American Civil War,-Andrew Dickson White, His Autobiography.

CHAPTER I

BOYHOOD IN CENTRAL NEW YORK--1832-1850


At the close of the Revolution which separated the
colonies from the mother country, the legislature of
New York set apart nearly two million acres of land, in the
heart of the State, as bounty to be divided among her soldiers
who had taken part in the war; and this ``Military
Tract,'' having been duly divided into townships, an ill-
inspired official, in lack of names for so many divisions,
sprinkled over the whole region the contents of his classical
dictionary.  Thus it was that there fell to a beautiful
valley upon the headwaters of the Susquehanna the
name of ``Homer.''  Fortunately the surveyor-general
left to the mountains, lakes, and rivers the names the
Indians had given them, and so there was still some poetical
element remaining in the midst of that unfortunate
nomenclature.  The counties, too, as a rule, took Indian
names, so that the town of Homer, with its neighbors,
Tully, Pompey, Fabius, Lysander, and the rest, were embedded
in the county of Onondaga, in the neighborhood
of lakes Otisco and Skaneateles, and of the rivers Tioughnioga
and Susquehanna.

Hither came, toward the close of the eighteenth century,
a body of sturdy New Englanders, and, among them, my
grandfathers and grandmothers.  Those on my father's
side: Asa White and Clara Keep, from Munson, Massa-
chusetts; those on my mother's side, Andrew Dickson,
from Middlefield, Massachusetts, and Ruth Hall from
Guilford, Connecticut.  They were all of ``good stock.''
When I was ten years old I saw my great-grandfather at
Middlefield, eighty-two years of age, sturdy and vigorous;
he had mowed a broad field the day before, and he walked
four miles to church the day after.  He had done his duty
manfully during the war, had been a member of the
``Great and General Court'' of Massachusetts, and had
held various other offices, which showed that he enjoyed
the confidence of his fellow-citizens.  As to the other side
of the house, there was a tradition that we came from
Peregrine White of the Mayflower; but I have never had
time to find whether my doubts on the subject were well
founded or not.  Enough for me to know that my yeomen
ancestors did their duty in war and peace, were honest,
straightforward, God-fearing men and women, who
owned their own lands, and never knew what it was to
cringe before any human being.

These New Englanders literally made the New York
wilderness to blossom as the rose; and Homer, at my
birth in 1832, about forty years after the first settlers
came, was, in its way, one of the prettiest villages
imaginable.  In the heart of it was the ``Green,'' and along
the middle of this a line of church edifices, and the academy.
In front of the green, parallel to the river, ran,
north and south, the broad main street, beautifully shaded
with maples, and on either side of this, in the middle of
the village, were stores, shops, and the main taverns; while
north and south of these were large and pleasant dwellings,
each in its own garden or grove or orchard, and
separated from the street by light palings,--all, without
exception, neat, trim, and tidy.

My first recollections are of a big, comfortable house
of brick, in what is now called ``colonial style,'' with a
``stoop,'' long and broad, on its southern side, which in
summer was shaded with honeysuckles.  Spreading out
southward from this was a spacious garden filled with
old-fashioned flowers, and in this I learned to walk.  To
this hour the perfume of a pink brings the whole scene
before me, and proves the justice of Oliver Wendell
Holmes's saying that we remember past scenes more vividly
by the sense of smell than by the sense of sight.

I can claim no merit for clambering out of poverty.
My childhood was happy; my surroundings wholesome;
I was brought up neither in poverty nor riches; my parents
were what were called ``well-to-do-people''; everything
about me was good and substantial; but our mode
of life was frugal; waste or extravagance or pretense was
not permitted for a moment.  My paternal grandfather
had been, in the early years of the century, the richest
man in the township; but some time before my birth he
had become one of the poorest; for a fire had consumed
his mills, there was no insurance, and his health gave way.
On my father, Horace White, had fallen, therefore, the
main care of his father's family.  It was to the young
man, apparently, a great calamity:--that which grieved
him most being that it took him--a boy not far in his
teens--out of school.  But he met the emergency
manfully, was soon known far and wide for his energy,
ability, and integrity, and long before he had reached
middle age was considered one of the leading men of business
in the county.

