flatboat, to join his father, who was about settling upon a tract of land assigned him as his bounty for service in the revolutionary war. Lewis was not inclined to agriculture, and while his father was getting his farm in order, he studied law at Marietta; where, in due time, he was admitted to the bar. He was just twenty years of age when he hung out his tin sign at the new settlement of Zanesville, informing the people that Lewis Cass had come among them to practise the profession of the law. The settlers of the western country (what with incorrect land surveys and the credit system) found plenty of business for lawyers. In four years Lewis Cass had so much practice that he felt it safe to marry, and had so won the confidence of his fellow-citizens that they elected him a member of the legislature. This was in 1806, when he was twenty-four years of age.

About the time that the people of Zanesville were casting their votes for Lewis Cass, President Jefferson, alarmed by rumors of what Aaron Burr was doing in the Western country, sent a secret messenger, George Graham, to investigate the matter. Graham went to Marietta, where he found fifteen large flatboats building, under the direction of Blennerhassett, Burr's confederate. Pretending to be one of Burr's confidants, he wormed out of Blennerhassett all he knew of the enterprise; then, revealing his true character, entreated him to abandon the scheme. Blennerhassett refused. Graham next went to Chillicothe, then the capital of Ohio, where the legislature was just assembling, Lewis Cass among them. The messenger disclosed to the governor of the State the nature of his errand, told him what he had discovered, and asked his assistance to nip the enterprise in the bud. No sooner, therefore, was the legislature organized than the governor sent them a secret message containing the information that Graham had given him, and asking their co-operation in the measure required.

Lewis Cass, elected as a democrat, instantly sided with the president against Burr, and took the lead in the measures which resulted in the seizure of the boats, the arrest of Blennerhassett and his friends, the desolation of his island, and the explosion of the whole scheme. It was Lewis Cass, too, who wrote the congratulatory and patriotic address of the legislature to the

president, to which Mr. Jefferson replied in a strain highly complimentary to the young member who had penned it.

These events decided his career. A few months after, President Jefferson appointed to the United States marshalship of Ohio the young politician who had aided him in that part of his administrative policy into which he had put most of personal feeling. The marshalship of a State such as Ohio then was yielded little revenue, but it gave standing and influence, and prepared the way for further advancement.

Would readers like to know what it was to be a practising lawyer in a border State half a century ago? General Cass shall tell them :

"A solemn demeanor," he wrote in 1840, "may become lawyers now; but in those bygone times, when the judge and the lawyer mounted their horses, and rode one or two hundred miles to a court, and then to another, and another yet, and through woods, following a mere bridle-path, crossing the swollen streams upon their horses while swimming, and thrown together at night in a small cabin, the laughing philosopher had more disciples than the crying one. I have certainly been in much greater peril since, but with respect to a real nonplush (my western friends will understand me), the crowning incident of my life was upon the bank of the Scioto Salt Creek, suddenly raised by a heavy rain, in which I had been unhorsed by the breaking of the saddle-girths. My steed was a bad swimmer, who, instead of advancing after losing his footing, amused himself by sinking to the bottom and then leaping with his utmost force; and this new equestrian feat he continued till rider, saddle, saddle-bags, and blankets were thrown into the water, and the animal emerged upon one side of the creek, and the luckless traveller crawled out on the other as he best could, while the luggage commenced the journey for New Orleans. It appears to me that a more dripping spectacle of despair was never exhibited than I presented, while surveying, many miles from a house, the shipwreck of my travelling fortunes."

In this way Ohio lawyers journeyed to the court-houses made of logs, "with interstices," adds General Cass, "wide enough to

admit the passage of a man,” where presided judges as primitive and rough as the woods in which they lived.

Tecumseh, the Indian chief, had been, for many years, stirring up the tribes west of the mountains to rise simultaneously upon the whites, and drive them back over the Alleghanies. The war broke out in 1811. The people of Ohio raised three regiments of militia, of one of which the popular Lewis Cass was chosen colonel, and by the time this force was ready for the field, war was declared with Great Britain. Colonel Cass, it is said, was the first soldier of the United States who set his foot upon the soil of Canada as an invader, and he was in command of the first party who fired or received a hostile shot. He was soon involved, however, in Hull's surrender, and returned to the United States a prisoner of war on parole. No man in the surrendered army was more indignant than he at the conduct of General Hull, and it was his testimony, perhaps, that had most weight with the court-martial that condemned the general. Exchanged in 1813, Colonel Cass received a colonel's commission in the regular army, and afterwards, a brigadier-general's, in which rank he took part in the battle of the Thames. When the war closed in 1815, General Cass being in command of the garrison at Detroit, he was appointed governor of the territory of Michigan, then a wilderness, with scarcely a white settlement except Detroit.

