Cleveland County herald., 1919-01-02
PREFACE
H.

The Light In the Clearing shone upon hany things and mostly upon those which, above all others, have impassioned and perpetuated the Spirit of America and which, just now, seem to me to be worthy of attention. I believe that spirit to be the very candle of the Lord which, in this dark and windy night of time, has f1iokered so that the souls of the faithful have been afraid. But let us be of good cheer. It is shining brighter as l write and, under God, l believe it shall, by and by, be seen and loved Of all men. One self contained, Homeric figure, of the remote countryside in which l was born, had the true Spirit of Democracy and shed it's light abroad in the senate of the United States and the capitol at Al bany. He carried the Candle of the Lord It led him to height of self lf-forgetful- ness achieved by only two others-Wash- ington and Lincoln. Yet 1 have been sur prised by the profound and general ig- norance of this generation regarding the career of Silas Wright.
 The distinguished senator who served at his side for many years, Thomas H Benton of Missouri, has this to say of Silas Wright in his Thirty Years View:
 "He refused cabinet appointments un- der his fast friend Van Buren and under Polk, whom he may be said to have elected. He refused a seat on the bench of the Supreme court Of the United States; he rejected instantly the nomina- tion in 1S44 for vice president; he refused to be put in nomination for the presi- dency. He spent that time in declining office which others did in winning 1t. The offices he did accept, it might well be said, were thrust upon him. He was born great and above office and unwillingly de- scended to it."
 So much by way of preparing the reader to meet the great commoner in these pages.
 There were those who accused MT. Wright of being a spoilsman, the only warrant for which claim would seem to be his remark in letter: "When our enemies accuse us of feeding our friends instead of them never let them lie in tell ing the story"
 He was, in fact, human being, through and through, but so upright that they used to say of him that he was "as hon. est as any man under heaven or in 1t.
 For my knowledge of the color and spirit of the time I am indebted to long course of reading in it's books, newspa- pers and periodicals, notably the North American Review, the United States Mag azine and Democratic Review, the New York Mirror the Knickerbocker, the St. Lawrence Republican, Benton's Thirty Years View, Bancrofts Life of Martin
 
 time by Hammond and Jenkins, and to many manuscript letters of the distin- guished commoner in the New York pub- lie library and in the possession of MT Samuel Wright of Weybridge Vermont
 To any who may think that they dis cover portraits in these pages l desire tc say that all the characters-save only Silas Wright and President Van Burer and Barton Baynes-are purely imagin- ary. However, there were Grimshaws and Purvises and Binkses and Aunt Deels , and Uncle Peabodys in almost every rus tic neighborhood those days, and regre to add that Rowing Kate was on many roads. The case of Amos Grimshaw bear: a striking resemblance to that of youns Bickford, executed long ago in Malone for the particulars of which case l an indebted to my friend, MT. H. L. Ives O Potsdam.
 THE AUTHOR.