My mother had a more serene career.  In another part
of these Reminiscences, saying something of my religious
and political development, I shall speak again of her and
of her parents.  Suffice it here that her father prospered
as a man of business, was known as ``Colonel,'' and also
as ``Squire'' Dickson, and represented his county in the
State legislature.  He died when I was about three years
old, and I vaguely remember being brought to him as he
lay upon his death-bed.  On one account, above all others,
I have long looked back to him with pride.  For the first
public care of the early settlers had been a church, and
the second a school.  This school had been speedily
developed into Cortland Academy, which soon became fa-
mous throughout all that region, and, as a boy of five or
six years of age, I was very proud to read on the corner-
stone of the Academy building my grandfather's name
among those of the original founders.

Not unlikely there thus came into my blood the strain
which has led me ever since to feel that the building up of
goodly institutions is more honorable than any other
work,--an idea which was at the bottom of my efforts in
developing the University of Michigan, and in founding
Cornell University.

To Cortland Academy students came from far and
near; and it soon began sending young men into the foremost
places of State and Church.  At an early day, too,
it began receiving young women and sending them forth
to become the best of matrons.  As my family left the
place when I was seven years old I was never within
its walls as a student, but it acted powerfully on my
education in two ways,--it gave my mother the best of
her education, and it gave to me a respect for scholarship.
The library and collections, though small, suggested
pursuits better than the scramble for place or pelf; the
public exercises, two or three times a year, led my
thoughts, no matter how vaguely, into higher regions, and
I shall never forget the awe which came over me when
as a child, I saw Principal Woolworth, with his best
students around him on the green, making astronomical
observations through a small telescope.

Thus began my education into that great truth, so
imperfectly understood, as yet, in our country, that stores,
shops, hotels, facilities for travel and traffic are not the
highest things in civilization.

This idea was strengthened in the family.  Devoted as
my father was to business, he always showed the greatest
respect for men of thought.  I have known him, even
when most absorbed in his pursuits, to watch occasions
for walking homeward with a clergyman or teacher,
whose conversation he especially prized.  There was scant
respect in the family for the petty politicians of the
region; but there was great respect for the instructors
of the academy, and for any college professor who happened
to be traveling through the town.  I am now in my
sixty-eighth year, and I write these lines from the American
Embassy in Berlin.  It is my duty here, as it has
been at other European capitals, to meet various high
officials; but that old feeling, engendered in my childhood,
continues, and I bow to the representatives of
the universities,--to the leaders in science, literature, and
art, with a feeling of awe and respect far greater than
to their so-called superiors,--princelings and high military
or civil officials.

Influences of a more direct sort came from a primary
school.  To this I was taken, when about three years old,
for a reason which may strike the present generation
as curious.  The colored servant who had charge of me
wished to learn to read--so she slipped into the school and
took me with her.  As a result, though my memory runs
back distinctly to events near the beginning of my fourth
year, it holds not the faintest recollection of a time when
I could not read easily.  The only studies which I recall
with distinctness, as carried on before my seventh year,
are arithmetic and geography.  As to the former, the
multiplication-table was chanted in chorus by the whole
body of children, a rhythmical and varied movement of
the arms being carried on at the same time.  These exercises
gave us pleasure and fastened the tables in our
minds.  As to geography, that gave pleasure in another
way.  The books contained pictures which stimulated my
imagination and prompted me to read the adjacent text.
There was no over-pressure.  Mental recreation and
information were obtained in a loose way from ``Rollo
Books,'' ``Peter Parley Books,'' ``Sanford and Merton,''
the ``Children's Magazine,'' and the like.  I now
think it a pity that I was not allowed to read, instead of
these, the novels of Scott and Cooper, which I discovered
later.  I devoutly thank Heaven that no such thing as
a sensation newspaper was ever brought into the house,--
even if there were one at that time,--which I doubt.  As
to physical recreation, there was plenty during the summer
in the fields and woods, and during the winter in
coasting, building huts in the deep snow, and in storming
or defending the snow forts on the village green.  One
of these childish sports had a historical connection with
a period which now seems very far away.  If any old
settler happened to pass during our snow-balling or
our shooting with bows and arrows, he was sure to look
on with interest, and, at some good shot, to cry out,--
``SHOOT BURGOYNE!''--thus recalling his remembrances
of the sharpshooters who brought about the great
surrender at Saratoga.

