WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN. BY RICHARD WEBB. Read before the Maine Historical Society, February 23, 1894. THE public career of William Pitt Fessenden covered the period from 1854 to 1869, from the rise of the Republican party to the close of Johnson's administration. With the exception of about eight months, when he was Secretary of the Treasury, he was, during all this time, a member of the Senate. He entered that body as the slavery question was reaching a crisis, and in the momentous events which followed he bore a leading part. In many respects this period of our history, from the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill to the first inauguration of President Grant, is the most important. It witnessed the rise and suppression of a great rebellion, the abolition of slavery, the reconstruction of the South and the impeachment of a president. At no former period had the necessity for the highest order of statesmanship been greater, and this necessity developed in many of our public men the qualities and abilities which the occasion demanded. Many who then occupied important positions and wielded large influence seem to have been now forgotten, save, perhaps, in the localities where they lived, or by those who were in some sense their con. temporaries. Lincoln and a few others have already achieved immortality, but there were many more whose names are now rarely heard, but whose services VOL. X. 16 to the Republic merit at least remembrance. Such a one was Fessenden. As an apostle in the antislavery crusade, and, for many years, as a leader in the Senate, he exhibited those qualities of mind and character which mark the statesman; and especially as Secretary of the Treasury, as Chairman of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, and in daring to vote against his party for the acquittal of Andrew Johnson, his services were most important. No sketch of Fessenden, however brief, would be complete without some reference to his father, Gen. Samuel Fessenden, for from him were inherited in marked degree the intellectual traits which made the senator distinguished. Samuel Fessenden was a son of William Fessenden, the first minister of the first parish in Fryeburg, Maine, and was born at Fryeburg in 1784. His early education was obtained at the Fryeburg Academy, the principal of which during the latter part of his course was Daniel Webster, then a recent graduate of Dartmouth College. A warm friendship sprang up between teacher and pupil which continued during life, and it was doubtless due to Webster's influence that Samuel Fessenden went to Dartmouth, where he was graduated in 1806. He studied law in an office in his native village, and was admitted to the bar in 1809. He began practise in New Gloucester, Maine, and remained there until 1822, when he moved to Portland, and formed a partnership with Thomas Amory Deblois. This firm continued for many years, and from the beginning had a large and important practise. The early volumes of the Maine Reports show that Fessenden & Deblois appeared in more cases before the Law Court than any other lawyers in Cumberland County, and it is said of Gen. Fessenden that probably no other lawyer in Maine ever argued so many cases to the jury. As a lawyer he was successful, and won a reputation at the bar as a safe counsellor and an able and eloquent advocate. For many years he was president of the Cumberland Bar Association, which position he held at the time of his death. He was not only well read in the law, but was also a man of scholarly and literary tastes. In 1828 he might, perhaps, have been elected president of Dartmouth, had he not declined to be considered a candidate. In 1848 he received from Bowdoin the degree of LL.D. For many years before Maine was set off as a separate state he represented the town of New Gloucester in the General Court of Massachusetts, serving in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate, and it was on account of his legislative services that he was elected, in 1818, a Major-General of the militia, thereby receiving the title by which he was commonly known. In politics he was a pronounced and ardent Federalist so long as Federalism had life. He then became a Whig, but his extreme antislavery views soon alienated him from that party, and finally and naturally drew him into the Republican party. He was, therefore, during the greater part of his life a member of the minority. Maine was a Democratic State from the time of its organization until the rise of the Republican party. Except in the memorable election of 1840, when Edward Kent was chosen governor, no Whig was ever elected by the people to that office, and except in the same election, when William Pitt Fessenden was elected to Congress, the seat for the .ortland district was regularly filled by a Democrat. Had General Fessenden lived a little earlier so that his prime of life might have come when the Federalist party was dominant, or had he lived a little later, so that his prime might have come during the Rebellion, he would doubtless have been a man of national position and reputation. He lived in both periods, but Federalist supremacy had ceased before he was of age, and the success of the later Republican party found him an old man nearing his eightieth year. In this respect his career was unfortunate. He was naturally drawn toward public life, and battled with keen zest in behalf of principles which he believed to be right. He did all he could for the negro when it cost something to befriend a slave. He received colored people at his house, visited them himself, and aided them in their attempts to attain position in society. The unpopularity of such a course did not deter him. He entered into the antislavery cause from sincere conviction, and gave to it the best efforts of his mind and heart. He was a man of great strength of character, of intellectual force and of firm convictions. He died at Portland, Maine, March 19, 1869, aged nearly eightyfive years, preceding his distinguished son to the grave by only about six months. William Pitt Fessenden was the eldest son of Gen. Samuel Fessenden, and was born at Boscawen, New |