Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1897-05-22

of sickness. ! am now in as good health
as l ever was. l have for fifty years been
In the habit of taking long walks. and keep
1t up to this day. l oftener walk five miles
a day than fall below three.
Il shall i'll few weekss ii I live, be
elghty-three years old; born at Lewisburg,
N. c.. came to Washington January D.
1914. and after some weeks of idleness and
of time spent in searching for employment
l was engaged to assist. Nathan Sergeant
known by his nom de phime as "Oliver
Old SchooP'-fn editing a daily whig paper
called the Wing Standard. The publisher
was John Towers, afterwam mayor of
Washington. Mr.. Sergeant soon withdrew
and left the duty Of editing the Standard
to me- l should have said THAT it was
through the influence OF the late Judge
Mangum Of North Carolina. who was. at
the time president of the Senate, that 1
obtained this employment.
'The Standard gave earnest and vigorous
support to tie election OF Mr.. Clay, but
the permanency Of the enterprise depended
upon the success of the1 cause, and the
paper ceased to be published after the re-
suit of the presidential election was male
A Wing of the Wings.
"Mr. sergeant-I should have styled him
Judge Sergeant, for he hefd a iudgeship in
Alabama in early lifelpossessed a valuable
store of political information. He was a
whig of the wings, and claimed to have
nected with the Press In Philadelphia in
1893. James Watson Webb of New York
editor of the Courier and Enquirer, also
claimed that honor, and 1 will not under
take to decide the case between them
" Len General Taylor became President
Judge Sergeant was appointed commission
er OF customs, the duties of which he per-
formed with credit to himself. The Office
was afterward abolished and the business
transferred to another bureau. Near the
close nnlliShQl a
interesting and valuable. book, entitled
Men and Events which contains a his
tory of the WING party down to that date,
which was near the end of its existence
as a national organization"
When did you first take up the cudgels
in the battle against slavery" asked The
Star man.
An Antf-Slavery Pamphlet.
"After the defeat of Mr.. Clay, and the
suspension-that is always the word-of
the Wing Standard, 1 for some months
edited the Georgetown Advocate, a semi
weekly journal but gave it up for school
in Maryland. I afterward went back to
North Carolina, and remained until the
Inauguration Of General Taylor, and then
obtained a clerkship here. I had written
pamphlet. at my native town, as early
as 1871, on the economic evils of slavery.
/ avoided touching on the moral question,
although my heart was full of it. My OBJ
ject was to reach the minds of southern
men. The leading thought, I am sure, was
original 1t was this, that capital invested
in slaves is unproductive-that its effect
is only to appropriate the wages of the
laborer. l brought this essay with me to
Washington, in 1914, and showed 1t to ex-
President Adams, WHO was then 4 men,
Der of the House Of Representatives. 1t
was written on quire of foolscaD, on
both sides Of the sheets. called the at
tention of Mr.. Adams to the point which
i'm a I'D
the essay carefully, and then reread it, in
my presence, and pronounced a high eu-
logy en- it. thought my fortune and fame
were made. little understood that nine
teen readers in twenty would prefer the
idlest work of fiction to dissertation on
political economy. Mr.. Adams said the
essay ought to be published. and asked
me If that was my purpose. told him
l was unable to incur the expense. He
then said that young man named Greeley
was publishing an anti-slavery WING paper
In New York: but that he was not ac-
quainted with Mr. Greeley, and upon re-
Election. thought. with my consent. that
he would send it to his friend. Charles
King, who was then publishing the New
York American. l consented. and he did
So Mr.. King published tile essay in two
numbers OF his paper, near the close of
March, 1914. and with Che highest COM
mendations. l then felt Certain that the
high hopes Sa ss.; Mr. Adams had awakened
the American was sold to 4he editor of the
Courier and Enquirer, and merged in that
journal II it had been sent to Mr.. Greeley
he y ould have harped uponI.ht it. in his
Tribune. to the day of HIS death.
John Stuart Min's, Approval.
I'm August. 1864 while reading Milrs Po-
litical Economy, came Upon p remark of
his which induced me to think that he had
seen the truth in regard to slavery, which
was the leading thought iii my essay. He
states-it is in his Introduction, or preface
that in estimating the wealth Of a ma
ton, the public debt In the hands of the
people, and mortgages. should not be in
cluded-that public debts are mortgages
upon the property of the people; and there
fore. to include them as a part of the ma
tfonal wealth is to count them twice. This
obvious truth impressed me yas parallel
with the idea had advanced, that there
was no more reason for counting slaves as
part of the wealth of a nation. or a
state, than there was for counting the
whole people as SUCH Turning then to
Mr.. Mills brief chapter on slavery, found
that he had not seen the analogy. and
that like all other writer's on political econ
omy, most of whose works had examined,
he simply condemned the system as i'm
polite, and that free labor in the end was
cheaper.
.In ls46 had had my essay. printed in
pamphlet form. sent Mr.. Mil copy In