Stevens Thomson Mason Misunderstood Patriot

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Public Library

Kansas City, Mo.

01170 2461

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STEVENS THOMSON MASON

By Kent Sagendorph

THUNDER ALOFT: U. S. AIR POWER TODAY
STEVENS THOMSON MASON: MISUNDERSTOOD PATRIOT

Stevens Thomson Mason

Misunderstood Patriot

By

KENT SAGENDORPH

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY, INC.

1947

Copyright, 1947 by E. P. Button & Co., Inc.

All rights

FIRST EDITION

C. No pan of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who wishes to quote brief passages in con
nection with a review written for inclusion in
magazine or newspaper or radio broadcast.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY THE WILtlAM BYRD KRESS, INC,

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

To Rut/iie

PREFACE

STEVENS THOMSON MASON was a youth whose strong per
sonality attracted people to him as to a magnet. In a raw,
boisterous frontier atmosphere such as Detroit's undeniably
was in the 1830'$, Mason could not help becoming a popular
hero, nor could he avoid becoming the target of political enmity.
Caught between these two opposing forces, Mason lived in an
environment of almost continuous drama. The selection of this
remarkable character for an explanatory biography is, I think,
an obvious one. Mason's life contains the ingredients for sev
eral books fiction, political history, and the more difficult
work of sympathetic but objective biography, which I have
here attempted to achieve.

While Mason's position in history is not that of an Andrew
Jackson nor a Henry Clay, he nevertheless exerted a powerful
influence upon his times and upon posterity. Throughout
Michigan, as well as in other parts of our country, there has
been some speculation among historians as to the cause of
Mason's eclipse in history. This volume throws some light
on the subject by describing the circumstances under which
Mason withdrew from public life the most remarkable in
stance of its kind I have ever discovered.

After more than a century in his grave, Mason remains
very much alive in the memory of the people who live in the
state he created. Legends about him, like those centering
around Sam Houston, Daniel Boone and Andrew Jackson
himself, tend to obscure Mason's lasting achievement by per
petuating anecdotes about what he did, what he said, the clever
ness with which he confounded his enemies. Legends about
Mason as a character fail to do justice to him as a leader.

The task of identifying and classifying great numbers of
forgotten records, letters, bound files of documents and obscure
reports bearing on Mason's career has been exhausting and
tedious. Fortunately I have had the help of scholars and his
torians who know where original source material can be found,

PREFACE

and who have been most generous in assisting me to crystallize
the Mason legends into a substance of solid historical fact.
To them, in the most sincere terms, I convey my gratitude.

Among them, the distinguished figure of Dr. George N.
Fuller stands pre-eminent. Secretary of the Michigan Histori
cal Society, head of the state's Historical Commission until his
recent retirement, Dr. Fuller regarded a popular biography
of Mason as a welcome addition to the documentary records
about him. He plunged into this work enthusiastically and
helped me with the research over a period of several years.
His successor and present Secretary, Lewis Beeson, carried on
Dr. Fuller's cordial cooperation by supplying me with new
references. My warmest thanks go to them and to their staff
at Lansing. To Mr. Sydney Bonnick, the well-known photo
graphic technician of Detroit, who created excellent illustra
tions from old pictures, congratulations. Mr. Bonnick made a
new photographic copy of the Mason state portrait for the
frontispiece of this volume which is also used officially by the
State of Michigan.

To Mr. Stevens T. Mason of California, grand-nephew of
the Governor and retired attorney of Detroit, I express my
thanks for locating many of Mason's family possessions and
books and the long-lost portrait which he caused to be copied
for this book. Mr. Haskell Nichols of Jackson, also, located
and forwarded to me invaluable records of Mason and his
times. Mr. W. A. Swanberg of New York, who assisted me
most vitally in the preparation of this manuscript, has been
my loyal friend. To them, and to all those who have volun
tarily assisted in the classifying of these new discoveries of
Masoniana, my most sincere gratitude.

KS

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE 7

L THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 15

II. FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 40

1812-1822

III. A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 74

1822-18^0

IV. FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 103

October, i8$o-]uly, 1831

V. THE BEARDLESS MOSES 141

July, iSji-August, 1834

VI. "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR I" 173

August, i834"-August, z#j5

VIL LITTLE JACK HORNER 204

August, i8^-May f 1836

VIII. BREAKING INTO THE UNION 234

May, iS^S-February, 1837

IX. RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 259

February, iS^y-November, 1837

X. WILDCAT MONEY 288

November, 18 ^-January, 1838

XL SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 317

January, iS^S-December, 1838

XII. MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 349

December, iSjS-December, 1839

XIII. THE WRECK OF THE Governor Mason 378

December, iS^November, 1841

XIV. FLOWERS FROM THE FIRING SQUAD 404

November, iS^i-January, 1843

APPENDIX: MASON RETURNS TO DETROIT 418

GENEALOGICAL NOTES 424

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 427

INDEX 437

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Governor Stevens Thomson Mason. State Portrait

by Afain Smith. 32

Stevens T, Mason of Raspberry Plain, and his wife,

Mary Armistead Mason. 33

The "Davis Place" Mount Sterling, Kentucky. 64

The Jefferson Avenue House, Detroit. 64

John T. Mason. 65

Emily Mason. 65

, A Wildcat Bank Note. 288

Michigan's First Constitution, 1835. 288

William Woodbridge. 289

Detroit in 1837. From an old sketch. 320

Michigan's First Railroad Train. 320

The "Lost Portrait" of Governor Mason. 321

Julia Phelps Mason. 321

MAPS

1. Detroit in 1 8 30. ' 107

2. The Old Michigan Territory. ' 118

3. Michigan-Ohio Border Controversy, 183$. 193

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

CHAPTER I

THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA

JOHN THOMSON MASON, ESQ., of the Virginia Masons, was
a perpetual adolescent who never quite grew up.

He was boundlessly enthusiastic about new things. This
in itself is an admirable quality in a pioneer, which he hoped
to become. He tried hard, in the latter half of his life, to be
come a true pioneer, and spent weary years opening frontier
forests in the Southwest. Yet he never really succeeded. Always,
in his memory, there remained the knowledge that he was born
a Virginia gentleman and that he had not carried on the tradi
tions of his class. He was more of an exile than a pioneer.

In the year 1811, when he was twenty-four, this gentleman
was the lord of a rolling plantation in the sunny uplands of
Loudon County, as rich a wheat region as Virginia could
boast. He bore a distinguished colonial name, and lived luxuri
ously surrounded by slaves, fine silver and resplendent coaches.
He was tired of the life he lived. He was a misfit In his environ
ment. Something in the man's character which no one could
explain made him crave an escape.

He disliked his situation, but did not know exactly how
to correct it. His mind was fixed on the money-making oppor
tunities of the West, which, following the Revolution, cried
out for development.

Mr. Mason carried on the routine affairs of his plantation
with only half his attention. The other half was concentrated
on ways to get away from Virginia. Absently he gave his con
fidence to men who turned out to be rogues. Casually he joined
other planters in community schemes which blew up in the
bankruptcy court. John Thomson Mason was a neighborhood
problem in Loudon County. Socially he was one of the great

IS

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

families, but culturally he might have been a backwoodsman
masquerading as a Mason. B

His plantation lay three miles from the border of Fairfax
County, and the main road to the bright-lawned manors led
past his gate. It was noted that occasionally when the great
ladies of the manors rode out for the afternoon in their landaus,
stiffly presentable in their curled wigs and satin gowns, they
would see John T. Mason galloping madly down the dusty
road in a suit of rumpled homespun, jet-black hair uncombed
and standing on end, eyes gleaming with some impulsive
scheme. "He was not," observed one of his relatives, dryly,
"in tune with his times."

Perhaps John T. regarded that as an advantage. He was
called John T. in letters merely to distinguish him from all
his relatives who bore the same initial in their names but who
always carefully spelled out the entire name 'Thomson"
(without a "p"). John T. didn't; he signed himself John T.
Mason and never alluded to the Thomson part if he could
help it. He was beginning to erect a barrier between himself
and all the other Masons, many of whom were Thomson
Masons with various given names. The family, one of Vir
ginia's mightiest clans, seemed to him to be disintegrating
rapidly. No one else apparently noticed it, and John T.'s in
sistence that things were going to the devil was regarded by
the clan as another symptom of his growing eccentricities.

The Potomac manors of Fairfax and Loudon Counties
bred a self-satisfied society which regarded any change as
dangerous. It was the region described by Alexander Hamilton
as the "Athens of America." Like Athens, its inhabitants saw
it as the most beautiful spot in the world, surrounded almost
entirely by barbarism. A few, like John T., regarded the
whole pseudo-feudal structure as decadent and doomed to
collapse. They told the wealthy planters that their great homes
were being undermined by the economic termites of taxes and
mounting overhead, only to be brushed aside impatiently and
termed radicals.

John T, was one of the few Masons who could speak with

I8l0-l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 17

authority on the subject of economics, because he had majored
in that branch at college. It was clear to him that land was
still the only source of the State's wealth. He saw, furthermore,
that in previous generations great grants of whole counties
and river valleys had barely sufficed to maintain a single big
plantation in expensive colonial u Athens of America" style.
In 1811, generations later, these grants had been willed to
so many cousins and grandchildren that the so-called planters
were actually only farmers. Their average holdings had been
cut to a point which would not support elaborate estates. But
the heirs kept on building manor houses and maintaining an
air of aristocracy.

The Virginia gentleman employed a steward to run his
estate, confining his own energies to the only two careers open
to him statesmanship and arms. He regarded service to the
State as his duty, to be performed as long as required, for no
fee and at his personal expense. Whether the service took
the form of writing a pamphlet, making a speech or raising
a regiment of troops, he undertook it. Very few such men
knew anything about bookkeeping, or the tricks of making
money from the land. They tended to regard the subject as
degrading.

A noteworthy exception, in 1811, was John T.'s uncle,
George Mason of Gunston Hall. This huge Georgian brick
mansion, set in an immense pattern of formal gardens and
wide lawns, was the show place of Virginia. The estate bordered
on Washington's property at Mount Vernon and in* George
Mason's time was equally well known. Gunston Hall had
eight thousand acres under cultivation, an entire slave city
with its own streets, factories and stores, its own fleet of river
scows to carry its produce down the Potomac to deep-draft
ships which awaited it. The estate operated five factories
which produced furniture, shoes, clothing, textiles and wrought
iron. There was the Gunston Hall distillery which produced
Lafayette's favorite brandy, and the barracks which quartered
the French warrior's personal staff during his long residence
there throughout the Revolution.

18 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Beside its docks at the river's edge, Gunston Hall's slaves
had built granaries, tobacco warehouses, carding and spinning
mills and a flax warehouse. In 1809, only two years previously,
the estate had exported thirty-six thousand bushels of wheat
to London, besides the other grain sold in domestic markets.
It was the biggest estate in Virginia and George Mason the
wealthiest citizen.

George Mason, the master of this enterprise, regarded him
self as a planter. Yet he ran the business himself, keeping his
own books in the panelled library, demanding that London
buyers come to him across the Atlantic instead of maintaining
a London agent.

He was one of John T.'s severest critics when the young
man pointed out that the plantation system could not survive.
George Mason pooh-poohed and tutt-tutted. He grew im
patient. But he was the last Mason to rule Gunston Hall,
and his son was forced to sell the "estate after the master's
death. The State of Virginia acquired most of the land and
sold it to mere dirt farmers who began raising tobacco* The
great house fell into ruin, and was restored in 1926 by a New
Yorker who bought the property as a private residence,

John T. had the foresight to see what was wrong with Vir
ginia, but not enough to see what was going wrong with his
own life. He saw that rising taxes and mounting volumes of
bills and expenses were going to ruin him, but the decision to
leave Virginia was a difficult one. He was indecisive about it
while events came crashing about his head in a series of crises,
all seemingly aimed at chaining him even more securely to
Virginia.

The statement that a wealthy Virginia gentleman, as John
T. Mason obviously was regarded by his neighbors, wanted
to kick over the traces and go plunging off into the wilderness
makes him seem slightly ridiculous. In reality his ideas were
sound, but few besides himself had the vision to realize it* John
T, wanted to sell what he could, abandon what he couldn't, and
Jyc Virginia while Ms JhpJdings still had some market value.

I8l0-l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 19

He dreamed of migrating across the mountains to Kentucky,
and of growing up with the new West.

His mother, the grand old dowager who depended heavily
upon him, was ailing. His two sisters were absent for long
periods, attending the elaborate balls at Washington City,
as the people then called the tiny village surrounding the new
Capitol. His wife was expecting a baby, her second. John T.
grew restless. His family must have winked, and told each
other that expectant fathers always behaved that way.

On October 20, 1811, the Mason clan arrived from all
over northern Virginia in response to news announcing the
imminent arrival of the baby. They assembled at the home of
Mary Armistead Mason, John T.'s mother, a few miles away,
because his small estate would not accommodate the mass
of uncles, cousins and in-laws who responded to the call. There,
in a quiet, dignified array, they waited for the tidings from
John T.'s home.

The birth of Stevens Thomson Mason was an event of social
importance in Virginia. This was no common baby, but an in
fant personage. The details of this occasion were recorded
in diaries by aunts and granduncles and fifth cousins. The
ceremonious act of inscribing the baby's name and birth date
in the great, gold-hinged family Bible was described carefully.
The baby's birth was a momentous occasion, and was stage-
managed like one.

There was a time for the guests to be very quiet, and a
time to make a noise. They gathered on the lawn and over
flowed the veranda, silently conversing, waiting for a signal
from John T.'s house beyond the horizon. The baby might
die. In those harsh times he had only a fifty-fifty chance of sur
vival at best. There might be a long moaning, shrieking ordeal ;
mother and infant were as likely to die as to survive, and the
Mason clan might be attending a funeral, not a christening.

Presently a mounted slave came galloping down the dusty
road, waving his arm. He flourished a hastily scrawled note:
"Aboyl"

20 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

That was the signal. Shouting and chattering, the assemblage
entered its carriages and mounted its horses for the short ride
to the near-by home, where John T. had a moment or two to
tiptoe upstairs and meet his new son before the arrival of the
family.

Ann Thomson Mason McCarty, John T.'s aunt, wrote many
years later that the new father was prancing around the lawn
of his little house like an Indian, with a big silver punch bowl
in his arms, ladling out cupfuls to all and sundry. He pumped
the arms of people who offered congratulations and seemed
to be all over the place at once.

It must have been a delightful scene ; the white portico of the
small, yet gracious, home acting as a backdrop for spreading
crinoline gowns, gentlemen in tight-fitting strap trousers, a
few in the more formal knee breeches. There was formalized
proposing of toasts, downed with the proper remarks and
gestures; stately quadrilles, an enormous feast. The home,
according to a Mason guest who wrote of it to John T.'s
daughter sixty years later, was festooned with garlands of
autumn leaves, and the yard was full of coaches and restless
saddle horses. The letter said that John T.'s slaves were
huddled under a spreading tree near the kitchen wing. They
were chanting softly, taking in all the sights, and "they never
tired of talking about the great day, even after it had been
forgotten by the gen try. "

Five days later, October 16, 1811, the Masons who lived
within a day's ride returned once more, to attend the christen
ing in the small Episcopal Church in Leesburg. They heard
the solemn name pronounced slowly, with pauses :

"I christen thee Stevens Thomson Mason."

The baby's name had been selected long in advance* There
was no doubt that he would be Stevens Thomson Mason if he
were a boy. Custom decreed it, and custom was obeyed. It was
the name of his famous grandfather, and must be carried on.
All the Masons who wrote delicately penned but heavily-
phrased accounts of this heir's appearance in the world re
membered John T. with that punch bowl in his arms. Some old

I8l0~l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 21

ladies described the punch bowl in detail, how it had the Mason
and the Thomson arms quartered, who gave it to John T.,
and his forgetfulness in not bringing out the matching silver
candlesticks with the punch. No one remembered having seen
the baby.

Custom, again, decreed that papa should take the bows,
ladle out the punch and answer the toasts, while upstairs,
a woman who had just passed through the shadow of death lay
in her bed, sighing, with a tiny, inarticulate bundle of life
beside her.

Stevens Thomson Mason was the forgotten man at his own
birth.

For nineteen years, the lives of this lad and his father ran
parallel. John T. shaped his son's character as a sculptor shapes
clay. He took the boy everywhere, perched him on the corners
of desks when he was a toddler, developed him under forced
draft because he enjoyed showing him off. Then, the father,
with characteristic abruptness, dropped out of the youth's life
as if he had fallen overboard at sea. He seldom reappeared,
and never afterward continued his influence.

But the trend he had developed in the boy's career carried
on until his death. Stevens Thomson Mason had his father's
alert mind, but not his father's impulsiveness or irresponsi
bility. Strangely, he matured before his father, becoming a
rock of rugged strength to the family while John T. was still
chasing luminescent bubbles far into the Southwestern forests.

Their relationship is one of the closest father-and-son com
binations in American history. John T. revelled in it. He knew
that he would never become an outstanding figure in the nation,
but he thought he saw in his young son Stevens a spark of
genius which, though it usually fizzles, sometimes flames into
lasting accomplishment. If that happened, he would have
something to hold up to the Masons ; to force a revision of
the clan's low opinion of him. John T. was a younger son, and
that fact doomed him to comparative obscurity as long as he
lived

22 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

There stand the Masons in review, in Virginia history; lined
up rank after rank in marble, bronze and State portraits, gen
eration by generation solidifying their title the Founding
Fathers of Virginia.

Governors, Senators, Supreme Court justices, generals, law
givers and law-enforcers. The Mason name rang down the
corridors of time, re-echoing for three centuries. In seven
generations the family produced four major generals, five
United States Senators, and three governors. For a hundred
and fifty years, Masons responded to roll calls in Congress.
Three ambassadors and five ministers abroad carried the
Mason name in honor to the foreign capitals of the world.
It resounds in historical association to this day.

There is Fort Mason in San Francisco, the port of em
barkation of Pacific-bound troops, named after a Mason who
was the first civil governor of California. The notorious
Mason-Slidell incident which almost touched off war with
England in 1 86 1 is a memento of another. Some writers say
that the Mason-Dixon Line, co-engineered by Charles Mason,
is an accomplishment of the same family, although Charles
himself said he was an Englishman.

At any rate, Stefens Thomson Mason (grandfather of the
baby born in 1811), Armistead T. Mason and George Mason
represent three generations in this immediate family who
earned fame in the United States Senate. Their descendant
James Murray Mason continued their prestige in the Senate
until the outbreak of civil war. John Young Mason was Secre
tary of the Navy during the Mexican War, and Thomson
Mason was Virginia's first Chief Justice.

Masons served their State and nation as long as service to
the people was called statesmanship and not politics. Then
they gradually thinned out of public life. The last Stevens T.
Mason practiced law in Detroit for forty years without any
temptation toward politics.

They were a remarkable clan. They were a hard-living,

I8l0-l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 23

energetic, opinionated group of scrappers, out in front during
every war and first on the rostrum during every civil crisis.
Few of them attained obscurity or old age, except their women
folk. They lived fast and dangerously, worn out by their
excessive labors, and died young. George Mason, the "Father
of Virginia" in the encyclopedias, was the eldest of the lot,
and he died at 66. His brother Thomson, first Chief Justice
of Virginia, died at 51. Thomson Mason's son, Stevens
Thomson Mason, I, died at 43, and his son Armistead died
at 39.

They are difficult people to understand today. They were
too active to be remembered merely as marble busts in a mu
seum gallery. The way they lived is too full of contrasts to
be explained easily. Most Masons were rabid advocates of
universal suffrage, leaders in the fight against slavery, viewers
with alarm in every abuse of civil rights, outspoken in any
cause aimed at levelling the class structure. They were vicious
pamphleteers, loud-voiced orators. Yet they all owned slaves
on their estates 1 they believed firmly that they were born to
rule their less fortunate fellows, and that theirs was the re
sponsibility for public well-being.

Their public careers were dedicated to establishing and
preserving democracy in State and nation. They lashed out
from the little mahogany speaker's stand in the House of
Burgesses at Williamsburg against "established wealth; the
tyranny of the privileged class" and the rest of it. When they
had finished speaking, they put on their gold-banded tricorn
hats, pulled down their lace cuffs, and prodded applauding
citizens out of their paths with gold-headed walking sticks.

At home, they intermarried and intermingled only with their
social peers. Casual strangers calling on the Masons usually
found them very difficult to see. Yet their loyalty to the prin
ciples of local and State sovereignty, of popular rule, was so
fanatic that the George Mason who helped frame the United
States Constitution refused to sign it because it did not prohibit
slavery in the new Federal Territories. He stalked out of In
dependence Hall in high indignation and returned to Gunston

24 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Hall, where he held three hundred and forty-five slaves of his
own. To him this attitude was not inconsistent. He wrote to
John Adams :

"If this preposterous situation [slavery] is to be tolerated,
the democratic form of government promised by this document
is impossible. As it is presented, it will lead only to a monarchy,
or to some form of tyranny by an aristocratic class wherein the
rights of the common man will be crushed beyond hope of
redemption."

He is the George Mason whose outcries aroused so much
antagonism toward the new Constitution that he was invited
to make his own suggestions about correcting it. He is credited
with drafting, in reply, the first ten Amendments to the Con
stitution, containing the "freedoms." It is known as the "Bill
of Rights," and is this particular Mason's monument in
American history. The State of Virginia's monument to him is
the familiar bronze statue on the State House lawn at Rich
mond.

He was but one of fifty or sixty Masons prominent enough
to gain mention in the Dictionary of American Biography,
which devotes .thirty-four pages of fine type to their achieve
ments. The repetition of -given names makes the Mason
genealogy a sort of detective assignment; my own solution to
the confusion was a card index which kept them in order.
Admittedly difficult to appraise in the mass, the Masons are
conceded to be among America's greatest families. They were
leaders from the days of the first American progenitor, whose
name, just to make things more confusing for the researcher,
was George Mason.

Colonel George Mason was a cavalry captain in the army
of Charles II of England in the war against Cromwell. De
feated in the Battle of Worcester in 1651, Colonel Mason
helped smuggle Bonnie Prince Charlie across the Channel to
France two jumps ahead of Cromwell's Roundheads. Then
he secreted himself and a few loyal companions aboard a
packet bound for Jamestown. When he arrived, in the same

1810-1812] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 25

year (1651), he found himself in a decayed, half-starved out
post which was on the point of collapse.

Colonel Mason laid out and named Stafford County, Vir
ginia, after his old home in Staffordshire. He assumed leader
ship of the colony; he was the first sheriff, a justice, and com
mander of the militia. His son and grandson held the same
three posts in the same county, for the ensuing century. By
that time the family was well-established as a sort of hereditary
autocracy, coupled with the largest fortune in Virginia.

The head of each generation of Masons in this line of
descent was always named George, so the genealogist scratches
his head over George Mason, I, II, III and IV, doing the same
things at the same place but at distressingly different times.
These leaders, named George Mason, begat more than one
son, and following British precedent, willed the bulk of their
estates to the eldest, but a certain patrimony to each younger
son. In tracing five generations of the family we find that three
of them built new manors and started new lines of descent.
They married into the other great Virginia families, the Car
ters, the Thomsons, the McCartys and the Lees.

Thus while George Mason, I, bequeathed George Mason,
II, a tract of land equal to three modern Virginia counties,
George Mason, III, held some forty-five square miles of land
and his son George Mason, IV, suffered along with only twenty-
three thousand acres. Of this, a great proportion was useless
foothill and swamp and the rest, except eight thousand acres,
was forest. He could have cultivated more if he had had more
labor, but with that acreage under cultivation he was very
wealthy.

George Mason, IV (1725-1792), was born in Stafford
County, but as a young man migrated to the Potomac River
onto land bequeathed him by his father and began developing
this big plantation. His father had begun the construction of
Gunston Hall there, in Fairfax County, adjoining the Wash
ington estate at Mount Vernon. George Mason, IV, and
George Washington were intimate boyhood friends and close

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

collaborators throughout the whole period of colonial friction
with England and the Revolution. .

In turn, his younger brother Thomson Mason, under their
father's will, had inherited two thousand acres of beautiful
rolling wheat land in what is now called Loudon County, up-
river from Gunston Hall This he left intact to his only son,
Stevens Thomson Mason. This brilliant young man was a
colonel in the Continental Army at the age of twenty-four,
Washington's aide throughout the war, and one of the first
United States Senators to hold office upon the adoption of the
Constitution. After twelve years of outstanding achievement
in the Senate he died suddenly in 1803, at the age of 43.

The unbending custom of favoring the elder son is noticeable
in the Senator's will. The elder son, Armistead Thomson
Mason, was a fat, somewhat pompous youth who had broken
away from family tradition only once when he disdained
matriculation at the College of William and Mary, Williams-
burg, to attend a Northern university. He inherited Thomson
Mason's lovely Georgian manor house, "Raspberry Plain, 77
and one thousand acres. The other thousand acres were left
to his younger son, who was John T. Mason,

In 1803, when the will was probated, John T. was sixteen
and about ready to enter college. He had been carefully tutored
during childhood at "Raspberry Plain 7 ' and showed the chief
advantage of the tutor system, which lay in its ability to pre
pare students for college at an earlier age than do the schools
of today. Virginia had no public schools, and very few private
schools of an elementary or preparatory nature, Families
of any standing employed tutors, who either discovered some
latent ability in their pupils and hastened to develop it, or gave
up in disgust before college age was reached.

Thomson Mason's will bequeathed to John T,, in lieu of
the family homestead, a fund wherewith to build one of his
own. He selected a site five miles from the town of Leesburg,
employed an architect, and departed for the College of William
and Mary as the first of the fourth-generation Masons on its
rolls.

I8l0-l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 27

He developed rapidly and, as many undergraduates do, be
came a bit conceited. His preparatory education, apparently,
had been excellent. He had a nimble mind, quick to absorb
facts and forget them again after examinations. John T.'s
extra time allowed him to take up outside interests, notably
a sort of gloomy preoccupation with what was happening to
Virginia and what was to become of him. He delved into all
the information available on the science of economics, which
wasn't much.

John TVs major talent obviously lay in that field. Although
economics was disguised under the clumsy title of "ethical
philosophy" at William and Mary, the youth was absorbed in
it to the exclusion of his attention to other subjects.

He pored over old titles and land records ; he saw quickly
that with every will probated, new heirs dividing once-ample
land grants, land was shrinking from generation to generation
at an alarming speed. His one thousand acres, for example.
In his great-grandfather's time there had been twenty-three
thousand acres to bequeath to a son. His future children
what would he leave to them ? A kitchen garden ?

He debated with faculty members on these themes. Profes
sors at William and Mary, as well as at other old colonial col
leges, were considerably more scholarly and less tolerant than
their modern counterparts at the great universities of the
twentieth century. Many of them were ordained ministers,
often Catholic priests. They accepted their classroom function
as part of their divine mission, the more so since all these
colleges were originally chartered as theological seminaries
and began teaching, not economists, but ministers and clergy
men. Such serious men did not like to have their most cherished
concepts flouted and attacked by a cocky undergraduate. One
professor undertook to straighten out John T. on some topics.
He began inviting him to his home.

This scholar, Professor William Moir, was a doctor of
philosophy as well as an Episcopalian divine. Professor Moir
taught a few courses in "ethical philosophy," but from the
Mason family's letters about him he appears to have been

2 8 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

intensely practical and to have regarded the subject as a
science. He was an undersized, heavily bearded man in middle
life, irritable with his students but quiet and patient at home.
He had taken his philosophy degree at the University of
Edinburgh, and boasted of his family's descent from the
Scottish poet David Macbeth Moir. But his family had lived
in Virginia for three generations.

At the professor's house, John T. met a girl. She was the pro
fessor's daughter, Elizabeth. John T, forgot the beauties^ of
abstract discussion about ethical philosophy, and began paying
court to her. She was a dainty little thing, fragile as a Dresden
doll. Often she was ill, and fainted easily. She had none of her
father's love of argument

Elizabeth was classic simplicity: finely cast features, brown
hair primly combed in two slanted planes over her forehead
from a central part, and large blue eyes. As became a young
girl of the period, she spoke not. Her family never recorded
any sayings of Elizabeth's. She moved silently, a willowy
figure in a high-waisted Empire gown, and was demure.

Apparently John T. loved that shy sweetness and Elizabeth's
silence. She was eighteen when he first met her ; twenty at the
time of their marriage in 1809. He was twenty-two. Their
marriage again illustrates the indifference shown by John T.
toward tradition, and what the family thought. He was the
first Mason to marry into a family distinguished only for
scholarship, and without property. It set a precedent carefully
avoided by the Masons in the future. Shortly after their mar
riage, when John T. had christened his new home "Moirfield"
and was happy as only a well-to-do bridegroom can be, Pro
fessor Moir and Elizabeth's tiny, brittle mother packed up,
left Williamsburg and moved in with their daughter and
son-in-law. John T. supported them for the rest of their lives.

Apparently John T. expected to live at "Moirfield" and
raise his family there. Soon after the arrival of the Moirs,
however, John T, began exhibiting acute symptoms of uneasi
ness, absent-mindedness and dissatisfaction with his environ
ment It may have been the Moirs, but it is more probable

I8l0-l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 29

that following the honeymoon and a resumption of his normal
pessimism about Virginia's future, John T. realized that
"MoirfiekT's thousand acres would never support a big estab
lishment in comfort. We know that he came to dislike "Moir-
field" quickly and found excuses to stay away from home.

He spent long hours in Leesburg, moodily watching long
wagon trains of migrating farmers plodding along toward the
western mountain pass, and toward Kentucky. The West
became a fever in his brain. He couldn't go.

At home he was surrounded with annoyances. A huge, coal-
black negress had come to "Moirfield" with the Moirs as
Elizabeth's attendant; her name was simply Granny Peg. She
spoke only a few words of English and was entirely pagan,
never becoming a convert to Christianity. When Elizabeth
was four or five years old, Professor Moir had encountered
a slave auction in progress on the Jamestown docks. This
buxom negress, captured in a Guinea village only a few weeks
before, was being pushed about the scene, cruelly lashed by
the auctioneer's whip, without being able to understand what
was going on. More as an act of compassion than anything
else, the professor bought her and brought her home as Eliza
beth's servant. As the girl grew, Granny Peg lavished affection
upon her. The slave's whole life was Elizabeth. When Eliza
beth married, Granny Peg concluded that she would have to
bring up Elizabeth's husband, too.

She coldly disapproved of John T. and of everything he
did. The lord of the manor did not live up to the slave's idea
of a fit consort for her adored Elizabeth. She seemed to be
hovering around him constantly, eyeing him, muttering to her
self. Inconsequential, perhaps, but another source of irritation
added to the growing list of domestic troubles.

Soon after the birth of his son Stevens in 1811, John T. de
cided to move into Leesburg and practice law. Admission to the
bar was not difficult. Requirements were not much greater than
those for a notary public's appointment in our day. If a man
could read and write well, if he knew who Blackstone was
and could quote from his Commentaries, if he knew the differ-

30 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

ence between a criminal and a civil action and had an attorney
friend to sponsor him, he was speedily admitted.

Many Masons were lawyers; few practiced law as a pro
fession. John T.'s grandfather, Thomson Mason, was a career
lawyer who studied his Blackstone in the same courts where
Blackstone gathered his material London's historic Courts
of the Middle Temple. He was admitted to the bar there,
first as a barrister, finally as a solicitor. He was a successful
London attorney for some years before returning to Virginia
immediately prior to the Revolution. John T. never had that
kind of training, but didn't need it to practice law in Leesburg.
He had a degree from William and Mary, and that was enough.
So he bought volumes for a law library, some office furniture,
and hung out his shingle.

Surprisingly, he was a success. He could argue as long as a
judge would listen. He was a genuine Virginia Mason, which
flattered his rural clients who came to him with boundary
disputes, leases, wills and the usual docket of a small-town
lawyer. His practice flourished and at night John T. took his
books home and studied hard. Opportunity was coming. Some
day it would appear. He would be ready.

John T. was the most ingenious of the seventh-generation
Masons of Virginia. He delighted in experiment, mainly out of
adolescent curiosity, but to some extent as a means of eventually
freeing himself from the rut of his environment The other
Masons watched the show with interest, wondering how long
he would continue to fight.

At Leesburg he adopted little mannerisms, changed his cos
tume and his personality. Gone was the formal ruffled neck-
stock he had worn at "Raspberry Plain", and in its place came
a plain black satin neckband, around a high starched collar.
He wore trousers of Leesburg homespun^ and let his black
hair grow upstanding and wild.

I8l0-l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 31

Anecdotes surrounded him. He cultivated them; such things
brought him clients. His village prestige presently brought him
to the notice of James Monroe, the Leesburg patriarch, whose
spreading estate adjoined "Moirfield" but who seldom was seen
in the town on business and never socially. Mr. Monroe was
Secretary of State, at the time, in the cabinet of President
Madison. He had served as United States Senator from Vir
ginia just before John T.'s brother Armistead held the seat,
and had succeeded John T.'s father, Stevens Thomson
Mason, I.

There had been a warm, intimate social contact between
the families for many years, Masons and Monroes visiting
and dining with each other. Mr. Monroe seemed like an old
man to John T., when during the summer of 1812 the great
man came home to his big, cool house for a rest. One of his
first social invitations was received in great glee by John T.
It was the first of many such visits throughout the summer.

John T., in his own words, was "astonished at the progres
sive ideas I received from Mr. Monroe." The Secretary viewed
the problems of the nation with a broad perspective the younger
man had not attained. He sat in the sun outside his pillared
manor house, gazing absently at the distant Potomac, while
his mind roamed the horizons of the world. He talked of the
recent Burr Conspiracy, and its implications.

Monroe had a feeling, based on this near disaster, that the
chief danger to the country's future lay in the West. In time,
the armed forces of the infant Republic could protect its
shores. But there was a limitless* "back yard", an unknown
wilderness spanning the continent. Maps meant little. Those
grand claims which appeared as parallel lines stretching from
existing states westward to nowhere ridiculous 1

Authorities at Washington City didn't know who was in
possession. No one knew what foreign agents were stirring up
trouble. Other nations still clung to precarious technical claims
to part of that "backyard." It was a vast question mark; a
fertile breeding ground for plots and schemes of revolutions.

32 STEVENS THOMSON MASON ___

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 was merely a step toward
the eventual colonizing of that inland empire. There were
Texas, Florida, the Great Lakes

When John T. heard words like these; he brooded over
them for days. His law office looked like a prison cell. The
West I That was where he wanted to be out there winning the
West for the United States! But there was the family; his
wife, his little girl, Mary, now aged two and a half, beginning
to toddle about and ask questions. And the baby.

Ah, yes, the baby 1

Stevens Thomson Mason, II, a squalling little object only
a few months old, a fuzz of black hair on his pink head and two
blue eyes as big as his mother's what was to be done about
him? And about little Mary? Suppose he found an opportunity
to migrate westward. Mary might stand such a trip ; the baby
surely couldn't.

John T. silently wished that his son would grow up fast.

The year 1812, in spite of its mounting war hysteria, was
an unhappy one for him, until autumn. His mind full of his
own worries, John T. was slow to perceive something that
most Masons knew before him. Romance had come to "Rasp
berry Plain", his mother's house,

John T.'s two sisters, Mary and Catherine, were Potomac
belles who were well past the first blush of girlhood as mar
riageable age was reckoned then, but charming in a slim, pa
trician way. Mary, the younger, was twenty-one; her sister
Catherine, twenty-six. "Raspberry Plain", only forty miles
from the white-domed Capitol, was close enough to enable
the girls to move in official Washington society during the
season, and there they had met two eligible bachelors, both
Congressmen.

These girls had been trained at home to be ladies. Their
aunt, Ann Thomson Mason McCarty, reading Plato to her
sons at Gunston Hall; Mary Armistead Mason, their mother,
debating philosophy with Madison and Monroe at "Raspberry
Plain", failed to endow Mary and Catherine with a reverence
for scholarship. They wanted homes, not degrees.

I'IIE STATE PORTRAIT OF (GOVERNOR MASON. Painted by Alvln Smith in
1837, when Mason was 26 years old and campaigning for re-election as
Governor for his second term. The portrait, six feet by fifteen feet,
hangs in the House chambers at the Michigan State capital, Lansing.
Photograph by Sydney Bonnie^

I8l0-l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA

33

For some years they had been cautiously, demurely looking
over the field while curtseying at Washington minuets. The
clapboard town was a disgrace to the nation, there wasn't a de
cent inn in the place, and every Congressman and official who
could secure an invitation spent his leisure time in the Potomac
manors. "Raspberry Plain" had been full of them, on week
ends, for many years. Sometimes the manor resembled a Wash
ington boardinghouse on such occasions, with Congressmen
loudly caucussing on the veranda while cabinet officials debated
with dignity in the drawing room.

Then there were lonely weeks while the girls were visiting
Mrs. Monroe or some other Virginia family at their Wash
ington homes. Because they were almost like Secretary Mon
roe's own daughters, they were invited everywhere and em
braced the opportunity to make careful selections. Gradually
they centered their attentions upon Benjamin Howard and
William T. Barry, both serving their first terms in Congress
and representing the same state Kentucky.

John T. began cultivating these two gentlemen. Mr. Howard
fitted into manor society with practiced ease, but Barry, a year
or two older, spent an exasperating amount of time in pure
man-talk with frontiersmen and seemed shy in the presence
of the Mason girls.

He singled out Catherine Mason for what attentions he
could muster, and she encouraged him. They were married
rather abruptly during the summer of 1812, with her mother's
benign approval. Ordinarily an affair like this would have
dragged on decorously for years, but war was in the air and
Barry might have to go. No sooner had the wedding been
celebrated than the younger Mason sister, Mary, came to her
mother and announced that Ben Howard had proposed and
that she had accepted.

Mrs. Mary Armistead Mason viewed that romance with
deep disapproval. She liked Ben Howard very much, and he
was socially acceptable. But Mary was her "baby", only twenty-
one. Her departure would sadden "Raspberry Plain"; leave
the old dowager with only her eldest son, then in the United

34 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

States Senate, to come home for occasional week ends. She
sobbed. Then, as mothers must, she gave her consent.

The two couples began packing for an immediate return to
Kentucky. The star of opportunity burst before John T.'s eyes.
The transportation problem was going to be difficult. The two
couples had only themselves and baggage. They had no slaves,
no wagons, no provisions, and the trail through the mountains
was long and tortuous. John T. had slaves; he had money, and
facilities for equipping the party as a regular expedition. He
volunteered. The two Kentuckians accepted. At this, Mary
Armistead Mason wept until her health seemed to fail her.

"Kentucky?" she wailed. "That place? Indians behind every
tree?" Why, even Daniel Boone had to hide from them. John
T.'s father, Stevens, had headed a government exploration
party through the Cumberland Gap in 1801 and his vivid de
scription of its hazards was preserved in his diary at "Rasp
berry Plain". John T. read excerpts from it :

"The pilgrim into those regions," Stevens Thomson Mason
had written, "will have to pass through the country of the
Cherokee Indian, nearly one hundred miles over the Cumber
land mountains, where he will be exposed to every unclemency
of the weather without a shelter to retire to, for there is not
a house or hut in the entire journey; a journey in which all
travellers are obliged at all times and of unavoidable necessity
to sleep one night at least, and from the fall of rains and the
rise of watercourses often many nights, without a roof to cover
them from the beating of the storm, and moreover where
they are liable at every stop to be robbed by the Indians, as I
myself experienced while passing through that wilderness."*

Stevens had left an excellent map of the course he had fol
lowed. That, said John T., was the route they'd take. Mr.
Barry demurred with violence. Why, he said, that was silly.
The new wagon road passing through Leesburg continued
on to. Redstone Fort, Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh, and thence
down the national road which lay parallel to the Ohio River

*Also quoted in Travel in America, by Seymour Dunbar, p. 158.

I8l0-l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA

35

to Covington, Kentucky, from which Lexington was just a
day's travel by a wagon road. It could be done in two weeks,
easily. John T. ran his finger along his father's inked topo
graphical map. He pointed out that the route Barry preferred
was not only longer, but that it crossed the mountains at an
elevation of seven thousand feet; the map said so. Now,
Boone's old Cumberland Gap trail was much easier, sparing the
women and the tiny baby, Stevens Thomson Mason II, the
anguish of that mountain climb between western Virginia and
Pittsburgh.

"It's not seven thousand feet high in those passes," Barry
replied.

But he apparently was outvoted; the southern route was
selected and preparations for departure began. John T. pro
cured stores, supplies and equipment. Whether he sold "Moir-
field" or not we don't know; he closed it, packed up his Lees-
burg lawbooks and desk, and ordered all his furniture piled
on long, wide-wheeled wagons.

Somewhere John T. bought an old six-horse coach, probably
a stagecoach. Into this sturdily built vehicle he packed four
women and two children: Mary Mason Howard, Catherine
Mason Barry, Elizabeth Moir Mason and her aging mother.
John T.'s two children were held on their laps. He packed a
veritable wagon train; a line of heavy road wagons piled high
with food and equipment. While he was thus engaged, war was
declared with England and the President sent commands to
all reservists to join the colors. Both Ben Howard and William
T. Barry received these summons, urging them to return to Ken
tucky with all haste.

Almost immediately came another letter, for Howard. The
President had carved out the upper half of the gigantic Louisi
ana area under the name of the Territory of Missouri, and
had appointed Colonel Benjamin Howard military governor.
He would have to stop in Lexington just long enough to leave
his bride, and hurry on. It made a quick departure imperative.

In the Northwest, Tecumseh's council fires were blazing, and
British officers fed the flames, Already British men-of-war

36 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

lay off the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Like the roil of approach
ing drums, the terror of war rolled louder and nearer, seeming
to drown out everything else.

Brass-bound trunks were lashed to the top of the coach.
Behind, stretching far into the distance, came the wagon train.
Twenty slaves drove the teams or perched precariously on the
canvas-draped loads. Granny Peg was there, so was old Peff,
a slave John T. had inherited from his father, his personal
servant since boyhood. Handling the intricate lines of the six-
horse coach team was John TVs coachman, a slave named
John Jackson, who had driven Senator Mason to White House
receptions and had been bequeathed to John T. in the estate.

In the wagons there lay, carefully wrapped, a gleaming set
of English silver with the Mason and Thomson arms, the
ceremonial punch bowl and candelabra, John T.'s law library,
some of his father's old books and Professor Moir's heavy
scholastic library. In those wagons were books like Adam
Smith's Wealth of Nations, with John T.'s college notations in
the margins; Mackintosh's Review of the Progress of Ethical
Philosophy; a finely bound calfskin edition of William Penn's
History of the People Called Quakers; Benjamin Franklin's
Autobiography; and Voltaire's Candide; and many hundred
other books. Under the canvas tarpaulin was a heavy English
walnut dining table, chairs, a carved sideboard, chests, beds,
foot warmers, brass andirons, trunks tied with rope and heavy
with crinoline gowns, Paisley shawls, lace caps, fluffy hooded
cloaks, absurd corsets.

All these items were entered on John T.'s inventory. Many
are in museums now in Michigan and Virginia: shoes, cooking
pots, fire tongs, pewter tankards, mixing bowls.

Looking at a relief map we can see that Barry was right
and John T. was cruelly wrong about the proposed route to
Kentucky. Modern maps are more accurate than those he had;
nevertheless Barry had ridden to Washington from Lexing
ton after his election to Congress and his services as guide
ought to have been more important than John T.'s father's
map. But John T. would listen to no disparaging remarks

1810-1812] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 37

about his father's handiwork. Stevens Thomson Mason, I, was
no engineer, and his estimates of altitudes and distances were
woefully incorrect, but John T. would have no other.

Mounting his horse, he rode to the head of the column.
Barry, Colonel Ben Howard and Professor Moir rode along
side the coach. In early September, 1812, the pilgrimage began.
John T. raised his arm, Jackson on his box cracked his long
whip over the coach teams, and the procession wound slowly
out of the u Raspberry Plain" driveway.

The road selected, through Cumberland Gap and along the
old Boone Trail, was one of the first means by which white
men invaded the plains of Tennessee and Kentucky through
the mountain barrier. Boone himself had publicized it quite
widely after some semi-factual adventures around the Cumber
land Gap nearly twenty years previously. After him came
Senator Mason, heading a military survey party whose ob
jective was opening a practical means of communication be
tween the interior and the seaboard.

Boone was a pioneer; the very name of Dan'l Boone is part
of our folklore. Not so well known is the fact that he was also
a good promoter and organizer; his influence is strong in Ken
tucky today. He did not like the Boone Trail and said so many
times. He negotiated it on horseback with an Indian guide,
discovering the practical value of the Gap. But he forded
rivers, galloped around the shoulders of forbidding mountains
and got through, never expecting that his discovery route would
be followed by a supply train of John T.'s household goods.

North of the Gap the mountains were impassable. Through
it, one had to ford the Cumberland River, which John T.'s
caravan could not do. And Senator Mason had forgotten to
enter this important bit of information on the map that John
T. trusted so implicitly.

In 1812 the route to the Gap from Leesburg lay south,
through Richmond. There it turned southwest and began
the approach to the mountains over a well-travelled emigrant
road which continued on for some two hundred miles until it

38 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

crossed the "Great Road"' from the Yadkin River to Philadel
phia, four hundred and thirty-five miles long. Intersecting this
main highway, the emigrant trail vanished entirely withm the
next hundred miles. From a point near the present town of
Pulaski, Virginia, there was only a vague set of directions on
the map leading to a ruined Revolutionary War blockhouse
called Fort Chissel, two hundred miles east of Cumberland
Gap, This was Daniel Boone's famous "Wilderness Road"
which in the first three decades of the eighteenth century saw
thousands of emigrant trains arrive at Fort Chissel annually,
thence branching off either to Tennessee, or across the Blue
Ridge Mountains to Kentucky.

In 1812 it was easily followed as far as the old blockhouse,
but not surveyed. Arriving there, the Mason party studied
its map again. Daniel Boone had indicated directions from
Fort Chissel to Cumberland Gap as about two hundred miles.
From the Gap, the route progressed along the top of a ridge
of mountains, through another gap, up again and across the
hardest section of the terrain, the crossing of the Smoky Moun
tains.

Once across, the route, which Boone had ridden in 1775
at the request of a land company interested in opening new
routes to Kentucky, led northward through a valley called
"Boone's Trace". This route branched off on other routes
which Boone had dubbed "The Warrior's Path" and "Bison
Street"

By following haphazard directions hastily scribbled by Boone
in his letters to the Transylvania Land Company, more than
thirty thousand white men had arrived safely in Kentucky
along Boone's road by the year 1800. Some authorities, notably
Seymour Dunbar, cite figures to show that hundreds of cara
vans like John T.'s came safely across the mountains every
year. In that case there seems to be no obvious excuse why,
under John T.'s leadership, the journey to Lexington should
have required seven weeks, as he admitted in later years. It
was hideous.

Trees had to be felled to pry the mud-cacked coach out of

I8l0~l8l2] THE MASONS OF VIRGINIA 39

the mire. Teamsters shouted profanely at horses, while the
ladies covered their ears. From Fort Chissel to Cumberland
Gap the party averaged only a few miles a day. "We were
frequently in danger of being killed by the falling of horses on
the icy and almost impassable trace, frozen at night, and above
all, attacked by hostile Indians who were even at that time
making war upon the whites at many places on the frontier.
We subsisted on scanty allowances of stale bread and meat.
The ladies rode with children in their laps, the men with guns
on their shoulders."

He probably got lost after arriving at .Cumberland Gap,
since the remainder of his own account of the trip was removed
from his file of letters by John T. himself in later life. Elizabeth
Moir Mason was ailing, but held the baby, Stevens Thomson
Mason, II, in her arms throughout the harrowing journey.
There was no place to leave him except in some other pair of
arms, and that wasn't practical.

Mary Mason Howard, thin and haggard, was ill. While
great flakes of mud fell from the coach wheels, she became
weaker. There was nothing to do but go on. No help for her
could be found in those mountains. Mile after mile they gnawed
their way toward the summits of the Blue Ridge, only to find
more summits, higher, confronting them farther on. Fall turned
to early winter. There came blizzards to whip them on. It was
an experience that left its mark on the minds and bodies of
everyone in the caravan, black as well as white.

After seven weeks, weary in every bone, most of the party
sick and Mary Mason Howard critically ill, the caravan limped
into Lexington. It was November, 1812, and Lexington itself
was in the grip of fever.

CHAPTER II

FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY

STEVENS THOMSON MASON ; S earliest childhood memories were
scenes of mourning at funerals.

Kentucky, as a state, was in mourning. Everywhere, when
the boy was about four years old, he heard tales of the savages
who had ambushed and slain nearly two thousand brave Ken
tucky fighting men at the hideous River Raisin massacre near
Monroe, Michigan, in midwinter, 1813. He saw the pitiful
remnants of the decimated troops, mutilated and stumbling,
dribbling back in scores and dozens for the next two or three
years. He and his family stood silently on the sidewalks of
Lexington to watch the slow processions pass.

It was drilled into his eager mind that somehow Michigan
had cost all those lives. Michigan was a savage wilderness
where no man's life was safe. It was a distant land many days'
journey to the north, where the country's flag had been dis
graced by a man named General Hull, and where many battles
had been fought Memories like these are enough to fix a name
like Michigan in a boy's mind as a very exciting place.

His mother, particularly, shuddered at the Territory's
name. His father looked grim and shook his head*

The impact of the disaster of Michigan on the boy's nimble
mind was a lasting one. More than any other factor, it lassoed
and hog-tied his galloping imagination and branded it with one
word politics. He heard about Michigan day after day:
why the cowardly Hull had surrendered; what was wrong
with the War Department to make such a thing possible ; how
Kentucky troops had been sacrificed on the altar of bureau
cratic indifference ; the crying need for men in office who would
do something.

40

1812-182:2] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 41

He heard little else. Around the house, John T. was con
stantly making extemporaneous speeches about these things,
and Stevens T., aged four or five, was the only one who would
listen.

In 1815, John T. was rich. He bought a famous old Southern
mansion with three hundred acres of velvety blue-grass lawns ;
he rode in a varnished coach with liveried footmen and he was
a big name in Lexington. The boy Stevens only knew what he
saw. He didn't remember the small rented house the family
had occupied upon arrival in Lexington. His parents didn't
like to recall the galling memories of that place, and very little
was said about it.

Local records in Lexington have very little to say about
John T. Mason's arrival in December, 1812. The attention of
the State was centered on meeting its quota of five thousand
troops for the fight against the British on the lakes. The Mason
caravan came snaking down out of the hills and limped into
Lexington just in time to be caught in this recruiting furor.
There was no time to talk about anything else.

Kentucky went far beyond its quota with nine thousand
able-bodied men raised and equipped within three months. The
enthusiasm for the war mounted >f almost to hysteria. Ken-
tuckians, mostly quick aggressive woodsmen and congenital
scrappers, rose en masse. They were fighting against something
that seemed very real to them. The Lexington Gazette, four
wavery columns of blurred woodcut type, defined the war as an
attempt by the British to curb our budding national spirit.
People said that the haughty British officers in their gold braid
and lace cuffs were openly contemptuous of the whole idea of
American independence. They boasted that they would squelch
it by a few bold moves. Everybody knew that the plan included
four simultaneous moves. British fleets were to sail audaciously
up Chesapeake Bay, the Mississippi and Hudson Rivers and
swarm down from Canada upon the Great Lakes. They
planned the very move James Monroe had visioned in talks
with John T. quick cleanups with Indian help in the West
and on the Lakes, and a sweeping movement eastward to meet

42 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

the victorious fleets. The Americans would be caught in a vise.

A British officer wounded in the battle of Tippecanoe told
grizzled William Henry Harrison that the British had com
plete plans for the administration of the United States as a
crown colony, and that they did not anticipate any difficulty
brushing aside American armed defense. Whether it was true
or just a contemptuous bit of propaganda, it aroused such
hatred in Kentucky that everybody who could walk and carry
a rifle volunteered.

In New England, a budding revolt had rumbled against
the Federal embargo which had tied up Yankee shipping and
kept seamen ashore rather than let them face the danger of
being seized and thrown into servitude on British men-of-war.
Privateers were armed and manned. In New York State there
was difficulty raising troops. In the East the war was looked
upon as a cruel act of fate; something that had to be suffered
through and survived if possible. In the West, Kentuckians
grabbed their rifles and swarmed northward to kill the British ;
just like that.

Kentucky sent them away without food and with one blanket
for six men, but they got there and they fought. In spite of the
ambush and massacre at the Raisin, they rallied and rushed on.
They chased the British commander, General Proctor, across
the Detroit River and far into Canada. At the Thames River,
near the present city of London, Ontario, they caught him.
They killed the wily Tecumseh. They came so close to killing
many British officers that four of them ran madly through the
woods for eight miles, half-dressed, leaving their subordinates
and all their Indians at the mercy of the Kentuckians. It was
a bloody slaughter ; as bad as the Raisin massacre. But it turned
the tide of the war. Kentuckians supported Commodore Perry
and helped him sweep the British from the Lakes, and they
were the last troops to return to their homes.

The British began paying the Indians a cash bounty for
American scalps. One Indian survivor, in 1824, related that
four tribes of redskins were making money on that bounty as
long as Tecumseh was alive. After the Battle of the Thames,

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 43

he said, at the mere sight of a Kentuckian they'd vanish, and
go hunting somewhere else.

This sort of thing showed British military policy at its worst.
Kentuckians, on the other hand, were fighting a back-to-the-
wall defense of their very homes and not even a scalping Indian
could stand up before that. Lexington, from the very day the
disaster at the Raisin was known, was like a military head
quarters. John T. Mason could not have picked a worse time
to arrive.

His sister Mary, utterly spent by the tortuous seven weeks,
was very sick. His wife Elizabeth was expecting another baby.
The men upon whom he had counted for introductions into the
right Lexington circles vanished into the excitement of the war
as soon as they arrived in town. Governor Ben Howard
resigned his post as Territorial Governor and was appointed
Brigadier-General of the Kentucky Volunteers. William T.
Barry wanted action; he was given a commission as a major
and became one of the great personal heroes of the war.

General Howard couldn't go to war. His bride was uncom
fortably ill at first, then seriously ill. She survived the jolting
of that coach only eight months, and died quietly in July, 1813.
Ben Howard never wore his resplendent general's uniform.
He followed her to the grave three months later, dying in that
quick, mysterious way in which so many people died a century
ago. There was no explanation.

It was an omen, a sign of more tragic events to come. Eliza
beth Moir Mason was delivered of a male child in the rented
house in Lexington. It was born dead. The following year,
1814, she bore her anguished husband another son. The babe
lived about an hour.

With returning troops in 1815; with General Andrew Jack
son's glorious but belated victory over the British at New
Orleans and with the corning of peace to Lexington, the skies
cleared/The war had wiped out many of the town's old asso
ciations. New beginnings were made. John T. Mason had a
degree from the College of William and Mary; he had a big
law library and he knew more law than half of these back-

44 STEVENS THOMSON MASON ^

woods lawyers ever knew existed. After the war, his practice
became very large.

Socially, he and Elizabeth Moir Mason captivated Lexing
ton. Major Barry returned, wearing the laurels of a hero.
He was John lYs brother-in-law, and that helped. Henry Clay
the mighty, a sort of haloed demigod around Kentucky, singled
John T. out for the benediction of personal and professional
approval. John T., as one of his colleagues said later, was a
"made man."

Henry Clay, next to the aging Daniel Boone himself, was
Kentucky's greatest man. Clay lived simply but comfortably at
a gracious little blue-grass estate he called ^Ashland", three
miles from the town. He had been in Congress long enough
to acquire a large national repute. It had the effect upon his
fellow citizens of endowing Henry Clay with an aura of great
ness which made everything he did seem like the inspired act
of a statesman. He maintained a law office, but he wasn't there
to practice very often. When he appeared, strangers bowed to
him on the street. In 1815 he was at the peak of his Kentucky
popularity.

A small, benign man with mild gaze and quiet voice, he
wore h/s thinning hair very long on each side so that it com
pletely covered his ears and draped almost to his stiff, stand-up
collar. He looked and acted like a distinguished man. Little
favors from him were magnified into events of great im
portance; stories were handed down from father to son.
Withal, he was a cantankerous old crab who took a serene joy
in making his enemies miserable. It was he who suggested to
John T. that there was a fine old estate for sale, adjoining
his own.

Clay was executor for the Todd estate, owners of the prop
erty, but John T. didn't know that until later. The home was a
great, imposing three-story brick mansion, built by Colonel
Levi Todd in 1790 and said to be the first brick house west
of the Alleghenies. Because of its associations with Todd,
the real colonizer of Kentucky, it was the center of most of
Kentucky's early history and already a hallowed object of

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 45

respect. Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd, came from that family.

John T., instead of preserving the historical associations of
the estate, changed its name and its appearance. He painted
the whole house a dazzling white, planted a formal flower
garden and built new slave quarters. He christened it "Serenity
Hall", because his maternal grandfather Robert Armistead
had thus named his palatial manor in Louisa County, Virginia.
John T. opened a new carriage drive to the Boonesborough
Road which ran past the property, planted trees and built
fences.

He could afford it. There was a surplus in the bank and
more came in every day. John T.'s dream of a future in Ken
tucky had come true. He was the happiest man in the world,
and one of the luckiest.

Late in 1815, John T. began worrying. Another baby was
expected. Every possible consideration was shown the fragile
little Elizabeth. Perhaps after three years the effect of that
bone-jarring journey across the mountains would have disap
peared. There was no recorded celebration, no social event.
But there was medical skill, and quiet, and a sense of security.
The baby was born; a girl. They had her christened Emily
Virginia, and she lived to be 97.

Stevens Thomson Mason was nearly fouj- at the time.

He was an eager, bright-eyed, effervescent child, abnormally
curious. Tall, but slender as a willow reed and nearly as deli
cate, his big blue eyes made him appear to be eternally ques
tioning, questioning, trying to puzzle out the answer to the
riddle of the world. When he was a small boy his face was
deliciously heart-shaped, smooth, dainty. He had the wavy
chocolate-brown hair of the Moirs, but he had his father's
energy. Even though he was a beautiful child in an age when
rich boys were dressed in elaborately adorned costumes, he
doesn't appear to have been a sissy. One reason, of course, was
John T, Anybody who could keep up with that dynamic man
needed energy.

Stevens learned so fast that sometimes he scared John T.
He couldn't read out of books, but he could listen. When he

46 STEYENS THOMSON MASON

was five he knew why General Jackson was a hero. People had
explained the Battle of New Orleans in detail for him, drawn
diagrams, quoted statistics. His astonishing brain quickly
analyzed all this, filed it away under the proper headings for
future reference. Professor Moir, humble at times m the
presence of this marvellous intellect, and constantly developing
it, began a new career. Its object was the transformation of
this bright-eyed little boy into one of the few recorded child
prodigies of the time.

Not a hundred miles away there was a boy about two years
older running barefooted around the tall grass of a tiny back
woods cabin. Nobody in the world of affairs knew that he, Abe
Lincoln, was there. At "Serenity Hall", statesmen held serious
discussions with Stevens T. Mason on the subject of the United
States Bank and other political subjects when he was seven
years old.

He must have known that he was abnormal in some way.
Hemans says that Granny Peg and Jackson, the coachman, fed
him a lot of African superstition which he took very seriously.
Voodooism helped him find some occult explanation for the
mysterious world in which he lived, and for his strange differ
ence from the carefree, uninhibited boys about him. He had
only one constant companion when he was about this age. This
companion exerted a highly marked influence upon him, of very
doubtful value indeed. Professor Moir had probably never
heard of anything approaching the modern theories of guidance
in dealing with precocious children. I imagine that it was great
sport, to him, to point out his handiwork when visitors came
to "Serenity Hall", asking the boy to answer a lot of complex
questions.

Professor Moir was more responsible for the boy's fund
of information than anyone else. He used to lie flat on the
carpeted floor of the book-lined library with him, tracing out
the routes of Caesar's legions on maps. He was teaching his
eager pupil the history of Virginia before the child could pro
nounce "Williarnsburg", One of the first noticeable effects
of this scholastic experiment was Stevens 1 s growing impatience

I8l2-l822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 47

with the drudgery of learning. He couldn't read, but he could
recite page after page from books. He didn't know what he
was saying, but parrot-like, he said it just as the Professor
read it to him.

All his life this habit clung to him and caused him endless
trouble. His mind would grapple with a situation by deciding
what sort of an answer he wanted and blithely skip to it across
a yawning chasm of intermediate details.

For that, we blame the Professor. This aged man, a pathetic
figure in the strange new land of Kentucky, was like a fish
out of water. Virginia was more than his home it was his
creed, his code. Shorn of his scholastic routine and the cloistered
gentleness of the college, tossed about over the mountains and
deposited like a sack of mail in this frontier city, Professor
Moir had little else to do than pump information into the
boy's brain.

Circumstances at "Serenity Hall" explain the rest: seclusion
in a quiet library; a cultured household three miles from town
and half a mile of lawns and shimmering groves from the
next hotise; a very large library, for the Kentucky of that day,
laboriously packed and unpacked so many times that every
volume in it seemed like a dependent friend; and there was
the boy's grandfather, a brilliant philosopher and a teacher
for most of his life.

When the boy was seven, John T. finally saw what was
going on. He did not relish the prospect of beginning his son's
education with college philosophy and having to work back
ward to the first grade. He wrote to "Raspberry Plain." Out
from Virginia, where he had been making the rounds of Mason
manors for nearly twenty years, came Mr. January, the tutor.

He was right out of Washington Irving. Tall, skinny,
pedantic, fussy, bound up with rules of conduct until he had
no more originality than a well-squeezed lemon, Mr. January
took the boy in hand.

It was fortunate. He was the perfect foil for Professor
Moir's broad philosophical concepts. He had a book. It was a
reader. In the book were letters. A is for apple.

48 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

The boy rebelled; Mr. January stood over him and made
him memorize the appearance of the letters. B was for bore
dom.

When he was eight, Professor Moir gleefully began teach
ing him Latin declensions on the sly.

John T. grew richer. Early in 1818 he was one of the most
successful men of Lexington after only six years as an attorney.
He had other interests. "Serenity Hall" cost a fortune to main
tain, but even with that load he had a surplus which ought
to be invested. Cautiously he bought a few business properties
in Lexington's downtown section. Recklessly he plunged like a
gambler into many a little business venture, hoping to come
out ahead in some of them.

Not because he was an attorney but merely because he was
a wealthy property owner, opportunity had come to him in
1817. The Federal government was about to put into opera
tion the most widely debated political puzzle of the time, the
United States Bank. A branch of the bank was to be estab
lished in Lexington. Groups of prominent men of the city
assembled to talk about it. Because they were mainly* Demo
crats, they opposed the idea in principle. But as long as the
Bank planned to open a Lexington branch they decided they
might as well handle the deal among themselves. John T.
had very definite ideas on the subject, and one of them was
that he should have one of the directorships.

And so it came to pass. When the Bank opened its Lexington
branch in 1817 it promptly became a gold mine for the direc
tors. It had quite a lot of legal business, having to do with
mortgages and trusteeships. John T. and Barry each received
many a gratifying fee.

The fact that his father was wealthy did not impress young
Stevens. He had always taken that for granted. At this period
he saw his father less often, and John T. didn't talk business
with him. One day Stevens came to his father and declared that
henceforth he was to be called Tom. He said that even though
the name Stevens Thomson Mason was a deep honor, and
one to be appreciated as such, he didn't like it. It appeared

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 49

that Mr. January addressed him as Stevens constantly, and
he wanted the family to use some other name. To his father
and mother he was always Tom thereafter. To his baby sister
Emily, toddling about the splendid halls in the heavy, puffed
dresses little girls wore then, he never was anything but
Tom all his life. His older sister Mary was suffering along
with Mr. January and his incessant penmanship exercises,
often making a slip and saying: "Mr. January says that
Stevens " She probably was rebuked for it.

Just an anecdote, one of many. But it shows that he had a
well-formulated idea in his mind. He knew his distinguished
grandfather's story at that age. He had been drilled in the
achievements of the Mason family until he undoubtedly be
lieved that he was foredestined for a great career himself.
His formal name would do to sign state papers with, when
he became governor of Kentucky someday. In his private life
he ought to be Tom.

Thus at the age of eight he made a distinction between his
public position and his private life. There is no doubt that
he firmly believed that he would become governor of Kentucky.
The more he learned about the Masons the more he felt cer
tain that he couldn't dodge fame even if he chose. And he
certainly did not choose. He eagerly prepared for it.

Some of the slaves on the place thought he was born to be a
celebrity. Emily has left us a vivid, but graceful, succession of
scenes from life at "Serenity Hall" which portray Tom as a
hero to the blacks. It is a manuscript volume in which she
transcribed all her diaries late in life. Names, from frayed old
inventories and letters, rise up to people the gaunt old ruin
of the mansion with busy blacks, snatching off their hats and
bowing when young Tom came sauntering around the corner
of the kitchen wing to visit with some of them. Granny Peg,
all two hundred pounds of her; old Peff, a chronic rheumatic
who walked with a cane but could lift a cask of wine any time
he thought he could filch a drink from it; Jackson, the coach
man, in his silk hat and white breeches; Tishey, the cook; Sam
and Robert, gardeners ; Evelena and Coty, the upstairs servants

50 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

nearly fifty in all. The spinning house, the dairy, the long
whitewashed stables under the whispering trees, lively with
whinnying saddle mounts. A double row of slave cottages on
its own street; white fences marching across the bluegrass.
A busy little island in a sea of lawn, populated by black servants,
quiet and uncomplaining. They served cigars to the gentlemen
from silver trays. They appeared out of the shadows with cut-
glass wine decanters, and they blended into the background
after trimming the dripping candles in their silver holders.

They belonged there; they were part of the very walls and
carpets. They would belong to Mr. Tom some day. They
adored him.

Little Emily, so tiny that Jackson had to lift her into the
carriage, knew each of them as an individual and a friend.
Eighty-five years later she was able to recall their names,
what they looked like, what they said. Tom never seemed
to realize that they were individuals. His mind was on other
things.

He was a constant annoyance to the exasperated Mr. Jan
uary. There was no gainsaying his brilliance of intellect but
nobody could make him work. He knew, as soon as the patient
old tutor began a sentence, what he was going to say. His mind
raced ahead to the point of the idea before Mr. January had
thought of it himself. He thought most of his elemental school
ing was childish.

Throughout the winter of 1817-1818 Mr. January stood
beside his pupil and made him practice penmanship until the
lad was dizzy. Tom's undecipherable scrawl gradually
straightened out and became, in time, the astonishing en
graver's script so familiar to researchers among historical
documents of the present day. What Mr. January did to Tom
to force him to write this way is one of time's secrets. Even
a hundred years later, every letter of his handwriting is plain
and as easily read as a page of type. His one concession to his
public position was an elaborately scrolled signature as com
plex and full of figure eights and flourishes as that of Elizabeth
of England. It was just the sort of gesture that pleased young

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 51

Tom. It was a signature that he designed and practiced pur
posely to go down in history along with his famous grand
father's.

Years of secluded peace, and of bounteous plenty. Shadows
of the brick mansion lengthened across the bluegrass, and
seasons changed. A new entry in the Bible, dated 1818: a
new baby sister for Tom and Emily and Mary, christened,
in grateful recognition of many gracious deeds past and present,
Catherine, namesake of John T.'s only surviving sister, Mrs.
Barry. In the summer of 1819 there was another such entry-
yet another daughter, Laura. Five children would bring sun
shine to the old Todd house and help brush away some of the
warlike tales about the place before John T. bought it, when
battles were fought and men died in its yard.

Tom, for some reason, had selected Emily as his closest
confident and companion. The elder sister Mary seems lost
in the corridors of "Serenity Hall"; a dimly seen, lonely little
girl who said very little and preferred to keep herself company.
It was to Emily that Tom came with his bits of sarcasm about
Mr. January; with her he tried to play hooky from the in
evitable family prayers which opened the new day. All his life
Emily was the only person, male or female, to whom he really
said what he thought. His sister was always his closest friend.

The year 1819 was a milestone in Mason history. It was a
year of rapid decisions, excitement, unpredictable events,
strange goings-on.

Early in the year John T.'s brother, Armistead Thomson
Mason, was dramatically killed in a pistol duel with his cousin,
Colonel John McCarty. A mounted messenger rode with the
tragic news as fast as horses would carry him across the moun
tains. The news arrived in the remarkably fast time of three
weeks. John T. summoned the Barrys to a family council to
hear its contents.

From the letter it appeared that Armistead had been ap
pointed to the United States Senate by the State Legislature,
and was serving his full six-year term. He was another Mason

52 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

who was personally a famous popular hero; a colonel of
cavalry in the War of 1812 and the chief figure of the Demo
cratic party in the northern section of the State. His own
popularity caused his death.

The Federalists had put up a candidate named Charles
Fenton Mercer from the Loudon district for election to the
House in 1818. The Party was aroused about it. That district
held the balance of power in the electoral votes for the coming
Presidential election, and it had to be carried at all costs. The
State leaders persuaded Armistead to resign from the Senate
and campaign for the House, as a Democrat, against Mercer.

The election contest was so bitter that it split the whole
district, ruined friendships, started family feuds. Armistead
T. Mason lost, by a mere handful of votes.

Colonel McCarty was a Federalist and one of Mercer's
chief lieutenants. He took violent exception to some of
Armistead's campaign remarks and called him out in January,
1819, on the historic old duelling ground at Bladensburg,
Maryland, with a pair of silver-mounted duelling pistols. At
the signal, both weapons cracked in unison. Mason's ball
shattered McCarty's left arm. McCarty's ball hit the wooden
handle of the pistol in Mason's hand, split into two parts, and
half of it glanced off and hit him squarely in the heart. He
died there on the field, with McCarty standing over him.

The letter caused hasty packing, hurried hitching of the
four biggest horses to the great coach. Because of the ex
pected baby, Elizabeth could not go. Young Tom went. It was
his first visit "home".

"Raspberry Plain" was silent with mourning. Armistead
had left a slender, weeping widow and two children, a son and
a daughter. The son was six years younger than Tom; just
a wide-eyed little toddler. To Tom's great disgust, he bore
the name of Stevens Thomson Mason. Tom's first cousin,
and now there were two of them I Armistead didn't know
whether John T.'s family would survive in the Kentucky wilder
ness, and he was taking no chances. If John T.'s son died, his
would survive to carry on the hallowed name. To that astonish-

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 53

ing degree did the proud Masons of Virginia set up barriers
against the disappearance of their illustrious names.

In practice, Armistead's theory worked just the other way.
His son Stevens went to military school and was just the right
age for a commission when the Mexican War of 1 848 appeared
to bring the phrase "manifest destiny" into the vernacular.
He was a captain in Robert E. Lee's mounted rifles, and he
got a Mexican bullet in the brain trying to drag some of Lee's
artillery up the blood-drenched mountainside at Cerro Gordo.
His death simplified matters considerably for historians, some
of whom would have been nonplussed had two men named
Stevens Thomson Mason emerged into the national spotlight
simultaneously.

There was mourning at "Raspberry Plain", and Armistead's
little son stared up at his tall, wavy-haired cousin without
worrying particularly about what the future held for him.
Then, quietly, John T. departed. The long journey homeward
gave Tom a chance to forget about the cruel fate which had
bestowed his name on somebody else. It was forgotten. As soon
as he arrived home, another sudden event eclipsed it.

James Monroe, President of the United States, was coming
to "Serenity Hall" for a visit. The Lexington Gazette sputtered
angrily about it, muttering deep in its mouthful of wooden type
about who did Monroe think he was, anyway, to gad about
the country spreading a doctrine he called "the era of good
feeling" at the taxpayers' expense?

The President had a very good reason for visiting Lexing
ton. Perhaps his decision to quarter the Presidential party at
John T.'s home was an afterthought, but it was a good one.
The grumbling Lexington newspaper was Whig in sympathy,
meaning that anything a Democrat did was patently the re
sult of an ulterior motive and needed looking into. Mr. Monroe
had just finished a very disappointing session of Congress and
was going to Tennessee with Andrew Jackson for -a rest at
"The Hermitage". Lexington was a stop on the route, nothing
more.

Everywhere he went, Monroe spread the gospel of peace, of

54 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

security, of getting along with the country's neighbors. Lexing
ton was a hotbed of anti-Administration criticism, thanks
largely to the Gazette and Henry Clay's frequent letters to
the editor under a Washington date line. Clay, exhausted
after the adjournment of Congress, was on the way home,
too. They were scheduled to arrive about the same time. Violent
enemies on every point of policy, Clay and Monroe were none
too cordial personally. John T. anticipated a lively visit.

The President arrived first, in June, 1819, to be feted by the
cheering citizens in a long parade which Tom and his father
watched. Veterans of the War of 1812 turned out in coonskin
caps and leather jackets. Cavalry, in new uniforms dazzling
with gold buttons and plumes, rode sedately as a guard of
honor. The Gazette came out that day with a growl about
the cavalry. It was the editor's opinion that such a display was
not in good taste to mark the arrival of a man who happened
to be merely the head of a democratic country. It smacked of
royalty. Copies of it were flung down into the mud as spon
taneous cheers went up. There were speeches, and John T.
stood beside Monroe while Barry delivered the official address
of welcome. Tom saw him, saw Monroe whispering to John
T. behind the back of his hand during Barry's speech. He didn't
hear a word Barry said. His eyes were on the tired-looking
man at the end of the platform: Andrew Jackson.

"Old Hickory" was the kind of hero who seemed to be
acknowledging applause all the time. Everywhere he went,
mobs surrounded him. The worst mob scene he ever survived,
according to his biographer Parton, was his arrival in New
Orleans at the conclusion of this same trip. Lexington was
nearly as bad. Whether the citizens were Whigs or Democrats
or Federalists they howled, whooped, milled around him.
At Lexington they pushed against the speakers 1 platform so
violently that they tore the bunting decorations off. Nobody
was listening when the President arose to speak. Not a word
of his address has been preserved.

Andrew Jackso^ was in the Senate; Clay was Speaker of the
House, and had launched a bitter campaign against Jackson

II2-l822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 55

about a year before, aimed at debunking him as a hero. Jackson
preferred not to stop at Lexington at all because of the violence
of his hatred for Clay; the two might meet on the street and be
forced to speak.

When the speech was over, John T. and Torn seated Jackson
between them at a reception dinner at Keen's Hotel. It was
late before the party arrived at "Serenity "Hall" but Jackson
had plenty of time to rest. He stayed there four days, with a
Sunday included. John T. said that he lay sprawled out on a
sofa in the parlor most of the time, rubbing his left arm. Truth
was, as several biographers have noted, Jackson was physically
sick and utterly weary. Periodically he would have spasms of
pain in that left arm, where Jesse Benton had accurately
plunked a bullet some five years before. The bullet was still
embedded in the bone of his arm. Physical exhaustion made it
ache like a throbbing tooth. At such times, Jackson was as
surly as a bear.

This was one of the times. He had to pay a duty call on
Mrs. Clay, next door, because Mr. Monroe went there. He
was relieved to find that Mr. Clay was still on the road some
where between Washington and Lexington. His relief was so
evident that he began to notice Tom, and joke with him.

If Jackson thought that Tom was a cute little boy to be
patted on the head, he was soon forced to change his mind.
Tom's mother came in to find Jackson laid out there on the
sofa arguing vociferously with Tom about something. He sat
up and took a hot toddy from her hand, muttered u Thank
you, ma'am", and lay back staring at Tom incredulously. He
gained a powerful attachment to Tom Mason during that visit.
The President and John T. and Barry and most of the Ken
tucky Democrats were outside in the rose garden, settling the
fate of the country over cigars and juleps. Jackson wanted
surcease from argument; enjoyed nothing more than resting
on the sofa and marvelling at Tom Mason.

The boy always loomed up in Jackson's mind as one of his
chief memories of that visit to Lexington. He remembered
John T. mainly as Tom's father. The visit exerted a strange

56 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

influence on the subsequent history of the Northwest. When
Jackson began packing to leave he was calling Tom "my son"
and "my boy", and begging Tom to come and see him some
time.

When Tom did, it was a different Jackson, and a different

Mason.

There is a little incident about this visit which only Parton,
among Jackson's biographers, seems to have appreciated.
Jackson and Monroe got away on schedule and made the town
of Lebanon, Kentucky, for breakfast the following morning.
Jackson limped out of his carriage and walked int<? the town's
only inn. He ordered breakfast and bought a copy of a news
paper containing an account of his arrival in Lexington. As
he sat there reading it, Henry Clay walked in.

There was an embarrassing silence. Jackson stuck his fur
rowed face deeper into the newspaper. Clay said: "How do
you do, General?" Jackson said: "Ugh." Immediately an
argument broke out. Neither man had eaten breakfast; both
had spent a hard night in their carriages on the road. They
argued up and down, while the President stared. Jackson
openly accused Clay of lying about him; claimed that Clay was
trying to besmirch his military reputation. Clay told Jackson
he was a fool; that he had his eye on the Presidency and that
he was totally unfitted by training or temperament to hold such
an office. Jackson was so enraged that he stalked out of the
place without breakfast and without even waiting for the
President. A military attache of the party was taking rapid
notes, unknown to either. Parton printed the conversation
almost word for word.

This angry meeting of the titans, with poor Mr. Monroe
being ignored entirely, explains a great deal. During the next
session of Congress there was open war between the two. Clay
finally took his revenge, and how sweet was the taste of vic
tory in his mouth! He beat Jackson out of the Presidency in
1824 on a parliamentary trick which was the biggest defeat

I8l2-l822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 57

of Jackson's life. Neither man ever spoke to the other again.
An accidental meeting, but it charted the course of history.

Young Tom Mason celebrated his eighth birthday at "Serenity
Hall," and thereafter saw it no more.

It is quite impossible for a historian to explain what hap
pened. We know the facts, but dusty entries on old records
often fail to tell a coherent story. Only a psychiatrist can say
why John T. Mason threw his fortune to the winds.

He owned everything a man of his times would want. His
faith in the new West and in the city of Lexington had been
more than justified. His estate was a recognized sight-seeing
attraction. Lexington people used to drive out there on the
customary Sunday afternoon airings just to gaze over the high
white fences in awe. He had one of the best law practices in
Lexington and one of its largest annual incomes.

A hundred and twenty years later, a wit named Robert
Quillen wrote a definition of a professional man: one who
makes a fortune at his own business and loses it by investing
in somebody else's. If John T. could have read just that one
little sentence in the musty old Gazette, his life might have
been different.

Probably John T. would have read it and forgotten it.
He was one of those men who manage to become successful
with only half their minds. With the other half he was always
dreaming weaving dreams of what he was going to do, some
day. Most men are never satisfied, no matter how prosperously
things are going/This pouty air of dissatisfaction seems to go
with successful men, at least in the opinion of men who are not
successes themselves. Executives are constantly demanding the
impossible and grousing until they get it, whereupon they de
mand something a little more impossible. Washington was such
a man, forever finding fault with his subordinates, complaining
to his diary of what scamps they were, seldom praising anyone.

58 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

John T. did not have that particular trouble, but he was al
ways telling himself that he could make more money with his
investments than he could in his law practice. He was cursed
with a craving for change. There was a limit to^ his tolerance
of routine. When that limit was reached, he attained his maxi
mum pressure and blew a gasket.

In 1819 John T. was eyeing the first feeble appearances of
industry. He poked around among cavernous sheds and sooty
shops full of strange iron machines. He asked questions. He
compiled logical summaries of the prospects of industry in
Kentucky. He convinced himself, at least, that Kentucky was
destined to become the workshop of America.

Plotting the future is a harmless sport, but backing one's
dope sheets with ones' own cash is not a sport but a highly
specialized profession. Some few men make fortunes that way;
most lose. John T. was basing his forecasts on increase of
population, emigration from the East, improvement in the
rivers and roads, known factors. He could not foresee that
the railroad, for instance, would in the next thirty years cen
tralize industry in the heavily populated East and keep Ken
tucky predominantly agricultural for a century. He could not
foresee that those masses of dusky slaves of his, chanting
spirituals in their cabin doorways on warm Sunday nights,
were going to become central figures in a struggle that would
nearly tear the nation apart. He could not chart the influence
of that war in his plans for Kentucky's future, because he
could not foresee any such movement of forces which might
cause it.

Those things were far in the future, hidden behind the
opaque screen of time. We can analyze the experience of a
century and see quickly that he was wrong. He could not see
any such signs at the time.

John T., in a tall beaver hat and well-tailored tail coat, stood
squinting into the glare of a roaring- fire under a smelting pot
in a little ironworks at Owingsville, a microscopic village on
Beaver Creek in Bath County some thirty-five miles from
Lexington. There was some ore, newly mined from a deep

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 59

shaft sunk slantwise into the looming hill. The little shop
breathed fire from its open door, sticking out its tongue at the
hill. A shaft car slid quickly down the incline while a cable
rattled over a pulley.

He watched while the blast of cold air aroused the fire to
white, roaring anger. He saw the ore liquefied in the heat of
the furnace ; saw the dross skimmed off, and the incandescent
ore poured from ladles into moulds. When they were cool
he picked up new pig iron, fondled it, studied it, nodded his
head at the men who pointed to it and shouted information
over the roar of the furnace.

In industry, he felt, lay his future In industry he could
produce new wealth, help build the State. The little company
owned the hill, and the rattling shaft car, and the smelter.
It produced something of value, something Kentucky needed.
With more money it would become a big company, and pro
duce more and more.

Some other "gentlemen", as the act of incorporation states,
and John T. Mason organized a new company to operate this
mine during the summer of 1818. Later, in the fall, he bought
an interest in a distillery at Mount Sterling, a village which
was on his way from Lexington to the iron mine at Owings-
ville. Then he waited for his profits.

About this time he casually gave a friend his endorsement
on a note at the Bank of the United States, without thinking
much about it. But it was a short-term note for a very large
amount; the friend defaulted and the Bank the very Bank
where he held a directorship regretfully notified him that
he would have to make good the amount.

In the fall of 1819 John T. saw nothing but ruin ahead.
He had sold property in Lexington and paid the note, but it
had cost him his directorship. The "gentlemen" who were his
partners in the Owingsville mine turned out to be practical
businessmen, not gentlemen at all. They had to have more
money more money. John T. had to supply it.

He sold "Serenity Hall". The slaves sadly loaded the long
caravan of wagons again. Down came the books from the

60 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

library walls. Into hogsheads of sawdust went the fragile
china and the gleaming silver. Once more the Masons were
on the move. In Mount Sterling, a village near the ironworks,
the caravan halted before a gloomy-looking old house on the
edge of town, overgrown with weeds, damp inside and with
windows half big enough. This was home. "Serenity Hall" was
thirty-five miles behind them in distance, but actually it was
something out of another world. Few people in Mount Sterling
had ever heard of the Masons. Villagers told each other that
the "Davis place" was going to be occupied again, and how
much were eggs worth this morning?

Tom Mason helped the family unpack, and his father es
corted him back to Lexington on a pony which Tom thought
was the finest animal in the world. He was eight years old,
reading Latin easily, writing in the precise script of an adult
but unable to understand even the rudiments of arithmetic.
Professor Moir's work had been done so well that he had
completed most of the required reading for entrance require
ments for college. In contrast, he could not spell the words he
recited.

There was a private school for young gentlemen at Lexing
ton. John Barry, his cousin, attended. Arrangements were
made for Tom to enter. He was to live at the Barrys'. Emily's
reminiscences announce that he was very happy there. Tom
himself never mentioned it.

It was Tom's first physical contact with a group of boys
his own age. John Barry was younger and smaller, but he
was as stocky as a bull calf and had his father's carefree ability
to get along with anybody. He valiantly undertook to make
Torn feel at east among these boys, but the effort was wasted.
Torn froze up, withdrew in shyness and was silent.

After some months Tom thawed out and took a more active
part in the games. I have studied all the records of this period
to find an anecdote describing how long Tom required to thaw
out, but nobody seems to know. He had a wide notoriety as
a boy prodigy, a superior little boy who always knew the

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 6l

answers. He must have been an insufferable little eight-year-old.

The penalty of precocity is never greater than in the com
pany of a group of boys. There is a pathetic loneliness, a sense
of being an outsider, somehow. Tom was one of the youngest
boys in the school and he had a long lead on them in scholar
ship. He was too young to be chosen for the games, too ad
vanced to share the burden of study. It must have been a very
unhappy first year.

Gradually he won a place for himself. His record was never
a distinguished one at this private school. Tom wasn't studying
very hard, but he was learning how to get along with others,
how not to lead with his chin, when to keep still in class even
if he knew the answer that stumped the rest of the boys. Dur
ing these school years he added very little to his store of knowl
edge. His trick of making himself popular had to be acquired,
the hard way, month by month. Popularity is the secret of every
politician's success. If Tom were dreaming about being gov
ernor of Kentucky he'd have to start learning that secret right
here in prep school. He learned it. He learned how to make
himself prominent, and he never forgot.

On week ends and vacations during these childhood years,
Tom rode back to Mount Sterling to roll luxuriously in the
verdant grass. He loved the "Davis place". If it weren't for
the multiple tragedies of these years he could have happily
rounded out his life there. But John T. was going broke. Food
was scarce, clothes were tattered and Tom didn't have to be
a boy prodigy to see it.

John T. had farmed out some of his slaves so that he
wouldn't have to keep them. He was away from home most of
the time, and he'd come back in a vile temper and utterly ex
hausted. Tom didn't have to ask what had happened. He knew
his father had been victimized again.

John T. was a gentleman, a man of honor. To the end of
his days he believed every associate of his to be the same
fortress of unimpeachable honesty. One of his worst failings
was his readiness to believe what he heard, and forget to ask
for proof. He was being skinned alive in that ironworks. His

62 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

partners were trying to squeeze him out. He had impoverished
himself to raise money to build the new plant the partners
said they had to have. When he couldn't raise another dollar
they decided that it was, after all, too good a thing to divide
with him. They tried to buy his interest for a pitiful fraction
of what he had invested. He was told he'd have to put in more
mone y more money, or the business would perish. But he

wouldn't sell.

Tragedy was bowing his head at home, and at the mine he
was just a woolly lamb whose function in life was to be shorn.
In the year 1822 his oldest daughter Mary, wasting away to
skeleton thinness with a malady then not fully understood, died
after a lingering illness. The effect of the heart-breaking death
of this quiet little twelve-year-old girl laid Tom's mother
perilously close to the grave herself. Just at that time she was
about to give birth to her seventh daughter and eleventh child.
Her husband's fortune was visibly melting away. The times
were bad; she knew intuitively that her husband's partners
were defrauding him. Mary's death brought her to a climax.

The floors were cold and the corners were drafty. There
was the smell of cooking all through the gaunt old house.
Granny Peg was there to fetch and carry, but John T. paced
the floor in anguish. A skilled surgeon from Lexington was
upstairs at the bedside. When the babe was born only fast
work by the doctor saved either life. For days it was a delicate
balance. Both survived, but neither mother nor daughter fully
recovered.

Another entry in the Bible: Theodosia. A mite of a baby,
brought into the world in the midst of a family crisis and
doomed to suffer all her brief life. The good old days at
"Serenity. Hall" were just legends to Theodosia. She knew
nothing but trouble, incessant migration from one Kentucky
house to another a little worse; never knew relief from the
constant battle to find food and keep the home intact. She
didn't live long enough to see her big brother's fame shoot
skyward like a rocket and cling there, at its zenith, for a

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 63

decade. Her life hung by a thread for the first few weeks. She
was an invalid all her life.

Elizabeth's cheeks were gaunt. She aged rapidly. John T.'s
upstanding shock of black hair was shot through with gray.

While he lived at Mount Sterling, his Lexington properties
mysteriously shrank in value. Taxes were shooting higher;
assessments against property owners to build roads were com
ing fast. His income from Lexington was a pittance, and it
was all he had to live on. He had given up his law practice
entirely. He had no clients in a place like Mount Sterling,
a village with two or three stores and a dozen lawyers to fight
for occasional wills and justice-court pleadings.

Once in 1824 he petitioned the State Legislature for permis
sion to organize a lottery to raise funds to build a road to his
mine from the neighboring health resort of Olympian Springs.
Permission was finally granted. He still owned a small share
in the distillery in the village, but it had only a local market
and never made any appreciable income for him.

Down, down went the family fortunes. Weeks dragged into
months, and years. John T. kept his head above water and
food in his family's mouths. That was all.

In 1825 he was given a temporary relief when a building
boom hit Lexington and his lots briefly climbed in valuation.
He sold some of them and used the money to buy equities in.
other properties. Hardly any of his Lexington property was
fully paid for/The windfall gave him a chance to move the
family back to Lexington for a short time in 1825 and fall
headfirst into another bit of luck.

His benefactor, oddly, was Henry Clay.

In 1825 Henry Clay was on the bottom in the scale of
Lexington popularity. Kentucky, after a generation of frenzied
loyalty, had turned against him so bitterly that he wanted to
take his family away from there. Even the patrician, white-
haired Mrs. Clay urged him to go.

Clay had engineered his deal against Jackson during the his
toric Presidential campaign of 1824. He had won; Jackson

64 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

received a large majority of the popular votes cast but Clay
beat him in the House of Representatives. There were three
candidates: Jackson, Democrat; John Quincy Adams, Whig;
and William H. Crawford, Federalist. None had an outright
majority of the electoral votes. Under the Constitutional pro
vision governing such contingencies, the election was thrown
into the House of Representatives wherein sat gimlet-eyed,
vengeful Henry Clay, enthroned as Speaker.

Clay himself appeared as a compromise candidate and man
aged to secure the electoral votes of three states. This ma
neuver cut the vote for each individual candidate even further
below a majority. General Jackson's name was marked on the
ballots as a second-choice favorite in three more states; he
was gaining in popular support every day. Clay had only one
opportunity for stopping him, and he used it. He appointed
a House committee to recommend a choice. Then he packed
the committee.

Clay did not like Adams, but he hated Jackson so bitterly
that he preferred to see Adams win. When the committee re
ported back to the House, Clay invited the members of the
Senate to come in and watch the roll call. One by one the vote
was counted by states, not by individuals. Adams received a
majority on the first ballot He defeated Jackson by two votes.

When the news reached Kentucky there was hissing, and
mass meetings. Clay did not even return to Lexington after the
adjournment. Adams immediately offered him the highest of all
Cabinet posts, that of Secretary of State. Clay wrote a few let
ters to his friends saying that he was undecided about accepting,
relating that there was a good deal of opposition to him both
at home and in Washington. He attributed that to the Ebul
lition of the moment, the offspring of chagrin and disappoint
ment." He accepted. And he did not return to Lexington.

He solved his problem by writing John T. and offering him
a very low rental if he cared to occupy "Ashland", the Clay
estate, during Clay's four-year term as Secretary of State.
John T. accepted.

About that time Mary Armistead Mason, the grand old

W vi

1 I

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 65

matriarch of "Raspberry Plain", died quietly with none of her
four children at her bedside. In her will she bequeathed some
of her own slaves to John T. He made a hurried trip to Vir
ginia to assist in the settlement of her affairs. When he returned
he did not take the new slaves to " Ashland' 1 . He found em
ployment for them, and used the proceeds for living expenses.

Tom liked "Ashland" because of its location. He had a pony,
and rode it to school every day. Among the three or four sur
viving slaves in the household was Jackson, the faithful coach
man who no longer had a coach to drive. Tom used to canter
to school every morning on this pony, like a young aristocrat,
with Jackson astride a horse following respectfully a few paces
to the left and to the rear.

Once again he was in his element: good clothes, fine food,
a servant to accompany him. John T. was feeling a little more
cheerful, too. The boom at Lexington continued throughout
the year. Floods of eager humanity were coursing through the
mountains, sweeping downward into Kentucky, swelling into
the full force of the tide which peopled the West in one gen
eration. Endless wagon trains of Virginians and New Eng-
landers and New Yorkers rumbled and creaked along the twisty
roads. Veterans of the War of 1812 were taking up the land
grants awarded them for military services as fast as new roads
were opened into their areas. Pike highways were being hewn
through the stone gaps in the Blue Ridge and Cumberland
summits. Inns were built. Settlements sprang up around the
inns. Along the muddy Ohio there were puffing steamboats
and new towns at every anchorage.

Good things can't last forever. John T. was guessing wrong ;
he believed that industry would find a market readily enough
among these hordes of land-hungry emigrants. The family lived
at "Ashland" not quite three years. By that time John T. was
unable to keep it up any longer.

Tom might have known. He was adaptable enough to live
anywhere and have a good time. Whether at "Ashland" or
some little cottage far out in the bald foothills known in Ken
tucky as "The Knobs", Tom grew taller and happier. In Lex-

66 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

ington there were parades for some reason or other every few
months. Tom and John Barry and some other youngsters from
the school always managed to get through the crowds for a
close view. They saw Lafayette, when he made his personal
visit to Lexington in May, 1825. They were on the platform
with the great people when, on July 4, 1826, William T. Barry
was the official orator of the day. A few weeks later they turned
out again for a monster funeral procession. Thomas Jefferson
and John Adams, the father of President John Quincy Adams,
had died on the same day. Mourning was nation-wide.

In 1827 Tom was almost sixteen. John T. was moving again,
but Tom begged leave to stay in Lexington with the Barrys. He
had just been accepted as a freshman in the autumn class at
Transylvania University.

Inevitably, disaster came to John T. Mason. Specifically it came
in the collapse of the Beaver Creek Iron Works at Owingsville.
But it would have come anyhow. He was no businessman, and
he could not fight with the weapons which constituted sharp
business tricks in 1827.

Tom heard from him infrequently. He knew the family was
poor, but not hungry. They were back at the "Davis place" at
Mount Sterling, waiting for winter with the stolid resignation
of the vanquished.

Grandpa, the splendid old Professor Moir, died quietly of
old age at "Ashland" in 1826. He was buried at Lexington.
Tom's grandmother was a wrinkled, quavery old woman. She
was hardly able to understand what had happened. The kitchen
fires smoked all the blue out of Tom's mother's eyes ; left them
a dull, beaten gray. There were wrinkles at the corners of her
mouth.

There was Granny Peg peeling potatoes ; Peff to weed the
garden; Jackson to take care of John T.'s horse. The others
were gone. Tishey the cook was dead. One or two had quietly

I8I2-I&32] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 67

stolen across the Ohio River to freedom. John T. didn't care.
There were that many less mouths to feed.

