Thirty-ninth Congresses. The speeches of Mr. Rice on Protection in its Relation to Agriculture and Manufactures and upon the Country, at the opening of the late conflict, were highly commended.

But his greatest work for the country in the civil war has been done as Chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs.

In this capacity, his labors have been manifold. When the fierce attack, under the lead of the Hon. Henry Winter Davis, was made in Congress upon the Navy Department, Mr. Rice prepared himself for the defence. A question of the most subtle scientific character, respecting certain applications of steam, had been for months before the committee. Mr. E. N. Dickinson, a scientific mechanical engineer of New York, affirmed that the principle adopted by the United-States Navy was radically wrong; while Mr. B. F. Isherwood, Engineer-in-Chief of the Navy, denied the assertion entirely.

The committee were seventy days taking testimony, making a formidable mass of manuscript. Mr. Rice addressed himself to the task of sifting this evidence, and consulting scientific works, till he was able to present one of the clearest, ablest, and most elaborate reports ever made before any legislative body.

And when, on Feb. 3, 1865, Mr. Davis made his studied speech in favor of establishing a board of naval administration, aiming a blow at the legitimate exercise of authority in the department, Mr. Rice, with no other preparation than could be made during Mr. Davis's remarks, replied in a logical, lucid, and most satisfactory specch of an hour and a half in length. We quote the closing passage of this eloquent defence of the navy : —

As I have already said, from the dawn of the Rebellion until now, the navy has been everywhere that it could be, and always has done glorious and efficient service. The Mississippi and its tributaries are open to commerce again; every port for blockade-runners upon the Atlantic and the Gulf has been closed; all the strongholds seized by the enemy upon the coast have been recovered, and nearly every corsair driven from the ocean. The navy was at Hatteras, at Port Royal, at Charleston, at Island No. 10, at Fort Donelson, at Fort Henry, at Shiloh, at Memphis, at Vicksburg, at Arkansas Post, at Port Hudson, at Mobile Bay, and at Fort Fisher; and in all those places it added radiance to the American name, and glory to the American naval history, which no lapse of time shall be able to obliterate. It has placed upon the imperishable record of fame, to be transmitted amid the plaudits of mankind to the latest generations, such names as Stringham and Foote, and Du Pont and Farragut, and Goldsborough and Porter, and

Dahlgren and Rodgers, and Rowan and Davis, and Winslow and Cushing. I should consume the day if I attempted to name them all. Their reputation is secure in history; it is secure in the hearts of their countrymen; and when the final history of this war shall be written out, and the comparison shall be made of the manner in which the different departments of this Government have executed the high and laborious and responsible trusts committed to them, faithful and earnest as they have been, there will not be one of them that will stand brighter, or that will be more loudly or warmly commended by our successors, than will the Navy Department. And, sir, I cannot think that the well-earned fame of the naval service, this just meed of praise, will be diminished or obscured by any gentleman, however lofty his standing, or however brilliant his abilities, who asks you, in the light of these facts, to put over your Navy Department a board of administration which shall be a change without improvement, or who cites to you the fact, that, in the accomplishment of the gigantic labors that have fallen to the lot of that department, it made a mistake in regard to the draught of a monitor, or an alleged, but not admitted, mistake in the construction of a doubleender.

Mr. Rice is a gentleman in feeling and action; and the marked ability of his official service associates most honorably his name with the part taken by the Commonwealth in the victorious conflict for national unity and liberty.

THE HON. SAMUEL HOOPER'S

Native place was Marblehead, where he first saw the light Feb. 3, 1808. After the usual culture of the schools, followed by four years in a counting-room, he visited Europe and the West Indies. In 1832, he settled in Boston, engaging in the China trade, a partner in the firm of William Appleton & Co. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1851; to the State Senate in 1857; and, in 1861, to the House of Representatives in Congress, to fill a vacancy caused by the resignation of William Appleton. He was Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means; and, re-elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress, he held the same position. Again elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress, he became Chairman of the Committee on Finance. It was here that he displayed that masterly knowledge of the difficult business properly before him that made him a confidential adviser of the Secretary of the Treasury, and won, in the highest degree, the confidence of the President. His name was conspicuous among the few from which that of the able Hugh McCulloch was selected for a place in the Cabinet. His judicious, practical course, amid

the fluctuations in the financial world during the war, has accomplished much, in a quiet way, for the country,-a service whose value cannot easily be appreciated nor over-estimated by those who are not in the secret of that complicated and mighty machine of national progress, the Treasury Department, in its connection with all business activity.

