St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1894-07-26


These pioneers" as Senator Proc
tor says, speaking of the founders,
drought with them the common
school. the town meeting and firm
belief in the rule of the people both
in church and state"
Vermont has always been
nursery of remarka BILE men" says
the opening sentence of the book and
the subsequent pages amply prove
the statement. Besides the men who
make this remark able history, be-
sides the long succession of those
who have been at the front in
national affairs from the beginning,
the Bradleys, Robinsons, Paine,
Fisk, Seymour. Phelps, Prentiss, Col
lamer, Foote, Edmunds, Niles, Chap
man, Lyon, Mallory, Slade, Hall,
Marsh, Poland and Willard, besides
such famous sons as Stephen A.
Douglas, Thaddeus Stevens, Chester
A Arthur and Levi P. Morton, IL is
shown that 100 sons of Vermont
have been in congress from other
states, and innumerable others have
been governors and judges, and
some state courts are almost entire
~ made up of Vermonters. 1t is
shown by Gov. Fuller in his ad-
mirabl sketch of Vermont Inventors
that nearly 1000 patents have been
issued to Vermonters, and over 1000
of them the first of their class, and
including in the products of her
minds the steamboat, the telegraph,
the electric railway, the ocean cable,
the present scale, the modern post
age stamp, the cooking stove, the
typewriter, the revolver, rule mark
ing, slate and marble cutting
machines, and many of the other de-
vices which have done SO much to
revolutionize modern life. And the
noteworthy fact is brought out by
Mr.. Davenport in his part of the
work that the two great tariff bills
before the Mckinley measure were
chiefly the work OF Vermonters, that
OF 1928 by Rollin c. Mallory, as well
as that OF 1861 by Justin S. Merrill.
Mr.. DavenpOrt's work In the His
torical Biography is extraordinary
for its research, for its discernment
and sense OF proportion in its char
acter measurements, and tor the IN
teresting way, the most difficult and
most profitable work of biography,
in which it connects its subjects with
the ideas and issues of their times
and careers. Thus he has given US a
complete political history OF the
state, and courses and fortunes of
its parties, with many election
figures never before published, and
has traced the pioneer origin and
development of its legislation, as
about schools and highways, with
singularly full and impartial justice
to all opinions treated. He has
similarly presented a succinct &C
count of the positions, votes, speech
es, etc, OF Vermonters in national af
fairs, facts that could otherwise be
learned only by the search OF whole
Libraries. His presentation of the
character and career of Ethan Allen
seems to us the most adequate and
like of all that has been written
about that remarkable man. Ger
tainly Ira Allen has never been so
wildly and comprehensively written
up as in the six pages here devoted
to him and very nearly the same is
true of the sketches of governors
d,
Matthew Lyon, Nathaniel Niles,
Stephen P. Bradley and others. An
interesting feature of the work is the
effectual and decisive way he meets
and disproves the Historian Ban
croft's reflections on Allen and
Warner at Montreal and Hubbard
ton.
Mr.. Huse is always a bright and
breezy writer and the 80 pages he
gives on the Judges of the Supreme
Court is work it would be i'm
possible to praise too highly. 1t is
not only full Of dates and informa-
ton such as seem to trickle from
Mr.. Huse increasingly, but it is
written in a catchy style, illumined
by abundance of anecdote and flashes
of wit and quaint philosophy that
make what would be expected to be
the driest department of the book
the most entertaining of all but it is
more than entertaining; for nowhere
else would it be possible to get so
concise and distinct a historical
view of the beginnings and so large
a comprehension of our court and
the evolution of our judicial system.
The sketches are all excellent, and
some of them, especially about
Judges Pierpont, Barrett, Steele and
the Redhelds simply masterful in the
clear, sharp, appreciative outline
with which the subjects are brought
out.
In the Vermonters of today consti-
tuting Part II. of the work, and Civ
ing sketches and portraits of some
$50 of the present leaders in all
walks,-farmers, mechanics, profess
sional men, governors, congressman
in service and out is priceless store
house of information, gathered with
every precaution to insure accura cy,
accessible nowhere else and sure to