A sad procession, barricaded all winter against the siege of
storm and limping forth in summer to find cheer at some sunnier
place. They rented little houses, sometimes at Mud Lick or
Indian Fields, just to give the girls a respite from the clammy
old brick house at Mount Sterling. Emily and Catherine and
Laura, running and laughing through the bluegrass ; Theodosia
lying limply on a blanket, staring with piteous eyes. And there
was their mother. She was grateful for sunshine.

When Emily was twelve her mother found some hidden,
cherished gem among her keepsakes which gave the little girl a
year's schooling at Madame Mantelli's fine Lexington private
school for girls. Where she got it, we don't know. Emily didn't
say.

Tom was finding college absurdly easy. He liked it mainly
because he liked the serious respect for scholarship which was
always the hallmark of the small classical colleges. At Transyl
vania the whole atmosphere was serious. It had an enrollment
of about two hundred boys, and offered strict classical courses.
Knowledge was approached reverently.

He attended classes in a brand-new building made of white
Tennessee stone and full of marble floors, the gift of an early
alumnus. Henry Clay as executor of the will of the donor,
named Morrison, designed the building in the severe classical
manner: tall columns, Greek pediment, frescoes, impressive
stone steps. The building itself crowned the very summit of a
rather sharp hill, and these steps led up to the second story,
which was the main floor. College wasn't hard on Tom's brain.
It was more of a strain on his wind, climbing those stairs every
day.

Emily was happy as a princess at Madame Mantelli's
French-style school. She made a thorough study of everything
she saw and heard. By candlelight she wrote in her small
leather-bound diary pinched little letters which look like the
first attempts at rhetoric of a very small girl. When Emily was

68 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

86 or so she transcribed these diaries and gave us a glimpse of
her life at Madame Mantelli's. She must have been a delightful
child. Everything was beautiful; all her fellow pupils were
splendid ; everything she saw was a new marvel.

"Here we danced and sang and were as gay as only French
people can make a house," she wrote. "Madame played the
violin, her son Waldemar the clarinet, and Ma'amselle Marie
danced with a grace beyond anything I had ever imagined.
Ma'amselle Louise made the best waffles ever eaten. It was a
happy household, giving happiness to all within its reach, and
I got on rapidly."

Waffles. Waffles in 1828? Was Emily sure about that? Yes,
she was sure. The waffle iron is in Michigan's State Museum
today, where any skeptic can see it. The iron was old and black
when it came to Lexington. Forged of bar iron in Louisiana
many years before, it was a very long and very heavy pair of
pliers, with waffle grids in place of jaws. The handles were all
of four feet long, with rings on each side. Ma'amselle Louise
hung the long utensil from a pothook over the kitchen fire until
it was hot enough. Then she withdrew it, opened it, greased
each grid, poured in the batter and hung it back on the pothook
again.

The grids are the same size and shape of the rectangular
electric waffle irons of today about four by eight inches. It was
a simple enough gadget. Any blacksmith could make one. When
the waffle was browned on one side Ma'amselle Louise pulled
the heavy handles off the ring, turned it over and hung it up
again. It didn't flash any red lights, ring bells or stick out a little
chromium tongue when the waffle was done to the precise shade
of brown. But it produced waffles.

On his sixteenth birthday, October 27, 1827, Tom Mason
had attained the stature and strength of a man. Taller than his
father, he was. He was an inch and a half under six feet, Emily
said, just to make him sound bigger. But he was skinny as a rail
and weighed a mere hundred and twenty. Narrow, boyish
shoulders did not fill the puffed and padded tail coat he wore.

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 69

They never did, even later in life. Some sketches of him show
these narrow shoulders in painful clarity but his official portraits
always show a well-tailored broadcloth torso which might have
belonged to a stevedore.

His inquisitive blue eyes were larger and more richly blue
than ever. Tom's face was losing its heart-shaped baby outlines
and beginning to show his father's strong chin. The chin had
a dimple in it; the waves of dark-brown hair were precise and
regular; well-arched black eyebrows completed a handsome
picture. His beauty was an outrage against the crude log-
cabin and dogwood background of Mount Sterling. In Lexing
ton he was a youth to set all the girls at Madame Mantelli's
into a flutter. He walked as erect as a soldier; head up and
held so far back under the weight of his big beaver hat that
his upper eyelids drooped enough to make him look arrogantly
superior.

Thoughts of superiority and his appeal to adolescent girls
never occurred to him while he attended college. Regardless
of his appearance he was a mighty hard-working youth with no
time or energy for anything but study. He was devouring the
undergraduate course in great bites, his nose in his books and
his eye on the calendar. John T. did not have to tell him that
each passing day might be his last as a college student. Tom
knew it in a hundred ways, from the clipped evasiveness of his
father's letters to the ever-mounting air of suspense and defeat
which they bore.

What hair John T. had was turning white. He clung to his
conniving partners at the ironworks with the rigid doggedness
of a drowning man who clings to any floating thing. He was
tortured, but he wouldn't sell He wouldn't give up and let those
men laugh at him for a fool. He stayed. He kept another set
of books himself. As fast as he stopped extortions and
swindlings in the plant, crooked agents cheated him out of funds
from the sale of his pig iron.

They called that smart business in 1827. John T. became
his own sales manager. Then, in self-defense, he became the
whole sales force as well. He saddled his horse, stuffed saddle-

7O STEVENS THOMSON MASON

bags with blank forms and bills of lading, and started on the
road.

Selling pig iron in 1 827 was something like being an itinerant
preacher. There was nothing to correspond with modern sales
methods because there was no way to exchange money with any
certainty. There was no way to sell a product at all except
the way peddlers still sell cloth and leather to the monks of
Tibet and Sinkiang, and the way the Romans sold bronze and
brass to the barbarians of Central Europe. John T. took sam
ples and went forth to barter.

If he got an order he couldn't collect for it until the pig
iron had been unloaded at the customer's warehouse. Then
according to the custom of the time he had to wait thirty or
sixty days. The customer received a big discount for cash, but
if he paid in bank notes he did not earn quite so much of a dis
count. The customer could mail bank notes of some backwoods
bank the partners had never heard of. They were subject to a
complicated system of discounts which varied from day to day.
He could send a draft on some well-known bank in Lexing
ton, Louisville or Cincinnati which was gladly accepted at par. *
Or he could stall.

Whatever he did, he forced the manufacturer to finance the
whole deal and carry the load while the customer was using
the foundry's money. Nobody had established credit in the
backwoods. It was a case of sell the product, wait, and try
to get your money.

Most customers made all their purchases through commis
sion houses up and down the broad Ohio River. These were
middlemen who never saw the goods they bought and sold.
They did not warehouse them, but merely collected a few
orders from various customers for similar merchandise and
bought it from the producer for delivery directly to the cus
tomer. They might have twenty little blacksmith shops that
wanted pig iron; they bought a bargeload from a producer and
directed the barge to stop at all twenty docks. For this service
they charged the producer a commission.

By dealing over a period of years with commission houses

1812-1822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 71

which supplied established customers, a manufacturer would
keep production at a fairly reliable figure. But a new firm
located far down a tiny creek in the bleakest section of Ken
tucky's foothills could not interest the commission merchants.
And they held the buying power.

That was why John T. spent the year 1828 on the road,
peddling pig iron from office to office, and that was why his
hair turned white. Today's purchasing agent is often abrupt
but usually courteous. Those commission merchants regarded
sarcasm as one of their chief accomplishments. They kept manu
facturers waiting day after day for a five-minute interview.
They softened hard-boiled factory managers until they got
what they wanted at any price they chose to quote.

Some of John T.'s pig iron could go out by wagons over the
back-breaking hills to near-by towns which had blacksmith
shops. That, until John T. bought his interest, was the only
market the ironworks had. John T. sent forth flatboats, brim
ful of dull-gray pig, to ground on sand bars and overturn in
rapids. Crews poled the floatboats down the creek to Licking
River, thence day after sweaty day downstream to the rushing
current of the broad Ohio. On the big river the flatboat had
to go downstream. It could not go upstream unless it was towed
by one of the new steamboats at a prohibitive price.

He had to find business downstream. Two or three months
after him came the cumbersome flatboat, putting in at swarming
river towns that were hastily being nailed together, unloading
pig iron at blacksmith shops, at carriage shops, at foundries
that made iron cooking pots and rifle barrels. He sold to any
body who would buy two or three hundred pounds of pig. As
a salesman, he was superb. He oversold his plant to the point
where he could keep it at capacity for a year. Then he turned
his whole attention to collecting.

Businessmen could beat him at that game. His only markets
were the new settlements, and nobody had any "hard money".
They all wanted to pay him in scrip, in wildcat bank notes, in
anything but good money. Solvent factories would not buy from
him because they had long-term contracts with commission.

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

houses. He could see that there wasn't enough of this odd-job
business to keep his smelter hot, and he laid siege to the com
mission houses like a general before a walled city.

Once in Cincinnati, then a good-sized river city, he persuaded
a new commission house to try him. He sold a staggering order
of pig and finished iron. He sold bar stock of graded sizes,
strap stock, castings to dimensions furnished on drawings. It
was a windfall. Smiling, he hurried home.

The little plant bustled noisily to work forthwith. Wooden
patterns were carved for the castings. A small draw mill was
built for the bars and straps. The order was finished on time
and delivered promptly. The customer paid the commission
house in silver dollars, a breath-taking act of business honesty.

John T. did not know about the silver dollars until later.
His remittance didn't come. The firm's capital was gone, spent
in building new equipment and additional payrolls. The firm's
credit was gone. It could not borrow another dollar and all
its previous notes were due. Banks at Lexington and at Mount
Sterling clamored for payment. John T. finally had to go
and see what had happened.

The commission house was empty. The whole staff had
vanished. So had John T.'s money and the hope of becoming
wealthy in business.

It was only eight thousand dollars, not enough to wrinkle
the brow of a modern steel-mill's accountants. To John T., as
he clamped his trembling hands to his white head in utter
despair, there was some kind of poetic justice about the disaster.
It cleaned him out, but it also bankrupted all of his partners.
After years of squeezing him out of a business that seemed too
good for a mere investor, they themselves fell victims to a
swindler who had even outsmarted them.

The white-hot, roaring flames under the smelting furnace
died into cold ashes. The mine tunnels fell in, eventually, as
nature put on a squeeze of her own. Weather curled the clap
board sides of the mill shack. Today one must be an archaeolo
gist to find the site.

There was weeping in the cold, gloomy house at Mount

I8l2~l822] FRESH GRAVES IN KENTUCKY 73

Sterling. John T. Mason was sued by the Bank of the United
States the very bank in which he had once held an honored
directorship. He was served with judgments. All his equities
in Lexington property were grabbed up and swallowed. Jack
son, his faithful coachman for fifteen years, was seized by
marshals and led away to face the ordeal of the auction block.

Only Granny Peg and Peff and a little negro boy were left.
They belonged to Elizabeth.

Life had to go on, and the Masons existed through that
tragic winter. John T., with bent shoulders and dragging feet,
stood in the bare little parlor of his stricken house gazing
at one of the finest law libraries in Kentucky. The marshals
hadn't seized that. He still had, in his trained brain, the means
of making a living. Over the bookshelves hung a certificate
proclaiming that he had been admitted to practice before the
Supreme Court of the State of Kentucky. He had almost for
gotten.

In winter's fiercest gale, Elizabeth cried out in labor. They
were snowbound; there was no doctor, no horse to hurry for
a doctor. John T. dragged himself upstairs like a man going to
the scaffold. It was a day that haunted him until the end of
his life.

Elizabeth lived, but the babe died within a few hours. John
T. tried to get to the village for a preacher any preacher.
He failed. There was not one comforting soul.

With his own hands he built a tiny coffin and dug a fresh
grave. The three children knelt beside him on the windswept
hillside while he fumbled in a gilt-edged leather Bible with
trembling fingers. His voice faltered, then began :

"I. am the Resurrection and the Life "

It was the last Mason grave in Kentucky.

CHAPTER III

A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT

JOHN T. collected his little brood around his sides and grieved,
Tom packed up his ruffled shirts and satin vest and sadly left
the Greek colonnade of Transylvania University. Emily's
year at Madame Mantelli's was up ; she quietly came home, too.

There was food, and there was wood jto keep them warm.
The old "Davis place" was regarded as a pretty good home
for a village like Mount Sterling. In the winter it was dismal,
but spring stirred the forest to fresh life and dressed the fields
in shimmering green. Elizabeth planted flowers on the sunny
side of the gaunt old house. Tom mowed the high grass with
a scythe. It was a home.

This old place, so typical of pioneer homesteads, seems now
to be leaning heavily to the sunless side like a very old woman
who hates to be gazed at with pity. It was tenantless for forty
years and nearly fell to pieces. Even for an imaginative mind
it is difficult to see the Mason children in their billowy, wide-
hemmed dresses playing in that grim old doorway; to conjure
up visions of young Tom in tight gray breeches and top boots
lustily swinging a scythe while Elizabeth carefully pruned
flowers that have left no trace of their loveliness.

Before John T. bought it, the house was known as the
"Davis place". Today what's left of it is still known as the
"Davis place"; the Mason ownership is just a forgotten inci
dent in its long and lonely past. Two stories high, made of
the tiny little brick of colonial times, it reared its severe
facade in a frown of stern disapproval at the pleasant rolling
foothills around it. One end of the house is completely blank;
just a cliff of brick rising at a steep angle to meet a towering
chimney. There was another chimney at the other end of the

74

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 75

house to balance it. The front door was just a door, unrelieved
by porch, architectured entrance or graceful iron handrails. It
opened, and defied one to go in.

Windows, half big enough, march stolidly across the front
of the house. Fifty or sixty feet away there is a tumble-down
picket fence which might have been there in Tom's time ; no
body knows. The place has that dead look of an eroded grave
stone in a forgotten cemetery. If Elizabeth ever made that
place gay and cheery and bright with spring flowers, as Emily
says, she was indeed a remarkable woman.

In the spring of 1829 there was little to do but read the
Lexington Gazette, a week old, and little to talk of but Andrew
Jackson and his smashing success in the national election of the
preceding fall. After the votes were in and the result was
known, John T.'s lined face relaxed. It was good to talk again
of familiar things ; good to see one man's dreams, at any rate,
coming true. Jackson was a name shining over Kentucky like
a flaming meteor. Jackson was to be the next President. Al
ready, said the Gazette, he had honored their distinguished
fellow citizen, William T. Barry, with a cabinet appointment.
Barry was going to Washington as Postmaster General; first
man in the country's history to hold cabinet rank as head of the
Post Office Department.

John T. was glad for Barry's sake; Tom was glad, too. It
meant that he wouldn't see his cousin John Barry, his father's
namesake, for a long time, but that was to be expected. The
Masons were proud of the Barrys.

Barry was the Democratic boss of Kentucky during the na
tional campaign and the appointment was a plain gesture of
gratitude for services rendered. Tom understood that. He knew
that Barry had been disgusted at Clay's treatment of Jackson
in 1824; he saw Clay reaching out a long and powerful hand
in 1828 to steer the State away from Jackson. Barry's some
what novel method of carrying the State for Jackson was suc
cessful. He ran for governor of Kentucky on the Democratic
ticket and in that capacity built up a political machine that
rolled ponderously across the prostrate bodies of the Clay

76 STEVENS THOMSON MASON ^

henchmen. He organized every county; he stumped the State
from the Ohio River to Tennessee. Clay himself was on the
platforms, debating against him, fighting desperately to keep
the Jackson vote down.

Clay, said Barry, "used the most disgraceful language against
Jackson, belittling his every achievement and overlooking no
opportunity to place Jackson in the position of a militaristic
seeker after power." This is the campaign that flooded Ken
tucky with handbills scattered broadside by Clay and the
Whigs. "Coffin Handbills", they were called, with heavy black
coffin-shaped borders containing accounts of the men Jackson
was accused of murdering in duels. Clay seriously accused
Jackson in a speech at Louisville of "murdering in cold blood
thousands of British citizens, whose only crime was their de
sire to spend Christmas Eve in New Orleans". Clay was the
master orator of the age. Barry, a mild, amiable man with
a ready grin and no great ability as an orator himself, was
at a loss.

Barry beat him in one way, and was defeated in another.
He carried the State triumphantly for Jackson, but lost the
governorship to a Whig. Thereupon Andrew Jackson ap
pointed him to a new cabinet post.

At Mount Sterling these stirring deeds were just surly little
items in a weekly newspaper to the Masons. They could not
take any part in the campaign. John T. was burying his eighth
daughter and twelfth child about the time Andy's cohorts
streamed to the polls. There is no record that John T. even cast
a vote in the election.

Emily, bless her filing-case memory, has given us a few
gentle hints of that awful winter. Even she is constrained to
skip over the worst parts. She reports in a rather matter-of-fact
manner that her mother's health was failing; that Grand
mother Moir huddled in the chimney corner all winter, that
Tom was the only lively figure in the family.

Tom went out determined to find some way to help, and he
came back the proud possessor of a job in a Mount Sterling
grocery and general merchandise store. There were only a

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 77

few stores of any kind in the village ; this was the largest. Emily
doesn't say what salary the young Adonis earned, but he must
have received some cash because he gave pennies to his sisters.
They promptly ran down the road to the same store and bought
candy, so the proprietor regarded him as an asset.

He got vegetables, flour, lard, bacon and occasionally fresh
meat. He opened the store every morning, sweeping out with
a broom made of aromatic pine shoots. He weighed out sugar;
he bent his back and grew strong lifting barrels and crates.
Little by little, as spring warmed into summer, Tom's narrow
shoulders grew wider and muscles of steel strained at his small
sleeves.

In his own writings he never referred to this experience.
Neither did John T. Bending and lifting heavy merchandise in
this general store was a sort of graduate course in human rela
tions for him. Until he first went to work there his outstanding
characteristic had been a smooth, frail figure which gave rise
to legends about his delicate ways. Never afterward did anyone
dare call him unmannerly names. The general store finished a
lesson begun in the private school in Lexington. He learned
how a man feels to fall from wealth and respect to the drudgery
of a servant; how it feels to be ordered brusquely around by
an illiterate; the cancerous pain of knowing that his only value
to himself or the world is the feeble work he can do with his
hands. If he suffered, he suffered in silence.

Mount Sterling housewives, bonneted and shawled matrons
we seem to see clearly now, probably made life miserable for
him. He thought of his uncle Barry, a Cabinet officer; of Jack
son fondly calling him "my son"; of Clay and Monroe discuss
ing with him weighty matters of national import. Then there
would be a growl from some big-booted, flat-hatted farmer
with tobacco juice in his beard: "Here, you ! Lift that bar'l on
my wagon, boy, and be quick about it !"

With the springiness of youth he grew to like it. Emily says
he would come home at night whistjing. Once or twice he ex
perimented with the long rat-tail cheroots tied in fly-specked
bundles in the cigar case. He filled out fast; his thin body de-

78 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

veloped a little more. In 1835 when he was a hero and ap
plauded on the streets of Detroit, an artist who had never
seen him before made a sketch of him in a barber shop just
because he was handsome and had such a well-developed chest.
Tom could thank the grocer for the chest, at least

The store was open until late at night, but the proprietor
usually let him off early. He walked the two miles home, flung
his homespun jacket across a chair, took a flickering tallow
candle and sat down at a table. In the dim yellow light, waver
ing and dancing before his eyes, he studied. He kept up his
ciasswork as carefully as if he had to recite all those lessons
next day. He wrote comments in the margins of his father's
and grandfather's works on philosophy. They are preserved
to this day, and readable. One says: "This is silly!" The
passage, in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nation* is the famous
dictum holding that any nation's economic resources can be
exceeded by the spending of tyrants.

Emily was studying with him. Nobody forced them to study.
They felt a strange thirst for every available drop of knowl-*
edge they could squeeze from the family library. Without
schools, without parental stimulus, without the wearisome
routine of classrooms every day, these two somehow realized
that in education lay their hope of escaping from this environ
ment. They could not have explained it that way themselves.

Far downstate young Lincoln had begun forming letters in
charcoal on a coal shovel. When he was about fifteen and living
in Illinois he borrowed Parson Weems' story of Washington ;
read it, used it to chink up the wall of their rude cabin when
the storms came. He had to work with his hands to earn money
to buy another copy to replace it. Nobody spurred him to
study. He felt the same craving for knowledge.

Tom succeeded better than Emily in wrecking the fine old
books in the family library. Lacking much paper to write on,
he scribbled comments all over the margins of books and wrote
detailed reviews of some passages that interested him. He
was cramming. Opportunity was coming.

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 79

In the spring there was a letter. John T., stooped and
wrinkled, had aged thirty years. Elizabeth, after twelve chil
dren, would have been unrecognizable to her girlhood friends
at Williamsburg. Tom was working at the store ; at home were
four little girls to play in the yard. When the letter came,
John T. realized with a sense of humiliation how far he had
fallen since his prosperous days at "Serenity Hall' 1 .

William T. Barry was in Washington. Jobs were being
handed out. He was going to make an effort to secure one for
John T. A political job, with a salary. To the proud Masons
it was a far cry from the statesman, the judge, the Senator,
who served their State from a sense of public obligation. A
political job, with a salary.

At "Moirfield", John T. would have torn up such an offer
with contempt. At "Serenity Hall" he would have laughed
uproariously, slapped his thigh, rolled up the letter and lighted
a* Virginia cigar with it. At Mount Sterling he held it in
trembling hands, and blinked.

There would be more details. After the inauguration he'd
know what Barry could do. He would wait. He could do
nothing else.

The hilarious inauguration of Andrew Jackson at Washington
City on March 4, 1829, was one of those spectacles which had
to be played down and quietly hushed in the history books.
Rheumy-eyed, irritable old John Quincy Adams was so in
furiated that he refused to ride to the Capitol in the same
coach with his victorious successor, John C. Calhoun made
up his mind then and there to resign the office of Vice-President,
although he could have held it longer, and became the first
and only Vice-President to do so. Members of Congress had
to be there but they hurried their families out of town like
refugees.

For a month before the event there had been a quiet,

8o STEVENS THOMSON MASON

sinister invasion of Washington City. From Tennessee and
Louisiana and Carolina and all the backwoods regions came
rnoccasined, coonskin-capped wild men, dirty as dogs, carrying
flintlock rifles and powder horns. Delegations of limping army
veterans were trooping the muddy streets ; backwoods lawyers
in tall hats, city politicians with tobacco-stained whiskers, In
dians, reprobates, swindlers. An eyewitness wrote that the
whole of the hinterland had spilled over its scum into Wash
ington. Jackson's biographer, Parton, says that there were
four thousand of these characters in town; other estimates
vary.

Most of them were there with only one idea jobs ! Spoils !
Some of the woodsmen had come to attend a sort of national
hoe-down: the Great Day, the triumph of a common man.
Calhoun appealed to a mob of them for quiet around the
Capitol. He very bitterly shouted that Andy Jackson was the
most illiterate man who ever aspired to the office of President.
The crowd cheered. They liked to hear it.

Jackson had arrived in February and was staying at the
"Wigwam", a private boardinghouse. Major Eaton, Jackson's
Secretary of War, was there ; Jackson's nephew, Major Andrew
Jackson Donelson, was there. So was Peggy Eaton; none of
them seemed to be able to keep a procession of noisy job-
hunters out of the front hall. Jackson was sick in body, mind
and soul ; sick over the sudden death of his beloved wife Rachel ;
sick over the prospect of a big White House reception without
her; groaning over the impending inauguration as an anti
climax; something he didn't want at all. He was sick of raucous-
voiced beggars stretching out skinny hands for jobs. He wrote
his inaugural address in this vein, and it reads like it.

There was a thick ship's cable stretched across the front
steps of the Capitol part way up to keep the crowd back. The
mob was orderly until after the oath of office had been ad
ministered. Then pandemonium broke loose and continued for
three days.

When Jackson stepped forward and began reading his ad
dress, nobody heard a word he said. His voice was low-pitched

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 8l

and rough. The crowd was straining at the cable and wrestling
with the bodyguard to get close enough to the hero to shake
his hand. When he bowed and retired, the shouting crowd
shot off squirrel rifles, leaped and whooped like Indians. Jack
son was guided to a carriage, alone, and the driver set off for
the White House at a brisk trot. The mob followed.

At the White House the mob poured in past the door
guards and tried to follow Jackson from room to room. Serv
ants tried to decoy the bulk of them outside by setting up great
bowls of punch and other refreshments on the lawn. There was
such a press of bodies inside that the draperies were pulled
down, holes gashed in the East Room rug and chairs ruined
from hobnailed boots and spurs of uncouth yokels who stood on
them to see over the heads of the crowd. At sundown the guards
had the doors protected but some ingenious wag had found a
window open on the first floor and had put a couple of planks
up to the sill. More shouting men crowded inside over this
improvised ramp.

This episode keynoted Jackson's administration better than
anything he could have said in his address although he was
very specific therein. The survivors of the White House soiree
read his address in the newspaper next day. They saw that he
had declared firmly that he could not trust any incumbent
officeholder; that he knew they were all antagonistic toward
him and his administration ; that they would sabotage whatever
they could. He said he would exercise his power of removal.
He did.

From that moment not one appointive job was safe. Jackson
quickly began carving up the nation to feast his friends. In his
first month in office he removed more officials than all his prede
cessors combined from the day of Washington's first inaugura
tion.

Jackson's biographers say that the sun had not gone down
on that inaugural before it was known in official Washington
that Jackson would immediately remove from office every
official who had opposed him in the election and appoint every
body who had helped him. Statistics on the mass slaughter are

82 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

unimportant, and have been in dispute ever since. The New
York American declared in 1830 that two thousand were re
moved the first year. Major Eaton said that the number was
six hundred and ninety. Somewhere between these two ex
tremes lies Jackson's toll in 1829.

Washington, during his first term as President, refused to
appoint a friend merely because he was a friend. u You are
welcome to my house; you are welcome to my heart. But
you are not a man of business and your opponent is a man of
business. My personal feelings have nothing to do with the
present case. I am not George Washington, but President of the
United States. As George Washington, I would do anything
in my power for you. As President, I can do nothing."

During his two administrations he removed only nine office
holders. Six of them were deputy collectors of customs. One
was a surveyor, one a vice-consul and one a minister to a foreign
country, Pinckney, who was thoroughly disliked in Paris. Every
dismissal was for cause, not politics.

Adams removed nine, all for malfeasance. Jefferson removed
thirty-nine, but he had a minor rebellion on his hands which
accounted for it. He declared in a Congressional message
that not one removal was the result of a difference in political
opinions. Jefferson refused to appoint any of his relatives, for
fear his motive would be misunderstood. James Madison made
only five removals ; James Monroe, nine ; John Quincy Adams,
two. The permanency of a Federal appointment was so well-
established in Monroe's administration that when the Fourth
Auditorship of the Treasury fell vacant there were, among
others, five United States Senators and thirty Representatives
clamoring for it.

Official heads fell faster in Washington, during Jackson's
first six months, than in Paris in the days of Marat. A Wash
ington paper, dated in July, 1829, complained that construc
tion on half-built houses was at a standstill; merchants could
neither sell their goods nor collect their accounts ; the city had
an air of tenseness like that of a place under siege waiting for
the enemj to smash through the gates-

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 83

Dismissals were cruelly sudden, usually unexplained. Major
Eaton was Secretary of War. He stalked into the Chief Clerk's
office and said : "Look here. There ought to be perfect coopera
tion between a Secretary and a Chief Clerk. I have no loyalty
from you ; I know that. So I have appointed Doctor Randolph,
of Virginia, to replace you. Good day, sir."

The Bureau of Indian Affairs was Eaton's most technical
staff department. For many years it had been adroitly handled
by a renowned expert on Indian affairs, Colonel McKenney.
One morning a disdainful youth walked in and spent some
time gazing at the portraits of powerful Indian chiefs which
hung on the walls of the outer office. He looked at the peace
pipes and other exhibits in the glass cases. Then he came to
the Colonel's desk and said he didn't think he'd like the office
after all.

"What office ?" demanded the Colonel.

"This office," answered the youth. "I was appointed to your
post this morning by Major Eaton." He exhibited his letter of
appointment. There had been no notice to McKenney. Further
more, McKenney was an officer whose whole loyalty was given
to his job. He had no political thoughts on any subject. But
the letter was no surprise. It was a relief.

"Take it, my dear sir," McKenney sighed. "Take the post.
The sword of Damocles has been hanging over my head long
enough."

"No," yawned the youth, languidly. "I prefer an auditor's
office where I can fill out forms." He told McKenney that the
grizzled old Colonel could have the office back. After stuffing
the letter in the wastebasket the visitor returned to the Presi
dent for a transfer. McKenney never learned his name, but
found that he had presented a pair of silver pistols to the Presi
dent, once carried by Washington.

Until the spoils system swept in with Jackson, there had
been a tradition of culture, and of ability, hovering over public
service. Public life was a profession like any other, and it re
quired a long apprenticeship before ability was recognized.
The ruling class was composed mainly of college men like the

84 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Adams family, Jefferson, Monroe, the Masons of Virginia,
men who knew the disastrous lessons of history.

"The nation/' mourned a Philadelphia newspaper, "has al
ways been served, and served ably, by its elite. It is now being
mangled by its refuse/' Even Clay, from sour retirement at
"Ashland", wrote that the fact of a man's holding office under
Jackson's administration was prima-facie evidence that he was
one of three types: an adventurer, an incompetent or a
scoundrel.

Opinions differ, but I believe Barry began dickering for a job
for John T. Mason in June, 1829, and kept at it until the fol
lowing spring.

Hemans says John T. "either sought or had offered to him"
a political post at that time. The distinction is academic, a
titbit for the delectation of scholars and librarians. The fact
is that John T. began perking up and regaining some of his old
verve as soon as this prospect dawned.

Barry knew all about John T.'s manifold misfortunes, and he
occupied a rather exceptional position in the Cabinet which
made a request from the Postmaster General very difficult to
ignore. He and Catherine Mason Barry were Jackson's bene
factors, many a time. Even a century cannot stamp out the
memories of Jackson's cabinet troubles early in his administra
tion. Major Eaton started Washington gossips on the first of
all Washington merry-go-rounds when he married a flip young
widow, daughter of the "Wigwam's" proprietor and recent
widow of a paymaster in the navy. Her name was Peggy
O'NeiL As Mrs. Eaton she was a Cabinet wife. Immediately
Mrs. Branch, Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Berrien and almost every
body but Mrs. Barry marched on the White House to protest
against receiving such a creature socially as an equal. Catherine
Mason Barry was a great lady. She was, furthermore, a Mason
of Virginia. Her social position was so secure that she could
well afford to ignore the others and keep herself thoroughly
clear of I' affaire Peggy. She received Peggy at her home and

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 85

she was the intermediary who finally restored peace in the
official family.

Jackson almost wept on Mrs. Barry's neck in gratitude.
Her husband rubbed his hands in glee. He waited for I' affaire
F* e ffffy to run its ridiculous course. When it was graciously
settled, and Jackson was deeply grateful, the wily Postmaster
General mentioned John T.

Barry was never a statesman, but he had few equals as a
practical politician. He elbowed the President out of direct
control of the Eaton situation and it became so desperate that
it very nearly led to a majority of Cabinet resignations. At the
proper time he stepped in and took the bows, and presented his
bill. The whole strategy was a build-up to get the President
into the proper frame of mind for appointing John T. to a
major political post. If John T. had mounted a horse and
hurried straight to Washington during the summer of 1829
he would have been competing for meagre handouts against
the riffraff of the nation. When that problem was gradually
lessened, and Jackson's Cabinet fight was over, Barry could
corner Jackson and gain his consent. What Barry really wanted
was a Territorial Governorship for John T. He couldn't have
that. Every such executive post had its rightful claimant : men
who had accomplished as much for the Jackson cause as Barry.

John T. had done nothing in the campaign. Gaining an out
standing administrative job for such a man amounted to a minor
miracle.

Barry couldn't say, in the fall of 1829, just what he could
do for John T. Suddenly a vicious winter fell like a blow. Moun
tain trails were impassable. Barry could keep the bill unpaid
until spring.

As soon as the March floods had cleared the trails, John T.
began preparations. Tom was going, too. Both needed new
clothes, new horses, time to prepare for a White House con
ference. Accident postponed the necessity for speed. The
accident unluckily befell Jackson, and it happened in the self
same "Wigwam" which had brought down so much trouble
upon him.

86 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

In April, Jackson began feeling a return of the dizziness
which was one of the reminders of his Florida campaign. One
evening after he had appeared at a public dinner in Washing
ton, a flock of noisy office seekers followed him home. He was
on fo,ot; he hurried around a block and tried to gain the sanc
tuary of the "Wigwam" instead of the White House because
it was closer. He arrived out of breath with the howling crowd
almost at his heels. Major Donelson slammed the front door
and Jackson wearily began climbing the stairs to his old room.
At the topmost stair the stairway was dark; Jackson instinc
tively felt with his foot for another step and tripped. He fell
headlong down the stairs.

During the fall he suffered a double hernia. Many years be
fore he had fought a pistol duel with a fiery Southerner named
Dickinson, and a pistol ball had ripped his abdominal wall from
side to side. Clumsy surgical stitching had left an insecure
peritoneum. It ruptured horribly, spilling the old man's in
testine out on the floor. Surgeons sewed it up again and Jack
son was in bed only three weeks. But he never was well again.
Pain and frequent bedridden convalescences followed him to
the end of his days.

Young Stevens Thomson Mason, eighteen years old and swing
ing a manly pair of arms, gazed serenely from the Barry door
way at Washington City. He had a new coat, a silk hat nearly
two feet high and a shirt with a ruffled front. His boots were
polished every day by the Barry house slaves. With care he
arrayed himself to the last detail, smoothed the wrinkles out
of his satin vest, pulled down his coat in the front and gave his
hat a quick pat to the correct rakish angle. Thrusting a lace
handkerchief nonchalantly into his cuff, he took a walking
stick from the bowing slave, stalked out of the Barry door
and headed for the shopping section.

John T. was closeted in nervous conference with Barry most
of the time. The President was very difficult to see. He was

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 87

back at his desk, but irritable to an astonishing degree. Scores
of people were trying to get past Major Donelson, who acted
as secretary, into his office. They were being turned away.
The White House was a place of mystery. Jackson was trying
to keep the seriousness of his injury a secret.

Finally there was a note, delivered to Barry's office by mes
senger. The President, wrote Major Donelson, would see
Barry and John T. Mason at two P. M., May 18, 1830. No
record of the interview was kept. Colonel McKenney, still the
famous chief of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was outside in
Donelson's office while Barry, together with John T. and Tom,
were in conference with the President. He wrote in his memoirs
that when they had left he found Jackson writing busily at his
desk, spectacles, on his nose, blunt and impersonal in manner
as if he were trying to write down something before he for
got it.

Some weeks before, another bureau chief had told Colonel
McKenney that he had better make some appointment and see
the President in order to clear the prevailing impression that
he was disloyal. He wrote that he had just entered when he
perceived that the President was busy, and started to leave.

Jackson looked up over the top of his spectacles and said :
"Come in, sir, come in."

"You are engaged, sir?" asked McKenney,

u No more so than I always am, and always expect to be,"
sighed Jackson, drawing a long breath and giving signs of
"great uneasiness".

The uneasiness was obviously an abdominal cramp, coupled
with the sudden realization that Barry had put something
over on him. Jackson had forgotten about John T. Mason as
soon as he had left "Serenity Hall" eleven years before. To the
President he was just another office seeker without any proof
of service to offer; nothing whatever to recommend him ex
cept Barry. Barry usually was devious about coming to the
point, and poor old Andy Jackson, suffering with a sore ab
domen, no doubt thought at the beginning of the visit that
it was purely social.

88 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

When the conference got down to the point of the visit and
Jackson discovered what Barry really wanted, he must have
been at a loss. Hastily he thumbed through reports of jobs
held by Whigs deputy collectorships, marshals' badges, clerk
ships. Barry was contemptuous. It would have to be better
than that. What, then? A foreign ministry? No, too expensive
to maintain. The salary was the chief factor a job with a fat
salary. A Territorial Secretaryship.

Scant wonder that the President felt "great uneasiness'*.
John T. did not rank high enough by several thousand votes
for a post of that magnitude. He couldn't say no, bluntly. He
was a fool to grant it. A Secretaryship was craftily pushed at
Jackson with a demand for appointment. It was only slightly
lower in magnitude than a Governorship, and because a Secre
tary was an acting Governor in the Governor's absence it paid
almost the same salary. Territorial Secretaries ranked on an
equal plane with Bureau Chiefs and Assistant Secretaries of
Federal Departments. Definitely no job for a political nobody.
Yet here was Barry demanding it.

Wearily he ran his finger down a list of entries. The finger
stopped.

"Now here's a situation in Michigan Territory. Do you
know Lewis Cass, sir? A remarkable man, a fighter. He's a
corning man. He's the Governor of the Territory. A good
Democrat, as well. The Secretaryship is held by a Whig named
Witherell. He must be removed, of course. Have you ever been
in Michigan, Mr. Mason?"

"No, sir."

"Fine. You're appointed."

When it was over, Jackson probably wondered how it had
happened.

The post paid twelve hundred a year, a tidy sum for a
frontier town like Detroit. It was a comfortable living for those
days. John T. breathed easier. When Colonel McKenney came
in and saw Jackson writing, he probably saw the President
writing an order to the Secretary of State to prepare the com
mission for his signature. Nothing else would explain the speed

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 89

with which such an important post was disposed of. Congress
was adjourned at this date; it would meet again in the fall
and John T. would be forced to hurdle the high fence of Con
gressional confirmation. Until that time, he was safe.

There were fees, travelling expenses, other "forms of
emolument" as the Treasury Circular described the frequent
outside sources of income which Secretaries liked so well. One
of them was simultaneously a Territorial Secretary at twelve
hundred a year and Collector of the Port at a thousand more ;
he was also an attorney and practiced law on the side. In an
other Territory at this time, a Secretary acted as his own
Supreme Court justice and collected two salaries. Others made
money in other ways.

One of John T.'s most welcome introductions into the service
of his country was a voucher for travelling expenses to Detroit
for Tom and himself. There was a one-paragraph notice in
the Washington newspaper which listed five appointments made
that same week; John T.'s name led all the rest. Such was the
confusion in Washington City that nobody paid any partial*
lar attention either to John T. or to his new position. But,
on the same day the notice appeared in the newspaper, some
unknown citizen of Michigan read it and hurried back to De
troit as fast as possible.

John T. could not leave immediately. He had to learn just
what the Department of State expected from him in the way
of reports. He talked with officials who knew Michigan Ter
ritory, as to ways of life there. He gazed in awe at great maps,
and saw Michigan Territory stretching far across the present
Middle West, including both the modern States of Michigan
and Wisconsin and part of Iowa. He learned what he could
about it from the viewpoint of Washington bureaucrats. It
was little enough.

Colonel McKenney had been there. He knew Cass; he ad
mired him deeply.

He told tales of Pontiac and his men; of the treachery of
all Indians and of Tecumseh in particular. He swept his arms
in eloquent gestures. John T. saw swift-running rivers cutting

90 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

murmuring trails through the forests of oak and tamarack.
He saw Hurons and Pottawatomis lurking behind every tree.
McKenney nonchalantly went into detail about Cass's bravery
in going alone and unguarded into the depths of this primeval
forest to consult with the suspicious chiefs.

John T. did not care for such graphic description. This
reckless sort of life was just what he had craved while he was
living in the luxury of "Moirfield". He had whiled away those
summers dreaming of adventure in the wilds. He had pic
tured himself, to himself, as a great civilized and trail blazer.
But McKenney rather deflated the image of himself that he
had built up. When John T. heard the details of how Cass
had to travel in the woods, he wanted to change the subject.
Cass was presiding over a council fire at the headwaters of
Saginaw Bay at that moment. Chiefs of seven tribes sat stolidly
around the fire, beady eyes fixed on Cass's flabby jowls. Cass
was selling them a bill of goods, persuading them to surrender
their tribal claims to more Michigan territory. He offered
practically nothing in return. John T. wondered how a man
could have that much nerve.

He set off for Detroit in an apprehensive frame of mind.
There were good-byes, affectionate hugs, handshakes and mu
tual congratulations. John T. was grateful; the Barrys were
delighted. John T.'s new horsehair trunk was packed and
Stevens Thomson Mason, his ruffled shirts carefully stowed
away, doffed his top hat with an exaggerated gesture. Con
fidently the pair embarked on their exhausting journey.

In 1830, Detroit was as far from Washington City, in point
of time as South Africa is now. Washington to Baltimore was
a dusty ride in an oscillating baby carriage of a stagecoach ;
all day as fast as horses could trot over the busy road. Balti
more to Philadelphia was a little longer and a great deal
rougher. There were more frequent changes of horses, and
slower times made. Philadelphia to New York, the busiest
highway in the new nation, was a succession of inns, frequent
stops, long delays. In those days, operators of stagecoach
lines were in the midst of a price war. The threat of the rail-

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 91

road was frightening them all. Canal boats made the entire
journey at a fare even lower than that in the stages. Stage*
coach operators also owned the wayside inns, and they had
been forced to cut the through fare to a point where it repre
sented a loss to them. So they made it up by stopping the
coaches often enough for the passengers to visit the taprooms
at each of their inns. The profit on the rum and whiskey bal
anced the loss on the stage lines.

The usual stagecoach time for the ninety-four-mile highway
journey was four days. A coach that made it in three days was
known as the u flying machine". Packet boats from Philadel
phia, down the bay and up the Jersey coast, could equal that
time for distance more than twice as long. Some years later,
this exorbitant stagecoach time and the efforts of operators
to get the passengers drunk en route was one of the chief argu
ments used for projecting the railroad. The Masons found out
why a railroad would have to come. It was a great lesson to
young Tom.

At New York, there was a rest of a day or so to remove
the stains of travel and recover from the characteristic head
ache engendered by a long stagecoach journey. There was time
for Tom to gaze at the hordes of immigrants arriving in be
draggled square-rigged ships at Castle Garden. There was
time for him to saunter up and down the stone-paved sidewalks
and admire the merchandise on display in Whitehall windows.
It was his first visit to New York; it was the metropolis of
the country and Tom, for some reason, always fancied him
self as an expatriate New Yorker ever afterward. In Michigan
he committed the political blunder of having all his clothes
tailored in Manhattan; of sending to stores on Spring Street
or Maiden Lane for articles which the outraged Detroit mer
chants were keeping in stock to tempt him. He seemed to know
everyone of prominence in New York and nobody of promi
nence in Detroit. That, too, had its aftermath and helped to
shape his subsequent career.

Perhaps New York looked like heaven to him after the mud
and poverty of Washington City. At any rate, it was the start-

92 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

ing point of one of the most delightful experiences of his life,
the magnificent voyage up the palisaded Hudson. In 1830,
day-line boats paddled serenely up the river just as they do
now, A little longer, perhaps; Tom Mason had fourteen hours
to contemplate the ever-changing beauties of the scene. But
the boats would have surprised moderns who like to think
of 1830 as a primitive period. They were ornately scrolled in
white and gold; they offered singers and instrumentalists to
serenade the passengers and their ladies, and they sold all
the latest mixed drinks in their spacious bars. The fare, accord
ing to the handbills of the period, was ten dollars. That in
cluded meals, but for an extra two and a half dollars there
was a "first-class sleeping accommodation" in one of the cabin
staterooms.

Teeming Albany was the crossroads of the old colonial
empire. There, amid shouting mobs of "pullers", the Masons
threaded their way to the famous little gilt-scrolled sign on the
quay that read: "Erie Canal Company. Passengers Inquire
Here."

It was a long way around. On the map, it appears as if
the Masons were purposely going as far out of a direct line as
they could. The casual traveller of today can leave Washing
ton by bus, train, airplane or motor car and take a straight-
line route to Detroit that is not as far as from Washington to
Albany. In 1830, the traveller could have done the same. But
instead of the luxury of the elegantly adorned Hudson steam
boats, he could have rolled his bedding and started on horse
back. There was no other comfortable way to reach Detroit.
It was a choice of horseback over the mountains and through
the swamps, or the lazy comfort of the river and canal.

Five days from Albany to Buffalo was considered good run
ning time. The passenger barges always had right-of-way over
the freight scows. At Lockport, where the great i lo-foot locks
raised the passengers fifty-four feet in five stages, sometimes
the freighters would have to wait three hours to let through-
passenger-traffic pass. The passengers rode in barges that
looked not unlike the lowly freight scows ; blunt-ended, squat,

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 93

perhaps a little trimmer with their green window blinds and
white paint.

In the one-room cabin there was a simple curtain stretched
across the space, amidships. At night all the men slept on one
side, the ladies on the other. Of course the curtain wasn't
soundproof, and they could hear each other's snores all night.
They didn't have beds. But they did boast thick mattresses, laid
on the floor, which they scrupulously rolled up and stowed away
in lockers in the morning. Most of the day, weather permitting,
they sat on folding chairs placed for their convenience topside,
pointing with gold-headed canes at the items of interest which
slipped so slowly past. About once an hour, inevitably as the
barge ground around a sharp turn, there'd be a mad scramble
for safety on the deck.. "Low bridge!" bellowed from a tiller
sent many a stiff old dowager flat on her face in a great, un
dignified hurry.

This was travel luxury in 1830. There was such a volume of
it that three years before the canal directors had segregated
passenger traffic into rigid classes, as on ocean ships. There
were wealthy tourists by the thousands, from New England
and the plantations of the South. The Erie Canal and the
steamers on the Lakes immediately opened to them a great
dark continent, hitherto the especial province of the soldier
and the scout. It became fashionable later to make the entire
journey to Chicago ; lecturers got bookings merely because they
had been there. Chicago, at the time, was an Indian village of
about two or three hundred assorted half-breeds nestling
around a swampy river and a burned old fort. But it was the
terminus of civilization's transport. Steamboats went there, on
supposedly regular schedules. Tourist cruises to Patagonia,
in the same period of the succeeding century certainly aroused
no such vibrant, breathless feeling of adventure as the great
Chicago voyage by canal and steamboat. It was one of life's
rare gems.

Tourists with money went first-class. Commercial people to
whom time was valuable and comfort essential always paid the
premium rate, too. But there was a sort of steerage, a low-rate

94 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

emigrant class that crowded the Erie's narrow waterway for
forty years. As soon as the Erie opened in 1825, the wave of
pioneers responded. By the year 1830 it was approaching high
tide. We have figures in existence today to show the traffic on
the canal month by month throughout its existence. Four thou
sand farmer families passed through the canal in July, 1830, at
the same time the Masons were making their journey. They
were all westbound in tightly jammed discomfort in the ordi
nary freight scows. "Flour, wool and hides eastbound; farmers
westbound" said the boater's manifest.

Four thousand of them to crowd the tiny decks of the Erie
steamboats, and four thousand more to join the creaking,
endless procession of ox-team trains entering Detroit from
New York and New England by way of Canada. As long as
the canal and the lake were open to navigation, they'd pour
their eager throngs in never-ending floods to Detroit !

On the lake, during the tedious four-day voyage from Buf
falo, young Tom must have had plenty of opportunity to talk
to these hard-mouthed folk and hear their stories. He and his
father were assigned to comfortable cabins, but the farmers
slept on their own piles of bags and bundles on the deck. Their
stories were all alike ; a saga that he was destined to hear
repeated thousands of times during the ensuing years. "We
weren't doing so good down home on the farm. We hear there's
land out here good land. They say a man can git a quarter-
section fer the askinV

It was a mass migration unlike anything he had ever seen.
White-thatched John T., who had sat in front of his law office
and watched caravans of Virginians plodding toward Kentucky,
was profoundly impressed. The pioneering and settlement of
Kentucky went on slowly for more than thirty years. This was
different. This was a sort of fire hose, aimed at Michigan and
plunging people into its primitive interior under pressure of
some new, some utterly unknown driving force. The Erie
Canal, most expensive public improvement in the United
States, paid for its entire cost within ten years and made a
prodigious profit. The traffic on Lake Erie was so unprece-

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 95

dented that by the year 1819 there were four steamboats
operating; by 1825 there were seventeen, and in 1830 there
were more than thirty. These companies formed a protective
association in 1827 to keep the fares up. They succeeded very
well.

The Middle West, all of five present states, was settled
and organized into counties and townships within a decade.
This has been called the swiftest mass movement of a coun
try's population in the history of the world. Undoubtedly it
was, until the day of the dictators.

Tom was not perceptive enough to see the social implications
of such a prodigious wave of migration. Both he and John T.
saw it instantly as most mortals would as a gold mine for
Detroit. That little hamlet, they knew, was the only supply
center in the region. All these caravans, and the boatloads
of weary farmers ; every plodding, complaining ox-team wagon,
had to come to Detroit. John T. was overeager to see the place.

At dawn, July 8, 1830, Tom threaded his way over the
crowded deck to gaze at a new world. There, stretching low
and limitless before him, lay the Michigan shore. The vibrating
steamboat was pushing hard under a full head of steam against
a vicious current. That would be, he thought, the mouth of the
Detroit River.

Low land, and marshy, a tangle of tamarack and pine,
confronted him. They were dwarf trees, not the tall pines of
Kentucky. There were clouds of buzzing insects. As the boat
struggled upstream against the current he saw a sandy island
hugging the Michigan shore, a very long island. Out of a white
washed shack in a disreputable state of neglect came a scrubby
peasant, to laugh up at the towering deck and shout gibberish
in an unknown tongue. He waved, and the boat's whistle gave
a disdainful toot. Then he had glided astern. Far up toward the
northern tip of the island there was a lattice windmill, which
to Tom looked like some pictures he had seen of Holland.

Caught in midstream, the boat chuffed and puffed valiantly.
Tom could see the foaming wheels gaining, foot by foot. He
looked ahead, at the placid expanse of bright river marching

96 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

straight into the horizon. John T., white hair blowing in the
stiff breeze, was beside him. They involuntarily watched the
shore.

Flat as a billiard table, the land held itself aloof from the
river on a sharp cliff. A wagon road, straight as two taut
strings, dwindled together in the distance. On the road was a
two-wheeled pony cart, the wheels outrageously thick and
heavy, the pony disgustingly small. It bore no resemblance
to any vehicle they had ever seen.

The very atmosphere reeked of strangeness. The boat was
a little haven of civilization in a sea of unfamiliar things. Fish
ing boats, queer-looking canoes with triangular sails all patched
and dyed in violent .colors, looked like something painted in a
picture. Swarthy men in round black woolen caps hauled in
their nets rhythmically, paying no attention to the boat. There
were more of those pony carts on the road. Up ahead, the road
disappeared into a clump of trees.

There were twin steeples, holding up their gold crosses in
pride, just seen above the treetops. The sun caught and
illumined a little rounded dome, gilded and glowing like gold
in the morning sun. They saw a stub of wharf.

Presently the throbbing boat stretched out the grove of
trees, and there was Detroit. It was so abrupt as to be like a
conjurer's trick; a village that somebody had pulled out of a
hat. One moment there was the road, pointing straight ahead
to a swaying clump of trees. The next moment they were op
posite a magic town, a town that had suddenly appeared there.

At the boat's bow, a sailor fired a salute gun that echoed
and re-echoed among Detroit's handful of roofs. Tom was
mystified. From the boat's rail he could see both ends of the
town, upstream and downstream. It was condensed into that
little frontage as if forced together in a vise. The buildings
huddled together in upright rows right to the city line, and
there were cow pastures next door. It was amazing to him.

People were running down the slanting ramp of a street
and out on the wharf. They waved. Answering waves came
from the boat's rail. A bedlam of roared orders from the

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 97

bridge ; clanging of bells below ; backing and churning of frothy
wheels. Slowly the boat swung in midstream, like some gaffed
monster. A heaving line snaked out; a heavy hawser crawled
behind it. There was a bump. Those on board flung out their
arms to hold their balance. The hawsers coiled over capstans
on the wharf, checking the boat's drift away from the landing.
Gangplanks rumbled into position, The captain, mounting to
his post on the paddle box, doffed his cap and bowed to the
passengers. That gesture signified the official recognition of the
known fact that the boat had arrived.

Tom and John T. looked apprehensively up the steep cobble-
stoned ramp. They saw a sign: "Thos. Palmer. Lumber."
Just beyond was another: u American Hotel." They looked
down at the shouting people on the wharf. No carriages to meet
the boat; only a few huge-wheeled freight carts and a couple
of little pony carts. Everybody was on foot; dark-skinned men
in brightly colored trousers and striped shirts shouted greet
ings in French.

A few Americans in rusty stovepipe hats were gazing up
ward curiously at John T. They said nothing; no word of wel
come. They just looked at him. News of his appointment had
arrived before him.

Tom's first impression of Detroit was unpleasant.

He was a stranger in a foreign land, populated mostly by
smelly French fishermen and tobacco-spitting, obscene back
woodsmen. Detroit was the residence of many persons of cul
ture ; Tom didn't meet them for a long time. The few white
men who could talk intelligently were Whigs, and bitterly an
tagonistic. They regarded him as part of an invading army
that had captured the city.

Merchants greeted their customers in French; drivers
shouted at their shaggy little ponies in French; even the
haughty Indians spoke French. Whitewashed, thatched cot
tages, each with a huge crucifix on a pole in front and a promi-

98 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

nent manure pile in the rear, shouted eloquently at him in
French. On his first exploring saunter down Jefferson Street
from the Mansion House, Tom stopped aghast. There right
in the middle of the market square, he saw an ugly oaken
whipping post silhouetted against the harsh summer sunset.
He saw a leather-thonged knout hanging beside it, as a warning
to evildoers.

The town was so compressed between its mysteriously nar
row river boundaries that it was growing backward away from
the river in a straight line. For a town that size, two thousand
people, it was a madhouse of frenzied street crowds. All the
stores and buildings seemed to be new. Yet he knew that De
troit was one of America's oldest inhabited places; at least
a century and a half of recorded history before his time.

The laughing, chattering French habitants lived a jubilantly
carefree life of their own, without disturbing the rest of the
population. But Tom met more and more sober, whiskery old
Whigs who seemed to think that Jackson's election tolled the
knell of American liberty. They told him so at every oppor
tunity; they predicted doom at his father's coming. News
papers he picked up in the Mansion House parlor carried
columns of the most insulting personal slander he had ever
read. In a Detroit newspaper, a politician who had somehow
gotten elected on the wrong ticket was a target for the most
amazing vilification in newspaper annals. He was mildly re
ferred to as a "black-hearted hypocrite; a knave who filches
from the public purse; a pious outer shell". On more important
occasions the editors would go into considerable detail about
him. He became "that blood-soaked murderer"; "that unhung
criminal." Tom winced.

Detroit at that time supported two weeklies : the Northwest
Journal and the Courier. There was a third, the Gazette,
which had gone up in flames after some firebug set a torch to
its second-floor office just a few weeks before the Masons'
arrival. Both of the survivors insulted each other and all the
figures in public life. Horsewhipping the editors was part of
any gentleman's code, a chore that had to be done occasionally.

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT 99

Political figures and prominent citizens assaulted editors on the
street with whips, in their own offices with clubs, upon a sudden
encounter with a well-placed uppercut; the editor was expected
to print a retraction. He seldom did.

Fuller, in his famous thesis, Economic and Social Beginnings
of Michigan, says that the temper of the time was ungracious
to a startling degree, and "downright nasty" upon occasion.
In such a dross-laden melting pot as lusty Detroit in 1830,
there was neither opportunity nor incentive to be polite. It
was a wild boom town as crazy as any Oklahoma oil metropolis
later, and packed with the same frontier characters and
customs.

Violence in thought matched violence in action. Tom Mason,
faced with this riotous environment, couldn't assimilate it. One
of the most pathetic passages he ever penned was a graphic
account of the last public hanging in Detroit, on September
3Oth, which he had the misfortune to witness because he hap
pened to be passing in the street when it took place.

He stood there, biting his lips and clenching his fists, just
one more stovepipe hat in a forest of them. In the market
square, an old French building in the middle of Woodward
Avenue facing Jefferson, a three-cornered gibbet had been
erected and a platform built. The victim, one Simmons, his
arms lashed behind him, was marched up the steps to the plat
form and stood there guffawing down at the crowd, which
roared at him good-naturedly. The crowd was in hysterics over
the drunken antics of the Oakland County Scouts, who were
supposed to provide the martial background on such occasions.
They were garbed in stained blue shirts and tremendous stove
pipe hats, tootling on fifes and whanging away at drums without
any conception of what they were supposed to be playing.
u Red-nosed and bleary-eyed," wrote Tom, "they made a sorry
spectacle of themselves. I grant that everyone had a good time
including the condemned man, who was still laughing when
launched into eternity." To Tom Mason it was nauseating.
He never forgot it.

He left Detroit the following day. After that spectacle he

IOO STEVENS THOMSON MASON

craved clean air. He waited until his father's first quarterly
pay check arrived, on October ist, and left rapidly for Ken
tucky. Tom was suddenly not a youth any more, but a man.
The change came about suddenly, not so much as a consequence
of his environment but because he was saddled with the care
of the Mason family.

John T. gave him only enough money to buy a horse and get
the family to Detroit. Upon Tom's shoulders rested the task
of collecting the delicate Mason brood and gathering up the
family possessions. Upon him now, no longer upon his father,
was the responsibility of conducting them in safety through
four hundred and fifty miles of mountain and swamp. He
was called upon to organize another of those Mason caravans
and command it on the slow and hazardous journey northward.

To his credit, Torn performed very much better than John
T. He lost no time in preliminary social observances. He rode
southward, executed his mission and arrived back in Detroit
with the family on October 29th. He had to fight a natural
wilderness almost as difficult as the Cumberland mountains:
the dreary succession of snake-infested swamps in southern
Michigan. But the family journals contain no heart-piercing
accounts of death and disaster such as had overtaken John T.

He made a map of his route as he rode southward, and
found all the bad spots. He arranged, on the return journey, to
pass those points in broad daylight. Hence the journey was a
slow, but steady, chronicle of progress from one inn to another
without undue delay.

He found the old brick house at Mount Sterling deserted.
A few miles away at Owingsville he located his mother and the
family at the home of Ambrose Dudley Mann, a young at
torney who had once been a law student in John T.'s office
at Lexington.

Where was Emily's facile pen that day? In all her writings,
no more dramatic episode could have been entered than the im
pressions of the family on the day that young Tom Mason
rode into Mann's dooryard. Did they see the thoroughgoing
changes in him? Did he still seem like the grocer's clerk who

1822-1830] A GENTLEMAN TO SEE THE PRESIDENT IOI

had left Mount Sterling six months before? Didn't anybody
notice his resplendent new clothes?

Of this there is no record. Tom was moving at such a speed
that they had scant opportunity to stand at a distance and
appraise him. There were wagons to be bought; a carriage for
mother and the girls ; horses, harness, barrels ; the old, old in
ventory that had become so painfully familiar to Tom's gray
ing mother. There was the shrill scolding of Granny Peg,
babying Elizabeth Moir Mason as she always did. There was
Emily, wrapping blankets around the frail Theodosia while
old Peff complained and loitered and dodged the heavy work.
There was chatter. "What's Detroit like? Did you see any
Indians? Weren't you afraid? Does everybody live in log
cabins and carry tomahawks in Michigan?"

At last the chests were loaded, the huge bedsteads carefully
wrapped and the last crate of books was on the wagons.
Granny Peg rode with Peff on one of them. Two new blacks
were coming along as drivers. They had been legally freed in
Kentucky, but they had to get to a free state somehow to enjoy
their liberty. Old Grandmother Moir, toothless and fragile,
wept quietly as she prepared to leave the body of her husband
forever under the bluegrass. Tom lifted her bodily into the
carriage with his mother and the girls. He looked along the
line of wagons, and mounted his horse.

No backward looks now; no thoughts of the Mason dead
lying peacefully in many a sad grave. Tom looked resolutely
forward as he rode slowly through Mount Sterling for the
last time. In the coach, his mother was silent. Into Lexington,
past proud buildings John T. once owned. There was the Bank
of the United States. There was no sound from within. Many
of the busy people on these streets had once bowed low to young
Tom as he rode his pony along them. They didn't recognize him
now, nor did he turn his head. "Serenity Hall" and its gleaming
lawns belonged back in another world. If Tom and his mother
were remembering the rich mansion, neither spoke of it.

Northward, wagons bumping over the dusty road and the
solemn chants of the blacks perched upon them. Northward,

IO2 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

facing an uncertainty in Detroit which irritated Tom more
than he could express in words. But henceforth Detroit was to
be the Mason home. Whatever happened, ignoring whatever
disasters the fates held in store for him, Tom Mason did not
look back at Kentucky. He hoped he never would have to set
foot in Kentucky again.

CHAPTER IV

FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER

ON APRIL 26, 1830, an incendiary fire which was set in the
office of the Detroit Gazette swept through an entire block of
the city.

The Gazette was the official spokesman for the Democratic
Party in the Territory of Michigan. Its destruction was known
to have been engineered by the Whigs, but the name of the
man who applied the torch remained a secret. John P. Sheldon,
editor of the Gazette, had been clapped into jail the previous
year by William Woodbridge after a series of articles had
held up Woodbridge as a crook who tempered justice with
favoritism. Woodbridge, the Whig boss of the Territory,
never was connected officially with the fire "but Democrats
could not escape the inference.

As it roared westward on Jefferson Avenue, the fire con
sumed the residence of Mr. Thomas Palmer as well as his
office, the store of Major Brooks, the residence of Judge Mc
Donnell, the store of Mr. Griswold, the office of Dr. Clarke
and his adjoining dwelling house, and was brought under con
trol in the building on the corner of Jefferson and Shelby,
occupied at the time by a Mr. John Smith.

Six months later there was a community squabble in progress
over responsibility for this fire. If Tom Mason had taken
time to read the newspapers after he arrived back in Detroit
from Kentucky, he would have seen both sides of a controversy
which had illustrated very well Detroit's amazing capacity for
producing trouble. He would have read, in print, accusations
and counterblasts which merely pointed up the temper of the
times.

The fire of 1830 exemplified the great fiery personalities who

IDS

104 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

inspired it. The disaster seemed to the gentle Masons, as they
walked past the ruins every day, typical of this wild town and
the wild people who shot and horsewhipped each other; who
burned their enemies' newspapers (incidentally levelling an
entire block in the busiest downtown section), and hated each
other with a viciousness that even appalling acts of violence
could not quench.

The fire keynoted the whole town, from its stinking open
sewer to its' secretive, pompous political bosses. Violence of this
kind was a natural accompaniment of a frontier people who
were unrestrained by any noticeable legal authority. The kind
of people who made up Detroit was seen any day on its streets,
where the crowds always seemed in such a hurry that they ap
peared to be on the point of breaking into a gallop. Burly
pedestrians elbowed each other off the narrow sidewalks into
the bottomless mud of the streets, then fought about it in
cursing anger while other people milled about the scene to
prod them on.

Mrs. Elizabeth Moir Mason, forty-one and fragile, shud
dered with the Virginian's distaste for all forms of rudeness.
She warned the five Mason daughters not to venture very far
from the safe confines of the Mansion House parlor. From Sun
shine Sister Mary, aged two, to willowy Emily, fifteen, the
girls meekly obeyed. They were frightened.

Tom Mason was out house hunting. His father had no time
to find a place to live in. Obviously he had not been expecting
the family for several weeks, and had made no provision for
their place of residence. Tom knew that John T. was harassed
and miserable, but he said nothing. John T. did not know how
to be acting governor; he was just a juicy Democratic lamb
being led to a Whig barbecue.

Governor Lewis Cass was still absent on Indian affairs.
John T. was propelled into the highest executive post in the
land before he knew where to find a pen or what to do with
it. Out of earshot, the chuckling Whigs regarded this inex
perience as a stroke of good fortune. It made all sorts of things
possible. They manipulated matters so that John T. would

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 105

appear to be ridiculous. The plot appeared to be the familiar
formula of providing the rope and letting him hang himself,
whereupon the Whigs could discredit him and block his con
firmation by the Senate.

Young Mason knew. How, we don't know. He was quick
to perceive a situation that only baffled John T. He did not
warn his father about it apparently because he didn't feel such
a thing becoming in a son.

He and his father located a house on West Congress, be
tween Griswold and Shelby. Right behind the back door was
the infamous open sewer, wriggling its horrid way obliquely
across town in a little gully between Congress and Larned.
Part of this house had been built from material salvaged from
Fort Shelby, then in the process of demolition and a good
source of building material. One whole wing of the fort, for
merly part of the officers' quarters, was remodelled and opened
as a girls' school. Only the gaunt old main gate was still stand
ing. Fort Street had not been cut through ; it was an unimproved
alley..

The town fascinated him because it challenged him. It
seemed like some conglomerate animal, ready to spring at
him. Because these people were harsh and quick-tempered, he
knew they expected him to be the same. To be anything else
would mark him as "different", eccentric. But a frontier town
is a prolific breeding ground for eccentric characters. Young
Mason decided to be something else. He fancied himself as a
bit polished, a cosmopolite who unluckily happened to be
stranded in a backwoods village. At any rate, Detroit immedi
ately discovered that it had a Beau Brummell in its uncouth
midst. The shock was a lasting one.

Arrayed in his skin-tight black broadcloth trousers and
flowing cloak, jauntily gesturing with an ebony walking stick,
Tom Mason sallied forth to explore the town. From the Man
sion House he could see nothing on the downriver side but a
spreading log citadel and an open farm. The Mansion House
happened to be on the extreme western edge of town, at
Jefferson Avenue and Cass Street. Sauntering down Jefferson

106 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Avenue and observing with satisfaction how people stared at
him, he passed rows of cluttered store windows and presently
arrived at Woodward Avenue. Three blocks. He saw a huge
street, astonishingly wide, cutting the town in two and running
straight back from the river toward the distant forest. To
his right, still in the middle of lower Woodward, was the
ignoble French Market and its rabble of gesticulating French
habitants. He continued onward.

Three more blocks eastward on Jefferson, and he was staring
at a tumble-down gate in an old pike-pole wall. This, then,
was the eastern edge of town. It was just six blocks wide on
the river, a compressed slice of city sandwiched in between
spreading farms.

Jefferson Avenue beckoned him onward. A row of little
whitewashed French farmhouses, guarded by decaying cedar
palings some ten feet high, relics of the Indian assaults twenty-
five years before. In the front yard, each proudly displayed
its moss-grown crucifix as a symbol of its owner's devotion,
and in the back yard each displayed its towering manure pile
as a symbol of his prosperity.

A distance equal to two city blocks east of the gate there
was a fine clover field enclosed by a rail fence. Returning, he
noticed that each farmhouse stood at the lower end of a long,
narrow strip of land, tightly fenced in, stretching away from
the river road. This, then, was the explanation of Detroit's
astonishing shape. These ribbons of land were farms forty
feet wide and more than a mile long. From the rich estate of
Governor Cass on the west to the Beaubien farm on the east
was about a five-minute walk. But Detroit was squeezed be
tween them mercilessly, crowded into a compressed river
frontage that now stretches seventeen miles and still is not
adequate. In Tom Mason's day there was room for expansion
only in one direction away from the river into the woods.

Back there, the land belonged to the Territory and was
known as the commons. Although there was nothing out there
of any importance, streets were ambitiously projected on a map
and a great city laid out with a width of six blocks. The com-

Plan of Detroit redrawn from John Mullen's map of ,830; There was
little above the Campus Martios then; streets were laid out, but they pro
jected mto the forest. Until 1835 Detroit was squeezed between borders only
a? streets apart. With the sale of the Cass farm and the final disappearance
of the Beauben strip the city began to expand swiftly. Mason's Jefferson
Avenue house and the Masons' first Detroit home on Congress Street have
been added in redrawing the 1830 map.

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

mons contained two buildings : the Territorial capitol and the
jail. They were about a mile from the river, built on opposite
sides of Woodward Avenue which, strangely, wasn't extended
that far. Someday, the Council said, there would be streets
around them.

From the river the town marched solidly, row upon row of
one- and two-story white frame stores and homes, as far as Con
gress four blocks. There it stopped. The Baptist Church, on
the northwest corner of what is now Fort Street and Wood
ward Avenue, was the northern limit of the town. In our day
that point is in the shadow of the smoky old city hall and has
been sliced off at an angle for a bus stop. In 1828 the Council
was seriously criticized for allowing the Territorial capitol
building to be built so far out in the commons that it was far
remote from the town and required a long, exhausting walk
to get there. There was no road to it, nothing but a pathway
continuing where Griswold Street gave up its wrestle with the
mud at Congress. It was a good half mile from downtown.

One can find it on large-scale maps today by indexing Capitol
Park. Hardly anyone in modern Detroit ever heard of such
a place. It is a triangular little space at the head of Griswold,
a block uptown from Michigan, crisscrossed with wide con
crete sidewalks and boasting a couple of conspicuous comfort-
station signs. Sunshine rarely reaches it; the towering cliffs
of tremendous buildings hide it from all but historical re
searchers and people who are looking for parking places. How
it could have been regarded, a century ago, as remote from the
city of Detroit is utterly incomprehensible to today's De-
troiters. Those who can find it realize that the point is in the
heart of the sprawling metropolis. Tom Mason and his father,
John T., frequently waded in mud over their ankles and ex
hausted themselves trying to walk there from the town.

They had to walk because Detroit streets were impassable
for carriages. Their thin wheels would have sunk hopelessly
to the hubs in the sea of mud that never seemed to dry, winter
or summer. Gentlemen of affluence who could afford a negro
boy to hold their steeds outside the building could ride to the

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 109

capitol. In the winter they joined everyone else in carioles,
the delightful, bell-tinkling sleighs. Most of the year there was
only one vehicle capable of navigating Detroit's so-called
streets. It was called many a picturesque name, but we know
it as a pony cart.

Elizabeth Moir Mason declined to ride in such a thing, pre
ferring to walk in dignity. The Mason family never owned one.
The cart had two wide heavy wheels and a sort of box-like
body, with a pint-sized pony bobbing about between the shafts
and a shouting French lad perched on one corner. Tom Mason
used to watch these ridiculous things maneuver backward up
to the wooden sidewalk in front of Mr. Gray's dry-goods store
on Jefferson and Griswold. The boy would jump down, run
around and drop the tail gate in the rear, then place a wooden
box on the sidewalk. Ladies of fashion would be sitting on
hassocks placed over buffalo robes spread on the floor/They
arose sedately, spread their voluminous hoop skirts, poked
out an inquisitive pantaletted foot and were gently lowered to
the box, from which they stepped to the sidewalk.

He could see these carts, any day, struggling along the
streets, carrying beautifully gowned ladies and proud young
officers from the military post west of the town ; officers literally
gleaming in gold braid and plumes, stroking their luxuriant
side whiskers and murmuring elaborate compliments. Pony
carts were part of Detroit, just as was the hurry-hurry atmos
phere of the streets and the sinister feeling of corruption which
hung over them. Pony carts took their place with the explosive
Courier and Journal, the artificially high retail prices and the
violence of political argument as characteristic phases of the
town's life. Tom Mason sniffed Detroit in his young nostrils,
and was glad. There was a place here for him.

The census of 1830 said that Detroit had 2,222 inhabitants
jammed into those twenty-four city squares. The real popula
tion was closer to 4,000. Detroit was also a military post and
furnishing subsistence to many officers and men; it was the
Territory's capital and full of jealous politicians with axes to
grind; it was the division point of one of the busiest overland

IIO STEVENS THOMSON MASON

caravans of settlers the world had ever seen, and they attracted
transient farmers, commission brokers, provision merchants,
people with something to sell and swindlers trying to get it
away from them.

Hotels were so full that a fleet of boats lay offshore acting as
floating inns. One of them was frozen in the ice during the
winter of 1832 and used as a newspaper office; it contained a
complete print shop being sent to Niles. Cholera, which deci
mated Detroit, swept ashore from plague-infested floating
dormitories in the river.

The new steam ferry, established during the year of Mason's
arrival, shuttled back and forth busily, bringing more and
more new people into Detroit. Every day during the ice-free
season, another boatload arrived from Buffalo.

Every night, or so it seemed, somebody was knifed, shot
or clubbed; lawlessness was part of the scene. Outrages such
as these justified two or three lines in the Journal; most of
that space was taken up with vitriolic denunciations of the
Council for tolerating such things. There were no city police
and no provision for maintaining order. Fires, once started,
scourged the city savagely. Part of it burned down regularly,
year after year. There was no fire department.

Some citizens had organized a volunteer brigade which
formed a line of buckets from the river to the fire. The results,
in general, were more spectacular than efficient. Tom Mason
joined this brigade and bought the required pair of buckets
to keep at his house. Governor Cass had belonged to it for
some years, paying out considerable sums in fines for not an
swering calls.

Detroit had no water supply. Somie homes dug shallow
wells in their back yards and bought iron pumps, but most
families carried water from the river in buckets and stored it in
barrels on their back porches. There were no sewers ; the
open ditch following an old riverbed through the gully between
Congress and Larned called sufficient attention to itself without
going into detail about it. There were no pavements in Detroit
at all, In 1830, except some cobblestone remnants which sur-

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER III

rounded the French Market, survivors of the fire of 1805
which had laid the city completely in ruins.

Detroit was a century and a half old in 1805; it was new
1830.^ Judge Augustus B. Woodward was one of the more
conspicuous victims of that disaster. His home was burned, too ;
he took charge of the homeless citizenry and laid out a new
Detroit. He laid out a new street at the old market, a hundred
feet wide and running straight back from the river. He named
it after himself, with true Detroit aggressiveness. On the
river bank, crossing this street at right angles, he laid out an
other. This he called Jefferson, in honor of the White House
incumbent who had appointed him. Then he gave narrow lots in
this new area to everybody who had owned a lot previously;
first come first served. In effect, he said: "All right, boys, take
it from there."

Detroit grew helter-skelter within its strait-jacket frontage.
Charles Larned drew a lot a block uptown from Jefferson and
the street which was cut through there was named for him.
Somebody thought Congress ought to be remembered, because
Congress had given the burned-out town a free grant of land
on which to expand. So the next street was called Congress.
There was room for only one street between Jefferson and the
river. There was no question as to the name of it; a certain
gentleman owned a goodly share of its commercial frontage
and it was named for him Woodbridge.

Not a single structure in town except the blackened old
French Market was more than twenty-five years old. The
houses were new and most of the people were new. The place
had not stopped growing long enough to settle into any tradi
tional pattern. It was just a brawling, crowded, conniving
frontier outpost in a new nation.

Like so many other wild and woolly frontier towns, Detroit
had courts which were pitifully transparent fakes. It had
lawyers who could hardly read and councilmen who spoke
English only with painful difficulty. Its stores exhibited an
astonishing big-city assortment of fine silks and gleaming silver
for people with a surplus of easy money. For the hard-pressed

112 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

salaried clerks and petty officials, Detroit was too expensive
a place to live in. There seemed to be no comfortable middle-
class mattress to take up the social shock of the structure;
Detroiters were too rich or too poor and nobody was satisfied.

Prices on staple foods were too high in a day when a laboring
man's wage was a dollar a day in dubious paper currency. From
the Journal of October, 1830: percale shirting, I2>4 cents
per yard at Gray's; bar iron, 9 cents a pound; nails, n cents
a pound; tea, $1.00 to $1.25 per pound; coffee, 25 cents. Prime
beef at retail in the markets, 20 cents.

On other things the prices were encouragingly low: rum,
$1.50 per gallon; whiskey, 50 cents per gallon; brandy, $2.00
per gallon at retail to innkeepers, $1.87 per gallon.

Microscopic taxes were assessed but few people paid them;
ten years previously (1820) the town's entire revenue had
been $250. After that disclosure and its violent aftermath, the
Council discontinued the practice of reporting how much reve
nue was turned in. Figures from 1820 to 1860 were very
difficult of access. This situation fairly reeked of wholesale
graft. The newspapers harped on that theme constantly. Yet
John T., as acting governor of the Territory, found that
nothing had been done and nobody around the capitol building
seemed interested.

Into this explosive atmosphere came a stranger empowered
by Andrew Jackson to act, and inspired by an urge to do some
thing John T. Mason. In the Secretary's office, politics
emerged as a form of big business. John T. had never been a
success in business and his feeble gestures made scant impres
sion now. Tom Mason gradually grew aware of his father's
slow progress, but the knowledge came to him slowly, over
a period of months.

Winter clothed the unclean city in a spotless mantle of snow.
On the silent river, boats vanished and the ice rang to the im
pact of skate blades. Roads froze, and the torrent of migra
tion dried up. Detroit was lulled into its winter quiet.

Now came Dr. Douglas Houghton to deliver a series of
public lectures on chemistry. Now appeared the Thespian

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 113

Corps, a proud-chested group of army officers, reciting "poeti-
cal, prose and scientific papers". Men of prominence wrote
and delivered essays on bits of Detroit history before the
Lyceum and Historical Society. Among them, that year, were
Major Thomas Rowland, Mr. Charles C. Trowbridge, Major
John Riddle and Mr. Henry R. Schoolcraft. "Balls and merry
making/' observed one contemporary, "not uncommonly filled
the hours of night close to the coming of morning."

Lamps burned brightly in many-paned windows. The jingle
of sleigh bells sounded the overture to Detroit's winter social
season. Then, and not before, the Mason girls could emerge
in their woolen dresses and new muffs. Then they went forth,
properly chaperoned by a pale, silent mother, to meet the
daughters of other good families.

Tom Mason went out too, but not with mother. He was
unnaturally subdued during his first winter in Detroit. He was
not yet sure of himself. He lacked the background he needed
to appraise this acquaintance or that one. He was searching,
constantly investigating people to discover where they fitted
into the political puzzle.

Once satisfied that a new acquaintance was a friend, Mason
dropped his inhibitions as casually as he might put aside his
cloak. More than once he drew a drumfire of sharp newspaper
criticism. One faded old sheet of newsprint proclaims that
"the handsome son of our Territorial Secretary has been dis
playing exuberance of spirits at places where such are to be
found". That notice probably did him a world of good, and
no harm.

He drank, not with the bottoms-up gulp of the provincial, but
with the slow, easy grace of the Kentucky aristocrat. Through
out his career newspapers yapped at him because he was seen
drinking so often. But he was never, even in Whig newspapers,
accused of drinking too much. He drank because it was a con
versational ice-breaker; because it was the custom of the day
and one of its pitifully few amusements; and because, as in
so many other things, he was good at it. He could appear to be
drinking moodily and incessantly when he was really executing

114 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

a series of innocuous gestures. His new friends thought he was
remarkable, because he was a listener, not a talker. He en
couraged them to bring their bottle and their companions over
to his table and talk and talk.

While he was continuing his tavern investigations, the
Mason girls were being welcomed wholeheartedly and cordially
into the best homes. Emily and the next younger, Kate, aged
twelve, were enrolled as pupils in a private school near St.
Ann's Cathedral, conducted by an order of Belgian sisters.
As pupils there, they were accepted into little-girl society as a
matter of course. They met the daughter of Governor Cass ;
the Joseph Campeau girls, descendants of Cadillac, the brilliant
daughter of Judge Desnoyer, and children of the Palmers, the
Witherells, and all the first families. Emily radiantly con
fided all of it to her diary. She was bursting with happiness,
as she had been at the school in Lexington.

u What charming recollections of those days of simple
pleasures crowd upon me!" she wrote. "Good Father Kundig
made for us a theatre in the basement of the Cathedral where
we acted Hannah Moore's and Miss Edgeworth's pieces to
admiring audiences of parents and friends. My sister Katie
as Mrs. Battle in 'Old Poz', and Josie Desnoyer as William
in hat and cravat of her father, a world too wide, and his
brass-buttoned coat, the tails of which dragged on the floor,
produced peals of laughter. My younger sister Laura with gilt
paper crown and scepter and long white gown, was Canute
bidding the waters retreat. Seized with stage-fright after the
first scene, she refused to return to the 'boards 1 , when Father
Kundig gravely announced the 'indisposition on the part of
King Canute' and prayed the audience to excuse his further
appearance. Between acts he played the piano, was candle-
snuffer, proprietor, scene-shifter, everything, with unfailing
interest and good humor."

Elizabeth Moir Mason rarely ventured outside her home
unless to accompany her daughters to affairs around their
school. At home she had another problem : her invalid daughter,
Theodosia. It became the family's custom to refer to its five

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 115

daughters. Theodosia was never included in the list of those
who went places and had a good time. She is a dark page in
the family's history. In 1830 Emily was fifteen and the eldest
surviving daughter. Next in order came Kate, who was twelve,
and Laura, who was nine. Cornelia, born in a rented house at
Lexington during the worst of John TVs troubles, was six
that year and the baby, Sunshine Sister Mary, was a dimpled,
laughing two-year-old. They were the five.

Kept in a quiet room and waited on constantly by her mother,
Theodosia hardly had strength enough to make her presence
felt in the family circle. She was eight years old on December
6, 1830, just about the time her three elder sisters were taking
bows in the cathedral theatre. None of the family's friends
ever mentioned Theodosia; few ever saw her. We do not
know, a century later, the well-kept secret of Theodosia J s ill
ness. Whatever it was, it was a family matter and hardly a
subject for too-close scrutiny.

However, we know that Elizabeth was hardly out of range
of the invalid's feeble voice at any time. Shopping had to be
done ; errands accumulated more rapidly then than they do in
these days of the telephone. It became Elizabeth's custom
to give Granny Peg some money and a big market basket,
and send her forth with a note to the grocer.

Some of the more perceptive practical jokers in the neighbor
hood soon discovered that the white-polled Guinea negress
couldn't resist anything in a bottle. They waylaid her as she
waddled forth to market, and surreptitiously invited her to par
take. After she had partaken a few times, with many a sigh of
pure pleasure, she would break forth into voodoo chants and
rapid evolutions wherein she was said to oscillate the most
prominent part of her ample anatomy until she had all the on
lookers beating out a jungle rhythm and shouting for more.
Later, Granny Peg would come forlornly home tight as a drum,
having forgotten entirely what she was sent for.

Elizabeth properly called her down for it time after time,
while Granny Peg hung her massive head and begged forgive
ness, vowing that it would never happen again. Never ! But it

Il6 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

happened regularly, until Granny Peg had become an estab
lished Detroit character.

There was another Detroit that lay behind the store fronts
and the crowded sidewalks. Just as the fire of the previous
spring seemed to Tom Mason to be so symbolic of the in
cendiary atmosphere of the citizens, the peculiar custom of
moving buildings furiously from place to place typified the
other Detroit. The city's place in the frontier scheme of things
was somewhat like those buildings. Constantly changing, being
yanked and tugged back and forth, subjected to prodigious
pull and protesting by loud creaks and groans, Detroit couldn't
even keep its buildings on permanent foundations, let alone
its policies.

Peter J. Desnoyer was one of Detroit's ablest citizens of the
period. When he was seventy-six and a part of Detroit's mo
mentous earlier history, he told the Free Press that between
1820 and 1835 the business of house-moving was a major occu
pation. His first experience with it came when he was five,
and his father moved all the furniture out of their house and
dumped it in the middle of Woodward Avenue near Jefferson,
with Peter deposited underneath the dining-room table so
they'd know where he was. When the furniture was collected
again, the house was somewhere else. Mr. Desnoyer recalled
that not a single structure in Detroit by 1835 was on its original
foundations, with one exception the Joseph Campeau resi
dence on Jefferson between Griswold and Shelby.

After the fire of April, 1830, the Palmers moved what was
left of their house up to a new lot on the corner of Woodward
and John R., a suburban estate at the time. Dr. Brown put
his house on rollers and moved it clear across town to a lot
he had just purchased in the rear of Mrs. Beaubien's farmhouse,
just east of St. Ann's Cathedral Charles Busch built a hardware
store on that site, but in 1832 that was moved, too, farther

1830-1831] FAUNTLERQY OF THE FRONTIER 117

up Jefferson. That one Jefferson Avenue lot, fifty by a hundred
feet, had four buildings within fifteen years.

The First Protestant Society bought the disused Military
Hall of Fort Shelby and slid it down the length of Fort Street
to become a parish house for their small yellow church at
Woodward and Larned. Soon it was moved from there to an
other lot to serve as a city courtroom. The officers' quarters
at the fort were moved, house by house, by the city to fill up
gaps in the new streets north of Congress. Even the city itself
was caught in this craze. Detroit's first fire hall was moved
at least three times. At one time it occupied the site of the
old city council hall at Jefferson and Randolph, forcing the
ruffled city fathers to arise with dignity and cart their council
hall out into the commons.

If people didn't like their neighbors, it was absurdly easy
to sell their lot or trade it for one somewhere else, then move
the house. These houses had neither cellars, furnaces, plumbing,
wiring, concrete sidewalks, garages nor air-conditioning ducts.
Foundations were nothing more than stone supports, easily
duplicated at any other location the owner might fancy. The
ease of house-moving gave Detroit an appearance rather like
the interior of an old-time vaudeville house. With every new
act there was a new backdrop.

It contributed to Detroit's air of unreality; it was like a
city that had been thrust ashore there by some indignant boat
captain, and which might decide to migrate farther westward.

That was about all Detroit was good for, in Tom Mason's
first jumbled impression. He saw the city as a sort of check
valve in a pipe, passing along people and wagonloads of freight,
snapping shut when there was a tinkle of money to be heard,
and steadfastly holding the pipe closed against traffic or un
complimentary reports going in the opposite direction.

It was virtually impossible for the authorities at Washington
to learn what was going on in the Territory. They knew the
physical facts about it, but were kept in ignorance of the feel
ings of the people.

n8

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

John T. found himself acting governor of a bailiwick which,
on a map, stretched limitlessly to the unknown western plains.
It comprised the present State of Michigan, and the present
State of Wisconsin, an undefined expanse of something or other
westward of the Mississippi which had been added to it from
the broken-up Northwest Territory in 1818. Nobody knew
just how many square miles Michigan Territory contained.

Michigan Territory before the admission of the state. A sketch map in the
report of the first State Surveyor, 1837.

1830-1831] FAXJNTLERQY OF THE FRONTIER 119

It extended westward from the middle of the Detroit River
to a point which was always in dispute, but somewhere around
the upper Missouri River. Michigan Territory thus extended
from the Canadian border to St. Louis along the Missouri
and White Earth Rivers, from Lake Superior to the northern
boundaries of Indiana and Ohio, and from Detroit something
more than a thousand miles northwest.

Of that, the major portion was unmapped and unknown
to all but a few explorers. The Territory which was admin
istered from Detroit comprised two sections: "the land east
of Lake Michigan", meaning the present peninsula known by
that name, and "the land west of Lake Michigan", meaning the
Wisconsin area from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River.

Beyond the Mississippi, the huge empire of the Northwest
was merely annexed to Michigan Territory for administra
tive purposes. It was administered by Federal officials, acting
under instructions from Washington, independently of the
Territorial officials at Detroit.

In 1830 this vast inland empire contained only 32,531 known
inhabitants. About three thousand of them were in "the land
west of Lake Michigan". There were new settlements at Green
Bay and Mineral Point, mostly workers in the newly discovered
lead mines. The balance were scattered across the lower half
of the peninsula of Michigan.

Twelve counties had been organized by that year, and duly
recognized by official proclamations signed by Governor Cass.
They had spread westward from Detroit across the State,
slowly, as more and more settlers took up land and became
permanent additions to the population. Twelve more counties
were in the process of organization, but in 1830 had not been
recognized.

The organized counties elected their own local constables
and supervisors. Each county elected a delegate to the Terri
torial Council. The Council, in turn, elected a delegate to the
national Congress at Washington who represented the Terri
tory there but who had no vote.

John T. was acting governor whenever his superior had to be

120 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

absent. Upon him also descended the responsibility of being
Indian Agent and administering the affairs of twelve tribes.
He had the power to pardon offenses against Federal laws;
the power of appointment of all judges of county courts, jus
tices of the peace, judges' of probate, court clerks and judicial
personnel in general.

He could have been a dictator had he been nervy enough
to assume command. But he was afraid, timid. The Whigs con
tinued to run the Territory by merely advising him what to do.
He didn't know the people.

The men who knew Michigan best were the woodsmen who
walked across it. They were the veteran trappers, traders, sur
veyors, scouts and guides, who felt with their calloused feet
how the firm land gave way to treacherous swamp ; who saw
how hills hid deep valleys, and what was at the bottom of them.
Days into the interior, they were close to the people because
they were close to the land, and the land created the people.

After them came the politicians. They fancied that they
knew more about what the people needed than did the people
themselves. Their function was to rule. The awful distances,
the thin sprinkling of settlers, the tortoise-like pace of trans
portation all these things contributed to a nullification of the
spirit of democracy although its outward forms were preserved.
Each isolated county aggressively voted and debated about
local matters, acting as a separate political unit in a sea of
forest and keeping local democracy alive. But from Detroit
came only orders, removals, new appointments, all the symbols
of a higher administrative authority in which the local people
had only a theoretical share.

Politically, Detroit had been a tight dictatorship since soon
after the election of John Quincy Adams, and the full flowering
of the local Whig machines. Deroit was only one example of
small-town Whig machines which collectively ruled the United
States until the election of Andrew Jackson. Detroit, ruling
its far-flung province almost by decree, with just a show of
approval by a complaisant Council, had a boss. The day-by-
day administration of such a political monstrosity would have

1830-1831] FAtTNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 121

been impossible without some strong central figure who could
assume, and hold, command. In Detroit, as elsewhere in 1830,
the boss was a Whig. His name was William Woodbridge.

The name Whig was originally an insult. The term had
come from England, where it had long been a symbol of pom
posity, ineffectual harrumph-ing and general stuffed-shirtedness.
During the first decade of the century and shortly afterward,
it had been used as a Democratic jibe in political handbills to
describe a sort of unorganized new party that was springing
up. The party was a direct descendant of Alexander Hamilton's
Federalists, one of the original participants in our two-party
system of government. It had been the original conservative
party of the United States. Its members were men of wealth
and influence who roundly distrusted the universal franchise
and believed in the rights of property. After the Burr con
spiracy the party suffered a serious disaster from which it
never recovered. It split apart into disputing factions.

Out-of-power Federalists joined with out-of-sympathy rich
men during Jefferson's administration to form a sort of nu
cleus around which a new conservative party appeared. The
term Whig, at first an opposition insult, eventually appeared as
the party's official designation on the ballot.

It was the party of Henry Clay, just as the Democrats were
the party of Andrew Jackson. The vicious political warfare,
and the personal animosity, between the two had identified
the issues with the men. The Whig and Democratic policies
became whatever Clay and Jackson were trying to promote.
John T. Mason was the first Democrat appointed to a post in
Michigan Territory in many years. He became, to the out
raged Whigs, a symbol of Andrew Jackson and rabble rule.
The very sight of him aroused die-hard Whigs to fury.

Governor Lewis Cass was a staunch Democrat. But he had
been appointed by Madison previous to Monroe's era of good
feeling, and furthermore he was anything but a politician.
He was a major national figure. His fame was world-wide.
At Washington has name was spoken with profound respect.
Cass was primarily a soldier, who, after a glorious military

122 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

career, had accepted appointment as a territorial governor
merely to offer his country the further service of exploration,
colonization, negotiation with suspicious Indian tribes and
blazing the trail for the long wagon trains of settlers. He sel
dom occupied his office. When he did, it was to catch up on
accumulated office work. He left again for the forests as soon
as he could.

When John T. arrived in Detroit and introduced himself
around the capitol building, a form announcement of that
fact was sent to Cass by messenger. Cass was very busy with
further negotiations with the Indians of Saginaw Bay. He
was leading up to his master stroke : the final treaty in a series
of twenty-one which established United States control through
out the entire peninsula. It was the climax of fifteen years'
incessant work. It meant everything in the world to Lewis Cass,
and to his career. The arrival of a new Secretary was a very
minor matter, certainly nothing to justify returning to Detroit
to look at him.

John T. located the building upon arrival, walked in and
asked somebody for the office of the Secretary. He was di
rected upstairs and down the central corridor. The Secretary's
office was the first door on the left; the Governor's chamber
was located at the end of the long hallway directly over the
Council hall on the first floor.

The timid Virginian entered the Secretary's office and saw
a florid, but pleasant, middle-aged gentleman of poised and
distinguished appearance. The man shook his hand cordially.
He said he was James Witherell, Mason's "predecessor".
Witherell urged him to be seated ; he was kindly of voice and
did not appear to be in the least upset over his removal. He
had expected it, he said, ever since the election of Jackson
in 1828.

His first act was a gesture of genuine friendship toward his
successor. But Witherell, unfortunately, was a mere political
satellite of the Whig boss. John T. had not been in the building
a day before he discovered that sad fact. Well-meaning people
told him that Woodbridge cracked the whip ; Woodbridge

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 123

held the Territory in his pocket; Woodbridge was the man
to see before anything could be done.

When John T. first gazed upon this awesome figure, he be
held in Woodbridge a character totally unlike anything in his
wide experience. Nobody like Woodbridge had ever held public
office in Virginia, nor in Kentucky. There have been few like
him in the history of the nation.

William Woodbridge had lived a tragic life, and reflected
his early hardships in everything he said and did. He was a
professional politician, one of the first in the Northwest. He
was really a generation ahead of his time, for it was Wood-
bridge who introduced boss rule to Michigan and who proved,
as other bosses have proved, that his way was the most efficient
way. It was frequently cruel and always secretive, but it ad
ministered the Territory smoothly and profitably for his men.

Fever and coarse food had weakened him until, in 1830, he
was a walking skeleton. Stooped and sinister, white hair
straggling down over his ears in imitation of his beloved patron
Clay, sunken cheeks, harsh lines in his parchment-like skin,
Woodbridge looked like an aged wSvengali. He stared forth
from watery, myopic eyes and had no teeth, so that strangers
often assumed that the poor old man was on the verge of tears.

This appearance of senility was startlingly at variance with
Woodbridge V true condition. He found it useful when he
wanted to arouse sympathy in someone, as he did when Jack
son's vengeance finally caught up with him two years later.
He whimperingly told the Detroit bar, solidly Whig of course,
that it was too bad that Jackson had seen fit to remove him at
his advanced age when he was "too old to seek new fields".
He referred to the notice as a "contemptuous ejection"; the
lawyers wept.

He was not too old, nor was he weak physically or mentally.
He was exactly fifty in October, 1830. He looked eighty. He
had the surprising strength, and the premature appearance
of old age, so characteristic of the true pioneer. Woodbridge
was weeping alligator tears in 1830 about being old; he out
lived both the Masons, father and son, and held the governor-

124 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

ship himself long after they were disposed of. Woodbridge
rounded out a half century on the public payroll as a United
States Senator almost until the outbreak of the Civil War.

