Identifier: largerhistoryofu01higg (find matches)
Title: A larger history of the United States of America, to the close of President Jackson's administration
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ut also modest, and even shy,so that his prevailing air was that of commonplace strength andrespectable mediocrity. After all the political excitements ofthe past dozen years, nothing could be more satisfactory thanthis. People saw in him a plain Virginia farmer addressing au-diences still mainly agricultural. Ralph Waldo Emerson oncesaid to me, when looking for the first time on John P. Hale, ofNew Hampshire, then at the height of a rather brief eminence: What an average man he is! He looks just like five hundredother men. That must be the secret of his power. It wasprecisely thus with Monroe. He had in his cabinet men oftalents far beyond his own—Adams, Calhoun, Crawford, Wirt;Jefferson and Madison yet lived, his friends and counsellors;Jackson, Clay, Webster, and Benton were just coming forwardinto public life; but none of all these gifted men could havere-assured the nation by their mere aspect, in travelling throughit, as he did. Each of these men, if President, would have been
Text Appearing After Image:
JAMES MONROE. (From the painting bv Gilbert Stuart, owned by T. Jefferson Coolidt;e. Esq., Boston 25 THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING. 387 something more than the typical official. Monroe precisely filledthe chair, and stood for the office, not for himself. He left Washington June 2, 1817, accompanied only by hisprivate secretary, Mr. Mason, and by General Joseph G. Swift,the Chief Engineer of the War Department. The ostensibleobject of his journey was to inspect the national defences. Thisexplained his choice of a companion, and gave him at each pointan aim beyond the reception of courtesies. With this nominalerrand he travelled through Maryland to New York City, trav-ersed Connecticut and Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hamp-shire, and Maine, then a district only. He went southwardthrough Vermont, visited the fortifications at Plattsburg, trav-elled through the forests to the St. Lawrence, inspected Sack-etts Harbor and Fort Niagara; went to Buffalo, and sailedthrough Lake Erie to Detroit.

Note About Images