Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/92

Rh sentatives. Both parties nominated candidates who favored the repeal of the Fifteen-Gallon Law. The temperance voters put a ticket in the field, the Rev. Amasa Sanderson, the minister of the Baptist Society, then a new organization, and feeble in numbers and wealth, and myself. At that time my associations were largely with Whigs, but I was opposed to a national bank, and in favor of free trade. With those views it was not possible for me to act with the Whig Party on national questions or in national contests. Mr. Sanderson and I received about seventy-six votes, and as none of the candidates had a majority, the town was unrepresented.

Edward Everett was Governor when the law was passed, and he was a candidate for re-election in 1839. I supported Mr. Everett on the temperance issue against Judge Marcus Morton, who was the candidate of the Democratic Party. Judge Morton had been on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court where he had the reputation of an able judge by the side of Shaw, Wilde and Putnam. At that time I had not seen Morton or Everett. In the year 1836 or 1837 I went to Boston to hear Alex. H. Everett deliver a Democratic Fourth of July oration. The effort was a disappointment to me. A. H. Everett had a reputation as an orator, but he was far inferior to his brother Edward. In later years I heard Edward Everett often. His genius in preparation and in the delivery of his orations and speeches was quite equal to anything we can imagine at Athens and by Athenian orators, excepting only the force of the argument.

In 1851 or 1852 I was present at an agricultural fair at Northampton and in company with Mr. Everett. After dinner speeches were made. When we rode to the fair grounds in the morning a dense river fog covered the valley but at ten o'clock it lifted, and the day became clear. At the dinner Mr. Everett in his speech described the morning, the dense fog, the lifting, the sun illumin-