He was a man in whom the fires of revenge were fed slowly,
carefully and incessantly. He had never seen John T. Mason
in his life until he stealthily appeared at the door of WitherelFs
office while the two were chatting. He had nothing whatever
against John T. as a man. But Woodbridge was utterly in
capable of distinguishing between a personal and a political
enemy. John T. was Jackson at his worst, to Woodbridge.
He was a scoundrel, a usurper, a pretender who had grabbed
power through some hideous coup ft etat, a foe to be hounded
and persecuted without a moment's relief. Someone had come
hurrying to Woodbridge with the news of John TVs appoint
ment. Woodbridge was ready. He had been ready a long time.

During the violent presidential campaign of 1828, Wood-
bridge was fighting hard and well for the Whigs. But he was
a shrewd political analyst and a judge of trends; he knew
there was a widespread outcry against Henry Clay. Secretly
he expected Jackson to be elected. So he quietly built himself
a storm cellar for the blow he knew was coming.

He had to sacrifice Witherell, but what of that? Witherell
was a justice of the Territorial supreme court, highly-educated,
able, fair, a jurist who had won respect from everyone. Wood-
bridge, although the holder of a law degree and thoroughly
grounded in legal procedure, was essentially a politician. He
had been a State representative in Ohio before migrating to
Michigan. He had campaigned for offices like prosecuting
attorney and State Senator. Most of his adult life had been
devoted to campaigning and political horse-trading.

In 1828 he had been Territorial Secretary for fourteen
years. For part of that time he had simultaneously held the
post of Collector of the Port, at an additional salary and a
three-and-a-half-percent rake-off on imports; he conducted a
lucrative private law practice besides and owned valuable down
town business property. In that year, before the election, he

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 125

called Witherell in and forced the judge to change places with
him.

Thus Witherell became Secretary and Woodbridge sat
serenely upon the Supreme Court bench, where the "spoils
system" axe would probably miss him. It was WitherelPs
name that Andrew Jackson read in his list of prominent Whig
jobholders.

Woodbridge was not a success on the bench. His political
partiality was demonstrated more than once; he jailed people
who accused him of favoritism and in general behaved badly.
But he clung to the job.

After John T. and his son Tom had come to know Wood-
bridge better, they realized that such actions were quite in char
acter. His manner of speaking stamped him as a man who might
do anything. He would simply stand and stare at a man for some
time before replying to a question, wobbling his toothless gums
and blinking his weak eyes as if he couldn't quite summon
the strength to make himself heard. Finally, when he spoke,
his voice would be low and mumbling. He used the most
elaborate, formal phraseology, never asserting anything boldly
but managing to convey a hint.

"I humbly beg you to excuse me on that point; I have in
sufficient knowledge of it to justify an opinion. . * . My ex
cellent colleague, Secretary Mason, who really knows much
more of this matter than I, will doubtless enlighten you. . . ."
He was a stickler for verbal bowings and scrapings. He fre
quently arose and stalked indignantly from a room if there
was the slightest hint of profanity or obscenity. He never
spoke ill of any man, a point oft quoted by historians. But
he could verbally slit a man's throat with the gentleness of a
benediction.

This was Woodbridge, the Whig boss, the man John T.
had to fight and beat if he expected to hold his new job. In
this, as in so many crises in his life, John T. Mason entered
battle practically weaponless. He was really incapable of this
sort of thing. It never occurred to him, as it did to his son

126 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Tom almost instantly, that Woodbridge would have a trap
baited for him and would propel him toward it with courteous
bows, mumbled compliments, innocent little gestures.

Gradually John T. Mason began to see the wolf behind
Woodbridge's grandmotherly make-up. When he did, he un
consciously changed the history of the Northwest for the next
hundred years by an act of reckless, adolescent impulsiveness.

Just before Christmas, 1830, Cass returned to Detroit.

The Governor's entry into the city was hardly a triumphant
procession. The great man and his suite, almost frozen, ears
wrapped in rags and leather boots stiff with ice, crawled wearily
into town astride horses so exhausted they could hardly move.
Cass retired to his bullet-scarred log mansion on the river bank
next door to the Mansion House, on Jefferson, to thaw out.
There was a notice in the newspaper stating that he had re
turned, but no word of what he had accomplished.

Cass was rubbed back to life for a few days, and presently
rode to the capitol building on a fresh horse. John T. was
overwhelmed with relief. Here was a fellow Democrat; here
was a friendly superior to take over the reins of office and
protect him. Cass's greeting was friendly, but not effusive.
John T. said that he wanted to sit down with him at once
and tell him of all the pitfalls set before him by Woodbridge
and his cohorts.

The Governor was sorry, but that would have to wait. He
had just returned from a most important mission. The authori
ties in Washington, especially Colonel McKenney, would need
to be informed at once as to the feeling among the Indians
about relinquishing all the tribal claims to the lower peninsula.
Then, he said, he must prepare his annual message to the Coun
cil and draft the administrative program for the ensuing year.
Some other time.

John T. received the impression that Cass knew all about
Woodbridge and wasn't alarmed. It was plain that Cass

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 127

couldn't be bothered with petty political squabbles and declined
to soil his hands with them.

However, Cass's coming was a boon. It meant that out-of-
state sheriffs and delegates and judges and people with griev
ances were no longer shunted to John lYs office by the wily
Whigs. They all wanted to see Cass, now. The Secretary was
spared the risk of appointing people, week after week, to jobs
he never knew existed and which in some cases probably didn't.
Cass seemed to know every citizen of the Territory by his first
name. Looking over a sheaf of new appointments, he would
bark out orders.

"No, not that man. Last year the Pottawatomis com
plained to me that he had sold them flintlock muskets that al
ways misfired. He got them at an auction somewhere; just
junk. He's a swindler, and he gets no appointment from me.
Present my regrets to the county board; advise them to nomi
nate an honest man. Now, this boy's all right. I know his
people; I danced with his mother two years ago at the village
of Ann Arbor."

On December 2Oth, a committee of five citizens of Jackson-
burgh arrived with a petition asking that an appropriation be
made for repairs to the Territorial Road passing through that
village. And Cass was furious, says a faded old letter of the
period. "I surveyed that road myself in 1828; your town
sprang up after the road was completed. What have you done?
You have not yet built so much as a bridge across the Grand
River at your village."

John T.'s office had been crowded with people like these.
He didn't know them; he had no answer that would satisfy
them. He loved to watch Cass, the master, bring these people
up short with blunt truths about themselves and their motives.
It took Cass about thirty seconds to dispose of a demand which
would send John T. pacing his office floor in worry for thirty
days.

.General Lewis Cass was about five feet tall and built like a
pickle barrel. Bulbous nose, double chin, high collar that came
up the sides of his fat neck and looked strong enough to choke

128 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

him; extremely short legs that gave him a noticeable waddle.
His usual costume included an ill-fitting tail coat that hung
on him like a tent and seemed about three sizes too large. It
protruded out in front of his rounded stomach and dropped a
pair of enormous coat tails almost to his heels. The coat be
came one of Michigan's great puzzles. Cass wore it while an
artist painted his portrait for the capitol building. For some
fifty years it aroused endless debate. Later generations vowed
that no man would wear a garment like that; it was assumed
that the artist was afflicted with double vision or a slapstick
sense of humor. It made the great man look like a German
comedian, they said. Nevertheless Cass wore it, and he did
look like a comedian in it.

His contemporaries adjusted themselves to the sight of
General Cass waddling down Jefferson Avenue dragging these
out-size coat tails in the mud. They did not see anything funny
in the spectacle. Other people wore costumes much funnier.
They saw only Lewis Cass, Michigan's foremost citizen and
America's most valuable Indian expert; Cass, the patient
explorer and trail blazer who pointed out places to build cities
and built roads to realize them. People made room for Cass
on the crowded streets, and bowed to him with deference as
he passed.

When Cass raised his short body into the governor's chair,
Woodbridge went into an eclipse. That was one consolation,
John T. told himself. There was no question now as to who
held the Territory in his pocket. Woodbridge paled into in
significance beside Cass's impressive public stature. He shrank
to the figure of a grumpy old politician who knew how to keep
silent when the "Genr'l" was in the capitol.

With Woodbridge quiet, and Cass making all the decisions,
John T. could sigh with relief and relax. The corridor outside
his office was still full of jostling people with grievances, but
none of them came to see him. They were waiting their turn
to see the "Genr'l". John T. had a massive piece of furniture
in a corner of his office which was called, appropriately, a secre
tary. It was eight feet high and built of solid, enduring Michi-

1830-1831] FAUKTLERQY OF THE FRONTIER 129

gan walnut; bookshelves above for the calf-bound legislative
acts and a desk below with a smooth leather top for him to write
on. John T. could tilt back his chair and put his feet up on it.
That was about all he had to do after Cass's return.

Frequently there would be a stentorian roar, echoing down
the corridor. u Mr. Mason 1" Down would come John T.'s
feet, to patter along the hall to Cass's chamber. "Yes, sir?"
u Mr. Mason, kindly prepare thirteen letters at once, to the
following-named justices of the peace "

John T. burned. That was a clerk's job.

Presently appeared his handsome son, Tom. The next time
that bellowed "Mr. Mason I" rolled down the corridor like the
echo of a cannon shot, young Tom urged his father to keep his
feet up on the secretary's smooth desk top. u Let me answer
that one, Father."

John T. was all too willing. So was Tom Mason. Cass ap
parently liked him because he would soak up information like a
sponge. He wanted to know all about everything. He was de
termined to keep his father in his office, secluded, as much as
possible. He evidently believed that the less John T. did, the
fewer things he could be blamed for later. The post of Terri
torial Secretary bore no appropriation for office help, but
young Mason didn't object to working free. He knew that
sooner or later John T. would commit a political blunder that
would give Woodbridge his opportunity to arouse the people
against him. To prevent that, young Mason determined to learn
the routine of the Secretary's office thoroughly, and handle as
much of it as circumstances would allow.

In one of those intuitive flashes, young Mason had seen
trouble ahead. Perhaps he never put it into words. But his
subsequent moves, throughout the winter of 1830-31, seem
to bear out the belief that he was proceeding step by step along
a prearranged schedule. He was trying to pull Woodbridge's
teeth.

Mason knew that the climax of John T.'s career would come
at the moment his name rolled forth from the lips of the Senate
clerk on a motion for confirmation. Woodbridge would be

*3 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

ready with strong Whig support to block it. Mason knew, or
thought he knew, a way to get it through. His success would
depend upon John T.'s acts and mistakes during his brief term
as a recess appointee.

As long as John T. had nothing to do, he loomed up as
quite an imposing figure of a Secretary. So Tom Mason
worked, as he had not worked since his days as a grocery clerk,
when he kept up his college studies by flickering candlelight
after the store was closed. He started at the bottom, with the
simplest official chores. He copied letters and affixed wax seals.
He filled inkwells. He shadowed John T. constantly, and won
a place for himself with Cass. He pumped information from
the other clerks; found out from them how certain routine
chores were done.

Commissions appointing some black-bearded settler as a
justice of the peace began filtering into the townships in Tom
Mason's beautiful copperplate script. Letters from Cass to
bureau chiefs in Washington concerning the day-to-day de
velopments in the Territory Tom Mason penned them, too,
and learned from them many a lesson in statecraft.

Many years later it appeared that Cass had taken a liking
to young Mason from the start and was secretly encouraging
him. Tall, straight, with luxuriant wavy black hair, and a
languid, aloof gaze that Cass found very useful, Tom Mason
became a familiar character around the capitol building. Cass
adopted him as a sort of unofficial greeter. He was a go-be
tween to sort out callers who were really important from the
riffraff who merely wanted something.

Cass bore a general's commission in the regular army and
had been a famous military figure ever since the War of 1812.
He was the military administrator of Michigan before it had
any civil organization. He knew what a comfort an efficient
aide could be. He valued a man who could get things done
without repeatedly asking elementary questions. He noticed
that he never had to repeat instructions given to Tom Mason.
He never complimented him, as far as records show. The
busy old general growled out a succession of orders, then sat

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 131

back with the confidence of a man who knew that those orders
would be carried out with no blunders.

Then, afterward, there were the long, lamplit evenings.
What Tom Mason did for recreation, no one knows. Most
of the time he was studying. But there were occasions when
he put aside his books and sauntered downtown, dropping in
at various clubs and taprooms in his easily recognized gleam
ing silk hat and ruffled opera cloak. He didn't like to go hunting
because it entailed considerable physical discomfort. He in
dulged in no outdoor sport, winter or summer. Euchre, the
drawing-room craze of the period, bored him. Occasionally
on fine days he and his firm-chinned sister Emily would saddle
borrowed horses and ride out the River Road; a chance to
let their horses amble along while they talked confidentially
about family matters.

Tom Mason was a city-dweller who never enjoyed the
pioneer's harsh contact with primitive life. He acquired a wide
repute throughout Detroit as a bon t vi e vant and drawing-room
decoration. He was polished and suave; he had a vocabulary
richly embellished with long words that sounded dignified
and complimentary; he usually looked bored and hard to
amuse. Perhaps for that very reason, hostesses eagerly sought
him out and surrounded him with people. He quickly dominated
a drawing room, not so much because of what he said as by
the sophisticated, weary way he said it.

Detroit had never seen such clothes. Linen sparkling white;
just a touch of starch in the ruffles to make them stand out
stiffly. Coats black or dark-blue, always fine broadcloth; cloth-
covered buttons instead of the popular brass buttons, because
he regarded such things as a breach of good taste. Mason's
coats were built up just a trifle at the shoulders to conceal
their pronounced slope. They were smooth and wrinkle-free.
They were superbly tailored so that the tails draped straight
and free. He did not introduce the Belgian lace handkerchief
to Detroit Governor Hull had worn one. But Mason knew
more ways to gesture nonchalantly with this bit of finery than
anyone other than Beau Brummell himself. When he took

132 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

his satin-lined, three-valance cloak from his black servant,
fastened his white gloves, patted his towering silk hat care
lessly down upon his luxuriant black curls, at a precariously
rakish angle, then caught up an ivory-headed walking stick
and stalked forth into society, he was a figure to make any
one stare.

He had found that it was no more expensive to order his
well-draped tail coats and tight trousers from New York
tailors than to buy them at inflated Detroit prices from mer
chants who did not know the art of fitting. If General Cass
were an example of what a Detroit tailor regarded as a suit
of clothes, Mason's well-arched eyebrows expressed what he
thought about that.

One of Mason's chief forms of usefulness around the capitol
building was to provide an awe-inspiring fagade behind which
Cass could assume a certain dignity before people saw him.
Provincial taxpayers, with the dust of days heavy upon their
clumsy homespun, came storming into the capitol and en
countered the Mason magnificence. They sensed that he must
be somebody vastly more important than anyone in a home
spun jacket could be. And when Mason gazed down at them
from his nearly six feet of stiff-backed, heavy-lidded indiffer
ence, inquiring in a silken voice how he might be of service to
them, the angered citizens frequently stood and gulped.

This was a pose completely artificial to his true nature, but
he made use of it. He was eager to learn everything, and
friendly to anyone who could teach him. He was deeply sincere
about his love for what came to be known as the great game
of politics. To him, outwitting Woodbridge was a major career,
ranking with Cass's conquest of the Northwest. He became
a political checker-player instead of a grand strategist of Cass's
stature because he learned the game through tactic^ instead
of strategy. Occasionally he could put on a frosty front and
chill a noisy caller. But his weakness was in the opposite direc
tion. He was overanxious.

He acquired a habit of dashing about the building and about

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 133

Detroit, debating with anyone on any subject so long as it was
political. He gave forth impulsive opinions where none had
been asked; he fancied himself as one of the powers behind
Cass's carved oaken chair. Even John T. heard frequently
that his handsome son talked too much.

Mason, perforce, subsided and merged into the background
as soon as the Territorial Council convened early in January,
1831. Cass had spent a good deal of time preparing his annual
message and being very secretive about it, which spelled trouble.
In the opinion of the older clerks, that meant that he was about
to reveal something.

Mason was not overly impressed by the thirteen stiff-
whiskered old provincials who appeared and took their seats.
He didn't know any of them by sight. By name, he recognized
them as the delegates from the twelve organized counties in
Michigan, plus one from "the land west of Lake Michigan",
now Wisconsin. The Council met only once a year and then
only for a few desultory weeks. It usually acted as a sounding
board through which the administration could seek answering
vibrations back in the townships, and as a means of attracting
attention to grievances which Woodbridge and his helpers
had managed to conceal from Cass.

A resolution was passed at this session calling upon Congress
for four townships out of Cass's new land grant to support a
silk industry. "The peninsula, on account of its locality, requires
that its inhabitants should be engaged in some branch of in
dustry," it compkined, adding that Michigan was so far away
from factories that its farmers had to pay two freight bills
on everything ship their produce to Eastern markets and
import the small amount of manufactured goods it brought.
"The common productions of the agriculturalist poorly pay
for the labor they cost after deducting the cost of transporta
tion." It was felt that a silk industry would be one step in the
right direction; Michigan ought to manufacture something.

A lengthy discussion about exorbitant transportation costs
ensued. The delegates decided that the Territory needed more

134 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

roads, bigger Federal appropriations. This was not original
enough to impress Congress, so the delegates wondered what
else they could ask for.

They decided that a system of canals across Michigan,
from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan, was the country's crying
need. These were to be constructed, of course, at the expense
of the Federal government as a means of stimulating com
merce between the East and the region farther west. There
was many a glowing reference to the natural valley between
Saginaw Bay and the headwaters of the Grand River. "Nature
appears to have pointed out this connection," hinted the resolu
tion. It was prepared and forwarded to Congress. No one
heard of it again.

Cass's annual message went into detail about something
much more practical. The States of Ohio and Indiana, he said,
were encroaching year by year upon Michigan and "pushing
their territory northward into areas which are the property of
citizens of Michigan Territory". This ought to be stopped at
once, he said. He urged a Council inquiry into the matter of
boundaries, forthwith, and a study of how best to see that those
boundaries were protected. This was Mason's first introduc
tion to the boundary dispute, a keg of political dynamite which
blew up under him some years later.

While the Legislature was still in session, Mason's attention
was drawn elsewhere. His father, side-tracked into oblivion,
had been sitting there in his office, feet up on the desk, looking
out of the window. He had been thinking. That was fatal to
Tom Mason's whole scheme.

When he heard about it, the son felt again that taut sensa
tion of apprehension, of disasters to come. Whenever John T.
had too much time to think, he invariably did the wrong thing.

John T. had been thinking how much he hated his job, and
how bitterly he detested politics in general. He saw quickly
that, with Cass firmly established in the governor's chair, the
Secretaryship was not an administrative post at all but just
a glorified clerkship. It was a daily drudgery of routine, of
writing out proclamations and appointments, and of jumping

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 135

when Cass roared. John T. didn't know when Cass proposed to
go out of town again and restore him to command. But if he
did, John T. would quickly feel the point of Woodbridge's
stiletto between his ribs. Either way, John T. was thoroughly
disillusioned and disgusted with his job. He was sick of being
a target for both Woodbridge and Cass.

But there was the family to support. Himself and Elizabeth,
old Grandmother Moir, Tom, invalid Theodosia, five growing
girls and three dependent blacks. On twelve hundred a year
it was an everlasting grind which kept him on the verge of
poverty. Into John T.'s mind there floated a vision which he
had seen before : money, great piles of money. He wanted to
quit, to go plunging into something else and make himself
rich again.

He had been thinking, he told Tom, about Tom's famed
grandfather, the first Stevens T. Mason. Well, he went on,
the distinguished senator had left a bequest which had come
down to John T. when the will was probated. It was some sort
of land grant in the South ; the grant was not specific but as far
as he could see the land was in Texas and just north of it, in
the Red River Valley. Ah ! That was where John T. longed
to go.

Michigan Territory was a blind alley and never would
amount to anything. But down there a man could get rich I
It was new, unorganized, unexploited, just the kind of virgin
land where fortunes originated.

It had been granted to Colonel Stevens T. Mason by a grate
ful Continental Congress as a reward for having served with
distinction as Washington's aide throughout the Revolution.
The subject of Texas was getting a lot of newspaper space
just now, John T. told his son. He had checked up this grant
and found that it was perfectly valid, with one trifling excep
tion the territory containing it was no part of the United
States.

It might go to Texas and eventually be returned to Mexico.
In that case it was worthless. But if Texas someday came into
the Union, John T. would be rich.

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

He wanted to go to Washington and talk it over with Andy
Jackson. He knew that Andy was more than anxious he was
eager to start something which would bring Texas into the
Union. He was said to be plotting outright revolution. He
had emissaries there reporting to him from every section. Sam
Houston, one of Jackson's most intimate friends, was leaving
Tennessee for Texas, and was regarded as a sort of ambassa
dor from Jackson to see what could be done openly or sub-
versively.

Maybe John T. rubbed his chin thoughtfully maybe if
Andy Jackson knew that John T. had this big land grant there
and thus a legitimate reason for poking his nose into the region,
maybe Andy could find something for him to do.

"But what about us?" demanded Tom. "Who's going to
take your post? Who's going to support the family if you
leave?"

"You," said John T. And he chuckled.

Washington was as infernally hot in June, 1831, as it always
has been every June. John T. Mason, Secretary of Michigan
Territory, and his son, Stevens T. Mason, were guests at a
new Washington hotel. For six weeks previous to their de
parture there had been whispered confidences and quick visits
to prominent men. Tom Mason, the son, was the subject. It
was hinted that he might become Territorial Secretary, and
what did they think about such an appointment? Some of them
thought it was all right, because Cass could supervise him.
Others didn't think so ; they feared a good deal of opposition
when it became known.

Cass himself had been in Washington twice; in May for a
few days, then he returned in June for a long stay which lasted
until late in July. He had been in conference with the President
every day, for hours at a time. He explained these lengthy
visits by saying that, after all, he had been in the forests for

1830-1831] FATJNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 137

fifteen years and had a wealth of information about our north
west frontier.

Cass's biographers interpret these visits somewhat dif
ferently. They agree that while the pudgy military hero might
have reported on the progress of colonization, he was actually
forced into politics for the first time in his long career. He and
Jackson were wading in political details up to their ears. The
whole subject of the Northwest's party structure was thor
oughly canvassed. It was after one of these White House
visits that Cass had suggested in a letter to John T. that it was
now time to come to Washington and bring Tom.

If there had been any observant Washington columnists in
those days they would have rushed frantically to their type
writers. It was as plain as the wart on Cass's face that there
was a deal in the wind.

Late in June they arrived, and found Jackson very cordial.

This surprised Cass, who had a rather indifferent opinion
of John T.'s ability. It would have surprised Cass again to have
read the wily Jackson's mind and see why he was so glad to see
John T. His mysterious land grant gave Jackson the wide-open
opportunity he had sought for years to place a secret agent
down there among the Cherokees on the Texas border. In
truth, Jackson was delighted. John T. didn't have to be a genius
to make himself invaluable to Jackson in the South.

In making it possible for John T. to leave for the South,
Jackson had to scramble up the entire administrative organiza
tion of Michigan Territory. He made several moves of national
importance, and made them quickly.

He saw in Cass the ideal national figure to add prestige to
his sadly battered cabinet. Major Eaton resigned forthwith,
and Cass was promised the post of Secretary of War but
warned to say nothing until the formal announcement was re
leased from the White House. Cass accepted on those terms,
and held his tongue until Major Eaton could find a larne ex
cuse for quitting the cabinet which he had done so much to
injure.

138 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

No successor to Cass as governor of Michigan was selected.
Jackson received John T. and Tom Mason in a long private
interview, ignored the father while he chatted with the son
and beamed radiantly upon him. The childless old man "loved
Tom Mason like a son and told him so; repeated again and
again his protestations of confidence and affection", according
to Lawton Hemans, whose intensive research into Mason's
career was published years later as an official state document.
Jackson remarked that every time he saw Tom Mason he ad
mired him more deeply. Jackson thought he was a genius;
a brilliant exception to all rules and the best possible choice
for Secretary.

In avoiding the selection of a successor to Cass, Jackson
told Tom" Mason that he wanted the youth to assume bold
command and run the Territory. He should hot be hampered
by a political superior, who, after the triumphs of Cass, would
have had scant chance to assert any actual influence anyhow.

Thus, in mid- July, 1831, the White House released the fol
lowing interesting information :

Major Eaton had announced his resignation from the cabi
net. To replace him as Secretary of War, the President had
appointed General Lewis Cass of Michigan Territory, out
standing hero of the War of 1 8 1 2.

John T. Mason, Secretary of Michigan Territory, had sub
mitted his resignation in order to accept appointment as a
brigadier general of volunteers. He would leave at once "upon
an undisclosed mission" for the President.

Stevens T. Mason, son of General Mason, had been named
to succeed his father as Secretary of Michigan Territory.

It must have required several days for Tom Mason to catch
his breath.

During those days he was a guest at the White House fre
quently, a dinner companion of the President and often seen
at his side whenever the feeble old man rode through town in
his open landau. It is apparent that Tom Mason would rather
have been at the hotel arranging family matters with his father.

1830-1831] FAUNTLEROY OF THE FRONTIER 139

But Jackson seemed to cling to him, insist that he stay beside
him and listen. The last thing Jackson said was :

"Now, Tom, write to me. Tell me everything that's going on
out there. I want to hear from you frequently, not just official
reports but anything you can think of. I'll back you to the
limit, boy. Assert your authority and if you get into trouble,
notify me!"

The youth bowed politely, and promised.

General John T. Mason sat in his hotel room regarding his
certificate of appointment with astonishment. He was exultant.
u Told you so ! Told you Andy could find something for me to
do down there!"

But young Mason was not very happy. He bade his father
farewell there in Washington and hardly ever saw him again
afterward. He didn't know just what to say to his mother;
how to explain matters.

John T. didn't care he said he'd be back in a year and
she'd get along very well for that brief time. Tom wasn't
so sure.

He left Washington on July I3th and arrived back in De
troit on the 24th, with a two-day stop in New York where he
was fitted for more new clothes. The news was not yet made
public. He hurried straight to his home and left instructions
that no one should be admitted. The following day, July 25th,
Lewis Cass returned to Detroit to wind up his affairs and pre
pare to move his family to Washington. Mason waited for
Cass to make the first move.

Accordingly, Cass summoned reporters from the Courier
and the Journal and the newly established Free Press , which
made its bow to Detroit in that month of July, 1 83 1. He called
the meeting in his own office.

Mason could sense the astonishment of everyone present
when Cass casually read through the list of changes. Out of
deference to Cass, no one present commented upon the change
in Secretaries. Cass said that Mason's appointment was the
President's own decision; he added that Mr, Jackson had com-

14 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

plete confidence in the young man. It was also his own wish,
he said, that every citizen of the Territory offer Mason his
cordial and complete support.

Cass then exhibited Mason's enscrolled commission, a huge
parchment diploma bearing the Great Seal, the prominent
signature of Andrew Jackson, and inscribed by the Secretary
of State and dated July 12, 1831. He wanted everyone to be
satisfied that Mason had been officially appointed and was en
titled to assume the authority of the office. When everyone
had viewed it in silence, Cass commanded Mason to stand.

There, in the Governor's chamber of Detroit's little brick
capitol, Lewis Cass himself administered the oath of office.
Stevens T. Mason towered over the squat little figure of Michi
gan's greatest citizen, who stood now with a Bible in one
hand and his other upraised. The official witnesses and invited
guests noted how Mason's chin was firm and his shoulders
thrown back as he gazed over Cass's rounded head toward the
flag of the Territory standing behind the Governor's desk.

"Do you solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Constitu
tion of the United States, to protect the same against all
enemies, to administer this office "

It was hot in the room. There were beads of moisture on the
new Secretary's forehead as he heard it through to the last
mumbled word.

"I do."

Cass extended his hand. "Congratulations, Mr. Secretary."

"Thank you, sir."

He was nineteen years, eight months and twenty-eight days
old.

CHAPTER V

THE BEARDLESS MOSES

SECRETARY MASON sat at home, reading the newspaper. In
his hand he held the Detroit Journal of July 27, 1831, fresh
from the clanking press. The front page was a jumble of tiny
one-column advertisements, few of more than one inch in
length. All of them were printed in a type so fine that close
study of a single column is enough to induce eyestrain today.
Stevens T. Mason had no difficulty in reading that particular
issue. He saw his own name in heavy capitals, enclosed in a
black-bordered box which looked strangely like a funeral
notice.

"Late Advices from Washington," he read. "Appointment
by the President of Stevens Thomson Mason of Kentucky to
be Secretary in and for the Territory of Michigan, in place of
John T. Mason, resigned."

Below stretched a long column of solid type, unbroken by
paragraph indentations. It was full of ponderous words and
smouldering with bitterness. News of the ceremony in Cass's
office two days before had come in just as the compositors
were making up the forms. This attack on Mason looks as if
it had been composed by the editor himself, setting it in a
type stick as he went along. He didn't have time to write it.

"We had scarcely dismissed the reflections incident to. the
translation of Governor Cass from this Territory to the War
Office when we were startled by the above communication in the
Washington Globe. We could hardly credit the evidence of our
senses, and, in common with the body of our fellow-citizens,
who were with one accord assembled on Saturday evening last,
in consequence of the intelligence, determined to wait for fur
ther information. The boat of Sunday which brought the Secre-

141

142 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

tary-elect dissipated all uncertainty. And now since he has been
given the oath of office, there is no doubt."

Charlie Cleland probably wrote it; he had moved back to
the Journal from the brand-new Free Press after a few bitter
months. Charlie wore a battered plug hat and chewed scrap
tobacco while engaged in his more vicious literary endeavors.
Charlie undoubtedly read the foregoing paragraph over, up
side down and backward as it lay there in his composing stick,
squirted a brown stream in the general direction of the spittoon,
and decided that it needed more punch. His next paragraph
was more characteristic of him :

"Be it remembered, ye Citizens of Michigan, that General
Jackson has appointed to be Secretary of your Territory
STEVENS THOMSON MASON, late of Kentucky, a young
gentleman who, whatever may be his amiable characteristics,
will, if he lives to the month of October next, be twenty years
of age and no more "

There were fourteen lines, getting more denunciatory as
Charlie threw rhetoric to the winds and indulged in pure muck
raking. At the bottom of the page he ran out of room, ending
apologetically thus :

"We have not patience nor space for further remarks this
week, and will simply commend to our fellow-citizens, in and
out of the Territory, the proceedings of confessedly the largest
and most respectable and harmonious public meeting that ever
convened for any purpose in the city of Detroit."

Mason looked through the rest of the eight-page issue, but
there was no report of a mass meeting it it. It must have oc
curred the day his boat arrived. While he wondered what had
happened, there was a determined knock at the door. Five
burly men entered, glowered at him, and sat down.

From them he obtained, fact by fact, the story of Detroit's
largest spontaneous public meeting. They had been appointed
a committee, they said, to come and inquire from him as to
the truth of the "charges" brought against him at that time.

Saturday night, before his steamboat had reached the mouth
of the Detroit River, people began milling around in the tall

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 143

grass of the Campus Martius. Other people came there must
have been more than two thousand. They had been receiving
word-of-mouth bulletins on what had happened at Washington,
and they were not going to stand for it. A purely natural feel
ing of anger had been kindled at neighborhood meetings; all
of these meetings had spilled over into a monster demonstra
tion in the empty Campus. There were shouts, brandished fists,
threats of violence. That situation had all the ingredients of a
tar-and-feather mob. The atmosphere of violence grew upon
its own momentum, just as the crowd grew as everybody in
town hurried thither to see what the excitement was.

Not even the gravest crises in the city's history had brought
out a swelling mob like that. Some of the leading citizens of
Detroit were there, and they hurriedly endeavored to steer the
mob away from violence and turn its demands into an orderly,
decorous demonstration of citizens.

Mason was told, as he listened in astonishment, how the
crowd had been lulled into a respectful silence by the pleadings
of Andrew Mack; how Mack and Oliver Newberry and the
others had pleaded for a hearing. They were not acting in de
fense of Mason, but in defense of Detroit's good name. They
were fearful of a riot which would have disastrous conse
quences.

Spokesmen for the citizens, in the crowd, had nominated
Mack and Newberry and these others as a committee to inter
view Mason and find out what he was going to do. They were
to report back, at another mass meeting on Monday, the
evening of the day the Journal appeared.

Mason looked them over. Andrew Mack, Oliver Newberry,
Colonel McKinstry, Shubael Conant and "General" John E.
Schwartz, a valiant soldier in the War of 1812. Honored
citizens all; stalwart, successful, luxuriantly bearded, the kind
of men to whom a crowd will always turn for leadership. They
were all die-hard Whigs and good friends of Woodbridge.

Mason, caught without a prepared reply, said the first thing
that came into his head. He readily admitted that he was only
years old. But, he said, the President knew that when

144 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

he appointed him; he had warned Jackson that trouble was to
be expected and that Michigan people would not like the im
plication of such a selection. He agreed with the committee
that it was indeed a puzzle to know what to do. Did they have
any suggesions ?

"You cannot serve as Secretary in any event," Shubael
Conant declared. 'The law adopted by the Territorial Council
provides that all administrative officers must be voting citizens,
own property, have a stake in this community."

"The President," replied Mason, coldly, "is not responsible
to the Territorial Council for his appointments. The Senate
has the power of confirmation or denial; beyond that, the
President is supreme."

That was so, they admitted/Mack said at once that he was
favorably impressed and would support Mason. The others
were not sure. Newberry intervened with a plea for sports
manship. He said he didn't think it was a crime to be a minor.
Shubael Conant and Colonel McKinstry remained frigid.
Mason instantly sniffed a Whig manipulation of the meeting
and a pretense of nonpartisanship by appointing a pair of open-
minded citizens to the committee who, nevertheless, would be
in the minority when its report was drafted.

Word of the dilemma had spread in all directions from De
troit as fast as spade-bearded farmers could larrup their horses
down the rutted roads. Indignation meetings appeared at Pon-
tiac, Saginaw and Ann Arbor. The Ann Arbor Emigrant lashed
out at Mason sarcastically, referring to him as "the stripling."
It was a nickname which clung to him.

Mason stayed quietly at home. He made no answer to the
fantastic charges and accusations which were buzzing around
his head. He did not appear at any of these neighborhood
indignation meetings which followed the demonstration in
the Campus Martius. He said nothing.

On August 2nd, at the height of this hostility, Mason's
next-youngest sister Cornelia died suddenly. Her death pro
vided him with a valid excuse for staying indoors and out of
sight. It postponed his inevitable appearance in his father's

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 145

erstwhile office at the capitol building. And, while at home,
it gave him a welcome opportunity to analyze the situation
and come to some decision about it.

A century after her death, Cornelia Mason is just a faded
entry in a mammoth family Bible which once belonged to Mary
Armistead Mason and had become John T.'s index of geneal
ogy. Two parallel dates: "born died.' 5 There is no likeness
of her ; no record of why she died or any scrap of illustrative
anecdote about her. She was six years old, a confused little
girl born into a distraught household at Mount Sterling who
never knew why her family was different from other families.
Her only contribution to the saga of her brilliant brother was
the morbid fact that her death was a boon to him. It gave him
a chance to make a series of quick, bold moves which other
wise would have been spotlighted with hostile publicity.

While family arrangements for Cornelia's funeral were in
progress, Mason was seated at his polished rosewood desk,
writing. He straightway notified Andrew Jackson in a personal
letter that the fat was in the fire just as all hands had predicted,
but that it was nothing serious. He came directly to the point
and wrapped up the situation in a few deft phrases.

"Upon my arrival at Detroit I found that news of my ap
pointment had preceded me by a day, and that certain persons
had gotten up an excitement against my continuance . . . the
motives which originated this course are obvious. . . . I have
been beset by a sort of inquisitorial scrutiny, and finding nothing
to rest upon but the fact of my minority, I have been asked to
relinquish the office. To this I replied that having received my
appointment from you, no power but that of the constituted
authority would drive me from my place, nor would I yield it
except to your wishes."

He reported that the whole course of the demonstration
led him to believe that it was a Whig trick to embarrass Jack
son's administration. He said that Jackson himself had never
been noted for yielding to Intimidation and that he had no in
tention of yielding to it. In his opinion, Mason continued,
the whole thing was a build-up to force Jackson to appoint a

146 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Governor. "My opponents," he wrote, "made their objections
as if I was in fact appointed Governor and would continue to
discharge his duties for years. This difficulty, I trust, will
soon be removed."

While he wrote, Mason meditated upon Jackson's strange
whims. He remembered the old man's last words to him at
Washington a fatherly gush of affectionate praise. "Let me
hear from you frequently," Jackson had urged. Mason,
thoughtfully brushing the tip of his long quill pen against
his beardless cheek, added a personal paragraph :

"I write you this as due the confidence you have reposed in
me; and especially due to the wish (equal to a command with
me) to hear from me frequently. / see my way clear. I feel a
confidence in maintaining myself against all opposition if sus
tained by you, of which I feel a perfect assurance."

John T. could never have written such a letter. At any rate,
he never did. Beardless youth though he might be called,
stripling though he was in print, Mason's mind was here shown
as the brilliant, analytical mind of a mature judge of popular
trends. In his estimation of the politically inspired mass meet
ings Mason was thoroughly correct. They drafted a bundle
of protesting resolutions, forwarded them to the White House,
and vanished. Opposition was kept alive by the Woodbridge
faction, but not for very long.

Mason, even before he had assumed his office, made a bid for
popular support which infuriated Woodbridge. After having
dispatched his letter to Jackson, Mason straightway wrote
another. This he sent to the Journal, the sullen Whig mouth
piece which regarded him as an imp of His Satanic Majesty
by special appointment. Mason cleverly changed his whole
literary style, donned the humble guise of a confused but well-
meaning youth and threw himself upon the fair-mindedness of
the people/The letter appeared in the issue of August 3rd,
the day after Cornelia's death.

"To the public: It is now more than a year since my father
emigrated to this place. . . ."

Either M%$on was too naive tP realize what he ^as doing,

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 147

or he was too clever to miss a golden opportunity to put his
case before the public at a time when everyone would see it.
He was the sensation of the Territory. Settlers talked of
nothing else. He knew he would have an audience.

He went into considerable detail about his father's troubles
acting as Governor in the absence of Cass ; recounted how he
had been a sort of clerk to his father and to Cass, had learned
the job, had come to feel that he was a citizen of Michigan
and wanted to be regarded as such. Then, he continued, his
father was suddenly called away to the South, saddling "his
only son and oldest child with the responsibility for the well-
being of a family of seven females (written before Cornelia's
death) and a large household. To their comfort it is well-
known that even the petty emoluments of this office are es
sential."

In other words, the family was left fatherless and the boy
had to go to work. So he had been appointed Secretary and
Acting Governor, and the salary was far from petty as living
costs were figured a century ago. It was a very comfortable
living. To play down that fact, Mason referred to it as a "petty
emolument," sending settlers scurrying for the dictionary.

He played down his own ability just as consciously. "That
there are many in the Territory of higher qualifications, upon
whom the appointment might have been conferred, is broadly
and fully conceded." He brought up all the objections, one at
a time, and answered them. He mi^ht have to exercise the
powers of Governor occasionally. Suppose the reader himself
were suddenly thrust into that situation. What would he do ?
If he were sensible he'd ask advice. He'd consult with the
wisest and best minds of the Territory. And that was just
what Mason proposed to do. A young man with the boldness
to act, and with capable advisers to guide him, was the best
kind of administrator. "The oldest," remarked Mason, "ask
advice. The difference is, youth yields to advice; age seldom

or never."

This letter seemed to catch the public fancy. It was widely
reprinted all over the United States. In Detroit the Free Press

148 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

reprinted it verbatim without comment, but no comment was
needed to impress Mason's personality upon the people of De
troit. Grumpily, the Journal admitted on August loth that
Mason might have something there. That point about youth
yielding to advice, the Journal thought, might be construed to
mean that Mason had employed a ghost writer to turn out that
communication. It seemed a little more effective than a
"stripling" could produce; perhaps his father had helped him
with it. Mason might have given the final draft a few touches,
remarked the newspaper. The Advertiser, losing circulation
rapidly since the advent of the Free Press, put in a whack of
its own. But the best quip of the week came from Sheldon
McKnight in the Free Press; a wit somewhat resembling
that great newspaper's own Malcolm Bingay of today. Mc
Knight was intrigued by Mason's frank statement that he
needed the job because he had a family to support. "To decline
a lucrative post tendered him without solicitation," commented
McKnight, "would have argued a degree of discretion very
uncommon at the tender age of the Secretary and Acting
Governor"

Immediately, Mason emerged from the confines of his house
and began making personal calls upon Detroit's influential
people. He selected them carefully, after a close estimation of
the weight a good opinion from each would carry. He saddled
a horse and rode to the village of Mt. Clemens to visit its
founder and chief citizen, Judge Christian Clemens. That
worthy was thunderstruck upon discovering his visitor's iden
tity. The Judge had inadvertently acted as a committee mem
ber during one of the local indignation meetings; 'whereupon
Mason asked him point-blank just what the Judge had against
him. Judge Clemens never expected to be investigated merely
for serving on a committee, and he was deeply impressed by
Mason's open bid for help. There was a long, friendly inter
view. As he mounted his horse to leave, the Judge came out
to the road to see him off. "Go to it, boy," he smiled. "Do
what is right. Up here, we'll back you."

"That's fine of you, sir," bowed Mason. "I am grateful."

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 149

Mason procured copies of all the resolutions drafted by
these meetings. He went over the names, and listed every
known fact about those men. He discovered a curious thing.
All these meetings had the appearance of spontaneous origin,
and were attended by many registered Democrats who sincerely
opposed Masons appointment. But the members of the resolu
tions committees were all Whigs. The fine Italian hand of
Woodbridge.

Signatures of men not known to be part of Woodbridge's
machine meant opportunity for Mason. He personally visited
them all, sitting down with them in their parlors, frankly ad
mitting that he didn't know everything, openly asking for sup
port and help. He made firm friendships which lasted as long
as he lived. Even conservative Whig families like the New-
berrys, the Thomas Palmers, the Andrew Macks and the Ben
jamin Witherells were won over by Mason's personal charm
and his prolific fund of compliments. He told them he was
nothing, but they were mighty. He asked their help. There
was really no way to refuse it.

Within a few days this campaign began bearing fruit. Op
position to Mason in Detroit collapsed like a windbag, which,
in fact, it was. His campaign to popularize himself had been
a necessity, at first. But he made such progress with it that he
never entirely abandoned it. He was always eager to convert
a possible enemy. He rode many weary miles, for years, for
the satisfaction of debating in person with some person who
had been quoted as disparaging him. Usually he won, and the
world loves a winner.

Andrew Jackson was a man to whom indecision was a vice.
Mason was notified by letter that Jackson had given thought to
his plight and had answered his request. On August 6th, prob
ably the same day that Jackson received Mason's personal
message, he appointed a new Governor for the Territory of
Michigan. The official announcement in the Washington Globe
appeared the same week. Jackson had appointed George B.
Porter of Pennsylvania. Mason didn't know him; no one in
Detroit had heard of him.

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

The papers of August lyth carried news of the appointment
clipped from the Globe, but Porter didn't arrive. On September
I9th he leisurely stepped ashore from the antique Henry Clay
and asked someone for a carriage. There was not a public
conveyance in Detroit. People walked, a form of locomotion
Porter found distasteful.

He was just another deserving Democrat like John T. He
had never achieved anything in his life which could have justi
fied such an appointment. He, like John T., had been selected
by pressure of Jackson's clique, because of his famous name
and his family's prominence in its own state.

He came from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the heart of the
rich old Dutch farming country. His father had been General
Andrew Porter, able commander in the Revolutionary War.
His brother, David RittenhouSe Porter, current governor of
Pennsylvania, was one of Philadelphia's great gentlemen. Out
side of those connections George Porter himself had nothing
to recommend him. It became evident to Mason that Jackson
had appointed a stooge, a name to carry the nominal title of
Governor while Mason worked without interruption.

Porter was tall, exquisitely tailored, very wealthy, inclined
to snobbishness and described by Fuller as a bon vivant thrust
into a frontier town. On his great estate near Lancaster, Porter
raised blooded stock and took prizes at county fairs with it.
He brought a boatload of pedigreed stud stock with him, and
was amazed to find that Michigan regarded horses purely as
a means of pulling or carrying something useful.

When he and his lady had walked through Detroit's teeming
streets to the sanctuary of the Mansion House, Porter lan
guidly went out and bought a house. The only one available that
week was the historic Hull residence on Jefferson and Ran
dolph, the first brick house in Detroit built after the fire of
1805. It was in a bad state of repair but because it had been
so closely bound up with Detroit's history the owners asked a
fancy price. Porter paid it. He attempted to live in it for about
two weeks, but found that it would be very expensive to change
it enough to suit his taste.

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 151

His chief interest in Detroit was its possibility of profit
through real-estate speculation. He cast about, and located a
350-acre farm on the river a few miles below the city. This he
bought for six thousand dollars, and immediately subdivided
and sold all but seventy-five acres of it for enough so that his
river-front estate actually cost him nothing. He moved his
blooded horses out there and planned to build an imposing
mansion, the finest and most expensive in Michigan. Architects
were consulted. Plans were hurriedly sketched for his approval.
Materials were purchased. Then George Porter and his lady
sailed away again, and did not come back to Michigan until the
following June.

On his seventy-five-acre estate, barns were built and prepara
tions made for the construction of the mansion. The tract
stretched along the river from what is now 22nd Street to 25th
Street. It was to be all lawn then. The city was very proud of
it and Porter was regarded as the ideal figure of a Governor.
He had long wavy sideburns which framed his thin face and
gave it impressive dignity and maturity advantages that
Mason obviously lacked.

Because he had an atmosphere of solid citizenry about him,
Michigan tolerated more breaches of official duty from George
Porter than from any public official in the city or Territory. He
was annoyed at his appointment but could not gracefully refuse
it. Thus he stayed away as long as possible, returned for a few
wefeks and left again. His salary went on a subject of con
siderable newspaper speculation in December, 1831, after he
had held office five months and not served more than three
weeks.

In February, 1832, the Senate dutifully confirmed Porter's
appointment and thus brought him to the attention of Detroit
papers again. In the Journal of February 22, 1832, Charlie
Cleland was in good form :

"A letter has been received in the city which states that the
nomination of Gov. Porter has been confirmed by the Senate.
It is, if we mistake not, about six months since this gentleman
received his appointment as Governor of the Territory of

152 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Michigan, of which he has spent among us some six weeks or
thereabouts; it certainly takes him a long while to look after
his one client in Pennsylvania. Must be a case in chancery.
We wonder if his pay goes on regularly meanwhile ?"

Behind this midwinter appearance of quiet, Mason was work
ing hard to build a wider tolerance of himself among Michigan
leaders. During the winter he had very little to say, and was
seen in public only infrequently. In the fall he had tried to rent
his Congress Street house and had moved to a new three-story
brick dwelling at 303 East Jefferson, a newly opened section
of the Baubien farm. The details of arranging for the purchase
of this house had to be arranged by correspondence with his
father, because even though he might be Acting Governor,
Mason was too young to sign a land contract and a mortgage.

Every Sunday he attended the graceful little Episcopal
Church of St. Paul's at Woodward and Larned, escorting his
tiny, heavily veiled mother. No roistering in the public taverns,
no moody drinking. In his office he declined to take any position
on administrative matters on the ground that the Council was
not in session and he had not enough experience to initiate a
program.

He was afraid afraid of Woodbridge. Any little embar
rassing incident would have been built up into something that
would have alienated support from him in Washington and
switched a few votes to the Woodbridge bloc in the Senate.
His own confirmation motion was due soon. Well he knew
that the Whigs in general were going to do everything possible
to block it. Mason, as a popular character, was receiving too
much friendly newspaper space to suit the Whig Party na
tionally. They realized that a new national personality was
being built up ; that Mason's hold on the public fancy was
bound to help Jackson and the Democrats solidify their gains
made in the election of 1828. The year 1832 being another
presidential year, Whigs rallied to Woodbridge's support in
an effort to discredit young Mason in the Senate.

Letters were moving back and forth between Washington
and Detroit all winter. Uncle William T. Barry left his office

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 153

in the Post Office Department and was seen deep in confer
ences on Capitol Hill. Colonel Richard Johnson of Kentucky
was probably the second-biggest popular hero of the War of
1812 next to Jackson himself, and he threw his great influence
to the side of the young Secretary. Jackson cracked the whip
over his top-heavy Senate majority in no uncertain terms. In
May, Stevens T. Mason was triumphantly confirmed. Wood-
bridge's sunken cheeks dropped lower, but his bright eyes
gleamed more icy than ever.

Woodbridge had reason to add an intense personal bitter
ness toward Mason to his obvious political opposition. Just
as the Senate battle over confirmation votes was at its hottest,
in February, Jackson removed Woodbridge from his sinecure
on the Territorial Supreme Court. All three Whig appointees,
Solomon Sibley and Henry Chipman too, were ousted by direct
Presidential edict. Woodbridge took this inevitable move as a
direct affront by the President at Mason's demand. Immediately
thereafter, what was left of the Whig opposition to Mason in
the Senate disappeared. This only established Woodb ridge's
suspicions as facts in his hate-filled mind. He thought that
young Mason had outwitted him.

For the first time in more than twenty years, Woodbridge
was off the public payroll. He was given a consolation dinner
by the Detroit Bar Association, a sort of testimonial. Mason
was present, and delivered a brief pep talk on "party spirit"
which launched the program on a note of optimism. Then
Woodbridge arose. In his characteristic attitude of self-pity he
almost wept over his plight and referred to it as a "contemptu
ous ejection". He sneered at the calibre of Jackson's appointees.
He begged for sympathy. He publicly asked himself what he
had ever done to deserve this. It was all very impressive and
some of the lawyers were in tears. They presented him with a
resolution saying that he had their undying admiration.

That was too much for Ebenezer Reed, a vitriolic news
paperman who was present. Reed had lost one good job when
the Gazette mysteriously burned just after it had exposed
Woodbridge. Reed still believed that Woodbridge had ordered

154 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

it destroyed. Reed had seen Woodbridge send another Detroit
newspaperman to jail because he asked some pointed questions
about the bitter jurist's official conduct. And now Reed sat in
the Mansion House dining room listening to Woodbridge feel
sorry for himself.

In a letter to the Free Press appropriately signed " Con
sistency", Reed let him have both barrels. "Can it be possible
that all this honeyed adulation is sincere? Did the reformed
judges really look serious when they performed their parts
in this melodrama? Mr. Woodbridge said that he hoped to
find something in his official life which would make him a wiser
and a better man. Had he been a wise man, and consequently
a better one, he would never have been a judge on the bench
or he would still have been there, secure in the affections and
respect of the people. But he has chosen to depend upon the
semblance of virtue rather than its substance. His fate is like
all others who have based the fabric of their reputations upon
mere shadow."

The readers applauded Reed. Other letters showered into
the newspaper offices, containing anecdotes about Wood-
bridge's judicial highhandedness. Some of them were written
by the selfsame lawyers who signed the resolution of admira
tion. They were enough to impeach him, had Woodbridge
still occupied the bench. But he was a private citizen again
and could send no one to jail. For some two weeks the news
papers of Detroit indulged in an orgy of Woodbridge-baiting
which indirectly helped to swing even Whig readers away from
him and toward Mason. The rivalry between the vengeful
old man and the aggressive youth had reached a point where
it was one of the spectacles of the community. It was out in
the open now, and involuntarily the community began to take
sides.

In such a battle, personal popularity decides the issue. Wood-
bridge could never win that sort of campaign. Mason couldn't
lose; people liked him on sight and seem to have adopted him
as a sort of community mascot. They urged him on.

His only public battles with Woodbridge were fought in

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 155

the columns of the newspapers, when he occasionally rapped
something the Whigs had done. These he signed "Aristides",
hiding behind that famed Greek's scanty tunic because he didn't
want to declare open war by signing his own name.

War is a grim business, except sometimes in retrospect. When
the spectre of an armed enemy begins casting a shadow over
a land wrung from nature by human sweat and courage, homes
are dark with fear. The very difficulty of defending such
sparsely settled farms gave the spectre a heart-stopping solidity
for people whose nearest neighbors were miles away.

The oft-repeated bromide concerning political bedfellows
could have referred to no more strangely matched pair then
Stevens T. Mason and one Ma-ka-tai-she-kia-kiak, a Sac Indian
with a shaved skull and one belligerent black topknot sticking
straight up from the top of it. The Indian rudely pushed the
political conventions out of the public mind and replaced Jack
son as the most hated man in the country. With him he dragged
Mason into more publicity. But Mason liked it and cultivated
newspapermen all the more.

This Indian was living quietly on a reservation on the west
bank of the Mississippi River opposite upper Illinois. His only
trouble was a consuming curiosity about what was on the other
side of the river. Early in 1832 he gathered some reckless
braves from several neighborhood tribes and crossed the river
to explore the new settlements.

The settlers recognized him immediately as the notorious
Black Hawk, a renegade who had never been a tribal chief in
his life but who was a veteran at stirring up trouble. Black
Hawk was sixty-five years of age in 1832 ; copper face deeply
lined, scars all over his skin, very erect in bearing and defiant
in manner. He was a veteran of the British payroll in the War
of 1812; he took a few scalps in the River Raisin massacre
and at Maiden. He survived the disaster of the Battle of the
Thames when Chief Tecumseh was killed. He had been

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

banished to this reservation and told to stay there. He should
have been hanged.

In one of his first raids on the border settlements he stole
a blue broadcloth coat with bright brass buttons, and a pair
of doeskin trousers. This outfit made him look like a sunburned
German burgher at a Turnverein meeting, especially after he
had added a tall beaver hat and began wearing ruffled shirts.
The brass buttons on his coat were visible through rifle sights
at quite amazing ranges, which is perhaps the explanation
for the odd fact that Black Hawk did no fighting in the Black
Hawk War, but acted as a sort of generalissimo who got the
others into trouble.

Throughout the vast plains of the Middle West, ranging
a thousand miles through forests and raw log settlements, the
name Black Hawk spread terror. People visualized him as a
half-naked savage galloping furiously on a painted pony,
brandishing a rifle and yipping war cries at the head of all
the downtrodden Indians in the West. They thought he was
a sort of George Washington of the Indians, leading them to
bloody revolution.

The times cried aloud for a tabloid, which would shortly
have debunked him as the half-pint Villa which history says he
was. People had no way of following a sudden outbreak with
accuracy. They were afraid of the potential danger of a situa
tion dramatized and typified by Black Hawk. Their runaway
imaginations produced the phenomenon we call the Black Hawk
War. It had all the future stars of the following two decades
inconspicuously acting as extras in its cast. Lincoln was about
Mason's age; he had just turned twenty-one and was trying to
drill a voluntary company at New Salem. Jefferson Davis,
Zachary Taylor, senators, ministers took part everybody
but able soldiers.

The military situation was simple. This was not a war,
implying an organized army with its supplies and reserves,
threatening a given point with a known objective. It was a
series of border raids on the settlements of northern Illinois.
The remedy was a regiment of cavalry.

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 157

But there was no cavalry ready to defend the threatened
points. The settlers were attacked in typical Indian fashion,
at night, as they slept. Black Hawk burned a line of cabins,
massacred and pillaged in savage fury. Then he and his men
vanished, to reappear at some other point the following night.
Long wagon trains of refugees began appearing at the stock
aded forts up and down the river. There, volunteers grabbed
muskets and allowed that they would stuff Black Hawk and
mount him in the local courthouse as a warning to obstreperous
redskins henceforth.

But a few dozen of the intrepid settlers chanced upon several
hundred aroused redskins. They were massacred. Once more,
white scalps dripped red at the belts of painted Indians. The
few survivors galloped like mad to the nearest fort, where they
bellowed at the top of their lungs that all the Indians in the
world were on the warpath. Settlements in the path of this
sweeping raid were evacuated overnight, producing creaking
processions of wagons which Black Hawk found loaded with
loot and completely helpless.

Murdered men, corpses of ravished women and mangled
babes, blackened ashes of newly built cabins left a trail behind
Black Hawk's redskins. With every telling, the horror grew.
The Governor of Illinois appealed for help to the Federal
government. Jackson ordered all states to raise troops ; asked
governors of states and territories to sign proclamations of
war at once. The army was mobilized. General Winfield Scott
got up off his polished oak chair and took the field. Mason was
one of the first governors to receive notice that he must furnish
troops. He became suddenly aware that he was Acting Gov
ernor, that he had the power of commander-in-chief of the
troops to be raised, and that he was a pretty important fellow.

Messages arrived in Detroit full of hysteria, trying to de
scribe the outrages committed by the bloody Black Hawk.
The terror was real; the reports were even more terrible than
the facts. Local companies of guards were formed in the Wis
consin portion of Michigan Territory to protect the valuable
lead mines against the Winnebagoes, who were reported to

158 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

have joined Black Hawk. In Michigan the Pottawatomi
were undecided as to whether to go on the warpath with him
or not. The southern settled area immediately demanded pro
tection. Mason had to provide it.

He proclaimed a state of emergency and ordered out the
volunteers who were asked to respond. The few troops of the
regular army in Michigan were mobilized at the same time by
orders from the War Department. There were not very many ;
mostly staff officers assisting in the demolition and auction of
Fort Shelby, and two companies of infantry quartered on the
edge of town. General Hugh Brady was ordered to assume
command of this force and proceed to the mouth of the Chicago
River, to the village of the same name.

Brady left at once, accompanied by his aide, Lieutenant
Elector Backus, and the troops. After they had gone, Mason's
problem centered around the Territorial Militia. In command
was a crusty old curmudgeon named General John R. Williams,
a leading citizen of Detroit, amassing wealth from trade with
the flow of settlers and conservatism from his close friendship
with Woodbridge. He had long been contemptuous of Mason.

He said he wouldn't move until he had been duly notified
by the Governor. And he made it plain that young Mason was
not the Governor and that he had no ex officio power as com
manding officer. Mason, thus rudelv awakened from placid
routine, was confronted with a challenge.

It was plainly his responsibility to see that Michigan men
were rushed to the aid of Illinois with all possible speed. Faced
with the irascible old General's indifference to his proclama
tion, the matter became a test of strength to see just what
Mason was going to do about it.

On May 22nd he issued an official proclamation directing
General Williams to "raise such a number of volunteers as in
his opinion might be necessary." The document ordered Gen
eral Williams to proceed with this force to Jonesville, a settle
ment far down on the Chicago turnpike. There he was directed
to rendezvous with General Joseph Brown's force of volunteers

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 159

which was coming from the other outlying areas of the Ter
ritory. The order named General Brown as head of the unit.

To this order he affixed the Territorial Seal and rushed it
downtown to the Williams residence at the juncture of Wood
ward and a curved alley which was subsequently named John
R.'s Street, now John R. There was just a chilly silence from
within the mansion. The following day Mason heard indirectly
that the General had remarked that volunteers were not com
ing in fast enough to make such a force practical, and that he
didn't see any use in it. Mason immediately issued an executive
order to General Williams as Acting Governor and Com-
mander-in-Chief of the militia, a power which the General
said he did not rightfully have. Anyhow, Mason thus exercised
the powers of the office by calling out all units of the Territorial
militia.

The officers and men of the militia seemed to regard Mason
as the boss. They obeyed the order. He sent a copy of it to
Williams with this letter :

"You cannot but be aware that delay is only calculated to
give rise to false and unfounded reports. These may possibly
have an injurious effect upon emigration to this Territory.
It is expected that you will use every exertion to meet General
Brown forthwith and that you will not return to this place
until every shadow of danger from hostile Indians on the
frontier has been removed."

Mason got to all the Detroit newspapers with his copy of
the order and the accompanying letter first, before the ruffled
General could think of anything to say. General Williams had
been one of the founders of the Free Press only two years
before. He could not stomach the thought, perhaps, of being
lampooned in his own publication. The tub-thumping Charlie
Gleland, who had no love for Williams, had gone to work for
the Free Press that month. And Williams, being a pompous
man, feared ridicule.

Reluctantly he penned an order, dated May 23rd, calling
out one regiment of infantry, a battalion of mounted riflemen

10O STEVENS THOMSON MASON

and the ornamental Oakland County Scouts, Detroit's cere
monial fancy-drill company. They were to assemble at Ten
Eyck's, a tavern on the Chicago turnpike which was the genesis
of today's city of Dearborn. The order specified one P. M.,
May 25th, which was Sunday and would interrupt everybody's
Sunday dinner. The entire command was there on time and the
General, perforce, had to go.

As the small force trudged along the dusty clay road it
accumulated volunteers from every hamlet and settlement.
Volunteers were not as slow in responding to Mason's procla
mation as General Williams had believed. Five more companies
of volunteers met the force at Jonesville and were absorbed
into Williams' 8th Michigan Regiment. They came from Clin
ton, Palmyra, Adrian, Blissfield and Tecumseh, towns in a sort
of triangle in the extreme southeastern corner of the State.

General Brown arrived in Jonesville with his regiment on
time, completing the rendezvous the way Mason had planned
it. But while the force rested, General Williams had to ride
back toward Detroit to muster in more volunteers at Saline,
who loudly protested at being left behind. The spirit of high
adventure was burning in these bovs' hearts. They were the
typical American boys who sprang to arms overnight; they
sang and wrestled and loaded themselves down with all sorts
of old-fashioned weapons which they thought might come in
handy. They were going to fight Indians. They were going to
have a whale of a time.

The only adventure they had was a long dusty march home
again. Mason had no more than drawn a sigh of relief at
General Williams' departure than a breathless messenger gal
loped up to the little brick capitol building, tethered his horse
4 to the hitching rail outside and hurried to Mason's office. He
bore a letter from the commander of the regular army forces
at Chicago, who stated that Scott had sent a large detachment
of infantry and cavalry overland to Fort Dearborn, by way
of the lake and the road across Ohio and Indiana/They had
arrived, he said, and they were strong enough to handle the
situation easily. Michigan troops should be called home at once.

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES l6l

In a daze, Mason penned a letter to General Williams and
sent it after him by another messenger. The letter caught up
with him at Saline, where he was still mustering in the volun
teers who were said not to be coming in very fast. He had
not even had time to start in the direction of Chicago.

There was a good deal of disappointment in Detroit at this
turn of events. Another public meeting popped up, composed
apparently of relatives and friends of the soldiers who de
manded that they be allowed to fight. Detroit seems to have
been as volatile as a labor union; every unwelcome announce
ment precipitated a crowd of noisy people who howled for
something to be done about it. They violently denounced any
one who might be held up as a scapegoat. While this meeting
was denouncing Mason, another letter arrived and was read
at the scene. This was written by General Williams, and ad
dressed, not to Mason, his immediate superior, but to'Cass,
at Washington. "The orders of the acting Governor are in
consistent, contradictory and incompatible with military rules I"

The crowd roared. Mason sent word to it, answering in
kind:

"Should we have to march again from this quarter, the gen
tlemen who fight the battles of the country at public meetings
will be the first to go, if it can be effected."

The crowd laughed, and the Black Hawk War was over.
The weary troops staggered back into town and were dis
missed. General Williams and General Brown rode on to Chi
cago without them, where the few dozen inhabitants of that
swampy village gave them a rousing welcome for their well-
meant gesture. Mason and his fight with Williams became
Michigan's only contribution to the war. There were some
twenty big-city dailies in the country which regarded Mason
as good copy and gleefully built him up as a sort of political
David, entering battle against the Whig Goliaths armed only
with his nimble brain and aggressive boldness of action. Every
little incident wherein he set his enemies back on their haunches
got an abnormal amount of newspaper space. The country was
aching for someone to lionize. It was a country in another cen-

l62 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

tury, ninety-five years before Lindbergh, but people were just
about the same.

The Black Hawk War gave him victory in a preliminary
skirmish and prepared a place of command for him. He was
forced by Governor Porter's absence to lead Michigan people
through one of their blackest hours. Hardly had the exhausted
troops returned home when another war began a war a hun
dred times more deadly than anything Black Hawk could at
tempt. Mason found Michigan people ready to accept him,
and to follow him. When he saw what he was facing he plunged
in and fought. They loved him for it.

The good ship Henry Clay was a wheezing old side-wheeler
ruggedly built along the general lines of a garbage barge.
Down in its vitals was a thumping little steam engine which
banged and bumped happily along, day and night, while its
rickety cabin abaft its tall smokestack squeaked and shivered.
Jammed into its cell-like staterooms were people of conse
quence. Porter had sailed on it; so had John T. and thousands
of other notables. For fifteen years it had been pounding over
Lake Erie from Buffalo to the Merchants' Wharf at the foot
of Bates Street, Detroit. The passage was advertised as "fast
express and mail schedule"; two and a half days. If a sudden
wind sprang up, whipping the shallow lake into a series of
sickening ground swells, the ship put in at some harbor and
waited.

Sometime during June, 1832, the Henry Clay joined the
army. An officer was sent to Buffalo to arrange for four steam
boats to move more troops to Chicago, there to act as reserves
if the initial force had trouble cornering Black Hawk. In addi
tion to the Henry Clay, this officer chartered another antique,
even older and more decrepit. She was the Superior, second
steamboat on Lake Erie and the proud possessor of the little
potbellied engine which had been salvaged from the wreck
of the historic Walk-in-the-Water. Both boats should have

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 163

been in some museum instead of acting as troop transports.

The other two were newer and better ; the Sheldon Thomp
son and the William Penn. Early in July all of these were filled
with infantrymen from Fortress Monroe, Virginia, and
weighed anchor for Detroit. They arrived in the midst of a
Fourth of July celebration. They disgorged their troops, and
uniforms mingled with homespun and gingham as the populace
made merry at the traditional barbecue and picnic at the Cass
farm.

At nightfall, the troops were recalled to the transports,
which were tied up at the Merchants' Wharf dock. That night,
two cases of Asiatic cholera were discovered among the men on
the Henry Clay. The army doctor immediately identified the
disease. He fled ashore and sought refuge in a hotel, on the
plea of a sudden illness. Aboard the old vessel, panic appeared.

Cholera swept through its crowded holds like incendiary
fire. One of the victims died in convulsions before daybreak;
by the time two Detroit doctors could be rushed aboard there
were sixteen cases. The physicians, Dr. Randall S. Rice and
Dr. John L. Whiting, shouted at the terrorized soldiers to lift
those men out of the crowded steerage and get them ashore
anywhere. They were carried into a dockside warehouse leased
by the army quartermaster's department, but eleven of them
died rapidly and the Henry Clay had become a floating death
trap.

The busy treadmill of routine life in Detroit stopped, para
lyzed. Silent groups of people came and stared down at the row
of lifeless bodies, bloated and discolored, as they lay on the
ground outside the warehouse. The steamboats had all been
ordered away from the dock and were chuffing up the river in
a smoky line, ordered to anchor in the lee of Hog Island (Belle
Isle) until the curse could be controlled. But orders were
switched in the excitement, and new papers were carried aboard
ordering the whole flotilla to proceed around the chain of lakes
to Chicago. No steamship had ever churned the waters of Lake
Michigan; the skippers had never heard of Chicago and didn't
know how to get there. But they started.

164 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

The Henry Clay got as far as Fort Gratiot, a few miles
up the course on the shore of Lake St. Clair. Then it was forced
to put in for wood and water.

"Conditions," testified Captain Walker, the skipper, "were
indescribable. As soon as we touched the dock, every man who
could move jumped ashore, hoping to escape from a scene so
terrifying and appalling. Some fled to the fields, some to the
woods, some just lay down on the dock and died. Bodies were
found in the adjoining fields for months afterward. We do not
know how many victims perished in that way."

The William Penn had to turn back. A camp for its stricken
men was set up at Springwells, and about half of them sur
vived. Of the 850 men aboard the four vessels, less than 200
ever reached Chicago.

Even before the Henry Clay had left the dock, cholera had
struck Detroit like a lash of a whip. The first two victims died
July 6th; thereafter cholera swept across the entire city within
two more days.

Mason offered the unused top floor of the capitol building as
a temporary hospital, but medical care could not help much.
On July 1 8th there were twenty-eight deaths and on the 2Oth
the toll was thirty-two. Normal life had come to a complete
standstill.

Stores were closed, offices left vacant, warehouses aban
doned with wide-open doors and none to pilfer them. Every
citizen who had a wagon which would hold his family and a
few physical necessities fled the city by any road that was open.
The people, fear-crazed, who could not leave, locked their
doors and shuttered up their windows as if cholera were some
kind of burglar. Over the city hung a blanket of eye-stinging
black smoke, rising from pitch-pine knots burned in alleys and
on street corners, which some unremembered healer thought
was a preventative of contagion.

Church bells tolled almost continuously, solemnly announcing
the passing of a beloved communicant. At night, in this pall of
smoke, carts would be drawn through the streets, accompanied
by bell-ringing wardens, calling: "Bring out your dead! Bring

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 165

out your dead!" Then doors would cautiously open and in the
dim yellow glow of whale-oil lamps dark shadows would slowly
move across the wall. Loved ones who fell victims to the dread
scourge were carried out and dumped into these carts as un
ceremoniously as so much cordwood. They were buried in
deep ditches dug in the commons, unmarked and unseparated.

Cholera struck with such swiftness that it was like the at
tack of an unseen army. A man helping to load the death carts
would be seen to put his hand to his spinning head to steady
himself, then sway and fall. In an hour he would be dead. Emily
Mason sat out on the front steps talking to a young man just
arrived from Boston. Granny Peg brought the youth a mint
julep, which she said she had heard was a preventative of
cholera. The handsome young Bostonian said he thought there
was no more pleasant way to ward off cholera than through the
medium of a julep. A few hours later he was dead. Granny Peg
died the next day, in Emily's arms. The household was hungry;
no one had the courage to try to find a grocery store that was
open and the valiant old Guinea negress set out alone. She
came back with food, and her loyalty cost her her life.

Throughout the city there were courageous souls who joined
Mason in organizing a strong fight against the scourge. They
flung caution to the winds. They drove the wagons which car
ried stricken people from disease-free homes to the impromptu
hospital in the capital building. They distributed supplies and
food and medicine. They were everywhere, sending help to
those who could be saved, defiantly ignoring the ever-present
threat of unseen death to bring a little aid to total strangers
who still had a chance for life.

Women from fine old French families worked side by side
with sailors from Lake Erie freight scows. The Desnoyers,
the Dequindres, the Campeaus, the Beaubiens, and many more,
organized a quarantine camp in a Beaubien lot just east of
the Campus. Father Martin Kundig and the Sisters of Mercy
labored frantically, without rest, dosing calomel and ipecac
into the mouths of fever-stricken strangers, bathing them, wrap
ping them in clean sheets after the recurrent seizures of diar-

l66 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

rhoea which were among the first definite symptoms of the
disease.

Word came that Father Gabriel Richard had been stricken
after having gone vigorously into a disease-ridden shack near
the Campus to administer extreme unction to someone who
had called for a priest. But the valiant crew couldn't stop then
to mourn. Father Richard died, Michigan's most venerated
sacrifice to the scourge. Every Catholic in Detroit, instead of
weeping, raised his head and plunged deeper into the filth and
misery to save what he could. Father Richard's spirit is part
of Detroit to this day. After a month of terror, when Detroit
had lost a tenth of its population and the scourge had run its
course, Detroit realized the magnitude of its loss. Father
Richard and Cadillac were the real builders of the city.

Father Richard designed and partly built the cathedral of
St. Ann's. He and a protestant minister named Reverend John
Montieth founded the forerunner of the University of Michi
gan, where the versatile priest was professor of four different
subjects. He was the first .delegate from Michigan Territory
to the national Congress, the only Catholic priest who has
ever been elected to that body. He did about everything that
needed doing, and it was from Father Gabriel Richard, a
vigorous Franciscan monk in a brown robe and sandals, that
Mason obtained the beginnings of his enduring educational
system.

Mason interrupted his debut as Acting Governor before the
Territorial Council when the disease struck. He had just de
livered a nicely phrased annual message to that body and out
lined two possible legislative movements when he saw that
the time for speeches was past. In the message he made a plea
for a public school system and subconsciously laid the founda
tion for continuing Father Richard's brilliant beginnings. But
the message is forgotten today, a breath of pure air in a stink
ing monsoon of disease.

When the full force of cholera's impact was felt suddenly
on July 1 8th, Mason was confronted with the first of the in
evitable signs of breakdown in public authority. In times of

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 167

panic it is every man for himself, and no one is more prone to
act with utter independence than a homesteader. It was vital
to Detroit's safety that the roads be kept open, in order that
supplies of medicines and food for the besieged inhabitants
might arrive in time to do some good. But the terrorized vil
lagers on the roads leading out of the city immediately erected
blockades and guarded them with guns. Nobody knew what to
do. If anything were to be done, Mason would have to do it
himself.

He left his own family to get along as best it could, and
took to the roads. He was everywhere, galloping far out into
the oak openings where only isolated cabins had been located.
He turned up as far west as Niles, a hundred and eighty miles
from Detroit, almost across the State.

Pontiac, on the north, called out its company of militia and
stopped by force any attempt to enter that village from De
troit. Ypsilanti posted armed guards at its barrier across the
Chicago turnpike. One of the hotheads of this band shot the
lead horse of the mail coach on July xoth as its driver sat on
his box arguing about the necessity for the mail to go through.

Mason himself was caught in this speed trap at Ypsilanti.
On July 1 4th he came galloping along the turnpike, his satin-
lined cloak flying out behind his shoulders, stovepipe hat
crammed down upon his wavy hair, a iong Virginia cigar
clamped between his teeth. He was brought up short at the
barrier. He demanded that he be allowed to pass, and a deputy
sheriff named Eliphalet Turner brusquely told him that if he
did, he woulcl be shot.

The barrier was the object of Mason's visit. He looked down
into the barrel of Turner's musket, wheeled his horse and
started away. But he detoured around the barrier and sought
out an Ypsilanti resident named Samuel Pettibone, asking for
directions on unfrequented roads to reach Mottville, where
Mason was to distribute emergency proclamations to the en
tire southern tier of counties. Pettibone got him safely out of
town and Mason was well away, riding hard, when Turner
suddenly appeared out of nowhere and overtook him on a

l68 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

__s

faster horse. The deputy grabbed the bridle and lugged the
Acting Governor back to town under arrest. In the courtroom
of the local justice of the peace Mason angrily revealed his
identity. Then he was given permission to pass. Livid with
rage, he turned to Turner and shouted :

"I haven't time to take up the matter now, but you'll hear
from me again!"

Turner's eagerness to make a pinch cost him his job, and
his boss's job as well. Mason had no more than reached Detroit
again from Mottville than Eliphalet Turner and Sheriff Worth-
ington were both summarily removed from office by an execu
tive order. Mason had found that Governor Porter had chosen
this particular moment of chaos to return to his so-called duties.
The only thing Porter did during the cholera epidemic was to
sign this removal order. But Mason was everywhere at once,
appearing suddenly in some barricaded village like a ghost,
gathering sheriffs and justices to enforce his proclamations, de
stroying the barriers, then galloping off again with only his
well-remembered flying cloak and tall hat visible.

At Marshall, a village about midway across the State, he
found that out of seventy people in the town eighteen were seri
ously ill with cholera and eight had died. It was about what he
had expected to find. Jacksonburg had five deaths to report
as he passed through en route to Detroit on July 20th. When
he arrived in the city he found that the tolling of those church
bells was shattering what was left of the population's nerves
and they had had to be discontinued. But the death list had not
slackened. The toll for July was nearly five hundred; in
August the fight against the plague began to make progress.
With the coolness of September, cholera disappeared.

No one in Detroit could explain how it happened to break
out there. Blame was shared equally .between 'the rotten steer
age floors of the Henry Clay and the crowded conditions among
its troops which made practices of sanitation difficult. Where
it came from originally was in doubt. There had been known
cases of cholera traceable to fever-infested ships from the

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 169

Orient docking at United States ports, but the disease did not
reach epidemic proportions at any of these seacoast cities.

When it was all over, the memory of that long-legged young
man on a galloping horse, cigar clamped between his teeth,
returned many times to Michigan people. They remembered
the quick, authoritative way he set about calming village panics;
how he ordered the sheriffs and the justices of the peace around
in a hurry and made them like it. He reminded them of Cass,
and like that great figure legends began to be told about how
he had been put to work by a busy doctor at Marshall in a
futile attempt to save the life of Mrs. John D. Pierce, wife of
the village pastor. When the doctor realized who Mason was,
he apologized. "Go on, doctor," said Mason. "I am here to
learn, not to teach."

"God bless you, Governor," said the doctor. To those people
he was always "Governor". They seemed never to have heard
of Porter.

In August, just as cholera was yielding to frenzied attack,
General John T. Mason unexpectedly returned to Detroit for
a visit. The city was delightful in winter and the General did
not appear to have anything in particular to do, so he stayed
until the following February.

So far had his able son progressed in one short year of public
administration of John T.'s erstwhile job that John T. himself
was treated somewhat like a stranger by those who once knew
him. It must have seemed more like a decade than a year to
Tom Mason if he had time to reflect upon it. And the son
must have seemed like a different person to the returning
parent.

We have no accurate records in the Mason correspondence
as to the state of their regard for one another at this period.
Whatever John T.'s failings might have been in his public
dealings, we know that his family always adored him. They

I7O STEVENS THOMSON MASON

often quoted some offhand remark of his to point up some
patrician principle. They marvelled at the sustained silence of
their mother, but her contented sighs at John T.'s return were
as descriptive as a poem on the subject. She had been writing
him occasionally, and in her letters she was voluble. Moreover,
she was capable of graphic description. She had a spiritual bond
with John T. that she never shared with any of her children.
Most of herself was her husband's. During his. absence she
was a widow.

Upon his return, Elizabeth Moir Mason doffed her widow
hood and became a wife again. The house was a happy place;
Emily was seventeen and beginning to attract a share of adoles
cent attention, and the younger girls were noisy and active.
Tom Mason continued to be the head of the family, with John
T. in the position of a welcome guest of his mother's. But
John T. liked that.

His return might have brought to Tom Mason's mind an
incident which occurred at the time of his appointment a year
before. To many Detroiters it illustrated the basic differences
between father and son, but highlighted their deep affection for
each other. While Tom Mason was being tried by proxy at
public meetings, some difficulty over shipment of John T.'s
papers and effects developed which did not yield to attempts
at solution by correspondence. It became necessary for John
T. to come home again and locate whatever it was that Tom
couldn't find, which he did without any public notice. The Free
Press, of August 10, 1.831, says that Mason might have had
some help with his famous letter "To The Public" because his
father was in town that day. But the letter was written before
John T. arrived. He departed immediately afterward, but
stayed long enough to attend his son's invitation dinner at a
Detroit hotel, at which some Whig lawyers were present.

At this dinner, when toasts were proposed, one of these
Whigs decided to be a bit subtle. "Gentlemen," he said, "I give
you Mr. Stevens T. Mason, the ^-Territorial Secretary."

"No, no!" interrupted John T. He was trembling. "Give
the boy a chance! Don't hang him without a hearing!"

1831-1834] THE BEARDLESS MOSES 171

Fifty years went by before one of the other guests at the
dinner wrote his memoirs. He said that Stevens patted his
father's hand reassuringly and sat there, gazing with complete
amiability upon the speaker while his father gurgled with sup
pressed anger. The speaker did not obtain any seconds to his
toast and he sat down, somewhat red of face. Young Mason
had rigid control of this situation without a spoken word, while
his father would have been trapped into a loud-voiced argu
ment which was exactly what the lawyer wanted.

A year later, Stevens was still figuratively patting John TVs
hand, and held rigid control of the Territory's administration.
In October he observed his twenty-first birthday, which there
upon qualified him as a voter in the far-flung frontier prairie
over which he had achieved supreme influence. He cast his
first ballot as a voter on October 23rd, backing the losing can
didate in a three-cornered fight for the office of Delegate to
Congress. While he made no attempt to campaign for his
party's choice, Austin E. Wing, out of this campaign came a
slogan which once more brought Stevens T. Mason to the
front pages of America. The Ann Arbor Emigrant haughtily
referred to Wing as "a protege of the Boy Governor". And
Boy Governor Mason remained as long as he held office in
Michigan, in every newspaper. It made him so angry that when
he discovered the ieditor of that newspaper on a street in De
troit, Mason attacked him with his fists and gave him quite a
beating. It was this story that was widely reprinted in New
York and Boston and Washington. City editors got it out of
the Ann Arbor Argus, a rival paper whose editor chuckled at
how ". . . the stripling, the Boy Governor if you please, was
man enough to give him a sound cuffing."

In April of the following year, 1833, Detroit was so pleased
at Mason's new-found manhood that its citizens elected him to
the important municipal post of Alderman-at-large, represent
ing the entire city on the governing board. He was nominated
and immediately elected to the exclusive Detroit Young Men's
Society. He was elected to the volunteer fire brigade, and was
called out of bed to haul a little four-wheeled pumper over

172 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Detroit's muddy streets. "Hardly a week passed," says Emily's
diary, "that did not see our home extending its hospitality
to notable men who had come from the east and had stopped
in Detroit to make themselves known to the 'Boy Governor'
as my brother was known."

Lieutenant Jefferson Davis was making a roundabout jour
ney of the principal cities with the captive Black Hawk, who
was entertained at Mason's home with his entourage. The
sinister Black Hawk and his steel-muscled warrior son slept
in Mason beds that night, thus making more than a parable
about political bedfellows. Mason was reported as very cordial
to the old Indian. Indeed, he had reason to be grateful.

CHAPTER VI

"THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR I"

THE YEAR WAS 1833, and the Mason star was in the ascendant.
He was emerging into the national spotlight at a time when
things were dull in the newspaper offices throughout the larger
cities. Editors welcomed a colorful personality. Out there on the
Western frontier they saw a popular youth who somehow
had inspired a fanatically loyal following, locking horns with a
sour old politician who knew all the answers and who was any
thing but popular. Later in the century, young Abe Lincoln
found himself the center of national attention during his de
bates with Douglas, for somewhat the same reasons; The
appeal of each personality was the same : an audacious young
man flinging down a challenge to an established political ma
chine.

In the cracker-barrel debates which followed each news
paper account of Mason's doings, throughout the East, he
was talked of as a "coming man". His name personified Michi
gan. His personality was the personality of the tough young
Territory. His meteoric rise to fame illustrated how rapidly
Michigan was acquiring solidity and stature.

In the Baltimore papers, accounts of Mason's doings with
the Whigs and his rout of old General John R. Williams,
filtered into Virginia and the Mason clan was glad. In New
York, the great Washington Irving made a note of the young
character at Detroit, and filed it for future reference. Mason's
morning mail was full of letters from strangers everywhere
who wrote him gushing letters as they write today to any
celebrity.

He was twenty-one. He looked it, but acted and tried to

174 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

appear older. He was somewhat like those army pilots of the
recent war who went from high school to colonel's eagles be
fore they had much fuzz to shave.

His nominal superior, Governor Porter, was always absent.
Few people had ever seen him. Mason was addressed as "Gov
ernor" both publicly and socially. He sent bills to the Ter
ritorial Council and signed appointments. He reported to the
various Bureaus at Washington, and kept a tight hand over
county sheriffs who were too officious. He was Governor in
fact, and in the hearts and minds of his thinly settled colonies
of people.

Michigan Territory stretched far, far beyond the peninsula
wherein the handsome youth found himself in power. Across
the big lake and far to the forested west, his influence was
slight. The trappers and miners out there wanted a complete
separation from him. Not because of any disapproval, but they
could not see how he could administer a vast wilderness which
he had never seen and knew nothing about. No one knew much
about those areas, except the Sioux and Blackfeet.

Mason agreed with them wholeheartedly. Acting probably
on some excellent advice, he threw his support behind the elec
tion of a Territorial Delegate to Congress who would come
from the Wisconsin area and would represent it exclusively.
He was trying to stimulate sentiment for statehood. If he
could get Michigan admitted to the Union, that would leave
the Delegate undisturbed and still functioning. It would be
an argument for Congressmen to mull over. They might help
him.

There was great support for Mason's plan, and some opposi
tion. The opposition came from the Whig crowd, as usual,
but it was based on sound economics. As a Territory, Michigan
got a $10,000 Federal appropriation for administrative ex
penses each year, and nearly lived on it. As a State, she would
have to raise about three times that sum from the impoverished
settlers and villagers by taxation. The pioneers out there in
the tamarack swamps were having a hard enough time clearing
and draining their land, and fighting fever. A money levy upon

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HPTSPUR!" 175

them would hardly be met with a cordial cheer, yet many set
tlers were loudly in favor of it.

Some time during the spring of 1833, Mason decided that
the time had come to begin fighting for Michigan as a State.
He knew the battle would continue for several years. The
60,000 minimum population that Congress insisted upon was
almost within sight. Another year or two of migration such
as he had seen in 1832, and his goal would be reached.

He was thus, in April and May, 1833, in a dual position of
almost comic contrasts. One phase of his life was that of the
statesman, leading his people literally out of the wilderness
toward the promised land of statehood and prosperity. He
was successful, famous, popular. His enemies were muttering
and plotting in political exile. The other phase was that of the
pink-cheeked youth whose mother, that very month, startled
him by presenting him with a baby sister. In this phase he was
the young fellow who worked in an office during the day and
came home to study at night, and who occasionally took his
sisters out to dinner at the Mansion House. He was the boy
who aroused all sorts of hopes in the hearts of impressionable
girls and their mothers; the frustrated, overgrown kid who,
the preceding winter, had gone down to the Detroit River
incognito and stayed up late sliding down the steep banks onto
the ice on a child's sled.

He had more self-discipline than his father. He never mixed
his twin personalities. In his office he really ran the Territory,
and Governor Porter's office was like a tomb. Evenings, he
took Porter's assistant downtown to Uncle Ben Woodworth's
Steamboat Hotel bar, and plied him with ale and questions
about the law. The assistant was a young Philadelphia lawyer
named Kintsing Pritchette, whom Porter had appointed as his
secretary because of personal liking for him. Pritchette was
glad to become Mason's law tutor. He was, like Mason, an
opportunist. He could see by now the relative importance of
Porter and Mason in the Territory. Hence, he helped Mason
at every opportunity and was ready with advice both legal and
political*

176 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

At Uncle Ben's taproom it was the custom for each little
group to select a corner, or a table, or a little space of its own.
Some cliques were heavy drinkers. Some were noisy. Others
preferred to drink even deeper of the atmosphere of the famous
pioneer inn overlooking the wide river.

Mason was one of the latter. So were a few others like
himself, such as Colonel John Norvell, George Palmer, Major
Isaac S. Rowland and Pritchette. This quintet became an estab
lished barroom club. It met every night. It was actually a law
school. Pritchette was coaching Major Rowland and young
George Palmer as well as Mason for the bar examination to be
held that autumn. Each of the three had personal reasons for
his choice of this form of legal study instead of the more formal
reading of law in some attorney's office.

Norvell was the postmaster of Detroit, newly appointed to
replace the venerable Whig, James Abbott, who had held the
post for twenty years. Never previously acquainted in the city,
he was thrown by politics into the company of the most promi
nent Democrat in the community, who was Mason. He was a
big, handsome, virile man in his middle thirties, who was mar
ried to a girl said by Emily to be "the prettiest woman who
ever set foot in Michigan Territory". The Norvells visited
at the Mason home, and vice versa, constantly. The friendship
between the young postmaster and the even younger Secretary
and Acting Governor was a lasting one.

Georgie Palmer was the son of the distinguished old Detroit
clan, the Thomas Palmers. He preferred to study law with
Pritchette mostly because his familv had a low opinion of his
abilities, and he was trying to show them that he could accom
plish something on his own. Ike Rowland, a man of self-made
success, was a Michigan-born pioneer whose chief interest in
life was the regiment of Michigan Volunteers, in which he was
a battalion commander. He was only a year or so older than
Mason, a superb physical specimen, and had led an adventurous
life which made him seem like, a storybook hero to fifteen-
year-old Kate Mason.

The Boy Governor's barroom law school didn't hold forth

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR I" 177

as regularly as it should have. He was interrupted periodically.
The baby born to wrinkled Elizabeth Moir Mason on April
5> J 833, was stillborn and he had to arrange a small funeral.
In May, funds arrived unexpectedly from John T., paying
semester's tuition for Emily and the next youngest sister, Kate,
at Miss Emma Willard's Select School for Young Ladies
at Troy, New York. At that period it was the most fashionable
finishing school in America. The girls were thrilled. Mason
arranged a trip which took him with them to Philadelphia,
Washington and New York before reaching the school.

He must have received a very cordial welcome in Washing
ton. His notes say nothing about a White House visit, but old
Andy must have known he was in the city. After making the
rounds of all the offices, he continued to Troy and returned to
Detroit about midsummer.

Cholera was the biggest fear in his mind. For some strange
reason, the dread disease by-passed Detroit in the summer of
1833, but struck at Louisville, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, and
other points along the Ohio River. A big circus and a theatrical
troupe, booked for that area, were marooned in Detroit. The
summer was a happy one, broken by a flurry of excitement in
June when a fugitive slave arrived in town via the "under
ground" with an irate owner two jumps behind. The owner
was trying to head him off before he reached safety in Canada.
The slave was a good public speaker. He aroused all the
negroes in Detroit, who rushed to his defense. In the ensuing
melee the sheriff was badly wounded and a miniature riot
shattered the summer peace. This did not touch Mason's Ter
ritorial administration but it provided the subject of some
interesting letters which he wrote to his sisters at Troy.

"He was handsome," sighed Emily, to her diary. People
wondered why Mason didn't marry, or at least select some girl
and give her an opportunity to preen herself with the dream
that some day she might become the new State's first lady.
They couldn't understand why he frittered away the long
moonlight nights in Uncle Ben's barroom. The papers thought
he was a heavy drinker. Emily herself, not knowing what was

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

transpiring at the barroom, complained that Mason was a
"social votary . . . given to conviviality."

At twenty-one he was still a bit under six feet, but had filled
out very satisfactorily. His dark-brown hair, almost black,
worn somewhat full as was the fashion, waved from front to
back. He had the clean, regular features of a romantic actor,
that impression being heightened by a pair of black, neatly
arched eyebrows that looked almost too perfect. His nose was
straight, his strong chin cleft with a dimple, and his blue eyes
were framed in thick dark lashes almost like a girl's. Careful
training had forced him to carry his lithe body stiffly erect,
head held high. That classic posture seemed even more statu
esque when viewed in the decorative clothing of the period:
black broadcloth tail coat, high silk hat, valanced cloak, stiff
shirt front and black satin neckstock. He was a figure to set
many a girl's pulse pounding, and young swains' tongues to
sarcasm. He knew it, and often purposely appeared with his
wavy hair in great disarray and wrinkles in his satin vest. He
thought that the men who came to see him would resent it if
he were too well-groomed. There are sketches of him which
show his hair pulled forward in awkward blobs around his
ears. Others show it plastered flat on his high forehead as if he
purposely were trying to look older and partially bald. His
official State portrait depicts him thus.

These tricks succeeded merely in making him look drunk,
but he evidently preferred that to looking too handsome. Emily
shared the prevailing opinion in Detroit about his nocturnal
habits. People who saw him almost daily marvelled that after
a night of debauchery at Uncle Ben's barroom he could appear
pink-cheeked and amiable the next morning. Ike Rowland
and Norvell kept the secret whenever they came to the Mason
home, which was frequently. During the girls' absence, Row
land had forgotten all about Kate. But she had not forgotten
him. Letters from the girls at Troy poured in, many of them
addressed to the Major. Rowland wrote that she ought to be
come a writer. Years later, she did. She signed her books "Kate

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 179

Mason Rowland", just as she knew, at the age of fifteen, that
she would.

"Tom," wrote Emily, "had scant time and less inclination for
affairs of the heart, though so handsome, so gay and so amiable
as to be much in demand and admired by the ladies." Emily
didn't mention the state of his bank roll, or the fact that Mason
couldn't afford to buy a girl a ring or anything else that cost
an important sum. He himself was probably painfully aware of
this condition. It may have been a big factor in his determina
tion to side-step what Emily called "affairs of the heart".

One way to make enough money to support the family and
still have a wife, he felt, would be to engineer the formation
of the State government as soon as possible. If he could get
himself elected to the Governorship and collect a handsome
salary each quarter, many of his most pressing troubles would
be over. The people were ready for it. The time was now.
Washington was receptive.

The more young Mason meditated on the task of building
a State government, the more the idea fascinated him. It was
an unparalleled opportunity for a young man. He would be
the progenitor, the father of everything in the State, the name
sake of all the new accomplishments. His name would live.
He sat back in his big office chair and dreamed of what he
would do with his State, and his people.

His mind began framing the preamble to the Constitution.
He wondered about a State seal. What great scholar would
furnish an impressive Latin motto? Who would select the
State flower, the State animal, the State nickname ? He would.

Daydreaming was a harmless pastime. Making these dreams
come true would take work. Mason was prepared to work for
the realization of his goal, but first he had to plan carefully
the sequence of moves that would culminate in success. "First
things first" became his motto. He knew he could meet the

180 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Congressional minimums as to population and plan of opera
tion. The next question was that of the boundaries of his new
State. There he ran headlong against one of the sorest politi
cal disputes of the nineteenth century. Specifically, the southern
border of Michigan Territory? where it adjoined Ohio, had
been the subject of political and private friction ever since Cass
warned him about it in 1830.

During the winter of 1833-34 he stayed much at home,
making up his mind how to attack this problem. He began to
see it as the climax of the whole battle. If he could win the
border dispute, he could win admittance for Michigan as a
State. Success in this controversy meant success in everything.
Conversely, if he failed there, he would lose all hope of getting
Michigan admitted during any period in which he would hold
office.

He could not concentrate his whole attention upon it dur
ing the winter. He was admitted to the Michigan bar on De
cember n, 1833, along with Georgie Palmer and Major Ike
Rowland, which called for a whopper of a celebration in Uncle
Ben's taproom and called down the Whig newspapers upon
his head in consequence. The year 1834 began with a fresh
series of family disasters which upset his schedule entirely for
weeks at a time.

While the two eldest girls were at school in Troy, Mason's
mother had been plunged into inconsolable grief by the death
of "Sunshine Sister Mary", aged five, the youngest. She, accord
ing to many contemporary accounts, was a chubby, lively little
thing who bore the name of Elizabeth Mason's first child, who
had died in Kentucky at the age of twelve. The saddened
mother never completely recovered from this tragedy, the
nature of which is a complete mystery. The family name for
her, "Sunshine," is graphically descriptive of the sweet little
girl she must have been. Mason, of course, cancelled all social
appointments and went into mourning.

During the same winter the invalid daughter, Theodosia,
aged eleven, died mysteriously, too, on January 7, 1834. The
secret of her affliction went to the grave with her. It left the

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 181

brave Elizabeth Mason staring almost incredulously at the
great gold-hinged family Bible, which showed the pitifully
brief annals of the thirteen children she had borne in twenty-
two years. In midwinter, 1833-34, four were alive: Stevens T.,
Emily, Kate and Laura.