THE HON. HENRY L. DAWES

Was a native of Cummington, and is now fifty years of age. Graduating at Yale College in 1839, he entered the profession of law. He edited at one time "The Greenfield Gazette." In 1848, he was chosen State Representative; in 1850, to the Senate; and again, in 1852, to the Lower House. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1853; and District Attorney for the Western District until elected from the Tenth District to the Thirty-fifth Congress, in which he was on the Committee of Revolutionary Claims. Re-elected to the Thirty-seventh, Thirtyeighth, and Thirty-ninth Congresses, he has been Chairman of the Committee of Elections; a post of duty of great importance to the country, and attended with many difficult questions, to which his practical ability was always equal. During the revolutionary period of the past five years, Mr. Dawes has done his work ably and well.

THE HON. JOHN B. ALLEY.

Is a resident of Lynn, his birthplace in 1817. While young, he was an apprentice in the shoe and leather business, to which he has since devoted himself when not engaged in public affairs.

He was a member of the Governor's Council in 1851, and of the State Senate in 1852. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and representative in the Thirty-sixth, Thirtyseventh, Thirty-eighth, and Thirty-ninth Congresses. As Chairman of the Committee on Post-offices and Post-roads, his official duties necessarily, during the chaotic condition of all things at the South and on the border, often required excellent judgment and prudent action. He won and retains implicit confidence on the part of the Government, his colleagues, and his constituents.

THE HON. DANIEL W. GOUCH

Was a son of Maine, and born in Wells, January, 1820. He was graduated at Dartmouth College, and, in 1846, settled in Boston, a lawyer by profession. In 1852, he was elected to the State

W. H. WASHBURN AND OAKES AMES.

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Legislature. He was chosen member of the Thirty-fifth, Thirtysixth, and Thirty-seventh Congresses. He was on the Committee on Territories, and subsequently on the Committee on the Conduct of the War. It was in this last responsible position that his influence was especially felt in the progress of the civil war.

THE HON. W. B. WASHBURN AND THE HON. OAKES AMES.

The Hon. William B. Washburn, of Greenfield, quietly met the questions before the House, in the national struggle, with the Christian patriotism which distinguishes him in the walks of private life. By him, in devotion to the country, stands the Hon. Oakes Ames, of North Easton, Massachusetts. Indeed, Massachusetts brain and heart have had no small share in the political and moral conflicts and achievements in the halls of Congress and in the departments of State, as well as in the field of martial strife.

CHAPTER V.

MASSACHUSETTS ABROAD.

Charles Francis Adams, Ambassador to the Court of St. James, London. - John Lothrop Motley, Ambassador to the Court of Austria, Vienna. - Anson Burlingame, Ambassador to Pekin, China.

TH

HE nations of Europe were deeply agitated by the outbreak of civil war in the United States. Monarchs, and the aristocratic classes generally, desired a dismemberment of the Republic. Such a catastrophe would strengthen in the popular mind thedivine right of kings," and secure the throne, and the proud distinctions it fosters, from the sacrilegious hands of the masses, awakening, in the light of American liberty, to the divine right of the people to enjoy freedom regulated by laws of their own making.

The United States, therefore, found little sympathy abroad, excepting among the common people, and the few liberal minds in the higher ranks of society. England was ready in all ways possible, under cover of national law and custom, to aid the leaders of the causeless and unexampled revolt. France occupied a similar position, though more cautiously taken.

In the complications, commercial and political, which would arise among the foreign governments to a great extent (and none could tell how great), it was of the first importance to have able and wise representatives in foreign courts.

Among the ministers to other nations, occupying prominent positions on the Eastern hemisphere, were three Massachusetts

men.

One has been in the mother-country, another, in the most despotic nation of Europe, and the third in the Celestial Empire; and, in the glimpse we take of them and their official services, we naturally begin with our minister to England,

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

He is a son of the illustrious John Quincy Adams, and was born in Boston, Aug. 23, 1807. When his father represented the