Removing his family from Ohio to Detroit in the summer of 1815, he began his residence there by an act which was censured then as most extravagent, but to which he owed his subsequent wealth, and the dignity of his declining years. He was worth twelve thousand dollars in 1815, the whole of which he invested in the purchase of a tract of land close to the village of Detroit, and upon part of which the thriving city of Detroit has since been built. I was told in Detroit that this tract is now worth two millions of dollars.

He was Governor of Michigan for sixteen years, during which time he was a kind of Frontier King. The true and full history of this part of his life would be one of the most curious and fascinating books in existence. He both made and administered lav. He ruled, with almost sovereign sway, over whites and

Indians. He negotiated nineteen treaties with Indian tribes, and bought from them great parts of Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Clad in a hunting shirt, he traversed the woods and prairies of the north-west, sometimes on horseback, sometimes in a birch-bark canoe, oftener on foot, on one occasion travelling four thousand miles in two months.

That he did not himself become a savage while associating so much with savage men and savage nature, was shown, toward the close of this part of his life, by his giving the results of his observations of the Indians in two extensive articles in the "North American Review." I have just read these articles. They are certainly among the most thorough and valuable to be found in the two hundred and twelve numbers of that distinguished periodical. They are much better written than General Cass's later work upon France and Louis Philippe. One would never suppose, upon reading them, that they were written by a man who had lived for twenty-eight years or more on the distant borders of civilization, and spent half his time in governing wild Indians.

In 1831, Governor Cass had the misfortune to be called away from this sphere of labor, in which he had gained nothing but honor, to one for which he was far less fitted, and in which he could not hope to shine. It happened, in one of President Jackson's numerous cabinet imbroglios, that he was suddenly in want of a secretary of war, the gentleman for whom he had intended the place having refused it, contrary to all expectation. In this emergency he cast his eyes upon the Governor of Michigan, who had given the great weight of his authority to General Jackson's policy of removing the Indians west of the Mississippi. The governor accepted the offer of the post, and midsummer saw him a cabinet minister.

It was no bed of roses. He did not agree with General Jackson in his war upon the United States Bank, and he was much perplexed to decide whether he ought to resign or retain his place. General Jackson, to whom he submitted the question, and who was heartily tired of cabinet-making, said, in effect:

ee

Oh, don't think of resigning; it is not necessary. Stay, by all means."

General Cass complied with the request, and was rewarded in 1835 by the office of minister to France, for which he had the very rare qualification of speaking French. Detroit was a French settlement, and to this day several of the principal families there are of French origin, so that General Cass not only spoke the language of France, but felt at home among French people. Louis Philippe, then King of the French, had the most pleasing and vivid recollections of his extensive travels in America, and was never happier than when relating them. He became unusually attached to General Cass, told him the whole story of his life, and listened, in turn, to the hundred tales of frontier adventure with which the ambassador's memory was charged. General Cass's little book, entitled, "France, its King, Court, and Government," is chiefly a statement of facts derived from the king's own lips. It is a very rambling, irregular production, but exceedingly interesting, - more so now than when it was published in 1840.

Returning home, he next figures as senator and candidate for the presidency, and he would actually have been president but for John Van Buren, who organized and run a "Free-soil” party, for the purpose of drawing off votes enough to defeat him. But let us drop a veil over the bad politics of that unhappy time. Let by-gones be by-gones. Cass, Buchanan, Van Buren, Douglas, and others who flourished then, were all in a false position, their real feelings pulling them one way, and their party ties pulling them another. Let us only remember of Lewis Cass, that when at last the crisis came, and he had to choose which he would do, side with or against his country, he took the patriot's part, and stood by the flag under which his father fought. May we never again have such politics or such politicians as we had, on both sides, from 1830 to 1860. It was a trial too severe for human virtue, and we ought not to be surprised that human virtue so often yielded under it.

General Cass, observing the ravages made by strong drink among the Indians, and desirous to add to the force of his advice the power of his example, became a teetotaler during