John T. was in Cincinnati en route southwest from Wash
ington. He wrote her to come and spend a few quiet weeks with
him. Sister Laura, aged twelve, became a pupil in Father Kun-
dig's new convent school outside Detroit. Mason was alone in
the house. The family was reunited in March, when the two
older sisters returned from Troy in Mason's two-horse sleigh
after a three-week battle with blizzards. Elizabeth tried to
show a little cheerfulness, but failed. She was very weak.

Mason had a long and serious talk with Emily, who straight
way took over the household. She became his official hostess,
and a sort of secretary as well. Her diary at this period is full
of notes on the visitors who came, what they ate, what they
said. She reports that her mother was fighting against the
temptation to give up and become a bedridden invalid. Eliza
beth forced her to get up and go through the motions of wel
coming guests, but all of them could see the strain it caused.

In the spring, Mason was able to turn his attention once
more to the business of the Territory. Governor Porter, who
is a dimly seen background figure during this period, had his
brief moment in the spotlight very early in the year. He re
turned from Pennsylvania in midwinter to collect a large sum
in back salary, and to discharge the only real official function
he could not delegate to Mason. This was the annual message
to the Council. In January, 1834, Porter produced a document
which sounds to us of this generation quite New Deal-ish.
He was interested in the first attempts to combine little local
railroads into statewide trunk lines throughout the East. He
thought that, because of the cost, it was a task beyond the re
sources of private companies and ought to be undertaken by the
people.

In his message he went over the old familiar praises of the
Michigan topography, with its transverse rivers seemingly

l82 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

made for commerce and transport. He brought up an impres
sive array of arguments about how the railroad, as a public
project, would stimulate the sale of public lands, develop new
cities, provide employment, and create traffic for itself.

Mason listened to this message, and was stirred. He was
convinced. Coupled with his task of creating a new State, now
came the equally difficult task of creating a great railroad
system, out of nothing. He did not know the elemental facts
about railroads, or about any engineering problem. He did
not have John T.'s economic training. But he had an intuition,
and impulsively he backed it.

Porter's message went a great deal further than mere rail
roads, demanding money for improvements in rivers and har
bors, for canals, and for all sorts of projects with fat Federal
payrolls. Mason recognized these demands for the treasury-
tapping political pap they were. But the railroad idea took pos
session of him from that moment. He began to dream again,
conjuring up a vision of what Michigan would look like fifty
years hence, with railroads winding between busy new cities,
serving a happy and prosperous populace. Dreams always pro
duce visions like that.

Somebody should have warned him. The vision was eco
nomically sound, and the railroad had to come some day. Mason
thought he could do anything. He had the imagination to see
what had to be done, and the ability to get it done. But he
lacked the experience to protect himself from the political
wolves who were to attack him incessantly before that rail
road ever crossed Michigan. That railroad, which he helped
so much to create, eventually killed him. If he had not at
tempted to finance it, he might have lived to be ninety, like
Emily.

Suddenly, Governor Porter died. Mason heard about it on
July 6, 1 834, almost at the moment his death occurred. Porter
was supervising construction on his new house, below the city
on his new park-line farm. He had contracted a strange illness
while across the lake in Wisconsin, on a treaty dicker with the

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 183

Winnebago Indians sometime during March. He did not seem
to be ill when he returned, but abruptly he was dead.

Mason quickly arranged the necessary formalities and the
notices of official mourning. He was Governor now, in sole
command. At the news of Porter's death, Mason went up
several notches in prestige. People looked to him to bring
their demand for State government into reality, and to do
something about the appalling condition of the roads through
out the Territory. The logical climax of that quest, of course,
was the railroad.

The Council worked with him smoothly and swiftly. Char
ters were granted to two new railroad companies which were
to build sections of the state-wide system. Engineers were em
ployed on contract to drive a survey for the trunk line across
the peninsula from Detroit to St. Joseph.

There was not a foot of railroad track, nor any rail vehicle
in operation, in the whole peninsula. Some companies had been
chartered* previously, but political squabbles of various sorts
kept them from completing their work. One company was
grading its right-of-way between Adrian and Port Lawrence
(Toledo), but had not finished. Public interest naturally cen
tered on the "big line", the cross-country road that was to
connect Detroit with Chicago via St. Joseph.

There were two possible routes. The old road known as the
''Chicago turnpike" swung straight southwest from Detroit
and angled through the Irish Hills to Coldwater. Thence it
was more or less guesswork and gamble with the swamps for
many miles, until it gave up altogether in the sand dunes at
the lower end of Lake Michigan. A detour had been con
structed which went through northern Indiana, and eventually
provided a wagon trail all the way to Chicago. It was the
shorter of the twd routes, but because a goodly share of it lay
in Indiana, and more practically because it avoided all the new
towns, it was not considered as a public project by the citizens
of Michigan.

The route selected was the old Indian trail between St.

184 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Joseph and Detroit, packed hard by the moccasined feet of
Indians for a hundred and fifty years as they made their fre
quent pilgrimages to Maiden, Ontario, to receive presents
from the British. Alongside it and sometimes over it, Governor
Cass had hewed out a lane which he called the "Territorial
Road". On this road were rapidly expanding settlements every
few miles. Some of them in 1834 were good-sized towns:
Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, Dexter, Chelsea, Jackson, Marshall,
Battle Creek, Bronson (Kalamazoo) and St. Joseph; it carried
the vast bulk of Michigan's commerce.

The engineers' survey ended the line at St. Joseph and
recommended a fleet of steamboats for the short voyage to
Chicago. Technical skill of the time was baffled by those sand
dunes, which wandered like enormous whales over some hun
dreds of square miles, never still. Since the road could not
go through them, the steamboat was a satisfactory answer.
The project aroused enthusiasm because this entire route lay
in Michigan.

The condition of this road in 1834 was almost indescribable.
In good weather a traveller could find traces of wagon tracks.
In foul weather he could not locate any part of a road. Volun
teer parties of settlers built bridges over the worst rivers,
but freshets washed them out. The miles of swamps were snake-
infested and disease-ridden. Mud was a constant curse. In
1834 some people pushing westward from Detroit in a wagon
got as far as Dexter. Then :

"There is an extensive marsh on the road near Grass Lake
in Jackson County. It gave us much trouble. We had not made
more than half the distance across it when we were brought
up standing, or rather sticking, in the mud. Thinking to lighten
our load we all got off and waded through, happily escaping
the venomous fangs of the snakes with which the swamp is
thickly infested." Four yokes of oxen could not budge the
wagon, and the occupants were getting hungry. "Totally un
conscious of how far we were from a human habitation, we
waited. Eight o'clock in the evening found our teams mud-
bound, and ourselves perched on high ground bedrabbled with

1834-1835] U THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR !" 185

the soil of Michigan." In the morning, seven ox teams hauled
the wagon free.

A stage line operating over the road in 1834 promised to
make the distance from Detroit to St. Joseph in five days, "in
fine weather'*. In rotten weather, the drivers just gave up
wherever they were, and waited. The road from Ypsilanti to
Ann Arbor was "whitened by the ribs of rotted wagons and
broken wheels" abandoned everywhere. The Detroit Adver
tiser, horrified by this vista, said that the wreckage of smashed
vehicles made the road look like "the route of a retreating
army". The road was so bad between Jackson and Marshall
that "inns thrived at two-mile intervals".

The railroad had to come, and soon. Dr. Fuller's thesis on
the subject says that as soon as Stephenson's Rocket had made
the first practical rail journey in England, agitation for rail
roads broke out in Michigan. In 1834 only a few miles of ex
perimental railroads had been built in the East, but the craze
for them hit Michigan suddenly, keynoted by Governor Por
ter's message, and followed through with frenzy by Michigan
promoters. The Detroit Courier advised Eastern capitalists
who had missed the train in the East when railroads were be
ing organized there "to bring their funds hither and forthwith
take preliminary steps to invest the same in the railroad be
tween Detroit and Chicago".

Chicago became a magic word in America with the demon
stration that railroads were practical. Lake Erie steamboats
and Detroit's outfitting facilities had channeled the bulk of
Western emigration through the city, but the condition of the
road was discouraging the flow. More and more emigrants
were landing at Port Lawrence and taking the military turn
pike to Chicago. Detroit promoters demanded that something
be done at once.

Mason was freed by Porter's death from the restrictions
placed upon a "Secretary and Acting Governor". He had been
in power most of the time for the past three years. His achieve
ments and personal popularity had, by that time, taken most
of the bitterness out of the fact of his position on the part of

l86 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

suspicious old Whig officeholders in the townships. He was
approaching his twenty-third birthday. He had the scene set
and the props in place for his greatest performance. The cast
was ready. Everything seemed in place.

Before he could raise the curtain, he was plunged into a new
disaster. During the first week of August, 1834, Asiatic cholera
hit Detroit the worst blow in her entire history. It scourged
the city and the Territory for five weeks. Detroit lost an offi
cially tabulated seven percent of its population during August,
and the Historical Commission records claim as high as ten
percent. Everyone who could pack a few belongings fled the
accursed city. Epidemics broke out simultaneously at Ann
Arbor, Ypsilanti and Pontiac.

Mason's father had remained at Cincinnati, just resting,
all spring. He now appeared in Detroit and whisked away the
invalid mother and the three girls. Hospitals were set up in the
churches. The top floor of Mason's capitol building was pressed
into service again. Nowhere were there medicines enough or
doctors enough. The awful suddenness of the plague seemed
like a special curse to the frightened citizens. There would be
suddenly a feeling of dizziness, a fainting attack, horrible ab
dominal gripes, nausea, diarrhoea, then coma and the stiff re
lief of death.

Streets deserted, stores closed, boats warned away from the
docks, Detroit staggered along as if she were herself a victim
of the dread plague. On August i6th, exhausted Dr. Rice
stumbled into his office in a building on the present site of the
First National Bank. Thirty-seven victims had died that day,
and the doctor was at his wit's end.

"Everybody's dying," he sighed. "Every one of us will die.
Two years ago I bled all my patients and most of them re
covered. This year, every one I have bled has died just the

same."

A youth named Robert Turner was scurrying about, making
some notes for a newspaper article he hoped to sell. He thought
he would die, too. He described the insidious way the plague

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 187

seemed to creep up and down the river, touching the docks,
warehouses and even the ships lying at anchor.

"Men fell as if struck by lightning," he wrote. "When at
early dawn the old French carts could be seen In line, like the
commissariat of the Grand Army of Napoleon, stretching
away to the old cemetery, a fearful line of festering corpses ;
when all men, no matter how brave, seemed appalled, when
we had no hospitals, no asylums, no place of refuge for the
sick and the dying, Father Kundig, God bless him, improvised
a hospital on North Grand Avenue. He summoned to his aid
the fair daughters, sweet young girls, of the Desnoyers, the
De Quindres, the Campeaus, and organized them into a splen
did corps of Sisters of Mercy. There, day and night, amid
filth and misery, faced with death in its most frightful form,
they fought. When death came, they gave to the poor, the
hungry and the lost, the last beautiful rites of their Church."

Judge WitherelFs wife died. General Larned, the old pio
neer, died. Hundreds of lesser-known people died. But Robert
Turner lived to be eighty. He remembered a man and wife
during the epidemic of 1834 who had newly arrived in Detroit.
The man left his wife for three days, to look for a place in
the country. When he came back, his wife had died and had
been buried and he could not locate the grave. Another man
sent all his family to a place of safety outside of town. He re
mained to help the emergency workers, believing that he would
be stricken any time. All of his family were killed by the plague,
but he survived. Even the doctor who treated him died.

Throughout the epidemic of 1834, the crooked open sewer
which modern doctors blame for the epidemic crawled and
wriggled its way across town, ignored. It was not Mason,
but a Dr. Whiting who called his contemporaries' attention to
it in the belief that in some way, not then known, it was the
source of these recurrent epidemics. Dr. Whiting practiced
medicine for fifteen years in Detroit, including the two epi
demics in 1832 and 1834. When he started In earnest to fight
for a water supply, and piped sewers, and a cover over the

l88 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

polluted creek, cholera disappeared. Cases of it have been
known since, but never again did it reach the deadly menace
that it became in August, 1 834.

Mason did not know why he lived through that month.
In September the falling temperature had a magic effect upon
the disease, and by October it had vanished. Nobody knew
where it came from, or how to fight it. Mason did not profess
to know. He had been exposed to it every day since the epidemic
broke out, but in some manner had never contracted it. He did
what little a layman could do, by straightening out arguments
between rival volunteer organizations with divergent ideas,
and by organizing supplies of clean linen and medicines from
outlying towns. In October, 1834, he sat at his desk in his
little Jefferson Avenue home. It was over. He was still alive.
The rest of the family was in New York, whither they had gone
with John T. to help him spend some of the money he was
making from his Southern ventures. He tried to tell them about
the epidemic, but found himself joking about it.

"The longer I live," he wrote, "the more I hate 'good so
ciety' as it is now ra^ed. Had I an empire of my own, I would
as strictly quarantine the approach of fashion as I would that
of a contagious fever. Both are equally dangerous. One case of
either thrown into a community will soon spread over it, unless
in the former instance the constitutions of the citizens are
sufficiently strong to withstand disease, and in the latter, their
heads are sufficiently strong to resist the contagion of fashion.
So recollect, you and Emily are to bring none of the exquisites
of fashion concealed in your frock sleeves, or I shall follow
the recent example of Governor Hayne of South Carolina
and consider it my duty to issue a proclamation against your
landing in the Territory."

He had been advised by some impatient soul in New York,
probably Washington Irving, that the English author, Harriet
Martineau, was coming, and was planning on staying at the
Mason home while in Detroit. The correspondent wanted to
know what Mason was going to do to entertain the great
and awe-inspiring lady, who was irritable, haughty, and deaf.

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 189

She went about poking at people with her stout cane and jabbing
an ear trumpet at them, screeching: "Hey? Hey?" Mason
was apprehensive. The distinguished lady was then in New
York and the family had met her. Emily wrote that she was
a pretty difficult social problem to tackle. Mason replied :

"I have been daily standing in dread of the arrival of Miss
Martineau, who I am informed has been invited to take up
her quarters with us during her visit. I wish her no harm, but
pray Heaven she may never arrive. Imagine to yourself, Miss
Martineau among us with our present household; Jemmy the
dining-room servant, and Ann, her waiting-maid. An earth
quake would not produce more terror amongst us than her
presence. Everybody about the house trembles at the noise of
a steamboat. Even the old gobbler in the yard seems frightened,
for the knock of Miss Martineau at the door of our mansion
is the knell of his departure 'to the place from which turkeys
never return'. If a master's hopes, his servants prayers and
a gobbler's petitions will avail anything, Heaven will send
adverse winds to the vessel that bears Miss Martineau to
our port."

Heaven duly sent the adverse winds, or in some manner
scrambled up the Martineau travel schedule, because she did
not arrive until June, 1835. The awesome Harriet wrote a
five-volume report called Society in America, and Retrospect
of Western Travel, in which she said that Detroit "over
whelmed" her. She had the same effect on the Masons.

Before her arrival, while the family was still in New York,
Mason began his long-delayed campaign to settle the border
dispute with Ohio. He sent a series of letters to governors of
other States trying to drum up some moral support nationally,
which he believed would have an effect politically upon members
of Congress. He was starting a pressure drive on Congress to
counterbalance the weight of Ohio's senators and representa
tives, who were determined to keep Michigan Territory out
of the area under dispute. For example, he wrote to the Gov
ernor of Virginia :

"Michigan feels justified in making an appeal to Virginia in

190 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

the fact that she is, in effect, her offspring" since a century
before Virginia had claimed all the territory around the Lakes,
then, in 1789, had relinquished it

"We spring from a noble and disinterested generosity on the
part of Virginia. . . . Michigan looks to her as a parent, and
feels a k strong degree of confidence in the belief that her rights
will be respected. It is with pleasure, Sir, that I address you
on this subject, from whom candor, impartiality and justice
can confidently be expected, and if permitted to allude to my
own feelings, as a native of Virginia, in justification of the zeal
with which I urge a full examination of the subject by your
Excellency, under a conviction that you will recommend to the
legislature of your State the adoption of such measures as will
be consistent with the rights of those interested."

His Excellency was appalled, no doubt, by that sentence.
He went back over it and eventually deciphered it as an appeal
for support over the border claim. He cautiously replied :

"I could say nothing more and nothing half so well. Masons
should never forget Virginia, and Virginia will never forget
the Masons."

He promised to look into the matter. Nothing happened,
except that his legislature passed some "stilted compliments"
and dropped the topic.

The Boy Governor was trying to bludgeon Congress into
validating Michigan's claim for a strip of land between Michi
gan and Ohio containing the present city of Toledo. The ques
tion had to be settled for all time before the more important
problem of statehood could be tackled. The slice of land under
dispute contained all of present Lucas County and Maumee
Bay, which was, in 1 835, the best harbor on western Lake Erie.
Mason insisted with every resource at his command that the
area was his.

Governor Lucas, of Ohio, was equally stubborn about hang
ing on for all he was worth. He had merely moved in and
settled the area, knowing that it was legally Michigan's. But
then, as now, possession was nine points of the law. Further
more, Ohio as a State had a good-sized political influence in

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 191

Congress whereas Michigan as a Territory had none. The
inevitable clash between the aged and stubborn Lucas and the
young and irrepressible Mason began in the form of raucous
offstage noises and mutual sarcasm. It progressed to pressure
blocs, political horse-trades and attempts by both sides to out
wit each other. It gathered momentum as the firmness of each
leader became evident. In the spring of 1835 it had arrived
at the now-familiar point where neither side could concede
anything without losing face. It was war.

The "Toledo War" is an episode in United States history
which has puzzled researchers for upwards of a hundred years.
There is no satisfactory explanation for what happened, or why
the affair didn't turn into a bloody interstate conflict. The
records say it was a war. The eyewitnesses remember it as a
frolic, wherein everybody had a high old time and no one,
outside of a sheriff or two, got hurt.

The participants' accounts read like a scenario of an old-
time Keystone comedy. It had the whole Keystone cast: the
whiskered cops falling out of windows, the stalwart young hero
(Mason) , the villain (Lucas) and his angry cohorts, and even
the traditional "wow finish", complete with hectic chases over
hill and dale. It was slapstick in that nobody was hurt and the
props were mostly fakes. Conversely, it was grimly realistic
in that it caused a terrible commotion in Congress, cost the
Boy Governor his job, alarmed the nation with the spectre of
bloody civil war, and as a penalty for starting it, cost Michigan
the city of Toledo.

Toledo in 1835 was a collection of marshes, warehouses and
docks known as Port Lawrence. The name Toledo had just
been coined by the merchants of Ohio, and the new city was
starting to be built by the lake. Ohio enterprise had built it,
and built the roads that led to it from many an inland village
and pioneer settlement. Wliile legally a part of Michigan Ter
ritory, Michigan had never colonized the area and was not well

192 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

represented there. Ohio was trying to legalize the acquisition
of the Maumee Bay area by a bill in Congress.

Mason had been trying to block a vote on this bill for some
time. He had the law on his side. Originally, the creation of
the Northwest Territory in 1787 had fixed the boundary be
tween Michigan Territory and Ohio at ". . . a line drawn due
east from the southern tip or extremity of Lake Michigan."
This line intersected Lake Erie below Maumee Bay, thus
placing Perrysburg, Port Lawrence and the projected city of
Toledo in Michigan Territory. It also included a slice of the
present State of Indiana, with cities like South Bend, Elkhart,
Angola and many smaller villages.

At the time Ohio and Indiana were admitted to the Union
they defined their borders as lines which ran well north of the
official border. They were able to do it because they had popu
lated this area and Michigan had not; because they had in
fluence at Washington and Michigan had none. They were
admitted with the borders they claimed in their applications.
Now, in 1835, twenty years later, Michigan was attempting
statehood and this border question exploded with a bang.

Mason ordered a new survey run along the line laid down
in the Ordinance of 1787. The engineer who surveyed it, John
A. Fulton, made a very detailed study of the terrain, and the
line came to be known as the "Fulton Line". This was to be
Mason's southern border, he proclaimed.

Indiana stiffly reminded Michigan that when she was ad
mitted, in December, 1816, she had been granted a border
that ran ten miles north of this line and nobody had com
plained, hence there could be no yelp about it now. Indiana's
admission had occurred at a time when old Governor Cass was
out on one of his Indian forays, and no one had taken the
trouble to challenge the claim. Therefore, that strip of land
was lost to the new State of Michigan. Mason did not attempt
to make an issue of it.

But Maumee Bay, and the projected port area of Toledo,
was something else. Ohio had likewise claimed a generous

I834-I83S] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!"

193

MICHIGAN

K du* OA\ Vvxve ^rmtto S\rtYve. bud t

The surveyors' sketch accompanying the Harris Line survey of the
Michigan-Ohio border controversy of 1835. The sketch was the one sub
mitted to Congress explaining the territory in dispute.

slice of Michigan Territory upon gaining admittance, and
Michigan was now challenging the grab.

In 1816, while the northern border of Indiana was being
surveyed, Ohio had ordered a new survey run simultaneously.
The Surveyor-General's office at Washington had sent out
William A. Harris, with instructions to run the line as set
forth in the Ordinance of 1787; that is, due east from the
southern tip of Lake Michigan. Harris, however, for reasons
which have since been in dispute, ran his line so that it angled
just a little northward from its starting point, just enough
so that it came out on the northern tip of Maumee Bay, placing
the whole port area in Ohio. Governor Lucas was standing

194 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

pat on the "Harris Line", which was Ohio's northern border
when she was admitted as a State.

Mason's opening gun in the "Toledo War" was his signa
ture on a bill passed by the Territorial Council on January 26,
1835, authorizing the people of Michigan to hold a constitu
tional convention and form a State government. There was no
Congressional authorization for such a move. In fact, Mason
had twice been warned not to try to "burglarize" Michigan
into the Union with any such pressure tactics. But this time
he went ahead anyhow. The convention, held at Ann Arbor,
promptly applied for admission as a State with a southern
border fixed on the old "Fulton Line".

Governor Lucas countered this move with the appointment
of a commission to put up prominent markers all along the
"Harris Line". Mason replied with a bill in the Council making
it unlawful for any person, "not a citizen of Michigan Ter
ritory," to exercise official functions anywhere within its bor
ders, on pain of a $1,000 fine and five years' imprisonment.
This bill, signed on February 12, 1835, aroused great indigna
tion in Washington, where it was viewed as a highhanded at
tempt on Mason's part to prevent a peaceful solution of the
problem. It gave him the power of arrest and a whacking
penalty, which Congress knew he was planning to use against
the engineers then at Toledo finishing the locks of the new
Maumee Canal. This canal was an Ohio project and a source
of pride to the whole State.

In order to protect the precious canal, Governor Lucas
grew equally highhanded. He straightway organized the dis
puted terrain into a new Ohio county, which he called Lucas,
containing two townships, Sylvania and Port Lawrence. He
sent a set of county officers, including a sheriff and a judge,
with orders to hold court there and thus defy Mason's attempt
to administer it. On February 23rd, the county began to func
tion.

The first round went to Governor Lucas on points. He had
his boundary marked and his civil officers in possession. Mason,
spurred to action, took the field as a sort of generalissimo,

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR I" 195

mobilizing the militia, calling for volunteers, chartering lake
transports. He dispatched his friend Colonel Norvell post
haste to Washington, to howl for "protection".

Mason's strategy was to raise as much fuss as possible,
hoping to spar for time until Michigan could be admitted as a
State under her new constitution, whereupon he could appeal
to the Supreme Court. There he knew he would win a clean
decision. The Ohio authorities knew it, too. They saw they
must block that move at all costs. They sharply reminded the
politicians in Congress that Indiana stood solidly beside Ohio
on the question; that Ohio had twenty-one electoral votes,
Indiana had fourteen more, and Michigan had none.

In the great game of politics, Michigan had no chips. An
drew Jackson was Mason's friend, but he was also a politician.
He could not stomach the thought of a noisy bloc of dissenters
in Congress thwarting him on every proposal, and fighting
him and the Party in every election. He had to purchase peace
with this bloc of votes. It was imperative.

The national press was having a field day over the issue,
strongly influenced in Mason's favor. Behind the scenes the
Ohio politicians were lining up a regular blockade in Congress,
determined to steam-roller their demands through no matter
how much popular support Mason had. In desperation, the
President assigned Attorney General Benjamin F. Butler of
Massachusetts to investigate and recommend a solution.

Butler investigated. His report blew the lid off the case,
and destroyed whatever chance there might have been of secur
ing an agreement by peaceful negotiation. He said Michigan's
title to the strip was unquestionably genuine. There was
nothing the President could do in the courts, and if the Federal
government started to intervene forcibly, its officers would
probably be shot by partisans of both sides. However, Butler
continued, "some contingency might arise" which would jus
tify the President in removing Mason from office. That was
Butler's solution. He thought Mason "too zealous in enforcing
what he believes to be the rights of Michigan". Fire Mason,
he said, and get a yes man in his place.

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

When he heard of this brilliant bit of political opportunism,
Mason was infuriated. From Washington came a succession of
letters. His friends at the capital were frightened. Colonel
Norvell wrote: "You must abandon the project in all haste.
The President will not hesitate to demand your removal."

Old General Cass, who had seen this problem coming to a
boil for two decades, wrote philosophically: u This is the most
dastardly piece of political manipulation I have ever seen.
Ohio has not a leg to stand on before the courts. Yet you are
about to be sacrificed to political pressure." He reminded
Mason about all the votes in Congress against him, and ad
vised the young executive to approach the problem with the
"utmost caution".

Mason saw himself being made the goat in a political frame-
up. He took counsel. He was going to be fired; he realized
that. But as he pondered the situation he tried to see wherein
he could make capital out of it; how to salvage enough to go
on to fresh triumphs, greater heights. This was not going to be
the end of him.

He could not surrender. His pledge to the people prevented
that, and he was not the kind of man who could give in to
anything under pressure, or threats. He had to go on. What
would happen ?

The Territory was well past the 60,000 minimum popula
tion demanded by Congress as a condition of statehood. The
new constitution was neatly inscribed on parchment, and the
first party conventions were to be held that summer under its
provisions. Sentiment throughout the counties was running
wild in all sorts of village demonstrations for immediate state
hood. The Democratic convention would offer him the Gov
ernorship, and elections would be held in the fall.

If he could maintain his popularity at almost fever pitch
throughout the summer, he would be unbeatable. He would
delay; he would keep the agitation going, and he would not
concede an inch. He would rally the whole Territory behind
him, or as much of it as he could mobilize. And he would make
a noise like a big army on the march, to keep a desire for open

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 197

hostilities in the hearts of Ohio people sublimated as much
as possible.

He said nothing to anyone about his plans. Immediately after
the receipt of these warnings from Washington, events in
Michigan moved rapidly toward a military outbreak. Troops
drilled; supplies were procured. General Joe Brown galloped
to remote farms and settlements, waving a manifesto from
Mason calling up troops for a war with Ohio. With yells and
virile roars, the men responded.

Out from Washington came two worried mediators, Richard
Rush of Philadelphia and Benjamin C. Howard of Baltimore.
They interviewed Mason at Detroit. He told them he would
hold operations in abeyance until they could call a meeting
with Governor Lucas, at which the problem might be settled
across the tabl^ In the meantime, however, he insisted that
Ohio remove its civil officers and others claiming jurisdiction
from the disputed territory.

Governor Lucas told the mediators bluntly that he was con
ceding nothing and would not even discuss arbitration. He had
plenty of political influence, and was at the moment reading
pledges of support from more Congressmen at Washington.
He said he would do all right unless the Federal government
intervened, which he feared would provoke warfare.

Since arbitration had failed, the mediators returned to De
troit and told Mason the sad story which was the real reason
for their visit. They had a personal message from the Presi
dent. In it, Jackson renewed his personal affection for Mason
but warned him that he would have to surrender to Ohio un
conditionally. The method the mediators recommended was
simple. Michigan was not to attempt to enforce the Act of
February I2th, the one containing the heavy penalty for the
attempted exercise of official functions by non-citizens of Michi
gan Territory. Just forget that, they told Mason. Don't en
force it ; allow Ohio to finish its canal and build up the area,
and Jackson would reward him later with a generous land
settlement for his new State in place of the Toledo area.

Mason was sorry, but he would not wink at non-enforcement

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

of laws because somebody told him to. Not even the President
had the right to require that of him. "I owe Jackson every-
thing," he said, "but even the President must execute the duly
voted laws of the nation." Furthermore, if Jackson thought
he was just a political puppet who could be manipulated that
way, then the President ought to remove him and appoint some
one else. He finished with this sentence : "I will submit to my
fate without a murmur, and even be satisfied with the result."

Messrs. Rush and Howard returned to Washington in awe
of him, convinced that Stevens Thomson Mason was the most
conscientious man ever to hold public office. They reported to
Jackson that he had, in effect, told them to go jump in the lake,
Jackson had no alternative but to act.

He knew Mason was right, and that Michigan's case was
legally bombproof. But he would have to gQ. Jackson, with
Mason's scalp figuratively at his belt, went forth to purchase
political peace with those thirty-five electoral votes.

Mason knew that formal notification of his dismissal was
only a matter of time. He was given a tremendous ovation at
the Democratic State convention at Ann Arbor, and nominated
by whooping acclamation to be the first Governor of the State.
Quietly he strengthened the sheriff's posse in Lenawee County,
Michigan, near Toledo, to the size of a company of infantry.
This posse caught some of Lucas's surveyors running their
marker posts well within the Territory, and took them captive
to the town courthouse at Tecumseh, where they were tried
under the new law.

The surveyor himself and three rodmen managed to escape,
and ran terrorized through the underbrush to distant Perrys-
burg, Ohio, yelling that they had been kidnapped and held for
ransom by a party of armed thugs who wore uniforms and
looked like an army.

Excitement ran high throughout Ohio. Mobs gathered. In
Washington, as fast as the news could get there, the Ohio
delegation screamed civil war. This was the pretext Jackson
needed to remove Mason. He demanded an explanation via
military courier. Mason sent him the sheriff's report, which

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 199

denied that the expedition was military in character. The re
port described how the Ohio escapers ripped their clothes
trying to get through the bushes, lost hats and even shoes in
their haste, and stated that :

". . . the surveyors' fugitives made good time through the
swamp and arrived in Perrysburg the following morning with
nothing more serious than the loss of clothing, including a pair
of Major Stinckney's breeches a pair without a patch."

Major Stinckney, an officer in the Ohio militia, had a farm
near Perrysburg. His strapping six-foot son, Two Stinckney,
was a bully. His father, being a military man, called off his sons
by the numbers, and this happened to be the second. Two
Stinckney had been in the party with his father, protecting the
surveyors, when the posse came along. He was ridden on a
rail back to Ohio, and there unceremoniously dumped off. The
people of Ohio took it as a personal insult.

A couple of days later, the Major himself was nabbed while
riding a horse on reconnaissance some miles inside Michigan's
area. The posse trussed him up with ropes like a big-game
specimen, and carried him fourteen miles to the courthouse
at Monroe. In this fracas, Two Stinckney stabbed a deputy,
who was the only casualty in the war.

However, on July i8th, a Michigan posse of more than
two hundred and fifty well-armed men swaggered into Toledo
and arrested all the Ohio officers visible. Several, in fact a
good many, escaped to Perrysburg. Some of them got thei*e
only two jumps ahead of this commando raid, and magnified
the tale to sound as if the whole population of Michigan was
on the march.

About August 15, 1835, Mason heard in Detroit that the
Ohio militia had been called out and was marching to Toledo.
The report was untrue, but he had no way of checking it. He
sent word to his own commander, General Brown, to move
forthwith to Toledo and hold it until further orders. With
the order he instructed Major Rowland to place into operation
the staff plan for such a contingency which the militia had
evolved many months previously. Troops converged on Toledo

2OO STEVENS THOMSON MASON

simultaneously from three directions. Loaded steam transports
appeared offshore. Ohio's spies galloped furiously back to
Governor Lucas with this information. Straightway, as Mason
had foreseen, the enthusiasm for battle on the part of the
Ohio boys cooled noticeably.

Governor Lucas's plan called for the arrival of his troops
at Perrysburg on September 5th. On the morning of Septem
ber 2nd, Michigan troops were holding Toledo and were de
ployed in battle formation around it. The Ohio scouts reported
the formation, and the Ohio men stayed well back.

Mason was on horseback, dashing in and out of General
Brown's camp, and responding to the cheers of the men. He
took a subtle part in the game himself. He wrote to Ike Row
land, newly promoted to colonel :

"Colonel Rowland: Have all the ammunition forwarded
by tomorrow's boat. Do not forget the six-pounder. We have
balls here. Mason."

This sinister-sounding dispatch promptly found its way into
enemy hands, as Mason no doubt expected. The records do not
mention any six-pounder, and he probably didn't have one
and wouldn't have known what to do with it if he had. But the
letter sounded mighty confident. It served its purpose.

South of Maumee Bay, the Ohio forces were dubious. They
were not as anxious to invade Michigan as they had been.
They were outnumbered, and apparently bewildered to find
themselves opposed to a formidable army and a fleet of trans
ports, when they had expected to find a sheriff's posse. On
Sunday, September 6th, the situation was extremely tense.
If a sudden shot had been fired, a massacre would certainly
have resulted. The Ohio commanders reviewed their instruc
tions. They were to proceed to Toledo, and there hold a session
of the Lucas County court, and produce witnesses and records
to testify that said session has indeed been held.

About midnight that night a party of cloaked horsemen
might have been seen filing slowly and silently past the sleeping
Michigan troops. It was composed of the judge of the new
court, his bailiff, the reporter, the sheriff and various witnesses.

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 201

Like so many ghosts they slipped into the slab town of Toledo.
They found a building that was empty, and gained entrance.
Carefully blacking out the windows, they lighted a tallow
dip and proceeded to hold a court session. By three o'clock in
the morning the clerk had finished writing the record, the dip
was snuffed out, and they cautiously returned to the street.

Someone remembered that there was an inn near by. Was
anybody thirsty? What a question, they muttered. They awoke
the landlord and made him come down and open the bar. He
filled big mugs of good Toledo beer. The party was just at the
"here's how" stage when some local yokel with a sense of
humor burst in and bellowed at the top of his lungs that the
"Michiganders" were coming. The court cast took off from
there in all directions, through the windows and out of the
back door.

For four days the Michigan forces were unaware that Gov
ernor Lucas had outwitted them. They were drilling, cheering,
yelling obscenities at the muttering Ohio men. More than two
thousand strong, they were eating all the stored food of
farmers for miles around. Everybody was having a good time,
until September i oth.

On that day, Mason was riding a black horse around the drill
area about noon, while the marching men were forming up
for a formal review. The ranks were finally quiet, when a
dramatic coincidence occurred. A mounted messenger dashed
up, horse and rider breathless. "Sir, a message from Washing
ton." Mason's hand was steady as he ripped open the large
sealed envelope. His classic features betrayed no emotion.

Then he held up his hand for silence.

"Men," he announced. "I'm not Governor any more. This
letter says I've been removed for being too zealous in Michi
gan's cause."

In utter, supine silence the men blinked at him, openmouthed.
He was seen to hand the reins of his horse to an orderly, dis
mount, and stride into General Brown's tent. Before anyone
could think of anything to say, the General emerged.

"You're all dismissed," he said. "The war's over. Go home."

202 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

That was the end of the Toledo War.

General Cass said that Jackson had "tears in his eyes" when
he signed the removal order. Cass said further that he walked
up and down, shouting at "that young hotspur governor" who
had gotten him in such a predicament. The letter let young
Mason down very gently indeed by reminding him that since
Porter's death there had been no regularly-appointed governor,
and that the President had let matters drift along because
he did not like to fill such an important post by a recess appoint
ment. But now Congress was in session again and would shortly
recommend a new Governor. Jackson had appointed John
Scott Horner, of Warrenton, Virginia, to Mason's post, and
removed Mason so that Horner might have a free hand to
select his own policies.

Mason quickly discovered that this peace offering cost the
President a high price. Ohio was immediately mollified by
Mason's removal, but no able Democrat could be found who
was willing to follow the popular figure of the Boy Governor
on the Michigan stage. Most of them realized that the ap
pointment was only temporary, and would terminate with the
admittance of Michigan as a State. Those to whom it was
offered quickly turned it down, adding to Jackson's embarrass
ment. Mason heard from one such potential appointee, Charles
Shaler, of Pittsburgh, but did not know who Horner was. No
one had ever heard of him. Apparently he filled the bill; an
unknown, a Democrat, and a man who didn't read the news
papers.

Detroit was going wild. Some stores were draped in mourn
ing; others were treating all comers to free beer. Banquets
were held in every hotel in town, all toasting Mason and pass
ing laudatory resolutions. Mason's mere appearance on the
street was the signal for a crowd to gather and cheers to follow
him. The Council passed a special resolution hailing him as a
hero. The leading citizens of the city gathered at the Mansion
House to honor him, presenting him with an engraved scroll
which commended him for the "able and satisfactory manner

1834-1835] "THAT YOUNG HOTSPUR!" 203

in which he had discharged his office since his appointment",
and testifying to the citizens' "high sense of gratitude". The
same man, David C. McKinstry, who had led the mass meeting
against him at the time of his appointment, now headed the
testimonial committee. All the clubs were holding 'Victory"
dinners, and making up rhymes about Mason and his adventures
with Lucas. One of them, well-remembered, went like this :

"Old Lucas gave his orders all for to hold a court.
But Stevens Thomson Mason he thought he'd have some sport.
He called upon the Wolverines and asked them for to go
To meet the rebel Lucas, his court to overthrow."

There were about twenty verses, describing the ridiculous
adventures in the so-called war. It was Mason's great day.
He was the greatest popular figure the Territory had ever
produced.

CHAPTER VII

LITTLE JACK HORNER

THE NEWS or Homer's appointment as Acting Governor of
Michigan Territory was spread from town to town by tolling
bells and funeral-draped wagons. For several days the citizens
couldn't understand it. Andy Jackson was the great national
hero of the period, just as Stevens T. Mason was the dominant
personality of the Territory. Friction between them, culminat
ing in angry words and abrupt dismissal, was something that
just couldn't happen. In the Pioneer and Historical Collection
files are old letters from wrinkled septuagenarians who told of
their stunned astonishment when the saw news came. To some
of them, names like Jackson and Mason belonged together
and stood for the same kind of leader. Citizens of the ham
lets met in the public squares, and at the homes of the chief
citizen, wondering what the world was coming to.

It occurred to many of them that elections weren't very far
off, and Michigan thus had a chance to make things up to
Mason. He had been the victim, and had taken it like a man.
But he was a sacrifice to an ideal : he represented their wishes
and their feelings. What had happened to him came about
because he chose to be loyal to them rather than to the man
who had originally appointed him. So, inevitably, Mason had
been punished humiliated by the wily Mr. Butler for cham
pioning the plain people. But the great day was coming! They
were going to elect a Governor pretty soon. That would be the
day they'd tell the Boy Governor how much they admired his
pluck and gumption in telling off old Lucas.

Gossip between neighbors waiting for the cascade of golden
grain to pour into the grist-mill hopper, to be exchanged for

204

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HORNER 205

sacks of flour; talk in the village store, and on the veranda of
the pillared courthouse the voices of the plain people, telling
of their fondness for Mason and their feeling of obligation.
There would be prematurely old farmers, holding up a Balti
more or New York paper to the feeble glow of a tallow dip
and reading therein, by the miracle of the Federal post road
only two weeks late, that Mason's plight had aroused deep
feeling in the East. Michigan men in Washington wrote to the
little rural weeklies that Mason was the universal topic there,
and that everyone was looking to Jackson for an explanation.

The aged President had nothing to say. Neither had Gov
ernor Lucas. Maps were pored over in the Surveyor General's
office, and a basis for a land settlement with Michigan worked
out, as a compensation for the impending loss of the "Toledo
Strip". Jackson well knew, from the volume of correspondence
pouring in, that Michigan was going ahead with statehood
plans regardless of his advice, or Cass's. He could have
stopped Mason's share in it with a word, but he preferred to
keep silent. A big showdown was coming up in Congress, and
Jackson decided to stay neutral.

In Washington sat Lucius Lyon, Michigan's voteless dele
gate. To his office came Senator Preston of South Carolina,
a politician who had been one of the ringleaders in the anti-
Michigan Congressional bloc. It was too bad, opined the Sena
tor, but that was politics for you; always two sides, and im
possible to satisfy everyone. But Michigan stood to gain a very
practical reward if things didn't go too far yes sir, a very
practical reward. Lyon ought to write Mason and advise him,
in defining the borders of his new State, to concede the "Toledo
Strip" to Ohio but to claim as compensation a vast timbered
wilderness north of Mackinac and encompassing the whole
southern shore of Lake Superior. All the land included in a
tremendous triangle formed by Lake Michigan, Lake Superior
and the Menominee River would be granted to the new State
as a bonus for keeping quiet and not raising a fuss over Gov
ernor Lucas's occupation of Toledo.

As a compensation for the priceless harbor area and river

2O6 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

highway at Toledo, such a proposal was insulting. The Senator
felt secure enough to offer it anyway, in the name of his bloc of
colleagues who were fighting for Lucas in Congress, knowing
that Lyon couldn't do much about it. Lyon indifferently wrote
of the offer to Governor Mason at Detroit, saying that in his
opinion the only beneficial result to Michigan of this offer was
the hint that, if accepted, it would lead to the removal of the
Territorial government from Detroit and the establishment of
a new Territory of Wisconsin across the lake.

In Detroit, Mason paced his hearthrug at home, and pon
dered. He sought out old Indian reports of the region, which
were vague. He talked to Henry Schoolcraft and a few old
pioneers who had been up there. They advised against including
the area in the new State ; it was entirely wild and could never
be adapted to settlement. In taking it, Schoolcraft said, the
State would have to drop all claim to the "Toledo Strip" in
exchange for a series of mountain ranges with deep, inaccessible
valleys which would need a small army of marshals, surveyors,
administrators and road builders merely to control. Mason
believed it could not be settled during his lifetime and probably
not within that of the following generation.

During this period of indecision, more letters came. Mr.
Lyon was showing considerable interest, not to say enthusiasm,
for the venture. He had heard that the unknown land was a
rich virgin timber and hunting area, with easy transport on
Lake Superior and up the river to most parts of it. It was a
whole new frontier, ready for exploitation. "I, for one," he
remarked, "shall go in for all the country Congress will give us,
west of the lakes. We will take advantage of it and let the
Devil take the hindmost, as the gamesters say. We can raise our
own Indians for all time to come, and even a little bear meat
for delicacy."

Mason had a feeling that Lucius Lyon knew something about
this area that he did not want to describe too fully. Whatever it
was future fishing revenue, rich contracts with Astor's North
west Fur Company which controlled the trading post at Macki-
nac Island,, or perhaps mining in the mountains- Lyon knew

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HORNER 2O7

something no one in Michigan then understood, Washington
was a good place to pick up inside information of that kind.
Lyon kept referring to this proposed grant as the "Upper
Peninsula of Michigan" in his correspondence. It was nothing
of the kind; neither a peninsula nor upper. It was a stretch
of land between the Mississippi and Lake Michigan, bordered
on the north by Lake Superior. The southernmost tip of the
area came well down the western shore of Lake Michigan,
almost to the settlement at Green Bay. For convenience sake
Mason adopted the term, and it remained.

Engrossed as he was in the obstetrics of Michigan's birth,
Mason had forgotten that he was just a private citizen, out of
power. Everyone had been calling him Governor Mason since
the Toledo skirmish, and he indeed felt that he was in fact
Governor of what, he could not have said. On September 19,
1835, he was yanked back to the realities of the situation by
the arrival of John S. Horner, the new Acting Governor of
the Territory.

Carpetbag in hand and a sour expression on his round face,
Horner made his way immediately to the vacated office in the
capital building occupied so long by Mason. No one paid the
slightest attention to him, even after he had announced him
self several times to the staff. He was there, he said, as the
representative of the Federal government and here was his
letter of appointment. He was now taking command. No one
appeared to have heard him. Horner was a short fellow,
middle-aged, stout and double-chinned. He had a rasping,
martinet quality which grated on people. When he finally
was forced to call at Mason's home and ask for a formal in
troduction to his office force, Mason at once thought him
opinionated and stuffy. But perhaps the young Moses* opinion
was biased.

Horner impressed Detroit as a stuffed shirt, and was coldly
ignored. No doubt he was doing all anyone could in a situation
like that, but it required someone with a hide like a rhinoceros
to survive the treatment that -"Little Jack Horner" received.
Horner had only one influential friend, John Forsyth, Jackson's

2O8 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Secretary of State, who had gotten him appointed. To Forsyth,
Horner began pouring out his woes in a flood of self-pitying
letters, which began with the statement that there was no
authority of any kind in Detroit when he arrived and that he
had to "take command" at once even though it was late in
the evening when he found the capitol building.

He was a bridegroom of only seven months. Mrs. Horner,
who was with him, was a sweet, demure little thing who was
immediately mothered by all the Detroit society matrons and
became the center of much clucking fuss. At the same time her
husband was outrageously insulted at every possible oppor
tunity. On September 24th he and Mrs. Horner were intro
duced to society at a banquet in the American Hotel. He was
booed; she was applauded. He went alone to a meeting at
the Detroit City Hall, and addressed a public meeting of lead
ing citizens. They adopted, and presented him with, a set of
resolutions in fancy terms which told him to go back to Vir
ginia and stay there. Horner became irritated, which in a figure
of his physical rotundity, made him appear ridiculous. Then
he was infuriated.

His letters to Forsyth are essays in futility; they constitute
a ready-made plot for a novel about a man's inability to under
stand himself or his environment. He wrote that he was going
to pardon all the persons arrested by Michigan in the Toledo
War, except Two Stinckney. He was going to show these rude
provincials that they couldn't high-pressure him. He didn't
care what they thought. A wholesale pardoning, furthermore,
would be popular with the Congressional bloc and might be
what the Administration would like from him. "I fear the re
sults will be unsavory to some extent," he remarked. It was a
masterpiece of understatement.

When he set about freeing all the Ohio trespassers from
Michigan jails, everyone in the Territory immediately con
cluded that he had been sent out from Washington to undo all
of Mason's work and play into Governor Lucas's wily hands.
He was openly accused in the newspapers of being a Lucas
tool and working against Michigan. A riot developed at the

1835-^836] LITTLE JACK HQRNER 209

scene of the late Toledo War which got out of hand and
threatened to take up where the War left off, and be as bloody
as the War wasn't. Horner, full of the dignity of his position,
mounted a horse and rode thither in person. That colossal
blunder ruined his prestige in Mason's estimation.

"I went down there to speak with them, and to turn the
lion in their natures into the gentleness of the lamb/ 5 he re
ported to Forsyth. "My condition was this : at Monroe, the seat
of the strife, amidst a wild and dangerous population, without
any aid, a friend, a servant or a bed to sleep in, in the midst
of a mob excited by the enemies of the administration and
bad men, I could not enlist a friend as an officer of the Terri
tory. How was my authority to be enforced or the government
in my hands respected under the circumstances? A design was
formed against my honor and my life. The district attorney
had the effrontery to say that if he acted, the mob would throw
him and myself into the river."

They booed, yelled, threw clods of dirt at him, and waved
him off the steps of the Monroe courthouse while he was try
ing to speak.

"I tried conciliation," Horner wrote. "I tried entreaty, ap
peals to their patriotism, indeed every resort but force which
I should not have been able to obtain had I desired it. There
was never a government in Christendom with such officers,
civil and military, and filled with such doctrines as Michigan."

The district attorney, Mr. James Q. Adams of Monroe,
warned Horner to get off the platform and spur his horse out
of there before the mob began throwing something more
pungent than clods of dirt. Mr. Adams was so nervous that
he thought he could smell tar simmering and feathers burning
that very moment, and wanted no part of that deal. He angrily
told Horner that he was quitting, as of then, and undoubtedly
added some advice as to what Horner could do with the job.
Whereupon he went home. Horner pleaded with him to stay,
and called after him that he wouldn't accept his resignation.

"I would have accepted," he complained to Forsyth, "but
no counsellor in Michigan would accept the office in either

2IO STEVENS THOMSON MASON

federal or territorial courts, for the reason that all of them
are looking forward to office under the new state government
on the first day of November next."

The Monroe mob fumed and began making hostile noises
when Homer shouted that he was going to free the prisoners.
Some of them milled toward him and he had just time to scurry
off the stone steps and mount his steed, on which he made an
inglorious exit toward Detroit. The crowd shouted at him that
if he came back they'd have a welcome committee with a rail
for him to ride on. Horner, not answering, galloped off.

He plodded along the road and reached Ypsilanti late at
night. Tired and disgusted, he went immediately to bed at
an inn. In the wee hours of the morning, word of what he had
attempted at Monroe filtered into the town. Citizens gathered
beneath his window, at first by twos and threes, but soon they
were coming from all directions. Their angry voices awoke
the sleeping Horner. He got out of bed and tiptoed to the
window.

A rock thumped up against the wall not a foot from the glass
panes. Below, the crowd was noisily asking each other where
a fence rail could be found. Horner popped back in bed, ter
rified. The whole guest list at the inn where he was staying
was aroused now, demanding to know what in Tunket was go
ing on down than . . The landlord was worried about the mob
and was hanging out an upper window, soothing them. "Now,
boys. Please, now!"

The boys didn't find a fence rail and contented themselves
with pelting the wooden walls with rocks, clods and blobs of
filth, meanwhile shouting their opinion of Horner at the top
of their voices. In the morning the landlord billed him for the
damage.

"Respectable people," comments an account of this episode,
"deprecated such conduct. The Whig papers seized on it as a
direct result of Democratic precepts and practices. Horner
was subjected to the indignity of an old-time charivari." In
Detroit, a resolution introduced into the Council by the Whigs
attempted to sympathize with Horner, and expressed regret

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HORNER 211

that he should be subjected to this brand of treatment. It was
beaten, thirty-one to five votes.

Homer was a man who wouldn't learn. He was aghast at
this outbreak of hostility toward him, but he was determined
to tame these wild pioneers and whack them with every ad
ministrative bludgeon he could find. He was going to cut them
down to his size and make them like it. He did neither; he
never succeeded in these punitive countermeasures, and Michi
gan surely did not like it. If Andy Jackson had combed the
country to find a man who could enhance Mason's towering
popularity even more, he could not have found a better man
than Horner.

He stubbornly refused to admit the fact that the State gov
ernment was getting under way all about him. He did not
recognize it, therefore it did not exist. In the capitol building
he was elbowed out of the way while workmen changed the
signs on all the doors and moved bulky cabinets from one office
to another. Polling places were decided upon. Registration of
voters was under way by midsummer; by early fall it was
nearly complete.

Mason did not add to Horner' s embarrassment by colliding
with him in the narrow capitol corridors. As soon as he had
taken Homer's mental measure and grinned inwardly at what
he found, Mason packed up and went to New 'York. He
thought it would be just as well to be out of the way while
Horner was battling Michigan's outraged feelings, and in addi
tion he needed a vacation. So the glitteringly handsome youth,
not yet twenty-four, made the rounds of fashionable tailors
where he aroused their usual admiration while being measured
for resplendent new costumes; he visited family friends of im
portance; met Washington Irving for the first time, and
through him was introduced to swanky New York society.
New York was well aware of the Mason legend even then.
The city lionized him. He was interviewed by reporters and
formally invited to great homes. Richard M. Johnson, a friend
of John T. Mason and a famous character in the War of 1812,
took him in tow and introduced him to Tammany.

212 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

The anniversary of the Battle of the Thames, Colonel John
son's most successful exploit, happened to fall on the very day
when Michigan would be trooping to the polls to elect its
first Governor and State administration. Johnson invited him
to a banquet at Tammany Hall on that evening, and Mason
showed so little concern for the outcome that he consented to
stay. Johnson had been announced as the principal speaker,
but he said he thought Mason ought to say a few words.

As the people of Michigan marched to the polls on October
5, 1835, Mason was receiving a flattering reception at the old
Tammany Hall. He quickly became the center of attention,
and his few words, amplified by quick extemporizing into a full-
length address, dominated the meeting. Afterward, said John
son, Tammany rose to its feet and applauded. It was nothing
compared to the applause Mason received in Michigan.

He was in by a landslide. Election day and the day following,
the 6th, were holidays throughout Michigan by nobody's
proclamation, merely by common agreement. At every settle
ment and frontier town they came, on horseback and in buck-
board wagons ; they swarmed to crossroads churches and town
ship halls ; they assembled with their sunbonneted women and
their pans of johnnycake and baked beans. And they voted
for Mason. In Detroit, bonfires blazed all night in the Campus
Martius while impromptu parades kept everyone awake across
the city. They yelled Mason's name, their shouts echoed by
the thumping of drums and the roar of voices.

Mason received 7,508 votes, compared with 814 for his
closest rival. That was more than all the other aspirants' totals
added together. His whole ticket went in with him a top-
heavy majority in each House of the Legislature and all his
elected officials whom he had sponsored. Edward Mundy, his
Lieutenant Governor, polled about the same proportion as
Mason himself. The constitution he had worked over, on so
many long winter nights, went in by a vote of 6,299 to 1,359.
Far out in the townships, returns dribbled in. The new counties
of Clinton, Ionia, Kent and Ottawa forwarded only ninety
votes, but all but six were for Mason and his Democrats.

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HQRNER 213

Where were the Whigs? Where was Woodbridge? The
old schemer, too wily to get his feet caught in a bear trap, had
boycotted the election. The Whigs held a party caucus at
which Woodbridge explained that he did not think the action
of the people in setting up a State government should be con
sidered legal until it had the consent of Congress. This trans
parent alibi saved the Whig face, whiskers and all, and was
accepted as the only way out of a resounding defeat and a
serious blow to Whig influence.

The State Senate now had sixteen members and the House
had forty-nine, mostly loyal Mason Democrats. The party's
candidate for the unrecognized seat in Congress, Isaac Crary
of Marshall, polled over 6,000 votes more than his only com
petitor.

Quite calmly, hoping not to be noticed in the Mason excite
ment, Woodbridge had entered his own name for the post of
Delegate to Congress from the Territorial areas across the
lake, which was being decided at the same time in the Wisconsin
area. Mason's choice for the post had been George W. Jones,
of Mineral Point, Wisconsin. Jones represented the area, and
it was agreed that when lyrichigan began operating under the
new constitution, he was to become the official delegate at
Washington.

First returns indicated a slight Whig lead. Woodbridge im
mediately demanded a certificate of election. As the returns
kept coming in during the next few days, the Whig lead
dwindled, then disappeared. Jones, too, had won. Mason's
sweep was complete. He was the first Governor of Michigan,
and to a degree never equalled since he was the personal ruler
of the State. About that time he observed his twenty-fourth
birthday.

2"

Mail, which travelled at night, could reach Washington several
days ahead of a passenger leaving Detroit at the same time.
The news of the illegal, precedent-shattering election reached

214 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Washington so fast that Mason had hardly started homeward
before Congress was viewing with alarm. Tongues were wag
ging. Politicians asked timidly what Ohio would think; how
would Governor Lucas react to Mason's assumption of almost
dictatorial power only a few weeks after they had shut him
up by removing him ? I

Mason didn't care what 'Governor Lucas thought. Immedi
ately upon arrival he sent copies of the new constitution to the
President, to the Cabinet Secretaries and to Congress for study.
Upon that constitution and upon proof that the population
minimum had been far exceeded, he based his demand for
immediate recognition as a State. He wrote to Lucius Lyon
and remarked that he had fulfilled every condition, answered
every question and satisfied every requirement, including the
fiat acceptance of the Upper Peninsula and the abandonment
of all claims to the "Toledo Strip". Now, he said. Now! He
wanted statehood now !

Of course, replied Lyon, such a demand was just a gesture.
The election of a Representative and the appointment of two
Senators left Mason in the same position as before, since none
of them could be seated and therefore Michigan had no voice
in Congress. He himself, said Lyon, was no longer Territorial
Delegate and there was no one who could speak for the State.

Mason didn't care about that. He reminded Lyon that he
himself was to become one of the two Senators, and that dur
ing the interval before his appointment he could act as the
State's Washington representative. Soon afterward, Mason
predicted, formal admission would be obtained.

Both Mason and Lyon were happy, after the election of
1835. The Michigan constitution arrived and was proudly
exhibited around Washington. It was received with lavish
praise. The President himself was pleased. The document was
the work of the Constitutional Convention, which had worked
all winter on it. Mason, as a .Federal officer, had not been a
member of the Convention, but he had attended all the meet
ings and had inspired its more democratic provisions. It was

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HQRNER 215

largely his work, and incorporated his ideas. It stood for his
definition of the term "popular government".

Most democratic of all State constitutions, Michigan's was
at the same time the most socialistic. It provided for State
ownership and operation of public utilities like railroads and
canals ; it set up State-supervised schools everywhere, and au
thorized the creation of a giant State University which, to
Mason's nimble mind, was destined to become an important
center of higher education. The constitution, in addition, set
up machinery for widespread State employment which reminds
us strongly of the late WPA.

Under its provisions every male citizen over the age of
twenty-one had a vote, regardless of property qualifications
or party registry. The Supreme Court and the county courts
were made into an interlocking chain of judicial fortresses,
protecting the population against the whims and errors of the
local justices of the peace. Only two officers besides the Gov
ernor and Lieutenant Governor required popular election and
thus a political background": members of Congress and of the
Legislature. All the rest were appointive, and two of them
required confirmation by both Houses of the Legislature : the
State Treasurer and the Superintendent of Public Instruction
showing Mason's emphasis on his school program.

All elective officers served for terms of two years. Again,
this is Mason's idea of militant democracy at work. He be
lieved that these officers should represent very closely the senti
ment of the people. Throughout the constitution there is con
stant evidence of Mason's sincere desire to let the people rule;
to make it easy for them to give voice to their approval or dis
approval through frequent elections and referendums.

He was dealing, in 1835, with a thinly settled peninsula,
crisscrossed by poor wagon trails and studded here and there
with new slab-pine towns. He was conscious of how the pioneers
felt about concentrated power, and that most of the emigrants
had come t to Michigan to escape that very situation in the
East. He thought they would discuss their community problems

2l6 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

in town meetings with dignity, and that they would forever
distinguish between liberty and uncontrolled license. He credited
his people, that is, with his own nobility of character. He never
made a graver error.

This handing over of political power to the liberty-loving
citizen was a wide-open invitation to politicians to usurp it,
and to crooks to pervert the meaning of his liberality. Gleefully
the people adopted it and voted him into office to put his
Utopian theories into practice.

The Convention had set the Governor's salary at two thou
sand dollars per year, paid quarterly, with an expense account
for travel on State business. It was a generous raise from the
twelve hundred he had been receiving as Territorial Secretary.
Besides, he was no longer bearing the whole expense of the
family's support His father was contributing occasionally, and
helping even more by inviting Mary Mason and the girls
to visit him for several weeks at a time at the Saint Charles
Hotel in New Orleans, then his base of operations. Mason, with
relief, saw himself approaching a financial position which would
justify him in thinking, at least, of getting married someday.

His immediate problem was something like a wedding with
out a honeymoon. He was about to be inaugurated Governor at
a big public celebration, scheduled for November 2, 1835. He
knew that when he mounted the rostrum to take his oath of
office he would be giving Congress a figurative kick in the pants
which would' bring down upon him the official wrath of the
Administration, It was a bit of political nose-thumbing so
audacious that it was covered by reporters from many large
Eastern newspapers as well as by all the Michigan weeklies
regardless of party sympathy. For a day he would become the
center of national attention. He prepared for it accordingly.

The newsworthy phase of Mason's situation was not the
existence of the State government, but the way Mason had
brought it into existence, Michigan was the next to the last
of the great bites of land organized as the Northwest Territory
in 1787 to clear the barriers and enter statehood" Her real
development was held up until the opening of the Erie Canal

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HORNER 217

and the appearance of excellent steamboats on the Lakes.
Then, after 1825, her influx of population began. In ten years,
Michigan had changed from a virtual wilderness of unexplored
forests and swamps to a thriving agricultural area of more
than 90,000 population and dozens of chartered towns and
villages. Michigan was ready for statehood and should have
been admitted long before.

Other States had politely applied for admission and had
entered the Union like invited guests, through the front door.
Michigan was like a burglar jimmying the back window. Michi
gan was forever plotting, threatening, embarrassing her sister
States and demanding her rights. Thrown out by an indignant
Congress, Michigan was back again with a ticket called a
constitution, by which it once more demanded admission. Con
gress, like an indignant hostess, told Michigan to wait in the
woodshed while a family conference was held to decide what
to do.

On November 2, 1835, Michigan had two separate and an
tagonistic forms of government. Horner's legal Territorial
government had no authority, but Mason's operating State
government had no legality. This put the United States of
America in a position not only embarrassing, but challenging.
The youth who had succeeded in creating this unprecedented
situation and who, in spite of being a "stripling", an "adoles
cent Adonis", a "Boy Governor", and other newspaper epithets,
had clung to power under both regimes, now found himself
famous.

Detroit felt as if a circus was in town on Inauguration Day.
Throngs of people lined the sidewalks, peering intently up
and down the streets as if wondering when the parade would
come along. Various accounts of the ceremonies found their
way into the Pioneer and Historical Collection, and the news
papers were explicit in their descriptions. The details are so
well recorded that Mason might have been inaugurated yester
day, so fresh and realistic is the scene we see.

We see the Governor, "his face singularly strong and hand
some," his eyes in animation seeming to change from blue to

2l8 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

gray, "while from a forehead broad and high was brushed
at times in seemingly aimless fashion a mass of wavy dark-
brown hair. The blush of youth was in his cheeks, and the vigor
of young years was disclosed in the alert and active move
ment of his well-nourished frame." He was four days past
his twenty-fourth birthday, and never looked as impressive as
he did on that day.

He came out of his narrow little house on Jefferson and
to'ok his place in an open carriage. Before him rode a troop of
cavalry in plumes and crossed white belts. The Michigan
militia under Colonel Ike Rowland formed ranks behind him.
As he set out, he was cheered. Crowds farther down Jefferson
heard this cheering and set up a similar clamor when the car
riage passed them. Mason kept doffing his stovepipe hat to
the crowd. As he turned at Jefferson and entered Woodward,
the crowds lining that wide thoroughfare took up the cry and
passed it along, cheering and applauding until the carriage
turned at Michigan Avenue and the Campus Martius for the
short remainder of the route to the capitol building.

The hoop-skirted and poke-bonneted ladies on the wooden
sidewalks waved tiny handkerchiefs. Men in draped tail coats
and stovepipe hats shouted. Mason bowed. At the capitol,
the carriage swung around the muddy dirt driveway and
stopped. Once more he waved as he stood up to dismount and
enter the building. He was seen to be wearing a black broad
cloth evening suit, with starched lace ruffles at the cuffs. His
gleaming expanse of stiff white shirt bosom was surmounted
by a high black satin neckstopk around a still-higher collar
which thrust twin starched points around his chin. Mason's
trousers were complete with the bootstraps under the instep
which were standard equipment with those extremely tight,
form-fitting garments, a practical device to keep them from
climbing up the wearer's leg. His wide-notched coat lapels
were of black silk, and the way those tails draped in a straight
line to the knee was a testimonial to the tailor's art.

The cruel high-pointed collar kept his neck up and chin high,
as in a vise. Coupled with that heavily starched dress shirt

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HORNER 219

front, he probably could not have looked down or bent over.
Fortunately, no poodle came along for him to trip over. His
heavy silk hat was worn straight upon his head, tilted fash
ionably a little to the right; his long gold-headed cane was
under his arm and white silk gloves on his dainty, long-fingered
hands. Instead of the familiar three-valanced broadcloth
opera cloak he had been so fond of wearing, Mason appeared
for his inaugural draped in a pure white fluffy-wool blanket,
with a long, rustling silken fringe dangling from it. People
were wearing them in New York instead of overcoats, and
Mason followed the fashion. It was the forerunner of the
famous shawl that Lincoln wore. Standing there on the capitol
steps, head up and smiling, one hand clutching this blanket
and the other raised high with his huge hat and stick, Mason
was the handsomest public figure of his time. The occasion
cried for the familiar Press Graphic and the too-familiar press
photographer of today, who should have left us a camera
record of the event.

He went inside and greeted his colleagues, then reappeared
on the capitol portico between the high stone pillars. He held
up his hand. He said that his regular inaugural address was
to be delivered the following day, but he could not appear for
the oath of office without thanking them all, yes, everyone, for
having helped to bring their State into being. If they would
wait, he said, the entire administrative staff would reappear
after the ceremony of oath-taking, so that the people could
see them. Most of them were unknown to the public. That was
where Detroit editors received a shock. Out came Kintsing
Pritchette, Mason's drinking pal. He was introduced as the
new Secretary of State. Flanking the Governor on the other
side stood the tall, broad-shouldered Ed Mundy of Ann Arbor,
the Lieutenant Governor. Clean-shaven, friendly, brilliant of
intellect and slow to take offense even from the quarrelsome
Whigs, Ed was the ideal foil for Mason's effervescent en
thusiasm.

In the line stood Ezra Convis of Calhoun County, the new
Speaker of the House; Isaac Crary, the lone Congressman-at-

22O STEVENS THOMSON MASON

large (so called because apparently there was no place to
put him) ; Reverend John D. Pierce, Superintendent of Public
Instruction; John J. Adam, chief clerk of the capitol. The
crowd gazed at them curiously. None save Pritchette was well
known. Pritchette was the topic of considerable speculation.
People wondered just how much influence Mason's "torts and
toddy society" was going to wield in the new government.
Pritchette probably was aware of this scrutiny. Not long after
ward, a wave of antagonism swept through the Legislature
directed against the so-called Detroit influence surrounding
Mason, and swaying him away from matters brought up by the
rural legislators.

This friction was not long in manifesting itself. Mason felt
it even as he stood before the flag-decorated rostrum in the
House chamber the following day, delivering his inaugural
address. The hall was jammed with legislators, reporters, in
quisitive small-town officials and plain people who had made
incredible journeys, in some cases, to squeeze in and become
suffocated in a corner merely to say they had heard the "Boy
Governor" speak. The little rosewood rostrum had a bunting
canopy over it, and the Constitution of Michigan lying on its
well-rubbed surface. Mason stood at one side in full view of the
audience, his fingertips resting lightly on the edge of the ros
trum and gesturing occasionally with the other hand. When
Alvin Smith was commissioned to paint Mason's official State
portrait he posed him in the same costume against this identical
background. The famed canvas which has so inspired Mason's
century-long list of successors in the gubernatorial chair depicts
him as he was delivering this address. He looks confident,
wholly at ease, and happy.

He spokfe for an hour. His voice was "full-rounded, and had
the charm of persuasion if it lacked the command of eloquence".
He pulled out all the stops and filled his address with long-
syllabled profundities which no doubt sounded very dignified
and impressive, but must have sent the rural delegation scurry
ing for the dictionary. It is heavy going for the modern reader,

LITTLE JACK HORNER 221

plowing through it in printed form. It must have sounded
ponderous to the audience, but words like those coming from
the lips of a virtual adolescent must have filled their hearts
with pride. The gist of the address was that he was grateful,
that he felt he had been called to the office to do a difficult
job, and that he would follow his usual custom and call on his
elders for advice.

"Summoned by the general voice of my fellow-citizens to
the station of chief executive magistrate of the State of Michi
gan,'' he began, "it is with feelings which language is inade
quate to express that I embrace the occasion to convey to them
my cordial thanks for the distinguished testimony of their
approbation and confidence."

He declined to take any bows for the Toledo War, but re
marked that "it would not become me to refer to the incident
in a spirit of dissatisfaction." (Chuckles) He was conscious
that the cares before him were beyond his ability; he said he
had consulted his capacity less, probably, than the "impulses
of a premature ambition". (Cries of "Go to it, boy!") Never
mind, Mason continued. This was not a one-man show. He was
merely the co-ordinator between the various departments,
which would get the job done. These, with the "intelligence and
virtue of the people", were guarantees that the foundations
of the State were laid in the correct principles, and that it would
prosper. He went into detail about the liberalism of the Con
stitution, which he said set a precedent among the States and
would be closely watched. There was the Territorial govern
ment question to be solved; the presence in Washington of a
Congressman and two Senators without credentials a dozen
or more sources of friction with the Federal government. For
these and other reasons he promised not to sponsor any radical
legislation or to indulge in any more capers which would give
the new State a poor send-off. Nothing of a permanent or
revolutionary nature ought to be brought up until the State
was admitted.

He invoked the help of God to set the State on the right

222 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

path, and prayed for the "friendship and approbation of the
Nation 5 '. The address ended, and the audience cheered, then
rushed up the aisle to shake his hand.

The address did not sound like Mason; it was too conserva
tive. He wrote it, but it was an evidence of his changing per
sonality. The liberalism he mentioned was indeed a precedent
among the States; the intelligence and virtue of the people
were qualities he merely hoped for, and trusted in, yet he had
hung the entire success of this gigantic enterprise on a slender
thread of belief in the goodness of his people. If they were
good, and generous, and noble, Michigan would prosper. If
they turned out to be rascals, they would bring Mason crash-
Ing down with them.

Yet it was equally clear that he was throwing himself whole
heartedly into the fight to get them what they wanted. He did
not lack for enthusiasm, energy or ability. He enjoyed an almost
hysterical popularity. The Legislature was solidly with him.
There was no reason apparent to Michigan citizens why his
inauguration should not usher in an era of lush prosperity
beyond anything they had known.

Hardly had the bunting been removed from the rostrum
and the new House called to order than the city versus county
feud became apparent. Having no minority party to bicker
with, the solons began to bicker among themselves over the
slate of nominations submitted to them for the two posts of
United States Senator. All factions had agreed long ago upon
Lucius Lyon, leaving only one post to fill. Mason was anxious
to bestow the toga upon another of his barroom buddies,
Colonel John Norvell, Postmaster of Detroit. Immediately
a howl broke out from the rural delegations. They wanted
John Biddle of Pontiac, who was a rural constituent through
and through, a reluctant visitor to Detroit and a prosperous
farmer. He had been president of the Constitutional Conven
tion, had been the only opponent to Mason in the State elec
tion, and had come to personify the opposition to Mason's
rapidly forming "torts and toddy society" of Detroiters.

On the first ballot, Norvell and Biddle tied. On the second,

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HORNER 223

they tied again. On the third, Biddle sprang into the lead
with a tie in the House but a majority of ten votes to six in
the Senate. The Senate continued to support him but Biddle
was beaten on successive votes in the house thirty-five to
twenty-eight. Norvell was certified the winner. The Senate
muttered. This was the beginning of fifteen years of constant
city versus county feuding in the Legislature, climaxed by an
abrupt removal of the whole State government to a remote
and unsettled forest in Ingham County (Lansing) just to get
it away from Detroit.

Mason's popularity did not suffer, but the seeds of disaffec
tion had been sown. On this disappointing note, Michigan's
State government began.

Some business lots on the lower end of Jefferson Avenue sold
in 1835 for $150 a foot. Thus, stealthily, wHile the attention
of the people had been centered on Mason, the Toledo War
and the election, prosperity turned the corner. Detroit was
riding the crest of a boom. Real estate was changing hands in
a manner which seems almost Floridian to us. In the 1835
boom, Detroit finally burst out of its narrow boundaries with
a ripping noise which was almost drowned out by the jingle
of cash changing hands every time another deal was made.

Compressed into its strait-jacket frontage, Detroit had to
expand. Wedged between the Cass farm on the west and the
Baubien farm on the east, the budding metropolis was push
ing its 6,927 inhabitants right around these barriers and de
positing them in colonies up and down the river, in the "com
mons"-, between remnants of the old French farms and even as
far away as Grosse He. In 1835 the city presented a patch
work appearance, with the old die-hard French farms seeming
to run backward from the river right through residential areas.
The Baubiens could not hold out forever, and in 1834 their
farm had become a street and a row of houses. The next street
was named for their patron saint, St. Antoine. Jefferson Avenue

224 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

burst out of the wooden gates at Brush Street which had been
there since 1812, and houses rose upon the cow pasture east
of St. Antoine which Mason had seen when he arrived in 1830.
In 1835, Jefferson Avenue stretched eastward for nearly a
mile from Woodward. Graceful homes of the first families
arose there.

The bullet-scarred old mansion of General Cass continued to
defy Detroit to encroach west of the Mansion House. At Cass
Street, the property line, there was a gate and a path leading
into the orchard, facing Fort and Lafayette Streets, which
General Cass had developed as a sort of city park. The man
sion stood on the riverbank facing a road which is known
now as West Jefferson, and the river lay directly below a sharp
cliff on the far side of this road. It had a private pier.

The house, constructed originally of foot-thick logs, was
sheathed with an outer layer of siding which disguised its
original purpose. It was a fortress, built for protection against
Indian raids and occupied by General Wayne as a military
headquarters during the French and Indian Wars preceding
the American Revolution. In its impregnable sides lay buried
the leaden bullets of the British redcoats and the fire-tipped
arrows of the Six Nations warriors. Every military commander
until the time of Cass himself had lived there; Cass bought the
historic old place and its accompanying 5 oo-acre farm for
$12,000 in 1816 when he was Military Governor. The farm
made him independent of city markets for a time, but in 1835
he was Secretary of War in Washington and the proud old
citadel was a museum, full of relics of the interminable wars,
of old Detroit before the fire of 1805, and of pioneer life in
the Territory.

In 1831, following Mason's appointment as Territorial
Secretary, Cass had departed for Washington. At that time
he offered the land, not including the house, for sale at $36,000.
The house was to stand there forever, as a permanent museum.
No one was interested. Four years later, In 1835, buyers came
rushing at him with insistent demands for the entire tract,
and agreements to move the house elsewhere to save it for the

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HORNER 225

Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society's headquarters. Cass
agreed to allow the old structure to be moved, and sold the
property for $168,000 cash. In the meantime, the purchasers
of the Jefferson Avenue property who paid $150 a foot, resold
the same lots for $285 and $292 a foot, and the boom was
reaching the dimensions of a runaway hysteria.

Cass Street was cut through at once; Fort, Lafayette and
Jefferson were projected across the farm, and farther uptown
Michigan Avenue now crossed it on a diagonal. From this
diagonal, new streets were laid out at right angles, so that
downtown Detroit now presents the appearance of a design
laid out by a drunken draftsman. Streets go every which way ;
they date from 1835, when the real-estate speculators suddenly
acquired land and laid out streets to suit themselves, wherever
they pleased.

Some Mason rooters were giving the Boy Governor credit
for all this easy prosperity, but the impersonal record of the
Fuller thesis says he had nothing to do with it. Emigration was
at its peak. Ninety boatloads of eager settlers arrived in De
troit in the single month of October, 1835, In one day more
than one thousand of them arrived in the city. The volume
of retail trade, mostly with these new arrivals, was fantastic.
The stream of emigrants was literally a stream of gold. Ex
pressions about a "land-office business" were no exaggeration
in Mason's Detroit of 1835. Public lands were selling for a
dollar, and a dollar and a quarter, per acre, with millions of
acres yet unclaimed. The safer, easier and much quicker water
route from the East via the Erie Canal and the lake boats
was funneling through Detroit the great bulk of traffic destined
not only for Michigan, but for the lands far to the west of
Chicago. It is scant wonder that in the pre-railroad era this
comparatively comfortable route dominated the settlers' migra
tions, and suddenly enriched Detroit.

Many Detroit merchants made fortunes by dealing with,
and for, small stores in the new villages. In return, the village
merchants did a wholesale business with Detroit firms. This
year, 1835, the official Blois' Gazeteer reported that half , if

226 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

not two thirds, of Detroit's total trade was with the interior
of the State. Ten important forwarding and commission houses
led the list. All the principal roads of the State led to Detroit,
and through its peculiar peninsular shape, Michigan was barred
from much trade with its neighbors. The appalling condition
of the roads was the only factor holding back even greater
development. More time was needed to ship a wagonload of
furniture from Detroit to Niles than the canal and lake trip
required from New York.

With the return of prosperity came bigger Detroit municipal
appropriations and long-delayed improvements. Not only
streets helped to change the city's physical face. There were
docks, new buildings. Following the cholera epidemics of 1832
and 1 834, investigations of the open sewer paralleling Congress
Street led to measures to close it in. Thinking that the drink
ing water might have been polluted by it, Detroit purchased
early in 1836 a private water works company which was trying
to process river water and pipe it to homes. The tallow-and-rag
lamps mounted on poles that constituted Detroit's only street
lights were editorialized about in the Journal and Courier, to
the effect that a few more lights like those would produce total
darkness.

Not much was done, or could be done, in this period about
the bottomless mudholes they called streets. Harriet Mar-
tineau described the "wooden planks laid on the grass to form
a pavement" in the newer sections of town, and described the
interest of the Detroit city council in the wood-block system
of street-paving being introduced into New York. In 1835
the downtown streets were navigable in wet weather only by
the old high-wheeled French pony cart, and in Farmer's History
of Detroit there is an account of fourteen teams stalled in the
mud at one time.

Workmen began immediately to raze the low hill around
Cass's log fortress and fill in the riverbank to bring it out to
Atwater Street. With the house gone, and the orchard vanish
ing day by day, the whole skyline of Detroit as seen from the
river began to change. Warehouses were lining the shore;

1835-1836] LITTLE JACK HORNER 22?

the steep bank was graded into a slope which began at Jefferson
Avenue, Up near the terraced, weed-grown site of old Fort
Shelby, workmen were cutting a strange-looking path along
side the Territorial Road and Michigan Avenue. They were
the advance guard of the new Detroit and St. Joseph Rail-
Road, building a right-of-way on the north side of Michigan to
a terminus at the Campus Martius. Mason had to climb over
this construction to get from his house to his office. Leading to
his capitol was a double-plank walkway from the Griswold
Street sidewalk, and a curved driveway describing twin arcs
through the mud. Back of the capitol building, in its very
shadow, was a boiler shop and a little network of track the
birthplace of the strap-iron rails and the rolling stock for the
strange new line.

In his office, trying to concentrate with that infernal clang-
clang from the railroad shop in his ears, Mason took up his
fight for statehood. The Legislature had recessed after its
stormy session over the Senatorial appointment. It was early
winter, 1835, and both Senators and the lone Congressman
were in Washington awaiting the opening of Congress. Norvell
wrote Mason that Michigan's bill was not ready. They were
given to understand, he said, that it would not be introduced
for a long time.

The reason, of course, had scant bearing on the merit of
the issue. The next year, 1836, was a national election year and
Congress straightway saw Ohio and Indiana members vocifer
ously pointing to the unsettled border question, threatening
the President with mass desertion if Ohio's demands were not
met, and plotting to use the incident as an election issue. The
Ohio bloc in Congress was mostly Whigs, and the furore was
an excuse to embarrass Jackson. He sought peace by sending
to Congress a copy of the Michigan Constitution, with a note
explaining that he had examined it and found it excellent. With
that, an Administration supporter introduced a bill to settle the
boundary dispute, and upon reaching a settlement, admit Michi
gan with the southern border described therein. The bill was
referred to the Judiciary Committee,

228 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Lucius Lyon wrote disconsolately: "We see scant probability
of action before next June." In the Whig papers of Detroit
appeared a new demand to reopen the border question, aimed
probably at sabotaging the efforts of the Mason appointees.
"The Toledo Strip or Nothing!" they bellowed. To which
Colonel Norvell replied from Washington: "There are a
few who say that if we cannot get what we want, we should
take what we can get," Senator Lyon and Congressman Crary
endorsed this view. Lyon wrote to Andrew Mack, of Detroit :
". . . .In my opinion, within twenty years the addition of the
Upper Peninsula will be valued by Michigan at more than
forty million dollars, and that even after ten years the State
would not dream of selling it for that sum."

They were voices crying in the wilderness. No one in Detroit
gave support to their opinions. The Michigan pioneers well
knew the back-breaking work they had endured to build their
homes in the comparatively civilized regions of southern
Michigan. The mere thought of 20,000 square miles of moun
tains, uninhabited, unsurveyed and roadless a vast wilderness
on the shore of Lake Superior made them shiver.

Even when it began to appear that only by complete sur
render of the "Toledo Strip" would Michigan be admitted,
settlers tried to cling to it. Mason knew quite well that the
cause was lost. He consulted Dr. Douglass Houghton, who
had been north of the Falls of the St. Mary's, and had gazed
on Lake Superior. Dr. Houghton, a practicing physician of
Detroit, had as an active hobby the science of geology. He had
been there gathering rock specimens and exploring. He said
it would take a vast fortune to survey the region, but that
access to it was quite easy by boat from the southern shore
of the lake. The trick was to get a boat up there, around the
high wall of white water that constituted the falls and rapids.
He thought a ship canal ought to be built there, by the Federal
government, as part of the terms of acceptance of the distant
region.

Mason thereupon acted on Dr. Houghton's advice. He gave
Congress a few hints that Michigan might make a deal for

1835-18363 LITTLE JACK HORNER 229

the Upper Peninsula, on condition that the government build
a canal at the Soo. Congress received the idea favorably. They
realized that without it, commerce could not develop the re
mote region for a generation to come.

A detailed, and highly dramatic, account of the troubles
experienced by the exploration party, and the friction that
slowed construction of the first canal at the Soo, is given by
Harlan Hatcher in The Great Lakes. Hatcher describes how
the United States backed down on the Congressional promise
to build the canal and saddled Mason with it ; how the United
States Army was sent thither as a border patrol and general
watchdog of the vital traffic link between the East and the fur
areas of the Northwest, and began a series of feuds with the
canal builders whom the troops were sent there to protect.
The construction crew shot bears for food, and were almost
eaten by their big-game targets many a time. They built a slip
way and hauled skiffs and barks up the seventeen-foot escarp
ment with a windlass. With the first appearance of direct con
tact between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, even before
Mason's canal was finished, an immense boom broke in the
Upper Peninsula and it was infested by geologists, fur scouts,
fishermen and commercial hunters. The town of Duluth grew
four hundred percent within a decade. The first canal brought
ore prospectors who discovered the mammoth iron and copper
deposits which have made Michigan rich.

Chronologically, this story follows the Mason era, but a
glimpse of the far-reaching effects of Mason's decision to build
the original Soo Canal ought to be permitted. He had no idea,
nor had anyone of his time, that in our generation the Soo
Canal would be the busiest waterway in the world and handle
more tonnage than either Panama or Suez. By sponsoring it,
and insisting upon it as a condition of accepting the Upper
Peninsula, he helped to bring this development from the dream
stage to reality.

Mason's family was reunited in Detroit during the winter
of 1835-36, and he wanted nothing more than personal and
political peace. It must have annoyed him as much as any-

230 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

one, therefore, when a fight presently broke out over the suc
cessor to Colonel Norvell as Postmaster of Detroit. Six or
seven Detroiters were clamoring for the post. One of them was
Sheldon McKnight, owner of the Free Press. He was a per
sonal friend of Lucius Lyon's, and of Mason's. He received
their endorsements. But the Whigs were aroused to anger.
Woodbridge apparently had plans to manipulate a Whig post-
mastership out of a Democratic administration. His slim
chance of success with this political miracle didn't keep him
from inspiring a political plot which was so characteristic of
the Michigan Whigs of this period that it should be described.

Mason learned that Mr. McKnight, as were all editors a
century ago, had been attacked on the street by some man who
didn't like a story in the Free Press. This man, whoever he
was, swung at McKnight and got a right smart poke in the
jaw in return, which laid him flat on the wooden sidewalk.
The man's name was never made public, but he died from some
entirely different cause a few months later. Nobody said any
thing. But when Mr. McKnight's name came up as a candidate
for appointment as Postmaster, the Whig machine dug up this
incident, had the publisher arrested for manslaughter, and
called a grand jury. They even packed the grand jury, De-
Garmo Jones, a Woodbridge yesman, becoming foreman.

Great was Mason's indignation when this frame-up caused
Mr. McKnight to be indicted for manslaughter, and tried for
that crime before the State court. A speedy trial promptly
exonerated him and he was appointed Postmaster. He never
forgot Woodbridge, nor forgave him for this political trick.
Mason regarded Woodbridge aghast, his eyes completely open
to the kind of man Woodbridge could be. He could see Wood-
bridge plotting, scheming, waiting patiently to find an excuse
to truss up Mason in a similar conspiracy, to frame him on
the first pretext, and to pursue him viciously. That was the
Whig policy in 1835-36. It must have made Mason nervous.

He tried to forget it on New Year's Day, 1836, when he
was the central figure in the Governor's Ball held in his honor
at the American Hotel. There, surrounded by his parents and

I835-I83 6 ] LITTLE JACK HORNER 231

sisters, he watched the slow procession of the minuet and the
faster, more modern schottische, disapproved of by the city's
elders. Mason appeared on the dais at the end of the ballroom,
in the midst of his family, wearing his inauguration costume.
Very handsome he looked in it, too. The Ball was an excuse for
all the belles of Detroit society to be present in their billowiest
and fanciest silken gowns, and Mason inaugurated the custom
of dancing once with each of them, as they were presented by
their mothers. He remarked in a letter soon afterward that he
would rather be out at "Coon" Ten Eyck's tavern at Dear
born ville with the hunting crowd he knew, "where campaigns
were planned and policies of State matured, while the bonds of
friendship were strengthened by many an act of good fellow
ship".

Things were going wrong in Washington. The State Constitu
tion had been approved. The conditions required by Congress
for statehood had been met. Mason had indicated that he was
not preparing to defend his previous stand over the southern
border, and would be content with whatever Congress wanted
to do about it. Individual members of Congress were demur
ring Michigan's admission would upset the balance between
free and slave territory. Besides, it would be Democratic, and
the Congressional majority was Whig and didn't want any
more Democratic votes.

Patiently, over the weeks, Lyon and Norvell canvassed each
member individually. By spring, 1836, they had obtained a
compromise. The jealous Congressmen would admit Michigan
if and the list of ifs seemed endless. // a slave State were
admitted simultaneously, to preserve the status quo . . . if
the Michigan delegation could win some sort of promise from
Ohio not to bolt the Administration during the coming election
campaign . . . if Michigan would accept the Upper Peninsula
in full settlement of all rights in the "Toledo Strip".

Yes, yes, they said. Yes, they'd accept anything. Arkansas

232 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

was ready for admission, and the pair could be presented on the
same Congressional bill Yes, they'd accept the Upper Penin
sula. Yes, they'd help soothe the thirty-five electoral votes.

Lyon was growing increasingly irritable. "An honest man,"
he wrote, "after looking on here a month or two^would laugh
at himself for ever having supposed that the merits of a ques
tion like this would have anything to do with the decision of
Congress upon it." Ex-President John Quincy Adams, an old-
time Federalist and more recent head of the Whig Party, be
came fatigued with the endless horse-trading of his House col
leagues. He made a fervent appeal in the House for Michi
gan's admission as a matter of plain right. In the Senate,
Thomas H. Benton echoed the demand. But the backstage
wirepullers wouldn't let it come to a vote.

The last objection they could raise was that Michigan had
undertaken the illegal course of setting up a State government
when, after all, she was still a Territory and had a duplicating
Territorial government. In Detroit, Mason realized with a
start that Little Jack Horner was still around somewhere.
He had forgotten about Horner completely. So had everyone
else except the Whigs, to whom Horner was a never-ending
source of friction upon whom they could make political capital.
Mason had not even seen Horner since the hectic days immedi
ately following his inauguration, when he had told Horner to
move his office out of the capitol and set up shop somewhere
else. Fortunately, the capitol building belonged to the people
of Michigan and was not a Federal building.

Horner, perforce, moved. He had spent the winter at
Ypsilanti, living very quietly in an inn near the one whose
landlord had billed him for the damage caused by the mob.
Mason saw an opportunity to make two gains if he had enough
salesmanship. He sought out Horner.

For about a week, Mason inspired a lot of questions about
where Little Jack Horner was ; what he was doing for his
salary as Acting Governor. His inn at Ypsilanti became the
center of another scrutiny by the unfriendly citizens, who had
never liked him and resented the mere fact of Homer's pres-

LITTLE JACK HORNER 233

ence in Mason's bailiwick. When Mason appeared, Horner
was glad to see him.

Mason said he had been advised that Congress was about
to create the new Territory of Wisconsin, as a prelude to Michi
gan's admission. Now, Horner had better get there with all
possible speed. The Territory would include all the vast resi
due of land left over when the two peninsulas of Michigan
were withdrawn, and Horner would automatically be Governor
of it if he got there before a new one was appointed. He ought
to be on the scene when the historic moment came for him
to assume command.

Horner's round face beamed with gratitude. Mason offered
to help him find a team and a wagon to move his household
goods and Mrs. Horner. The little man's double chin trembled
with unspoken gratitude.

On April 20, 1836, Congress created the Territory of Wis
consin. Horner was there. He made the proclamation which
set the Territory in motion. He became a Founding Father
and one of Wisconsin's most respected citizens. It was Horner
who founded the City of Ripon, Wisconsin, where a scant two
decades later a meeting was held which became one of the
twin birthplaces of the present national Republican Party. The
other was held in Jackson, Michigan. Each city now claims to
be the original birthplace of the Party. Horner became success
ful in Ripon and died there, full of years and honors, in 1883.

After his departure from Michigan, Mason felt that the last
objection had been overcome and the last obstacle removed.
In exasperation he wrote to Lucius Lyon wanting to know
what more he could do. Both Lyon and Norvell answered, say
ing that they saw no hope for action on the bill until the fol
lowing June.

CHAPTER VIII

BREAKING INTO THE UNION

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, Member of Congress and ex-President
of the United States, strode into the cloakroom off the old
House chamber in the unfinished capitol building at Washing
ton, The session, like many others recently, had been taken
up with a good deal of rather acid debate about Michigan's
chances for statehood. Privately, said Adams, he didn't think
Michigan's chances were worth a continental. But he would
go on pleading her cause in public at every opportunity because
of a belief in the justice of Michigan's cause and a sense of
outrage at the way she was being treated. He was getting
heartily weary of seeing the issue twisted and tortured by
members of both Houses who were trying to wring the last
vote, and pledge, out of it.

He explained to the unaccredited Michigan delegation how
he felt. He reminded them that Illinois had lately espoused the
cause of Ohio and Indiana in the border controversy, and that
together these three States had six Senators and twenty-nine
Congressmen. It was a tight little bloc, Adams continued, which
was holding together on every issue that came up. Now, the
election was going to be a free-for-all, with no telling who
would win the nomination in either party convention.

There were, he said, a half-dozen or more aspirants for the
Presidency. Scarcely anyone dared advocate Michigan's ad
mission for fear of jeopardizing his chances or antagonizing
this bloc of electoral votes. The border issue and Michigan's
plea for admission were intertwined and together they con
stituted a clear case of political dynamite.

The majority in each House had no real objection to Michi
gan's admission. They probably would approve the bill if it

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 235

could be dug out of the Judiciary Committee and scheduled for
a hearing. But it could not be reported out until the wirepullers
were satisfied that Michigan was thoroughly licked and that
Mason, personally, was humble. In order to satisfy everybody,
in the Adams view, a statement to that effect should be made.
The Michigan men assured him that everybody had long since
given up the fight for the "Toledo Strip".

No, answered Adams, that was not the case. The Whigs in
Michigan hadn't given up; they were forever complaining
about it editorially in the little rural weeklies. It was still a
political issue. If the two Senators and one Representative
would assure the ruffled politicians that Mason would indeed
accept any settlement Congress saw fit to award Michigan
for the loss of the strip, he thought the bill could be exhumed.

Assurances were given. The bill was reported out on March
i, 1836, with a statement that the Judiciary Committee felt
that the Upper Peninsula would be a disadvantage to the new
State but that geographical considerations made it necessary
for it to be administered by Michigan. In case a ship canal
could be constructed at the Soo, the Committee believed that
the whole chain of lakes would become a Michigan waterway.
By water through this proposed canal it was suggested that
the administration of the Upper Peninsula would be easier for
Michigan than for the new Territory of Wisconsin, which was
separated from the area by a mountain range. It was recom
mended, therefore, that Michigan be admitted with the Upper
Peninsula, and a southern border on Ohio's "Harris Line".

No opposition to this proposal was evident from the vote-
less Michigan delegation. The bill went into the hopper and
stayed there, awaiting its turn. On April 25, 1836, the Senate
voted on it favorably, twenty-four to seventeen. The House,
however, delayed week after week. Nothing Lucius Lyon
could do, even with his wide personal popularity, could make
any impression on the granite-like indifference of the House.
It was said in the corridors that Michigan was being punished
for the way Mason had embarrassed Governor Lucas in the
Toledo War.

236 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

It became apparent that the House was going to delay action
on the bill as long as possible, at least until after the fall elec
tions. The Whigs might then have a Whig President and a
majority in Congress, and that would mean that Michigan
never would become a State as long as a Democrat remained
in power in Detroit. Lyon saw the implication in this apparently
meaningless delay. He determined to use his ace in the hole
his friendship with the President, with the Cabinet and with
members of the Democratic majority in the House. He began
to exert a little pull.

With this weapon he broke the jam. The President and Gen
eral Cass had friends, too. The President wanted Michigan
admitted. There were rumblings in the House cloakroom, but
the bill was finally voted upon under a surly atmosphere of
pressure. On June 25, 1836, Lyon and Norvell sat in the House
visitors' gallery watching their bill emerge for a vote. It was
the long-awaited day. It was the day Lyon hoped to see his
great fight won. But the political tacticians of the House handed
him another long list of conditions, enraging him beyond en
durance.

In the vote to admit Arkansas and Michigan simultaneously,
Arkansas won admission unconditionally. Michigan, however,
was silenced until long past election time by a hamstringing
provision calling for local county conventions all through the
Peninsula to ratify the boundaries as set forth in the bill, and
to vote on whether or not to accept the Upper Peninsula. The
exact wording of the bill stipulated :

"The matter will be reconsidered upon the express condition
that the said State shall consist of, and have jurisdiction over,
the territory prescribed by Congress and none other."

Congress knew that backwoods areas of Michigan contained
many a noisy Whig and many an independent, opinionated
farmer who would vote "agin the government" on general
principles. Alsoy Congress well knew that the delay was quite
likely to bankrupt Mason's unaccredited State government.
Every day's delay on the vital bill was a costly loss to the im
poverished Michigan treasury. Since she had ceased to be a

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 237

Territory, she could no longer collect the Federal appropria
tion for administration expenses. And until the day of ad
mission, not one dollar of Federal funds could be allotted to
her. Caught thus between the upper and nether millstones,
Michigan was rapidly going broke while Congress invented new
schemes to delay.