In my seventh year my father was called to take charge
of the new bank established at Syracuse, thirty miles
distant, and there the family soon joined him.  I remember
that coming through the Indian Reservation, on the road
between the two villages, I was greatly impressed by the
bowers and other decorations which had been used
shortly before at the installation of a new Indian chief.
It was the headquarters of the Onondagas,--formerly the
great central tribe of the Iroquois,--the warlike confederacy
of the Six Nations; and as, in a general way, the
story was told me on that beautiful day in September a
new world of romance was opened to me, so that Indian
stories, and especially Cooper's novels, when I was
allowed to read them, took on a new reality.

Syracuse, which is now a city of one hundred and
twenty thousand inhabitants, was then a straggling
village of about five thousand.  After much time lost in
sundry poor ``select schools'' I was sent to one of the
public schools which was very good, and thence, when
about twelve years old, to the preparatory department
of the Syracuse Academy.

There, by good luck, was Joseph A. Allen, the best
teacher of English branches I have ever known.  He had
no rules and no system; or, rather, his rule was to have
no rules, and his system was to have no system.  To
genius.  He seemed to divine the character and enter into
the purpose of every boy.  Work under him was a pleasure.
His methods were very simple.  Great attention
was given to reading aloud from a book made up of
selections from the best authors, and to recitals from these.
Thus I stored up not only some of the best things in
the older English writers, but inspiring poems of Bryant,
Whittier, Longfellow, and other moderns.  My only regret
is that more of this was not given us.  I recall, among
treasures thus gained, which have been precious to me
ever since, in many a weary or sleepless hour on land
and sea, extracts from Shakspere, parts of Milton's
``Samson Agonistes,'' and of his sonnets; Gray's
``Elegy,'' Byron's ``Ode to the Ocean,'' Campbell's
``What's Hallowed Ground?'' Goldsmith's ``Deserted
Village,'' Longfellow's ``Psalm of Life,'' Irving's ``Voyage
to Europe,'' and parts of Webster's ``Reply to Hayne.''

At this school the wretched bugbear of English spelling
was dealt with by a method which, so long as our present
monstrous orthography continues, seems to me the
best possible.  During the last half-hour of every day,
each scholar was required to have before him a copy-
book, of which each page was divided into two columns.
At the head of the first column was the word ``Spelling'';
at the head of the second column was the word ``Corrected.''
The teacher then gave out to the school about
twenty of the more important words in the reading-
lesson of the day, and, as he thus dictated each word, each
scholar wrote it in the column headed ``Spelling.''  When
all the words were thus written, the first scholar was asked
to spell from his book the first word; if misspelled, it
was passed to the next, and so on until it was spelled
correctly; whereupon all who had made a mistake in writing
it made the proper correction on the opposite column.
The result of this was that the greater part of us learned
orthography PRACTICALLY.  For the practical use of spelling
comes in writing.

The only mistake in Mr. Allen's teaching was too much
attention to English grammar.  The order ought to be,
literature first, and grammar afterward.  Perhaps there
is no more tiresome trifling in the world for boys and
girls than rote recitations and parsing from one of the
usual grammatical text-books.

