University of Virginia Library

Seven in number, with John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton at their head, the founders of New Haven, then a separate jurisdiction. (See Professor Kingsley's Historical Discourse on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of New Haven.)

The name by which its former owners designated the eminence on which Henry Whitney, Esq., is now erecting a seat,—in full and near view from the top of Sassacus. The time alluded to was the year 1637. New Haven was founded in 1638.

“Thus,” (at the taking of Mystic Fort,) “parents and children, the sannup and squaw, the old man and the babe, perished in promiscuous ruin.”—

Sassacus was the great prince of the nation.—“When the English began their settlements at Connecticut,” (a previous affair to the establishment of New Haven,) he had “twenty-six Sachems under him.”—“His principal fort was on a commanding and most beautiful eminence, in the town of Groton, a few miles southeasterly from Fort Griswold. It commanded one of the finest prospects of the Sound and the adjacent country, which is to be found on the coast. He had another fort near Mystic River, a few miles to the eastward of this, called Mystic Fort. This was also erected on a beautiful hill or eminence, gradually descending to the south and southeast.”—“The Pequots, Mohegans, and Nehantics could doubtless muster a thousand bowmen.”—The Narragansets said of Sassacus, that he “was all one God; no man could kill him.”—

The lock from his scalp, was carried to Boston by Mr. Ludlow, “as a rare sight, and sure demonstration of the death of their mortal enemy.”—

Of this formidable individual, Roger Wolcott, one of the old governors of Connecticut, says,

See Kingsley's Discourse; also Bacon's Historical Sermons.

Stints is the proper word.

“He trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth; his nose pierceth through snares.”—

The sobriquet by which James Hillhouse was known in Congress and elsewhere.—The result of his labors in behalf of the Connecticut School Fund, alluded to in some of the foregoing lines, may be taken in the words of a scrupulous and well-informed narrator, it having been previously stated, that its affairs had fallen into an entangled condition. “The best friends of that fund, and those most acquainted with its history, have said, that they would have been happy to have realized from it, at that time, eight hundred thousand dollars. After fifteen years' management, he left it increased to one million seven hundred thousand dollars of solid property. The difference was to be ascribed to his skill, his fidelity, his accuracy, his patience, and his wonderful and indefatigable industry. While that fund shall be perpetuated, and shall continue to carry through all the streets of our cities, and every rude, secluded hamlet among our hills, the blessings of instruction, it will stand a monument to his faithful and disinterested patriotism.”—The toils he underwent, (for the property consisted chiefly in lands scattered in five States, some parts of them then very difficult of access,) and the expedients he resorted to, in accomplishing his great objects, cannot even be shadowed here. They were highly curious and interesting. He was literally “in journeyings often,—in watchings often,—in hunger and thirst, —in perils from robbers,—in perils in the wilderness,”— to say nothing of his perils nearer home, “among false brethren.” Once, he was frost-bitten; losing, in consequence, during the greater part of a winter, and far from his family, the use of one eye: but I have been assured that he did not, even then, spare the other. Once he was arrested as a criminal, by an enraged debtor, who, in his own neighbourhood, exercised a party influence, and but just escaped the indignity of a prison. Twice he was brought to death's door, by fevers taken in the unsettled and unwholesome regions he was obliged to visit. When persuaded, with some difficulty, that the public welfare required him at this arduous post, in the same spirit in which Mr. Jay, yielding to the arguments of Washington, undertook the ungracious task of the British treaty, he flung up his third term in the Senate of the United States, then just commencing, and entered on a series of exertions, in which he displayed a fortitude, a perseverance, and a practical sagacity, that have never failed to excite surprise. The power of bodily endurance would have been nothing without the infinite tact in business; skill would have fallen short of its objects without miraculous patience and perseverance; and nothing could have disarmed opposition, but that natural spring of sweetness in his disposition, which perpetually welled out in the midst of appalling labors, and converted, in many, many instances, the suspicious and intractable into sincere and zealous friends. The astonishing little animal he drove for six or eight of the first years, sometimes took the Sachem seventy miles in a day. On one occasion, he pushed her thirty miles after twilight, without stopping; having been dogged by two ruffians, in a desolate part of the country, who attempted to deprive him of his trunk. It contained, unknown to them, twenty thousand dollars of the public money. After putting them to flight, he thought it prudent to make as many tracks as possible. Her subsequent blindness he ascribed to the severe drive of that memorable evening. Her “going like a greyhound,” as she descended the Onondaga hollow, was described to me there, years after she was as stiff as the steeds of Rhesus.—As a friend once said of the business letters of Mr. Astor, Every word weighs a pound; or, as the leaves of the Sybil, which, though light enough for the wind, were full of ponderous meaning,—so, reader, couldst thou peruse these flimsy verses through my spectacles, thou wouldst find in some of them more “than meets the ear.” As an illustration of the words,