In dollars, the desperate Michigan administrators were
losing a fortune every month in the five per cent commission
on the sale of Federal lands, which all recognized States were
pocketing. Elsewhere, Mason feared that his precious develop
ment program would be blown sky-high because, until admitted,
Michigan could not set aside an acre of its idle land for the
support of the State University or any of the State functions.
And additionally, there was no one who had a voice in Con
gress to protest.

It was a cruel but brutally efficient means of subduing the
"Young Hotspur". It was the politicians' way of nailing
Mason's hide on the fence, in spite of the wide popularity
which surrounded him in Detroit and throughout Michigan.
Congress frowned upon the way he rose up, at the head of
his people, and threw out their Territorial government, and the
way in which he had thumbed his nose at them in the Toledo
War. The last straw, which all Washington realized would
lead to the political woodshed, was Mason's rebound after
he had been summarily dismissed from office. That should
have shut him up. Dismissal had always worked before ; it was
the one sure way in which Washington could guarantee itself
relief from a noisy character who wouldn't follow the poli
ticians' rules. Mason's astonishing support in the outlaw elec
tion struck this clique of Congressmen like a blow from a
mallet. Their revenge took time, but it was well thought out.

When the flattening news reached Detroit, Mason realized
that they had him between the jaws of a vise. There was nothing
he could do but comply, and hope that the delays would not
bankrupt the State hopelessly. Accordingly, he summoned the
Legislature in special session on July 25th, and told the mem
bers the sad news. Debate was brief . Action was fast.

238 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

The legislators knew that the mud-trapped roads would
make response anything but swift, so they set the date for the
convention to report on September 26th. They set to work to
arouse the counties, so that the fifty delegates required by the
Congressional bill could arrive with instructions, after being
elected at a score or more of little backwoods hamlets to repre
sent the people in the final action at the convention. They would
have the written wishes of their rural neighbors in their hands.

Woodbridge saw the dawn of opportunity glowing before
his eyes. As fast as Mason's loyal legislators obtained promises
of support, his unforgetting Whigs raised storms of rural
protest about the unfairness of being denied the "Toledo
Strip". The Whig newspapers across the Peninsula erupted
editorially about the injustice of the deal, and the timidity of
Governor Mason in surrendering abjectly to politics when he
had the war won in the field. Far from being dead and buried,
the Whig opposition raised the border issue to a new high of
hot controversy.

On the maps of the time, the Upper Peninsula was shown
as an area almost completely separated from Wisconsin by
a range of mountains, which we know now are not really such
formidable barriers. To Mason's Michigan, names like "Porcu
pine Mountains" and "Mineral Range" sounded awesome.
These two ranges of timbered foothills cut up the Upper
Peninsula into a series of mountains and parallel gorges, and
to persons who had never been there they seemed as fearsome
as the Rockies. It was freely admitted that the area was good
for nothing except fishing and furs, that it was not a coloniza
tion site. Mason's men quoted the words of the Congressional
bill defining the borders of the Upper Peninsula :

". . . that region enclosed by a line drawn through Green
Bay> the Menominee River, Lake of the Desert and Montreal
River." To us, it defines the area as a triangular space enclosed
by Green Bay and Superior, Wisconsin, the south shore of
Lake Superior to the Soo. Topographically the old maps
exaggerate the terrain, but their estimate of the area, twenty
thousand square miles, was not far off.

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 239

The local debates began. In the county courthouses out in
the fresh tamarack-built towns there were "loud cries of tyr
anny and oppression" from the Whigs and the independent
settlers. Reports from local assemblies were full of interrup
tions while some noisy demonstrator was thrown out* This
was the first time the individual citizen had had a chance to
determine the State's policy. Some of them, not knowing
Mason's problem, howled for the harbor and facilities at
Toledo and waved aside the whole Upper Peninsula in dis
gust. Mason lost heart; the fight looked hopeless. The only
reports reaching him were full of bad news. One example said :
u We question the desirability of entering the Union at all if
we must be admitted mutilated, humbled and degraded."

Mason didn't know who was writing these reports, but
Woodb ridge did. Most of them were penned by Whigs who,
being the richest and most influential men of the community,
naturally became the delegates and wrote the expressions of
their inarticulate townsfolk. Not even Mason's own people
were with him unanimously in the fight; many looked upon
Governor Lucas as a smooth customer who had outsmarted
the "Young Hotspur" by cold-decking him in the great game
of politics. At the end of August, Mason saw nothing but
defeat ahead. His prophetic sense was good.

The elected representatives bore the ballots of their people
to the convention at Ann Arbor on September 26, 1836. They
voted down the proposal offered by Congress. The vote was
fairly close, twenty-eight to twenty-one, but the sentiment was
plain. The people, if left to their own devices, would vote ac
cording to individual whims which had no support in the harsh
facts of the case as Mason knew them. The deal was unpopular,
but like any bitter medicine, Michigan had to swallow it. Mason
knew he was dealing with a pure individualistic reaction when
he read in the majority report of the convention that: ". . . in
effect, Congress has given legal recognition to the State by
ratifying the constitution," and that therefore Congress had
no power to lay down any terms at all concerning what was a
purely internal problem of Michigan.

240 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

In Washington, Attorney General Butler ruled that this
position was all bosh and nonsense. Mason agreed. So did all
other experienced attorneys ; that report was probably drafted
by a backwoods lawyer who had never tried a case outside of
justice court. Butler referred to the convention as "The Con
vention of Dissent", and the name stuck. Back where he started
and thousands of dollars in the red, Mason had no choice but
to try to go on from there.

There was nothing he could salvage from the attempt to
comply with Congress' terms, except possibly some experience.
Congress had won; he faced the fact and sat back to see what
they would do to him next. Some day, he felt, Congress would
relent. Probably some future Governor could get the State
admitted. Perhaps in years to come he could try again.

Pacing the floor of his small plaster-walled office, Mason
meditated. Floor-pacing was his habit when agitated; he was
agitated now. Word of his plight was not long in seeping back
into the frontier towns. There, people who had been in the
forefront of the opposition to any such deal with Congress
now began feeling sorry for Mason as a man. He had a
curious personal influence on his people. They felt as if he were
a relative, and they took to heart any hurt inflicted on him.
When they saw that it was they who had hurt him this time,
they were sorry.

Mason temporarily forgot about statehood. It was the only
thing he could do. He sat in his office reading the New York
papers, and a flood of mail from Cass and other friends in
Washington. The campaign was in full cry. It was a rather
listless one, comparatively speaking. It was a puzzle. There
was no definite sign pointing to anyone's victory. Both parties
had able candidates. The Whigs had dusted off and thrust
forth the now-ancient figure of General William Henry Har
rison, a hero of the War of 1812. The Democrats had finally
picked Vice-President Martin 'Van Buren, Jackson's assistant
and acting President during Old Hickory's frequent illnesses.

In Michigan the advance predictions were for Harrison,

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 241

Gossip in the newspapers pointed out that Van Buren was not
popular enough to succeed the famed Jackson; only another
military hero of equivalent stature could bring out the votes.
Van Buren, an aristocrat who lived in splendid isolation sur
rounded by an army of servants, was not the type of man to
appeal to a raw and undeveloped nation, mostly frontier, and
only then preparing to vote for its eighth President.

Mason received no comfort from Cass's belief that Jackson's
policies would be continued in Van Buren's administration
if Van Buren won. He did not think Van Buren was going
to win. Few people did. Wearily, Mason turned his attention
to a flood of small appointments and an accumulation of office
detail, and tried not to think about the Treasury.

When the appointed day rolled around in November, Stevens
Thomson Mason was among the most surprised men in the
United States. Another astonished man was the fluffy-haired
Van Buren himself. The Democrats took the country by storm.
They larruped the old Whig war horse, Harrison, in one of
the most upsetting elections of the nineteenth century. Van
Buren had a majority of more than a hundred electoral votes.
Harrison dropped out of the headlines immediately. Old An
drew Jackson was shot at, for the last time, in front of the
White House by an angry Whig house painter whose pistol
misfired, and with this fizzle one of the greatest men of his
century slid gently into the seclusion he had craved for twenty
years. After Van Buren's inauguration, Andy Jackson returned
to The Hermitage to die. But he still had time enough in office
before that date to do something about the Michigan dilemma.

Mason's awakening to the meaning of the Democratic land
slide was not long in making itself evident He saw a chance
to revive the statehood bill if he acted quickly, while the Demo
crats were still joyous and the Whigs were stunned. But there
remained the damning fact of the defeat of the deal Congress
had offered. Summoning his party cohorts, Mason told them
that if that "Convention of Dissent" report could be circum
vented somehow, Michigan still stood a chance for statehood.

242 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

He could not call another convention, because the Congres
sional bill made provision for only one. He paced the floor.
There must be some way.

Even while Mason's high black custom-made boots were
wearing out the threadbare rug in his office, a few loyal Mason
partisans were coming to his rescue. There appeared to be a
spontaneous demand for a new vote on the Congressional deal.
Mason's friends were talking for him, telling the settlers
what the ill-starred convention had done to him.

Within a few weeks of the election of 1836, a new form
of public meeting was in full cry throughout Michigan. It was
a pure example of classic, textbook democracy: the voluntary
meeting of the electorate to decide what the State would do.
It is doubtful whether the residents of one isolated village
knew that the same kind of meeting was in progress at dozens
of other villages at the same time. It was a democratic proce
dure, but it lacked both legal authority and administrative
consent. As such, this series of meetings was entirely in char
acter. That was Mason's Michigan; put up the project first,
and then put up the proposition.

It sounds like sarcasm to remark that these meetings were the
last example of popular government, that is, democracy like
unto that of ancient Athens, at work in Michigan. Such seems
to be the case. Conditions forbid the wide exercise of individual
initiative by American voters today, although they have the
power of consent or rejection of a stated proposal, and a choice
between candidates. Jefferson was thinking of just such a so
ciety as Mason's Michigan when he tried to bestow liberty
upon a young Republic in the manner of a rich gentleman en
dowing a library. What Jefferson meant was universal suffrage,
universal participation in the fruits and expense of govern
ment, and an utter absence of a class structure. He dreamed
of universal opportunity resulting from this Utopia, and dur
ing the first half century of her history, the United States

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 243

struggled seriously to reach Jefferson's goal. By that time the
liberal laws and universal suffrage which were to bestow liberty
had bestowed instead the great families like the Vanderbilts,
Astors, Livingstons and Adamses; the political circuses like
Tammany, the "Spoils System" and the Whigs. The individual
citizen was as much at their mercy as he had been at the mercy
of the Tories prior to the American Revolution, and in the
face of that comparison it seems he was no better off.

In Mason's Michigan he was, in fact, vastly better off. This
was a state-wide attempt to place a large share of political
power directly in the hands of the electorate, a bigger version
of the New England Town Meeting. It was a place where a
citizen could leave his plow like Cincinnatus to lead a regiment
or a division in battle, and return to it afterward. It was a
series of almost-independent towns where anybody who voted
could get up on a stump and there, by stating his views to his
fellow citizens, influence the conduct of his government. If
enough people agreed with him, he could dominate it. In
Mason's Michigan the citizen was a king, and Mason humbly
regarded himself as a servant of that king.

In 1836 these sovereign citizens began gathering in barns,
In schools, in town halls and village stores, and deciding that it-
was time to do something about Mason. They selected five
anonymous committeemen who went from town to town urging
greater action, more speed. These committeemen started to
raise seventy delegates to attend another convention at Ann
Arbor on December I4th. They succeeded; seventy-one at
tended.

Ann Arbor was a frozen wasteland on that bleak December
day. The little courthouse had a tiny stove which could not
take the chill out of the frozen air no matter how much dry
wood they piled into it. Somebody said: "Well,. this sure is a
frost-bitten convention." And the Frost-Bitten Convention it
became a landmark in Michigan history. On the first ballot
the convention voted to reverse the action of the previous
body, and accept any border, any conditions, any land that
Congress wished to bestow even if it turned out to be in Tibet.

244 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

They sent a copy of their report to Governor Mason and
another to the President, and several of the committee set out
for Washington to explain personally why they not their
predecessors ought to be regarded as the official voice of the
State.

"There is some doubt," commented Dr. G. N. Fuller in his
thesis on this period, "that this convention actually expressed
the will of the people. The legality of it was never questioned
in Michigan, even though the delegates had no legal authority
whatever."

In his own day, however, Mason strongly upheld the legality
of this rump convention. "If you are dissatisfied with the de
cision of the September Convention," he wrote to Ezekiel
Pray, of Washtenaw County, "the remedy is with yourselves.
You have the inherent and indefeasible right in all cases or
propositions coming before you in your original capacity, to
reverse the acts of your agents if found to be prejudicial to
your interests." He cited a precedent from the history of Penn
sylvania. A somewhat similar popular action had been taken
by the people, without recourse to constituted authority, when
the young colony decided to separate from England.

Whatever he might have thought about it, Mason was off
base legally. Even his greatest friend, Lawton Hemans, him
self a successful attorney, could not stomach this. "However
pleasantly this sort of thing might have appeared to the lay
mind," wrote Hemans, "the student of government and of
legal form is hardly persuaded that in a government of laws
and constitutions, their decrees and established forms can thus
be lightly set aside." All other legal talent is unanimous in
deciding that the Frost-Bitten Convention was illegal, without
authority and clearly the result of somebody's activity who
had an axe to grind.

Whereas the correct, sealed, tape-bound and enscrolled pro
ceedings of Congress said that Michigan couldn't get away
with it, Mason merely forwarded a copy of the report to Wash
ington. It was whipped through Congress in three weeks with
out even a debate. Andrew Jackson signed the bill admitting

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 245

Michigan as one of his last official acts, on January 26, 1837.
At long last, Michigan took her official place in the star section
of the flag.

Malcolm Bingay is a sharp-witted old editor who has a wide
following in the modern Detroit Free Press. He says that right
then, in 1837, his granddaddy, John Crichton Bingay, founded
the Bingay Institute for the Study of Political Flapdoodle,
which has continuous records to show that never, in its long
and interesting history, has the Institute recorded an excep
tion to its major precept "There is one law," he writes, "in
this low art of sniffle-snaffle which no politician has ever vio
lated. It can be taken for granted that when a man holding
office announces that he is 'studying the situation,' he is not
going to do anything about it."

For fifteen months, between November 2, 1835, and January
26, 1837, Michigan had been living in sin. During that time,
with Congress "studying the situation", nothing was done until
the last three weeks. Then it was done arrogantly, illegally and
contrary to everything Congress had demanded, but the legal
vote was cast out and the illegal vote accepted. Perhaps the
Institute for the Study of Political Flapdoodle has some sta
tistics on that one.

If not, perhaps Mr. Bingay will allow me to supply some.
The men who headed this apparently anonymous and spon
taneous uprising of the aroused citizenry were the businessmen
of Michigan. During the period when Michigan was a maverick
among the States, she had lost in commissions on the sale of
public lands somewhere between $450,000 and $600,000.
This was the money needed to build the railroad, dig the
canals, drain the swamps and cut through new roads. The men
of Michigan needed this money as much as they admired
Mason. Even more, they needed the other cash bonuses which
a spectacular bit of good fortune had laid in the States' ample
laps.

During November, 1836, just after the election, President
Jackson announced that he was leaving office with every dol
lar of Federal debt paid. He had a surplus in the Treasury.

246 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

This sum was to be divided equally among the States upon
the expiration of his term of office. The businessmen of Michi
gan knew that; they knew that unless Michigan was a legally
recognized State by that time, not a dollar of it would they
see. They devised this example of pure democracy; they in
spired it and led it. It is, therefore, just another political pres
sure play like any other except that this one is hallowed in
history as a demonstration of what the plain people can do
if they unite. Actually it was a desperate race against the
calendar, which they won in the proverbial nick of time. Levi
Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury, wrote Mason that he
would extend the time a little and give Michigan her share
provided she was admitted before Jackson left office. Michigan
eventually received a share of this sum, and it, also, arrived
just In time to soothe an incipient money panic.

It was a time of spurts: first of remarkable prosperity and
then of utter stagnation in business. Detroit newspapers during
the summer of 1836 had quoted rising prices on staple foods,
always a good index of the times. They came back to normal
in the fall when bumper crops began flooding the city, and
fell steadily throughout the winter. Employment was low;
money difficult to obtain on loan. The few workmen employed
on private contracts loafed on the job and demanded more
money. The razmg of the old Cass house and the bluff adjoin
ing became the scene of a workmens' strike, not for more
money but because they did not like the foreman. They got
drunk and hurled rocks at passers-by. The city hastily organized
a platoon of young men to keep order, and it was this organiza
tion which later was fitted to new gold-trimmed uniforms and
became the Brady Guards, Detroit's famous city militia. As
commander, Ike Rowland bore the title of Major proudly as
long as he lived. Throughout its history it was always being
called out to protect the city against the incessant mobs and
riots which were, and are, such a typical feature of Detroit. To
quote Bingay again: "If this town of ours was ever without a
crisis, old settlers wouldn't recognize the place."

During 1836, Detroit was changing from a one-street busi-

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 247

ness section along Jefferson Avenue, to a rather good-sized
downtown section dominated by Woodward Avenue. Wood
ward was lined with busy shops as far as the Campus Martius,
and homes were being constructed as far uptown as Grand
Circus Park. It was believed that Adams Street was as far
north as the town would go, and consequently it was built
so that it ran straight across the northern border and could
be protected by a high wall if necessary. The water front
now stretched nearly two miles, from the western edge of the
Cass farm to a point opposite St. Antoine Street, with strag
gling cottages and boat works as far as the western tip of
Belle Isle. The census of 1837 gave the city more than 8,000
permanent population, which meant a summertime average
of about 1 5,000 people there on any typical day. Six steamboats
a day arrived during the season ; 200,000 people came and went
through the port that year. Above and below the city along
the river roads, the "orderly rows of new settlers' houses seems
endless," said Harriet Martineau.

The creaking wagons that bumped and jolted along the roads
soon left civilization behind them when they crossed the city
line. In 1837 there were a number of middle-sized towns
flourishing throughout the State, but compared to Detroit they
were primitive indeed. Towns forgotten now, with descriptive
names like Sylvan Center, Sandstone, Palmyra, Gibraltar.
Towns like Jefferson, in Jackson County, are entirely gone, and
even the main streets have gone back to weeds and cultivated
fields. In 1837 they were thriving communities, with wagon
roads leading to them from all directions and public squares
with inns, stores and bandstands. There, at grist-mill sites
which vanished generations ago, boys of 1837 helped their
fathers unload sacks of grain and waited for their flour by
fishing below the millrace.

Settlers who came to Michigan after 1835 found a fair
degree of stability. The forests were still there, but the log
cabin was disappearing. New roads, laid out precisely north-
south and east-west, led at one-mile intervals past painted barns
and pillared farmhouses. The source of all wealth was the

248 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

land, but the land was rich. A quarter section and a family of
four strapping boys meant prosperity.

The preceding generation had cleared the land, split the
rails to build the fences, and hewed logs for their cabins. They
had lived precariously in complete isolation at remote clearings,
snowed in all winter and shaking with fever and ague in the hot
summers. With their calloused hands they had grubbed roots
and vines, and with their backs they had guided the huge
breaking plow behind its four yoke of oxen. In the "grub-lots"
where the roots were thickest, seven yoke could hardly break
the sod.

The new settlers in 1835 and 1836 had money, and hired
most of the heavy work done. Often they bought completely
built farms, with buildings ready. As soon as these people began
sowing their first crop they began keeping books. Nothing
illustrates the changing type of Michigan pioneer better than
the thoroughness of these old records, and the hand-set old
newspapers wherein their doings were recorded.

Harriet Martineau says that after a gruelling fight with
the mud on the road to Ann Arbor, she picked up a copy of an
Ann Arbor newspaper at an inn where she sought much-needed
rest. "It was irregularly printed and not good," she commented,
"but it could happen nowhere outside America that a back
woods village like Ann Arbor, where there is difficulty in
procuring proper food and accommodations, should have a
newspaper." It was no exception; all the county-seat villages
had newspapers/The educational standard of Michigan immi
grants was astonishingly high. There are legends about pioneers
who carried sweat-stained copies of Plato and Horace in their
jeans to read during moments of rest from the plow. And the
Ann Arbor Argus which so impressed Miss Martineau carried
a poetry column with flowery allusions to Circe, Juno and
Ceres.

In its news columns theJrgus in 1837 reported that whereas
land cost a dollar and a quarter per acre, it cost an additional
ten dollars an acre to clear it with ox teams and build rail
fences. This was said to be an average; timbered land might

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 249

cost fifteen dollars an acre to clear and fence; burr-oak plains
and prairies cost about ten dollars. In a few cases settlers had
claimed to have cleared, fenced, plowed, harrowed and seeded
open land for as little as eight dollars an acre.

Pioneers recalled in documents now in the files of the Pioneer
and Historical Collection that they got back as much as this
outlay cost them in one or two good seasons' crops. The natural
products of the land represented profit. The timber built mills
on the creeks, new houses in the villages. The fields, even before
plowing, yielded berries, nuts, maple sugar, honey, grasses for
their livestock and small game for themselves. A Detroit man
in 1836, exhausted by a hard day's ride, knocked at the door
of a house near Parma. His horse had fallen down while try
ing to ford Sandstone Creek and he could go no farther. The
farmer invited him in, and told him that this was his third
season there. He wouldn't sell for forty dollars an acre, he
said. He claimed he was getting eighty bushels of corn to the
acre. If so, it was better than his descendants can get now on
the same land.

These Michigan families lived a community life quite dif
ferent from the dangerous, fever-ridden exile of the log-cabin
pioneer. Barn-raisings, logging bees, quilting bees, husking
bees and other semi-social events indicate the willingness of the
whole neighborhood to pitch in and help a man with a big job.
This co-operative spirit made life an enjoyable one. Each
settler regarded himself as a unit in the village team. He was
ready at any time to hitch up his teams, yoke his oxen and go
to help his neighbor do a job he couldn't do alone.

The era was slow, inexpensive, picturesque and thoroughly
enjoyable. At least it seems so to moderns by comparison, and
in retrospect to the old folk who described Mason's Michigan
in letters to the Pioneer and Historical Society from about
1880 to 1900. These letters are full of detailed descriptions of
everything Mason's people wore, what they ate, how they put
up preserves and smoked meats and collected vegetables in
great bins and always had plenty on hand even if twenty or
more sat down to table. One of them said that his grandmother,

25O STEVENS THOMSON MASON

who lived on a farm near Pontiac, never seemed surprised if
her numerous sons brought their large families to Sunday din
ner without invitation, and could feed fifty without going to the
village store for anything. It was his belief that this family
could be snowed in from November until April, and emerge
on the first of May wearing double chins.

A man's whiskers were as much a part of his personality
as his house. Mustaches drooped downward to meet under the
chin; sideburns were wavy and luxuriant. Martin Van Buren's
were eight inches long, pure white, and as fluffy as an Angora
cat's. The "Uncle Sam" narrow chin-beard came into fashion
with the boot-strapped trousers, but it required daily shaving
to keep it narrow. More common and equally expressive of
solid citizenry was the "down-Easter", a thick fringe of beard
all around the face and under the chin, while the face itself
remained clean-shaven. John J. Adam, a State employee who
kept most of the records in the capitol, had a thin, turned-
down mouth that made him look like the old-time melodrama
actor's idea of an old squire or a typical old sour-puss. He
made himself look even more like a tintype of a curmudgeon
by wearing a gray wisp of beard about three inches wide,
right on his chin. It stuck straight out; Mr. Adam was a
prankster and wore it that way for the laughs he got. It made
him look like the stubborn old father in East Lynne who throws
his erring daughter out into the snow.

It was the full beard, however, rather than the fancy
whiskers that was the measure of a man. Men in Mason's
Michigan regarded them as symbols of dignity and began
growing them as soon as possible. Some were two feet long;
most of them were bushy and ferocious-looking. In time they
attained a rich brown hue from tobacco juice, and when they
inevitably turned white, a man had either to stop chewing or
keep trimming his beard. Out of these fur-bearing countenances *
came nasal, twangy monosyllables handed down no doubt from
New England forebears, but in time attaining a pure Mid
western farm dialect form. In Mason's Michigan the dialect
was perhaps at its most extreme ; with the railroad era it

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 251

gradually became ridiculous and disappeared. It was the basis
for the speech of the stage "rube character". Mason's farmer
"calculated" it was time to "fetch the caows"; he "reckoned"
he better get the hay in; and, if baffled, he ejaculated, so help
me, "I swan."

His farm produced everything he ate or wore, except per
haps salt, pepper and buttons. He bought things like these
at the village store on credit and paid once a year, with his
cash crop. He had to buy his land outright and pay for it in
advance, hence he had no mortgage and no bank debt. He
built all the buildings on it himself, with some help from his
neighbors at raising-time. His land was his citadel. He had
created it out of wilderness, arid he was furiously independent
in thought and deed. He would vote as he felt, regardless of
party or issues, but he had violent likes and dislikes which
made politics in Mason's Michigan a reckless gamble. He
liked Mason and disliked Woodbridge. Tomorrow he might
change. He "liked that government best which governed him
least". He received no form of aid from it; no relief in the
recurrent epidemics of cholera and fever; no expensive develop
ments like electric power lines and drainage programs. He re
ceived no AAA checks, no help from a County Agricultural
Agent, and to him, government was just the tax assessor and
the colonel of the local militia looking for recruits to fill his
empty ranks in the regiment. It is understandable that he had
a mental horizon bounded by the fence rails on his quarter
section of land. He took a dim view of politicians in general,
and became the most hidebound, rock-ribbed reactionary in
the world.

Outside of the periodic church revivals, politics was his only
amusement. He and his wide-hatted, bearded neighbors
gathered at the courthouse to hear the "speechin"', not because
of a burning zeal for justice, but to watch the candidates rant
and rave, and insult each other. He was well-educated for a
pioneer; amazingly so for a man who had felled a forest and
was wringing a living out of land broken only a year before.
He had the best rural newspaper informational service in the

252 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

world at that time, and he read constantly, But he was not,
and could not become, a liberal. The newspaper did not attempt
to influence his political views. It quoted markets, reviewed
books, published poetry and long editorials which the man
frequently did not read at all.

It is hard to generalize about 80,000 people. If these ex
amples we know so well from voluminous records originating
in Mason's time were typical, we are forced to conclude that in
spite of their fund of information on public questions they re
mained victims of some personal whim to the last. Michigan
is full of middle-aged men who say of their grandfathers : "He
knew what was going on ; he went to all the speeches and read
all the papers, but once he made up his mind he never changed
it the rest of his life. He went to his grave thinking that all
Democrats were crooks." Or Whigs, or Republicans, or what
ever form of stubbornness the old party had become addicted
to in his youth.

The isolation of individual farms, and this intolerant, stub
born defiance of self-evident facts, continued to be a symptom
of life in rural Michigan until comparatively recently. The
postal system, the telephone, the automobile, have banished
the isolation and forced the farmer to become a citizen of the
State. There are traces of this old-time attitude in the more
remote sections of Michigan today. There are fourth- and
fifth-generation farmers who leave their land but once a year,
and then to attend the county fair.

3

Detroit forgot about business and all personal things on the day
the news arrived that statehood had been granted. It was a
blizzardy day in February the 9th and the frozen river
gave up swirling whirlwinds of icy snow which froze in the
citizens' beards. All the saloons and barrooms were keeping
open house, and by noon the population had taken aboard
so much anti-freeze that the streets were jammed with noisy

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 253

people. A spontaneous parade soon formed, with the Brady
Guards' new gold-lace uniforms in the lead. The official salut
ing gun on the customhouse thundered twenty-six times. All day
they celebrated, and most of the night as well. The residents
organized a "grand illumination", by placing a candle in the
front window of every house in town. Celebrating bands of
neighbors serenaded each other. Mason was holding open
house, and the parlor was full of red-nosed, loud-voiced
visitors who clapped him soundly on the back and demanded
to know if he remembered the time the "Michiganders" in
the Toledo War wound up in Major Stinckney's wine cellar.
Anecdotes cut the smoky, alcoholic air; did the Governor re
member the boys who shot off all the State's ammunition on
the way home from the War because the day fell on the anni
versary of the Battle of Put in Bay?

Ruefully, Mason no doubt was remembering all those
things, plus the knowledge that if he had not taken part in
them, Michigan would probably have been admitted a year
earlier. At the time, his people were so busy celebrating the
long-awaited victory that they did not realize the real cause
of the delays. Mason thereupon decided to stop being a Young
Hotspur. He had been plunging headlong into legal obstacles
with both fists full of illegal weapons, but nobody had pro
tested yet. Someday they might. He had been lucky that the
courts were not full of protests about the "Frost-Bitten Con
vention" at that very hour.

He was one of the few persons in Detroit who took time
to analyze the situation. To illustrate the effervescent nature
of his fellow citizens, the same people who had howled to high
heaven about the highhanded methods Mason used while try
ing to jimmy his way into the Union; the very citizens who had
shouted that he was "bartering away part of the State" and
selling them down the river "like unto Joseph into Egypt",
and so forth, now signed more testimonials complimenting
him on "the untiring zeal and unremitting fidelity with which
he tried to sustain our rights". The Legislature straightway

254 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

appropriated funds from the dwindling Treasury to pay the
expenses of the delegates of the "Frost-Bitten Convention"
who had gone to Washington.

Mason revelled in the new glories of his position. He had
new stationery. "State of Michigan", it proclaimed. On it
was the Michigan seal, designed by Lewis Cass with the help
of an artist in the Treasury Department. There was a Latin
motto, inspired by the famed epitaph of Sir Christopher Wren
in St. Paul's, London: Si Quaeris Peninsnlam Amoenam, Cir-
cumspice. (If Thou Seekest a Beautiful Peninsula, Look
Around.) Under the seal appeared his name: STEVENS
T. MASON, Governor. He thought he had a pretty good job
for a fellow of twenty-five. He hoped he could hold it; he
would have to stand for re-election during the coming fall.

He had reached the point where he began to see his career
going in cycles. He was alternately popular and unpopular;
booed and cheered. He no longer cared much about the hys
teria of the crowd. He had a glazed, impersonal politeness
that he showed to everyone; dowagers at the Governor's Ball,
and drunks breathing down his neck at Ten Eyck's tavern.
Strangers who followed him on the street sometimes asked,
timidly: "Hello, Governor. Ain't you Mason?" The answer
was always, "Yes, sir. And may I inquire your name?" He
was not visibly surprised that a visiting English artist should
ask to make a sketch of him while being shaved in a barber
shop on Jefferson Avenue, nor that the artist should later get
the wrong name on it and sell it as a sketch of Lord Byron.

A little boy from a Whig family wrote the Historical Society
that when he was about six, which was about this time, he saw
Governor Mason come down the steps of the capitol building
wearing his gleaming high silk topper, fringed white blanket,
high black boots and gold-headed cane. He looked about eight
feet tall to the child, and tremendously dignified. But because
he was a Whig and Mason was a Democrat the youngster
knew he could not let the occasion pass without an insult, so
he ran after the Governor, shouting: "Five-quarter Mason!
Five-quarter Mason !" He said he had no idea what the phrase

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 255

meant ; he had heard his father talk about it. Mason turned,
stared down at him, and walked back.

"I was afraid of his big gold-headed cane," he oldster re
called. "I was even more afraid when the great man came to
ward me, stooped down, put his arm around me and talked for
some five minutes in the most soothing, amiable voice imagina
ble. I cannot remember a word he said, but I shall never for
get the kindly tone of his voice as he spoke to me."

It was another Whig taunt, a reference to an alleged book
keeping error by which Mason was said to have drawn five
quarterly salary checks during his first year as Governor. He
had indeed been given five checks, but he discovered the error
before the bookkeeper did and returned the extra one. The
Whigs picked up even such trivialities as this to attack Mason.
By the year 1837 he was case-hardened to it and did not pay
much attention to anything the Whigs called him. He expected
to be lavishly praised and grossly insulted every few days,
usually by the same people, and well he knew that they had
no idea what they were talking about.

He mentioned a typical example in a letter to his father,
the formation of the Anti-Slavery Party as a new entry on the
ballots. Mason had no position about slavery; he was bel
ligerently neutral. His reticence did not save him from be
coming the center of a newspaper and village-inn storm in the
spring of 1837; he was accused of being in sympathy with the
slaveowners because his family had lived in Virginia and Ken
tucky, and conversely he was held up as a militant abolitionist
who would go about creating public riots. Hadn't Harriet
Martineau lived at his house while penning a violent diatribe
against U. S. slavery? All the young man wanted out of life
was peace. His family tried to see that he attained it.

He might have known that no governor ever has much
peace. Not even modern governors. A century ago, when they
were virtually kings in their bailiwicks, they were at every
body's beck and call constantly. Every time Mason cleared his
desk and prepared to go hunting deer in the forests near Sagi-
naw Bay, something happened.

256 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

During the spring and summer of 1837 he tried more than
ever to get some precious time away from his desk. He seldom
succeeded. In the spring his father arrived to complete the
family circle once more. The girls were there, and even his
mother seemed to be feeling better. Emily was the iron-willed
hostess of the little gubernatorial residence. She was twenty-
one; jet-black hair, flashing eyes, and a long, strong chin which
fairly shouted determination. She was the 1837 version of a
career woman, not interested in men and never known to be a
figure in a romance. She was a student of her times, forever
collecting notes and filling diaries, speaking from rostrums,
writing pamphlets. She became a well-known figure among the
Mason manors in Virginia, rapidly evolving into a famous
personality.

Sister Kate married Ike Rowland when she was eighteen,
and went happily to housekeeping in a tiny bungalow on upper
Woodward Avenue near Adams. The couple was so obviously
under the influence of bridal bliss that Mason politely waited
a month before paying a social call. Thereafter, as children
began arriving, Uncle Stevens kept up his lifelong intimacy
with Ike in the taverns and taprooms. They seldom visited
each other's homes.

It was a standing joke with Ike to ask young Mason why
he didn't marry. It always reddened Mason's face. He didn't
know. He just wasn't in the mood ; he didn't have time to go
courting, and didn't want a girl he could win without a struggle.
He complained to Ike that he was cut off night after night
from any time to relax at home ; something was popping up at
every opportunity to sit down and rest. This crime wave, for
instance.

Thugs were beating up citizens in Detroit doorways. Rob
bers, unmasked and defiant, stopped stagecoaches and rifled
wallets. Caught without a police force in Detroit and no State
wide law enforcement system in the counties, crimes of violence
multiplied until most of Mason's time was being taken up ap
pointing marshals and answering village complaints. It was
midwinter when the crime wave began, and it lasted far into

1836-1837] BREAKING INTO THE UNION 257

the summer. The sheriffs' departments were feeble and jealous
of each other. There was no prison to put felons even if they
were caught and convicted in one of the travelling Circuit
Courts which visited each county seat at intervals of several
weeks.

While the Legislature was in session, Mason wrote a mes
sage about it.

"One of the greatest evils under which the public is now
suffering is the want of an improved and regular penitentiary
system. To such an extent has this evil grown that the ends of
justice are entirely defeated by the want of the necessary and
proper buildings for the confinement of criminals. . . . My
object is reformation of the offender, but at present this end
is worse than defeated."

In the towns, promoters sniffed a State contract for a con
struction job. Bids came in from everywhere. At Jackson,
the local committee donated to the State sixty acres of privately
owned land which they bought as a speculation. They offered
this for a temporary stockade while a prison was being built.
Mason accepted the offer. Located on the east bank of the
Grand River, the site was swampy and heavily timbered, and
had to be filled, graded and prepared before it could be used.
But the Circuit Courts sent enough convicted felons to get the
work started. In the beginning, there was just a tamarack
stockade made from poles cut on the site. It was easy to crash
through. All the prisoners were manacled, and dressed in
canvas suits with two-inch alternate black and white stripes.
Before the stockade was secure, protests began arriving in
Mason's office from other localities which declared they had
been defrauded by Mason's sudden decision in favor of Jack
son. One wrote: "We made our proposals and offered our
inducements to the State, while the Jackson citizens offered
all their inducements to the commissioners who had the power
of awarding the contract."

Mason was too busy to debate the point It might have
been bribery, but at least Jackson people got a prison built.
The first inventory shows that in 1837 iron shackles to attach

258 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

the prisoner's leg to a stake in the open stockade cost two
dollars each ; the blacksmith who hammered them on received
two dollars a day for doing it. The prisoners were poorly
fed, cruelly beaten for attempted escape, and did not even re
ceive any underwear under their striped canvas uniforms.
During the first winter there they nearly froze, and conditions
in the "tamaracks", as the place was known to the underworld,
were unspeakably cruel.

Mason changed superintendents and appointed Benjamin
Porter as the first warden of Jackson Prison. Porter went to
Auburn, New York, and made a survey of the grim old granite-
walled prison there. He returned to build one even more grue
some at Jackson. Stories about the horrors of Jackson Prison
multiplied until in defense of its good name Michigan aban
doned it about 1930 and built a modern college-campus type
of "rehabilitation center" a few miles outside of Jackson. It
is the largest prison in the world; so vast that a person could
sleep in a different bunk every night and stay inside the walls
for fifteen years.

Mason would not have bragged about it.

CHAPTER IX

RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT

DURING THE YEAR 1837, directly following Michigan's ad
mission as a State, the career of Stevens Thomson Mason
reached its zenith. He had accomplished his mission in spite
of obstacles which would have defeated a lesser man. His place
in Michigan history was secure, and his stature as a governor
was already so great that, had he died suddenly that spring,
he would have been honored as Michigan's greatest pioneer
figure. The fact that he is not so honored today, and is just
a disembodied name in the school histories, rests upon what
happened to Mason while he was at the top of his career and
during a couple of years afterward.

He is a unique figure in the history of the United States.
Nothing precisely like him has appeared on the national stage
since his decline and death. The conditions which produced
him have vanished. Governors no longer have the towering
personal power that Mason had; business and agricultural
conditions do not permit any one man's influence to dominate
them on a State-wide plane. Economists call this period the
era of untrammelled personal initiative. It was the time when
most of the huge personal fortunes in America were created.
It was a day when opportunities were everywhere, laws were
few and feebly enforced, and a man could become rich by
building a business on piratical methods which would land him
in prison today.

Political figures in Mason's day had more personal power,
too. A governor like himself was practically a dictator, with
very little between his present position and absolute power
except his conscience. Mason was a true liberal whose whole
heart was in the desire to sublimate his own wishes, his own

259

26O STEVENS THOMSON MASON

desires, and truly represent the people who had chosen him.
Woodbridge, on the other hand, was at the opposite end of
the political spectrum, a man who saw official position as a
means of getting something for himself or his followers, and
not as a post of public trust.

Mason held power because he was more popular than
Woodbridge; because he could think faster and because his
policies reflected accurately the very things the people wanted.
But the strain upon him was growing. It was soon to become
intolerable. He had won his major victory in the creation of
the State. Now he was faced with an even greater task the
job of building the State, constructing railroads, digging canals,
filling the empty treasury, bringing Michigan out of the raw
settlement phase into the new era of prosperous cities and
cultural accomplishment.

In this new act of the drama which was his life, Mason was
called upon to play a difficult and unfamiliar role. He would
have to be an engineer, and protect the State against the
schemes of visionary promoters who wanted railroads in every
village. He would have to become a banker; not a small-town
mortgage holder, but a wizard of the money markets who
could keep a jump ahead of the sharpers in New York and
London. He must become an educator, and build a system of
State-supported schools climaxed and crowned by the creation
of a great university. He must become a super-sheriff and au
thority on penology, and stop the brutal floggings in the new
prison while keeping all the county sheriffs working harmoni
ously instead of scheming to outwit each other.

Mason's mind was many-sided. He was ingenious, but not
a true genius. He was resourceful, but not always successful.
He had a tendency to dash into a dilemma like a white knight
upon a charger, clouting his enemies with spectacular tricks
while his people cheered him on. If he was unhorsed he bounced
to his feet anyhow and claimed that he had won, creating
the Illusion of victory and reaping the benefits whether or not
his feat had really won anything. Being clever had won for
him up to now.

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 26l

In 1837, Mason found himself opposed to men who were
as clever as himself, and far less scrupulous. They were old
hands at technical games which were almost mysteries to him.
They were construction engineers, bankers, brokers people
who were out to skin him at great profit to themselves. They
knew Mason was committed to a gigantic public-improvement
program. They were going to get theirs, and usg Mason to
get it.

Mason did not see the cracks in the economic structure.
They were there. Bankers and lawyers saw them, but Mason
was so bewildered by the magnitude and multiplicity of his
many jobs that he failed to notice them. He had a hundred
things to do simultaneously. The Legislature appropriated a
fund which was swelled by popular subscription to engage
Alvin Smith to paint the Mason portrait. Mr. Smith, a widely
known New York portraitist, came to Detroit and found
Mason scratching away at his desk writing all his own letters
because there was no provision for an office clerk for him.

The framers of the Constitution had set $400 as the annual
salary of the Secretary of State; $300 for the Banking Com
missioner; $200 for the Attorney General. These gentlemen
would not spend any amount of time on State business for
such paltry sums, and Mason had to do their jobs in addition
to his own. He was becoming desperate. Daily he put on his
resplendent black inauguration costume to pose for Mr. Smith,
looking confident. Then he took it off again and became de
spondent, as one officer after another failed him. He had ap
pointed a Banking Commissioner to look after the local banks
chartered under the Banking Act of 1837, which was en
couragingly liberal in character and allowed any remote
village to set up a bank. But the appointee lived in Cass County,
nearly on the shores of Lake Michigan and a hard five-day
journey from Detroit. He did not appear. Mason wrote him
that he would have to move to Detroit and function as a Bank
ing Commissioner, whereupon the man told Mason to throw
the job into the Detroit River, or words to that effect.

Attorney General Daniel LeRoy lived in Pontiac. When

262 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

he, too, was notified that his job was in Detroit and Mason
would like to have him show some interest in it, Mr. LeRoy
responded with a long legal proclamation which amounted
to the same thing. Mason could get himself a new boy. The
Governor had a Secretary of State only because Kintzing
Pritchette was his neighbor and friend, and was willing to help
him out. He had a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who
lived in Ann Arbor and held court in a little log house on the
edge of town. Members of the Supreme Court were circuit
riders who sat in county seats as judges of the Circuit Courts.
They had to sit in judgment on appeals from their own de
cisions.

This heavy burden of administrative work caused Mason's
friends grave concern. He was not afraid of the magnitude of
the task, but they were afraid he would slide over some of it,
make the wrong decision out of impulsive irritation, and land
himself and the State in serious trouble. He had absolutely no
one to whom he could pass a buck. It was inevitable that under
this pressure a man of Mason's temperament would commit
a blunder. He blundered, but in 1837 he had a batting average
that was nothing short of amazing. Decision after decision
affecting State policies fluttered off Mason's ink-stained desk
in his own ornate handwriting. They were mostly the correct
decisions. As long as he did not attempt to solve technical
problems in finance or engineering or jurisprudence, he main-
ta ined an excellent record.

Two examples may be cited of the kind of thing Mason
was forced to decide in the midst of this confusion. One was
magnificent, the other palpably absurd. He signed both bills
on March 27, 1837, an d during the same day he posed for Mr.
Smith, held a long discussion with a legislator named Alpheus
Felch on the Democratic Party situation in Monroe, and wrote
several letters. It is apparent that he did not consider either
bill with the care they deserved.

The first set up a fund for the support of primary schools
throughout the State and for the creation, organization and
construction of the University of Michigan. The fund had been

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 263

authorized by the Constitution under Mason's inspiration at
the time it was being drafted. In the field of education he knew
what he wanted, and his school program has developed into
his most lasting achievement. The other bill was an Act which
authorized the setting up of a rigid inspection system for the
new State banks which were being chartered, but failed to ap
propriate the necessary funds for such an inspection program.
The plan was a step toward a goal which Mason wanted, but
did not quite know how to attain. He was for the most liberal
banking policy that was practical, but he had an uneasy feel
ing that the bill he had signed, because of its lack of teeth, was
too liberal for the State's good. He did not follow through and
demand enforcement of the Act. He didn't have time to tour
the State examining bankbooks himself and there was no one
to whom he could delegate the task. The results were not long
in becoming apparent. No one paid any attention to the inspec
tion provisions of the Act, and the "wildcat" bank burst upon
the scene with an ominous yowl.

The good and the bad the wonderful school system and
the ridiculous liberality toward backwoods banks only Mason
among U. S. administrators would have been so inconsistent.
Michigan soon assumed the lead among all the States in the
coverage and efficiency of her school and University program.
Simultaneously her people went broke in a spectacular panic,
which broke out in the summer of 1837, immediately after
Mason had signed this Banking Act which, lacking any enforce
ment machinery, merely left rustic swindlers on their honor
to be good little boys. Since people remember panics and for
get an achievement like a school system, the panic straightway
monopolized everyone's attention.

The beginnings of the national Panic of 1837 (capitalized
by historians) were traced to Andy Jackson's temper. The
old war horse had finished a successful second term in the
White House and was about to bow out of public life. He did
not need to curry political favor with anyone; he could act
solely for the public good. He knew the United States was
taking a beating from a small clique of moneyed men who were

264 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

the directors of the United States Bank, He saw these favored
few rapidly obtaining control of most big-scale U. S. businesses,
squeezing out the small businessmen and developing the first
U. S. industrial monopolies. The Bank's charter came up for
renewal just as he was leaving office, and he refused to renew it.

This act dissolved the United States Bank as a Federal
institution, depository of Federal funds and the source of all
Federal banknotes in circulation. The directors at once re
organized it as a private bank located in Philadelphia. Im
mediately, its banknotes began to be discounted. The govern
ment's surplus after all debts amounted to $40,000,000; this
was of course withdrawn from the defunct United States Bank
and distributed among the States. Michigan received $1,895-,-
ooo, which was placed on deposit in two Detroit banks, the
Bank of Michigan, and the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank
of Detroit.

The same distribution was in progress all over the country.
Everywhere, gold and silver coin virtually disappeared and a
flood of bank notes issued by these State depositories was
the only currency. Within six months the hoarders had hidden
away so much silver coin that merchants had trouble making
change. In the newer areas of the nation, such as Michigan,
the paper snowstorm of bank notes was a bonanza in one way,
because they could buy public lands with Bank of the United
States bank notes at par, but the Government had to discount
them and take a loss.

To stop this, and to discourage the increasing speculation
in public lands on the part of a great number of bootstrap
promoters of dubious real-estate gambles, Jackson in 1836
had signed the famous "Specie Circular", which demanded
gold or silver of a certain weight and fineness as the only allow
able payment for public lands. Immediately, speculation stopped
and the bank notes went into a tail spin of depreciation.

In Michigan alone these sales of public lands in 1836 had
amounted to $5,241,228.70, which was one fifth of the entire
national total. When the Specie Circular demanded only
specie payment, the speculators turned to speculating in bank

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 265

notes themselves; selling them to each other and to gullible
citizens for some promised redemption at a very vague date.
The notes continued to depreciate. Men who had to deal in
money soon accumulated bales of the things. One of them was
Barnabas Campeau of the old Detroit family, a private banker.
He bought Belle Isle from John Macomb for $4,500 in notes
of some suspended banks of Ohio which had been foisted on
him, and thus the island cost him nothing. Detroit had been
trying to obtain it as a municipal park, but because of the
Campeau purchase, was prevented from doing so until 1879,
when the island and its bridge approach cost the city $700,000
in legitimate money.

In May, 1837, the first blow of the Panic fell. New York
banks suspended payments in specie; Philadelphia and Boston
banks followed soon afterward. When word of the crisis
reached Michigan, Mason called the Legislature into special
session to ask that Michigan authorize all banks to stop re
deeming bills in specie and thus dissipate their backing for
the bales of bills they already had in circulation. Almost every
bank in the State closed. A few reopened after a week or so,
when an examination of their assets had insured their sol
vency. But mostly the bank closings were followed by failure,
suspension or sympathetic closing of a good many mercantile
and industrial firms.

Panic, following a wave of seemingly limitless prosperity,
swung the popular pendulum away from Mason at a most
inopportune time. It was election year, and during the summer
both political parties would hold their conventions. Mason
was thus forced to stand for re-election with his State in the
grip of the worst panic his people had ever seen.

The Whigs were everywhere, distributing vitriolic hand
bills, stumping the counties with evidence that Michigan was
bankrupt, and even organizing bread lines in Detroit as a
campaign stunt. They placed display advertising in the Ad
vertiser:

"To the poor: The Whigs will distribute one hundred dol
lars in bread and pork among the city poor tomorrow evening.

266 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Due notice of the hour and place will be given in the morning
paper, 51

They thought Mason would squirm at that, but he shrugged
it off. Most of the "poor" turned out to be Irish families from
Windsor, across the river, and the stunt backfired on Wood-
bridge when some of his own partisans said they thought it was
just an attempt to stir up more trouble. There was trouble
enough in the State. As more and more banks remained sul
lenly closed, the public temper approached the boiling point.
How many people blamed Mason for this state of affairs we
don't know, but the proportion was not considerable.

As always in panic conditions, the laboring man and the
farmer were the chief sufferers. Food prices fell away to such
a point that the farmers could not afford to bring their produce
to town. Employment almost disappeared, as one business
after another followed the insolvent banks into failure. Only
in Detroit did the inevitable mob scene make its appearance
when the old Campus Martius was packed on May 3rd, follow
ing a rumor that Mason was going to issue a proclamation
invalidating all the bank notes in the State. The rumor was
false. Mason at the moment was making a personal plea to the
Legislature to give him some full-time, skilled Banking Ex
aminers, and quickly. He asked for three; he was given two,
and later a third was added. The delegation from the mass
meeting found him with some news to telL . . . He reported
that he was going to examine every bank in Michigan and
find out exactly what was the trouble. In the meantime, there
would be at least two banks open in Detroit, well backed with
great casks of yellow gold coin and gilt-edge, first-mortgage
bonds. Other old-time conservative banks remained open in
Monroe, Adrian, Tecumseh and Marshall, It was, he said,
the best he could do.

Luck was with him. The forests were full of immigrants who
had arrived but lately, their pockets full of cash gained from
the sale of the farms they had left in the East. They introduced
enough metallic money into the currency system to keep things
going fairly well These people had to stay, because they had

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 267

bought land and spent their money on improvements for it.
They were committed to whatever Michigan's course was to be.
Like the independent, optimistic people they were, they bounced
back rapidly. They prepared their fields in the spring and
gathered a prodigious crop in the fall. As Mason told the
Legislature: "The wealth of our State derives from its farmers,
and from their land. Agriculture is our foundation stone."
The farms were lavish in 1837; few people had money, but
no one starved.

The harsh experience of this prolonged panic made a deep
impression upon Mason. Everyone in his administration knew
that something was terribly wrong with the banking situation.
Whether the trouble was with the Act authorizing the banks,
or with its administration, no one then knew. It would take
time to find out. In the meantime, Mason decided that the time
had come to turn his attention to something more pleasant.

2'

Viewed from the perspective of time, Mason's achievement
in setting up America's oldest and greatest State-supervised
public-education program outweighs his error in not going
after the "wildcat banks" until struck down by the Panic of
1837. The State has gained more from its schools than it
lost in the brief experience with the "wildcat banks". Michigan
schools are something quite unique, and have pointed the way
toward educational reforms all over the world. Probably the
educational standards of Michigan schools are no' better than
elsewhere, but the standard of teachers' salaries certainly was.
In Mason's time his boldness in paying teachers a living wage
was considered fantastic.

Because he knew more about schools than he did about
banks, he went into his task with a knowledge of what he, as
an individual, would have wanted to achieve had he been a
child again, about to enter first grade. Because he would not
compromise on his school dream, he insisted that the Superin
tendent of Public Instruction have the best job in the State

268 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

next to his own, and a salary of $1,500 a year phenomenal
for an educator in those days. He selected and coached his own
candidate for the post.

The candidate was John D. Pierce, an ordained Congre
gational minister who lived at Marshall, a town in the cen
tral part of the State. The Rev. Mr. Pierce was a big, raw-
boned, calm-voiced man with a black beard that cascaded over
his waistcoat, and a pate almost as bald as an egg. He had
the wild eye and the tireless energy of the true crusad.er; he
could rise to his great height and bellow forth his demands
for the most astounding set of schools in the world, and convert
tight-fisted local committees. He was truly an apostle, preach
ing a new gospel.

Mason had first met him during the cholera epidemic of
1832, when he sought shelter in Pierce's cabin after a wild
night ride from YpsilantL Mrs. Pierce died that night while
Mason was there. The Rev. Mr. Pierce took no time then to
mourn. He saddled a horse and rode with Mason to help fight
the epidemic, and afterward he returned to the empty log
cabin, became a recluse and wrote elegies to her memory in
Latin. He did his own cooking, and kept a cat.

The appearance of a dynamic character like this in the edu
cational world, and Mason's success with him, indicates the
Boy Governor's success in recognizing and encouraging talent.
He knew that the Rev. Mr. Pierce held a degree from Brown
University and that for some years he had a bold theory about
education* Mason backed him, fought for him at the Constitu
tional Convention, and succeeded in writing this theory into
the document in the form of constitutional authority for
Pierce's schools and sharp legal teeth to protect them from
exploitation. Isaac Crary, the first Michigan Congressman,
lived in Marshall and it was he who really brought the two into
harmonious action as a smooth-working team. Mason sum
moned the minister and drew from him the facts about his
background and his starting point on this educational crusade.
It was a fascinating story.

The minister had had plenty of time to read, following the

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 269

death of his beloved wife. Into his hands came a translation
by Sarah Austin of a report in German on the school system of
Prussia, published in New York in 1835. It emphasized the
typical Prussian national characteristics centralized control
coupled with strict discipline by a responsible public official.
In Prussia the superintendent of the state schools wore a gold-
braided uniform and strutted with a sword and a military title.
His pupils all wore little round soldier caps, recited in unison
and sat stiffly at attention in class. But Prussia pounded the
rudiments of education into their hard, flaxen little heads,
and there were figures to show one of the lowest illiteracy
rates in the world. There everyone, regardless of birth or
means, had to go to school. The State paid for it, and the
State paid the truant officer, too. The superintendent was ap
pointed by the King, and paid a handsome salary from the
royal purse. If he did not show results, he could be ousted and
disgraced.

The benign missionary, shivering in his little log cabin,
read this account and was thrilled. He realized that in this
forested peninsula there was no existing school system to tear
down against entrenched opposition ; there was a fast-growing
population with children who grew even faster By establishing
a new school system on a new basis, he could begin by aiming
at a big future population, and thus build on a well-planned
foundation. The bare idea of universal free education was
only beginning to-be accepted. What the Rev. Mr. Pierce pro
posed was an end to illiteracy, with a tough State Department
cracking down.

To Mason this was also the answer to his own dream. He
knew from his own experience what some pitfalls were pri
vate boarding schools were high on the list. They did not reach
a sufficient slice of the population. Young as he was, he could
remember vividly the troubles he had had trying to educate him
self between gaps in his attendance at private schools. He
shuddered at the inadequacies in his school background. He
had never had a chance to attend anything comparable to the
public school of today, for the reason that until Pierce read

270 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

this article on Prussia, nothing of the kind had existed in the
United States. Characteristically, Mason's dream went far
beyond Pierce's, and envisioned branch colleges at all the
bigger towns and the greatest State University in America.
Seeing this detailed picture of his goal before him, Mason en
thusiastically backed Pierce.

The Rev. Mr. Pierce started his sales talk in Mason's office
by saying that he was going to take the cruelties and over
emphasis on regimentation and discipline out of the plan but
keep the iron-fisted State control. No one, said Pierce, was
going to grab any school land at any time for any purpose.
Downtown business frontage in many a Michigan city is oc
cupied by a school That land belongs to the State and cannot
possibly be used for any other purpose than a school. In all thip
counties, towns and villages the same principle applies. The
State controls thousands of acres of school lands.

This came about because Mason and Pierce put a section
into the Constitution reserving one section of land in every
sixteen for the support of primary schools. In Michigan this
amounts to 640 acres of land in every township of every county.
A great deal of this land is under cultivation in modern Michi
gan, but the income from it reverts to the State's primary
school fund, which is then apportioned among the counties.
The fund maintains a county school board, with a county school
commissioner and staff of supervisors. It also maintains a
school library in every county, which today travels from one
school to another in trucks.

Using this county organization as a supervisory and ad
ministrative machine, Pierce placed the actual conduct of the
remote rural schools under the direction of township school
boards. These boards are empowered to assess a special school
tax on all township property, which goes to pay the teacher's
salary and buy fuel for the little stove. As the valuation of
farm land in Michigan has risen, the primary school fund and
the township school tax revenues have risen accordingly. Mu
nicipalities also have separate school boards and a separate
school tax to finance city schools. Families which send their

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 271

children to private schools or parochial schools pay the pub
lic school tax just the same.

Michigan today has beautiful public schools. She can afford
them. She pays teachers one of the highest average salary
schedules in the United States, and behind that achievement
rise the ghosts of Mason and Pierce. Pierce planned it. For
a century, successive generations of politicians have* schemed
to get their scoops into the pile of gold that annually filters
down to the towns and counties as the primary school fund.
So far, they have been unsuccessful. Had that provision not
been written into the Constitution, it certainly would have
been ripped into tatters by the appropriation hounds by this
time.

Pierce figured everything in his plan to the last decimal
place. He designed a standard rural school, with two doors for
boys and girls leading to two convenient "Chic Sales" exactly
a hundred feet from the doors. He spied on the first attendance
officers, to see if Farmer Jones had sent Willie to school or
was keeping him in the barnyard to do the chores. If he caught
Willie at home on a school day, Farmer Jones was fined. To
supply teachers for the scores of schools thus created, Pierce
set up and headed the first normal college in the Middle West.
He laid out the curriculum and taught several courses himself.
As he foresaw the effect of an education on the farmers of
the succeeding generations, he inspired the first successful agri
cultural college in the northwest. This Institution is known
now as Michigan State College at East Lansing, one of the
oldest and largest, and probably the most famous of its kind
in the country.

They called him "Father Pierce". Before he had his school
system running smoothly his beard had turned gray and his
wild fanatic's eye was dim and philosophical, but he clung to
his original doctrines. When he began his work for the State,
he sold his cabin at Marshall, put his household goods on a
lumber wagon and started for Detroit. He did not know where
he was going to live when he arrived there, and apparently did
not care, Mason told him to store his furniture and take a long

272 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

trip through the East, visiting many kinds of public and private
schools, taking notes and absorbing ideas. He conferred with
college presidents and school deans throughout New York,
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and before he returned he
appeared as guest lecturer at the two chief teachers' conven
tions those at Worcester, Mass., and Cincinnati. On his re
turn he worked his notes into a powerful lecture which he de
livered to the Legislature and won a resounding vote of ap
proval.

Mason discovered in this bearded evangelist a nature as
impetuous as his own, but a strength of will he could not equal.
He tried to get Pierce to take over the University project as
well as the primary schools and colleges. Nothing doing, said
Pierce. Mason wrote him a persuasive letter :

"The State fund for the support of the common schools
will, with prudent husbandry, equal our utmost wants. The
University of Michigan will also possess an endowment which
will enable the State to place that institution upon an eleva
tion of character and standing equal to that of any similar in
stitution in the Union. I would therefore recommend the im
mediate location of the University, and at the same time the
adoption of a system for its government, such as the system
for the government of your primary schools. In the organiza
tion of your common schools, which are the foundation upon
which the whole system is based, the first measure essential to
the success and good government is the appointment of
teachers of the highest calibre, both moral and intellectual.
Liberal salaries should be allowed. . . . Without this you fail
in your object, as individuals in all respects competent to the
charge of your schools will be excluded from them by the
parsimoniousness of their compensation."

Mason always phrased letters like this from force of habit.
He was capable of writing to Emily: "I like New York and
would like to live there." He could not say anything of an
official nature simply. In this letter he could not say, for ex
ample: "If you offer poor pay you'll get poor teachers." He
referred ponderously to the parsimoniousness of their compen-

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 273

sation, which would drive one of his own high-school English
teachers to sharp remarks. The Rev. Mr. Pierce, who could
read this stuff as rapidly as he could read normal English, was
not impressed. He said he would advise Mason on the curricu
lum and the relationship of the University to the State, but
he would not serve as a Regent nor had he time to hold office
in its administration.

Well, replied Mason, what about the gap between the pri
mary schools and the rigid requirements of a University?
What he had in mind, he went on, was a chain of academies
to be located in the principal towns, which would receive grad
uates of the primary schools and provide them with secondary-
school educations leading to college entrance. Some of these
academies, because of their locations, ought to offer some
college courses in addition, because he felt that a good many
students would not go on to the University. These academies
would not confer degrees, but they would all be branches of
the University and subject to its control. What did Pierce
think of that?

Pierce's reply, if any, is not on record. It was a good means
of plugging the gap between a little country school and the
sophisticated University, and for his times was an efficient
solution. Mason went ahead with plans to build these branch
colleges at Detroit, Pontiac, Centerville, Niles, Grand Rapids,
Palmer, the old Indian town of White Pigeon, Jackson, Mon
roe, and Mackinac. While the long and apparently endless job
of establishing the University was in progress, these branches
were the highest education a public-school student could ob
tain in Michigan.

Mason might have written a book himself, before he left
office, entitled "How To Build a University". He certainly
wished many times while the exhausting task was in progress
that he could hold in his hands a good book with such a title.
The most that Michigan people knew about a university, in
cluding those who held degrees from many great ones, was
that no matter what Michigan built, or endowed, or authorized,
it was useless unless all the presidents of the leading American

274 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

and foreign universities accepted it and accredited it as a mem
ber of their intellectual stratosphere society. They would not
conceivably take such a step, he was told, until the institution
had been running as a maverick for a few years and had ac
quired the prestige, the traditions, the alumni body and the
bad habits without which a university was no better off than a
private young ladies' seminary.

Mason therefore sent for a pedant. This character, whose
erudition was so profound that he could recite lewd verses
in Greek, was accredited as the Mason ambassador to the
sanctums of the world's great educators. He carried a sizeable
proportion of all the hard money in the Michigan Treasury
for his prolonged travelling expenses, including $5,000 in gold
to procure a few books in Europe to act as the nucleus of a
library. His name was Dr. Asa Gray, a loyal native son of
Michigan whose scholarship field was botany, and who was
well recognized as a professor of the subject. He travelled
for nearly two years; he succeeded magnificently in his mis
sion and returned with specific suggestions from many American
and European universities as to the standards to be set at
Michigan's proposed institution. Along his route, he had picked
up a few cases of works in French, German and Italian on the
natural sciences, some sets of classic poets and dramatists in
Latin and Greek, and a few works in English. This was the
beginning of the University of Michigan Library, now housed
in a place so vast that modern undergraduates frequently be
come lost in its endless corridors and have to be located by
radar.

The location of the new University was a puzzle for a
time which was finally settled in favor of Ann Arbor. There
were two or three good reasons. First, of course, Ann Arbor
had the site. There was a wooded plateau just east of the old
town, heavily forested with oak and elm, which the citizens
of Ann Arbor offered as a site for the campus. The owners,
the Ann Arbor Land Company, decided to donate the first
forty acres to the State gratis, because they also owned all the
adjoining property and hired carpenters who could build

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 275

boardinghouses for the students. Secondly, Ann Arbor bore
a reputation for culture dating back to its earliest settlements
in 1817. Most of the settlers who took up land there were well
educated. They brought with them the first libraries in the
forests; they published little newspapers as early as 1822,
and in 1831 there were two of them competing for the scanty
business of the forested county. The leading Michigan news
paper outside Detroit was the old Western Emigrant of Ann
Arbor, which in 1835 became the now-famous Argus. Ann
Arbor was the home and professional location of William
Asa Fletcher, the eccentric Chief Justice of the Michigan
Supreme Court; the scene of most of the important annual
conventions and the expected site for any institution of this
kind. It was pointed out to Mason that the very atmosphere
of Ann Arbor was so conducive to culture that the first white
child born in the county was named Alpha.

Mason himself, so it is said, planned the arrangement of
the first row of buildings along the western edge of the campus,
His architects designed a pair of classroom buildings just alike,
separated by a wide expanse of bright green lawn from the
western border of the tract, reached by a pair of gravel paths.
They were four-story brick oblongs, with narrow windows and
even narrower stairways. Between them was a rustic walk
leading to the coal bins, out back, from which the students
filled the tiny individual stoves in the low-ceilinged classrooms.
The northernmost of these two buildings was set aside for the
College of Literature, Science and the Arts. After completion
it was given the name Mason Hall.

It is still there, but difficult to locate without a guide. It has
been swallowed up by the modern classic temples in marble
and glass which now stretch endlessly around the perimeter
of the original forty-acre campus. It is there, tucked away
behind Angell Hall, looking like the contractor's shanty left
by mistake when the modern temples of learning were erected
in our generation. Mason Hall is Mason's building and his
monument. He worked for it; he stood there on a wooden
plank walkway on what we now call State Street and watched

276 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

it rise, brick by brick. That little old classroom building gave
Mason more real satisfaction than anything else he ever accom
plished. To him it was the University; it was the triumph of
his perseverance and the Legislature's patience when Michi
gan men said it couldn't be done. Mason dreamed of this build
ing somewhat as we see it now the original structure and
cultural heart of what was to become one of the greatest cen
ters of learning in the world.

No one believed that such an institution could be created,
much less maintained, out there in the depths of a Michigan
forest nearly a thousand miles from New York and Boston.
The University authorities declare in their own history of the
institution that Mason's mind saw it originally, not as just
another school, but as the most influential State University
in the Union. They concede credit to Mason for his determina
tion to see it through until some day, years after him, a future
governor would acknowledge that his goal had been reached
and that Ann Arbor had joined towns like Oxford, Heidel
berg, Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton and Palo Alto in a
common connotation. It is universally admitted that the goal
was reached long ago.

The little old relic looks today just as it did when Mason
stood in his top hat and mud-smeared boots on the wooden
sidewalk along the western boundary watching the workmen
lay up the brick. It is one of the few connecting links between
his day and ours ; perhaps it is the most appropriate of all monu
ments to his memory. It is today hardly more than a symbol
of what Mason tried to do then, and what he faced in the
way of constructional difficulties and ignorance of modern
materials. For his day it was a splendid building. A delegate
to the Whig convention in Ann Arbor about the time Mason
Hall was finished wrote to his brother at Syracuse : "Saw the
College up here. Two new buildings just finished ; looks like
it is going to be even bigger than the College at Syracuse."
Visitors said the campus had a "noble aspect"; that it was
bigger than Harvard Yard and prettier than Princeton.

Whatever else happened to Mason's memory in the cen-

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 277

tury since his death, his University lives and thrives. He is
only one of a great many men who have regarded the Univer
sity of Michigan as their greatest career, although many of
them never held any office in it. There have been Regents,
both appointed and elected, who have neglected everything
else to work for the University; Governors who have had to
extract it from difficulties which threatened to swamp it.
Mason's protection was buttressed by the Constitution ; he laid
down the principle that the Board of Regents ought to be chosen
by the State and responsible to the State. He endowed the
University with great blocks of land, some of it in the Upper
Peninsula and some in the best areas of wealthy cities. He
worried about such obscure details as the care of the lawn and
the accommodations for the first students. He was one of the
founders, and among all who helped build it, none felt more
pride in the mere sound of the name: "University of Michi
gan."

Generation followed generation to the boardinghouses of
old Ann Arbor. In 1860, the two original buildings were still
housing the whole University classrooms except for the College
of Medicine. Before the Civil War, the high school appeared in
Michigan and Mason's branch academies were closed. The
Michigan Agricultural College became Michigan State; the
little teachers' college at Ypsilanti is the Michigan Normal
College of today. The branch at Kalamazoo became Western
State Teachers 1 College ; that at Marquette moved to the
Upper Peninsula and became the Michigan College of Mines.

Mason and the Rev. Mr. Pierce built better than they knew.

3

Sometimes during the summer of 1837, Mason would stand
quietly in the narrow living room of his little house on Jefferson
Avenue gazing at his mother, wondering how long she would
live. Elizabeth Moir Mason was showing the effects of a diffi
cult frontier life in the way most women did in the era before
the advent of modern medicine. Emily's statement on the sub-

278 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

ject was written in 1904, when she herself was about twice the
age of her mother at this period, and unquestionably twice as
strong. Emily says that her mother had not been well for some
years. She was wasting away, growing thinner and more fragile
with each new season. John T. had given her as much quiet
and rest with him as his own restless wanderings would allow.
When he was deep in the Louisiana bayous or the Red River
valley in Indian Territory, Elizabeth Mason of necessity was
sent back to Detroit and another period of weariness and
mental depression.

In 1837 s he was present in the Detroit home all summer.
During the preceding winter she had been absorbing sunshine
in Mexico with John T., and Emily was the Governor's hostess
and household manager. "Adieu to studies and books!" she
wrote, exultantly. "Ostensibly I had Latin and French and
music to study, and the fine library my father had left us to
draw from. But little time had I for study; it was all politics
and pleasure. All the distinguished persons who came to Detroit
were entertained by the Governor, and among others I remem
ber Harriet Martineau, with her formidable ear trumpet. We
young people stood in much awe of her."

When the fragile Elizabeth returned, Emily kept on run
ning the household and everyone in it. The strain of all her
overlapping activities put her into a "decline", very fashionable
at the time, and for which the only cure was an expensive vaca
tion at a well-known hotel and a horsehair trunk full of new
clothes. An invitation from the owner of a big Virginia manor
to come and spend a few weeks might have had a tonic effect
upon Emily's constitution, also. John T. wrote from Mexico
that he was coming out in the fall and intended to spend the
winter at New Orleans. Emily and her mother began planning
their trip months ahead.

She took notes on the Governor's behavior, "Sometimes
after the day's work he came home and studied until two in the
morning," says her diary. "He was an earnest student. He
denied himself the pleasures of the table, lest they should dull
his brain and make him less capable of taking in the weighty

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 279

matters of the law, in which he hoped to win distinction. This
was the dearest wish of my father. 'We have been a family of
lawyers; you must not desert the path in which your grand
father and great-grandfather won renown', he used to say."
John T. himself, while winning scant renown, had made a lot
of money as a lawyer, but he preferred not to spotlight his
own career in this fatherly message. Emily did not dwell on
it, either.

Mason was on a diet, working late at night, and slaving
like a beaver. He was not so much interested in renown as in
self-protection. He was trying to study some of the intricacies
of finance, so that he would seem less like an amateur when
the inside story of Michigan's corrupt banks burst upon the
public. He was digging down to the basic facts about banking,
so that he would have some information to draw upon when
the technical questions about bond issues and development
loans came up in the Legislature. He was paying the penalty
for being young, for starting at the top, as Governor, instead
of working up to it through two decades in politics.

The house was usually filled with guests, and Emily had
her hands full with guest lists and colored servants. It some
times startled Emily to remember that her brother was only
twenty-five years old. He seemed so much more mature than
that ; responsibility was aging him, and the fear of being caught
in the middle over some technical problem was sobering him
fast. He was still called the "Boy. Governor", .the "Young
Hotspur", and "The Stripling" in the Michigan weeklies. It
was just a nickname, more of a political handle than a de
scription.

With more than his normal degree of caution he began
preparing for another State election. In 1835 the Whigs had
side-stepped the certain avalanche that would have buried them
had they participated. In 1837 they not only were competing,
they had a red-hot campaign issue and a candidate nearly as
popular as Mason himself. Mason, as the defending cham
pion, found himself without a campaign issue except his record,
and that was an easy target for his enemies.

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

About the time the State parties were gathering for their
conventions, Daniel Webster arrived in Detroit to visit his
son, Daniel, Jr., a Detroit Whig attorney. Webster, along
with Clay, was the incarnation of the Whig party a mighty
figure among the wealthy and professional classes. Like Jack
son, Webster had a wide personal following who^did not care
about his politics as long as they could gaze at him on a plat
form, and listen to his voice. He had another purpose in visit
ing Michigan; he had an interest in a land company along
the Chicago Turnpike, and he had come out during a Con
gressional recess to see how his investment was coming along.

The Whigs grabbed him at once, and lionized him. They
staged a big barbecue and rally in the surviving remnant of
the Cass orchard, installing the great man on a flag-draped
speakers' stand on a knoll between Fort and Lafayette Streets,
near First Street. There Webster took his place on the plat
form, cowed the crowd with one of his imperious glances,
and proceeded to deliver an oration that verbally knocked
the Democrats end-over-end all over the landscape. After
ward the Whigs wined and dined him at a great banquet for
500 guests, at which Webster repeated all the unpleasant
things he had said about Democrats, adding a few more every
time there was a lull in the applause.

This campaign was being difficult enough to Mason without
having to take the stump against Daniel Webster. The Whig
papers erupted in a rash of elaborate compliments. The Ann
Arbor Argus said: "This speech should be sterotyped and be
come the pocket companion of all office-seekers and declaimers
for all time to come." The style of Webster's delivery was
hailed as "admirable" ; editors said he was "full of his hearers
and full of himself". This probably aptly described Webster
after the big banquet, but Mason searched the columns in
vain for a good word about himself or his party. There was
none. In an eloquent journalistic silence, he prepared for his
re-election campaign.

The Democrats held their convention as usual in the little
courthouse in Ann Arbor, near the place where workmen were

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 28l

felling trees on the new campus of the University. A delegate
brought Judge Fletcher a jug of hard cider to discourage him
from interrupting the debates with anecdotes of what he did
when he first came to Ann Arbor on a mule, his lawbooks
in his saddlebag, and had to fell trees to build a log cabin.
Other delegates stood around and watched the grading of the
campus site instead of attending sessions. Mason did this him
self. No one paid much attention to the party problems.

Eventually the convention got down to the business before
it, and renominated Mason for a second term unanimously.
Ed Mundy and Isaac E. Crary were renominated; resolutions
in praise of President Martin Van Buren were passed. Mason
was busy "sidewalk superintending" the grading job and had
to be told that the renominations of both Mundy and Crary
had deadlocked the committee for hours, finally being sub
mitted to the whole convention which promptly tied itself up
in another deadlock. It was hard work to solve the riddle, and
the delegates grew irritable. By the time Mason returned to
the floor the pair had been renominated, but it was a struggle.

Mason began feeling a sinking sensation. It was the most
listless body of Democrats he had ever seen. They could not
arouse any enthusiasm for the party or for their candidates.
The voters would feel the same way.

The Whig party convened in the same building a week
later. There, amid shouts that rattled the little windows, the
Whigs demanded Mason's head. With blood-curdling war
whoops they nominated Mr. Charles C. Trowbridge of Detroit
for the Governorship, Daniel Bacon of Monroe as Lieutenant
Governor and Hezekiah Wells of Kalamazoo for Member
of Congress.

Mason knew a good deal about Trowbridge. The two, in
spite of their political differences, were good friends and had
been seen together frequently. Charlie Trowbridge was a
member of an old, illustrious Detroit family and a rich busi
ness man. Socially he was a monarch in the innermost circles
the Trowbridges, the Palmers, with Judge Benjamin Wither ell
and the John R. Williamses. In his political contacts with

282 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Mason*s administration he had been very careful to keep his
hands clean, and as a result he was respected and trusted.
He was the toughest opponent the Whigs could muster, and
as Mason pondered his prospects he had doubts for the first
time of his own ability to win through.

Trowbridge was thirty-seven years of age at the time, and
Mayor of Detroit. He had become a well-known figure during
the cholera epidemics, wherein he had fought the scourge as
violently as Mason; both of them tried to stamp it out by
sheer energy. The people loved him for what he had done
for them, and in Detroit he was as popular as Mason ever
was. Topping this heavy-calibre ticket, the Whigs for the
first time had a theoretically unbeatable campaign issue the
terrible panic which was wiping away everyone's savings and
causing bankruptcies and suicides. Added to that was the cor
rupted condition of the banks, for which the Democrats were
blamed. The Whigs were out to win in 1837, and expected
to sweep the State.

In their convention summary they called upon every right-
thinking citizen to "extricate the government from the control
of incompetence and impending war". On this alarming note
the campaign swung into motion.

Records say it was "a campaign of the bitterest invective of
the most uncompromising personal character ... no move
in the so-called game of politics was overlooked ... no charge
that could be predicated upon a semblance of fact seems to
have been understated." No holds were barred, and there was
no referee to call time out. Mason with disgust rolled up his
sleeves and donned his thickest boots, cocked his silk hat on
the back of his aristocratic brow, and waded in.

The Democrats invented a bogus party as an offshoot to
the Whigs and tried to split the Whig vote. They put Wood-
bridge's unpopular name on the ticket for Governor, which
was their undoing. Woodbridge promptly exposed the trick
and denied that he had any intention of running. Then the
Whigs tried the same trick with the Democrats, and succeeded
very well.

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 283

They brought out a scandal sheet called The Spy in Michi
gan, which purported to expose a lot of skulduggery on Mason's
part. This paper demanded a reform movement among the
Democrats to repudiate Mason and his whole ticket. With
plenty of Whig cash, a party of "Simon-Pure Democrats" was
actually organized and registered. It nominated Edward Ellis
of Monroe for Governor. Mr. Ellis had been a Whig member
of the Constitutional Convention and had a modicum of vote-
getting power. Anyhow he started stumping the counties,
preaching for reform in the State government. He threatened
to slice off a considerable share of Mason's rural support.

Mason countered this by getting the influential Detroit
Young Men's Society to hold a State convention of "Young
Democrats", which endorsed him for re-election and com
mended his administration. It gained considerable support
from young voters who were with Mason because of his youth,
aside from politics. The trick partly counterbalanced Ellis and
his outlaw Democrats, but there being no such thing as a
"Young Whig" their attempt to copy the youth movement idea
flopped.

Meanwhile the scurrilous libel sheet called The Spy in Michi
gan was putting forth page after page of vile personal abuse
of Mason as a man. "Mason came here as a boy of about
nineteen," it stated, "born and raised in Kentucky with all
the attributes of a domineering population. His education
was very imperfect and it is believed that he could not have
written a page of respectable English. His morals were still
worse, but entirely in the Southern style "

People who read this wondered why Mason didn't take a
musket and shoot the liver out of the anonymous author of
this slander. He was described in every other paragraph as a
hard drinker. "His time has been too much taken up with
the tavern, the ball-alley and the theater to admit of much
mental cultivation," the sheet continued. Mason's friends
writhed.

Friendly editors made matters worse by quoting at length
from this drivel and demanding an end to it. One editorial

284 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

said: "A more malicious, malignant and damnable falsehood
was never penned by any man." Shortly all the newspapers,
Whig and Democrat, were calling each other knaves, liars
and scoundrels. Mason was said to have been a traitor to the
State when he was forced to abandon claims to the "Toledo
Strip". Another said that Mason had been voted $500 annual
house rent by the Legislature, which was an outrage, uncon
stitutional and unethical, besides being expensive. That wasn't
so ; it was just something to raise a fuss about at election time.

The Whig papers, apparently by agreement and out of whole
cloth, simultaneously printed a story that Mason had been
caught buying votes at a previous election (for the first Con
gressman) . They hired an artist to paint a> picture of the al
leged scene. It showed a man clearly recognizable as Mason
slipping a bank note to a drunk with a whiskey jug. They ex
hibited the picture everywhere, captioned: "First Michigan
Election' 1 .

This could not be allowed to pass. Mason demanded an
apology. In reply the Whigs produced a newspaperman named
G. L. Whitney, of Rochester, New York, who said he "hap
pened to be visiting in Detroit at the time". He identified the
bribetaker as a John Weese, a Detroit meatcutter. He said he
had seen Mason give Weese a bank note on election day in
front of the National Hotel The Democratic Free Press kept
its columns open waiting for Mason's answer. The Governor
wrote an impatient note which stated that he had indeed given
Weese a dollar, not on election day but on the day following.
He said Weese had approached him as he was about to enter
the hotel, asking for the loan of a dollar. Mason had accom
modated him, he said. Weese was located, and admitted that
he had not paid the dollar back/He said he thought he bor
rowed it a week after election day.

There was so much excitement about the Whig accusation
that Mason saw a chance to editorialize about the whole con
duct of the campaign. He wrote to the Free Press saying that
he had kept silent throughout all the unwarranted attacks
upon him because to deny them would do more harm than

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 285

good. They were all unjust, Mason declared, as anyone who
knew him would testify. It was with regret that he saw the
campaign degenerating into a mud-slinging alley fight. As for
himself, he would have none of it. He was going to run a clean
campaign, without impeaching anybody's motives, questioning
his character or involving his good name. He concluded that
it was not "an act of moral turpitude to entertain political
opinions different from those of my opponents".

The Whigs retorted that he was hyper-sensitive and en
joyed seeing his name in the papers. But the statement rallied
all the Democrats, besides many "mugwumps" or neutrals, to
his defense. In October a committee of many non-partisan De
troit people bought advertising space in the papers to denounce
the whole conduct of the Whig campaign. They were tired,
they said, of the "misrepresentation and slander" going around
about Mason. They demanded an end to the Whig policy of
defamation.

Mason followed this advertisement with a slow, leisurely
wagon trip through the southern part of the State, speaking
from town-hall steps and bandstands, anywhere there was a
platform and a few people. He shook hands with friends, re
membered anecdotes about his previous association with them.
They remembered, too. Campaigning entirely on personal popu
larity, Mason managed to undo some of the harm generated
by the violence of the Whig attacks. He believed his prestige
had not been smashed.

In September, just before the election, he was recalled to his
office on a matter connected with the long-awaited development
program. The Legislature had passed a bill authorizing the
State to negotiate a loan for $5,000,000 in New York, by means
of a bond issue. The program was ready, contracts were drawn
up, crews were being hired. The money was needed at once.
They assured Mason that since he had no one in the adminis
tration who could handle such a job excepting himself , he would
have to go to New York immediatelv. In vain he pointed to the
lackadaisical showing of the Democrats in the campaign and
the need for his presence in Michigan until the election. They

286

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

replied that it was too bad, but the matter was urgent. Regret
fully he packed a bag and left. He was gone a month.

When he returned in October, Mason was full of smiles,
optimistic, and said he had accomplished something. No, he
had not negotiated the loan, but it was approved and almost
ready. The Legislature would be asked to make a slight change
in the law so that interest could be made payable in Europe
as well as in New York. In that way, he said, New York bankers
could place part of the bonds among European money mar
kets. After the election he would have to go again, he said,
and conclude the deal.

This trip of Governor Mason's had an important bearing
on the outcome of the election. It is the opinion of most students
of Michigan history that by coming up with this political plum
in his mouth in late October, Mason changed probable defeat
into a good chance of victory. The Whig machine's slander
line was beginning to run down; they had called him every
thing they could think of and had run out of adjectives. The
best they could do in the last few weeks was to print and dis
tribute a handbill saying that U..S. Marshal Conrad Ten Eyck
was coming to throw all the settlers off their land because of a
pretended fault in their titles, and that he was trying to get
$13,000 from the State for the railroad right-of-way across
his farm. People saved some of these for curiosities

EI wu n Day in Detroit Was " a da ? of S reat excitement".
I he Whigs were on the streets first with a parade featuring
a replica of the USS Constitution sailing up Woodward Ave
nue, commanded by Captain Robert Wagstaff in costume It
was preceded by a band and followed by all the Whig district
leaders, shouting for Trowbridge and victory. They bore aloft
huge banners carrying their slogans. The Democrats started
their parade from a different part of town. They had several
floats drawn by yokes of oxen, with banners demanding gold

1 wt Cr """I 1 " drculation - Thes * inevitably collided with
the

w I

the Whig parade and precipitated the usual election day bat-

tie, which onthis occasion cost Detroit only about two hundred
casualties. Mason, standing on the sidewalk, saw Mr Trow

1837-1837] RAISE HIGH THE PENNANT 287

bridge on his way to the voting place. He came out and took
Trowbridge's arm, saying: "Come, let's go and vote for one
another." The crowd parted to let the pair pass and, says the
newspaper, "the multitude cheered".

Mason was re-elected, but with difficulty. He barely squeaked
through. The official tabulation gave him 15,314^0 Trow-
bridge's 14,800 votes. He carried the city of Detroit, but lost
Wayne County, in which the city is located. He lost Washtenaw
County, of which Ann Arbor was the county seat. His only
crumb of comfort came from the showing of Edward Ellis,
the Whig-paid bogus Democrat, who polled only 311 votes.

His loyal helpers rode to victory with him. Mundy was
re-elected. The Democrats retained a small majority in the
Legislature, although the Whigs had gained surprisingly in the
House. Old Woodbridge had gotten himself elected to the
State Senate, which disturbed Mason deeply. As he gazed
at Woodbridge after the election, Mason was thoughtful.

The old man's eyes were watery and expressionless.

CHAPTER X

WILDCAT MONEY

IT is HARD enough to be a businessman when conditions are
ideal. Business in general seems to collect blights the way a dog
collects fleas. In 1837 it was not taxation which caused the
businessmen of the time to grow haggard and gray, nor labor,
nor scarcity of materials. The blight was far worse; so much
so that in examining the wildcat-money situation in Michigan
during that year it is difficult to understand how any trade
was conducted at all.

The term "wildcat" is an officially accepted one, and was
used in the report of Mason's banking commissioners. No
other word expressed so well the effect of these savage condi
tions upon the people. A wildcat is always hostile, preys on
its own kind, lives in isolated areas and is a serious menace
to anyone unlucky enough to encounter it. So, also, was the
wildcat bank. In 1837, Michigan was trying to tame it.

The State had done all it could do to pen up these wildcat
banks by the Banking Act passed by the preceding Legislature
in the spring of 1837. Mason clearly warned the people, in
his annual message, by telling them that they were on the wrong
path and that aids to small-town banks did not mean unre
stricted license to flood the State with worthless notes. He re
peated at intervals his opinion that too many banks were
springing up in little out-of-the-way towns where supervision
was difficult and the far-reaching effects of their distribution
of bank notes hard to control.

He could not do everything himself. The time had come for
him to begin the actual construction of the State railroad net
work, authorized a long time before. He had staggered along
after the Banking Commissioner resigned, only to be forced

288

A WILDCAT BANKNOTE. Mo// o/ them were engraved and printed by the firm of Rawdon,

Wright & Hatch, New Yorl(, who made bales of them during the brief era of these

queer batiks, 1837-1838.

MICHIGAN,^ FIRST CONSTITUTION, 1835, was written on heavy paper. After Mason's ad'

ministration the Whigs lost it. The document was superseded by a new Constitution in

1850, and in 1899 this original was joimd in a jun\ heap in the basement of the new

State Capitol at Lansing. Repaired and re-bound, it is now in the State Library.

WILLIAM WOODBRIDGE.
From the official portrait now in Lansing.

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 289

to ask help from individual legislators in their free time, for
which he could not authorize payment. In 1837 he was granted
a new Board of three Banking Examiners, but could find only
two who would actually saddle up and try to find out what was
happening. Kintzing Pritchette was one of them, actuated no
doubt more by sympathy for Mason's plight than by the pe
cuniary reward of the job. Alpheus Felch of Monroe was the
other.

Mr. Felch was a great boon to Mason, and to the State of
Michigan for a decade afterward. He was a small, mild fellow,
with a high forehead and a long shock of hair on the back
of his head hanging down over his collar like a misplaced
toupee. He had thick spectacles, and a determination like the
steel jaws of a bear trap. Digby Bell, the third Examiner, joined
the pair some months later.

The Banking Act said that any twelve people residing in
the same county could start a bank, provided that they had, or
could raise, $50,000. This privilege was explained long after
ward in Dr. Fuller's thesis on the ground that it was an exten
sion of the democratic principle into a field which had long been
dominated by special privilege; the chief province of the Big
Names who had milked the country dry during the era of the
United States Bank. Whatever it was, the response was quick
and the banks which sprang up under the Act were strange,
mysterious institutions.

Pritchette and Felch were patiently trying to find out why
the Act had gone wrong. The Panic of 1837 was good enough
evidence that the new banks were not succeeding at the task
which the framers of the Act visualized. Instead of financing
local enterprises, each in its own locality, the banks were flood
ing the State with notes which looked fishy and became almost
worthless when presented at the Bank of Michigan in Detroit
for deposit or as security. This bank, with the Farmers' and
Mechanics', were the two chartered banks which filled the
empty function of a State Depository following the closing
of the United States Bank. There was no decent money, no
Federal currency except some silver coins for change, and a

290 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

few scarce gold pieces which gravitated to the two big banks
as security for big bond issues and the like. Few people had
gold money.

The Act was bound up tightly with restrictions, and copper-
riveted by provisions for frequent examination. It stipulated
that at least one third of the bank stock must be owned locally,
and that before beginning business all the stock must be sub
scribed to and thirty per cent of it must be in specie that is,
in gold or silver. The president and directors were bonded;
the bank itself was required to furnish proof to the State that
it had securities or mortgages on real estate enough to meet the
full amount of any bank notes it might have in circulation.

It was the best that Mason and his Legislature could do to
provide local banking facilities in the absence of a Federal
currency and legal provision for an official State Bank. Mason
strongly preferred the latter alternative, but the Legislature
insistently kept him from organizing it on the ground that it
would shortly become another United States Bank, controlled
by ten or twelve directors who would become fantastically
rich at the expense of local businessmen.

A storekeeper in a small town, during the course of an aver
age day, would be offered bank notes from a dozen strange
banks of which he had never heard. He knew that his own
local bank did not have a too-secure specie backlog, and he
suspected that these strange institutions didn't, either. Hence
he took the bank notes, if at all, only under a heavy discount,
which promptly produced inflation and subsequent panic.

Even after the election of 1837 when the Panic had sub
sided and the people were turning eagerly to the advent of the
development program, the inflation continued. Hard money
became so scarce that in Michigan many merchants took hack
saws and sawed up silver dollars into halves, quarters and
eighths. This "cut money" was accepted at par and became
a widespread medium of local exchange. Another merchant,
who handled a large volume of purely local business with
farmers of his county, turned out gfreat numbers of wooden
bowls of various sizes on a lathe. He made change with these,

WILDCAT MONEY 29!

and the farmers accepted them as legal tender at his store.
They circulated at par throughout the county.

Out of brass-bound horsehair trunks, the people revived
ancient Territorial "shinplasters" bearing the U. S. seal and
issued in fractional amounts like ten cents, twenty-five cents,
fifty cents. These curiosities appeared in merchants' tills and
were accepted everywhere, while the newly printed notes of the
wildcats were taken grudgingly, with discounts.

Under this handicap, and with many misgivings, Mason
began to get up steam in the boiler of his development program.
The Legislature, in appropriating $400,000 of State funds and
authorizing a bond issue of $5,000,000 more, had referred to
the plan as the "public-development" program. Mason coined
the phrase "Internal Improvements". It became known as his
Internal Improvements plan, and the title stuck.

At the outset he discovered that private enterprise was get
ting nowhere with the chief item in the project, the Detroit
and St. Joseph Rail Road. The promoters had spent $117,000
on it, and had completed only thirteen miles of grading be
tween Detroit and Ypsilanti, but a good deal of grubbing and
clearing remained to be done along the graded stretch. Not
a foot of track had been laid. They had, however, built a forge
and shop wherein they were turning out car wheels and iron
strap for the wooden foundation rails. They had a locomotive,
but no cars. .

Down at Toledo, the primitive Erie and Kalamazoo Rail
Road had finished its line from Toledo to Adrian, Mich.
Weary of waiting for a locomotive, from Philadelphia, the
company had begun operations with a string of flatcars drawn
by teams of horses. The road was an immediate financial suc
cess. In the interior of Michigan, the price of Syracuse salt
fell from fifteen dollars a barrel to nine, and other heavy sup
plies in proportion. The demand for passenger accommoda
tion was met by the company very quaintly. It built a double-
deck structure that looks top-heavy and dangerous to moderns,
with sheepskin-covered seats for the ladies above, and plain
wooden benches for the men below. The car had open windows

292 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

to give the tobacco spitters plenty of room. This apparition
was named the "Pleasure Car".

When the locomotive arrived it was the wonder of Michigan.
It was rated at twenty horsepower, and burned wood which
the fireman collected from the farmers' woodlots along the
route. The "Pleasure Car" was not a success. It continually
jumped the track and once turned over on a curve. After its
novelty had worn off, it was replaced by a string of regular
Concord stagecoaches mounted on railroad wheels. Six of
them made up the train. The conductor had a catwalk out
side, and hopped from car to car clinging to the windows, with
his whiskers blowing backward in the breeze.

The success of this road stimulated the promoters of the
Detroit and St. Joseph, but they could not finance an under
taking so colossal. Ruin and bankruptcy lay before them. After
some consultation with Mason, they agreed to sell the com
pany to the State for the sum of $139,802.79. The Legislature
agreed with Mason that the State ought to finance it. Hence,
in 1837, the Detroit and St. Joseph Rail Road, its charter
and its right-of-way, became the property of the State under
the title: "Michigan Central". At the same time, the Erie and
Kalamazoo found itself in difficulties. It was showing a paper
profit on every run, but the insane pattern of banknotes turned
in by its conductors and freight agents made no sense to the com
pany's auditors or creditors. It was a relief to the company
to receive an offer from Mason to absorb it as part of the
State's network. It was taken over on a lease, with the original
company officers continuing in its management. A year or two
later it became, according to its records, "hopelessly bank
rupt," and was leased to the new Michigan Southern forever.

At the time these deals were being completed, Mason must
have been on the verge of panic himself. He had only $400,000
appropriated funds to work with, and only a dream of floating
his $5,000,000 loan in New York. He had promised everyone
that the deal was going through. He had been re-elected largely
on the strength of that promise. Now, great stretches of un
completed rights-of-way and bankrupt railroads were falling

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 293

into his lap, with an insistent public clamor for immediate com
pletion. Other projects, notably a network of canals, demanded
financing and awarding of contracts. Congress had backed
down on its promise to appropriate funds for the St. Mary's
Falls canal connecting Lake Michigan with Lake Superior.
Mason had to find more money to begin that fearful engineer
ing struggle.

He, like many Governors since, had no idea where the money
was to come from. He must fulfil his pledge. Contracts must
be signed, men employed, equipment procured. The railroad
to St. Joseph was the biggest job. Very well, he would start on
that first. He would tell the Legislature frankly that if he were
to be held responsible for the improvements they wanted,
they'd have to support him with the necessary appropriations.
He began drafting his annual message to the Legislature for
the year 1838, to be delivered shortly after the New Year's
holiday.

