begun by Napoleon I, and now continued by the equally lawless alliance calling itself holy.*

These ideas are summed up by President Monroe in his message in the statement of the principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the two continents by the free and independent condition they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. And especially when such colonizations are organized as hereditary monarchies, and with the Roman Catholic church as the established religion, the right is claimed of protesting against it, and of carrying such protest as far as may be thought expedient to prevent it.

It was such a protest on our part against the invasion of Mexico by a French army and the establishment of an hereditary monarchy under a Catholic and foreign prince, and our ability to enforce that protest if necessary when our war was over, that made Napoleon withdraw his troops and abandon his Austrian prince to his fate. And so this protest has answered its purpose for the greater part of a century without our being obliged to resort to force, and so may it prove in the future.

* This means the "Holy Alliance Prussia, for the maintenance of dynasties."

entered into in 1815 by Russia, Austria and peace and the establishment of existing

NOTE.-Page 448 As showing the perverted judgment of the English people in respect to this matter, Bishop Brooks tells us what Tennyson, one of our good friends, and whom we held in high honor, said to him: "We should think you would be ashamed to keep that award," while we were wondering that they were not ashamed to cause us such loss.

CHAPTER XXIX.

UNITED STATES SENATOR.

Governor Buckingham's Term in the Senate-His Share in Maintaining What Had Been Gained by the War-Some of His Work -His Death Shortly Before the Expiration of His Term of Office.

When the war was over, and the interests of Connecticut were well settled with the general government, and Governor Buckingham had held his office eight years, he declined re-election, and in 1868 was sent to the United States Senate.

In the meantime he had met with a sore domestic bereavement in the death of his wife. He had been singularly favored and happy in his family relations. His wife, Eliza Ripley, belonged to an old, large and respected Norwich family of eight children, who mostly settled in the town, and had families of their own, which of themselves made a considerable social circle, but concerned as they were in all the interests of society, it rather indicates the breadth of their intercourse and abounding hospitality. A Thanksgiving dinner with twenty or more at the table, an evening party of a score of nephews and nieces and several times that number of their young friends, the daily entertainment not only of men in public life, but of ministers, missionaries, students, or some neighbors from the old Lebanon home, which was near, were matters of course. And it was hospitality as sincere and unstinted as could be found anywhere. No one who ever enjoyed it, and especially was accustomed to share in it, could forget the parents and the daughter who constituted the family, and

*

*This daughter became the wife of General William A. Aiken of Norwich, and the mother of a large family, where they now reside.

who were never weary in contributing to the comfort and enjoyment of their guests. The mother, a great-hearted woman, full of the tenderest sympathy, with hands wide open to want, and with sufficient means at her disposal, always had a company of dependants who knew that as long as she lived they would never be deserted, and when she died cherished her memory as they would few of their own kindred. To her own husband, she was for forty years all that a wife could be in tender affection, efficient helpfulness, and as sharing their Christian faith and immortal hopes together. And nothing could have expressed more fittingly the estimation in which he cherished her memory than the inscription he had chiseled upon the family monument under her name:—

"I thank my God upon every remembrance of you." (Phil. i: 3.)

Her death was a sad bereavement, and especially when he was released from the cares of state, to enjoy his family and friends the more. Indeed, his election to the United States Senate had little interest to him at that time, and especially if he must go to Washington without taking with him the devoted wife and true helpmeet of his life. Notwithstanding this, he purchased a residence in Washington, and contributed his part to the social life of the capital and to the entertainment of strangers, with one of his wife's nieces to preside over his table and household, who will be pleasantly remembered by those who shared his hospitality there. How he accepted his bereavement and bore it like a Christian, may be seen from his reply to one who extended his sympathy, and to whom he wrote as follows:

I am greatly obliged for your kind and sympathetic letter. You knew Mrs. Buckingham quite well, for she carried her heart in her face and her character was perfectly transparent. There was no deceit and no guile. She humbly trusted in Christ, lived to please him, and in the hour of trial he was true to his promise and did not forsake her. Her end was peaceful. While I sorrow and mourn, I

also rejoice in God's goodness to us. My heart was never so large before. Until now it never held so much sorrow and so much joy; sorrow that the light of my dwelling is removed, and joy that she has gone where there is "no need of the sun, nor of the moon to shine, for the glory of God and the Lamb" are the light of her present dwelling place.

Governor Buckingham was elected to the United States Senate in 1868, and took his seat March, 1869, for the term of six years. This was the first session of the Fortyfirst Congress, when the Republican ticket of Grant and Colfax swept the country by 214 electoral votes, to eighty for Seymour and Blair. It was the indorsement by the country of the administration which had carried through the war successfully, and especially disposed once and forever of Secession and slavery. President Lincoln had been assassinated four years before, just as he was entering upon his second term of office. Vice-President Johnson, who succeeded to the presidency, soon broke away from all sympathy with his party, and in a strange and reckless way set out to defeat their plans of reconstruction. What he had done added greatly to the difficulties of President Grant's position, and multiplied obstacles to the reconstruction of the Union. Indeed, it seemed as if there was never to be any end of these obstacles and difficulties. And it only increases our respect for the statesmanship and patriotism of the men who managed our national affairs through all that perilous period, and intensifies our gratitude to that good Providence which raised up and guided our statesmen, as well as inspired the nation with such intelligent and self-sacrificing patriotism.

And if Congress under President Johnson's administration, and in spite of his hindrances, made a good beginning in the work of reconstruction, and secured the adoption of the amendments of the Constitution which abolished slavery, and gave the freedmen the rights of citizenship, and received the Secession States back into the Union, and

all this had been accomplished before General Grant came to the presidency; still there was work enough left, and and of this kind, for the new President and his administration. The new amendments of the Constitution were to be carried out, and the spirit of them enforced so far as possible, and this required much and difficult legislation. Political disabilities were to be removed from individuals and classes for their connection with Secession, which was done until "more than 3,000 participators in the rebellion, among them some of the most prominent and influential, were restored to the full privileges of citizenship; the rule being, in fact, that any one who asked for it, either through himself or his friends, was freely granted remission of penalty." Provision was also to be made for the national debt, for taking off the tariff and taxes of the war, and for a good banking system, all of which was done greatly to the credit of President Grant's administration. Before his second term of office was ended, he had also frightened the French out of Mexico, satisfactorily settled our Alabama claims against England, and adjusted all our boundary questions with Great Britain, some of which had been in dispute ever since the government was organized, so that he could say in one of his last messages, and ninety years after the close of the Revolutionary war: "We are permitted to add that for the first time in the history of the United States as a nation, we are left without a question of disputed boundary between our territory and the possessions of Great Britain on the American continent." Whatever may be thought of his unsuccessful attempt to annex St. Domingo, the bitter and personal attacks made upon him for it in Congress, and by a portion of the press, led him, in his last message to Congress, nearly six years after the controversy had closed, to restate his reasons for it, and in self-vindication, he said: "If my views had been concurred in, the country would have been in a more pros