John A. Dix

THESE handsome volumes,¹ which, be it said in passing, are in every respect a credit to American book-making and to the good taste of the author and publishers, contain the memoirs of a man who for sixty-five years, with only brief intervals, served his country, and for a large portion of that period filled a conspicuous place among the public men of his day. Dr. Dix has written the story of his father’s life in a most simple and attractive manner. There would be very few persons who would dissent from the affectionate and yet modest estimate which he makes of his father’s character, abilities, and public services. The biography has an individual and personal rather than a historical quality. The memoirs of John A. Dix would of course be an important contribution to our history if they did no more than present a faithful picture of their subject; and they do not, in fact, go much beyond this. They do not, except in a few instances, throw much light on the general history of the time. As Dr. Dix says, the period since the war is too recent, and too many of the actors are still living, to permit a full and critical discussion of the affairs in which his father was then engaged. But this is not true of the long period before the war during which General Dix was in active public life. It might fairly have been expected that we should learn much that was new of the Albany Regency, of which General Dix was a member, and of the inside history of the democratic party from 1830 to 1860. There are occasional glimpses of the political history of those years, which are from a new point of view, and which have a freshness that makes the reader wish for a more extended acquaintance with the sources from which these suggestions arise. But Dr. Dix seems to have been so absorbed in the central figure of his biography that he has ventured but little into the wider filed of general history. This is perfectly natural and perhaps equally wise. The result is certainly a very vivid picture of the hero of the story. One can only say that when so much has been so well done there is a feeling of regret that a little more was not attempted.

General Dix was born in New Hampshire, the rugged little State which has sent forth so many distinguished men to seek elsewhere a more generous fortune than was offered them among their rocky hills. At the age of fifteen he entered the army, and served in the war of 1812 with his father, whose life was finally sacrificed by disease and exposure on the Canadian frontier. Then followed sixteen years of military life, and then came a happy and fortunate marriage and the abandonment of the army for law and politics. Even in the army General Dix had given much attention to public affairs, and exerted a considerable influence by writing for the newspapers. Once released from the trammels of the army, he drifted, after a brief interval, into active politics, for which he had great natural fitness. He was appointed Adjutant General, and then Secretary of State, in New York, and in this capacity was a leading member of the famous Albany Regency. General Dix, like his father, was a democrat, and what is more a New England democrat, which meant a good deal in the days when democracy was synonymous with resistance to the dominant and often domineering federalism of that part of the country. At the outset an admirer of Mr. Calhoun, General Dix naturally became, in the progress of events, an ardent supporter of Jackson, and then of Van Buren. For the latter gentleman, indeed, General Dix appears to have had a strong affection, and his son and biographer takes a view of the astute New York manager which certainly seems a little rosy. Dr. Dix writes with much indignant warmth of the rejection of Van Buren by the Senate when he was nominated for the mission to England. It is, as Dr. Dix says, perfectly true that this rejection helped Van Buren to the presidency, and was an unprecedented proceeding. But he omits to state that Van Buren was the first, and we believe the last, American statesman who in an official paper addressed a foreign court as the representative of a party, and not of the nation, and cast reflections upon his predecessors for the benefit of a foreign minister. A meaner act of extreme partisanship could not have been committed, and it is pleasant to think that the Senate rebuked it as it deserved. Dr. Dix also refers to Van Buren as one of the “ purest ” statesmen of the country. This seems hardly the epithet to apply to a man who, whatever his abilities and merits, was conspicuous for an adroitness which often became trickery.

The Whig victories, in 1838, forced General Dix into retirement, from which he soon emerged to sit in the New York assembly, and then to represent the State in the Senate. His is career as a senator was honorable and distinguished. He was always an independent and fearless man, and although he was involved in the contradiction of opposing the extension of slavery, and at the same time of sustaining the Mexican war and the acquisition of territory without the Wilmot proviso, he never hesitated to differ from his party. It was this bold and manly spirit which led Mr. Polk to try to remove General Dix from the Senate by sending him to England. On the same occasion, Mr. Polk assured General Dix that he had no idea of conquests in Mexico. The characteristic duplicity of which this is fresh evidence is still further brought out by the way in which General Dix was deluded in regard to certain New York appointments by this same administration, described more forcibly than politely by one of the general’s friends as “ a mere elongation of the trading, time-serving, mongrel Tyler concern.”