This message was quite a lengthy one, and had to be pre
pared with the greatest care. He was alone in his house except
for two colored house servants, and a handyman who brought
in coal for the fireplaces. He had plenty of uninterrupted hours
to analyze what he thought the State ought to do, and to
enumerate the things they expected him to construct. Emily
and his mother had left for New Orleans, from which delight
ful city they wrote him that ". . ..Papa has established us in the
St. Charles Hotel" and that they were being entertained royally
by the wealthy land speculators who were working with John
T. at the time. Mason wrote in reply that he had been to New
York on business connected with floating the bond issue, and
that he, too, had met a good many interesting people. He knew
Emily would like them. There was Washington Irving, for
example, a director of several banks and a very wealthy man.
There was a rich leather merchant named Thaddeus Phelps,
who was a member of the syndicate which was helping to float
the bond issue. While visiting at his home, Mason wrote, he had
met a very sweet girl, whose name was Julia/According to him,
Julia Phelps had " all the charms that were ever bestowed

294 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

upon the daughters of Eve ... in sweetness and real worth,
she surpasses every other woman I have ever known. ..."

He should have had his mind completely free to concentrate
on his preparation of the message. The success of his whole
second term as Governor would hinge on whether or not he
could sell his demands to the Legislature and get the State's
financial tangles straightened out so that a few contractors
could be paid. That was a full-time job. It was a poor time for
Stevens T. Mason to fall in love.

Separated from Julia by nearly a thousand miles, Mason
could only dream of seeing her again when some excuse war
ranted a future trip to the big city. He did not keep a diary,
as Emily did, and hence we do not know just how he felt about
the affair when he unveiled his budding romance in an im
pulsive letter to Emily. Julia Phelps was unquestionably the
first girl in his life who had aroused enough interest to become
the subject of gushing letters to Emily. If there had been the
usual parade of adolescent affairs which most of us experience
at some time or other, we would have known it. A man who
lived in the all-revealing public glare which spotlighted Mason
could not take a social drink at a tavern without reading about
it the following day in a newspaper. If he stopped and spoke
to a child, the incident became a matter of ponderous public
record. At this period, in fact, his hostile Whig minority in
the Legislative House was howling at his heels over the "five-
quarter Mason" alleged overpayment. A love affair, or even
any noticeable attention shown to a Detroit girl, would have
become the subject of nosy Whig scrutiny and loud Democratic
defense. Unless the records are incomplete, which seems un
likely, Mason at the age of twenty-six was a virgin.

He was writing to Miss Julia Phelps as often as he was
writing to Emily, and trying to keep the tender words of love
from affecting the weighty phraseology of his message to the
Legislature. In reading the message we do not discover any
traces of passion in it. Perhaps he wrote the message in his
office, and wrote to Julia from his house. We cannot but marvel
at Mason's talent for remembering and keeping distinct the

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 295

details of so many different problems which overcame him
simultaneously.

Not only was part of his mind and most of his heart on
Julia, but some of his mental energy had to grapple with the
embarrassing discoveries of his Banking Examiners while an
other part was watching Canada, across the river, where the
Patriot War was brewing a storm cloud of trouble. What con
centration he had left, which was some, was devoted to the
$5,000,000 bond issue, the construction of three railroads and
two canals, the rising bitterness of the Whigs and their indica
tion of open revolt soon, and such things as what terrible
punishment to inflict on a Lenawee County constable who had
just attached the State's brand-new passenger coach on a judge's
order.

Snatching a few spare moments from these varying puzzles,
he wrote his message and delivered it when the Legislature met
in January, 1838. For the first time in his career as Governor,
he faced a noisy and unreasonable stubborn Whig bloc which
used devious parliamentary tricks to embarrass him. The
"five-quarter Mason" argument broke out at the opening of
the session. He demanded a board of inquiry to examine the
records. This committee, of which Woodbridge was a member,
absolved him and reported that somebody had been starting
rumors about him which were not true. When this report was
read to the House, the Whigs began a noisy demonstration.
The Whig leader, Jacob M. Howard, tried to raise a point
that by asking for an investigation of the charges against him,
Mason was guilty of "abridging the freedom of discussion".
They also said that such a demand was "despotic" and "no
part of his official duties".

Mason gazed at these violent politicians with mounting sus
picion. He couldn't make sense out of anything they said. Most
of their babbling was composed of inane attacks like these
anything to appear to be whacking Mason constantly. They
would probably protest and attack anything he said. In deliver
ing his message he was extremely cautious. At the outset he
appealed to them publicly for co-operation, reminding them

296 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

of the vile things they had said about him during the election
campaign. He trusted to the good sense of the people to correct
wrongs of this kind done to him personally. He thought there
was enough trouble in the State government without borrowing
more.

The State was in the red by $13,353-68. This, he said, was
because the counties hadn't paid their share of the tax levies.
He wanted a change in the tax law which would give the State
power to collect it. Next, he began on the Internal Improve
ments project. In the Illinois Legislature there was a young
lawyer named Abraham Lincoln who, Mason thought, was a
coming man. He had sponsored a similar program there, and
the State had backed him. By all means, he said, finish the work
we've started but don't add any more projects until we see
where the money is coming from. By January i, 1838, he had
been given only $438,551.49 in appropriations and had ear
marked all but $116,000 of it for immediate payrolls and
contracts. Added to those, the Legislature now wanted three
dubious railroads, two canals and a list of highway projects
undertaken at once.

It just couldn't be done, the message declared. Even with the
new $5,000,000 bond issue there would be no money for these
things. He reminded the solons that they were committed to
begin the St. Mary's Falls Canal, at the Soo, and extend the
Detroit railroad to St. Joseph, and five million would not
complete either of these projects. The banks were in a turmoil,
and he had not received the support he needed from local
bankers in enforcing the Act. He pointed out that he had ap
proved the exact banking law the Legislature had wanted; one
that would "destroy the odious features of monopoly and give
equal rights to all classes of the community". But the Act was
being winked at and often ignored; abused by the very people
who should be helping to enforce it.

"It becomes your duty to guard against these evils," he
warned them. "The productive labor of the community is the
true foundation of all the capital, and the banks are a conse
quence, rather than a cause, of our wealth. Multiplication of

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 297

banks and bank paper does not produce wealth. The attempt
to substitute paper for real capital disturbs the natural laws
of trade and is always attended with fluctuations and revul

sions."

He made his remarks as strong as he thought he could get
away with. He saw trouble coming, and he wanted to be on
record, in a State document, as foreseeing it and pointing out
how to lessen the effects. If his advice went unheeded, he had
a scapegoat in the Legislature.

The Whigs introduced a minority resolution, claiming that
Mason was "unschooled in the, elements of economics" and
that he seemed bent on ruining trade, stopping new promotions
and plunging the State into financial chaos. Mason, his lips
tightly compressed, said nothing. He needed no further tirades
from the Whigs to see that they were out to discredit him,
somehow.

"Abolish the ancient Territorial statute calling for imprison
ment for debt," Mason told the Legislature. "You can't blame
a man for falling into debt if the State's money is no good."

Just how rotten Michigan money really was, became known
when the Banking Examiners returned to Detroit with their sad
story. Not in the realm of fantasy would such a story be ac
cepted. It was like a dream. Mason, his heart pounding, de
manded names, facts, figures, signed statements. He got a re
port that blew the roof off his little capitol and focussed all
the Eastern newspapers' attention on Michigan until the Mason
stomach rebelled. Looking at that report actually made him
sick.

The wildcats couldn't be tamed, but they had been caged.
Every bank in the State, chartered under the Act of 1837, was
closed. Bankers were in jail; bonding companies were suing to
avoid payment; "hell was popping".

The report exuded a nauseating stench. This was how his
people had repaid him for "extending the democratic principle"'

298 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

into the banking field. Rottenness, corruption, thievery, chi
canery, gross abuse of confidence, outright defiance of the law
these were the minor consequences. What struck Mason,
as he held the report with trembling hands, was the awful
collapse of his belief in "the good sense of the people". The
people, faced with temptation, had let him down. Mason was
to be held responsible.

The leading citizens had done this : the men people trusted
to invest their money; the very persons who had been demand
ing railroads, canals and expensive improvements. They were
the ones. They were swindlers. They had betrayed their towns,
their neighbors, their State.

Examples poured around his dazed head like bricks. Here
was the Farmers' Bank of Homer, in Calhoun County. It was
the first bank chartered under the Act. It had begun business
in August, 1837, with a reputed capital of $100,000. The
village had a store, a sawmill, a gristmill, a post office and
about two hundred inhabitants scattered all over the township.
It never saw $100,000; it never had any assets, but it pro
moted enough money to buy a bale, of beautiful bank notes
from an engraving company in New York. It did not have a
banking building or a safe. But its worthless notes were all
over the State.

There was the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank of St. Joseph,
trying to confuse people by adopting a name like the sound and
respected Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank of Detroit. It was
not found in St. Joseph, but at Centerville, a crossroads with
a post office in a general store. The institution didn't even pre
tend to comply with the law. It was just a gang of twelve
signers and a bale of bills. The investigators found $19,860
of this gang's worthless notes in circulation before anyone
knew what was happening. The Attorney General said of this
swindle: "These notes were sent forth with a lie upon their
very faces, as they purported to be on a bank which in truth
had no legal existence and which never possessed, it is believed,
one cent of real capital and which had nothing to sustain it but
the effrontery and fraud of its principal founder."

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 299

Banks were flooding the State with this stuff. They claimed
to be thriving financial institutions in places which did not
exist, and never had. The Bank of Sandstone printed and dis
tributed $38,000 worth of notes before the investigators dis
covered that there was no bank; the signers had gotten their
bundle of bills and had ridden at high speed to faraway towns
to buy up good merchandise as fast as possible before the
merchants refused their fraudulent bills. It never had any
specie, either owned or borrowed. It was never located at Sand
stone, but at the near-by village of Barry. The Bank of
Shiawssee was comparatively affluent. It started business with
seven copper pennies as its "specie" and circulated a fortune
in bogus bills.

For bona fide "big business", the investigators thought
they should tip their tall hats to the Jackson County Bank at
Jackson. Located in a rapidly growing town, it boasted a bank
ing office, a strongbox and depositors. But it had $70,000 of its
bank notes in circulation before the alert Mr. Felch grew
curious about its specie. He was shown a row of padlocked
boxes, which when opened displayed the gleam of sunshine on
heaps of silver coins. Mr. Felch was suspicious by nature. He
thrust in his hand, and discovered that the boxes were full of
scrap iron and nails, with a sprinkling of coins on top. Even
those boxes weren't genuine. During the examination one of
the directors told Mr. Felch that they were the property of
the bank. After he had gone, this man brought suit to recover
the boxes, claiming that they had been his property all along.

While the inquisition was thus exposing these transparent
fakes, pandemonium reigned throughout all the places where
the wildcats had been whelped. If Pritchette and Felch were at
Dearbornville, for example, trying to find the stock said to
have been put up by the Wildcat Wayne County Bank, news
of their presence was hurried down the road. By the time they
had discovered that the Wayne County Bank was a phony,
and had closed it, all the banks along the road to Ann Arbor
had been alerted. The Wayne County Bank was a scheme
whereby twelve men wrote checks to each other to set up the

3OQ STEVENS THOMSON MASON

bank, ordered their pile of bank notes, then destroyed their
checks. Mr. Felch said that while he was en route from Wayne
to Ypsilanti, a man in a blackboard wagon passed him on the
road driving like all get-out, with a keg lashed to the wagon.
The keg turned out to be full of genuine specie, and it stood
on the floor of the Ypsilanti wildcat looking very innocent.
They went to Pontiac. It passed them on the road again, and
was waiting for them in that city. Mr. Felch recognized it at
the Oakland County Bank at Pontiac and became curious
about it. It was full of very old French and Spanish gold,
minted dollars, and French gold louis. The Pontiac bank
claimed that it was theirs; their records showed that the bank
had been organized with $5,000 in specie and a "specie certifi
cate" for $10,000. The certificate was no good. So the direc
tors credited the $5,000, then took the keg out of the back
door and brought it in the front door, and deposited another
$5,000. They repeated the stunt, and had $15,000 on their
books. Then they spirited the keg out the back window
while Mr. Felch was still in the place, hurried it on ahead of
him, and it was waiting for him in -the Bank of Saline. The
same $10,000 specie certificate which he had refused to credit
was offered to him in five different banks. The Bank of Saline
got it with the specie keg from Pontiac. Both items went to the
Lapeer Bank, where they were on the books as that bank's
entire paid-in capital. Both of them returned to Pontiac and
posed as the capital of the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank of
Pontiac. The keg was full of old coins out of some hoarder's
attic, worth more as curiosities than as currency. The certifi
cate was drawn originally by some wealthy man who had that
much specie on deposit somewhere. But it was not specie and
could not pass as such.

In the Act there was a provision for redeeming the notes
of these banks by requiring them to maintain enough securities,
or first-mortgage real-estate bonds, to redeem every dollar
they had in circulation. When the Examiners attempted to find
some of this pawned real estate, they ran into situations like
that of the Bank of Lake St. Clair.

1837-1838] WILDCAT' MONEY 3 or

This was a mythical bank in a mythical town. Pritchette and
Digby Bell, after searching all over Macomb County, located
a Mr. Conger, who admitted that he was president of the
wildcat. He had made the engraving company take its own
worthless notes for payment. The bank? Oh, yes; well, you
see it was like this. He had planned to build a bank building
in Belvedere, a plot of land at the mouth of the Clinton River,
where it joined Lake St. Clair. No, there was no town there.
It was flooded; it would have to be drained first. The stock
of the Bank of Lake St. Clair was well watered. Ha ha !

The Shiawassee Batik put up as security for $22,000 worth
of wildcat bank notes a "one-fortieth interest" in the "City of
Portsmouth". This was a purely paper real-estate development
in which the promoters were trying to sell stock. It involved
quite a number of well-known people. Pritchette's face was
red when he found among them the fancy scrolled autograph
of Stevens T. Mason.

Even the rock-ribbed, impregnable institution known as the
Bank of Detroit, the one bank chartered under the Act which
was set up to survive, was victimized. In its safe the investiga
tors found evidence that it had accepted mortgages on lots in
the imaginary village of Cascade, in Kent County, and on
another called White Rock City, in Sanilac County, as a chaser,
no doubt. The Commercial Bank of St. Joseph had listed as
securities $60,000 worth of mortgages on twenty-eight city lots
worth at most $50 apiece. Bank strongboxes were crammed
with mortgages on land in purely fictional and unsettled geo
graphical names like Kensington, Gibraltar, Singapore, Brest,
Suez and other Asiatic and European points that their pro
moters recalled out of school geographies.

Few of the wildcats had any money on deposit. It was a
case of organize, get a charter, buy as many bank notes in New
York as the backers could pay for, and get them into circulation.
Some of the banks which had funds shown on deposit were dis
covered to have private arrangements with the depositors
whereby they received their deposits back, but left them on
the bank's books. Typical was the case of the Lenawee County

302 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Bank, which began with $30,000 of actual capital paid in. As
soon as the charter arrived, the money was withdrawn and
handed back to the original owners. To cover it on the books,
a promissory note was entered for this amount and signed
by a man in Toledo, where he was safe from inquiry under
Michigan law. The books showed that the bank had $13,210
worth of notes in circulation. But Mr. Felch discovered about
$6,000 more in the pockets of two of the bank's officers, not
entered on the books and being used to speculate with privately.
The total face value of the bank's notes was $42,363, with
a backlog of $34.20 in cash.

The prize item in the Felch section of the report, one which
he kept talking about even when he was Governor a decade
later, was the Bank of Brest. He never quite pinned down the
elusive town of Brest on the map, although it was laid out
near Monroe and the promoters said that it would be quite a
town someday.

When Mr. Felch located the president from records at
the time a charter was applied for, he turned up a character
named Lewis Godard. At first Mr. Felch thought he had struck
gold, literally and figuratively speaking. The books showed
$9,754.92 in metallic gold and silver in its safe. Mr. Felch
cooled off, however, when he found that most of it, $7,497,
had been put there the previous day after advance warning
had reached Godard that the Examiner was on his way. Mr.
Felch, muttering, went away. Suddenly, ten days later, he
popped in again without warning and found that $7,500 had
been withdrawn. Godard had been distributing bank notes on
the Bank of Brest, and some friend of his had come in with
$7,500 of them for redemption in cash, whereupon Godard
said he had paid it out. He had nearly $75,000 worth of bank
notes out, and $139,80 in the till. The Bank of Brest was fold
ing as security for these notes a mortgage on some lots in the
dream village of Brest executed by this same Lewis Godard.
It also had securities a couple of bonds signed by Lewis
Godard.
Washtenaw County, which contained the town of Ann Arbor,

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 303

had a population in 1837 f about 8,500. During the year,
seven wildcat banks were set up there. Their names, and capi
talization, were :

Millers' Bank of Washtenaw $ 50.000

Bank of Manchester 100,000

Bank of Saline 100,000

Farmers' Bank of Sharon 50,000

Huron River Bank 100,000

Citizens' Bank of Michigan 100,000

Bank of Superior 100,000

Messrs, Felch, Pritchette and Bell left a trail of closed banks
and dead wildcats behind them as they whipsawed their way
through this forest of financial chicanery. They found that
the same men were presidents and directors of several of these
invisible institutions simultaneously. When they could not lo
cate the supposed towns where these alleged banks were said
to be doing a so-called business, they went to the Secretary of
State's office to look in the files of village plans which were
registered but not yet executed. In this way they found that
Brest was "going to be built" on Stony Creek, seven miles
from Monroe. Sandstone was a rotted bridge across Sand
stone Creek in Jackson County, where the difficulties of the
mud road had inspired local farmers to build an inn and a
blacksmith shop. Singapore was the registered name of a de
velopment at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River on Lake
Michigan. There was a sand bar there, but no sign of habita
tion. Deep in the trackless forests of Shiawassee County were
claim stakes marking the location of a dream village to be
called Shiawassee. The whole county had a population of 1,200,
but it had five wildcat banks with a total capitalization of
$400,000.

For a time, the only wildcat survivor was the Detroit City
Bank, a big institution which was chartered December 26,
1837. It was to be another citadel of financial strength like the
Bank of Michigan and the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank.
With a capitalization of $200,000 and a directorsMist that

3^4 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

looked like the Social Register, it, too, came a cropper when
the relentless Felch nose was thrust into its books.

He learned that, out of $60,000 actually paid in at the time
it was founded, $20,673 was represented by another of those
certificates of specie signed by some absent moneylender who
could withdraw it any time the whim seized him. The mort
gages held by the bank were useless as collateral. So, regret
fully, Mr. Felch ordered it to close and reorganize with a
better financial foundation. Thus, by the time the Examiners
had finished their gruesome business, only four or five banks
were open in the entire State and all of them were conserva
tive old houses which had been doing business long before
the Banking Act of 1837 had introduced this chaos.

It was a legend in the tamarack stockade at the new Jackson
Prison that one of the bankers sent there for fraud told another
inmate: "I'll never rest until I get out of here and put that
bank back on its feet." The second inmate, probably an honest
burglar, responded: "I thought you said you had reformed."

Governor Mason realized that the people he had most
trusted to use their "principle of democracy" for the benefit
of their local towns, and their neighborly activities, had re
garded the Banking Act as a legal invitation to start printing
bank notes. It must have been a great temptation to find such
a provision in the law. Michigan sharpers soon discovered the
Joker in the Act; they ordered stacks upon stacks of bank
notes, traded them to unsuspecting merchants for goods, and
automatically became rich. They were not counterfeiters, be
cause they had a license from the State to buy all the bank
notes they liked and distribute as many as they could.

The ingenuity of these wildcat bank promoters was limit
less. When they found that their bogus bank notes were going
begging at ten cents on the dollar, they began a lively trade
swindling each other by selling the whole bank. They gave
each other promissory notes for $100,000 with no more
thought than if they were cutting cards for the drinks. They
organized banking associations of several wildcats in a single
county, or adjoining villages, and artificially kept their notes

WILDCAT MONEY 305

near par by swapping them rapidly back and forth from bank
to bank like a baseball going around the infield after a pop
fly. Before Messrs. Felch and Pritchette struck them out, they
had organized forty such associations, representing a total capi
talization of $3,115,000. Under the law, such an aggregation
of banks would have been required to keep on hand $934,000
in gold and silver specie. There wasn't that much hard money
in the entire country west of Cleveland.

One of these wildcatters with a carpetbag full of heavily
discounted bank notes found himself at a little inn on Otter
Creek, near Monroe. He met a cattle drover just coming back
from Detroit after having sold his herd. The drover had a huge
bundle of bank notes issued by this wildcatter's bank. He began
lamenting his fate, complaining that he didn't know how much
the notes were worth, if anything. The wildcatter, bringing
out his own collection of notes he knew were no good, said that
he, too, was a victim of the pernicious system. He shouted
that none of them were worth anything. To prove it, he threw
his bundle of notes into the fire, and said: "Good riddance!'*
The drover, with a sigh, guessed that he might as well do the
same, and together the pair watched the pile burn. This brilliant
bit of salesmanship on the part of the wildcatter cost him
nothing, and earned him several thousand dollars. He did not
have to redeem those burned-up notes.

In the summer and fall of 1838, the situation had reached
the point where merchants were accepting pencilled lOU's
from their old customers and refusing all bank notes. Even the
churches paid their sextons in lOU's. Mason realized with a
start, after wading through to the bitter end of the Examiners'
report, that he had better take some action at once before the
State was forced to pay him in lOU's. He sent a copy of the
Felch report to the Legislature with a note asking a year's
suspension of the Banking Act of 1837, effective immediately.
The request was granted.

Incipient panic was quickly quelled when Mason announced
that the old-time banks would stay open, and that some wild
cats would be reorganized and rechartered under the old laws

306 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

as soon as possible. There was a mad rush to get off bank di
rectorships, resign from boards, close up banking associations.
Some people of the State took an optimistic view of the furor
and, like Judge Thomas M. Cooley, quipped that "no circulat
ing medium ever circulated so rapidly before". Others tried in
vain to get the wildcats to give them something anything
for their notes.

A man who came from Ingham County to Detroit was try
ing to salvage something from the wreck of his thrift. He wrote
in his diary on March 15, 1838 :

"Nothing is talked of but the wildcat banks, some of which
are showing the stuff they are made of, and are rotten to the
core. There is scarcely a single one of the whole number whose
bills will be received at the stores for goods, while many a
farmer has sold his produce and some even their farms for
this worthless trash. Most of the laborers and mechanics hold
all their receipts and earnings for the last six months in these
worthless rags which they cannot use. We hear almost daily
of the arrest of presidents, directors and cashiers for fraud,
and injunctions placed upon the banks. 9 '

Everyone was frantically trying to unload his wildcat bank
notes on someone else. Those who had horses galloped to the
most remote towns in the State, where news of the collapse
of the wildcats might not have penetrated. Others tried to
get some kind of goods anything at all for bank notes by
the bushel. Only a few were credulous enough to hunt down the
furtive wildcatters and try to get something back.

One such person located the president of the Bank of Sand
stone at his house in the village of Barry, where he operated
a small grindstone shop. He reported that for each ten-dollar
bill he received a millstone; for each five-dollar bill he received
a grindstone; and for each two-dollar bill a whetstone. He
was the most fortunate of any of the wildcatters' victims whose
misery blots the record. The vast majority never saw their
money again.

Under the most intense pressure he could apply, Mason sent
out messengers to round-up the chief wildcatters and bring

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 307

them to Detroit. Many came voluntarily when they found that
if they attempted to delay, a posse might take them forcibly.
Many conservative bankers who had been drawn into the ex
citement by an honest misinterpretation of the Act came to
Detroit like penitents, humbly inquiring what they could do
to make amends. Hastily organized, they called themselves
the "Currency Meeting or Bankers' Convention", and held
secret meetings for two days. Nothing was allowed to seep out
concerning what they accused each other of doing.

In their report to Mason they were contrite. They said
they meant no harm, and that if allowed to resume business
they would police themselves voluntarily and see that each
bank had the minimum amount of specie and negotiable se
curities.

Mason angrily refused. He took the opportunity to demand
again the organization of a State Bank which would issue
legal-tender State bank notes. Once more he was defeated on
the point, but the Legislature agreed with him that the wildcats
should never be allowed to resume business. Alpheus Felch
was elevated to the new title of Auditor-General, and he im
mediately divided the State into three districts, one for him
self and one each for Pritchette and Digby BelL He and his
colleagues scoured the forests all during 1838, making doubly
sure that no more attempts were made to do that kind of bank
ing business.

Their report to Governor Mason has been widely publicized
over the world, and their opinion of wildcat banks is quoted
in many standard textbooks on banking and economics. Certain
familiar passages, like the one which follows, are Pritchette's :

"Not even a regiment of examiners could have enforced the
Act . . . against the host of bank emissaries who scoured the
country to anticipate their coming, and the indefatigable spies
who hung upon their path, to which may be added perjuries,
as familiar as dicers' oaths, to baffle investigations. Painful
and disgusting as the picture appears, it is neither colored nor
overcharged, and falls far short of the reality. The result
of 'free banking' in Michigan is that, at a low estimate, a mil-

308 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

lion dollars in the notes of insolvent banks are due and un
available in the hands of individuals."

Felch dwelt upon that specie keg. "I grew so familiar with
it that I soon recognized every coin it in by the surface mark
ings. Once I saw it being hustled in the back door of a bank
which was under investigation at the time. At oth^r times I
recognized it in banks which were being examined for the first
time, but the proprietors assured me that it was the property
of that particular institution and expressed surprise that I
had encountered it elsewhere. Most of the coins in it were old
ones, minted in foreign countries. It was impossible not to
recognize them at once."

"I was up in the dense forests of Shiawassee County," con
tinues Pritchette, "looking for the Exchange Bank. I was lost
in a little narrow trail, which I saw was a lumber lane used
by loggers to skid their logs to the streams. I came to a fork
in the road, and started down one leg of it, almost certain
that I had taken the wrong turn. Presently I came to a clearing,
and there was a raw pine shack with a sign across it : 'Exchange
Bank of Shiawassee.* That was a real wildcat, and I found it
in its natural habitat."

Digby Bell was indignant at the claims of the Currency Con
vention of wildcatters that they had liquidated a large amount
of debt by the rapid exchange of these worthless bank notes.
"That may be true," he wrote, "but whose debts have they
liquidated? Those of the crafty, and the speculative, and by
whom? Let every poor man, from his log hut and clearing in
the woods, make the emphatic response by holding up to view
as the rewards of his labor a handful of promises to pay, which
for his purposes are as valueless as a handful of dry leaves
under his feet."

Their jointly written section of the report demanded the
immediate repeal of the Banking Act. They said it was in
effective to control the sort of people who had taken advantage
of it, and "when we reflect that the moral tone of society seems
so far sunk as to surround and protect the dishonest and the
fraudulent with countenance and support, it imperatively de-

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 309

mands that some legislative action should be taken to enable
the prompt and vigorous enforcement of the laws, and the
making of severe examples of the guilty, no matter how pro
tected or countenanced."

The bountiful farms of Michigan once more came to the
rescue of the impoverished citizens. The harvest of 1838 was
a record-breaker. Barter systems sprang up which staved off
actual hunger, but widespread privation dogged the economic
footsteps of the State for years afterward. The era of the
wildcats was brief, but terrific. Its impact upon the economic
thinking of the time was less than the same experience would
produce in our day. The people agreed that the principle of the
Act was good, but that unscrupulous sharpers had wrecked
the effectiveness of it They did not see that the Act opened
the floodgates to the worst kind of fraud, and that it gave
the people a free hand to indulge the most sordid side of their
natures- the human impulse to outwit one's neighbor.

Bales of these wildcat bank notes are still scattered around
Michigan, to reappear out of attics occasionally. Children of
swindled farmers used piles of them to play a "game much like
a certain popular one of the present day, wherein they clutched
wads of $100 notes and imaginatively bought mills, stores,
farms, city houses and even wildcat banks from each other.
During the Civil War the notes made a brief reappearance
in the pockets of Michigan troops in the South. The Southerners
evidently preferred them to Confederate currency because
they looked impressive and bore the name of Northern banks.
Soldiers bought laces and other luxuries with them and sent
them home. There are some of them on exhibition in the State
Museum in Lansing, Michigan, but there is a guard on duty
to see that they stay in their frames on the wall and never again
enter the arteries of Michigan commerce.

".; ' '' . '. : , v ' . 3' . ", ' : '. . " : '

The excitement of Michigan's pursuit of the wildcat, and the
staggering blow of the Examiners' report, left Stevens T.

310 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Mason groggy. He tried to take the people's attention away
from the bitter spectacle of widespread individual and cor
porate bankruptcy by focussing it on the progress reported by
the construction crews of the new railroad. Anything referring
to railroads was a popular topic. The State's success in actually
building a section of track for the new mechanical marvel was
cause for a bit of mild celebration. Right at the height of the
banking exposure, a stretch of track was opened between De
troit and Ypsilanti, a distance which on the original roadbed
was almost thirty miles. This, thought the Boy Governor,
would be something that should get the people's minds off
their worries even if only temporarily. He decided to make
a sort of holiday out of the arrival of the first train at Ypsilanti.

Financially the effort had cost about twice what the con
tractors had estimated, but Mason realized wearily that State
contracts would always turn out like that. He had approved
vouchers for some $400,000 to achieve those thirty miles, and
the survey of the route to Ann Arbor. The Detroit and St.
Joseph Rail Road Company had spent $i' 17,000 grading and
clearing the right-of-way. The balance represented the ex
pense of the track.

Mason did not know the simplest facts about engineering.
He was helpless in the presence of the jargon used by rail
roaders. They attempted to explain how they got the cars to
stay on the track. It was incomprehensible to him. As we see
what kind of track they were building in January, 1838, it is
incomprehensible to us, too. We build better tracks for little
carnival rides than that one. Engineers who would demand
money for building track like the Michigan Central in 1838,
would be lynched today.

The line between Detroit and Ypsilanti cut through miles
of soft, springy swamp land. Settlement was fairly even as far
as Conrad Ten Eyck's tavern at Dearbornville, but between
that point and Ypsilanti the line was parallel to the old Ter
ritorial Road through virgin tamarack and jack-pine forests.
The right-of-way was thirty feet wide and graded a few feet
above the low, damp surrounding woodland. The grade was

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 3H

just a dirt embankment about fifteen feet wide, thrown up
by laborers with wheelbarrows. It was not tamped or packed
because no proper tools existed at that time to pack it hard.
Nature did it, by the simple means of weathering it a year
or so before the track was laid.

Even then the roadbed was insecure, frequently slipping and
forever falling into bumpy hollows. To level the track, the
engineers invented what they called the "block system", which
had nothing to do with the current railroad signal term. This
one was a means whereby vertical holes were dug in the em
bankment on eight-foot centers lengthwise along the right-of-
way, and five feet on centers crosswise. Huge wooden blocks,
two feet in diameter, were rammed into these holes and
pounded down to a surface depth of eight to ten inches below
the grade line. On these wooden foundation blocks they laid
two parallel lines of wooden beams fifteen inches square and
anywhere from twenty feet to forty feet long, depending upon
the log length. These beams were dressed down by carpenters
to the exact grade line. They were five feet from centerline to
centerline, and with the big wooden blocks they became the
foundation for the track.

When the route led through a cut, they dispensed with the
foundation blocks and ran the stringers in parallel trenches.
Sometimes they struck such soggy ground that they drove
piles into the sod and ran the stringers across them/The road
bed went along about three feet above the Territorial Road
on a dirt embankment most of the way, but the embankment
was built up in places to a height of fourteen feet. The dirt
was packed down around the stringers by patting it with
shovels; the crossties spiked down, three feet apart, and on
the crossties came the rails. They were white-oak stringers,
seven inches high by five inches wide. These were carefully
mortised into the crossties by hand, carpenters with chisel and
mallet sitting on them and whacking away day after day for
more than a year to build thirty miles of such hand-built wooden
craftsmanship.

When the oak rails were in position, another gang of car-

312 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

penters followed with spokeshaves and chamfered off about
three quarters of an inch from the inside surface. Strap-iron
surfaces were then hammered to the rails with great spikes
four and a half inches long, hand-forged by blacksmiths. The
strap iron was half an inch by two and a quarter inches wide,
and fifteen feet long. When it was all finished, graders built
up the grade to within three inches of the strap-iron surface
of the rails. The grade was trimmed to fifteen feet in width
and the sides carefully banked to a slope of one and a half
to one.

Under this expensive and slow system, a railroad across
Michigan would have cost more than the State's credit could
raise. Years went by while the construction gangs were pains
takingly whittling away at these huge timbers. When they
finished, they had a roadbed which usually washed out after
the first drenching storm, and which in some cases could stand
as many as eight little cars travelling as rapidly as fifteen miles
per hour.

To the people of Detroit and Ypsilanti, however, it was a
masterpiece. Mason had scant time to go out and watch the
carpenters trying to level the track by squinting up an eye and
squirting tobacco juice at it. He was dashing to the rescue
again. The passenger coach which was already on exhibition
in Detroit ready to make the first run was replevined by a
constable from Monroe, armed with a county-court writ. He
served his paper and hauled away his passenger coach. Detroit
groaned, and came to Mason demanding that he perform a
miracle and create a new coach.

Mason found that the coach had been ordered by the State
for its new railroad, and was built in a shop in the East and
shipped to Detroit by boat Now came the constable with his
writ, claiming that the River Raisin and Lake Erie Rail Road
had placed a prior order with the same car-building shop; that
this car was, in fact, the one belonging to that railroad and
was being held by Detroit contrary to justice and due process
of law, and so forth. Mason had never heard of the River

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 313

Raisin and Lake Erie Rail Road, but of necessity he had to
watch the car disappear.

In Detroit there lived a craftsman named John G. Hays,
who assured the Governor that he could build a better car than
that, for less money. Mason told him to get busy; the grand
opening was scheduled for February, 1838, and the date, the
3rd, was only a few weeks away. The bunting was going up
on the little steep-roofed "depot" on the Michigan Avenue
corner of the Campus Martius. The track siding from this
little terminal had been built almost in the shadow of the capitol
building, and it was there, where Mason could watch him out of
the window, that Mr. Hays got busy. He built a passenger car
much bigger than the little stagecoach-type affair which the
constable had grabbed. This car was the forerunner of the
modern railway coach ; it had doors fore and aft and held
thirty-six passengers. It was a great improvement on anything
these primitive railroads had seen. It was painted yellow with
a sign "Governor Mason" below the windows.

On February 3rd it was snowing hard, but there was a con
siderable crowd on hand at the Campus Martius to see the
cavalcade set out. The weather was cold; Mason was wearing
high leather boots and had his white blanket snuggled up
around his ears. He arrived at the depot and waved. The crowd
cheered. From around the corner of the depot came the Brady
Guards in their new ceremonial uniforms. Inside the car were
Ed Mundy and some of the legislators who had been invited,
and all the railroad officials. The distinguished guests climbed
into the front end of the car and newspapermen filled all the
rest of the space in it. The Brady Guards were shouting and
milling around looking for space. The stationmaster finally
found three regular stagecoach-type cars which were to have
supplemented the new one on regular runs. The Guards piled
into these. The overflow climbed onto two little flatcars and
the open trailer behind the locomotive. They were swarming all
over the train, and on the ground the crowd swarmed around
the locomotive, gazing at it in awe. The smokestack was eight

314 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

feet high; it had a horizontal boiler and a pair of cylinders
mounted at a forty-five-degree angle, driving a single pair
of high iron wheels. This monster was a new twenty-horse
power model built by Baldwin, of Philadelphia, and called
the "Peter Cooper" type. It bore a sign: "Pioneer No. i."
Behind it was an open flat trailer containing a box of cord-
wood and a cask of water. There was no cab for the crew and
nothing between them and the roadbed but a twelve-inch walk
way they stood on.

There stood the train : the smoke-belching little engine and
its open flatcar; the huge, resplendent "Governor Mason"
coach with the Governor himself waving from the front win
dow; three stagecoach-type cars and three flatcars including
the lomocotive trailer. The Guards were trying to keep warm
by dancing around and jostling each other. Departure had
been delayed by the search for the flatcars, and it was nearly
noon before the engineer yanked the whistle cord and the
iron horse screeched. The population moved backward hastily,
to give the steam-spouting monster more room. Slowly the tiny
locomotive moved away, dragging its noisy load. Then, says
the account, "cheers arose from the multitude while from those
inside came waves of farewell."

The train wheezed and chuffed along the track for three
hours, arriving at Ypsilanti in the midst of a snow flurry. The
newspapermen aboard said that at times the train had attained
speeds as high as fifteen miles per hour, but could not hold
that dizzy pace because of irregularities in the track. When the
train came within sight of the much larger crowd waiting at the
end of the track at Ypsilanti, such an outburst of cheering arose
that the whistle was unheard.

Farmers had brought their families many miles, from all
parts of Michigan, to see the great event. "My father told
me it was history," an old man recalled many years afterward.
"He said -no . matter how cold it was, we were going to sit in
the wagon and be able to say afterward that we had seen Gov
ernor Mason, and had seen him arrive on the first train to
Ypsilanti."

1837-1838] WILDCAT MONEY 3*5

Another boy in the crowd whose father had lugged him
there for the same reason wrote for the Historical Commis
sion files :

"The Michigan Central was finished as far as Ypsilanti,
the farthest west of any railroad in the country at that time.
T* celebrate the event, all the people were invited by the
City to a monster barbecue. My father went and took me with
him. When we got there, early in the day, we found the one
street gaily decorated with flags and a brass band filling the
air with music. We next visited the place where an ox was
being roasted, over a huge fire, to make sure with our own eyes
that we and the multitude present were not to be disappointed
of our great dinner we had come so far to share.

"Then we went to the depot to see the arrival of the first
passenger train. On it were officers of the road, with Governor
Mason and other prominent people who were to speak. A
light snow was falling and when the train came in sight on the
slight up-grade near the town it presented the novel spectacle
of two men sitting on opposite ends of a cross-beam in front of
the engine, holding large splint brooms to sweep the snow off
the track. That was the first and original snow-plow,"

General John Van Fossen, on behalf of the town of Ypsilanti,
had written one of those elaborate speeches which were in
flicted upon the public on occasions like this, but gratified
Mason deeply by presenting it to him in the form of a hand-
lettered scroll rather than read it to him. Mason muttered a
brief extemporaneous reply; the band played and the multitude
attacked the barbecue again. Finally it was time for the train
to leave.

It was late in the afternoon and colder than ever, but the
snowfall had stopped. The Brady Guards were herded into
their little cars and draped over the flatcars ; the whistle tooted
and the locomotive once more jerked the train into motion.
They made a slow and dramatic exit out of Ypsilanti while
the band played a farewell.

Everybody agreed that it had been a most satisfactory
celebration. Aboard the train everyone was tired but satisfied.

3*6 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

The Guards were pretty sleepy after all the drinks Ypsilanti
people had given them. It was therefore a shock to everyone
aboard when the train abruptly stalled a few miles out of
Ypsilanti.

The big driving wheels of the locomotive had gotten down
into one of those hollows in the track, and all hands had to get
out and push it. This was exhausting, and it happened several
times between Ypsilanti and Dearbornville. By a startling coin
cidence, the boiler, which had been losing pressure throughout
the return trip, sprang a leak just as the train was opposite
the big Conrad Ten Eyck tavern at Dearbornville. Of course
someone suggested that the entire passenger list get off and
buy Governor Mason a drink after all that speechmaking.
Governor Mason seconded the motion. While the Governor
was delivering another impromptu speech in Ten Eyck's bar
about the cussedness of railroads, two teams of horses were
procured and hitched to the disgraced locomotive. They
couldn't budge it, and six teams had to be located and harnessed
to it. The party rescued Mason and helped him aboard. The
teams started. Presently one of the teams balked, and the
State officials in the big car said that they must be a pair of
Whigs. This somehow caused another wave of laughter and a
suggestion that it called for another drink.

The special train limped into Detroit about midnight. There
was no one on hand to greet it. Perhaps it was just as well.

CHAPTER XI

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

MASON'S feeling of panic was a normal one, when he con
templated the maze of interlocking tasks he was called upon
to perform. His apprehension stemmed from the knowledge
that he was over his head. Sometimes, men of true genius ap
pear in the world, to whom is given a sort of intuitive under
standing of all things. Mason had to learn everything by ex
perience, or depend upon elemental precepts gleaned from the
clumsy textbooks of the time. He had been proved right about
the danger to the State from the Banking Act of 1837. If he
had been given any support, he would have been proved equally
right about his projected Bank of Michigan. Now he must
prove he was right in new fields of frenzied finance, of rail
road construction, canal and highway engineering.

His only solution to the problem was to confine his thinking
to the relation between the Legislature's enthusiastic planning
and the State's estimated income. In the spring of 1838 it
seemed to him that his desk was always piled high with glitter
ing projects which somebody was lobbying through the Legis
lature. Every little town and village had the 1838 equivalent
of a Chamber of Commerce or a Boosters' Club, an unor
ganized but noisy group of the chief citizens. During the wild
cat-bank era they had been making fabulous plans for railroads,
drainage systems, public buildings and parks. They thought all
of this should be paid for by the State. Legislators were sup
porting each other's pet projects, all aimed at more State
funds. Outside of the optimistic village committees, the stage
coach companies were the noisiest pressure group, forever de
manding new roads, new bridges and better State maintenance.

During the fall of 1837, Mason had worked out a plan for

317

3*8 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

combining all the projects the State might conceivably be able
to afford. In assigning priorities he had considered transporta
tion first, and railroads the first step in the transportation
phase. For heavy local freight, Mason didn't think any form
of transport could beat a canal. These, therefore, had second
place. Highways and highway improvement received third
priority, not from any lack of need, but because with the open
ing of other forms of transportation, the heavy traffic on the
roads would be lightened and the expense of maintaining them
would be less.

This was the Mason "Internal Improvements" plan. Look
ing at it objectively, he could see that it was gaining momentum
too rapidly. For example, in railroad construction he had kept
the original demand for five big trunk lines down to three.
The Detroit and Pontiac would lead to the Northern Railroad,
and be extended up to Saginaw Bay to tap all the new settle
ments in the Bay region. The Detroit and St. Joseph, now
the Michigan Central, was following the original line its pro
moters laid out. Down along the Ohio border, the Commis
sioners dreamed of combining four of five small projected
village-to-village lines into another cross-State trunk line to be
called the Michigan Southern.

He succeeded in convincing the Board of Commissioners,
empanelled by the Legislature, that his plan was good. On
January 23, 1838, they reported to the Legislature that their
advisory engineers had followed the Mason suggestions very
carefully. Each of the three Commissioners appointed to super
vise Internal Improvements had charge of construction in
one of the three railroad systems. Levi S. Humphrey was the
boss of the Southern; David C. McKinstry handled the Cen
tral; and James B. Hunt was the State official in charge of the
Northern line. Besides, each of these officials was responsible
for supervising construction on the canal projects in his dis
trict, and anything else which might be approved. He was the
personification of State authority for the Internal Improve
ments project.

Each, in turn, hired engineers, bought surveying instru-

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 319

ments and located construction crews. The Commissioner was
his own contractor, and the administration of the project was
almost a duplicate of the late WPA of our era. The parallel
becomes more striking as the Internal Improvements plan
unfolds. Some of the projects on the list had no immediate
value and were frankly designed to provide local employment
and relief for out-of-the-way communities hardest hit by the
wildcat banks. Others were obviously political, being thinly
disguised bribes by which the local legislator had bought re
election. Conrad Ten Eyck, one of Mason's good friends, was
U. S. marshal by Mason's appointment and also was slated to
receive $13,000 for the railroad right-of-way across his farm.
This was the chief motive behind the Whig bombardment of
the plan. The Whigs, naturally, wanted all these spoils for
themselves.

Some projects Mason tried to rub off the list as being entirely
visionary. He recommended only those which he personally
would want to justify to the next generation which would have
to pay for them. For the survivors on the list, Mason had an
enthusiasm and a pride which was almost parental. Let people
talk about him as they liked. But one hostile word against
any of his pet projects would cause Mason to fly into a rage.

Examining them in the musty archives, we find most of them
unworkable. Michigan in 1838 had a total population of about
175,000, distributed over an area as large as England, Scot
land and Wales. Detroit, with 10,000 population, was the only
city worth the name. Westward and southwestward, new
"Cabinet Counties" were sprinkled with ambitious hamlets
which were already fading from a promoter's dream to an in
vestor's nightmare. Before the railroad came, little towns at
five-mile intervals were economic and agricultural necessities.
But the first railroad journey to Ypsilanti proved that trade
would henceforth cluster around bigger towns, and many
brand-new settlements were doomed to die after a life of less
than a ddcade. Farms were only making a dent in the vast un
settled wilderness that was still Michigan. The sale of five
million dollars' worth of public lands in 1837 indicates that

320 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

proportionately little of the State was as yet recovered from
the forest.

Across this frontier area, Mason proposed to build three
parallel railroad systems. With their connecting north-and-
south branches, they would give Michigan a greater railroad
mileage than all the rest of the Middle Western United States
combined. Serving these railroad systems, he wanted a feeder
network of canals. The St. Mary's Falls Canal at the Soo was
also on the list. Added to canals, Mason visualized improve
ment of all the navigable rivers of the State, and development
of their water power by dams with boat locks around them.
The Board of Commissioners told him that the sale of water-
power rights would more than pay for the expense.

Adding up these projects already approved by the Legisla
ture, Mason found that Internal Improvements would cost the
State nine million dollars. From experience Mason knew that
he would have to double that estimate before much construc
tion could be completed. Eighteen, perhaps twenty, million
dollars ! It was a sum which no one of that day could visualize.
Accustomed as we have been during two world wars to juggling
billions as if they were straw hats in a vaudeville act, it may
be difficult for us to see that this was more than the entire
national budget.

The Legislature had finally authorized a five-million-dollar
bond issue. This would get some of the work started, and per
haps the State would grow up into the others during the next
decade or so. While a glance at the list shows that Mason was
thinking far in advance of his time, and preparing a transporta
tion network for a State with a population of several millions,
he did not think the list was exorbitant. But of course he had
only engineers' estimates of what the work would cost, not
auditors' statements of work finally completed. Timidly, like
a man reaching for a doorknob in the dark, Mason groped for
a handhold which would start the work.

The Michigan Northern was Mason's lead-off item. It
was a line beginning at Detroit and running northward to Lake
St. Clair at the mouth of the Clinton River, and on up to Port

MICHIGAN'S FIRST RAILROAD TRAIN, o //2<? Er/> #</ Kalamazoo Railroad, between
Toledo and Adrian. Locomotive arrived 1837; first one west of Buffalo. This 1 car was
called the ''Pleasure Car" and had sheepskin-covered seats for ladies on the upper level,
bare benches for men below. Topheavy and impractical, it was abandoned in 1838.

DETROIT IN 1837 north side of Jefferson Avenue at Griswold Street. From

a sketch made in August, 1837 , by William A. Raymond for Blois Gazetteer of
Michigan. // was used in 1883 by Silas Farmer in his "History of Detroit." The two
churches on the left are on Woodward Avenue, a block east of Griswold. The newly-
completed spire of /. Paul's Episcopal Church, where Mason worshipped as long as
he lived in Detroit, is at the left. The steeple in the center is the First Presbyterian.
The twin steeples of St. Ann's Catholic cathedral, on Bates Street, appear to the right.

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 32!

Huron. From that port on Lake Huron, the road was projected
through almost uninhabited forest. Port Huron faced the town
of Sarnia, Ontario, across a narrow channel. Sarnia, in turn,
was the terminus of a cross-Canada road being built from
Lake Ontario and the big cities of Toronto and Montreal.
There is a vast volume of traffic across the big suspension
bridge there now, but not in Mason's time.

The Northern Railroad was to run from Port Huron, "as
nearly as the interest of the State would permit," to the micro
scopic villages of Lapeer, Flint, Owosso or Corunna, and on
to Grand Rapids, on the Grand River, The depth of the river
at that village gave rise to hopes of a future steamboat route
to Chicago. There wasn't enough population that far north
to support a mule-team freight line, but Mason said: "Good
navigation exists for steamboats, and the road, when con
structed, will receive a very large share of the constantly in
creasing travel through this State from east to west." In his
mind there was the possibility that the road would help to at
tract settlers to its remote and little-known northern areas.
It was expensive, but he was looking to the future. The time
to begin was now.

The Board of Commissioners' engineers estimated that they
could hew this railroad through the gigantic hardwood forests
of northern Michigan for $3,973 per mile. In Mason's office
were completed figures for the Central Railroad's line from
Detroit to Ypsilanti, along a natural plain and through a com
paratively cleared and settled area. This line had the added
advantage of a heavily travelled highway paralleling it, which
made transport of supplies and crews easy. Yet it had cost
over $10,000 per mile, even with the cheap wood-block sup
ports and timber stringers. So Mason pooh-poohed that esti
mate and did not take it seriously. The projected Northern
Railroad ran a little over 201 miles, on paper. For the esti
mated cost, he thought he could build it as far as Flint, a
quarter of the total distance.

The Central Railroad, of course, was the biggest item in
the entire budget. Its line from Detroit to Ypsilanti was the

322 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

most gratifying financial success that Mason could ask. Two
trains a day in each direction were showing receipts of more
than $300 a day. The thirty miles of track was bringing in
$326 one day, $426 the next, $310 the following day, and for
one week, ending July 18, 1838, it earned $2,957.52. It be
came so popular that the "Governor Mason" car was adver
tised as a tourist attraction, and farmers came many days'
journey to ride in it.

The graders were working through the graceful hills toward
Ann Arbor, and ahead of them the surveyors were puzzling
over the gravel drifts of Chelsea. Equipment contracts had
been signed which would carry the road to Jackson, seventy-
two miles from Detroit. Jackson was named as a division point,
with many car-sorting tracks and a shop for the exchange of
locomotives. It was felt that seventy-two miles was as far
as a locomotive could go in a day without maintenance. Another
such division point was projected at Kalamazoo, 112 miles
from Detroit. That would carry the road to its terminus at
New Buffalo. Arrangements were in progress for a fleet of
steamboats to meet all trains, carrying passengers overnight
to Chicago.

This is the same route which the Michigan Central has fol
lowed for a century or more. At Niles the line was rebuilt
through New Buffalo to Michigan City and Chicago about
1866, and the Michigan Central then put over its famous
deal for the use of the Chicago water front. From Detroit to
Niles the line follows, for scores of miles, the same old roadbed
originally surveyed by Mason's engineers in 1837. They
wouldn't recognize any part of it now. The railroad has been
the biggest factor in the growth of interior Michigan; it was
there first, and the towns grew up around it and strung along
it like beads on a necklace. Towns which were by-passed by
the original Michigan Central, even by as little as five miles,
sickened and died. Those located on it grew amazingly.

Today we can see the whole story of pioneer triumphs
and tragedy by riding over the line from Detroit to Chicago.
The super-luxury "Mercury" deigns to stop only at the im-

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 323

portant points, and then just hesitates : Ann Arbor, Jackson,
Battle Creek, Kalamazoo and Niles. The "Wolverine" adds
stops at Ypsilanti, Albion, Marshall and Dowagiac. The morn
ing mail train stops at more than a score of other towns which
survived Grass Lake, Dexter, Chelsea, Wayne, Dearborn.
All of them were founded before 1835, and were there on the
Territorial Road, ready, when Mason pushed through his big
railroad project. Names like these were Michigan's pride in
Mason's day. They were the State's body; the railroad was the
artery.

Mason's only worry about the Michigan Central was how to
build it faster. A much greater worry was the Michigan
Southern, last of the three parallel systems. It was purely
political, an expensive club wherewith to deliver another blow
to Governor Lucas of Ohio. The Southern began at Monroe
and was supposed to end at New Buffalo, on Lake Michigan,
in a junction with the Central. On the map it ran through a
hundred and fifty miles of nothing much. There was no large
volume of traffic for it to handle, because only the route from
Monroe to Adrian was settled. From Adrian onward the map
bore names like Coldwater, Branch, Centerville, Constantine,
Mottville, Adamsville, Edwardsburg, Bertrand and New Buf
falo. Most of these hamlets were the alleged location of wildcat
banks, which shows how accessible they were. Some, notably
Coldwater and Adrian, are lovely, jewel-like towns now. They
were not as attractive in 1838, nor as big. The entire area from
Monroe to New Buffalo along this route had a population of
less than 4,000, but the railroad projected to serve them was
189 miles long and at the absurd engineers' estimates would
have cost $1,496,376. It included two transverse branches, one
running north to connect with the other two roads, from Cold-
water to a village in Ingham County which had recently been
established. It proudly bore the name of Mason.

The other was the Havre branch, from a remote depot on
the old Adrian-Toledo line to the entirely imaginary town of
Havre, which was to be built one mile north of the Ohio border
on Lake Erie/This branch was purely wishful thinking. It was

324 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

a hope that a chance might come to divert some of the steady
flow of traffic from Toledo and ship it over this all-Michigan
route to New Buffalo and thence to Chicago. Toledo was
building a bigger railroad, directly to Chicago via South Bend,
Indiana, and Michigan City. The jealous Michigan politicians
retaliated by dreaming up this parallel railroad a few miles
north of the Ohio line. The Commissioners themselves were
hard-pressed to explain how a railroad built there could make
money. One said :

"One of the principal arguments is ... that unless our State
is first in the field, the States of Ohio and Indiana will construct
a railroad from Toledo to Michigan City and Chicago along
our southern border and divert the travelling community from
our thoroughfare, thus not only completely isolating us, but
compelling a large portion of our citizens to find a market for
their produce in those States. The Commissioners consider the
argument a forceful one in favor of the most southern location
as well as for the Southern Road itself."

Mason regarded this proposal as economically ridiculous.
Nevertheless, he was committed to it, and would support the
Southern Road; he had his own reasons for wishing it success.
As he looked at the map, he saw, with his clear blue eyes, that
a new port like Havre, just north of Toledo, would indeed be
capable of funnelling a large volume of traffic into the State.
If it were built deep enough for the new Lake Erie steamboats,
he could bring pressure to bear upon their captains to discharge
some through freight there instead of at Toledo. It might
someday earn its operating costs entirely by through traffic
from Lake Erie to Chicago. There was no railroad line out
of Buffalo, New York, as yet. All the immense flow of human
bodies and farm implements and hardware and clothing for the
whole new Northwest travelled across Lake Erie in boats. The
volume of it was staggering, even when we see the figures in
type in our own day. We try to visualize this never-ending
stream of migration filling endless reaches of the unknown
West, and the superlatives in the vision seem limited.

Toledo's quick success was possible because it occupied

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 325

the only good harbor at the eastern end of the lake, and also
by virtue of the Military Road, one of the best highways in
America. The road led from Toledo to Chicago. Toledo thus
had the port facilities and the inland transport to dominate the
situation. Smarting under the treatment given him by Ohio
in 1835, Mason heartily wished he could create another Toledo
on soil which was forever Michigan's, and build a railroad
to dwarf theirs.

He no doubt recognized this childish impulse as economically
unsound, and knew it was being pushed at him by the same
people who had promoted the wildcat banks. Just the same,
he determined to do what he could.

As if these three railroad systems weren't enough, the Com
missioners' engineers rabidly advocated a trans-State canal
which would connect two of Michigan's biggest rivers and from
them took its name the Clinton and Kalamazoo. This canal,
278 miles long, was shown on a map as leading out of Lake
St. Clair above Detroit at the town of Mt. Clemens. It followed
the two rivers across the State to the mouth of the Kalamazoo
River at Saugatuck, a village far up the lake shore from New
Buffalo. Preliminary estimates of the construction of this
canal began at $16,000 a mile, and were shortly revised upward
to an average of $18,000. Even that figure proved embarrass
ingly low when construction began.

Justification for the canal is easier for us to grasp than for
the Southern Railroad. In that era of mud roads and no known
system of paving an inter-city highway, canal transport was so
much cheaper than freighting by teams on the bad roads that
canals throughout the country were enjoying their heyday.
The route chosen by the engineers was prepared by nature.
Two rivers which tapped most of the settled area of the State,
together nearly spanned the width of the peninsula. One has
only to look in old newspapers and guides like Blois' to be
surprised at the volume of heavy freight which went far into
Michigan forests by being poled up swift-rushing streams in
flatboats. Rivers were practically the only way to get into the
interior of Michigan from the western shore. As early as 1831

326 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

there had been steamboats on Lake Michigan, and most of
them had penetrated many miles into these rivers. Keelboats,
flatboats, "arks" made of tents on rafts, and even little stern-
wheel steamers kept the rivers filled with busy traffic.

Both the Kalamazoo and Grand Rivers were choked with
this upstream freight-hauling from Lake Michigan inland as
far as fifty miles. This was all done without benefit of locks or
other aids to navigation, even at rapids and falls where the
whole craft had to be lugged painfully over a portage. It was
so much cheaper and easier than hauling by road that the
volume of such traffic was growing steadily. By providing a two-
way canal fifty feet wide between towpaths, the Commissioners
could see that the existing traffic would eventually repay the
construction cost.

In 1838, canals and railroads went together in the trans
portation picture just as railroads and airlines supplement each
other now. The canal was then fulfilling the function of a rail
road of the present day, hauling heavy freight and carrying
the bulk of the transportation burden, with the delicate little
railroads, developing their dizzy fifteen miles per hour, cater
ing to the passenger who now buys an airline ticket. In 1838,
both systems were being developed by the State, and were
designed to be supplementary, not competitive. Within the next
fifteen years the development of railroad engineering went
ahead so rapidly that it doomed all canals. But Mason couldn't
foresee that, any more than his father, John T., had foreseen
the railroad's effect on industry in Kentucky twenty years pre
viously.

This whole program was Mason's baby from the moment
of conception. He became responsible for it when he declared
in 1838 that the State ought to become interested as a stock
holder in the attempts of private companies to construct some
of these railroads. As always when a State attempts to finance
any industrial or business venture, it shortly took over every
thing, and Internal Improvements became a political as well
as a financial and engineering problem. Mason found himself

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 327

with a veritable tiger cat by the tail which was as dangerous
and as tricky as the wildcat banks had been.

He began to finance Internal Improvements without expert
aid. At that moment he passed the peak of his career, and
took the first step which led him to the toboggan of oblivion.

Finance meant New York. New York meant Julia Phelps, and
Mason was in a hurry to leave Detroit and rush to her side.
Now that the Commissioners had reported, Mason knew what
he was expected to finance. Having arrived that far, he knew
he would first be compelled to complete the five-million-dollar
loan and make no more excuses for not having it ready. Once
more the implausible fact that he was only twenty-six years
old asserts itself and greatly influences Mason's career. He
was eager to get to New York and see Julia. His mind was on
Julia when it should have been concentrated fiercely upon the
task before him. Because of Julia, he was granting only casual
attention to a situation which arose so rapidly that he was
confronted suddenly with another crisis armed rebellion.
Mason was embarrassed to admit that he did not know how it
had happened.

The armed rebellion was the Patriot War in Canada, now
spilling over into Michigan. Since most of the fighting took
place along the Detroit River, Mason was regarded by both
factions as the leader in Michigan and both appealed to him
against their opponents. In vain he wrote to the Canadian
authorities that in the United States only the Federal govern
ment had the power to engage in war, to declare war or to
define what constituted war. His words were unheeded. He was
accused by each side of aiding and abetting the other. The un
fortunate fact that both factions were using the United States
as safe ground wherein to raise volunteers and procure arms
put Mason squarely in the middle.

The Patriot War of 1837-38 was in progress at the same

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

time as the wildcat bank crisis. It was a popular revolution
against the privileged upper classes, inspired by much the same
brand of treatment the British gave our own colonists prior
to 1776. In our own country, the Tories were rich British loyal
ists who owned most of the property and controlled most of the
business. Like any solidly entrenched, influential class, they
hotly resisted any change in the colonial administration, even
during the war itself in many cases. Thousands of these Tories
had sought sanctuary in Canada during, and immediately fol
lowing, the American Revolution.

There, stripped of their U. S. possessions, they constituted
a clamoring section of the Canadian population, presenting
huge bills for redress to the British crown. They were, in gen
eral, well-educated and bore famous names which seemed to
constitute some sort of claim upon Parliament. They, and
their children, received huge grants of land. They quickly
assumed many of the most important civil and governmental
posts in Canada. Historians say that they attempted to run
Canada as a sort of closed corporation, in which the less for
tunate citizenry were regarded by their newly arrived rulers
as a field for exploitation.

No doubt there was another side the Tories' side. But
it has been lost sight of in the mass of grievances piled up
against the Tories during the Patriot War. The prime causes
of the war must be explained, however, because it became
another problem confronting Mason at the busiest stage of
his life. We see it, as Mason saw it, as a protest against
privilege*

After Quebec became a British province in 1763, it was
found to be too big to administer as a unit. In 1791, therefore,
at the height of the Tory influx from the United States, it was
divided into two provinces called Upper and Lower Canada.
The King promised to appoint a Governor for each, and a*
legislative council. The assembly in each province was to be
elected by the people. The seeds of the Patriot War were
sown when the Tories kept the terms of this grant from the

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 329

people and monopolized all of these new posts, both appointive
and elected.

Canadians called this ring the "Family Compact." It in
cluded not only the Tories as a class, but most of the clergy
and professional men who together were bent on maintaining
a severe class structure, as in England. The many thousands
of new settlers in Canada objected violently to being treated
as peasants. Their objections merely caused the class distinc
tions to become tighter. The "Family Compact" entrenched
itself more securely in power year by year. The settlers were
actually being moved off their farm land throughout both
provinces because some privileged "Family Compact" member
had obtained a grant to it. Each member of the council re
ceived 5,000 acres of land for himself and 1,200 more for
each of his children. The Established Church was given almost
as much land as the whole of England. Millions of acres of
the best land and river frontage went to personal and social
favorites of the Governors. The Canada Land Company was
organized as an exploitation project, something like the
flourishing Hudson's Bay Company, and for thirty years it
seized every acre of land which might have future value. The
rest of Canada's citizens took the leavings.

Controlling both council and assembly in each province,
the "Family Compact" had been tightening its hold on Canada
ever since 1800. At the close of the War of 1812, Canadian
citizens applied at United States border gates for admission,
claiming that Canada was too British for admirers of democ
racy to live in. The United States experiment in popular gov
ernment had succeeded so well by 1837 that sentiment in
Canada for a similar government could no longer be denied.

It was foreseen that any man who so far forgot himself as
to challenge his betters in the assemblies over this assumption
of privilege would become Canada's No. i scapegoat. In 1 824
such a man appeared: William Lyon Mackenzie, editor of the
Colonial Advocate of Toronto. He was elected to the assembly
from the County of York, and straightway began agitating

33 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

for reform. He was thrown out five times for various parlia
mentary reasons, and his constituency promptly re-elected him,
unanimously, cheering his name in the streets. He had a parallel
in the other assembly in Lower Canada Louis Papineau,
around whom all the French-Canadians rallied. Papineau be
came speaker of the assembly, went to London to implore the
cabinet to do something about Canada's untenable situation,
but failed.

Mackenzie was regarded by the aroused people of Canada
as their George Washington, who would lead them to complete
independence from Britain. At first, Mackenzie was horrified
at the idea of an open break, but history says that later, about
1837, he began to entertain the idea of armed resistance and
a complete overthrow of British authority. It was the only
way experience had shown him to dislodge the "Family 'Com
pact' 5 class from the hard-pressed Canadian farmers of both
French and British extraction. He had tried every peaceable
way, and had been thoroughly squelched by the privilege
holders. War was the only way he knew to get the bulk of
Canada's people out from under their domination.

The British Army forces in Canada at the time were weak
and thinly scattered. Sentiment in the United States was becom
ing aroused over Mackenzie's cause. People didn't have to be
very old, in 1837, to remember the burnings, the Indian massa
cres and the contemptuous destruction of American homes by
the British during the War of 1812. Mackenzie appeared as a
liberator, fighting for the same cause and rallying behind him
the same kind of people, against the same enemy, as had Wash
ington.

Ever since the days of the Federalists, the trend of American
administration had been toward liberalizing the conduct of
government to keep the pledge made by the Founding Fathers
in 1776. Top achievement of the liberalizers had been the wild
cat bank; but people were ashamed, and tried to forget that.
They enjoyed a greater measure of personal and governmental
liberty than any people in the world at that time. Naturally

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 331

they were deeply aroused at Canada's plight, and tried in many
ways to help. VJ

The history of the Patriot War is a Canadian story, but
Mason was inevitably drawn into it because of the partisanship
shown by the aroused liberty-loving people on his side of the
border. The British secret service sent a confidential report to
President Van Buren which accused Mason of openly aiding
and abetting the Patriots. This was accompanied by a protest
from the British Ambassador demanding to know what Van
Buren was going to do about it, and asking pointedly whether
the national administration was going to back him in fostering
open revolt in Canada. Of course Van Buren denied the charge,
but he sent Mason a copy of the British document, with a polite
request for an explanation.

Mason had been sending periodic reports of the clashes
across the river to the State Department, but apparently they
had been buried in the files. In his letter to the President, he
took opportunity to howl for help in case the war should break
out of the Canadian border and spread to Michigan soil. He
said he had only the ornamental Brady Guards, an untrained
militia and a handful of regulars at old Fort Wayne under the
command of white-whiskered General Hugh Brady himself.
The Patriot War, he said, was flaming all over Canada from
Montreal to Mackinac Straits. The sentiment of the people was
rabidly pro-Patriot, and he was making every effort to be
neutral in thought and deed.

But there had been one outbreak after another while he
was in the throes of the banking crisis, most of them centering
around attempts by the Patriots themselves to steal caches of
muskets out of Michigan arsenals at Detroit and Dearborn-
ville. Other Patriots had invaded Michigan from Windsor,
across the river, and were inflaming sentiment by stump
speeches in an effort to obtain volunteers. Some of these inci
dents had involved the seizure by bands of "Patriots" of
American boats on the Detroit River. One of Mason's protests
had drawn a contemptuous rejoinder from the British Army

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

colonel in command at Maiden, now called Amherstburg. The
colonel had written Mason that while he had a high regard for
General Brady personally, he had none whatever for the
authority of the United States. If the "damned vagabonds"
from the United States who were helping the Patriots main
tain a perilous foothold on Fighting Island in the Detroit
River weren't out of there before daylight the next morning,
the colonel swore he would clean them out with grape and
canister from his batteries. If they retreated to the United
States, he said he would pursue them there "and kill them
wherever they could be f ound".

At this, General Brady's mustaches bristled with anger.
Mason lost no time in making a simultaneous appeal to the
War Department for great forces of troops, and another to the
Secretary of State for diplomatic help in convincing the Ca
nadian authorities that he was not involving the United States
in the war.

He went out into the gray wind of a February dawn in 1838
to see what General Brady proposed to do about this challenge
from the Canadian colonel. Brady had posted a line of guards
on the ice down the middle of the river. He had set out a line
of flags, a hundred feet apart, to mark the exact line of the
boundary. Then he mustered all his men, including the Guards.

"Men," he roared, "you see before you clearly marked the
boundary between the United States and Canada. See those
flags! If a British soldier or officer bearing arms crosses inside
our lines, I charge you to beat them back; to capture and kill
them if necessary to protect our sovereignty. My orders to you
are as heretofore : to arrest and prevent all fighting men from
getting over to Fighting Island, and to capture and turn over
to the United States marshal all men who shall retreat from
Fighting Island to our shore. Now get out there and take
your posts 1"

The men, thinking it was a lark, cheered and ran to their
positions. By the first light of dawn, the British regular Army
lookouts spotted a body of men trying to skid a stolen cannon
from the Michigan shore to the island across the ice. It was

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 333

on a raft of logs, being pulled by hand. Immediately the British
troops opened fire, pouring volley after volley at the cannon
party. From Fighting Island came a rattle of musketry and the
bang of a few light field pieces. The party stopped, loaded the
cannon and fired. The recoil blew the cannon backward almost
to the Michigan shore. But the men ran after it and began
dragging it forward once more.

A line of gold-braided and epauletted British regulars came
out of its revetments and started toward Fighting Island,
muskets and bayonets ready. Brady's line held firm. Not a man
moved, except to bring his piece to his shoulder and take a
fine sight. But the Patriots scampered out of the blackness of
the undergrowth on Fighting Island and ran for the Michigan
shore. There, Brady had a second line of infantry which caught
them one by one as they came, disarmed them and turned them
over to the Marshal, Conrad Ten Eyck. The redcoats, seeing
this, advanced right up to the line of flags in marching order,
saluted, about-faced and marched back.

Mason breathed a sigh of relief. General Brady slipped and
skidded his precarious way to the island across the ice, where
he found five Patriots wounded. Ordering them to be taken
to the Detroit hospital, he joined Mason for breakfast and
commented only that he'd be damned if he'd take a chance
like that again. If he had to defend a border, "why, then,
dammit, doesn't the War Department send me a couple of regi
ments?" Mason told him that a request was on the way, but
in the meantime if the militia would help, Brady might feel
free to requisition as much of it as he could use. The grizzled
old man thought that would help. Accordingly, Mason mobil
ized the militia under an executive order dated February 12,
1838, and General Brady immediately requisitioned six com
panies.

Swiftly the tide of battle rose, and just as swiftly it seemed
to develop its bitterest conflicts on the shores of the Detroit
River. Some Canadian Patriot arms-raisers had left Buffalo,
and came to Detroit through the United States along the
southern shore of Lake Erie. By the time they were discovered,

334 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

the diplomats at Washington were so upset that President Van
Buren found it necessary to issue a proclamation declaring the
neutrality of the United States in the conflict. Mason wrote him
February nth:

"I regret to inform you that contrary to my most confident
expectations this frontier is again thrown into a state of con
fusion by the appearance of a force recently disbanded and dis
persed from Navy Island (another island in the Detroit
River). I have no idea that this assemblage of persons can
make an effective impression on the Canadian shore, but the
fact of their appearance is calculated to keep this side of the
line in a continued ferment, and the opposite shore in a constant
state of alarm and apprehension. 5 '

He continued with a detailed description of the open cam
paigning for volunteers going on in Michigan towns. He
wanted Federal authority to seize any suspicious-looking boxes
or crates which might contain arms being smuggled into Can
ada. A day or so previously, he had been hoodwinked bv a band
of Patriots in Detroit itself. They had stolen twelve boxes of
United States Army muskets which were being transferred
from the arsenal at Dearbornville to the city jail at Detroit for
the use of the militia. Brady's intelligence officer located them
hidden in a loft over a "ball-alley", and no harm was done;
but while the military was patting itself on the back for finding
the muskets, the Patriots stole a hundred and one barrels of
flour which were on the steamer General Brady at a Detroit
dock.

Throughout Michigan the Patriots were raising a squad here
and a company there. Most of these volunteers were Canadian-
born or had families in Canada, but Mason issued a proclama
tion in which he denounced them and said that by participating
in an armed rebellion they forfeited all claims to United States
protection. They were meeting everywhere, in out-of-the-way
cabins which were known to the Patriot sympathizers in the
United States as "hunting lodges". Volunteers were passed
from one point to another by these people until they could
be mustered into a company on the Michigan side, then hurried

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 335

across the river into the fighting area. The Hunting Lodges
Society was found to include a good many prominent Ameri
cans, and was used as window-dressing by the Canadian pro
moters to obtain a larger number of ordinary volunteers. The
President's investigation into the society disclosed that it was
operating these "lodges" throughout Ohio and New York
State, and as far south as Kentucky. Michigan, however, led
the list. Most of them were in and around Detroit; some were
as far north as Port Huron where the narrow crossing to
Sarnia was the favorite means of exit.

General Winfield Scott, from Washington, sent three com
panies of infantry under the command of Colonel Worth.
This did not satisfy old Brady by any means. Scott replied to
his urgent message by banging his old mahogany desk, uttering
a few heartfelt oaths and painfully lifting his 230 pounds out
of his comfortable chair. He picked up his plumed and gold-
encrusted headgear and announced that he was going to have
to keep America out of war personally. He departed forthwith
for Detroit. In his entourage rode his aide, a young lieutenant
named Robert Anderson. In 1861 it was this same man, then
Major Anderson, who had the misfortune to be in command
of Fort Sumter when it was fired upon and thus touched off
the Civil War. In February, 1838, he was a nervous, timid
sort of person who was continually fussed because of the pres
ence in the party of a woman, Miss Emily Mason of Detroit.
She had been leisurely jaunting around the country after a
pleasant winter in New Orleans, and had gone to Washington
just in time to hitchhike to Detroit as the General's guest.

She wrote : ". . . It was a long and bitterly cold journey by
coach through Pennsylvania and Ohio. At this time Lieutenant
Anderson was young and shy, and when ordered by the general
to help me over the Maumee River, which we were crossing
on the ice, he extended to me the tips of his fingers, much to the
general's indignation, who then took me in hand and at the
risk of drowning us both, for the ice cracked at every step
of his enormous person."

At any rate, General Scott and Emily Mason arrived in

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

frozen Detroit on February 26th, and the two of them soon
had the situation well in hand. Emily was eager to catch up on
family gossip and to hear all about the angelic Julia Phelps,
and to rush to the honeymoon cottage blissfully occupied by
the Rowlands. General Scott listened to Brady's estimate of
the situation, and suggested that the United States Army
make itself as inconspicuous as possible. He knew that tension
in Washington over the crisis was greater than at Detroit,
where only the common people were calling each other names
across the border. He assured General Brady that war with
England was a distinct possibility, that the British embassy
had taken a decidedly dim view of the assistance to the Patriot
cause painfully apparent throughout Michigan.

Even as he spoke, peaceful Americans who were trying to be
neutral were clapped into Canadian jails. Mason's protests
were futile. Movements of troops at Windsor, Sandwich and
Amherstburg were studied by United States Army officers
through telescopes. They reported that it certainly looked as
if the British were preparing an invasion of Michigan across
the ice. More mass meetings were held in Detroit, with all sec
tions of the city's population genuinely scared. In haste, Mason
again wrote to the President in alarm over the growing tense
ness, urging that Army supplies be sent to General Scott. The
ponderous general was the coolest figure in the situation. He
did not seem alarmed in the least, and tut-tutted Mason's de
mand for formidable preparations for war. His advice was to
lie low.

Apparently, Scott's summary of the situation was correct.
He stayed on at Detroit to watch things personally, but the
combat zone in the war presently veered off toward Niagara
and Michigan obtained a lull in the excitement. As spring melted
the ice and brought on its receding floods the first resplendent
Lake Erie steamboats of the 1838 season, Mason's anxiety
over Julia and the tricky bankers of New York could be con
trolled no longer. It was time for him to go.

A governor, he discovered, cannot go to New York when
ever he likes. The Legislature had to be consulted, and reasons

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 337

given for his absence. He said he was going to try to com
plete the five-million-dollar loan, and that he should go at
once. Ed Mundy sided with the Legislature; there was too
much to do. Mason's desk was littered with invitations from
towns which wanted him to speak; others had organized open
ing ceremonies for the new projects and needed him to officiate.
Besides, argued Ed, the Legislature was about to adjourn and
Mason must make some kind of statement about the chances
for floating a loan before he left.

Hurriedly Mason swept through his office routine and
without too much meditation drafted a message to the Legis
lature about a loan. He said that the three-commissioner sys
tem had worked very well, to everyone's satisfaction, in both
the Banking Department and the Internal Improvements
project. He therefore moved that a board of three Commis
sioners be appointed to take over the entire responsibility for
the five-million-dollar loan. He said he would work with it,
and advise it, and would assist the members to float the actual
loan in New York. But he wanted to be relieved of the re
sponsibility for handling the money, and accounting for it.

"I am constrained by a sense of public duty," he wrote, "to
call the attention of the Legislature to the importance of provid
ing some proper agency for the management of State loans
already authorized or hereafter to be authorized. At present
the exclusive and unrestricted negotiation and management of
loans, as well as the sale of all exchange derived from that
source, is left to the discretion of the executive. . . . This is
wrong in principle. It gives to one individual control of millions
of the public money for which there is no corresponding check
or responsibility. It will readily occur to you that the public
interests demand that this important branch of our State
policy, the management of the five-million-dollar loan, should
receive the undivided attention of a distinct department or
ganized for that purpose. It is impossible for the executive
to bestow that attention to the subject which its importance de
mands. . . . I earnestly recommend the creation of a Board
of Loan Commissioners "

338 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

The vote on Mason's recommendation started an oratorical
free-for-all in the Legislature ; the Whigs shouted that he was
dodging responsibility, and the Democrats howled for some
help for a badly overworked man. The argument grew so noisy
that both sides forgot what they were arguing about and drifted
into insults and invective. They did not pass the resolution. In
consequence, Mason had to shoulder the entire responsibility
for floating the bond issue, collecting the money from it and
delivering it intact to the State Treasurer.

If he had enjoyed unlimited authority, such a burden of re
sponsibility would have been accepted as a normal burden.
But it became evident that the Legislature was saddling him
with all the administrative and executive work he could stand ;
the Democrats because no one else could do it half so well,
and the Whigs because they hoped he would stub his toe and
come a cropper which would discredit him in the eyes of his
people.

Mason was quiet and strangely repressed. He appeared at
Monroe in April as the guest of honor at a banquet whereby
the city expressed its gratitude for his part in saving the
Southern Railroad. He went to Mt. Clemens, took off his silk-
lined coat, rolled up his lace-cuff sleeves and manfully dug
the first spadeful of earth for the Clinton and Kalamazoo
Canal. Immediately afterward, baggage packed and letters to
his associates in New York already mailed, Mason booked a
berth and left for New York.

3

He stayed in New York during all of May and part of June,
1838. The deal, which he had intimated was going smoothly
the preceding fall, was not going smoothly at all. In his heart
Mason knew it, and realized that he was not the man to try
to win concessions from New York financiers. They tied him
up like a Christmas turkey ready for the oven. He was not
the only state official in New York trying to float bond issues
for the same kind of projects. It was a bankers' market They

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 339

did not like state issues anyway, and their incessant stipulations
and conditions almost drove Mason wild.

He was living at the original Astor House, far downtown,
only a brief walk from the Washington Square district where
dwelt Julia Phelps. Every day he was victimized and hood
winked by the bankers ; evening brought solace at Julia's.
He had come alone and for the first two weeks of his visit he
thought he was alone. Then he became conscious of someone
watching him. He said clearly in his report, later, that he felt
he was "spied upon". Try as he would, he could not identify
anyone.

Every evening Julia sat demurely in her parlor. She had
just turned twenty. She was beautiful. As she sat on the horse
hair sofa, her wide skirts spread in rippling satin waves over
most of its length and her two prim little slipper toes peeping
side by side from beneath the hem, Mason contemplated her
as he would have the Mona Lisa. There was something in
scrutable about her; mysterious, challenging. She was dark,
and her brown hair flowed away from a central part to cascade
down either side of her high forehead, acting as a backdrop
for a small, delicate, heart-shaped face and two of the biggest
and most soulful eyes in this world. She was small and dainty,
as fragile as a doll. Her tightly laced waist seemed so small
that Mason thought he could touch his finger tips around it,
and the idea seemed to have possibilities.

Julia was a figure in New York society, and had enjoyed
easy contact with the great personalities of the city since child
hood. Her father was one of those millionaires who still op
erated his original business and ostensibly invested money as a
sideline. His leather and hides business was unimportant now,
although very lucrative. He was doing a private banking busi
ness ; joining pools with other wealthy men to underwrite bond
issues and speculate on anything that looked attractive. This
interesting occupation brought to the Phelps home frequent
guests as wealthy as himself. They, and their sons, had been
courting the fair Julia for some time.

Mason, while obviously not wealthy, fascinated Julia. He

34<> STEVENS THOMSON MASON

was a hero right out of a book; a dashing, handsome, adven
turous character with the excitement of a frontier life and the
charm of an old Virginia family. In his courtship he played
strictly in character. He swept her off her feet. He over
whelmed her. He made up his mind to marry her as soon as
he saw her, and told her so. This occurred in November, 1837,
and he had to return to Detroit immediately. There was no
time for the niceties of convention then. Throughout the winter
he wrote to Julia constantly. He had plenty of time to consider
the matter carefully, and so did she. He had time to analyze
it with the calm detachment which matrimony requires, ex
cept when one's beloved is in the same room, posed primly on
a horsehair sofa, gazing up out of a pair of round, question
ing eyes. . . .

He must have asked her to marry him the moment he came
into her house, that first evening in April, 1838. She cast down
her eyes and nodded her head. We know she did, because
Mason jubilantly wrote friends in Detroit all about it Soon,
anyone in Detroit who could read a newspaper knew about it.
There were little liners to the effect that . . . "our handsome
Governor is about to become a benedict", and speculating on
how Julia would like Detroit. The couple had probably not
even considered subjects like that, as yet. Julia said she would
have to have time; she would not be rushed off in any whirl
wind elopement or anything so callous. Papa's position decreed
that she must be a bride, with a church wedding, and a re
ception at the Astor House afterward. -"In the fall," she said.

Deliriously happy, Mason now found that he had plenty of
energy to attack the problem of the five-million-dollar loan.
Nothing could stop him. He went about New York in the coma
which all lovers suffer from when they realize that they are
now committed to matrimony and already approaching the
golden day. It was a most unfortunate frame of mind for a
man making the rounds of New York brokers trying to float
a loan. He had difficulty in focussing his mind on what they
were saying. He thought the credit of a state was synonymous
with that of the Federal government itself. He fancied all he

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING N,EW 341

had to do was name the amount he wanted, and point out
where they were to sign.

After his first week of tramping from broker to broker,
the loan was still unplaced and no one would give him any
assurances that they would handle it. He came back to earth
with a thump. This unpleasant incident occurred in the office
of John Delafield, an independent broker who had been
handling some banking business for Michigan in New York
previously. It had been Delafield who had promised Mason
the preceding fall that if a slight change were made in the law
authorizing the loan, he and his partners would handle it.
Mason, his mind on Julia, had heard only the last part of
the sentence. He had nodded and said it would be attended
to, and had returned home to announce that the loan was all
but completed.

It now appeared, to Mason's horror, that Delafield had lost
interest in it and had decided to withdraw. He had been corre
sponding with capitalists in Europe in an effort to organize
a syndicate which would handle the loan and bond issue. But
no part of the loan had been placed, even after Michigan had
changed the Act so that interest and principal were made pay
able in Europe as well as in New York. Now, Delafield de
manded that the law be changed again, to raise the interest
rate from five and a half to six percent. Even then he didn't
know what could be done about it.

This squelched Mason. A one-half percent rise in the interest
rate would change the carrying charges in Michigan by a very
large sum. But Delafield said that all other states and mu
nicipalities were offering six percent and having hard sledding
to raise money at that high rate. Mason wrote hurriedly to
Ed Mundy; the Legislature was notified of the crisis and
without debate amended the Act to authorize six percent. It
further declared that both interest and principal might be
payable anywhere in the world, at the existing rate of $4.44 to
the pound sterling. Mason received news of this cooperative
gesture while he was still in New York, and at once hurried
back to Mr. Delafield's office.

342 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Apparently satisfied, the broker said he would turn it over
to his associate, James King, who was about to leave for
Europe on other matters. Mr. King was a partner in the big
banking house of Prime, Ward and King, which made it sound
very impressive to Mason. He said he would advance Michigan
$150,000 as a gamble against the success of Mr* King's ven
ture. But a day or so later he said he had changed his mind
and wanted to withdraw entirely. He claimed that the Michi
gan Legislature had no business fixing the relation of the dollar
to the pound sterling at $444; by the time the principal be
came due it might be higher or lower, and no banker in Europe
would want to be tied down to such a stipulation.

With a heavy heart and dragging feet, Mason shut the door
of Delafield's office behind him. He saw a vision of himself,
the Governor of Michigan, on a soapbox in Battery Park ped
dling bonds to passers-by. He didn't know any other way of
selling them. In despair he began making the rounds again,
office to office. Somebody put him in touch with a Mr. Edward
R. Biddle of Philadelphia. Mr. Biddle, a former director of
the United States Bank and immensely wealthy, came to New
York to see him. After hearing Mason's story, he said it might
be arranged. He would take the whole load from around
Mason's neck for a commission of $80,000. It seemed to Mason
that this time the deal would go through. But before he could
consult the Legislature to learn whether it would authorize
such a commission, Mr. Biddle notified him that he could not
go on with it.

In the meantime, work in Michigan stopped. In Ann Arbor,
the construction crews on the Michigan Central were stricken
with cholera and the job was halted. They were all sick and
had not been paid for two months. In Monroe, surveys on the
Southern Railroad were abandoned entirely, because no funds
remained in the Treasury to go on with it/Village merchants
were sending delegations to Detroit, demanding from the
Legislature some word of a date when the paralyzed banks
would reopen. Money from the sale of those boiids became

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 343

so vital that Mason worked like a madman. But Mr. Biddle,
his last hope, had definitely turned him down.

Eventually, in Mason's darkest hour, Mr. Biddle had an
idea. He said he was on a number of boards, and so forth,
and among other titles he was president of the Morris Canal
and Banking Company, the firm which built the mountain-
climbing canal which wound through the New Jersey hills.
The canal was a very profitable one, and it operated a bank
in connection with its activities. Perhaps this bank could help
Mason out of his dilemma.

Like a man reprieved from the gallows, Mason marched
into the meeting of the directors of the Morris Canal and
Banking Company. With Mr. Biddle on the board sat Wash
ington Irving. Mason's spirits rose. The assemblage glittered
with names synonymous with great wealth. Their company,
too, was an industrial octopus of 1838. It owned warehouses,
mills, docks, fleets of ships, farms, mines and Newark property.
Their stock had been selling at fifty percent premium until the
Panic of 1837, but was still quoted above par. They had money
millions of dollars. They had underwritten the same kind
of bond issue for Indiana, and were doing very well with it.

To these men Mason made one of the most successful
speeches of his career. They agreed to take the loan, and told
Mason to forget about Prime, Ward and King. Negotiations
were swift and pleasant. Mason was in a daze. Under date of
June I, 1838, a contract was prepared between the Morris
Canal and Banking Company, hereinafter called Party of the
First Part, and the State of Michigan, Stevens T. Mason,
Governor, etc., etc., which Mason unfortunately didn't read,
didn't submit to his Attorney General, and signed where he
was told for fear this deal, too, would collapse.

"That the Company is to become the agent of the State for
the sale of the whole issue . . . principal and interest payable in
New York, to which city the Company is to guarantee to safe
delivery of funds secured through the sale of bonds or else
where. Paragraph 8. The Company guarantees to the State

344 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

that It shall receive the par value of the aggregate amount of
bonds sold, that is, if in the sale of said bonds the Company
is obliged to dispose of them at less than stated par value, the
Company is obliged to reimburse the State for the difference
between received and par value. Paragraph 9. The Sum of
$1,300,000 in bonds of the State of Michigan is to be delivered
to the Company upon execution of this contract ; the Company
advancing to the State the sum of $250,000 in cash at the
same time. The sum of $1,050,000 is to be credited to the State,
to be drawn upon demand by its duly authorized Governor
or Treasurer. The remainder of the amount is to be paid in
quarterly installments, beginning with the first day of July,
1839, and continuing until the entire amount is paid,"

Mason almost whooped with joy when he saw that the con
tract would guarantee that the State received par for every
bond. The installments would be paid to the State on time
whether the Company sold them or not, thus guaranteeing
steady employment in Michigan on the Internal Improvements
project. Further, the Company retained the right to buy up
the remainder of the issue at any time and take delivery of
all the bonds, upon written notice of thirty days to the Gov
ernor.

"In the event of sales at more than par value, the contract
ing parties are to divide equally all premiums up to and includ
ing five percent. For the execution of the contract, the Com
pany is to receive a commission of two and a half percent on
the proceed of sales, which is to be in lieu of all other ex
penses "

Yes, cried Mason. Yes! Yes! All he wanted to know was
where to sign. He thought he had his good friend Washington
Irving to thank for this bit of corporate generosity, but he
didn't stop to inquire. The money situation in Michigan was
such that he must get home at once, with all haste. He wanted
to leave by June 8th, and take the first payment on the bonds
with him. Accordingly the deal was hurried up a bit so that he
could take with him about $100,000 in cash, which turned out
to be bank notes issued by the Morris Canal and Banking Com-

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 345

pany. The contract was amended to provide for an immediate
payment of $250,000, due August i, 1838, and $100,000
each month thereafter. Mason signed this new contract with one
eye on the cashier's cage, where a gentleman was busily count
ing out crisp new $100 notes. He signed for a first payment of
$i 10,397.70, which was made up at the Company's New York
bank, and delivered to him in a package containing a pile of
carefully marked stacks of bank notes.

When Mason returned to the Astor House he found await
ing him in the lobby a Detroit resident named Theodore
Romeyn, a lawyer. Mason knew him; he knew Romeyn had
been the promoter and chief scalawag of several of the most
vicious wildcat banks in the State. A Whig, a furtive charac
ter with a darting glance that never looked into anyone's eyes,
Romeyn was the last man on earth Mason wanted to see. The
lawyer wanted to know how the big deal was corning. Then
Mason knew. This explained the invisible presence of some
watcher, which had haunted Mason throughout his visit.

The Governor replied stiffly that the deal was completed, and
that he was leaving for Detroit at once with a little over a
hundred thousand dollars. At this, Romeyn's eyes popped and
he clutched Mason's arm.

"You can't carry a sum like that to Detroit safely," he said.
"Why, the New York papers are full of this deal. The Bank
will release a story on it even if you don't No, sir. Your life's
in danger. Now, I'll tell you what I'll do. . . ."

The Romeyn plan was simple. He had just happened, he
said, to have spent a few days in New York on business, and
was about to return to Detroit himself. They could go together.
They'd get a trunk, a small trunk, and put some of Romeyn's
clothes in it and mark it with Romeyn's name. Then nobody
would suspect. The money, and Mason's life, would be safe.

Mason's first impulse was to punch Romeyn in the nose. He
came inside the lobby, sat down, lighted a thin Virginia cigar
and meditated. The packet of money he gave to the bookkeeper
to put in the hotel safe until his departure. He knew he had
almost a thousand miles of rough travel; the mere name of

346 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Governor Mason and the presence of that packet would be
enough to get his throat cut somewhere along the route.

He did not like Romeyn, but he did not like highwaymen,
either. It was true that the deal had been given some New York
publicity. It was equally true that robbery anywhere along the
route was such a commonplace occurrence that no one was ever
surprised that the crime occurred or that few were ever ap
prehended.

On second thought he decided to let Romeyn carry the
money, and then to watch Romeyn. Accordingly, the trunk was
purchased and packed as Romeyn directed. His name was
hammered on it in brass-headed nails. Now let us hear in
the Governor's own words what happened :

"On the morning after receiving the trunk, I left New York
on the six o'clock boat. The trunk was not out of my sight
for more than ten minutes, and then under the lock of my
room until it was placed aboard the Albany boat. When on the
boat I requested Mr. Romeyn to have it placed in the cap
tain's office, he having his name attached to the trunk. My
reason for identifying the trunk with Mr. Romeyn, as well
as my reason for requesting him to purchase it, was that it was
generally known that I was negotiating a loan in New York
and I might be followed for the purpose of stealing it on the
road home.

"At Albany the trunk was kept in my hotel room, and when
I was out I had the key of the room in my possession. In Al
bany one evening, I left for Utica the next day and it was
under the lock of the baggage car (of the railroad train) . From
Utica to Syracuse it was on the front seat of the stagecoach
under the driver's seat. We left Utica about four o'clock in
the afternoon and reached Syracuse about one or two in the
morning. At Syracuse it was not out of my keeping. From
Syracuse to Oswego it was on the deck of the canal-boat for
about half a day. At Oswego for one afternoon it was under
lock in my room. From Oswego to Niagara it was in the office
of the captain of the canal-boat for one night. From Niagara
to Buffalo it was on top of the railroad car, and I rode on the

1838-1838] SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW 347

outside in the night with it. At Buffalo it remained in my room
under lock.

"On Lake Erie it was placed in the captain's office and de
livered to me at Detroit. When I arrived at my home I took
from the trunk the articles beyonging to Mr. Romeyn and my
self, and delivered it to the Treasurer. At no time on the
journey was it opened by me, nor could I at any time observe
that the overcoat on the top had been moved. On opening
the trunk at home, everything seemed to be as I had placed
them. The package of ten thousand, three hundred and ninety-
seven dollars was on top, as I had placed it, and was immedi
ately delivered to the Treasurer as part of the cash payment,
counted by him, and found to be correct/'

But the amount was not correct; the cashier at the Michigan
State Bank counted the whole amount and found that from
various marked stacks of fives, tens and twenties, the sum of
$4,630 had been taken. Suspicion immediately pointed to
Mason. He awoke to the realization that he had not counted
the payment at New York. Alarmed, he wrote the Morris
Canal and Banking Company asking them to recheck their
records and certify that the money was correct at the time the
payment was delivered to him. The cashier at the Michigan
State Bank, a loyal Whig, immediately notified the editor of the
Detroit Advertiser. Romeyn was nowhere to be found. Various
friends asked Mason to make a statement about it, whether
he was going to accuse Romeyn of taking the money. Mason
had strong suspicions but no proof. As word of the incident
spread, Mason found himself under direct accusation by the
same section of violent Whigs who had been baiting him in
the Legislature. Mason was so infuriated that it was with
difficulty that his friends avoided a regrettable brawl.

One day he received a letter from the Morris Canal and
Banking Company enclosing $4,580 in the same bills Mason
had been carrying. Some anonymous person, they said, had
mailed it in, from a New York post office. The missing $50 was
quickly made good by Mason himself, and the incident officially
closed. Politically it was never closed. Suspicion clung to him.

348 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Romeyn continued to be missing. Mason couldn't find where
he had gone. For fifty years, says Lawton Hemans, this baf
fling mystery hung to Mason's name and defied explanation.

Emboldened by an excuse to attack him, the Whigs now
came out into the open and began assaulting every phase of the
fivc-million-dollar-loan deal. They accused Mason of swindling
the State out of a fortune by getting involved with the Morris
Canal and Banking Company. Woodbridge, in the State Senate,
cried that it was no better than a wildcat bank; what were
its notes worth in Michigan? More paper, more depreciation,
Woodbridge declaimed. And Michigan had paid a whopping
commission for the privilege of discounting them. The law
said the bonds must be sold at par; the contract admitted that
they would be guaranteed to the State at par, but what was
this? A provision for a two-and-a-half -percent commission.
That meant that the State realized a net of ninety-seven and
a half per cent. Illegal I A swindle !

