- Whitcomb
- Shea and his Son
- Bartlett Francis
There was a thunder gust last evening shortly before midnight,
contradicting the proverb that the month of March goes out like a Lamb:
and this morning was cold and blustering more like the first of March
than of April— Mr Powers had called at my house yesterday and
requested that I would give him a short final sitting for my bust. I
went accordingly at nine O’Clock this morning, and he gave the last
touches to his waste mould of clay; taken from the soil of this city;
and which he says is the best moulding clay in the world— This is
probably the last time that a counterfeit presentment of me will be made
in this world; and likenesses enough of my face and person will be left
to survive me— My likeness has been taken in the course of my life by
sixteen Painters, five Sculptors, and one medalist— Stweart, King, Harding
and Durand have painted me twice.—
My face has been copied in my sixteenth and my seventieth year— They
show what I am, and what I was. John
Cranch was with Powers— From his studio, I went to the
Library at the Capitol, where I met Leonard Jarvis late a member of the House of
Representatives from Maine, but who declined a re-election to the 25th
23225th Congress, and
who remains here an invalid waiting for permission from his physician to
travel northward home— I had some conversation with him— We disagree in
almost all our opinions; but are yet upon terms like those of Dr
Johnson with Gilbert
Walmsley. He said to me that S. L. Southard while Secretary of
the Navy had purchased of Thomas
Newton lands no otherwise described in the Deed than as in
the neighbourhood of the Navy hospital at Norfolk, for which he had paid
Newton 8000 dollars, and for which he thought Southard ought to be
impeached. I told Jarvis that I knew nothing of the facts; but that I
had such confidence in the integrity of Southard and of Newton, that I
would stake any thing upon the issue that no wrong to the public had
been done by the contract whatever— I went into the Law Library chamber,
and examined the act of Parliament 5. George
4. C. 113 containing the revised British code for the
abolition of the Slave-trade; and the Treaties of Great-Britain then
existing with Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands for the suppression of
the trade— I read also the decision of Lord
Stowell in the case of the Slave, Grace, in the second volume of Haggart’s Admiralty Reports— These are
both cited in Mr Van Buren’s Note to Lord Palmerston, on the case of the
Slaves liberated at New-Providence, after the wreck of the Comet— The
British Slave-emancipation Acts I cannot find in the Library— The
decision of Lord Stowell in the case of the Slave Grace, is very
remarkable— He gives a history of the abolition of Slavery in England
effected by the mere fiat of Lord
Mansfield in the case of the Negro Somersett only 22 years after a
directly contrary decision by Lord
Hardwick— Lord Stowell leans hard against the decision of
Lord Mansfield, though he dares not reverse it; and he absolutely
ridicules the boast of Britons that the soil of their Country will not
bear the foot of a Slave— The whole tenour of his argument is
anti-abolitionist, and was adapted to discountenance the progress of the
abolitionist Spirit in England, which nevertheless very soon after that
judgment accomplished the emancipation Laws in the British West-India
Colonies— This was forced upon the British Government by the
irresistible current of public opinion; and this decision of Lord
Stowell’s was among the last struggles against it— The decision was,
that although a West-India Slave, landing in England, was emancipated
while residing there, yet by being carried back to the land of Slavery,
she was restored to her servitude and to her master— I returned home
about an hour before dinner. After dinner there came Mr
Whitcomb, heretofore a subaltern Custom-house Officer at
Boston, and persevering applicant for an Office here— He had removed
233removed to the State of Vermont, where he had
purchased a farm; but is now offered a Clerkship under Albion K. Parris, sometime Governor of
the State of Maine, but now first Auditor of the Treasury— Mr Whitcomb said he came to thank me, for
having recommended him a year or two ago, for an appointment under the
Commissioner of the general Land-Office— He enquired if Mr Alexander H.
Everett was here, and said he was not at Boston when he
came through there this day fortnight— A man by the name of Shea, and his Son, from
Baltimore, came with a subscription paper for a volume of Poems, to
which I declined to put my name— He asked me then to accept the volume,
which I also declined— Mr Francis Bartlett came, and I
went with him to the House of Mr Dickerson the Secretary of
the Navy, to whom he submitted his claim to be restored to the year
1832. instead of 1833 for his rank as passed midshipman— Mr Dickerson took his papers and said he
would consider his claim— Thomas J.
Frye dined and spent the Evening here— Whist.