On one of his school-fund journeys, nearly thirty years ago, traversing a forest in Ohio, which, for many a long mile, had seemed as undisturbed by human occupants as on the day of creation, there suddenly glided into the path an armed Indian. The apparition was rather startling. The Sachem nodded, however, to his compatriot, and kept jogging on, as if unconcerned. The Indian surveyed him earnestly, from time to time;—but, whether Young Jin quickened or slackened her pace, he still kept at the wheel. After about six miles, the sulky drew up, and a four-pence-ha'penny was handed to its persevering attendant. The Redskin received it with a grunt, or nod of thanks, turned off into the woods, and was seen no more. If any evil purpose was harboured, perhaps the donor owed something, on this occasion, to those indisputable sachem marks, which distinguished both his person and aspect.

I wish it had been possible, consistently with brevity, to throw in a few more of the traits, which made even his children smile at the simplicity of his feelings, while they stood amazed at his power, and adored his goodness. His memorable relations (memorable at least to his family) with the Connecticut School Fund might be summed in the quaint address of Eliot, the spiritual friend of the Indians, to Robert Boyle:—“Right honorable, charitable, indefatigable, nursing father!” The words are singularly applicable, also, to his exertions in behalf of another public interest. For fifty years he was the Treasurer of Yale College; and during the first thirty he may be said to have been the Ways and Means of the Corporation;—by which I intend, that in all their pecuniary difficulties, and in their collisions with the State, (for there were Anti-Grammaticals in those days as well as these,) their main reliance was on his commanding influence, his resource and ingenuity, and on his single-hearted attachment to their interests. In such a state of despondency was that body in 1791–2, that he was called home from Congress to advise in the threatening aspect of their affairs. His counsel was,—unreservedly to open the whole condition of the Institution to the recently appointed and very able Committee of the Legislature, (composed, however, of individuals supposed to be desirous of some changes,) and the result was, a Report favorable and honorable to the College. About this time he conceived the idea of obtaining a grant in its favor of certain outstanding taxes, the nature of which will be found explained below, in the words of the Hon. Mr. Pitkin. By unflinching zeal, he carried the measure, contrary to the hopes of many equally sincere, but less sanguine friends. This grant laid anew the corner-stone of Yale College. When he assumed his office, in 1782, one of those shadowy White Wigs, which then rendered the Corporation illustrious, said to him:—“Young man, you are taking upon you an important trust. Remember! in the discharge of business, you must never serve the Devil;—but you may make the Devil serve you.” Whether that venerable and honorable Body ascribe the rescue of their institution from a state of want and decay, and its exaltation to its present pitch of usefulness, to any agency less orthodox than the Divine blessing on disinterested human efforts, we have not inquired.

The subject of this note, and the late illustrious President, who came into office in 1795, were co-workers and brothers, —yea, more than brothers,—in all that tended to the enduring prosperity of this favorite object of their care.