Woodbridge's long-awaited day had come. The Whigs
rallied behind him. They went over the contract with a fine-
tooth comb, and the career of Stevens Thomson Mason in
Michigan began to crumble when they drove wedges into its
most obvious cracks; his pitiful lack of experience in finance.

Numbly, Mason didn't care. He was sick of it; weary to
death of this continual sniping at him. He had done his job;
he had negotiated the loan on the best terms he could get;
he had pleaded for help and received only mocking laughter
from the Legislature. Suddenly, defiantly, Mason packed up
again and left for New York. He wanted Julia.

They were married at Thaddeus Phelps' home on November
i, 1838. Mason was four days past his twenty-seventh birth
day. Emily Mason and the aged Mrs. Elizabeth Moir Mason
wept, as they saw the fine young man embrace Julia and bestow
the nuptial kiss. Her life with him was a constant fight against
the relentless elements which were pulling her husband to pieces
before her eyes. Paradoxical as were most of the big moments
in Mason's life, his marriage was the beginning of his downfall.

CHAPTER XII

MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN

THE FASHIONS of 1838 gave dainty Julia Phelps Mason an
unfortunate beginning to her married life. It was considered
indelicate to be healthy. Ladies swooned at many dilemmas.
A sigh and a collapse into someone's arms appear to have been
the standard answer to any difficult situation. This seems
slightly silly. Today it requires some concentration to treat
of the early Victorian lady with the requisite dignity* In De
troit the daughters of the Witherells, the Palmers and the
Trowbridges, who had been helping the daughters of the
Campeaus, the Casses and the Dequindres fight the terrible
cholera epidemics four years before, now developed fashion
able paleness and hair-trigger fainting attacks, like victims
of the last stages of consumption.

Emily Mason pooh-poohed all this feminine delicacy and re
fused to be cowed by it. She went troupmg around the United
States as gaily as ever, without any nurse to hand her the
smelling salts every time she encountered a deck hand blithely
relieving himself against a dock piling. Emily never fainted
and never had a serious illness of which there is a record. She
was regarded as a bit too independent for the period, however,
and continued to live as a maiden lady. It was Julia's type
which collected suitors.

England as well as America appeared to be in the midst
of this ardently romantic interlude/The death of Sir Walter
Scott in 1832, and of Byron eight years earlier, had given
the elaborate verbal scrollwork of those popular penmen a
popularity which affected the whole social history of the times.
Scott's heroines were invariably small, dainty and delicate, so
much so that they had to repel the boorish advances of wealthy

349

35 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

but baseborn suitors with twelve-syllable words which made
the cads slink away in confusion. They swooned; they had the
pallor and paleness of a chronic invalid; and therefore girls
like Julia Phelps Mason, who was naturally weak, became
fashionable. She had huge, expressive eyes, a tired smile and a
genius for conveying an impression that she was about to have
a relapse.

Her husband fetched and carried for her during their brief
honeymoon, which they spent right in New York. He waited on
her as if she were, in fact, an invalid. This was just what Julia
loved. They were completely happy.

Letters came to furrow the Mason brow. He never men
tioned them to Julia, because in 1838 a woman was not sup
posed to know anything about statecraft. Emily did. In brief
interludes during the honeymoon Mason and his sister spent
long hours talking about what remedy he could apply to the
sinister situation in Detroit, growing worse by the hour.

Mason did not tell Julia that he stayed around Detroit dur
ing most of the summer of 1838 because his official neck was in
a noose and he was fighting for his political life. He spared
her the details of the rising tide of Whig sentiment against
him which had threatened to engulf him almost every day,
and which was aimed at knocking him out of public life. He
had an easy way out. He could make a graceful exit on the line
that he had served two terms and that it was contrary to na
tional precedent to serve a third. He decided not to become
a candidate for re-election.

This was probably the only fact which kept Stevens Thom
son Mason, Michigan's first Governor, from being impeached.
Woodbridge's day was now dawning. He was going after
Mason with a violence that was almost savage.

Bit by bit, Mason had attempted to remedy the ills that
Woodbridge was arousing the Legislature to investigate. Fur
ther risk of robbery in transit from New York to Detroit was
eliminated by installing John Norton, Jr., cashier of the Michi
gan State Bank, in New York to receive the cash payments on
the loan. Woodbridge's lamentations in the Legislature about

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 351

the illegal contract with the Morris Canal and Banking Com
pany were answered by the Governor in detail. He said the
contract was not illegal, and it was so held by a Supreme Court
opinion. But it was unfortunate. The contract was indeed as
full of loopholes as an old stockaded fort, and fully as vul
nerable. When Whig lawyers began tearing it to bits, they
found that the Morris Canal and Banking Company was re
ceiving $125,000 from the State as a brokerage fee. Further
more, the State was dependent* on the market for the value
of the bank's bills. They might drop suddenly in New York,
and be almost worthless in Michigan. Yet Michigan was obliged
to repay the loan, dollar for dollar, plus interest, in legal ten
der, which would mean absolute par.

There was nothing much Mason could do about the con
tract. It was signed; the bank had Michigan's bonds and Michi
gan had the bank's money. The bank's directors rubbed their
hands over their $125,000 fee. They were not anxious to go
through the money markets in an attempt to sell the bonds at
a premium; there was no reason why they should thus exert
themselves. While Mason was still ecstatically clasping his
bride in his arms in the bridal suite, Chairman Edward Biddle
of the bank sent him a gloomy letter about it. The bank, he
said, was receiving bad news about the chances for the sale
of the bonds in Europe, and so forth. The United States Bank,
now a private institution in Philadelphia, was said to be loaded
up with other state and municipal bonds and could not buy
any more. Therefore he thought they'd better let it go, and
said that the bank would take all the rest of Michigan's bonds
and pass them to the State's credit at par -less, of course, the
two-and-a-half-percent commission. Mason came down out of
the clouds long enough to reply.

, "It is with regret that I perceive that the state of the Euro
pean market is such as to render the sale of Michigan bonds a
matter of hazard and doubt. My expectation under the contract
with your institution was to realize at least par for the bonds,
and it is with extreme disappointment that I have presented
to me the probability of losing two and a half percent . . . but

352 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

as the negotiation of this loan has been a most thankless and
perplexing undertaking on my part, I feel unwilling to ad
vise you."

Mr. Biddle replied that the sale of the remaining bonds
had been put through and the balance due the State credited
to it on the books. He congratulated Mason on the advan
tageous deal he had made for the people of Michigan. Mason
should have framed this letter and taken it back to Michigan
with him. Mr. Biddle was apparently the only person who
thought the deal was any good. Sentiment in Michigan was
mostly to the effect that the State had been well fleeced, and
that Mason had been unable or unwilling to fight through
a deal which would have saved that fee.

Woodbridge, of course, began hinting as early as the first
of December, 1838, that Mason had profited by some kind of
fee-splitting deal when the contract was signed. Friends in De
troit wrote the Governor to get back at once, honeymoon or
no honeymoon. They urged him to the greatest haste. They
said Woodbridge was demanding his investigation, and had
hand-picked quite a board from among the most violent Whigs
in each House.

Upon reading this, Mason groaned. There was nothing else
he could do. With a sinking heart he began packing his and
Julia's baggage and booking passage for a journey home.
He had a final conference with Emily, who had decided not to
return to Detroit. Now that her brother was married, and
their mother an invalid under Emily's care in New York, there
was no point in going back. She felt more than a little appre
hensive about the treatment Mason would receive upon his re
turn home. It was as plain as the long, granite-like chin on
her face that a reaction had set in because of the disappoint
ments over the loan. The very people who had cheered him
for so many years were gathering rocks to hurl at him now.
Intuitively Emily realized that he had suddenly lost his popu
larity. She urged him to finish out the rest of his term and
then return to New York permanently, to practice law. In her
diary she relates how she had made up his mind for him, ex-

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 353

plaining that his marriage u paved the way for his removal to
New York, where he had but to enter the road to wealth and
fame". She recalled how the whole family had hurried to New
York from all sorts of distant points to be present at the wed
ding, and adored Julia immediately. u She was a beautiful and
fascinating woman," Emily admits, "with whom we kept up
the most affectionate relations as long as she lived."

And so the bridal couple set out, in bleak December, to begin
a ten-day stagecoach journey, partly by rail, across the frozen
wastes of New York State and the Province of Ontario.
Mason's spirits were as cold as Julia's feet. He must be par
doned if he did not show any of the warmth usually associated
with young couples who have been married only a month. He
probably felt like a man being brought back in handcuffs to
face trial.

Julia was twenty years old, and pregnant. This was a rather
brutal introduction to married life, but she bore up under it
as well as she could. Neither she nor her husband ever dwelt
on paper about her feelings during that jolting journey, nor
of he-r opinions about the little narrow house on Jefferson,
across from the old Williams mansion, in which he presently
installed her. He set out across town to his office, wondering
what sort of reception he would receive.

It required only a few startled words from Ed Mundy
and his associates in the Legislature to confirm his worst fears.
He was in for it; he was about to be investigated. While
Mason had been oblivious to goings-on in Detroit, Mundy and
the others had been trying to develop a defense against the
worst attack of any they had seen up to that time. They ad
vised Mason to let go the first volley in his annual message to
the Legislature, due within a few days. Sentiment in both
Houses was pretty fluid so far, and they had at least an even
chance of appointing a majority of Democrats to the investi
gating Committee. They thought that if Mason would acknowl
edge the furore over the disappointing contract, and submit
to an investigation voluntarily, his bravery would win him a
friendly board.

354 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Mason thereupon sat down to draft his message. He de
voted almost the whole of it to a detailed history of the loan ;
he recounted all the details of the various turndowns he had
received from New York brokers, and said that the Morris
Canal and Banking Company offered the only way out. The
deal, he said, was a disappointment to him, too, but probably
no one else could have done any better. This message has been
the subject of very careful study by historians of Michigan,
who agree that it reveals a very strong note of pessimism and
disappointment in Mason's mind, as if he were politely telling
his enemies to do their worst and be damned. He surely had a
clear conscience, and just as surely was not going to defend
anything he had done. Let the record speak for itself. By all
means launch the investigation; he would co-operate with the
board to his utmost.

"I demand for my own conduct the most rigid inquiry. . . .
Let the Committee investigate all such matters as present an
unfavorable aspect. . . ."

Almost as soon as Mason had finished speaking from the
rostrum, the wily Woodbridge was busy. He called his whips
in both Houses into immediate session, and cracked his own
whip over them unmercifully. He wanted a majority on that
board in both Houses, or else. Mason left matters to the Demo
cratic majority leaders, which was a grave blunder. Wood-
bridge had his way. The joint resolution of the Legislature de
manded a committee of seven members of the House and seven
from the Senate. The Whigs managed to pack it outrageously.
In the Senate there were four Democrats to three Whigs.
In the House there were two Democrats to five Whigs. Thus
armed with an eight-to-six majority, the Whigs gleefully named
to the board the very persons who could be depended upon to
go to the absolute limit in persecuting him. Woodbridge him
self was named to the committee, and so was James Wright
Gordon, the source of the resolution against Mason the preced
ing summer. Chairman of the whole joint committee was
Daniel S. Bacon, the man who had been defeated by Ed Mundy

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 355

for the lieutenant-governorship on the Whig ticket the year
before.

It started out as an overture to political murder. Mason
flung himself into midnight political sessions with his adherents,
and by strict insistence on the business at hand he steered the
Whigs away from irrelevant political and personal generalities.
Confined solely to the matter of Mason's guilt or innocence,
they disappointed the Whigs by clearing him.

"Your committee does not inquire if the compensation stipu
lated to be paid to the Morris Canal and Banking Company
was exorbitant, nor whether the sale of bonds could have been
made on more advantageous terms. They refer to the Act of
the Legislature (authorizing the loan) as their only rule of
action." Thus, was the act of Governor Mason in submitting
to a deduction of two and a half percent legal, or illegal?
It was legal. They inquired into the mysterious theft from the
first installment of notes carried by the Governor himself.
They said they had accumulated a ream of testimony, and had
gone all around Robin Hood's barn, or words to that effect,
but could find no one responsible. "It sleeps in the bosom of
him who perpetrated the crime. It is due to Governor Mason
and the public to say that no imputation whatever rests upon

him."

Woodbridge wrote that. What was in his mind? Was he try
ing to build up a reputation for impartiality to cloak some
slashing future attack? No one knew. Woodbridge summoned
Rorneyn in an instant, although Mason never could find him.
Romeyn had appeared before the committee. He denied taking
any of the missing money, or appropriating any of it to his own
uses, and exonerated Mason in the most specific language. He
said: "I have never directly or indirectly drawn any money
from the State for my own purposes ; neither have I received
from Governor Mason any accommodation or advances."
This statement was made a matter of record and appears in
the committee's report. Then Theodore Romeyn disappeared
again for two years, and reappeared just as suddenly to change

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

his story entirely. In 1841 he was summoned again, and in
response to Woodbridge's whistle he produced a story that
was like a bomb. Mason never did succeed in finding him.

However, Mason accepted the report with relief and pre
pared to let the whole thing die a natural death. He turned
his attention once more to his bride. He was aware now that
Julia was in what the Victorians called u an interesting condi
tion 1 ', and that pretty soon the cruelly tight bodices of the
1839 costumes, with their flaring hoop skirts, would reveal it.
Julia didn't like Detroit and was tearfully afraid of the ruth
less Whigs. She thought they would plot to knife her husband
some dark night. She felt in physical danger every hour she
stayed there.

Mason, too, began to see Detroit in a new light. What had
happened? Where was the triumphant party spirit that had
carried Mason and his Democrats to victory in contest after
contest? What was the meaning of this quarrelling and back
biting between old party friends? What disaster had produced
the hollow feeling of impending trouble that had changed all
these once-sunny faces to hangdog, evasive grimaces?

For nearly eight years, Stevens T. Mason had lived in a
glare of publicity. He had learned not to depend upon the
cheers and plaudits of a crowd to guide him, and had painfully
acquired a certain judgment of popular trends from the re
actions that followed his impulsive acts. It was said of him that
"he had learned something of the insincerity of the praise that
sometimes follows success, and the injustice of the blame that
sometimes follows failure." Now, however, in January, 1839,
he was wholly at a loss. Something had happened that he could
not understand. On the surface, it seemed to him that the
fight over the five-million-dollar-loan contract had fizzled out
when the committee found no parliamentary tree on which
to hang him, and that it would be forgotten. But it was not
being forgotten. The bitter feeling against him was there,
growing strong enough for him to sense it every day in the
atmosphere of the. -capital corridors. He was constantly on
the defensive.

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 357

The party was breaking up before his eyes. The machine
that he had built long years before, even prior to the "Toledo
War", had carried its last election. In Congress, Senator Nor-
vell was not on speaking terms with Senator Lucius Lyon,
and Congressman Crary was in the doghouse with his con
stituents. They thought that Crary had gone "politician" in
Washington, and was being seen with too many rich lobbyists
and influential vote buyers. When he came up for re-election
in the summer of 1838, he just squeaked through with a ma
jority of 204 out of more than 10,000 votes cast. In this same
election the Whigs had picked up more seats in the Detroit
city council and had a powerful majority there, but not in the
Legislature. They were happy, confident and forever threaten
ing Mason.

The Boy Governor was slipping badly. Out in the rural dis
tricts there was another spasm of bitter poverty, for which
he was blamed. The unpromising future of the Internal Im
provements project had stopped work on everything except
the Central Railroad, which at this time was past Ann Arbor
and approaching Dexter. Money could not be had; credit was
tight ; loans were being called, and mortgages foreclosed. All
this, in the people's eyes, was caused by Mason's failure to
carry out his lavish promises of State construction projects
and a sound currency backed by a State Bank.

He was a thoroughly discredited Governor at the head of a
cracked and disintegrating administration. Such a realization
comes eventually to the head of almost every political or
ganization dependent upon public support for existence. Some
charge headlong at it like a ram butting into a brick wall, and
get their brains knocked out. Others, gifted with some degree
of foresight, accept the inevitable and make plans for life
as plain citizens. Fortunately, Mason had perception enough
to realize that he had had his whole cycle and was now facing
the concluding phase of his public career.

If they would let him alone, he would bow out gracefully.
If Woodbridge or any other vengeful Whig didn't try to
hoist himself into Mason's chair over his bleeding and pros-

358 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

trate body, Mason would even make it easy for him. The tone
of the investigating committee's report had indicated that the
Whigs intended to campaign on straight election lines without
lambasting Mason personally. Mason felt relieved at this.

Yet, in his heart, he knew this dream would never come
true. It was impossible for these Whigs to campaign for any
office at all without raising a stink, calling grand juries, smear
ing somebody's carefully nourished public reputation all over
the pages of their indescribable campaign sheets. The temper
of the times was never nastier than in the spring of 1839.
Mason felt strongly that the Whigs, and Woodbridge per
sonally, were going to crucify him.

As soon as possible after delivering his annual message,
Mason sent the Legislature a politely phrased paragraph an
nouncing that he was not to be considered a candidate for re
election in 1839. He hoped that this definite statement would
turn the Whigs' attention from him and focus it upon any
Democrat luckless enough to be nominated at the party con
vention to succeed him. Whatever happened, Mason knew that
he would not humor Julia and take her back to New York
until after the spring session of the Legislature, which usually
lasted only a few weeks.

Perversely, this session lasted well past its allotted time and
ran into months. It seemed to Mason that every little detail of
the State's administration became the subject of loud-voiced
harangues in the Legislature. Lucius Lyon's term as Senator
expired on March 4, 1839, and the fight which presently broke
out in both Houses set an all-time high for malevolent per
sonal name calling. Neither party could agree on anyone. Even
the members of the joint committee, appointed to nominate a
candidate, wrangled and scolded each other. Some Whigs
tried to take advantage of the confusion by attempting to slip
through a bill which would have allowed some of their schem
ing real-estate men to buy up the State's precious school and
University lands for the standard dollar and a quarter per
acre. Mason promptly vetoed it and sent it back with a sting-
ingnote.

MAS QN CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 359

The Legislature hung about, belligerently, until April 2Oth,
and became the longest session in the State's experience until
that time. The final day's session continued almost all night
and well into Sunday morning, the 2ist, with the members
making so much noise that the Michigan Observer complained
that their conduct was "unbecoming statesmen". They never
acted less like statesmen than during this session. When they
finally gave up, and went home, Mason hurriedly booked
passage on a Buffalo boat for himself and Julia.

Twenty-two days later, Mason was back at his desk at Detroit.
He had taken Julia home to her father's house with many
soothing assurances that he would come back again for a week
or two during the summer, but that he couldn't spare time now.
He had to tell her, quietly, that she'd be better off with her
family while the slanderous attacks on him were building up
during the coming campaign. He would be embarrassed to have
her in Michigan while the Whig party convention was in prog
ress and the name of Mason was being plastered with Whig
epithets and political mud. Julia seemed quite content. She
said she would be all right with mama and papa to take care
of her. It was with great relief that Mason started homeward.

He didn't have much time in Detroit to worry about the
Whigs' plans for his political ouster. He had arrived back in
May, and about the middle of June letters started coming from
Julia. She was completing her preparations, and had the baby's
crib all decorated with satin ribbons. The time was drawing
close. In July, Mason left Detroit again, in the midst of politi
cal meetings and a heavy burden of State work. The selection
of delegates to the party's convention was in progress, but
nothing happening in Michigan could hold a candle in im
portance to what was happening in New York. He arrived in
New York exactly on time.

Mason's mother was spending the summer with him in De
troit, and she kept the house open while he was gone. She

360 STEVENS THOMSON MASOK

remained quietly indoors, and it was to her on August 3, 1839,
that Mason wrote jubilantly that the baby had arrived on
August ist, exactly nine months to the day after the wedding.
It was a boy a nice, healthy boy with blue eyes. Happily
he wrote that it was Julia's wish to christen the baby Stevens
Thomson Mason, Jr. He would be the first boy of the fourth
generation to bear the honored name. Julia was well but weak,
he wrote, and as soon as everything was all right he expected
to return to Detroit. He was practically a commuter between
New York and Detroit, an average of ten days each way. He
had the same time problem that a man of the present genera
tion would have if he went dashing back and forth between
Detroit and Manila. He seems to have spent as much time
travelling as he did at his desk.

His plans were too vague to enable him to make any long-
range commitments. He acted quickly, as circumstances dic
tated. When the baby was a couple of weeks old, he felt he
could not postpone the unpleasantness any longer. The con
ventions were meeting, and he might as well go back and get
it over with.

When he arrived, the Democrats were in the midst of their
sessions. They were meeting at Ann Arbor as usual, and had
chosen Elon Farnsworth as candidate for Governor ; Thomas
Fitzgerald for Lieutenant Governor, and a long list of new
comers for the other elective positions. They had dropped
their feuds and were trying to present a united front against
the Whig machine. By selecting Mr. Farnsworth they had
gone as far to the right as Democrats could. He was a con
servative, successful Detroit attorney who had been a Supreme
Court justice and had served for a time as one of Mason's
Banking Examiners. He had had a long career as a banker in
Detroit.

The ticket was as strong as the party could make it. They
avoided any reference to Mason in their resolutions. They did
not follow the custom of giving the outgoing Governor a vote
of thanks, nor did they refer to his administration in any way.

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 361

The slight, if it was intended as such, must have made Mason
squirm inwardly, but he never alluded to it.

The Whigs travelled halfway across the State to Marshall,
where there was plenty of elbowroom and open air to throw
the voice. Mason was kept informed as to what they were
saying about him. Most of their biting comments could be read
in the Detroit Advertiser. They began their convention with
a blast at the Democrats for having hyphenated their name a
few seasons previously when they had picked up a small in
dependent group of voters calling themselves "Republicans".
The party was known as the "Democrat-Republican" party on
the ballots, which infuriated the Whigs. They were hoping to
get away from the title entirely and adopt the name "Republi
can" as their own. The resolution declared: "We will not, di
rectly or indirectly, acquiesce in the assumption by our op
ponents of a name as dear to us as it is inapplicable to them."

This seemed mild enough. So did their nominating-com
mittee report, which gave the convention its choice of half a
dozen candidates. In Detroit, Mason had just begun to breathe
again when he was figuratively knocked flat by news from
Marshall. Woodbridge had stepped in and collared the nomi
nation, insisting that it be made unanimous and that James
Wright Gordon be acclaimed as his running-mate for Lieu
tenant Governor. The Whigs obediently passed the necessary
resolutions. Woodbridge did not mention Mason's name, but
the quick action he received from the Whigs was due partly to
his comment that he was going to campaign entirely on the
issue of the administration's failures and its record of "accumu
lated disasters".

In the Whig party convention, resolutions attacking Mason
were wildly applauded and cheered. After adjournment, dele
gates rode back to their home towns confident of a smashing
victory. It seemed to be a Whig year. Everything they did won
results, and new voters. No matter how energetically the
Democrats tried, they seemed to encounter a wall of public
indifference. Mason could see before the campaign had been

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

under way a week that the Whigs had everything their own
way.

They began their village campaigning by calling Mason
a traitor and a curse; he was a "Benedict Arnold"; Fitzgerald
was hailed as the "nurse of the wildcats". The Democrats
pointed a pitiless finger at old Woodbridge. He became "that
blue-light Connecticut federalist; that filcher from the public
Treasury; a tyrant judge; an office-seeker in his dotage."

Woodbridge called his speakers together and told them this
was old stuff. They'd have to do better than that. Calling names
no longer was the best way to get votes. It was customary
during a Michigan election, and about every possible epithet
had already been applied. What he wanted was a short, catchy
phrase that could be painted on signs and carried on banners
in parades. The Whig brain trust came up with the slogan :
"Woodbridge, Gordon and Reform." The Whigs decorated
every county seat in the State with it. Whig meetings turned
into shouting, singing demonstrations. Democrats spoke to
empty courthouse squares.

The Michigan Democrats were sharing the blame for bank
rupt conditions throughout the country. In 1839, Michigan,
along with most other States, was in about the same condition
as the United States was to be in in 1933. The Federal govern
ment lacked, however, the resources and resourcefulness of
later Democrats in inaugurating a long series of alphabetical
agencies which transferred great chunks of the impoverished
public to the Federal payrolls, and consequent bonded loyalty
at the polls. Martin Van Buren had no WPA, PWA, NRA,
CCC, NYA, ERA or Federal Writers' Project. Hence, in
Michigan, Mason was branded as the successor to Benedict
Arnold instead of being hailed as Governor Frank Murphy
was, as a sainted Sir Galahad rescuing Michigan from poverty.

It was a day when people still looked to the wisdom of their
leaders in Washington to enact wise and just laws which would
speed the return of prosperity. They still believed that good
times could be legislated into being. It was the aftermath of a
decade of wild speculation, unrestricted industrial piracy, and

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 363

over-confidence. When the bubble burst with the "Specie Cir
cular", paper fortunes dwindled and swiftly vanished. Ambi
tious undertakings like railroads and canals, which would have
acted somewhat like relief agencies to the harassed poor, were
halted.

No clever sloganeer was needed by the Whigs to find the
chinks in the Democratic armor. Throughout the campaign,
the wildcat banks were a sure-fire signal for booing at any
crossroads meeting. The bungling of the five-million-dollar
loan drew repeated catcalls. The general ineptness of Mason's
administration because of feuds in the Legislature, friction
in Congress and a do-nothing attitude on the part of jobholders
was a fruitful source of Whig campaign oratory. The Whigs
invented a synthetic animal with a wildcat hide and a stove
pipe hat which they called a loco foco. This creature was sup
pose to be a Democratic voter. His only aim in life was the
instinct to destroy his State and nation.

Even such things as economic conditions and changing
prices favored the Whigs. While the campaign was in progress,
a fresh wave of bank failures flowed across the State. This
was, to Mason, the disappearance of the last thin straw of
hope. The preceding spring session of the Legislature had
been marked by the failure of one of Michigan's biggest and
richest banks, the famed Michigan State Bank of Detroit.
It was forced to close its doors because real-estate mortgages
which it was holding throughout the State dwindled in value
almost to the vanishing point. Throughout the summer, prices
had been going down steadily as the once-spectacular wave of
emigration dried up. People no longer had money to travel.
They could not sell out in the East and finance a journey to
Michigan. Farm land was going begging at five dollars an
acre, and in the towns local storekeepers kept going somehow,
even though their books showed total bankruptcy. Wheat,
which was selling in Detroit the preceding winter at $1.20
a bushel, now brought seventy-five cents. All other farm pro
duce fell in proportion. Instead of promoting wildcat banks
and demanding State grants of railroads, local businessmen

364 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

were now looking for day work on farms grubbing weeds.

In the face of such a spectacle, the Democratic campaign
was as listless and indifferent as the Whigs' campaign was en
thusiastic. "Turn the blackguards out!" cried the Whigs. "Re
form! Reform!" Woodbridge did very little campaigning.
The less he said, the better. He recognized the political truism
that he could sit quietly at home and let the Democrats beat
themselves. Mason, instead of taking the stump in his party's
behalf, looked around Detroit for a vacant office wherein he
could begin the practice of law. He shuddered at each men
tion of the campaign.

It was no surprise to anyone that the Whigs carried the
State. On election day Mason was busy winding up his official
affairs and wrapping up the wreckage of the five-million-dollar
loan so that Woodbridge could find all the pieces. He signed
his last batch of appointments, wrote his final reports to Wash
ington, and cleaned out his desk.

Woodbridge, his watery eyes agleam with victory, entered
the office. Mason politely beckoned him to be seated, and said
he wanted to explain about the present status of the loan. He
was deeply worried, Mason continued, about the Bank of the
United States, in Philadelphia. It was said to be shaky, and
might not be able to meet its installments on the bonds it had
purchased through the Morris Canal and Banking Company.
Pritchette, he said, was in Philadelphia at that very moment
as Mason's representative, studying it. It was Pritchette's hope
to get back all the Michigan bonds held there, and return
them to the Treasurer. If he could get that part of the deal
abrogated and get the bonds back, they would be in the State's
custody until other buyers could be found. But if the Bank of
the United States closed, Michigan would lose the bonds but
would be required to keep paying interest to the bank's re
ceiver.

This fear of the Bank of the United States was a widely
held one in Detroit, Mason remarked. He said he had called
on all the officials of the surviving Detroit banks, and they had
advised him to get the State's bonds out of there with all speed.

l83&-l$39l MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 365

They did not think the Morris Canal and Banking Company
was going to weather the balance of the financial crisis, either.
He advised Woodbridge, therefore, to bend all his energies to
the task of retrieving all the Michigan bonds that remained
with the Morris Canal and Banking Company after January
I, 1840. This would leave the State with about half the bonds
sold and collected for, and the other half unsold.

Woodbridge nodded his white head and mumbled a polite
agreement. He said he would act accordingly. While he was
there, Woodbridge said, he would like to remind the Governor
that it was the custom among States for the outgoing Governor
to draft a farewell or "exaugural" address to the Legislature
upon completing his term of office. Woodbridge would see
that it was taken care of. Mason thanked him, and promised
to comply.

Mason's mother told him that evening, the day following
election day, that she had received a letter from John T.,
date-lined New York, asking her to come there for a few
months to escape the worst of the Michigan winter. She felt
well enough to travel, she said, arid furthermore she did not
want to be in the way when Julia and the baby arrived during
the next few weeks. Mason affectionately bade her good-bye
at the Randolph Street dock as she boarded the boat for
Buffalo.

After her departure, Mason attended the inauguration cere
monies and watched Woodbridge being sworn in as Governor.
Mason dropped suddenly from the public gaze. No longer
did the newspapers inquire into his love life or his drinking
habits. Gone were the long diatribes about his "youthful in
discretions" which allegedly sold out the State to the money
barons of New York. With many a sigh of relief, Mason
entered the practice of law in a little second-floor office in a
new building not far from the capitol. As a partner he took
in a newly admitted attorney a year or so younger than him
self, E. B. Harrington of Port Huron. He looked forward to
Pritchette's return and the establishment of a new firm to be
called Mason & Pritchette. In the meantime, he thought,

366 STEVEN'S THOMSON MASON

young Harrington cowld help him in the office while he concen
trated on getting clients.

He had Left th service of the State nearly penniless. A
carefully saved finmd which he had built up over the ^course
of his two terms as Governor was wiped out when the Michigan
State Bank failed in IMarch, 1839, with the savings of thou
sands of depositotrs L ike himself. He had enough to live on
for a month or tiro, sind to pay his office rent. Books for his
law library had keen given to him, one at a time, as they were
published by the Secretary of State's office. He had all the
Michigan Statutes anJ Public Acts, and a compilation of the
Territorial Acts back as far as Governor Hull's time, thirty
years before. Onthtewall he had framed his certificate to prac
tice in Michigan, "dated December n, 1833. Often he liked
to look at it, andtrMil of the big blowoff which he, Ike Row
land and Georgi ePalrmer had staged for their tutor, Pritchette,
when they all passed the examination. He had another such
certificate, dated [wily 23, 1834, admitting him to practice be
fore the Supreme Court of the State. These were the only
professional qualid cations he needed. Besides, his father's old
law library contained a great many valuable volumes which
served him as references. Compared with most young attor
neys setting up a practice, Mason was very well equipped
indeed.

He was twenty-eight years old on October 2yth, a week or
two before the eLectSon which swept Woodbridge and the
Whigs into office, PMaaried, with one baby son, possessed- of an
adequate house WiScli ~vas big enough for a small family, owner
of a fairly good 1 a? library and endowed with the aura of
eight years as lie ad of Michigan's administration, Mason
should have Beccnme immensely wealthy in later life as Michi
gan's topmost legal figure. He had the ability, the background,
the energy, and tLe expectation of about fifty years of prac
tice on the road thsatl ay ahead. According to all the textbooks
on success, Mas on^s eight years as Governor and Territorial
Secretary should ksave= been just an incident in his longer, and
more lucrative, rise to success.

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 367

We know that no such mellow pot of gold awaited him at
the end of his rainbow. He had everything but good fortune,
what we moderns call the "breaks". No man on the threshold
of a new career should try to pierce the future. He might dis
cover that ahead of him lay such a combination of circumstances
as those which struck Stevens T. Mason at the outset of his
legal career. They were blows which not only caused his un
timely death, but which plunged his name into the mire of
public contempt and held it there for sixty years. Anyone who
would pull aside the curtains which conceal the future and see
before him such a spectre, would have only one recourse
suicide.

He had just arranged the furniture in his new office and
received a pen and inkwell from Harrington, and was trying
to lure in a client who might want a will written, for example,
when he received news of the sudden death of his beloved
mother in New York, which occurred on November 24, 1839.
The feeble Elizabeth had caught cold, or something, and had
been running a temperature when she arrived in New York.
John T. put her to bed and called a physician. But before any
diagnosis could be arrived at, Elizabeth Moir Mason just
quietly sighed, turned away her eyes, and died.

She was only fifty, but she had been in poor health since the
birth and immediate death of her thirteenth child on April 5,
1833. Of those thirteen, only four were alive at the time of the
funeral. Emily and the youngest daughter, Laura, attended it.
Kate Mason Rowland and Stevens T. Mason were in De
troit, and their mother was cold in her grave before they knew
what had happened. She had found peace after thirty years
of turmoil.

3

His mother's sudden death plunged Mason into gloom. For
days he did not come to his new office, but stayed at home and
wrote letters to his father and to Julia, urging her to bring
the baby and come out to Detroit as soon as spring reopened

368 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

the more comfortable canal and rail route across New York
State and Lake Erie. For the past few years the care of his
invalid mother had been some responsibility, but both he and
John T. wanted her with them as much as possible. They
felt toward her a deep admiration for her patient and enduring
character; a warm affection for the thousands of incidents by
which she had brightened their drab lives in their worst years
in Kentucky. She had suffered so many family losses that she
poured out her heart and her life on those who survived. Kate
was married and mistress of her own house. Little Laura was
eighteen at the time, and her mother knew that she, too, would
soon marry and go away. Emily and Stevens T. were her two
solid rocks of strength in a fluid world. She had been dividing
her time between visits to them and to John T., wherever he
happened to be. He might be anywhere. He was a mysterious
and somewhat sinister figure in the Louisiana bayous, a power
ful secret agent constantly stirring up a witch's brew of plots
and uprisings. He had found the career that exactly suited
him, and it had made him rich once more. He was influential
both in New York and Washington, the king of Red River
Valley land speculators, the man who seemed to be every
where, completing some big deal every day.

His mother's death brought father and son closer than
they had been during the past decade. Christmas, 1839, was a
sad one for Mason. He felt terribly alone in the empty house.
He tried to relieve the sadness by writing his father long let
ters. In them, just by way of conversation, he complained that
he had no clients and did not seein able to attract any. His
office was empty. No one would come near him for fear of
offending the newly powerful Whigs, who hated him. The
Whigs were quite outspoken about what they would think of
anyone who so much as came near Mason's office. Some of De
troit's ever-bubbling population, who didn't play politics but
did get into trouble, came to him fbr help in criminal cases
like assault, drunkenness and other misdemeanors. He ob
tained a few small pleadings in civil actions, but not enough
to claim that he had established a practice.

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 369

Upon Pritchette's return, Mason's spirits revived. He re
organized the partnership as Mason and Pritchette, with Har
rison as a junior partner. He had cards printed, and a sign
lettered on the window. The window overlooked the route
which nearly everyone took in going to, and coming from,
the capitol. The partners amused themselves by looking out
of the window and gossiping about what this or that person had
been doing up there. Occasionally Mason performed some
desultory work on the "exaugural" message that he had
promised Woodbridge to prepare.

When the Legislature convened on January 6, 1840, Mason
sent his message to Governor Woodbridge. He still had friends
out in the counties, and for their benefit he sent some copies
of it to friendly newspaper editors. The editors passed it up
the first day because of a more newsworthy event that oc
curred in the capitol on inauguration day. Retiring Lieutenant
Governor Ed Mundy had been attacked in the corridor of the
building by a particularly violent Whig, Colonel Edward
Brooks of Detroit. Colonel Brooks had knocked Ed down
and was beating him with a heavy cane when other people
pulled him off. The Whig papers tried to play it down, because
Colonel Brooks admitted he didn't have anything personal
against Ed, but that he was infuriated past endurance at the
mere sight of a Democrat in their Whig stronghold. The
Free Press called it "the new Whig reign of terror". Ed was
a gentleman about it. He was much bigger and stronger and
could have thrown Colonel Brooks through a window had he
not decided to be a martyr and take the beating. He waited
for an apology. None came.

Next day the newspapers printed excerpts from Mason's
"exaugural", and the people waited to see what Woodbridge
would do with it. Nothing happened in the capitol building.
Governor Woodbridge had not sent it to the Legislature. In
the towns and villages it was clipped from the small weeklies
and used in the schools as an example of beautiful English
composition, full of noble thoughts. It was a sort of summary
of the State's position at the time Mason relinquished control

37 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

He was trying to state facts and stay away from charges
that he might be painting too rosy a picture. The general tone
of the message, therefore, was not optimistic. He described the
boom conditions, and the wave of money speculation which
had led to the State's exaggerated Internal Improvements
project. He said he could well realize that now some of those
projects would have to be abandoned, and others curtailed.
He went into details above improvements in the State's ad
ministrative machinery, appropriations authorized for the
militia, the geological survey and the penitentiary construc
tion program. One by one he took up each problem the State
was currently facing. Most of all, he warned his successors not
to compromise with his great accomplishment in caring for
primary schools and safeguarding his University.

"If there is one duty from us higher than another," he
wrote, "it is to assert and defend the youthful fame of our
rising commonwealth. When she is charged with want of re
sources, point to her abundant harvests and fertile fields.
When she is thought to be broken in spirit, look to the energy
of her husbandmen. And when she is said to be burdened with
taxation, refer to your statute books and learn how limited
is her burden compared with her neighboring and sister States."

After disposing of the business in the message, he concluded
on a personal note. He gave this portion of the message a great
deal of thought, and polished its phraseology.

"My official relations with you, fellow citizens, now termi
nate, and it remains only for me to take my respectful leave.
On reviewing the period of my connection with the executive
branch of the Government of Michigan, I find much both of
pleasure and of pain . . . pleasure derived from the recollec
tion of the generous confidence reposed in me by my fellow-
citizens, and pain for the many unkind emotions to which my
position has given rise. But seeking in private life that tran
quillity and good-will heretofore denied me, I part from official
station without one sigh of regret. I shall cling to every recol
lection making a claim upon my gratitude or service, and en
deavor to forget the painful experience of the past.

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 371

"I cannot be insensible to the many errors I may have com
mitted. But I derive consolation from the reflection that they
will be amply repaired by the services of one whose experience
is acknowledged, whose ability is known and whose patriotism is
unquestioned. . . . Michigan shall have, wherever the vicissi
tudes of life shall place me, my earnest and continued desire for
her prosperity and welfare, and my earnest and fervent prayer
that He who holds in His hands the fate t>f nations and the
destinies of men will bestow upon her every blessing a free
and enlightened people can desire."

The mail for several days was full of letters from well-
wishers out in the counties, congratulating Mason and claiming
that no one, not even Woodbridge, could take offense at a lush
compliment like that., They didn't know Woodbridge. He sub
mitted it to the Legislature unofficially, and with expressions
of contempt. The Whigs there booed it, would not read it, and
refused to enter it upon the records. They treated it with
hilarious jeers which were taken down by the official reporter.
He called them "expressions of ridicule and sarcasm". Wood-
bridge told the editor of the Detroit Advertiser, the Whig
organ, that Mason had used the utmost effrontery in trying
to get such a message on the records, but fortunately the
Legislature refused to have anything to do with it. The paper
published this statement.

Mason awoke suddenly to the realization that Woodbridge
had asked him to draft the message only to have an excuse
to humiliate him publicly. The matter did not die down with
Woodbridge's refusal to treat it as a public document. Editors
of city papers in other States caught it up out of Michigan
exchanges, and let go with blasts about Whig "intolerance",
if they were Democratic, and "Democratic demagoguery", if
they were Whig. The Democratic papers published Mason's
long message in full.lt was copied and paraphrased throughout
the country. Editors used it as an example of what the Whigs
would do if they won the national election in 1 840.

Mason, cut to the quick, stayed in his office and hated to go
outside. Woodbridge said nothing. He was just starting. The

372 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Advertiser took up the old man's cudgel and whacked Mason
again, with a story that Mason did not have Woodbridge's
permission to draft the message in the first place. Angered,
Mason played directly into Woodbridge's hand by sending him
a personal letter demanding an explanation, and citing the
original request from Woodbridge himself. Woodbridge re
plied suavely in a public letter :

"I am incapable of doing you injustice or even to evince
toward you other than the courtesy I have always received
from you,"

Woodbridge now had Mason on the defensive, and was
influencing the newspaper-reading public to believe that Mason
was a sorehead, a selfish seeker after personal publicity, and
had a bitter personal hatred for Woodbridge. While this cam
paign was in progress, Woodbridge, with excellent timing,
began to wield the axe and tear down every accomplishment
that Mason had built, except the impregnable school system.
He began on the Internal Improvements project, because that
was easiest to wreck. In a message to the Legislature he set
forth in his characteristic phraseology his reasons for advising
its complete extermination. It pained him to have to say so, but
the whole scheme was visionary and "it must, I fear, be
given up."

Work stopped on all the railroads. The sides fell in on the
excavated portion of the Clinton and Kalamazoo Canal. All
the construction crews were thrown out of work. This, said
Woodbridge, was caused by "the degradation into which the
Executive plunged the State" by trying to carry through a
public-ownership plan. Times were bitterly hard, but not too
hard for wealthy Detroit Whigs to organize the Michigan
Central Railroad Company as a private corporation very soon
after this news, and to begin a long battle to buy it from the
State at a sacrifice price.

On the streets of Detroit, people who had been Mason's
friends for many years began looking the other way. Urchins
threw rocks at his gleaming stovepipe hat, as bystanders
laughed.

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 373

In his next phase, Woodbridge unlimbered his heavy ar
tillery and took sights on the five-million-dollar loan. He had,
of course, the report that Mason had given him about
Pritchette's negotiations with the Bank of the United States, in
an effort to salvage the bonds before the bank failed. Wood-
bridge used this situation to make it appear that he alone
had been dealing directly with the tottering institution; that it
was Woodbridge who had decided to get the bonds back. Of
course, this statement had the effect of making Mason appear
to be a complete dunderhead and a bungler of colossal stupidity.
He was regarded as an idiot to have gotten the State involved
with that crowd of sharpers in the first place.

The Whig clique split up the bond business between the
Bank of Michigan and the Farmers* and Mechanics' Bank of
Detroit, both of which had Whig presidents who had long
been on the Woodbridge bandwagon. They were authorized to
buy back the salvaged portion of the bonds, and resell them
privately, at a profit in commissions. In order to allow these
banks to assemble all their specie to buy back the bonds from
the East, Woodbridge suggested to the Legislature that an
exception might be made for the boys. A bill was put through
exempting the two banks from the legal requirement to re
deem their notes in specie. This was done very quietly, but
not quietly enough to prevent the Democrats from learning
about it.

Woodbridge was having everything his own way; Mason
had nothing but bad luck. As soon as the Democrats began to
rally behind Mason to expose this piece of favoritism, the
Bank of the United States, and the Morris Canal and Banking
Company, suspended payment. The Whigs screamed: "Just
in the nick of time I" The people cheered Woodbridge's almost
magic foresight. He appointed a committee to go East and get
the bonds back, ignoring Mason's advice and Pritchette's
weeks of work in Philadelphia achieving this very result.

The committee found it had nothing much to do, because
Pritchette had done all the work long before. They thereupon
turned into a gang of super-snoopers, and went foraging

374 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

through the correspondence in the files between Mason and the
Morris Canal and Banking Company, hoping to find something
upon which to base a charge that Mason and Pritchette had
received a slice of the fee paid to the Eastern bank at the time
the contract was signed. This was one step in Woodbridge's
over-all strategy. He wanted to send Mason to prison on some
such charge, which would discredit the Democrats for a genera
tion. It would serve the supplementary purpose of putting
Mason behind bars, or drive him far away where the people
would never hear the ringing voice of the Boy Governor again.

Psychologists might see in Woodbridge's savage policy
toward Mason a feeling of insecurity, an inferiority complex,
or possibly a fear that Mason might come back from political
exile and wallop him in the next election. In Woodbridge's
view it was imperative to get Mason out of Detroit. If he
wouldn't go peaceably, Woodbridge proposed to run him out
forcibly. Mason was the only man in Michigan the toothless
Woodbridge really feared. He was too popular. Even after this
series of debacles, thousands of people throughout Michigan
almost worshipped Mason as a great figure. As long as he main
tained a law office under the very shadow of the capitol, Wood-
bridge knew that he was not safe.

Accordingly, Governor Woodbridge, on March 10, 1840,
received the report of this little committee, and ordered twice
the usual number of copies printed. The few surviving Demo
crats in the Legislature were growing heartily sick of these
vitriolic attacks upon Mason. One of them heard about this
report and seized a chance to read it privately,

He smuggled a copy of it outside. The Democrats held an
indignation meeting and hurried to the Free Press office. They
shouted that Mason was about to be assailed by a pack of lies
which would get the whole committee indicted and tried for
libel if the report were published.

When the news was brought to him, Woodbridge hastily
changed his tactics. He had the report brought up in the House
at the last moment before adjournment. Then he allowed the

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 375

majority Whig version to be read, and hastily adjourned the
Legislature before the minority Democratic version could be
put into the record.

The report of the Whigs reads like a tattletale child tell
ing mama what the boy next door did. Ignoring the pertinent
fact that Pritchette had instituted the attempt to regain Michi
gan's bonds, Chairman DeGarmo Jones insisted that the whole
matter had been dug up by the sleepless energy of the Whig
committee. He said in the report: "Had the Act been con-
summated at the time and in the manner proposed, it must
have been entirely illegal; a .daring fraud upon the interests
of the State, and highly discreditable to all parties concerned.
The stigma of violated faith must, ere this, have been indelibly
fixed upon our escutcheon and the credit of the State irre
trievably gone.' 1 This was what was alleged to have been in
store for Michigan if the committee had not discovered that
Mason was dickering with the Morris Canal and Banking
Company, and Pritchette with the Bank of the United States,
for the return of the bonds. It does not make sense. But per
haps it was not intended to bear analysis. The report was read
aloud, with the underscored phrases heavily emphasized Mem
bers in the back rows probably heard: "entirely illegal .
daring fraud . . . credit of the State irretrievably gone." It
appears that this was the sole purpose of the report

The exasperated Democrats got their minority report into
the Free Press after some eHort. Under the signature of Samuel
Etheridge of Coldwater, it set forth the well-established fact
that the very matter the Whigs were yelping about had been
foreseen and thwarted by Governor Mason long before the
Whigs were in office. The Democratic document continued for
several paragraphs, proving point by point that Mason had
taken every possible step to forestall such loss to the State
from mismanagement of the fund. Then it openly accused the
Whigs of fomenting a popular reaction against Mason because
they were afraid of him, and asked why the Whigs were doing
it. The whole sordid affair was a black eye for Michigan na-

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

tionally. It was going to bounce back and become a problem for
the very Whigs who were now yelling the loudest for Mason's
hide.

"No effort has been spared to place the monetary affairs
of our State before the world in their worst possible form.
These constant and clamorous assertions of the absolutely
desperate condition of Michigan are everywhere producing
the most disastrous results, and in the end these predictions
of ruin will bring about their own fulfillment. No motive ap
pears strong enough to prevent everything from being dragged
into the political arena. Every good custom, and well-estab
lished principle, vanished before the demand for political capi
tal. No art is too low, no tongue too base to be used in trumpet
ing to the world everything which seems calculated to ruin the
credit of the State and depress her interests at home, provided
that a political object can be attained."

A set of thoroughly angry men wrote that, and when other
men read it in the newspapers, they too became angry. Mason
remained quiet. Not even the accusation that he and Pritchette
had split a fee from the Morris Canal and Banking Company
could break the unnatural stillness of his law office. He and
Pritchette sat there, at empty desks in a clientless office, day
after day. They could not be tricked again into replying to
anything.

Throughout the settled portions of the State there was un
spoken sympathy for Mason, but no overt act which would
bring down the mallet of the Whig framing machine. No one
dared speak openly in his defense excepting himself, and
everything he said was twisted into an accusation, and used
as the basis of another plot against him.

Silence is probably the only defense against that sort of
persecution. As a means of earning a living in the law business,
however, silence has its drawbacks. Mason's finances were
rapidly becoming precarious. He could not afford to sit there
and wear down the Whigs' schemings, and conversely he could
not practice law because clients were afraid to go to him. Soon
after the opening of navigation on Lake Erie, Julia and the

1838-1839] MASON CHOOSES NOT TO RUN 377

baby arrived in Detroit. Their presence made the question of
actual survival eclipse everything else in Mason's mind.

The tragic, sudden death of his mother at the outset of this
crusade against him had robbed him of the concentration he
needed to think through a plan for saving the situation. Now,
in the spring of 1 840, when he most needed it, he had no idea of
how to attack the problem. Undoubtedly he had scant interest
in what might happen to him. He was thinking only of how
to protect Julia and the baby.

His work smashed, all his achievements threatened, his po
litical career falling about his ears in great chunks in the form
of vile and slanderous personal abuse, Mason now found him
self penniless and without means of earning a living. Wood-
bridge was winning. Mason could give up, and go to New York.
But he determined to stay and fight it through.

CHAPTERXIII

THE WRECK OF THE GOVERNOR MASON

THE FIRST steamboat built in western Michigan slid down the
ways into the Grand River, at Grand Rapids, on June 14, 1837.
It was an elegant white-decked passenger side-wheeler, and
Governor Mason, then at the peak of his popularity, had spon
sored her. He had presented the craft with an expensive set of
flags and colors in recognition of the honor. The S. S. Governor
Mason was launched, at a time when Mason was nationally
famous, and his popularity at home was something so alive that
he seemed like an incarnated statue. In May, 1840, the S. S.
Governor Mason was wrecked on a reef near Muskegon
harbor.

The fortunes of her sponsor went down to ruin with her.
The wreck was an omen. Mason seemed to be lying there just
as helplessly, with the gales af adversity pounding him to pieces.
On all sides of him he saw Whigs, slander, plot after shame
less plot to smash what was left of his life. He would not leave
Detroit while his enemies could say that they had done it;
they had driven him out in disgrace. No matter what happened
to him, Mason knew that he must stay in Detroit until he
weathered this storm and regained his public position as a dis
tinguished citizen.

Woodbridge and his clique of Whigs lost no time in gloating
while their man was down. He wasn't out yet, and they had
to finish him quickly. He might revive. They had tried em
barrassing him before the Legislature, accusing him of dis
honesty, and finally they had practically picketed his office
and kept him from gaming clients. But the victim was still
conscious and was glaring up at them like a winded fighter

378

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 379

on the canvas measuring his opponent for a haymaker as soon
as he gets up.

Mason remembered that Congress had tried some such
squeeze play on him in 1835, during the border dispute. He
had found a way out then. He must find another now. He tried,
dazed, to think of one. What were they afraid of? Why did
Woodbridge flirt with the criminal laws himself in order to
place Mason in a false light as an embezzler? It must be that
in the State, or in Detroit, there were a good many people
left who loved the Mason legend, looked up to him, and would
cling to him.

Mason still had influence, driven underground now but
still in being in spite of the Whigs. He still had friends
enough to worry old Woodbridge. These stalwart friends must
get up and say publicly that they would stand by him. They
would become shock troops ahead of him and eventually they
would win his battle for him.

There was a Presidential election coming up during the sum
mer and fall of 1840. It would be Mason's excuse to go head
first into politics again. He would try to rally the defeated and
scattered Democrats. He would get back into the public eye,
and stay there. Before Woodbridge could concoct another
frame-up, Mason would have time to organize a good-sized
slice of the population along strictly pro-Mason lines.

In this, as in all battles for personal popularity, Mason was
a sure winner. With renewed courage he shut the door of his
office and began walking the streets, hours at a time. He smiled;
he bowed to the ladies. He stopped to talk to old acquaintances,
and they were pleased. He went to the American Hotel, to
Uncle Ben Woodworth's Steamboat Hotel, to the distant but
well-loved gathering place of the Democrats, soldiers and
rivermen at Conrad Ten Eyck's tavern. Everyone bought him
drinks, clapped him on the shoulder, milled around him. "Do
you remember the time those Patriots stole the chest of muskets
right out from under old 'Coon's' nose?" Mason's voice pierced
the tobacco smoke : "Yes, and where were you when those red
coats started out of the pits across the river?" "Who, him?

380 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Why, he was sleepin' under them flour sacks, the time they got
away with the schooner Ann!" Laughter, and another round.

The tension was relieved as long as he was one of a crowd.
It hurt most when he was at home, watching baby Stevens T.
chewing on his tiny toes and regarding the world with a round
blue eye that was so serious it always brought a smile to his
father's tired face. Julia bustled about the narrow rooms,
scolding the two colored servants and bringing to the little
house the cheering presence of a busy and happy housewife.

Miraculously, Pritchette got a couple of big cases, and
Mason himself received a retainer from a wealthy client, a com
mission merchant. Came the day when the Democratic hand
bills went swirling onto wooden front porches and were tacked
to bulletin boards, announcing the "Great Democratic Jubilee"
at the City Hall council chamber. The auditorium was full of
noisy Democrats when Mason arrived to search for a seat.
When he was discovered, the Democrats started yelling:
"Mason! Mason! Mason!" It was one of the great thrills of
his life.

He took a chair on the platform instead, and made a brief
extemporaneous talk. The Democrats did so well that they held
another jubilee a few days later, and Mason received a rousing
roar of welcome when he entered. He was the principal speaker
at the second meeting, an act of defiance to Woodbridge which
he would have thought himself incapable of exhibiting a few
weeks previously.

"He was still the beau ideal of the Democrats," wrote
Hemans. "In the frank and unaffected democracy of his nature,
the spirit in which he resisted attack, and the natural urbanity
of his manner, there was that which typified the sentiment of
his time."

The Democrats evidently thought he was all of that, and
more. As the first few days of the 1840 pre-carnpaign bustle
began to stir Detroit, Mason was propelled into the first rank
of the party committee. He was trying to practice law, and
needed the money desperately. His prominence as a Demo-

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 381

crat gradually brought the office a little business, enabling
Mason to make more friends in politics, which in turn brought
a small volume of new clients. Pritchette did the law work;
Mason brought in the clients.

At least he was able to devote himself wholeheartedly to the
task of organizing a Democratic defense against the Whig
"log-cabin and hard-cider" campaign of 1840. His spirits came
up out of the cellar. He wrote to Sister Laura, at school in
Troy:

"For the winter, I have been trying to confine myself to
the quiet routine of an attorney's office, but as might have been
expected, all my efforts have failed. I had hoped when retiring
from public life I might have some respite from the toils of
politics, but find myself as deep in the game as ever. So, what
with the divided allegiance between the law-office and political
speech-making, I am more occupied than ever. . . , You will
find Detroit sadly changed. The bubble of false prosperity has
burst from under us, and we are down again to the realities
of earth. The streets every day look like Sunday, and in every
direction you hear nothing but the croakings of hard times.
But we may extract a jewel from adversity, and will learn
wisdom enough to last us in later life. . . . You have yet to see
your nephew, whose praises have been so often recorded. He
may be considered the greatest prodigy of the age, and al
though I say it, he is the most beautiful and intelligent young
ster in the Republic. In a few days he mounts his first short
dresses, the first great epoch in his onward march to man
hood. I shall turn him over to you and Emily when you arrive,
and rest assured you'll have your hands full, for he is already
the very personification of mischief."

Apparently he was feeling better. He did not know what
the campaign would be like, but he was glad to be doing some
thing. And he had gained a breathing spell in the Woodbridge
fight. The old fox was in his hole. He had not made a single
comment about Mason, or indicted him for anything, for
several weeks. The plain fact of Mason's presence in Detroit

382 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

was proof of the young man's victory. The added implication
in Mason's skyrocketing popularity made Woodbridge's whole
attack upon him collapse like a punctured balloon.
At least that was the revived Mason's impression of the
affair as he collected his meagre portion of the office income
and sat down to write another political speech. Everything
seemed to be going splendidly. Julia was pregnant again.

When the Presidential campaign began in earnest, Mason
was not so sure that the sky was rosy. The Whigs had a new
trick in 1840, one that rapidly captured the imagination of the
country. They had a slogan: "Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" It
sounded childish and cryptic. Tippecanoe was a battlefield in the
War of 1812, which was still being fought on the political
front. The alleged winner of this dramatic conflict was a
grizzled old man named General William Henry Harrison,
the man who had taken a resounding beating from Van Buren
in. the previous election. But in his first charge into the political
arena in 1836, "Old Tip," as he was jokingly called, didn't
have a strategy board to do his thinking for him.

In 1840 he had an excellent staff, composed of some of the
best brains in the country; able men who had imagination, pro
motional ability and resources. They conceived the idea of sur
rounding the old warrior with a stage setting consisting of log
cabins, jugs of cider, sunbonneted maidens and all the props
of an old-time silent Western horse opera. "Old Tip," it ap
peared, was supposed to represent the pioneer spirit which had
made America great. Since he was a Whig, the Whigs had made
America great. It was a forceful argument, especially since
Van Buren's administration had been one long financial crisis
and a slow funeral march behind dead fortunes, hopes and
achievements.

The country was ripe for change. Mason had learned that
in Michigan. It was the party's turn to learn it nationally.
The Whigs had little to sell except the vague promise that they
could do better, based on nothing very tangible. Hence they
went in heavily for entertainment to disguise their lack of a
convincing platform.

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 383

The log-cabin craze hit Michigan as early as April, 1840.
Whig partisans went out into the near-by forests and worked
up an honest sweat, for once, logging. They built a big cabin
at the northeast corner of Jefferson and Randolph, only a few
blocks from Mason's house. It was forty by fifty feet/On
April 1 5th they assembled a big crowd for the traditional
"raising"; they put a jug of hard cider beneath each of the
four corners, and decorated the outside with rabbit skins, coon
skins and such. Inside, the chandelier was made from the
tangled roots of a small tree, suspended from the roof, and
bearing a white forest of dripping candles. They chained a
live bear outside, suspended a few stuffed owls, wildcats and
raccoons around the interior, and on April 2ist the Whigs all
gathered in pioneer costume for a "hoe-down". This dedica
tion was advertised on handbills, asking the Whig ladies to fur
nish "corn-bread, an other such log-cabin fare as their kind
hearts and ingenuity might dictate".

This shindig promptly turned into a wild community square
dance and church supper combined, with almost no hint that
it might have a political meaning. "Needless to say," runs an
account, "they responded liberally to the call and at the ap
pointed hour the ladies had loaded the tables about the cabin
wall with johnnycake, pork and beans, and the substantial fare
of pioneer Michigan. A large crowd gathered, and in the fitful
glare of a tallow dip listened to the orator of the occasion,
dispatched the provisions, and finished the festivities with many
a toast drunk in hard cider. From this time until the election,
the political rally was the order of the day, Whigs gathering
at the cabin, and Democrats at the City Hall."

The log-cabin craze swept the country in the same mysterious
manner as bobby soxers and swoon crooners a century later.
Every town big enough to boast a few Whig committeemen
built a cabin in the public square and kept it liberally supplied
with hard cider. The yell: "Tip-pecanoe and T^-ler too!"
roared across the West like wildfire. The foot-patting rhythm
of agonized fiddles and tinny banjos was echoed by the squeals
and shouts of dancing citizens, while local orators whooped

384 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

it up for the Whigs. While this extremely clever ruse was
monopolizing people's attention, the Democrats proceeded to
do some dignified, old-fashioned campaigning, to which few
people listened.

Vice-President Richard M. Johnson, Mason's Tammany
friend, and a hero of the War of 1812 fully as famed as "Old
Tip", came through Detroit on a campaign junket He was
wined and dined by the local Democrats. They put up a stand
in front of the National Hotel, decorated it with bunting, and
called on Mason to introduce the distinguished guest. This
he proceeded to do with his customary grace and elegance.
The Free Press reporter said he drew a good crowd, and that
Mason "was greeted with the heartfelt and peculiar enthusiasm
which always attends his appearance." Mr. Johnson gave utter
ance to a campaign speech, and the committee led the way
to a surviving patch of apple orchard on the now-vanishing
Cass farm, which had been turned into a picnic ground. The
Whigs had the effrontery to toss in a batch of their handbills
announcing another free feed at the log cabin a few days
later. It, too, was a huge success.

On this occasion the Whigs received a State-wide response.
One hundred and three wagons bearing 600 people came from
the little suburb of Farmington. The Dearborn Whigs arrived
on a float, a log cabin on wheels drawn by twenty yoke of oxen.
The Whigs had some 15,000 noisy partisans in the city. They
brought great heaps of food from their farms, and the com
mittee took over Williams and Wilson's big warehouse to dish
it out to all comers. In the evening they held neighborhood
mass meetings all over town. After that, anything the Demo
crats did was an anticlimax.

Mason could see throughout the campaign that the Demo
crats were in for a thorough beating. Toward the last stages
of it he lost interest. Before election day would arrive, he knew,
Julia's second baby would be due. Delivery of Julia's precious
child in such a raw frontier town as Detroit was unthinkable
to her. It just couldn't be. Stevens would have to take her to
New York. He must leave before the election.

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 385

Stevens did not require much urging. He found the money
somewhere and made his plans. Fortunately, the client who paid
him the retainer in his darkest days produced some additional
business in the East which would keep him occupied for several
weeks. Furthermore, at this moment of indecision over his
future plans, the white-haired John T. wrote him one of those
fatherly letters which parents like to write to sons in times
of crisis, causing them some moments of indecision.

In this letter, his father suggested that he ought to locate
in the East permanently, and get away from Detroit. Regard
less of his popularity there, John T. declared, he would have
a much better chance of success as a lawyer if he went to some
place like Baltimore, where he had no connections and no back
ground to disturb his concentration upon his career. Now,
Baltimore, continued John T., was a great city. It was a coming
city. It had immense commercial interests and growing ship
ping and warehousing firms. There was a future for him in
Baltimore.

Mason decided to visit Baltimore and investigate. He did not
want to be committed to anything. If he felt that he had a bet
ter chance in Detroit, he'd stay. It depended in great measure
upon the outcome of his long trip East, and his impressions
of the places to which his legal inquiries took him. He talked
it over with Pritchette. His partner, too, felt that he had bet
ter go. As for Pritchette himself , he said he had decided to stay
in Detroit. If Mason wanted to come back the following
spring, and resume the partnership, Pritchette would be de
lighted.

It was early by the political calendar, but alarmingly late by
the stork's, when Mason and Julia, with little Stevens, Jr.,
wrapped in blankets, departed from Detroit during the first
week in October, 1840. He did not stay for the election re
turns. It was well that he didn't, because his judgment about
the result was well substantiated. The Whigs took Michigan
along with most of the rest of the voting centers in the United
States. They catapulted the aged William Henry Harrison
into the White House by a smashing vote. The margin in

386 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Michigan was surprisingly narrow, but the Whigs took the
vast majority of the elective offices which were being contested.

Two sidelights on the election were so characteristic of
Michigan that they deserve to be mentioned, although Mason
was too far away to be influenced. The first was that, immedi
ately after the national Whig victory, old William Wood-
bridge told his legislative whips that he was going to grab the
impending vacancy in the U. S. Senate. Lucius' Lyon's term
was up. The Legislature, now overwhelmingly Whig, obeyed.
It announced the election of Woodbridge to be the new U. S.
Senator, to take office March 4, 1841. He did not miss a day
from a public payroll. He held office as Governor right up to
the day he was sworn in as Senator, and he stayed on the Sena
torial payroll almost until the outbreak of the Civil War.

The Senatorial toga had been the ultimate dream of old
Woodbridge ever since he first entered politics. One would have
believed that now, since his ambition had been realized and
its acceptance would take him out of Michigan forever, he
would have dropped the Mason persecution program. He had
no more to fear from Mason and no motive for bothering him.
This, of course, is what one would think, if one did not know
William Woodbridge.

The second sidelight in the election was known as "Paffaire
Hamtramk". Hamtramk was a little town populated mostly
by German-American immigrants which had grown up in
Wayne County almost at Detroit's doorstep. It has furnished
a great deal of political news during the past century, and in
our time Hamtramk is an independent city entirely surrounded
by the sprawling metropolis of Detroit. In Mason's time it
was a political question mark. The Whigs carried Michigan by
the uncomfortably close margin of 22,759 to 21,464. The slow
returns from distant villages kept the result in a dangerous
tie for several days. Eventually all the returns were in but
those from Hamtramk. Outside, in Hamtramk Township, the
Democrats showed majorities ranging from 126 to 130 for
all their candidates, which reflected the locality's general habit
of voting the straight Democratic ticket. In the town proper.

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 387

the council had stipulated separate ballots for members of the
Legislature, fearing a contested vote which would have to be
patiently examined afterward. None of these ballots could be
found. Investigators discovered that the official guardian of the
ballot box had been a Democrat. He was sitting there, he said,
when a Whig friend of his came up and asked him how he'd
like a drink. Well, sir, first thing you know, he was higher'n
a kite and had forgotten all about them ballots. They'd just
vanished.

The missing ballots hung up the Legislature like a side of
beef. It stood at six Whigs elected from Wayne County, and
six Democrats. This tie continued elsewhere in the State, and
the missing ballots contained the balance of power in both
Houses. The search was redoubled. Nothing was found. Later,
when the Legislature had to convene anyhow in this hamstrung
condition, loud cries broke out from both sides. Something had
to be done about it, and soon. The Wayne County canvassers
replied that they couldn't do anything about it under the law
except appeal to the Legislature, which they were then doing.

The Democrats unanimously demanded a new and better
supervised election in Hamtramk. This was booed down by the
Whigs. One of their members was ill and could not serve, and
his removal would break the tie and give the Democrats a
22-21 majority of one vote enough to dominate the whole
legislative program. At the crucial moment, before the ill Whig
left, a Democrat failed to answer roll call. With a temporary
22-21 majority, the Whigs certified the election as closed,
refusing to take a chance on Hamtramk's whims in a new elec
tion there. In a few weeks the situation caused by illness and
absence settled down to a permanent one-vote Whig majority,
22-21. The Democrats protested, wanted a new election, but
the one Whig vote prevented it.

Mason read about it in the papers forwarded to him in New
York. He gave the incident only a casual glance, because after
election he was rather busy/Julia's second child was a beautiful,
sturdy little girl, born in mid-October. After the family had
consulted with the parents, she was baptized Dorothea Eliza.

388 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

When he was assured that no sudden crisis was about to arise,
and that both were doing well, Mason bade them a fond fare
well and set out for Baltimore.

While Mason was handling his client's legal affairs in the
East, the Michigan Legislature met in Detroit for its regular
session in January, 1841. The complaints and recriminations
about the missing Hamtramk ballots occupied it for a time,
but about a week later both Houses decided to forget the
Whigs' one-vote majority and get down to business. Before
them was a long list of legislative musts. They had to review
the State's entire financial position, and decide what, if any
thing, they were going to do with Mason's monument, the
Internal Improvements project.

Construction had been stopped on the Central Railroad,
then started again in late 1 840. The road had thirty miles to go
to Jackson. A pittance was appropriated, enough to maintain
the Central's equipment until it could be sold at a fair price to
the new private railroad company.

The State had more than two millions tied up in the Central,
and the towns along it were raising such a furore that the
Legislature had to keep it going. The Legislature's chief pur
pose was to protect the road against an attempt by the private
company to acquire it cheaply for scrap, or salvage, prices.

Both the Northern and Southern roads were doomed. The
Southern had been constructed between Monroe and Adrian,
and there it terminated. Some years later, after a hectic exist
ence as a municipal railroad owned by the City of Monroe,
it was sold, by Monroe and by the State jointly, to the Lake
Shore Railroad, which then became the Lake Shore and Michi
gan Southern. Only the name survived. The original Adrian-
Toledo route was abandoned and a new line surveyed and
built, and shortly after 1900 the whole system, along with the
Central, became operating subsidiaries of the New York
Central Lines.

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 389

The Northern Railroad died a-borning. This session of the
Legislature finally agreed to give it $30,000 and turn it into
a wagon road. The Clinton and Kalamazoo, too expensive
for private financing, was never completed. The St. Mary's
Falls Canal at the Soo became the scene of a disgraceful brawl
between the State's contractor and the U. S. Army. The con
tractor insisted on running the excavation across the parade
ground of Fort Brady. Soldiers with bayonets drove off the
diggers, which was probably what the contractor wanted. He
said he couldn't continue and sued the State for $30,000 dam
ages. By the time he had been paid off and the Army's ruffled
feelings smoothed, the Legislature was heartily sick of the Soo
Canal and hated Mason for having saddled them with its
organization.

The whole magnificent Internal Improvements program de
generated into a political mess. The most odorous aspect of
the refuse pile was the stench of burning fifty-dollar bills aris
ing from the ruin of Mason's five-million-dollar loan.

Woodbridge sat in the Governor's office, meditating. He was
due to leave for Washington permanently within a couple of
months. He had inspired widespread criticism of this sudden
departure to take a better job. There were people who thought
that since he had campaigned for the Governorship and nearly
mangled Mason to get there, he had some slight interest in
becoming Governor. They now discovered that they had been
fooled; he was just using the job as a steppingstone to the
Senate. The ambitious plans which Woodbridge had unfolded
during his campaign, aimed at the recovery of the State, now
stood revealed as merely campaign literature.

Naturally, there were murmurings. The best way to offset
this feeling of dissatisfaction, Woodbridge apparently felt,
would be to dig up some more charges against Mason and really
cause a sensation. This, from the Woodbridge viewpoint,
would achieve a dual effect. It would distract public attention
from himself and furnish a new topic of gossip, while creating
an impression that Woodbridge was a relentless reformer who
would leave no stone unturned to achieve the ends of justice,

390 STEVENS TH'OMSON MASON ^

even if he signed Mason's imprisonment order with his coat
half on and the boat whistle blowing at the dock.

Accordingly, Woodbridge once more got up steam in his
framing machine. This time the aged schemer went too far, and
touched off such an explosion that the echo reverberated
throughout his generation and the next. It is difficult to judge
Woodbridge's motives correctly. Perhaps he meant merely
to create an effect, whereupon he could make a graceful exit.
He may not have intended to put Mason physically in the very
prison the Boy Governor had built, but his opening moves
looked like it. He drew up a plan which was aimed at indicting
and trying Mason for criminal conspiracy and embezzlement.

The awkward fact that Mason was not guilty of any such
crime made it necessary for Woodbridge and his cohorts to
forge documents, present perjured testimony, hide witnesses,
change records, and in general concoct a wholly synthetic
case. But he had the vital ace in his sleeve.

Woodbridge had access to the records; Mason did not. He
could keep the files from being examined by Mason's defenders.
He could inspire lies in the Legislature and enter falsehoods
in the records as evidence before his investigating committee.
He and his henchmen could, and did, say anything they liked
in accusation while rigidly denying Mason a chance to speak
a word in his own behalf.

Serene in the knowledge that he thus had a pretty fair hand
stacked in his political deck, Woodbridge opened by sending
to the Legislature an entirely fraudulent legal paper purporting
to be a bill in chancery on the part of the State of Michigan
against the Morris Canal and Banking Company. It was ad
dressed to the Chancellor of the State of New Jersey, and was
accompanied by a report from the State Treasurer, Robert
Stuart. It demanded the return of certain moneys alleged to
have been fraudulently collected by Governor Stevens T.
Mason while engaged in the contract negotiations.

About the year 1905, Lawton Hemans spent many tedious
days digging through the New Jersey State records, and he
says that no such chancery bill ever was sent to the Chancellor.

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 391

He declared that if the purpose of Woodbridge's move was to
blacken Mason's character, "it was most skillfully adapted to
the purpose". This document was submitted to the finance com
mittee of the State Senate, headed by DeGarmo Jones. A
minor Woodbridge stooge, Jones had been used repeatedly by
the old man to accomplish his less public skulduggeries. He was
the same Jones who had headed the investigating committee
once before. Jones knew what was expected of him. He locked
up the papers and announced that a most secret investigation
was going on and that Mason was heavily involved.

At this, most of Mason's friends in Detroit came rallying
to the rescue. Pritchette demanded a hearing and was refused.
Benjamin Witherell, a Whig but a good friend of Mason's,
stepped forward and volunteered to act as the Mason defense
counsel. Jones refused to allow him to bring up any evidence
of Mason's innocence, and denied him the right to cross-
examine those witnesses produced by the State. Witherell was
a famous attorney, and he knew the law. He carried the mat
ter to the floor of the Senate and demanded a clear statement
of the charges, if any, against Mason. A vote was taken and
the Whig majority silenced him.

Frantic letters were now dispatched to Mason, in New
York, urging him to get back to Michigan as fast as he could.
Mr. Witherell, among others, wrote that only Mason himself
could do any good; it was Mason's continuing popularity in the
State that was at the bottom of the trouble. A great popular
pressure by Mason's host of friends everywhere might halt a
certain miscarriage of justice. The Legislature was sitting tight
and taking orders from Woodbridge. It was plain that he had
a completely worked out plan of campaign, of which only the
first step had been revealed.

These letters caught Mason totally unprepared. He had not
imagined that anything like this would happen, because there
was no sane explanation for it. Hastily bundling up the family
against the blasts of winter on the Ontario roads, Mason and
Julia set off at top speed for Detroit.

He arrived too late. The hush-hush investigating committee

392 STEVENS THOMSON MASON ___

had made its report to Wbodbridge in the greatest secrecy,
under date of March 27, 1841. Not even Mr. Witherell was
permitted to see it. But it was entered at once as an official
record, and the obedient Legislature set about naming a "hang
ing committee 1 '.

It was before this legislative committee that Jones' report
finally was revealed. Even there, Mason's friends had the
opportunity to learn of its details only through gossip and in
sinuation, because the committee kept it out of sight and would
not make its contents public. Eventually, about the time that
Mason arrived breathless in Detroit in early April, it was ad
mitted to the record and publication was possible.

The report outlined a clear case of embezzlement and con
spiracy against Mason. It stated that State Treasurer Stuart
had undertaken direct negotiations with the Morris Canal and
Banking Company, under authority from the Legislature to
"secure the unpaid installments on the loan". During the
course of these inquiries, continued the report, State Treasurer
Stuart had uncovered evidence that Mason "had sought and
derived financial profit" from the loan. This evidence was
contained in an appended statement from Theodore Romeyn,
who testified under oath that he had been present with Gov
ernor Mason at the time the arrangements were made to re
bate part of the fee which the State had paid to the canal di
rectors at the time the contract was signed.

In vain Mason raised his voice and pointed to Romeyn's
previous statement in 1839, that he had not "directly or in
directly" drawn any money from the State nor from Governor
Mason. In the new statement Romeyn changed his whole story
and declared that he had, that both he and Mason had been
paid by the directors for enabling them to make a $125,000
fee. He admitted that both he and Mason were guilty, and he,
for himself, threw himself upon the mercy of the Legislature.

Mason, in Mr. WitherelFs company, tried to get the Legisla
ture to listen to him. They were refused. Woodbridge would
not admit Mason to his office. In terror, Mason tried to find
a few friendly Whigs who might present his case to the com-

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 393

mittee. No one would help him, Romeyn was not present per
sonally during any of this so-called "investigation." But he
presently sent Mason a personal letter, which the Whigs en
tered in the record before Mason received it. In it Romeyn
said:

"I think if I could see you in person we could arrange an
swers [to the committee's investigation] that would be more
satisfactory than if published without consultation."

Mason was aghast. He was being brazenly framed. He
realized a fact which his friends had known for weeks, that
Romeyn was a major figure in the plot and was acting on
Woodbridge's instructions.

The discovery that nothing he could say would make the
slightest difference seemed to take the heart out of Mason's
will to win. He had been in battles before. This was* not a
battle; it was a slaughter. He didn't have a chance. Gradually
he ceased to care. He roused himself finally, went down to his
dusty office and sat down to write. He had only one source of
help. That was the people, as Mr. Witherell had advised. He
would write and publish a personal appeal to them, if friends
would help him pay for the printing. Woodbridge was standing
pat now, with all the face cards, waiting for Mason to push
in his chips. The old man had everything his own way. He
had given orders that Mason was not to be heard before the
Legislature; none of his documentary evidence was admitted,
and his witnesses were refused permission to testify. Not one
word in Mason's defense was admitted to the records and
thus given a chance for publication with the committee's re
port.

On May I ith, Mason began distributing a lengthy pamphlet,
running to forty pages of closely set type. On its first page
it bore a big double line of black, bold-faced type: "TO THE
PEOPLE OF MICHIGAN".

This pamphlet was Mason's defense. If he had been per
mitted to present it in the Legislature, the plot would have
collapsed. If the pamphlet had been condensed and extracted
for newspaper publication, that would have helped. Distributed

394 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

by mail, to a list composed mostly of Democrats, it reached
only a few people who had an influence with anybody in the
State administration. Individuals were powerless to help him.
And the State wouldn't.

A few copies are still treasured in old family albums in
Michigan. There are originals in some city libraries. They are
just curiosities now, and modern readers cannot see Mason's
lifeblood pouring out all over the narrow, wrinkled pages. It
was there ; probably his tears, too.

Patiently he recounted all the steps in the negotiation of the
loan, from its earliest beginnings. He dwelt at some length on
Robert Stuart's story about his alleged discoveries. "Nothing
could be more false!" declared the pamphlet. History agrees,
but at the time it must have sounded like a hollow phrase.
The type rolls monotonously onward. Mason arrives at the
point in his narrative wherein DeGarmo Jones and his partner,
James M. Edwards, on the finance committee, enter the plot.
He calls them "my violent personal and political enemies,
pliant instruments to aid their work of infamy", and tells how
he first found them in Detroit, "one a starveling refugee from
abroad and the other an unacquitted felon of this city. Such
were the instruments chosen by the committee to blacken my
reputation during my absence from the State."

Page after page of documentary proof of his innocence
follows. He had kept some of the original correspondence ad
dressed to him by members of the Morris Canal and Banking
Company directorate, and this he quotes at length. He quotes
Mr. Biddle as having said that the deal was an advantageous
one for the State of Michigan. Finally, obviously exhausted
and thoroughly sick at heart, Mason closed with a feeble appeal
to be remembered as he once was, when the State was prosper
ing and he was leading a happy people.

"I have thus, fellow citizens, endeavored to place before
you a full answer to all the accusations preferred against
me by the committee. Whilst I am free to acknowledge
that there is no external reward so dear to me as the good
opinion of my fellow citizens, even to secure that reward I

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 395

would not mistake the grounds of my defense. I act as a private
citizen, unjustly and ruthlessly assailed. Circumstances render
it probable that I shall never again be a candidate for your
suffrages. I have therefore no political purpose to effect. I
strike in defense of my name and all that is dear to me. I have
left your service poorer than I entered it, and if I have any
earthly boast, it is that I have never intentionally wronged
the public. That I have felt the imputations against me I do
not pretend to deny, but the consciousness of my own integrity
of purpose has afforded me an inward pride and satisfaction
that the world cannot rob me of. To the people of Michigan
I owe many obligations, and with the last pulsations of life I
shall acknowledge and remember their kindness."

"STEVENS T. MASON"

Throughout the State, farmers held this fine type to the
flickering light of a tallow dip and read it aloud to their fami
lies. Women quietly sobbed. Villagers huddled in subdued
groups and spoke darkly of what they would do if Wood-
bridge didn't let up. Mason's old friends foregathered in Ten
Eyck's tavern and wondered if a monster parade and mass
meeting would help. All the people, everywhere, wondered
what Woodbridge was trying to do, and why he was doing it.
Woodbridge didn't say. He just kept on. A few days after the
appearance of the pamphlet, the Whig newspapers carried an
open letter from Romeyn to Mason in which the conspirator
told Mason to take it like a man ; that they were both guilty
and, further, they were guilty of other things, too, which he
did not explain.

As a matter 'of simple justice, one Detroit newspaper did
relent long enough to publish a stinging reply from Mason in
which he called Romeyn a liar and quoted from documentary
evidence to prove it. The cleverest part of the episode was the
masterful control by which Woodbridge denied every shred of
Mason's defense any hearing whatever. Secondarily, the pres
sure he put on Romeyn to accuse himself thus publicly as a thief

396 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

and an embezzler, along with Mason, must have been tre
mendous.

Woodbridge won a complete victory. Mason was crushed,
the Whigs heard no more from him, and Woodbridge prepared
to depart for Washington. It seems to us that he neglected to
go on with the plot and indict Mason. He just left the whole
thing in mid-air and left majestically for the Senate.

Until the appearance of the curious figure named Lawton
Hemans in the Mason legend, and his superb research into
Mason's life about 1900, that is the way matters stood in
Michigan. Mason was finished as a public character for all
time. His very name continued, generation after generation,
to collect abuse and vile anecdotes. The Whigs disappeared
and were replaced by the Republican Party, which held power
for many years. There was no one who was interested enough
to complete the story, and find out what had happened to
Mason after the Whig framing machine left his crushed and
bleeding public reputation lying in the gutter after that affair
in 1841. The little boys who asked who Mason was were
told that he was a drunkard, a crook, a disgrace to the State,
the man who had caused the wave of bankruptcies and dis
asters which history says made up most of the period wherein
he held office. That was all these boys' fathers knew; as boys
they had heard it themselves from their fathers.

Woodbridge did Michigan a grievous injury by carrying
his fear of Mason to such violent lengths. After his departure
the Legislature's session degenerated into a brawl that sounds
more like the anecdotes of old-time Tammany precinct clubs
than the activities of a body of elected statesmen. They had
been whipped into line by Woodbridge, but upon his departure
they began snarling at each other. They were all heartily
ashamed of the Mason episode, and blamed each other for it.
This Legislature was the only one in Michigan history with
a Whig majority, and the only one to behave in such a manner.

Mason was not in jail, but for all the good he did in Detroit
he might as well have been. He became a walking ghost. He
spoke to no one, went out but seldom/and then only for the

1839^1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON" 397

most necessary errands. Julia was in a decline over the affair ;
her family and his family kept begging him to wake up, accept
the inevitable, and get out of Detroit. This combination of
pressures could end in only one way. Mason, brokenhearted,
physically ill and completely disgusted, sold his household furni
ture to raise money to transport his family to New York.

His last day in Detroit must have been a bitter one. The
smell of the city was nauseating in his nostrils. The picturesque
little capitol where he had held sway for so many years seemed
to him a dream of something he had known in another in
carnation. The streets were full of people who sneered at him,
or he thought they did. His friends; His people! Look at me,
he thought. This is Stevens Thomson Mason, the man who had
faith in the good judgment and inherent uprightness of the
people. This is what those people have done to me. Liberty! I
gave it to them ; I fought to keep their rights. I gave them the
fullest freedom of any people in the United States. What did
they do with it ? They let me hang.

This was how Mason said good-bye to Detroit. Shuddering,
he climbed aboard the Buffalo boat and sought sanctuary in
his cabin. He knew he would never see Detroit again.

The gradual stiffening of governmental control in the United
States has given us such an instinctive fear of the law that it
seems difficult to believe that such a crass plot could have suc
ceeded against Mason in 1841. We have learned that liberty
implies a sense of honesty in the individual citizen. We define
liberty loosely as the "four freedoms", and few among us
remember what tyranny actually was like. Except in certain
labor unions and statist nations, it is no longer expected that
a man's political enemies will lash him as savagely as a wild
animal merely because of a difference in political creeds.

In Mason's time, liberty was indeed often a synonym for
unbridled license. Laws on the statute books were vague and
feebly enforced. A man of some influence locally could get

39^ STEVENS THOMSON MASON

away with almost anything. Crowds formed and roared threats
over issues which would hardly rate a letter of protest to a
newspaper of our times. In the village of Michigan Center,
for example, in 1841, a group of buildings and $30,000 worth
of lumber and building supplies were burned by a mob which
was protesting the village's attempt to become a division point
on the Michigan Central Railroad. Things like that were com
monplace, not only in Michigan but throughout the West.
Frontier history is full of such instances, and we still thrill
to the theme of violence in books and films based on the old
West. Violence was as much a part of any pioneer's life as his
midday meal of pork and beans.

This was the period when the Mormons were trying to
build their dream city of Nauvoo, 111., only to see their homes
burned and their leaders murdered by Illinois mobs. This was
the same year, 1841, when anti-Mormon violence at Nauvoo
first captured the nation's attention. It was an era when no
one outside the policymakers at Washington seemed to have
the slightest conception of democracy as u the greatest good
to the greatest number", but regarded their hard-won freedom
as governmental weakness and as an excuse to take matters
into their own hands.

It goes without saying that had Woodbridge lived in the
present era he would have been a politician, but hardly a plotter
of 1841 proportions. In Michigan several politicians have had
to learn this lesson the hard way; the mammoth prison at Jack
son usually has several politicos on its "guest list" simultane
ously. They are guilty of criminal conspiracy, a crime which,
had it been on the statute books in 1841, would have been
Woodbridge's nemesis. Their crimes were not knee-high to the
monumental frame-up which broke Mason's heart. Under the
present rigidly enforced laws on this subject, Woodbridge
would have gotten off lightly with ninety-nine years.

The laws would not have legislated a sense of fairness into
a man like Woodbridge, but they would have made him afraid
to risk heavy punishment by conspiring against Mason. The
fact of Mason's defeat and disgrace during this conspiracy

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON 1 ' 399

illustrates the fundamental difference between the two men.
Woodbridge was a schemer. Mason was a trusting soul.

He had a powerful imagination and an amazing breadth
of vision, but he employed these aids to visualize constructive
goals like the schools and the Internal Improvements project.
In his career there is no record of personal bitterness toward
anyone, except his indignation in 1832 when he fired a too-offi
cious constable, Eliphalet Turner, for interfering with his
attempts to fight the cholera plague. He made mistakes and
was guilty of foolish acts, but never of vicious ones. His own
strength of character brought about his downfall because, as
a gentleman, he credited his enemies with being as high-minded
as himself. He neglected to take proper precautions to pro
tect himself from the network of plots which they presently
cast around his astonished figure as soon as he became Gov
ernor.

In reading great numbers of Mason's letters, messages,
documents and statements to newspapers, as any researcher
must, there comes into relief a strong feeling that Mason was
sincerely devoted to the thousands of little people who made up
his beloved Michigan. He thought of the farmers and villagers
first; their welfare claimed first consideration when a bill was
presented to him for his signature. Mason was the common
man's governor and administered his post as a public trust.

The picture is made vivid by a contrast with Woodbridge,
who was in politics because it was his job a livelihood and
had been for thirty years. He administered every post he
held so as to squeeze the last dollar out of it, as is shown by
his concurrent occupancy of the Territorial Secretaryship and
the post of Collector of the Port of Detroit, besides practicing
law at the same time. The two men were natural opponents
in everything.

Mason fought for his beloved schools; Woodbridge fought
Mason. The schools survived; not one act of Woodbridge's
has survived except the sale of the Michigan Central Railroad
to private purchasers, and perhaps that was inevitable. Mason's
mind was aimed firmly ahead on the future. Woodbridge's

4OO STEVENS THOMSON MASON

mind was always on the present what he could do now. There
is no parallel in Woodbridge's writings to the sentiments of
Stevens T. Mason as expressed in speeches he made on the
need for helping the schools.

"If our country is ever to fall from her high position before
the world, the cause will be found in the ignorance of the
people; if she is to remain where she now stands, with her
glory undimmed, educate every child in the land."

Another :

"As the friends of civil liberty, it becomes our duty to pro
vide for the education of the rising generation. To the intelli
gence of those who preceded us we are indebted for our ad
mirable system of government, and it is only upon the intelli
gence of those who come after us that we can hope for the
preservation and perpetuation of that system."

A warning to the Legislature, in an annual message :

"Public opinion directs the course which our Government
pursues, and as long as the people are enlightened, that direc
tion will never be misgiven. It becomes our imperious duty, to
secure to the State a generous diffusion of knowledge. This can
in no wise be so certainly effected as by the perfect organiza
tion of a uniform and liberal system of public schools. Your
attention is therefore called to the effectuation of a perfect
school system, open to all classes, as the surest basis of public
happiness and prosperity."

This is the man whose name the violent Whigs plastered
with filth; this is the character which was attacked and smashed
merely as a diversion to get Woodbridge out of the news
paper columns. Nothing the Whigs ever did for Michigan ap
proximated the loss they caused when they drove Mason out
of Detroit, embittered, humiliated and crushed in spirit. In
fact, the party dissolved soon afterward without having ac
complished anything of note, to be succeeded by the Republi
cans. The early Republicans were a reform party, disavowing
nearly every point of the Whig platform. And so while the
Whigs defeated Mason, the popular reaction which set in
almost immediately after 1841 helped to kill the Whigs, at

WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON"

least in Michigan. The party's chief contribution to the country
after the election of William Henry Harrison was the scan
dalous fight they caused in Congress after his death. "Old
Tip" died after a month in office, and Tyler, who succeeded
him, quarrelled with the Whigs and vetoed their bills. The
entire Whig cabinet resigned except for Daniel Webster,
Secretary of State. In Congress a solemn vow was given to pre
vent any member from speaking to Tyler, or of him. The
nation rapidly slid down into the political turmoil which made
the elimination of the Whig Party a stern necessity.

Thus Mason was sacrificed to nothing. There was no gain,
only untold loss. He did not go down fighting in defense of a
principle. He was just knocked on the head and tossed aside.
The impact upon Detroit was not long in making itself felt,
and perhaps the Mason episode was the reason why Wood-
bridge's trained-animal act was the first, last and only Whig
legislature in Michigan history.

The impact upon Mason is more difficult to explain. He was
young, in good health, and had a family circle of loving parents,
wife and children. He had within himself ample resources
for warding off a blow like this, getting to his feet, and going
on to greater triumphs. He tried. Perhaps he tried too hard.
Instead of succeeding, he became increasingly irritable and
moody. He could not forget what Woodbridge had done to
him. It was not Woodbridge who loomed up as the chief sin
ner in Mason's mind, because he had learned long ago to ex
pect anything from him. The cause of Mason's misery was
that composite character, the common citizen of Michigan.
Where was he when Mason was being refused a chance to
speak in his defense? What self-sacrificing, immediate action
in Mason's behalf had the people taken during the 4 Toledo
War"? They had been sheep, led around by Woodbridge and
afraid to speak up.

He was not the first man to be felled by an unscrupulous
enemy, but he seemed to succumb to it to a greater degree than
most. What had happened in Mason's mind could be explained

4O2 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

by a psychiatrist, perhaps, in terms of shock, disillusionment
and apathy. He became so cynical that he became unfit for
any big accomplishment, and slipped farther and farther down
the social and professional scale. It could have been prevented.

The experience was a stunning psychological blow. Mason's
belief in the fundamental goodness and honesty of the public
was much stronger than ours of today, surrounded as we are by
so many examples to the contrary. The shock of his abandon
ment to Woodbridge's wolves without so much as a mass meet
ing in the Campus Martius in his behalf was a terrible blow to
him. He had the heritage of generations of Mason statesmen
in his veins. He, too, had tried to be a statesman. He now
discovered that, in order to survive in Michigan, he should
have been a politician all the time.

And so Mason went away to New York. He tried to for
get that he had ever lived in Detroit. He was a vivid topic
of conversation for a while and then, as people will, they for
got him. The Mason legend, which had begun when he had
first started filling inkwells in the Territorial capitol in 1830,
finished with his dramatic appeal in the pamphlet: "To The
People of Michigan". It is human nature to remember a man
mostly for what last brought him to our notice, and so Mason
was remembered as a thief who had narrowly escaped prison.
Only the lies about him survived, twisted from generation to
generation into almost unrecognizable forms. Finally, toward
the close of the century, school children no longer read of
him. The name of Mason was missing from the list of Found
ing Fathers.

Yet the Mason name survived in various traces. There were
Mason County, and the town of Mason in Ingham County.
Many of the older cities have a Mason Street, well downtown
now, bearing testimony to the size of the place when the name
of the illustrious Boy Governor was applied to it. There is
Mason Hall at the University, the Mason School in Detroit.
His portrait in the Representatives' Hall at the State capitol
leads all the rest, hanging in the corner from which the painted
parade of Michigan's chief executives begins.

1839-1841] WRECK OF THE "GOVERNOR MASON 9 ' 403

In the legislative term of 1899-1900 a young Representative
named David E. Heinemann was fascinated by the portrait,
the optimism in Mason's face, the proud set of his shoulders,
the graceful hands. He studied the history of the painting and
wrote a monograph on it, and as far as records show, that
was almost the first mention of Stevens Thomson Mason in the
Michigan Legislature since that day in 1841 when his plea
to speak was denied.

CHAPTER XIV

FLOWERS FROM THE FIRING SQUAD

MASON looked at a clipping from the Free Press of October
7, 1841. "To Rent," it proclaimed. "The dwelling house ^on
Jefferson Avenue now occupied by John T. Mason. Possession
given on the 15* of October. S. T. MASON." The notice
had been running in the paper since September 2ist, and when
he succeeded in renting he had just time to pack hurriedly and
leave before his tenant came in. He remembered, as he gazed
at the clipping, that he was only twenty when he had bought
that house, and the deed was in his father's name. Twenty
years old I Ten years ago.

He would not go on deck and watch Detroit's graceful
skyline recede behind the trees of Grosse He. His mind closed
on the chapter of his life that Detroit represented. Ahead
lay only the problem of making a living, and that did not seem
much to Mason, after what he had been through in public life,
He thought about his family, and about Julia.

Julia was happy. As she dozed in their cabin she smiled to
herself with the pleased look of one who has succeeded. She
was glad that Detroit was behind her and that she would never
have to see that place again. She was glad that the frightening
people of Detroit stayed there far behind, where she would
never again see them or be afraid of them. Particularly, she
was glad because her new baby, the third, would be born in
New York like its brother and sister. She thought that it was
her insistent pleas which had dictated Mason's removal. She
had been kept in ignorance of the more sinister implications of
the Woodbridge plot. While she knew that business at Mason
& Pritchette had not been very good, she did not know any
motive other than her entreaties for this happy state of things.

404

1841-1843] FLOWERS FROM THE FIRING SQUAD 405

Mason wasted no energy trying to explain. He was exhausted
and in need of rest. As he covered her, considerately, against
the chill of Lake Erie, he was aware of the distortion of her
body that signalled the approach of their new baby. He felt
acutely sorry for Julia, knowing that earning a living in New
York would not be as simple as she believed. He knew he was
facing a hard time.