General Dix’s differences with his party arose on the slavery question, upon which he never bent the knee. He was opposed to meddling with slavery in the States, but he was still more opposed to the system and to its extension. He was in principle a free-soiler, and it is not surprising that he was nominated for governor by that party in 1848. He ran in the election much against his will, and yet he was in the right and natural place. But although never an extreme partisan except toward his youthful foes, the federalists, it was an essential quality of his nature to be very loyal to his party and his friends. The free-soil movement having been checked, General Dix devoted his best energies to a reunion of the democracy. To his efforts and those of his friends this reunion and the consequent victory were largely due. But General Dix soon found that he had committed the unpardonable sin. He had dared to speak out on the subject of slavery, and the South stood between him and all advancement, and held back the hand of Franklin Pierce — poor, weak creature— when, as President, he tried to do his duty to the high-minded New York leader. The democratic party had no use for such a man as General Dix until their post-office at New York was beset with corruption, and then they called on him to repair the mischief. It was at this time that General Dix wrote a letter which would serve as an admirable campaign document to-day, forbidding political assessments in the postoffice. He was a Jackson democrat, but with the chief dogma of his old leader, “ the spoils system,” he would have nothing to do. He was a thoroughgoing civil-service reformer in every respect.

But while General Dix was managing the New York post-office, the country was drifting rapidly upon the rocks of rebellion and secession. In the last hours of Buchanan’s administration, with driveling timidity in the White House and bold treason in the cabinet, General Dix was called upon to take charge of a bankrupt treasury. He restored confidence and raised money; but he did more, far more, than this. Andrew Jackson was national to the core, and that was the essential quality of all his best followers, one of whom now found himself in Washington at the head of a great department, confronted with panic, treachery, and a breaking Union. Above the confused noises of that miserable winter, the voice of John A. Dix rises clear and strong : “ If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.” With characteristic modesty, General Dix said afterwards that he should be chiefly remembered by a “savage order, justified by a still more savage provocation.” The truth was that he had the good fortune and the inspiration to strike the keynote, to say the one all-embracing word at the very moment of a great conflict. All else might go, but the symbol of unity, the flag, should never be hauled down or given up ; and that was the war cry of the North, and what they fought for and won. The war revived all General Dix’s old love of military life. He was at once made a general, and was deeply disappointed that he was not sent to the front. But that was the work for younger men, who probably could not have fulfilled the delicate, difficult, and most important duties which came to General Dix at Baltimore and in the Department of the East, where the rare combination of civil and military training which he possessed was so essential. After the close of the war came the mission to France, and a term as governor of New York,—well-earned distinctions, which closed General Dix’s public career. He lived five years longer, happy and active, and then died, surrounded by his family and full of years and honors.

We have touched only on the public side of General Dix’s career, but he had many interests and many admirable qualities wholly apart from public affairs. He had a vigorous administrative faculty, great diligence, and a marked aptitude for business, and he never shrank from any task when he could render valuable services. He was a good linguist; he had much literary taste and skill, as is shown by his version of the Dies Iræ ; and he was a really fine Latin scholar. He spoke well, and sensibly, with great force and effect, and was master of a strong and simple style. Above all, he was courageous and affectionate, with a keen sense of humor, and manly in all his ways and habits.

The first feeling that comes to us, after reading these volumes, is one of pride in the character and career of this typical American gentleman, who was so simple and brave, a lover of learning for its own sake, and a modest, industrious, and patriotic man. General Dix was not one of those who sway the course of events, and leave their individual impress on a nation’s history ; but he was a type of man of which the country has a right to be proud, and of which there are far too few examples in our public life to-day. He will always be remembered as the man who, at the crisis of the nation’s fate, put into one short sentence the great principle which was at stake, and to which the people rallied and clung for four long years. Any man may be content who has thus succeeded in associating his name indissolubly with the emblem of a great and united country.