To spook,—to saunter about inquisitively.—

For their prospective magnitude, see the interesting report of Mr. Ruggles, to the New York Legislature, during the last session.—One's imagination can hardly advert to the North River, without thoughts of steamboats, western wheat, &c.; so I leave this couplet as it is, though it rings in my ear as if I had heard its like somewhere. I cannot possibly remember. If I have stumbled upon any other person's words or thoughts, they are much at his service.

The residence of James G. King, Esq., opposite the city of New York.

Namely, from Archibald Gracie, and Rufus King.

His favorite toast among old friends, uttered with a beaming of the eye, which showed that no bitter reminiscence could be harboured in his heart, was,—“Let us bury the hatchet.” It embodied the spirit of his life.—It used to be said in the Senate Chamber, that he kept one of these implements, under the papers and red tape, in his desk; which he had been known to take out and lay carelessly by the side of his inkstand, when the debate waxed personal. No bad idea, by the bye. He, at any rate, averted many a désagrément, by pleasantly threatening to “take the tree.”—His father, William Hillhouse, of Montville, who, in the days of steady habits, came up on his Narraganset pacer, and took his seat in one hundred and six Legislatures, (then semi-annual,) was a tall, spare man, as dark as the Black Douglas himself, and did not particularly fancy being hit, upon his reputed Mohegan cross. Being the Patriarch of the eastern section of the State, and with a relish of wit, he usually had a circle round him at his lodgings. On a certain occasion, the Sachem, who had often, in the State Legislature, been opposed in argument to his father, but was then a young member of Congress, happened to call on the old gentleman during the Hartford session, at a moment when he was reading with great glee to the whole mess, a squib upon the Congress Men, from a Philadelphia newspaper. It was at the time a Library was talked of for Congress. The gist of the pleasantry lay in the adaptation of a Book to the private history of each of the prominent Members. The old man read on, chuckling, for some time: at last, looking up, he said, dryly: “Why, Jemmy, they don't notice you at all.”—“Read on, father.” He did so; and soon came to the volume to be ordered for his son, namely, a History of the Aborigines, to aid him in tracing his pedigree! For a rarity, the old gentleman was floored. Venerable image of the elder day! well do I remember those stupendous shoe-buckles, that long, gold-headed cane, (kept in Madam, thy Sister's best closet, for thy sole annual use,) that steel watch-chain, and silver pendants, yea, and the streak of holland, like the slash in an antique doublet, commonly seen betwixt thy waistcoat and small clothes, as thou passedst daily, at nine o'clock, A. M., during the autumnal session! One of his little granddaughters took it into her head to watch for her dear “Black Grandpapa,” and insist on kissing him in the street, as he passed. He condescended, once or twice, to stoop for her salute; but, anon, we missed him. He passed us no more; having adopted Church street, instead of Temple street, on his way to the Council Chamber. One of the earliest recollections of our boyhood is the appearance of that Council Chamber, as we used to peep into it. Trumbull sat facing the door,—clarum et venerabile nomen!—there lay his awful sword and cocked hat,—and round the table, besides his Excellency and his Honor, were twelve noble-looking men, whom our juvenile eyes regarded as scarcely inferior to gods. And, compared with many, who floated up, afterwards, on the spume of party, not a man of them but was a Capitolinus. As the oldest Counsellor,—at the Governor's right hand,—sat, ever, the Patriarch of Montville, (a study for Spagnoletto,) with half his body, in addition to his legs, under the table, a huge pair of depending eyebrows, concealing all the eyes he had, till called upon for an opinion, when he lifted them up long enough to speak briefly, and then they immediately relapsed. He resigned his seat at the age of eighty, in the full possession of his mental powers. The language of the letter before me is: “He has withdrawn from public life with cheerfulness and dignity.” He was able, at that age, to ride his Narraganset from New Haven to New London in a day, abhorring “wheel carriages.” At his leave-taking, I have been told, there was not a dry eye at the Council Board.