As to mathematics, arithmetic was, perhaps, pushed
too far into puzzles; but geometry was made fascinating
by showing its real applications and the beauty of its
reasoning.  It is the only mathematical study I ever loved.
In natural science, though most of the apparatus of
schools nowadays was wanting, Mr. Allen's instruction
was far beyond his time.  Never shall I forget my excited
interest when, occasionally, the village surgeon came
in, and the whole school was assembled to see him dissect
the eye or ear or heart of an ox.  Physics, as then
understood, was studied in a text-book, but there was
illustration by simple apparatus, which fastened firmly
in my mind the main facts and principles.

The best impulse by this means came from the principal
of the academy, Mr. Oren Root,--one of the pioneers
of American science, whose modesty alone stood in
the way of his fame.  I was too young to take direct
instruction from him, but the experiments which I saw him
perform led me, with one or two of my mates, to construct
an excellent electrical machine and subsidiary apparatus;
and with these, a small galvanic battery and an extemporized
orrery, I diluted Professor Root's lectures with the
teachings of my little books on natural philosophy and
astronomy to meet the capacities of the younger boys in
our neighborhood.

Salient among my recollections of this period are the
cries and wailing of a newly-born babe in the rooms at
the academy occupied by the principal, and adjacent to
our big school-room.  Several decades of years later I had
the honor of speaking on the platform of Cooper Institute
in company with this babe, who, as I write, is, I believe,
the very energetic Secretary of War in the Cabinet
of President McKinley.

Unfortunately for me, Mr. Root was soon afterward
called away to a professorship at Hamilton College, and
so, though living in the best of all regions for geological
study, I was never properly grounded in that science, and
as to botany, I am to this hour utterly ignorant of its
simplest facts and principles.  I count this as one of the
mistakes in my education,--resulting in the loss of much
valuable knowledge and high pleasure.

As to physical development, every reasonable encouragement
was given to play.  Mr. Allen himself came frequently
to the play-grounds.  He was an excellent musician
and a most helpful influence was exerted by singing,
which was a daily exercise of the school.  I then began
taking lessons regularly in music and became proficient
enough to play the organ occasionally in church; the best
result of this training being that it gave my life one of its
deepest, purest, and most lasting pleasures.

On the moral side, Mr. Allen influenced many of
us by liberalizing and broadening our horizon.  He was
a disciple of Channing and an abolitionist, and, though he
never made the slightest attempt to proselyte any of his
scholars, the very atmosphere of the school made sectarian
bigotry impossible.

As to my general education outside the school I browsed
about as best I could.  My passion in those days was for
machinery, and, above all, for steam machinery.  The
stationary and locomotive engines upon the newly-
established railways toward Albany on the east and Buffalo
on the west especially aroused my attention, and I came to
know every locomotive, its history, character, and capabilities,
as well as every stationary engine in the whole region.
My holiday excursions, when not employed in boating
or skating on the Onondaga Creek, or upon the lake,
were usually devoted to visiting workshops, where the
engine drivers and stokers seemed glad to talk with a
youngster who took an interest in their business.  Especially
interested was I in a rotary engine on ``Barker's
centrifugal principle,'' with which the inventor had prom-
ised to propel locomotives at the rate of a hundred miles
an hour, but which had been degraded to grinding bark in
a tannery.  I felt its disgrace keenly, as a piece of gross
injustice; but having obtained a small brass model, fitted
to it a tin boiler and placed it on a little stern-wheel boat,
I speedily discovered the secret of the indignity which
had overtaken the machine, for no boat could carry a
boiler large enough to supply steam for it.

So, too, I knew every water-wheel in that part of the
county, whether overshot, undershot, breast, or turbine.
Everything in the nature of a motor had an especial
fascination for me, and for the men in control of such power
I entertained a respect which approached awe.

Among all these, my especial reverence was given to the
locomotive engineers; in my youthful mind they took on
a heroic character.  Often during the night watches I
thought of them as braving storm and peril, responsible
for priceless freights of human lives.  Their firm, keen
faces come back to me vividly through the mists of sixty
years, and to this day I look up to their successors at the
throttle with respectful admiration


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