There was only one time during the trip when Mason was
cross with her, and she put that down to his exhausted physical
condition. She brought up the matter of domestic arrangements
at her father's house, assuming as a matter of course that the
Mason family would live there. Mason told her with great em
phasis that they would go anywhere else, that his first occupa
tion upon reaching New York would be that of house hunting.

The only money he had was the small sum realized from the
sale of his household possessions. It would get them a place,
but not a house, because they no longer had the furniture for
it. Pritchette had promised to forward certain fees owing
Mason from the partnership, and as of the date of his arrival,
Mason felt able to survive until he could earn new money as
anattorney.

Julia and the two children had only a day or so in the Phelps
house before Mason yanked them away. He confessed in some
embarrassment that he had been unable to find a proper place
for them which he could afford. But he had found a boarding-
house on Leonard Street, off Broadway, far downtown, and
it would have to do until he could find better lodgings. "Not
for always," he said, "only until I can afford something better. 5 '

Julia wept; old Phelps said it wasn't necessary. He said he
had plenty of money and plenty of room. He could afford
to play host to them indefinitely. Mason refused bluntly ; it was
the boardinghouse. That was the best he could afford, and that
was where his family was going to live.

The location was close to the financial district, only a short
walk from the great mercantile areas in lower Broadway.
Somewhere thereabouts Mason determined to set up an office,
in a district where law business originated. He determined to

46 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

plunge In, hang out his shingle at the best address he could
get, cultivate people who had expensive connections and fre
quent trouble with the courts.

He had made these plans and installed his family in the
boardinghouse before he learned that he couldn't even practice
law in New York State. If he had known that there was a
difference In qualifications between the two states the fact
had entirely escaped him during his recent worries. The dreams
of quick success vanished when he learned what delays faced
him. His first interview at the office of the New York Bar
Association blasted his plans sky-high.

"But I'm admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of Michi
gan ! Isn't that enough ?"

"Is that in New York State?" inquired the Secretary. "It's
immaterial what courts you have been admitted to practice
before, if they're not in this State. You have never applied for
admission here, nor passed the examinations we require. I'll
give you a list of the requirements. You'd better get some text
books and start studying."

With a sinking heart, Mason studied the long list of re
quirements. It would take him all winter to prepare for the
examination. In the meantime he was totally without earning
power, and also without sufficient resources to finance a long
struggle merely to gain admission to the Bar. It was another
resounding blow, added to all the others. He no longer carried
himself stiffly erect. The optimism and confidence so marked in
his state portrait were gone now and were replaced by lines of
worry on his high forehead and around the corners of his
mouth. A man can stand attack from almost any angle except
through his family. Mason winced when he thought of Julia
and the babies cooped up in that boardinghouse all winter,
living on less and less, going without, giving up everything
Julia had known as a girl so that he could sit there, month
after month, studying law. Poverty! At last he was face to
face with actual privation, as John T. had been during the ugly
winters in Mount Sterling. He knew what poverty had done
to his father. Must he go through that ?

1841-1843] FLOWERS FROM THE FIRING SQUAD 407

He did go through it, but he drew from his enormous reser
voir of inner strength to ward off the psychological effects
which had reduced his parents to misery in similar circum
stances. He tried to keep cheerful, and did his best to make
Julia as happy as he could. He worked ; he attacked those books
with the same energy that he had shown in Detroit as Governor.
It was while they were living in the crowded little boarding-
house on Leonard Street that his third child, a boy, was born
in March, 1842, and proudly named for Lucy's father Thad-
deus Phelps Mason.

In spite of the honor thus conferred, the baby's grandfather
sat in his big house and moped. He did not like the world.
The country was going to the dogs ; scoundrels were in public
office and sound money had vanished. There was no incentive
any more, he said, for a young man like Mason to get out and
make a fortune. Crooked politicians would probably take it
away from him anyway. He was through with it all, Phelps
declared. He had closed up his leather business and was calling
all his loans. He was going to retire. He saw no future in
America; nothing ahead but recurrent panics and ruin. Mason
felt depressed every time he spoke to the old gentleman, and
after the ceremonies attending the baby's christening he de
termined to go somewhere else, if possible, where he and the
family could be happy.

In April, 1842, he moved the family to a sunny house on
Staten Island. About this time he wrote to his father that he
had made some progress. He had been admitted, he said. He
had been practicing only a few weeks, but he was already get
ting a few clients. "I have formed an extensive acquaintance,"
he wrote, "and have about ten cases, a most respectable docket
for a beginner. I have no fear of the ultimate results."

He was whistling in the dark. Hemans says the ten cases
he had were the cat-and-dog drudgery of the law that other
attorneys didn't want, mostly as the court-appointed defense
attorney defending petty crooks who were caught red-handed
and didn't have a dime. He had not been fighting this legal
battle very long before he wrote his father again :

4Q8 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

"I confess that I had formed but a limited idea of the difficul
ties in the undertaking of coming to New York. My absolute
living expenses are $1,500 a year, and my only capital consists
of hope, energy and perseverance."

In July, 1 841, things were no better :

"Humility and modesty are not appreciated in New York.
... A man, to succeed, must keep up appearances and seek the
society of those who can benefit him in his profession, otherwise
he would starve to death."

He was becoming disillusioned and in doubt of his ability
to achieve all these things. He probably missed the applause
of the crowds, the stir caused by his appearance at a political
meeting or a formal ball, or the humble attitude of Michigan
villagers who were famous people at home merely because
they had met him, touched him, or spoken to him. In New
York he was something less than nobody, another lawyer in
a city full of struggling lawyers, another tenant in a boarding-
house. This Mason was beginning to walk stoop-shouldered.
He was hollow-eyed, morose and becoming bitter.

In the summer sunshine on Staten Island the family's spirits
revived somewhat, but Mason's precarious practice didn't im
prove. He rode the ferry back and forth every day, sat in his
law office, and tried to think of ways to regain the social recog
nition in New York that was once his as Governor of Michi
gan. u Keep up appearances . . . seek the society of those who
can benefit me. ..."

The red and gold leaves were falling from the maples, and
the autumn wind whipped the bay as Mason rode to his office
on the ferry. Summer was over. Facing him was another winter
in that boardinghouse, instead of the pleasant house he had
promised Julia. Mason's heart was not in anything he was
doing. He was thinner, and increasingly moody.

During the summer, Emily had come over to Staten Island
to visit the family for a day or so, and of course her diary
presently flowed with crisp comments on the sad change in his
appearance, the queer apathy which made him absent-minded,
the heartbreaking look of futility which had replaced the

1841-1843] FLOWERS FROM THE FIRING SQUAD 409

firm, clear-eyed countenance of the Governor. Emily was so
deeply concerned that she kept her worst fears out of her notes
for fear that her brother might find them someday, and realize
how he looked through the eyes of another. It was to their
father, John T., that Emily wrote a series of letters about
Tom Mason with the painful situation clearly and unhesitat
ingly depicted. John T. immediately left Louisiana and began
a hurried trip to New York, hoping that he would arrive in
time.

Mason was oblivious to the change in himself, or if he
noticed it, he did not comment. During December, 1842, some
of the Richmond folk he had met on Staten Island invited him
to attend a meeting of the Lyceum Society and deliver a talk
entitled 'The History of the Northwest", They paid a fee;
it was just before Christmas and Mason was temporarily
happy again. He could tell them a few facts about the history
of the Northwest from a decade of intimate daily contact
with it; he himself had shaped that history as much as any
living man. His lecture was a success. He returned to Julia
wreathed In smiles, and Christmas was a happy day.

New Year's Eve promised to be even happier. At last he
held in his hands his long-awaited opportunity. He received
a cordial invitation from Washington Irving, who Mason
feared had forgotten him, to attend the famed Irving New
Year's Eve ball. He and Julia were as excited as children. A
ball at Washington Irving' s !

He wasn't feeling well, but that was nothing. The ball was
a great social affair in the best old Knickerbocker tradition,
with a guest list that read like the index to the Social Register.
He must go I It was the place for a young lawyer to be seen.
It was the environment in which to meet important people,
seek new clients. It was the very affair he had in mind when
he wrote: "I must seek the society of those who can benefit
me "

He went. He had a wonderful time. But it was a long, cold
journey downtown in a drafty hackney carriage from the re
splendent Irving mansion to the little boardinghouse on

410 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Leonard Street. He was coughing when Julia helped himjn-
side, and she realized he was running a fever^The following
day, New Year's Day, was a holiday and Julia couldn't find
a doctor until evening. By that time she had located Emily
and John T., and implored their help. Her husband was dan-
gerously ill.

John T. hurried to the boardinghouse, and gazed upon the
stricken figure of his son. Mason was only partly conscious,
but tried to smile as he recognized his caller. The old man
ran for a doctor any doctor. There was a Doctor Boyd who
lived in the neighborhood, and to him John T. breathlessly
poured out the story. Dr. Boyd returned to the boardinghouse
with him, examined the patient and opined that he was cer
tainly sick, and had a high fever, but it would have to run its
course. He expected that by morning the patient would be
somewhat better.

It was a poor diagnosis. Mason was seized with violent
stomach cramps that night, January ist, and vomited and
retched unceasingly. All day January 2nd he lay tossing in bed
complaining of a violent headache. The fever was as high as
ever. On the night of the 3rd, Dr. Boyd declared that he had
an "inflammatory sore throat, " bled him, gave him some medi
cine and told Julia not to worry.

Dr. Boyd evidently did not recognize pneumonia, and might
not even have heard of the disease. On January 4th he was
at Mason's bedside with a Dr. Grayson, whom he had called
for consultation. They put their full-bearded heads together
for a long, whispered conference, examined him again, and
declared that whatever ailed him it probably was not serious.
They left some pills and took their departure.

About ten minutes later, which places the time at about
eleven o'clock on the night of January 4th, a personal friend
of John T.'s called at the boardinghouse to see him. He was
shown into Mason's sickroom, where John T. was standing at
the bedside. His name was Dr. Mott. He was a well-known
physician from uptown, with a big practice and a famous
name. His visit had nothing to do with the sick man, but as

1841-1843] FLOWERS FROM THE FIRING SQUAD 411

soon as he saw Mason he made a quick examination, took
pulse and temperature and called John T. out of the room.
Taking him aside, Dr. Mott told him quietly that Mason was
dying, that he had pneumonia and was in such an advanced
condition that there was no help for him.

At three o'clock on the morning of the 5th of January,
Mason was in a semicoma. He was conscious for some minutes,
then drifted into delirium. He roused himself long enough to
recognize Julia, and then, said John T., he seemed to fall into
a composing sleep. Silently, he died.

John T. collapsed in a chair and wept. Emily ran to give
help to Julia, who was in hysterics. Dr. Mott stayed long
enough to prescribe sedatives for her, and said that he would
notify Thaddeus Phelps. The dawn came, but to the shaken
people who had taken part in that all-night vigil, the sun had
lost some of its brilliance. They were still sitting there by
midmorning, without having spoken, when Dr. Boyd returned
with a diagnosis. Mason, he said, had "suppressed scarlet
fever".

Toward midafternoon of that day, January 5, 1843, John
T. had finally quieted Julia and he sat down to write the tragic
news to his daughter Kate Mason Rowland, at Detroit. He
found a pen, and began :

"I attempted to write you last night but found myself un
equal to the task, and am now little better prepared to an
nounce to you a most heartrending event. Our light afflictions
for the past year we bore not without repining, but they were
temporary and susceptible of alleviation. Now we have to sum
mon to our aid the strength we possess, and call to our relief
the only power that is capable of it the power of religion
the trust in God that all His ways are best. Your beloved
brother is no more I cannot yet realize the awful truth.
But it is nevertheless so. He now lies a corpse in this house.
His sickness was not considered dangerous until two hours be
fore his death, and it was so sudden, so calm and so free from
pain that to look upon him at this moment the serenity of
his countenance cheats you into the belief that he still lives.

412 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

Yes ! He does, but in another world, the destined abode of
us all."

There follows a brief description of the doctors' mistaken
treatment and the shock the old man received when Dr. Mott
told him the terrible truth. He recounts calmly how Dr. Mott
"told me he was dangerously ill and could not live more than
two hours," but that nothing could be done.

"His predictions were, alas! too true, and at three o'clock
he expired without a groan, in such entire absence of pain that
he seemed to fall into quite a composing sleep. Little did we
apprehend that it was the sleep of death from which we can
only awake at the Resurrection such is the will of God, and
we must submit, and in true faith believe that this decree is
according to His wisdom and goodness and for the best
hard as it is for us to bear the infliction.

"Julia is in a state of distraction and I can hardly tell the
character of my own mind. I shall write to you again in a day
or two, but it is impossible for me to afford consolation other
than your own minds will present; a submission to the will of
God -to whom I commend you, and pray that He may give
you strength to sustain you under the heartrending calamity
which it has been His pleasure to award us.

"Your affectionate father,

JOHN T. MASON"

As the body of the Boy Governor was borne slowly out of
the Phelps house a few days later, John T. Mason and Emily
walked bareheaded, side by side, behind the hearse to the little
old cemetery across the lower end of Manhattan. The body was
encased in a beautiful mahogany casket, in which was sunk a
wide silver plate bearing his name, and the date of his death.
It was covered with flowers from the New York Bar Associa
tion, from Tammany, and from the Mason and Phelps families.
The procession followed slowly behind the flower-banked
hearse until it arrived at the appointed place, the now-forgotten
Marble Cemetery, between the Bowery and Second Avenue,

1841-1843] FLOWERS FROM THE FIRING SQUAD 413

Second and Third Streets. There the procession halted. Julia
Phelps Mason, a wisp of heavily veiled black, stood between
her father and John T., with Emily close by. There was a brief
service, then the awful, final leave-taking. The casket, shorn
of its silver handles and with the flowers now carefully banked
around the scene, was observed to disappear, inches at a time,
into a dark, damp, limitless hole in the side of a towering stone
wall which contained the Phelps family crypt. A newly chiseled
marble slab was swung over the opening and cemented in. On
its clean white face it bore only two lines :

STEVENS T. MASON

Died January 5, 184 3

Only a week later, on January I2th, the news reached Detroit.

The citizens of that lusty city knew that something was
amiss when they saw their conservative Free Press in mourning,
with heavy black rules between its page one columns. They
hurried scanned the Advertiser ', which had hated Mason more
than cholera. Yes, there it was again. "Death of Stevens T.
Mason." John N. IngersolPs Journal and Courier carried a
laudatory column on the front page, among the classified ad
vertising, an almost unheard-of place for a news story in 1843.

All the Detroit papers forgot political feeling and paid
warm tribute to Mason the man. Sheldon McKnight's Free
Press, always Mason's champion, dramatically described him
as "the most honored citizen and universally beloved friend
of Michigan . . . the gifted orator ... the talented statesman
. . . the high-souled patriot . . . the warm-hearted, frank, gen
erous, noble and magnanimous friend." Editorially the paper's
issue of January I3th carried on in the same vein, with many
a reference to Mason's sterling virtues and acknowledged
abilities. McKnight in a signed column wrote an obituary
which shows his deep personal affection for the handsome
figure who had dominated Michigan for so long. "He was an

414 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

excellent son, and a devoted husband and father. His abilities
were of a high order, his information general and extensive,
his eloquence ardent and impressive. If he had political enemies
they were fewer than ever fell to the lot of any other public
man. If he had defects, they too were slight and unobserved
amidst the good qualities which excited admiration."

Even the bitter Detroit Advertiser thought the time had
come to close the books on an old feud. "We cannot forbear
to mingle our tears in the general sorrow. His career here was
indeed an uninterrupted political struggle, and yet few men
have left behind them more personal friends from among all
parties, and now when the hand of death has laid him low
we cannot but count ourselves fortunate to have been per
mitted to have been of that number. Fale, amice, vale!"

That was the first and only time the Advertiser had declared
any friendship for Stevens T. Mason, but the spirit behind it
was generous. It was spoken of as a courteous gesture, and
the general tone of the newspaper eulogy brought the Mason
name back to Detroit lips immediately. The Legislature was
in session. It still had some of the familiar whiskery old faces,
but they were thinning out. Detroiters who had known Mason's
agony under the lash of legislative persecution looked toward
the old capitol building with curiosity.

^Mister President !" "Mister Speaker I" .
It was all right now. They were going to hear Mason's
name again, in the Legislature that Woodbridge had forbidden
to utter it. Woodbridge was reading his newspaper in Wash
ington, with what thoughts we do not know. He no longer held
control. A Democrat named Greenly, from Adrian, took the
floor in the Senate. He had held a brief caucus with other
Senators of both parties and said he was authorized to speak
for them.

"Since our adjournment yesterday," he said, "the mournful
intelligence has been received of the death of the Honorable
Stevens T. Mason, the former and first Governor of our State.
The first political relations of his life were with us. As soon
as he had attained his majority he was by the almost unanimous

1841-1843] FLOWERS FROM THE FIRING SQUAD 415

suffrages of our people elected to the Chief Magistracy of our
State. In all his relations with us, both as a citizen and as a
magistrate, he was courteous, generous and liberal, deeply im
bued with all those qualities which were the governing princi
ples of his life, and created strong attachments which existed
between the deceased and the citizens of Michigan. After our
relations were terminated by his voluntary withdrawal from
public life, he removed to the City of New York to follow the
profession of law and to follow a quiet domestic life. But his
earthly happiness was destined to be of short duration. In the
midst of his usefulness and in the pride of his manhood, by
the interposition of an overruling Providence he has been
called to 'that bourne from which no traveler returns', and
while our tears of sympathy flow freely with those who are
afflicted by this dispensation, let us invoke the Father of all
Mercies to smile upon and console his bereaved family and re
lations.

"THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we deeply sym
pathize with the relations of the late STEVENS T. MASON
in their sudden and afflictive bereavement, and in this manner
publicly would tender our heartfelt tribute to the memory of
the deceased, as an individual who was deeply imbued with all
the sterling virtues of public, social and private life."

The Senate did not keep this mention of Mason from the
public records; it had copies of this resolution distributed
throughout the State. The House passed a very similar one, in
troduced by Representative Edwin H. Lathrop of Kalamazoo
County. By arrangement, the leaders in both Houses got a com
mittee appointed to prepare what they called a "funeral," and
a day of public mourning for the late Governor Mason. The
ceremonies were held on Sunday, January 15, 1843, at the little
Episcopal Church on Woodward to which Mason had come
reverently each Sunday for many years.

In silence, thousands of Detroiters and people from near-by
towns gathered on the wooden sidewalks to watch a solemn
funeral procession which had no body to bury. As a parade it
was a success. It bore a noticeable military air in recognition

4l6 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

of Mason's participation in two minor wars the Black Hawk
War and the Patriot Uprising. The Brady Guards were up in
front, with Major Ike Rowland in a black arm band marching
at their head. Following them came the equally resplendent
Scott Guards, with officers from the Army post at Fort Wayne
in their gold-epauletted dress uniforms. Governor James
Wright Gordon, looking very sad at Mason's untimely death,
rode with all the heads of the State departments, Judges of the
Supreme Court in their robes, officers of the Senate and House,
the Mayor of Detroit and his Board of Aldermen, all the mem
bers of the Detroit Bar Association and peculiarly, the entire
membership of the Detroit Typographical Society, to which
Mason had not belonged.

It was the longest procession Detroit had ever seen, and
one of the strangest. There was no music, no sound from the
crowds, only the clop-clop of horses' hooves on the thick plank
surface of the streets. It must have been an impressive sight.
It must have made newcomers to Detroit wonder what manner
of man could have inspired such a monster funeral, especially
since its central attraction, the casket, wasn't there. If they
had been told that he wasn't there because many of these same
distinguished figures now riding in the procession in their shiny
silk hats and lugubrious expressions had driven him out, heart
broken and in disgrace, it would have sounded like a fairy tale.

Mason himself would have been thrilled at the sight of it.
Here was proof , in the crowds lining the sidewalks, that in spite
of the abuse heaped upon him he still held the affection of great
numbers of citizens. If he could have mingled with them, on
the sidewalks, and could have heard them sigh at their mem
ories of this spectacular figure, relate little anecdotes about
how he had spoken to them, or how they had seen him on a
platform once, his heart would have recovered and his spirit,
too. He would have heard their praises of him, their repug
nance at the mean way they all had turned their backs upon
him when he most needed their help. Like them, as they saw
the Whig legislators who had refused to hear him, he would
have turned aside in disgust.

1841-1843] FLOWERS FROM THE FIRING SQUAD 417

What had happened to him during his last days in Detroit
was forgotten now. In their hearts, as they watched the slow-
moving procession, and to no lesser degree in the hearts of
thousands more in the villages throughout Mason's Michigan,
Mason was there. They seemed to see him fleetingly once
more, looming up over that procession, as Michigan would
one day immortalize him tall, erect, confident, chin up, his
gold-headed cane under his arm as he stroked on his white
silk gloves and patted his gleaming high hat to just the right
rakish angle the figure of fashion in a setting of sin.

THE END

APPENDIX

MASON &ETURNS TO DETROIT

THE BODY OF Stevens Thomson Mason lay in the cold crypt wall space in
the Marble Cemetery, New York, for sixty-two years. Then something
happened which is a natural part of the Mason legend, another one of those
impossible things which were always happening to the Boy Governor. He
got out of that crypt and came back to Detroit.

He came in triumph and he came to stay. The lies about him were for
gotten by that time, but the good he did was beginning to be understood in
its true perspective. No one in Detroit cared much what his politics had
been. They wanted Mason to come home.

The man who brought him home was Lawton T. Hemans, of whom so
much has been written in the preceding pages. He was a middle-aged
lawyer who lived in the town of Mason, and practiced law there. He had a
very good practice; so lucrative that, in the declining years of his life, he
could afford an expensive hobby. This hobby, for some reason, was the
justification of Stevens Thomson Mason before posterity. He undertook to
write a complete legal brief on Mason's life and career which would place
the Boy Governor and the Whigs in their true relationship, without any
Whigs being on the scene to forbid him the privilege. He was a legal re
searcher who determined to prepare his case in Mason's defense as if he
might have to plead it before the Supreme Court. He spent twenty years
doing it and, like his beloved hero, he died before success was reached. He
spent twice as long, in fact, justifying Mason as Mason himself had spent
in office. But it was an appalling task to locate, assemble and analyze old
records which by that time had been gathering dust for sixty years. It was
detail drudgery on a colossal scale, and sometimes there are questions asked
about why Mr. Hemans did it.

Mrs. Hemans understood part of it, and in a preface to Hemans' great
work she tried to explain. She said that when he was a boy running around
the village of Mason he wanted to know why the village was so named,
and was told that it had been a mistake; Mason was a politician who had
once been Governor. He had died suddenly in early manhood after an eve
ning's debauch, and his lifeless body found in a Detroit gutter; so the boy

418

APPENDIX: MASON RETURNS TO DETROIT 419

was told. He grew curious about Mason. As a young man he visited the
capitol at Lansing and there encountered the Mason State portrait.

"As he gazed upon that face so full of culture and refinement, the desire
was born in his heart to try and refute that criticism and other calumnies
heaped upon the Boy Governor. As he began collecting and reading, he
became more and more convinced that many unjust remarks had been
showered upon Governor Mason; that the beautiful, upright, conscientious
character of the man had never been shown in its true light. Mr. Hemans'
desire grew stronger as his knowledge became deeper in his subject, and I
really know that he had the greatest love and admiration for Governor
Mason.

"He fell in love with his subject. His life's best endeavors went into col
lecting and putting together and writing a story of the Boy Governor. I
think Mr. Hemans gave his life for the State of Michigan."

That is no overstatement. It is literally true. During his last two years
he was in constant pain, bedridden, but dictating between groans with the
knowledge that death was upon him. He repeatedly asked his wife whether
she thought he could finish before he died. She didn't know. But she says
he would sigh and say: "It was worth it. It was worth the cost."

For many years Mrs. Hemans was his agent in the thankless task of locat
ing old letters, quaint daguerreotypes and trinkets which Hemans had traced
to some family. Then the gracious middle-aged lady would have to call upon
these total strangers and ask please might she poke around in their attic in
search of a letter Governor Mason had written to the family's grandfather
sixty years before. He sent her to the Burton Library of historical collections
in Detroit with instructions to copy every reference to Mason in the old
newspaper files, and there were hundreds. She sifted trash out of rubbish
heaps, and found old brooches that contained a picture of some character
in the Mason legend. All this time, Hemans himself was away from his law
office and exploring around Owingsville, Kentucky, looking for the ruins
of John T/s iron mine. Or he might have been interviewing the astonished
residents of Virginia manors about the history of their houses, when they
were built and who lived there. He spent weeks in the New Jersey State
capitol, making transcripts of all the records of the Morris Canal and Bank
ing Company, which had been incorporated in that State. Eventually he
wore himself out, exhausted his savings paying for clerical work on copies
of these old records, and took to his bed.

But he had over 200,000 words of carefully footnoted facts about Mason.
He was a lawyer, not a writer, and he was drafting this report, not writing
a book. He planned to give it to the State Historical Commission as a perma-

420 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

nent record. This was done. It appeared as a State document about 1905, and
was reprinted in a second edition in 1930.

During his wanderings and inquisitorial pokings into this and that,
Hemans discovered that Mason was buried in the crypt in New York. He
determined to correct that, and the decision led him into a long detour
down the cluttered alleys of genealogy; he had to locate Mason's descendants,
if any, and get permission to move the body. His first contact was with the
Boy Governor's daughter, Mrs. Dorothea Mason Wright, of Newark. Mrs.
Wright, a plump matron in her sixties, told him that she was very glad to
consent; she felt that Mason belonged to Detroit. She said her Aunt Emily
thought so, too. At this, Hemans nearly swooned. It was true. Aunt Emily
was the original Emily Mason, a wiry old lady of ninety but still full of
energy and crisp decisions. Mrs. Wright brought Hemans and Emily Mason
together.

Emily had been through a hard time in the Civil War, in which she was
a one-woman USO, Red Cross and canteen manager combined. She had
been a dear friend of Lee's and a valuable organizer throughout the chain
of Confederate camps and prisons. After the war she went to Europe to
live, but became fed up with it and returned prior to 1900. Her old family
furniture was still adorning her New York home; her diaries were intact;
and many of John T. Mason's .library books exhibited in Hemans 5 excited
hands the marks of that trip across the Cumberlands in 1812. She told
Hemans to take anything he liked. Her diaries were priceless. But like any
monomaniac, Hemans was not satisfied. He wanted more. And thus it hap
pened that Emily, at the age of ninety, sat down and began writing quanti
ties of descriptions, character sketches of figures in the Mason legend, and
quaint word pictures of what the Mason slaves had looked like at Serenity
Hall, Lexington, when she was five years old. She turned out to have a
memory like a bound file of The "New Yor% Times. Before the demands of
Mr. Hemans were satisfied, Emily had a book-length manuscript on her
hands. This, too, at Hemans' suggestion, was turned over to the Michigan
State Historical Society under the title "Autobiography of an Octogenarian".
Excerpts are still kept on the shelves in Lansing.

By 1900, Hemans had a mountain of material on Mason's life and public
career. But he had not gained custody of the corpus delicti, because he had
been too busy cracking the whip over his two female slaves, Emily and Mrs.
Hemans. He had, to interrupt the work to organize a campaign to get the
body back. The Legislature agreed to pay for it if there was a public interest
in the idea. The Historical Society sent out a flurry of newspaper features
on the Hemans campaign. It aroused the demand.

APPENDIX: MASON RETURNS TO DETROIT 421

When the Legislature appointed a committee to supervise the removal
of Mason's body to Detroit, Hemans was named as one of its members.
He did most of the work, made all the arrangements, and fixed it for Emily
herself to be present in Detroit when the new funeral was held. News of
Hemans' activities, and the fact of Emily's survival, intrigued Michigan. The
popularity of Governor Stevens T. Mason made a sudden reappearance. He
was a famous man in modern Michigan, lauded by all the school authorities,
praised by the professional men, immortalized by the University. The Mason
legend came to life in such force that the Legislature was non-plussed. That
body had not expected to encounter a wave of enthusiasm for a politician
who had been dead, at that time, nearly seventy years. But it was so ap-
apparent that the Legislature had to take official notice.

Almost without debate, it appropriated $10,000 for the execution of a
fitting monument. Correspondence between Governor Fred M. Warner and
Mayor George P. Codd of Detroit was friendly and mutually cooperative.
Certainly the City of Detroit would help. It would landscape Capitol Park
and get it ready for a permanent reburial there. The City would build a
speakers' stand and bleachers for those who wished to attend the ceremonies.
Hemans would have been satisfied merely to have the body back in Michi
gan. He was not much of a glad-hander or public orator. The Governor
and the Mayor, however, would not be denied. They insisted that both he
and Emily appear on the platform, along with Mrs. Wright and all the
other surviving Mason descendants. They called out the militia, engaged
bands, flooded the newspapers with announcements of a State-wide public
holiday, and aroused so much enthusiasm that it became contagious. Michi
gan could not have been more excited if Mason had turned up alive, waving
his silk hat. They looked forward to the big day the way we of this genera
tion crowd around police lines to see the President. For that one day,
Mason was a hero again.

The ceremony was announced for June 4, 1905. Horseshoe-shaped bleach
ers had been erected around the site in tiny triangular Capitol Park. It
would seat only 2,000 people, and the rest of the Detroit public had to stand.
They backed up in a milling mob far down Griswold. They couldn't hear
much because there were no microphones or public-address systems in that
day, but they could see sprightly old Emily mount the platform, nod vigor
ously to the crowd, and sit down. Mrs. Dorothea Mason Wright sat next to
her, flanked by her son, Captain William Wright, USA. Stevens T. Mason of
Detroit, a grandnephew of the Governor and the only surviving bearer of
the famous name, was introduced and seated.

Hemans, his stooped figure darting nervously back and forth supervising

422 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

details, was the chief worrier of the occasion. Governor Warner read a long,
eulogistic speech; Mayor Codd and the Board of Aldermen, now called the
Common Council, took a few bows, and Hemans began to recite some of the
biographical facts about the Governor. But the crowd was restless; they
wanted to hear Emily. Several times Emily shook her white head and indi
cated that she didn't want to become the center of any attention, but the
crowd was insistent. Finally she arose.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am so old I am sure you will hardly expect me
to say anything of great length. With all my heart I thank you all, in the
name of my family, my niece and myself, for your kind words and the
kind things you have said about my brother. I shall never forget the honor
and pleasure I have had in this visit, and I hope I shall yet live to come back
again. I will talk no longer, because I want to shake hands with my old
friends and neighbors here."

In 1905, Emily was able to greet Judge Edward Cahill, the Rev. D. M.
Cooper and a number of others who remembered her when she lived at 303
East Jefferson Avenue with the aura of being the Governor's hostess. People
who had shaken hands with the Boy Governor now tottered forward and
took Emily's firm hand in theirs. While this was going on, the crowd had
swelled until it was jampacked from building to building across Griswold
and across the park itself. Traffic was tied up all through the downtown
section awaiting the parade, and all Detroit was crowding on the sidewalks
to see Mason's coffin, which their ancestors were denied during the similar
parade on the same streets, starting from the same point, in 1843.

The band led the way through the canyons between towering buildings
to the Light Guard Armory, where the Detroit Police drill team was stand
ing guard around the flower-covered coffin which Hemans had rescued from
the vault. It was tenderly borne outside and placed on a gun mount. It was
late in the afternoon. The sun slanted down across the Farwell Building,
interposing a shadow like a benediction on the fresh earth in Capitol Park.
The parade moved to the park; the old mahogany casket was slowly lowered
into its final resting place and a bugler sounded "taps". The grave was di-
recdy below the spot where Governor Mason's office had been when the
litde capitol building stood there; the office wherein he created the great
State, defended it and tried to build it also the office where Woodbridge
had slammed the door upon him when he sought to defend himself. The
building had been a memory for many years, serving out its time as a
school after Lansing became the State Capital in 1847.

Workmen began grading the site, seeding a lawn and preparing for the
erection of the bronze statue, by Albert Weinert of New York. Detroit's

APPENDIX: MASON RETURNS TO DETROIT 423

Russell Alger, then Secretary of War, had located the bronze for it from
old cannon salvaged from historic old frontier forts of Mason's time. Pres
ently the statue arrived, and was unveiled. Flanking the monument, the
sculptor designed two curved marble endpieces serving both as benches and
as decorative spacers around the base of the monument itself.

Visitors to Detroit seldom include Capitol Park among the modern at
tractions of the great motor metropolis. Mason is there; his body lies be
neath the statue and his monument towers above. He stands there, erect
and dashing as he was in life, but the huge skyscrapers of midtown De
troit dwarf the little triangular space and let in little light. The bronze
figure seems tiny now, and hard to find even if one looks for it. Bushes
have grown up, untrimmed, almost to the statue's shoulder. On either side
of the bushes are enormous comfort-station signs, which get most of the
attention. Impatient cars lined the curbs, bumper to bumper. Mounted police
men on imperious steeds glare at taxi drivers, who glare back. There stands
Mason, forever glancing straight down Griswold with an expression of
amused tolerance, but few of the thousands who pass there daily have ever
noticed his monument. It seems like a sentinel, watching to make sure that
these rushing people go down the right steps into the right places. It is time-
blackened and forgotten by the lines of busy stenographers forever dashing
across the park's diagonal sidewalks. Whirls of dust and bits of paper and
gum wrappers blow unnoticed around Mason's calm, boyish face.

There stands Mason, and all around him flows the hurried, irritable end
less wave of sound that is Detroit.

GENEALOGICAL NOTES

FROM JOHN T. MASON'S family Bible, now in the Rare Book Room in the
University o Michigan Library, the following is transcribed:

JOHN THOMSON MASON Born in 1787 at Raspberry Plain, near Leesburg,
Virginia. Died at Galveston, Texas, April i7th, 1850, of malaria.
Age 63.

ELIZABETH MoiR MASON Born 1789 at Williamsburg, Virginia. Died in
New York, N. Y., on November 24, 1 839. Age 50.

Children of John and Elizabeth Mason:

1. MARY ELIZABETH Born Dec. 19, 1809, at Raspberry Plain. Died Febru

ary 8, 1822, at Lexington, Ky. Age 12.

2. STEVENS THOMSON Born Oct. 27, 1 8x1, at Leesburg, Virginia. Died

January 3rd, 1843. Age 31.

3. ARMISTEAD T. (i) Born Lexington, Ky., July 22, 1813. Lived 18 days.

4. ARMISTEAD T. (11) Born Lexington, Ky., Nov. 13, 1814. Lived 3 months.

5. EMILY VIRGINIA Born Lexington, Ky., October, 1815. [Miss Mason was

over 93 when she died on a date which is not given in the family
records.]

6. CATHERINE ARMISTEAD Born Owingsville, Ky., Feb. 23, 1818. Died in

Detroit as Kate Mason Rowland.

7. LAURA ANN THOMPSON Born Oct. 5th, 1 82 1. Married Col. Chilton of

New York. [Date of death not recorded.]

8. THEODOSIA Born at Indian Fields, Bath Co., Ky., Dec. 6, 1822. Died at

Detroit Jan. 7th, 1834, a e d II years i month.

9. CORNELIA MADISON Born June 25th, 1825, at Lexington, Ky. Died in

Detroit August 2nd, 1831. Aged 6.

10. A SON (Stillborn) March 20, 1827, at Owingsville, Ky.

11. MARY ELIZABETH (ii) Born January 18, 1828, at Owingsville, Ky. Died

in Detroit Oct. 29, 1833. Age 5.

12. LOUISA WESTWOOD Born at Mt. Sterling, Ky., Sept. 24th, 1829. Died

Oct. nth, 1829, aged 1 8 days.

13. A SON (Stillborn) Detroit, April 5th, 1833.
Children of Stevens T. and Julia Phelps Mason:

STEVENS T. MASON and JULIA PHELPS were married in New York, No
vember i, 1838. Julia was born in New York November 21, 1818.
Daughter of Thaddeus Phelps.

424

GENEALOGICAL NOTES 425

1. STEVENS THOMSON, iv Born in New York, August i, 1839.

2. DOROTHEA ELIZA Born in New York, October, 1 840.

3. THADDEUS PHELPS Born in New York, March i r, 1842.

The death dates of Julia and the children are not recorded in the family
Bible. The baby Stevens T. lived only a few years and died before reaching
school age. Dorothea Mason Wright lived to an advanced age in Newark,
N. J. Thaddeus Phelps Mason's death date is not known.

Antecedents of Stevens T. Mason

Source: Life of George Mason, by Kate Mason Rowland, Vol. I
Mason Lineage and Arms, by Jane Griffith Keys
Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason, by Lawton T. Hemans
The first Mason in the New World was a George Mason, of Staffordshire,
an officer in the army of Bonnie Prince Charlie, which was badly defeated by
Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Worcester, Sept. 3, 1651. In the general
exodus of Loyalists from England, Colonel George Mason came to James
town, Va., where he built a home in 1652.

In 1700 George Mason, II, son of the English officer, was commander of
the Jamestown militia, a lieutenant colonel at age 20. He
was a general in 1715.

In 1721 George Mason, 111, a youth of 22, was elected Justice of the
Peace. In this year he married Ann Thomson, daughter of
Stevens Thomson, the Attorney General of Virginia. He
built a huge manor house called "Gunston Hall," adjoining
Mount Vernon, and was a friend of Lawrence Washington.
In 1774 George Mason, IV, boyhood friend of George Washington, be
gan writing the "Virginia Papers" and urging Independence.
He was the wealthiest man in Virginia, owner of 1,600
slaves and 30,000 acres of cultivated lands. He drafted Vir
ginia's first State Constitution, served in the Continental Con
gress and in the Constitutional Convention. After refusing
to sign the U.S. Constitution he drafted the first ten amend
ments, the famous "Bill of Rights".

George Mason, IV, had a younger brother, Thomson Mason. He built a
small manor house at Raspberry Plain, Loudon County, Va., after returning
from extended study and practice of law in London. He was the first Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. He was born in 1730, at "Doeg's
Neck Manor" in Stafford, now Fairfax County, Va., and died at Raspberry
Plain in 1785. He was married twice; his only son by his first marriage was

STEVENS THOMSON MASON

the first Stevens Thomson Mason, born in Stafford, Va., in 1760, who died
at Philadelphia, Pa., in 1 803.

Stevens Thomson Mason left two sons, (i) Armistead Thomson Mason,
born at Raspberry Plain in 1787, and killed in a duel at Bladensburg, Md.,
Feb. 5, 1819. Armistead T. Mason was a colonel in the War of 1812, after
ward a general in the Virginia militia and U.S. Senator, and inherited
Raspberry Plain from his father. Armistead T. Mason's brother (2) John T.
Mason, father of Governor Mason, by a curious coincidence was born the
same year, 1787, both sons being born to their father when he was twenty-
seven years of age and already the father of two girls: Catherine, who mar
ried William T. Barry of Kentucky, and Mary, who married Benjamin
Howard of the same state. In his will, the noted wit and raconteur left a
warning to his two sons: ". . .neither of the said sons shall live on the
south side of the James River nor below Williamsburg until they shall
reach the age of twenty-one years, lest they should imbibe more exalted
notions of their own importance than I wish any child of mine should
possess."

Wife of the first Stevens T. Mason, Mary Armistead Mason, was the
daughter of Robert Armistead, master of the great manor known as Seren
ity Hall, in Louisa County, Va. She outlived the Senator by many years,
living quietly at Raspberry Plain until 1824, when her grandson, the future
Governor Mason, was thirteen years old.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

THE USE OF FOOTNOTES throughout this volume has been avoided by pro
viding instead a complete bibliographical index of the source material. Ref
erence to this section will open to the reader many fascinating subjects for
further reading, and almost any of them will provide him with detailed
answers to scores of questions which may arise in his mind. It has been my
intention to include the specific source of quotations, newspaper statements
and other items which would ordinarily require footnotes, concurrently with
the mention of the fact in the text. Others not fully explained therein will be
found in this bibliography as subjects of entire volumes, lectures, papers and
reports.

The bibliography contains more than a hundred references for such ex
tended research on the part of the reader. The initials M.P.H.C., together
with Roman and Arabic numerals, which occur so frequently, invite the
reader to continue his quest in the volumes of the Michigan Pioneer and
Historical Collections, on the pages and in the volumes cited. The complete
thirty-volume set is found in all city and school libraries throughout Michi
gan, as well as in the Michigan State Historical Commission Library at Lan
sing. The bibliography is thus a sort of cross reference to the compiled foot
notes of more than 150 years of carefully accumulated Michigan history.
Other volumes cited are to be found in the State Library at Lansing, the
Burton Library at Detroit, the Clements and University Libraries at Ann
Arbor and in most other city libraries throughout the State.

For enabling me to gain complete access to this vast storehouse of infor
mation, and for his continued help, advice and encouragement throughout
the long period of this volume's preparation, I am deeply grateful to George
N. Fuller, Secretary of the Michigan Historical Commission.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Historical Aids

i. Atwell, Prof. Willis: Illustrated History oj Michigan. 1937. Centennial of
Michigan's statehood described in detail.

427

428 STEVENS THOMSON MASON ^

2. Burton, Clarence M., with Gen. Byron M. Cutcheon: Michigan as a

Province, Territory and State. 3 vols. 1906. Vol. II, pp. 292-351,

3. Campbell, James Valentine: Outline of Political History of Michigan.

1937. Full text of several important legislative documents, 1835-1840.

4. Cadin, George B.: The Story of Detroit. 1923. Illustrated history of the

city from old newspaper files. Useful for banking details,

5. Cooley, Thomas M.: Michigan; a History of Governments. New York.

1905. Best general account of the early history of Michigan. Excel
lent reference work for general information.

6. Dunbar, Seymour: A History of Travel in America. New York, 1937,
A rich account of the wave of immigration to Michigan, 1830-1840.

7. Farmer, Silas: The History of Detroit and Michigan. 2 vols. 1890. Con

tains some good woodcuts of early Michigan scenes.

8. Fuller, George N., Ph.D.: Economic and Social Beginnings of Michigan.

672 pp. Lansing, 1916. Documented thesis on the wave of immigra
tion which peopled the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, 1825-1840.

9. Hubbard, Bela: Memorials of a Half-Century. New York and London.

1887. A collection of papers bearing on the early settlement. Hub-
bard was a Michigan pioneer of prominence. His writings have the
authority of a dependable eyewitness.

ID. Martineau, Harriet: Autobiography. 2 vols, 1878. Little-known sidelight
on the Abolitionist movement in Michigan in 1836.

11. Martineau, Harriet: Retrospect of Western Travel. 2 vols. History of her

journey from New York to Detroit, thence to Chicago and return.

12. Martineau, Harriet: Society in America, 3 vols. Details of visit to Detroit

in 1836 and excellent study of Governor Mason.

Government Records

House Documents: Index to the Executive Documents and Reports of
Committees of the House from the Twenty-Second to the Twenty-
Fifth Congress (iS^i-iS^). Washington. 1839.

Ordway, Albert: General Index to the Journals of Congress, from the
Eleventh to the Sixteenth Congress Inclusive. Washington. 1868.

Mason Manuscript Collections

Manuscript collection, William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor.
Mason letters and documents, Burton Library, Detroit.
Territorial Records t 1805-1831. Originals in the Burton Library, Text
and discussion, M.P.H.C., Vol. XXXVI, pp. 100-260.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 429

Biographies General

1. Carlisle, Fred: A Comparison of Eben Ward, James Joy and William

Woodbridge. Michigan State Library, Lansing.

2. Ferris, Woodbridge K: Michigan's Hero of the War of 1812. M.P.H.C.

Vol. XXII, pp. 22-283. Background of Cass's career.

3. Fuller, George N.: Governor Woodbridge of Michigan. Lansing. 1916.

A short sketch of Woodbridge's short career as Governor.

4. Hollands, Mrs. Hulda: When Michigan was New. 242 pp. 1916. Inter

esting sketches of Woodbridge, Lyon and Norvell.

5. Lyon, Lucius: Letters of Lucius Lyon. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXVII, pp. 412-

604. Correspondence with Mason about the Upper Peninsula.

6. Parton, James: Life of Andrew Jackson. 3 vols. Vol. 3, pp. 210-345. De

scription of Jackson's visit to Lexington.

7. Woodbridge, William: The Woodbridge Papers. Burton Library, De

troit. Journals covering Woodbridge's long period of politics.

Biographies Father Gabriel Richard

1. Ellsworth, R. H.: An Early Visitor [to Marquette's grave]. Source ma

terial for study of Father Richard's extensive travels. M.P.H.C.
Vol. XXVIII.

2. Girardin, J. A.: Ufe and Times of Father Gabriel Richard. Lansing.

1887.

3. Weadock, Thomas A. K: A Catholic Priest in Congress. M.P.H.C. Vol.

XXI, p. 431. Detailed account of this remarkable man's career.

Biographies Lewis Cass

1. Ferris, Woodbridge N.: Michigan's Hero of the War of 1812. Complete

book on Cass, of which M.P.H.C. Vol. XXII is easier reading.

2. Hubbard, Bela: 'The Cass Farm and Homestead." Address before the

M.P.H.C. Vol. i, p. 357.

3. McLaughlin, Andrew C.: Life of Lewis Cass. New York. 1891. Best

comprehensive account of Cass's life and times.

Biographies The Mason Family

i. Burton, Clarence M.: Introduction to the Mason Papers. Burton Library,

Detroit. See also M.P.H.C. Vol. XXXV, p. 14.
x Dictionary of American Biography: Vol. XII, p. 375 et seq.
3. Fuller, George N., Ph.D.: Governor Mason of Michigan. A publication

of the State Historical Commission, 1927.

430 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

4. Fuller, Mrs. George N.: "The Boy Governor of Michigan." Article in

the Michigan Republican, 1936.

5. Hemans, Lawton T.: The Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason.

32 chapters. Published by the State of Michigan. Second edition,
1930. Inspired defense of Governor Mason. See Appendix.

6. Keys, Jane Griffith, M.A.: The Mason Lineage and Arms. Reprinted

from Genealogical Review. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXXV, p. 605.

7. Lancaster, Robert A,: Historic Virginia Homes and Churches. 1915.

History of Guns ton Hall and Raspberry Plain.

8. Mason, Miss Emily V.: Autobiography of an Octogenarian. 1905. Ex

cerpts in M.P.H.C. Vol. XXXV, p. 238.

9. Mason, Stevens T.: Letters to ]ohn T, Mason. Burton Library, Detroit.

Early Michigan Newspapers

1. The Ann Arbor Weekly Emigrant. Weekly, 1829-1830. Name changed

to Argus, 1835. Files in Clements Library, Ann Arbor and Burton
Library, Detroit.

2. The Detroit Free Press. Daily, 1834 to date. Detroit City Library.

3. The Detroit Journal. Daily, 1829-1833. Burton Library, Detroit. Later

became the Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, controlled
by Whig Party. Files in Burton Library, Detroit.

4. The Jac1(sonburgh Sentinel. Weekly, 1834-1845. Jackson City Library.

Travel in Michigan, 1830-1840

1. Beebe, Silas: Utica, N. Y., to Ingham County, Mich. 1835. M.P.H.C.

Vol. i, p. 187.

2. Dunbar, Seymour: A History of Travel in America New York. 1937.

Story of the Chicago Road and early canals in Michigan. A par
ticularly good account of strap railroad construction, and traffic on
the early railroads of Michigan.

3. Dye, Mrs. Richard: Coming to Michigan. Diary of trip from Herkimer,

N. Y., to Ionia, Mich., in 1837. M.P.H.C. Vol. VIII, p. 260.

4. Farmer, John: The Emigrant's Guide, or Pocket Gazeteer of the Sur

veyed Parts of Michigan, with maps. New York, 1830.

5. Goodrich, Enos N.: Across Michigan Territory in 1834. M.P.H.C. Vol.

XXVI,p,226.

6. Haynes, Hon. Harvey: Log of Journey from Rome, N. Y., to Mac\inac

unth Powder and Clothing for the Troops at the Fort. 1833.
M.P.H.C. Vol. X, pp. 137-142.

7. Hoffman, C..R: A Winter in the West. 2 vols. New York, 1835. Journal

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 431

of an experienced traveller. Vol. i describes trip to Michigan,
l8 33-34-

8. Martineau, Harriet.: Retrospect of Western Travel. Vol. II.

9. Martineau, Harriet.: Society in America. Vol. II.

10. Northrup, Enos: First Trip to Michigan. 1830. From Ohio to Detroit
via Monroe, nearly parallel to Mason's trip from Lexington at the
same time. M.P.H.C. Vol. V, p. 60.

n. Raymond, Col. Henry: Travel from Detroit to Washington. 1829.
M.P.H.C. Vol. IV, p. ioo.

12. Wells, Jim: "The Old AAA Traveller". The Walker Tavern, on the

Chicago Turnpike, scene of many pioneer exploits. American
Automobile Association, Detroit.

13. White Pigeon (Mich.) Republican, The: Excellent anonymous article

on steamboats on Lake Erie. Reprinted in M.P.H.C. Vol. XIV,

P- 453-

14. Woodward, S. C.: New Yor% to Michigan. 1836. M.P.H.C. Vol. XIV,

P- 553-

Ban\s and Banking

1. Anonymous: "The Muster-Roll of the Wildcats!" An extremely candid

and often humorous description of all the wildcat banks in Michigan
by someone in public life who had firsthand experience with them.
Possibly Pritchette. M.P.H.C. Vol. V, p. 214.

2. Blois, John T.: The Five-Million-Dollar Loan of 1837. Essay printed in

M.P.H.C. Vol. 7, p. 145.

3. Felch, Hon. Alpheus: Early Ban\s of Michigan. A report accompany

ing a decision of the Michigan Supreme Court in 1845. Reprinted
in M.P.H.C. Vol. 7, p. 145.

4. Palmer, Gen. F.: The Old Ban\ of Michigan. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXX,

p. 410.

5. Utley, Henry M., Ph.D.: Wildcat BanJ(s of Michigan. Burton Collec

tion. Reviewed in M.P.H.C. Vol. V, p. 209.

Schools and the Development of Education

1, Comstock, Dr. O. C.: The Rev. John D. Pierce. M.P.H.C. Vol. V, p. 184.

2, Knight, George W., Ph.D.: History of the Land Grants for Michigan's

Public School System. M.P.H.C. Vol. VII, p. 17.

3, Miller, Judge Albert: Pioneer Schools of Michigan. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXII,

p.28 3 .

432 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

4. Norton, J. M.: Early Schools and Pioneer Life. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXVIII,

p. 107.

5. Pierce, John D.: Origin and Progress of Michigan's School System.

M.P.H.C. Vol. I, p. 36.

6. Salmon, Lucy M.: Education in Michigan During the Territorial Pe-

riod. M.P.H.C. Vol. VII, p. 36.

7. Ten Brook, Andrew: Rise of the University of Michigan. M.P.H.C.

Vol. XXVI, p. 300.

8. Utley, Henry M.: Henry Phillips Tappan, First President of the Uni

versity of Michigan. MP.H.C. Vol. V, p. 27.

9. Van Buren, A. D. P.: Log Schoolhouse Era in Michigan. M.P.H.C.

Vol. XVIII, p. 107.

10. Van Buren, A. D. P.: Old Academy and Seminary, the Classic Schools
of the Pioneer Days. M.P.H.C. Vol. XVIII, p. 397.

City of Detroit 1830-1840

1. Bates, Hon. George C.: Bygones of Detroit. 1832-36. M.P.H.C. Vol.

XXII, p. 305.

2. Bates, Hon. George C.: General Hugh Brady. MP.H.C. Vol. II, p. 573.

3. Burton, Clarence M.: Detroit in 1832. MP.H.C. Vol. XXVII, p. 163.

4. Detroit City Clerk's Office: Records, 1830-1840.

5. Detroit News: A Survey of Detroit in 1837. M.P.H.C. Vol. X, p. 102.

6. Dewey, F. A.: Some Sketches of Long Ago: Detroit from 1838-1840.

M.P.H.C. Vol. XIV, p. 528.

7. Dickinson, Moses F.: What The City's Earliest Directory [1837] Shows.

MP.H.C. Vol. XXVIII, p. 585.

8. Fitch, Rev. W.: Reminiscences of Detroit, 1838-1842. MP.H.C. Vol. V,

P-53*.

9. Ford, Dr. Henry A.: Sketch of Detroit, 1838. MP.H.C. Vol. X, p. 97.

10. Holmes, Dr. J. C.: The Old American Hotel, Detroit. MP.H.C. Vol. I,

P-43I-

11. Hubbard, Bela: When Detroit Was Young. M.P.H.C. Vol I, p. 351.

12. Israel, Walter (Ex-Chief, Detroit Fire Department): History of the Old

Detroit Fire Department, 1840 Onward. MP.H.C. Vol. IV, p. 410.
This department organized during Mason's residence in Detroit.

13. McCabe, Julius P. Bolivar: Directory of the City of Detroit, with its En

virons, and Register of Michigan for the Year 1837. Burton Col
lection, Burton Library, Detroit.

14. Norvell, Col. Freeman: History of the Times of General John Norvell,

by his Grandson, M,P.H,C, Vpl III, p. 140.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 433

15. Palmer, Thomas Witherell: Detroit Sixty 7 ears Ago. (1838) M.P.H.G.

Vol. XXXI, p. 490.

16. Phclps, Col. William: Detroit in the Year 1835. M.P.H.C. Vol. IV,

P- 459-

17. Smith, Mrs. Julia Talbot: Reminiscences of Detroit, 1835. M.P.H.C.

Vol. XXXV, p. 682.

1 8. Thompson, A.: Detroit in 1833. M.P.H.C. Vol. i, p. 395.

19. Woodman, Elias S.: Early Recollections of Detroit, 1837. M.P.H.C. Vol.

XVIII, p. 455.

The Patriot War (1837)

1. Bishop, Levi S.: The Patriot War of 183?. M.P.H.C. Vol. XII, p. 414.

2. Dougall, James: That So-Called Battle of Windsor. Vol. VII, p. 82.

3. McFarlan, Robert: The Battle of Fighting Island. M.P.H.C. Vol. VII,

p. 89.

4. Ross, Robert S.: The Patriot War. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXI, p. 509.

The Toledo War (1835)

1. Brown, Gen. Joseph: The Battle of Phillips' Corners. M.P.H.C. Vol. XII,

p. 409.

2. Detroit Free Press: Accounts by "Front-Line Correspondent", 1835.

3. Hollo way, F. M.: History of Hillsdale County. Eyewitness description

of the entire war by a "survivor". M.P.H.C. Vol. I, p. 170.

4. Moore, J. Wilkie: How They Foughtl M.P.H.C. Vol. VII, p. 69.

5. Norvell, Col. Freeman: History of the Times of Gen. John Norvctt, by

his Grandson. Norvell was a prominent figure in this dispute.
M.P.H.C. Vol. Ill, p. 140.

6. Soule, Anna May, M. L.: "The Southern and Western Boundaries of

Michigan." A thesis for a master's degree, carefully documented.
Excerpts in M.P.H.C. Vol. XXVII, p. 346.

7. Stuart, L. G.: Verdict for Michigan. (How the Upper Peninsula became

a part of Michigan.) M.P.H.C. Vol. VII, p. 262.

The Indians of Michigan
i. Brunson, Mrs. C. C.: Pioneer Life Among the Indians. M.P.H.C, Vol.

XXVIII, p. 161.
a. Copley, Alexander: The Pottawatoml. History of the tribe. M.P.H.C.

Vol. XIV, p. 256.

434 STEVENS THOMSON MASON

3. Goss, Dwight: Indians of the Grand River Valley. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXX,

p. 172.

4. House Documents, Michigan State Legislature: Annuities paid to

Pottawatomi, 1824 and 1826, until 1830.

5. Osband, M. D.: Indians of Michigan. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXIX, p. 697.

6. Wake, Mrs. Minnie B.: Our Forerunners: A Vanished People. Lecture.

M.P.H.C. Vol. XXXVIII, p. 318.

Pioneer Life in Michigan, 1830-1840

Van Buren, A. D. P.: Amusements of the Early Settler. M.P.H.C. Vol.

V, p. 304.

Foes of the Pioneer; Fever and Ague; Mosqui
toes. M.P.H.C. Vol. V, p. 300.
What the Pioneers Ate; How They Fared.
MJP.H.C. Vol. V, p. 293.

1. Ann Arbor Argus, The: Price lists of acreage, labor and crops, weekly^

1830-1835. And many other personal reminiscences in this collec
tion. Michigan Historical Collections, Univ. of Mich., Ann Arbor.

2. Beal, William H., PhD.: Pioneer Life in Southern Michigan in th?

i8 3 o's. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXXII, p. 236.

3. Cutcheon, Byron M.: Log Cabin Times and Log Cabin People. M.P.H.C.

Vol. XXIX, p. 609.

4. Driggs, Alfred Latourette: Early Days in Michigan f 1831-1836.

M.P.H.C. Vol. X, p. 57.

Mason's Internal Improvements Project

1. Bliss, A. N.: Land Grants for Internal Improvements, 1837. M.P.H.C.

Vol. VII, p. 52.

2. Comstock, Dr. O. C.: Internal Improvements. M.P.H.C. Vol. i, p. 46.

3. Frost, Clarence: Early Railroads in Michigan. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXXVIII,

p. 498.

4. Gilbert, John: Railroads in Michigan. See especially the chapter en-

tided "The Great Conspiracy", showing loss to investors in the
Whig manipulation of the Michigan Central Railroad. Reviewed
in M.P.H.C. Vol. XXXI, p. 232.

5. Hedrick, Wilbur O., Ph.D.: "Social and Economic Aspects of Michi

gan's Early History." A doctorate thesis, with separate bibliography.
Reviewed by the author in M.P.H.C. Vol. XXXIX, p. 327.

6. Hemans, Lawton T.: "Internal Improvements" chapter from Life and

Times of Stevens T. Mason. Best analysis of this project available.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 435

7. Ingersoll, John M.: Clinton and Kalamazoo Canal Celebration. M.P.H.C.

Vol. V, p. 469.

8. Joy, James F,: Railroad History of Michigan. M.P.H.C. Vol. XXII, p. 327.

Maps and Charts

Burton Collection: Map of Detroit, 1835, outlining every structure then

existing in the city.

Map of Detroit, 1834, accompanying census of 1834.
Chart of Detroit, 1830, entitled "Judge's Original Plan of Detroit,

1830", showing radiating street plan.
Surveyors' sketch of Michigan-Ohio boundary dispute, with chart

of conflicting lines, 1835.
Blois* Gazeteer of Michigan, 1830, 1835, 1837. With maps of all

Territorial roads; locations of post offices, inns; descriptions

of counties, towns and villages; statistical tables and Directory

for Emigrants, with Michigan Census of 1834. Some copies

also in Detroit City Library.

INDEX

Abbott, James, 176
Adam, John J., 220, 250
Adams, James Q,, 209

, John, 24, 66, 82-3

- , John Quincy, 64, 66, 79, 82-3,

120, 232, 234
Adamses, 243
Adamsville, Mich., 323
Adrian, Mich., 160, 182, 266, 291, 323,

388, 414

Toledo Railroad, 323, 388

Albany, 92, 346

Albion, Mich., 323

Alger, Russell, 423

Alleghenies, 44

Alpha, 275

American Hotel, 97, 208, 230, 379

Amherstbtirg, 332, 336

Anderson, (Lieut.) (Major) Robert,

335

Angell Hall, 275
Angola, Ind., 192
Ann, 189

Ann (schooner), 380
Ann Arbor, Mich,, 127, 144, 184-6,

194, 198, 219, 239, 243, 248, 262,

*74-5, 187, 3 02 i 3>, 3 22 -3i 34*

357. 3&>

Argus, 171, 248, 275-7, 280, 299

Land Company, 274

Western Emgrant, 144, 171, 275

Anti-Slavery Party, 255
Arkansas, 232
Armistead, Robert, 45
Arnold, Benedict, 362
"Ashland," 44, 64-6, 84
Astor House, 339-40, 345
, John Jacob, 206
Astors, 243
Auburn, N, Y., 258
Austin, Sarah, 269

B

Backus, Lieut. Elector, 158
Bacon, Daniel S., 281, 354
Baldwin, 313
Baltimore, 90, 173, 197, 205, 385/387

Bank examiners, 289, 295
Bank of Brest, 302

Detroit, 301

Lake St. Clair, 300-1

Manchester, 303

Michigan, 264, 289, 303, 317, 373

Saline, 303

Sandstone, 299, 306

Shiawassee, 299

Superior, 303

the United States, 59, 101, 364,

373
Barry, Mich., 299, 306

, Catherine Mason, 35, 50, 84-5

., John, 60, 66, 75

, William T., 33-7, 44i 48, 54-5,

67, 75-7. 79. 84, 87, 152
Bath County, Ky., 58
Battery Park, 342
Battle of New Orleans, 45

the Thames, 42, 155, 212

Tippecanoe, 42

Worcester, 24

Battle Creek, Mich., 184, 323
Beau Brummell, 105, 131
Beaubien farm, 106
Beaubiens, 165, 224
Beaver Creek, 58

Iron Works, 66

Beeson, Lewis, 8

Belgian sisters, 114

Bell, Digby, 289, 301, 303, 307-8

Belle Isle, 163, 247, 265

Belvedere, 301

Benton, Jesse, 55

, Thomas H., 232

Berrien,

-, Mrs., 84

Bertrand, Mich., 323

Biddle, Edward R., 342-3, 351, 394

, Major John, 113, 222-3

Bill of Rights, 24
Bingay, John Crichton, 245

, Malcolm, 148, 245

"Bison Street," 38

Blackfeet, 174

Black Hawk, 155-8, 162, 172

War, 156, 161-2, 416

Blackstone, 29-30
Commentaries, 29

437

INDEX

Bladensburg, Md., 52
Blissfield, Mich., 160
Blois' Gazeteer, 225, 325
Blue Ridge Mountains, 38-9, 65
Board of Loan Commissioners, 337
Bonnick, Sydney, 8
Bonnie, Prince Charlie, 24
Boone, Daniel, 7, 34-5, 37-8, 44

Trail, 37

"Boone's Trace," 38

Boosters' Club, 317

Boston, 165, 171, 265, 275

Boyd, Dr., 410

Brady, Gen. Hugh, 158, 331-3, 335-6

Guards, 246, 253, 313, 3151 33*

416
Branch, Mich., 323

, Mrs., 84

Bread lines, 265
Brest, Mich., 301, 303
British Army in Canada, 330
Bronson, Mich., 184
Brooks, Col. Edward, 369

, Major, 103

Brown, Dr., 116

, Gen. Joseph, 159-61, 197, 199-201

University, 268

Buffalo, N. Y., 92, no, 162, 324, 333,

346-7> 359, 397 ^
Bureau of Indian Affairs, 82, 87
Burr Conspiracy, 31, 121
Burton Library, 419
Busch, Charles, 116
Butler, Benjamin F., 195, 204, 240
Byron, Lord, 254, 349

Cadilac, 114, 1 66

Cahill, Judge Edward, 422

Calhoun, John G, 79-80

County, 298

California, 8, 22
Cambridge, Mass., 276
Campean, Barnabas, 265

, Joseph, 114, n6

Campeans, 165, 187, 349

Canada, 41-2, 94, 118, 295, 328, 331,

334

Land Co., 329

Canals, 318 , w , ,

Candid e, 36

Capitol Park, 108, 421-2

Carters, 25

Cascade, Mich., 301

Cass, Lewis, 88-90, 104, 106, no, 114,
119, 121, 126-30, 136-9, 147, 169,
184, 192, 196, 202, 205, 224, 226,
236, 240, 246-7, 254, 280, 384

County, 261

Cases, 349

Castle Garden, 91

Centerville, Mich., 273, 298, 323

Ceres, 248

Cerro Gardo, 52

Chamber of Commerce, 317

Charles II, 24

Chelsea, Mich., 180, 322-3

Cherokee Indians, 34, 137

Chesapeake Bay, 36, 41

Chicago, 93, 158, 160-4, * 8 3> 22 5 3 2 *- 2

3 2 4-5

River, 158

Turnpike, 280

Chipman, Henry, 153
* Cholera, 163-9, 177, *86, 226, 268, 282,

34 2 349 399> 4*3
Christmas Eve, 76
Cincinnati, 70-1, 177, 181, 186, 272
Cincinnatus, 243
Circe, 248

Citizens' Bank of Michigan, 303
City of Portsmouth, 301
Civil War, 124, 277, 309, 335, 36, 4 2
Clarke, Dr., 103
Clay, Henry, 7, 44, 54> 5^ 6 3 6 7> 75~7>

84, 121, 123-4, 280

, Mrs., 55, 63

Cleland, Charlie, 142, 151, 159

Clemens, Judge Christian, 148

Cleveland, Ohio, 305

Clinton, Mich., 160

and Kalamazoo Canal, 325, 338,

37 2 389

County, 212

River, 301, 320

Codd, George P., 421-2

"Coffin handbills," 76

Coldwater, Mich., 183, 323

College of Literature, Science and

Arts, 275

Colonial Advocate, 329
Commercial Bank of St. Joseph, 301
Conant, Shubael, 143-4
Confederate currency, 309
Conger, 301

INDEX

439

Congress, 33, 37, 53 , uo , ^6, i ?I> I?5?
189. 191* *95-<5, 202, 205-6, 213-14,
217, 227, 229, 237, 239-41, 243,
245, 379

Constantine, Mich., 323

Continental Congress, 135

Convention of Dissent, 240-1

Convis, Ezra, 219

Cooley, Judge Thomas Al, 306

Cooper, Rev. D. M., 422

Corunna, Mich., 321

Coty, 49

County of York, Ont., 329

Covington, Ky., 35

Crary, Isaac E., 213, 219, 228, 268, 281,
357

Crawford, William H., 64

Cromwell, 24

Cumberland Gap, 34-5, 37-9

Mountains, 65

"Currency Meeting or Bankers' Con
vention," 307-8

D

Davis, Jefferson, 156, 172
"Davis place," 60- 1, 66, 74
Dearborn, Mich,, 160, 323, 384
Dearbornville, Mich., 231, 299, 310,

_ t 3J* 33 x, 334

Delafield, John, 341

Desnoyer, Josie, 04

-, Judge, 114

, Peter J., n6

Desno^ers, 165

De Quindres, 165, 187, 349

Detroit 8, 22, 78, 88, 90-2, 94-102,
103, 106-33, *39 *43, H5 *5,
157-8, 161-3, 166-9, 173, 176-7,
181-3, ^5-8, 207, 210, 223-6, 228,
230, 237, 246-7, 249, 256, 261, 265,
271-2, 281-2, 287, 310-12, 316, 320-
2 327, 331, 334A 34<> 347, 352,
356, 360-4, 381, 387, 401-2, 404, 406,
413-14,416-18

City Bank, 303

Advertiser, 148, 185, 265, 347, 361,

371-2,413-14

- - and Pontiac Railroad, 318

- & St. Joseph Railroad, 227, 291-2,
3*o, 3 l8

- Bar Association, 153, 416

Courier, 08, 109, 139, 185

- Free Press, 116, 139, 142, 147, 153,
159, 170, 230, 245, 284, 369, 374-5,
384, 404, 413

Gazette, 98, 103, 153

Journal, 141-2, 146, 151

Journal and Courier, 226, 413

River, 42, 95, 119, 142, IJ$9 2(Sl?

327> 331-3

Typographical Society, 416

Young Men's Society, 171, 287

Dexter, Mich., 184, 323, 357
Dickinson, 85

Dictionary of American Biography,
24

Donelson, Major Andrew Jackson, 80,

85-6
Douglas, Frederick, 283

, Stephen A., 173

strike, 232

Dowagiac, Mich., 323
Drainage systems, 317
Dunbar, Seymour, 38

E

East Lansing, Mich., 271

East Lynne, 250

Eaton, Major, 80, 82, 84, 137

- Peggy, 80, 84-5

Economic and Social Beginnings of

Michigan, 99
Edgeworth, Miss., 114
Edwards, James M., 394
Edwardsville, Mich., 323
Elkhart, Ind., 192
Ellis, Edward, 283, 287
England 22, 26, 35, 121, 319, 349
English Channel, 24
Erie and Kalamazoo Rail Road, 291-2
Canal, 93-5, 216, 225

Co., 92

Established Church, 329
Europe, 286, 420
Evalena, 49
Exchange Bank, 308

Fairfax County, Va., 16, 25
"Family Compact," 329-30
Farmers' Bank of Homer, 298

Sharon, 302

and Mechanics' Bank of Detroit,

264, 289, 303, 373

440

INDEX

Farmers' Bank Continued

Pontiac, 300

St. Joseph, 298

History of Detroit, 226

Farmington, Mich., 384

Farasworth, Elon, 360

Federalists, 121

Felch, Alpheus, 262, 289, 299, 302-7

Fighting Island, 332-3

First Protestant Society, 117

Fitzgerald, Thomas, 360, 362

Fletcher, William Asa, 275, 281

Flint, Mich., 321

Florida, 32, 85

Forsyth, John, 207-9

Fort Brady, 389

Chissel, 38-9

Dearborn, 160

Gratiot, 164

Mason, 22

Shelby, 105, 117, 158

Sumter, 335

Wayne, 416

Fortress Monroe, Va., 163
Founding Fathers, 22, 330
France, 24

Franklin, Benjamin, 36
French and Indian War, 224

Market, 106, in

Frost-Bitten Convention, 243-4, 253-4
Fuller, 99, 150, 225, 289

, Dr. George N., 8, 185, 244

Fulton, John A., 192
Line, 192, 194

Galahad, Sir, 362

General Brady, 334

Gibralter, Mich., 247, 301

Godard, Lewis, 302

Gordon, James Wright, 354, 361, 416

Grand Rapids, Mich., 273, 321, 378

River, 127, 134, 257, 321, 326, 378

Granny Peg, 29, 36, 46, 49, 62, 66, 73,

lox, 115, 165

Grass Lake, Mich., 184, 323
Gray, Mr., 109

, Dr. Asa, 274

Grayson, Dr., 410
Great Lakes, 32, 41, 93, 217
Great Lakes, The, 229
Green Bay, 119, 207, 238

Greenly, 414
Griswold, 103
Grosse He, 223, 404
Gunston Hall, 17-18, 23-6, 32

H

Hamilton, Alexander, 16, 121
Hamtramk, 386-8
Harrington, E. B., 365-7, 369
Harris, William A., 193

Line, 194, 235

Harrison, William Henry, 42, 240-1,

382, 385, 401
Harvard Yard, 276
Hatcher, Harlan, 229
Havre, Mich., 323
Hayne, Gov., 188
Hays, John G., 313
Heidelberg, Germany, 276
Heinemann, David E., 403
Hemans, Lawton T., 46, 84, 138, 244,

348, 380, 390, 396, 407, 418-22

, Mrs., 418-20

Henry Clay, 150, 162-4, 168

"Hermitage, The," 54, 241

History of the People Called Quakers,

3*

Hog Island, 163
Holland, 95
Homer, Mich., -298
Horace, 248

Homer, John Scott, 202, 204, 207-12,
217, 232-3

, Mrs., 208, 232

Houghton, Dr. Douglas, 112, 228
House of Burgesses, 23

Representatives, 54

Houston, Sam, 7, 136

Howard, Benjamin, 33, 35, 37, 43

, Mary Mason, 35, 43

, Benjamin C., 197-8

, Jacob M., 295

Hudson River, 41, 91
Hudson's Bay Company, 329
Hull, Gen., 40, 131, 366

residence, 150

Humphrey, Levi S., 318
Hunt, James B., 318
"Hunting lodges," 334

Society, 335

Huron River Bank, 303
Hurons, 90

INDEX

441

Illinois, 78, 155-6, 234, 296
Independence Hall, 24
Indian Fields, 67

Territory, 278

Indiana, 09, 134, 160, $83, 192-3, 227,

234, 324, 343

Indians, 34-5, 39, 41, 89, 122
Ingersoll, John N., 413
Ingham,

, Mrs., 84

Internal Improvements, 291, 296, 318-

20, 326-7, 337, 344, 357, 370 , 372,

388-9, 398

County, 223, 306, 323, 402

Ionia County, Mich., 212

Iowa, 89

Irish Hills, Mich., 183

Irving, Washington, 47, 173, 188, 211,

293, 343, 409

Jackson, Andrew, 7, 43, 46, 53-7, 67,
75-7i 79 84-5, 97, 112, 120-3, 136-7,
130-40, 145-6, 150, 195, 197-8, 202,
204-5, 207, 211, 227, 236, 241, 243,
245-6, 263, 280

-, Mich., 8, 184-5, 2 33i *57 273,
209, 322-3, 388

County, Mich., 184, 247, 303

Bank, 299

, John, 36-7, 46, 49, 65-6, 73

Prison, 258, 304, 398

, Rachel, 86

Jacksonburgh, 127, 168

Jamestown, 24, 29

January, Mr., 47-40-50

Jefferson, Mich., 247

, Thomas, 66, 82-3, in, 121, 242

Jemmy, 189

Johnson, Col. Richard, 153

, Richard M., 211-12, 384

Jones, DeGarmo, 230, 375, 391, 394

, George W., 213

Jonesyille, 158, 160

June insurgents, 65

Juno, 248

K

Kalamazoo, Mich., 184, 277, 281, 322-3,
325-6,415

River, 303

Keens, Hotel, 55

Kensington, Mich., 301

Kent County, Mich., 212, 301

Kentucky, 19, 29, 33-4, 37-8, 40-6, 49,
58, 61, 64-5, 70, 73, 75, 94-5, 101-2,
103, 123, 142, 153, 255, 283, 326,
. 335, 3<58

King, James, 342

"Knobs, The," 65

Kundig, Father Martin, 114, 165, 181,
187

Lake Michigan, 134, 163, 192, 205, 229,

261, 293, 303, 325

of the Desert, 238

Ontario, 321

St. Clair, 164, 301, 320, 325

Shore Railroad, 388

and Michigan Southern Railroad,

388
Superior, 119, 205, 207, 228-9,

238, 293

Lancaster, Pa., 150

Lansing, Mich., 8, 223, 309, 419, 422
Lapeer, Mich., 321

Bank, 300

Larned, Charles, in, 187

Lathrop, Edwin H., 415

Lebanon, Ky., 56

Lee, Robert E., 52, 420

Lees, 25

Leesburg, Va., 20, 26, 29-30, 34, 37

Lenawee County, Mich., 198, 295

Bank, 301-2

LeRoy, Daniel, 261

Lexington, Ky., 35-9, 40-1, 43, 48, 53-7,

59-60, 62-73, 77, loo-i, 114
-Gazette, 40, 53-4, 57, 75
Licking River, 71
Lincoln, Abraham, 45-6, 78, 156, 173,

219,296

Livingstones, 243
Lockport, 92
Locofoco, 363
London, England, 18, 30, 260

, Ont., 42

Loudon County, Va., 15, 26
Louisa County, Va., 45
Louisiana, 68, 80, 278, 368, 409
Purchase, 32, 35

442

INDEX

Louisville, 70, 76, 177

Lower Canada, 328

Lucas County, Ohio, 190, 193-4, 200-1

Gov., 190-1, 197, 200, 202, 205-6,

214, 235, 239, 323

Lyceum Society (Staten Island), 409
- and Historical Society (Detroit),

i*3
Lyon, Lucius, 205-6, 214, 222, 228, 230-

3, 235-A 357-8, 386

M

McCarty, Ann Thomson Mason, 20, 32

, Col, John, 50-1

McCartys, 25
McDonnell, Judge, 103
McKenney, Col., 82, 87-90, 126
McKinstrey, Col. David C., 143-4, 203,

318

McKnight, Sheldon, 148, 230, 413
Mack Andrew, 143-4, 22 &
Macks, 149

Mackenzie, William Lyon, 329-30
Mackinac, Mich., 205, 273

Island, 206

Straits, 331

Mackintosh, 36
Macomb, John, 265

County, 301

Madison, James, 31-2, 82, 121

Ma-ka-tai-she-kia-kiak, 155

Maiden, Ont., 184, 332

Manhattan, 01

Manila, 360

Mann, Ambrose Dudley, 100

Mansion House, 98, 104, 106, 126, 150,

154, 175, 202, 224

Mantelli, Madame, 67-8

, Louise, 68

, Marie, 68

, Waldemar, 68

Marat, 82

Marble Cemetery, N. Y., 412, 418

Marquette, Mich., 277

Marshall, Mich,, 168-9, 184-5, 2<5<5 > 2<58

27^ 3*3, 36*
Martineau, Harriet, 188-9, 226, 247-8,

*55 2 7.8
Mason, Mich., 323, 402, 418

, Armistead T., 22, 26, 31, 50-1

, Catherine (sister of John T.),

32-3

, Catherine (daughter of John
T.), 50, 67, 114-15, 176-8, 181, 256
, Charles, 22

, Cornelia (daughter of John T.),
115, 144-6
County, 402

, Dorothea Eliza, 387, 420
, Elizabeth Mok, 35, 39, 43-5, 52,
fo-3, 73-5, 79> *oi, 104, 109, 114,
135, 170* *77 180-*. 277-8, 293,
348, 359, 364, 367-8
, Emily Virginia (daughter of
John T.), 45, 49'5> 67-8, 74"7*
xoo-i, 104, 114-15, 131, 165, 170,
172, 176-7, 179, 181, 188-9, 2 5<$
272, 277-8, 293-4, 335-A 348-50i
352, 367, 381, 408-13, 420-1
, George, I (British Colonel), 24-5
, II, 25
, III, 25
, IV, 25
, George (patriot), 17-18, 22-4,

37

-, James Murray, 22
, John Thomson, 15, 18, 20
, John T. (brother of Ajrmistead) ,
26-7, 40, 44-8, 54-5, 57-9, 61-73,
77, 79, 84-90, 94-100, 108, 112, 118,
121, 124-9, J 34-<5, ite *&?i 188,
278-9, 364, 367-8, 385, 409-13, 420
, John Young (Secretary of the
Navy), 22

, Julia Phelps, 349-50, 352-3, 359-
<5o, 3<$5 37<5~7 38o, 382, 384-5,
387, 391, 404-13

, Laura (daughter of John T.)
50, 67, 114-15, 181, 367-8, 381
, Mary daughter of John T.), 32,
40-50, 62

, Mary (sister of John T.), 32-3,
219
, Mary Armistead, 19, 32-4, 64-5,

>45

, Col. Stevens Thomson, 22, 26, 31,

34-7. 135

, Stevens Thomson II, 20, 29, 32,

, Stevens Thomson (son of Ar
mistead), 52

, Stevens T. (grand-nephew), 8,
22, 421

, Stevens Thomson, Jr, (son of
Governor), 360, 376-7, 385

INDEX

443

, Sunshine Mary (daughter of

John T.), 104, 115, 180

, Thaddeus Phelps, 407

, Theodosia, 62, 67, 101, 114-15,

135, 180
, Thomson (Chief Justice, Va.),

*2-3 30, 32
, Thomson (son of Geo. IV),

26, 30
- -, Dixon Line, 22

Hall, 275, 402
School, 402

Slidell incident, 22

and Pritchette, 365, 369, 404

Massachusetts, 195

Maumee Bay, 190, 192, 200

Canal, 194

River, 334

Menominee River, 205, 238

Mercer, Charles Fenton, 51

"Mercury," 322

Mexican War, 22, 53

Mexico, 278

Michigan, 7, 36, 40, 88-91, 94-95, 101,
118-19, 121, 133, 147, 151-2, 158,
161-2, 173-5, 182-3, 185, 189-92,
200, 204-5, 209, 213, 215-17, 221-6,
232-54, 259, 264, 275, 288, 292, 309,
319, 325, 327, 334-5, 341-3, 351-4,
358-9, 362-3, 370-1, 376, 382-4, 394,
396, 398, 400-1, 413, 415

- Agricultural College, 277

Center, 398

- Central Railroad, 292, 310, 315,
318, 321-3, 342, 357, 372, 388, 398-9

City, Ind., 322, 324
College of Mines, 277

- Constitution, 215, 220, 227, 231,

261
Historical Commission, 8, 186,

3* 5 '. 4*9
- Historical Society, 8, 254, 420

Normal College, 277

- Northern Railroad, 318, 320,

388-9

. Observer, 359

Pioneer and Historical Collec
tion, 204, 217, 225, 249

- School System, 268-73, 399

Southern Railroad, 292, 318, 323-

5, 338, 342, 388

State Bank, 350, 363, 366

State College, 271, 277

State Museum, 68, 309

Volunteers, 176

Middle Temple, 30

West, 89, 95, 156, 320

Military Road, 325

Millers' Bank of Washtenaw, 303

^Mineral Point, Wis., 119, 213

Range, 238

Mississippi River, 41, 118, 155, 207

Missouri River, 119

Territory, 35

Moir, David Macbeth, 28

, Elizabeth, 28-9

, Mrs. 28, 35

, Prof. William, 27-8, 36-8, 46-8,

60, 66

, Mrs. 101, 135

Moirfield, 28-29, 31, 35, 79, 90

Mona Lisa, 339

Monroe, James, 31-3, 41, 53-6, 77, 82-3,

121

, Mrs., 33

, Mich., 40, 199, 209, 262, 266, 273,

281, 283, 289, 302-3, 305, 312, 323,

338, 342, 388

Montieth, Rev. John, 166
Montreal, Que., 321, 331

River, 238

Moore, Hannah, 114

Mormons, 398

Morris Canal and Banking Company,

343-4, 347-8, 350, 354-5, 364-5, 373-

6, 390, 392, 394, 419
Morrison, 67
Mott, Dr., 410-12
Mottville, 167-8, 323
Mount Clemens, Mich., 148, 325, 338
Sterling, 59-61, 66-7, 69, 72, 74,

76-7, 79, loo-i, 145, 406

Vernon, 18, 25

Mud Lick, 67

Mullett, John, 107

Mundy, Edward, 212, 219, 281, 287,

3 r 3 337 34 r 35
Murphy, Frank, 362
Muskegon, 378

N

Napoleon, 187
National Hotel, 384
Nauvoo, 111., 398
Navy Island, 334

444

INDEX

Newark, N. J., 343, 420
New Buffalo, Mich., 322-4
New England, 42, 93-4, 250

Town Meeting, 243

New Haven, Conn., 276

New Jersey, 343, 390, 419

New Orleans, 43, 54, 76, 216, 278,

2 93 335

New Salem, 156

New York American, 82

Bar Association, 406, 412

Central Lines, 388

City, 8, 90-1, 94, 171, 173, 177,

188-9, 20 5? 2ll i 22 6, 2 4<> 260-1,
265, 269, 272, 276, 286, 293, 298,

3 OI > 3 2 7 336, 338, 347> 35, 35 2
359-60, 367-8, 384, 397, 415

State, 42, 272, 335, 353, 368

Times, 420

Newberry, Oliver, 143-4

Newberrys, 149

Niagara, Ont., 336, 346

Nichols, Haskell, 8

Niles, Mich., no, 167, 226, 273, 322-3

Northwest, 35, 123, 132, 229, 409

Fur Co., 206

Journal, 98, 109-10, 112, 139, 226

Territory, 118

Norton, John, Jr., 350

Norvell, Col. John, 176, 178, 195-6,
222-3, 22 7-8, 230-1, 233, 236, 357
, Mrs., 176

o

Oak, Tiston M., 6

Oakland County Scouts, 99, 160

Ohio, 119, 124, 134, 160, 180, 189-94,

197-200, 227, 234-5, 26 5, 3*8 3 2 3-5,

335

River, 34, 65, 70-1, 76, 177

Oklahoma, 99

"Old Hickory," 54, 240

Olympian Springs, 63

O'Neil, Peggy, 84

Ontario, Province of, 353, 391

Oswego, N. Y., 346

Ottawa County, Mich., 212

Otter Creek, 305

Owingsville, Ky., 58-9, 66, 100, 419

Owosso, Mich., 321

Oxford, England, 276

Palmer, Mich., 273

, George, 176, 180, 365

, Thos., 97, 103

Palmers, 114, 149, 176, 282, 349

Palmyra, Mich., 160, 247

Palo Alto, Gal., 276

Panama Canal, 229

Panic of 1837, 263, 265, 267

Papineau, Louis, 330

Paris, 82-3

Parks, 317

Parliament, 328

Parma, Mich., 249

Parton, 54, 56, 80

Patagonia, 93

Patriot War, 295, 327-36, 416

Perl, 36, 49, 66, 73, 101

Penn, William, 36

Pennsylvania, 150, 152, 181, 244, 272,

335

Perry, Commodora, 42
Perrysburg, Ohio, 192, 198-200
"Peter Cooper," 313
Pettibone, Samuel, 167
Phelps, Julia, 293-5, 299, 327, 336,

339-40, 348

, Thaddeus, 293, 348, 405, 411

Philadelphia, 38, 84, 90-1, 150, 177,

197, 264-5, 2 9*i 3*3 35*. 364
Pierce, Rev. John D., 220, 268-9, 2 77

, Mrs., 169, 268

Pinckney, 82

"Pioneer No. i," 313

Pittsburgh, Pa., 34, 202

Plato, 32, 248

"Pleasure Car," 292

Pontiac, 89

, Mich., 144, 167, 186, 222, 250,

261, 273, 300
Porcupine Mountains, 238
Port Huron, Mich., 320-1, 335, 365

Lawrence, Ohio, 183, 185, 191-2

Township, 194

Porter, Gen. Andrew, 150

, Benjamin, 258

, David Rittenhouse, 150

, George B., 149-51, 162, 168-9,

174-5, 181-3, 185, 202

, Mrs., 150-1

Postmaster General, 75

INDEX

445

Potomac River, 16-17, 2 5 3 1
PottaWatomis, 90, 127, 158
Pray, Ezekiel, 244
Preston, Senator, 205
Prime, Ward and King, 342-3
Princeton, N. J., 276
Pritchette, Kintzing, 175-6, 219, 262,
289, 299, 301, 303, 305, 307, 364-6,

3*9. 373-<5> 380, 385, 39*i 405
Proctor, Gen., 42
Prussia, 269-70
Public buildings, 317
Pulaski, Va., 38
Put in Bay, 253

Q

Quebec, 328
Queen Elizabeth, 49
Quillen, Robert, 57

R

Railroads, 288, 291-2, 310, 317-18

Randolph, Dr., 82

Raspberry Plain, 26, 30, 32-4, 37, 47,

51-2,65

Red River Valley, 135, 278, 368
Redstone Fort, Pa., 34
Reed, Ebenezer, 153-4
Republican Party, 233
Retrospect of Western Travel, 189
Review of the Progress of Ethical

Philosophy, 36
Revolutionary War, 15, 17, 26, 30, 38,

135. i5<> 22 4 243, 328
Rice, Dr. Randall S., 163, 186
Richard, Father Gabriel, 166
Richmond, Va., 24, 37, 409
Ripon, Wis., 233
River Basin and Lake Erie Rail Road,

312

Raisin massacre, 40-3, 155

Roads, 318

Robert (gardener), 49

Rochester, N. Y,, 284

Rocket -, 185

Rocky Mountains, 23$

Ronieyn, Theodore, 345-7, 355, 392-3,

395

Roundheads, 24
Rowland, (Major) (Col.) Isaac S.,

176, 178-0, 199-200, 217, 246, 256,

366, 416

, Kate Mason, 179, 367-8, 411

, Major Thomas, 113

Rowlands, 336
Rush, Richard, 197-8

Saginaw, oo, 122, 144

Bay, 255

St. Charles Hotel, 216, 293

Joseph, Mich., 183-5, 2 93 *9&

Louis, Mo., 119

Marys Falls Canal, 228, 293, 296,

320, 389
Saline, Mich., 160

Bank of, 300

Salt, 291

Sam (gardeners), 49

Sandstone, Mich., 247, 299, 303

Creek, 249, 303

Sandwich, Ont, 336

San Francisco, 22

Sanilac County, 301

Sangatuck, Mich., 325

Sarnia, Ont., 321, 335

Schoolcraft, Henry R., 113, 206

Schwartz, Gen, John E., 143

Scotland, 319

Scott, Gen. Winfield, 157, 160, 335-6

, Guards, 416

, Sir Walter, 349

Secretary of State, 65, 140, 208

War, 137

"Serenity Hall," 45-50, 53, 55, 57, 59,

62, 79, 87, 101, 420
Shaler, Charles, 202
Sheldon, John P., 103
Sheldon Thompson, 163
Shiawassee, Mich., 303

Bank, 301

County, 303, 308

Sibley, Solomon, 153

Six Nations, 224

Simmons, 99

Singapore, Mich., 301, 303

Sinkiang, 70

Sioux, 174

Sisters of Mercy, 165, 187

Smith, Adam, 36, 78

- , John, 103

446

INDEX

Smith Continued

, Alvin, 220, 261

Smoky Mountains, 38

Social Register, The, 304* 409

Society in America, 189

Soo Canal, 229, 235, 238, 293, 296, 320,

389
South Africa, 90

Bend, Ind., 192, 324

Carolina, 188

Specie Circular, 264
Spoils System, 243
Springwells, 164
Spy in Michigan, The, 283
S.S. Governor Mason, 378
Stafford County, Va., 25
Staffordshire, England, 25
Stage coach companies, 318
Staten Island, 407-8
Steamboat Hotel, 175, 379
Stephenson, George, 185
Stinckney, Major, 199, 253

, Two, 199, 208

Stony Creek, 303

Stuart, Robert, 390, 392, 394

Suez, Mich., 301

Canal, 229

Superior, 162
Superior, Wis., 238
Svengali, 123
Swanberg, W, A., 8
Sylvan Center, Mich., 247
Sylvania Township, Ohio, 194
Syracuse, N. Y., 276, 291, 346

Tammany, 211-12, 243, 384, 412
Taylor, Zachary, 156
Tecumseh, 35, 89, 155, 266

, Mich., 160, 198

Ten Eyck, U. S. Marshal Conrad, 286,

311, 316, 319, 333, 379
Ten Eycks, 160, 231, 254
Tennessee, 37-8, 76, 80, 136
Territorial Council, 119
Territorial Road, 227, 310-11, 323
Texas, 32,^135
Thames River, 42
Thespian Corps, 112-13
Thomsons, 25
Tibet, 70, 243
"Tippecanoe and Tyler too," 382

Tishey (cook) , 49, 66
Todd, Levi, 44

, Mary, 45

Toledo, Ohio, 183, 190-2, 198-201, 205-

6, 291, 302, 324
Strip, 206, 214, 228, 234, 238-9,

284
War, 191, 201, 208-9, 221, 223,

2 35, 253, 357
Toronto, Ont., 321, 329
Transylvania Land Co., 38

University, 66-7, 74

Trowbridge, Charles C., 113, 281,

286-7

Trowbridges, 281, 349
Troy, N. Y., 177-8, 180-1, 381
Turner, Eliphalet, 167, 399
, Robert, 186

U

United States, 42, 121, 229, 270, 328,

33o-?4 397

Army, 229, 336, 389

Bank, 46, 48, 264, 289-90, 342, 351

Constitution, 23-4, 26

U. S. S. Constitution, 286

Senate, 50, 54, 105, 151, 386, 389,

39<5

University of Edinburgh, 28
Michigan, 166, 215, 237, 262, 272-

7, 358, 370

Library, 274

Upper Canada, 328

Peninsula of Michigan, 207, 214,

228-9, 231-2, 235-6, 238-9, 277
Utica, N, Y., 346

Van Buren, Martin, 240-1, 250, 281,

331, 334, 362, 382
Vanderbilts, 243
Van Fossen, Gen. John, 315
Villa, 156
Virginia, 15-16, 18-19, 22, 24, 28, 30,

3<5, 46-7, 65, 123, 173, 189-90, 208,

2 55
Voltaire, 36

W

Wagstaff, Capt. Robert, 286
Wales, 319

INDEX

447

Walker, Capt., 164

Walk-in-the-Water, 162

War of 1812, 35, 51, 54, 65, 130, 152,

155, 211, 3*9-30* 382, 384
Warrenton, Va,, 202
Warner, Fred M., 421-2
"Warrior's Path, The," 38
Washington, D* C, 19, 31, 37* 55 79-
80, 82, 85-6, 89-92, 09, 121, 126,
136, 142, 171, 174, 177, i79 *8i,
192, 195-8, 206, 213-14, 224, 228,
231, 240-1, 254, 335-6, 362, 364,
368, 398-

- Globe j 141, 150
, George, 18, 25-6, 57, 78, 81-3,

156, 330

- Square, 339
Washtenaw County, 244, 287, 302
Wayne, Gen., 224
, Mich., 323
Wayne County, 287

Bank, 209

Wealth of Nations, 36, 78

Webster, Daniel, 280, 401

, Daniel, Jr., 280

Weems, Parson, 78

Weese, John, 284

Weinert, Albert, 422

Wells, Hezekiah, 281

West, 15, 191 29, 3*" 2 ' 57i 6 5i 3 2 4> 39 8

Western State Teachers' College, 277

Whig, 121

White Earth River, 119

- House, 36, 8o~i, 84-5, in, 137-8,

146, 177, 263

Peogeon, Mich., 273
_ Rock City, 301
Whiting, Dr. John L., 163, 187
Whitney, G. L., 284
"Wigwam, The," 80, 84
Wildcat money, 288-* 10

Wilderness Road, 38

Willard, Miss Emma, 177

William and Mary College, 26-7, 30,

William Penn, 163-4

Williams, Gen. John R., 158-61, 173

and Wilson's warehouse, 384

Williamses, 281

Williamsburg, Va., 23, 46, 79

Windsor, Ont., 266, 331, 336

Wing, Austin E., 171

Winnebagoes, 157, 183

Wisconsin, 89, 118, 133, 157, 174, 182,

206, 233
Witherell, Judge Benjamin, 281, 391-3

, James, 88, 122, 125

, Mrs., 187

Witherells, 114, 149, 349

"Wolverine," 323

Woodbridge, William, 103, in, 121-3,
129, 132-4, 143, 146, 149, 152-4,
158, 213, 230, 238-9, 251, 260, 266,
282, 287, 295, 348, 350, 352, 354-8,
361-2, 364-6, 369, 371-77, 378-82,
386, 389-93, 395-6* 398-4 01 * 4*4

Woodbury, Levi, 246

Woodward, Judge Augustus B., in

Woodworth, Ben, 175-7, 180, 379

Worcester, England, 24

, Mass., 272

Worth, Col., 335

Worthington, Sheriff, 168

Wren, Sir Christopher, 254

Wright, Mrs. Dorothea Mason, 420-1

, Capt. William, 421

Y

Yadkin River, 38

Ypsilanti, 167, 184-6, 210, 232, 268, 277,
291, 300, 310, 312-16, 319, 3 2I > 3 2 3

110952