SAMUEL GALLOWAY.*

BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D. D., LL. D.

It is hardly necessary to ask where the Galloways came from. Their name bewrayeth them. The southwesternmost peninsula of Scotland, jutting out into the Irish Channel, and separated by only a few miles of water from County Antrim in Ireland, was known as the Galloway district. Burns's country of Ayr was just north of it, Carlyle's country of Ecclefechen and Dumfries was just east of it, and Wordsworth's country of Cumberland was not far south of it. The green hills of Ireland were in plain sight of the eastern shores of Galloway, and their invitation was accepted by numbers of the Scotch people, who crossed the narrow strait and made for themselves a home in the north of Ireland. Thus it was, no doubt, that some Scotch John or Alexander or Andrew of Galloway found his home and his surname in Ireland. How long the race had been established on Irish soil we do not know; it was early in the history of this country that the first Galloway took up his further journey westward, crossing a broader sea, and setting up his roof-tree in Gettysburg, Pa. About the same time the Buchanans, another Scotch-Irish family, came to the same neighborhood; and a daughter of the Buchanans became the wife of James Galloway and the mother of Samuel, our honored townsman. President James Buchanan and Samuel Galloway were cousins; politically they were somewhat distant cousins, I judge, from a remark in a letter of Galloway to his brother, written in the last days of 1860. "Are you troubled," he asks, "about the secession of South Carolina? I am; but I should not be troubled if we had a man of principle in the White House." Evidently he was not inclined to shade the truth on account of relationship.

It was in the ancient and renowned town of Gettysburg that Samuel Galloway was born March 20, 1811. The paternal residence is still standing, as I learn; during the eventful days of '63

* An address delivered at the First Congregational Church, Columbus, January 6, 1895.

it was occupied as a hospital by one or the other of the armies. In the schools of Gettysburg Samuel received his primary training; and it was here that Thaddeus Stevens, then a rising young lawyer of that town, heard young Galloway speak at a school exhibition of some sort, and at once predicted for the boy a brilliant future. Stevens did not lose sight of him; and a friendly correspondence followed the removal of Galloway to Ohio.

It seems difficult to fix the date of this migration. It occurred after the death of his father, and was probably as early as 1828 or 1829, when he was seventeen or eighteen years old. The family settled in Greenfield, Highland county; and in 1829 Samuel entered Miami University, at Oxford, from which, in 1833, he graduated at the head of his class.

He at once began the study of law at Hillsborough; but his religious nature had been deeply stirred by some experience, and he abruptly abandoned his legal studies and went to Princeton, where he remained one year as a theological student. Why he did not complete his theological course I do not know; financial considerations may have constrained him to turn, for a while, to the work of teaching. In 1835 he was made Professor of Greek at Miami University; but resigned, on account of ill-health, at the end of a year. When his health was recovered he resumed teaching, first at Springfield in this State, and later at South Hanover College in Indiana, where for two or three years he was professor of the classical languages.

The biographies which have appeared in the Cyclopedias and the Collections all state that his purpose of abandoning the ministry for the law was clearly formed when he left Princeton, but I have good evidence, in a long letter written from South Hanover, in 1840, to his brother, then a Presbyterian pastor at Springfield, that the question of his calling was not even then settled. It is a most interesting epistle as showing the workings of this alert and penetrating mind. He has recently been visiting in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and lecturing there on Education and Temperance; and he makes some interesting observations on the state of society which he finds there. "They are a people," he says, "distinguished for their liberality and enlightened

views of human rights. Many of the people there talk freely on the subject; they admit slavery to be a sore evil and are anxiously looking forward to the day when the curse shall be removed. The great error that I observed in their views is their disposition to shuffle off the responsibility from themselves upon the State."

These interesting comments are, however, but introductory to the principal theme of his letter, which is a full expression of his mind concerning his future career. "I intimated," he writes, "to Bro. Steele, when we met in Kentucky, that I thought it not improbable that I might connect myself with the Presbytery in the spring. *** I am still of the same opinion, yet halting. I am aware that the state of suspense in which I have been for three or four years is not only unfavorable to my own advancement, but especially unfavorable to my usefulness and comfort, but these are simply and honestly my feelings upon the matter. I have been so much thwarted and disappointed in my intentions. in regard to the ministry, that I have more than once come to the conclusion that it was not the will of Providence that I should serve him in that department of labor. This, in addition to conditions arising from impaired constitution and my peculiar temperament, have placed me in my present unsettled condition. If I know my own heart, my object is to glorify God, and no considerations drawn from wealth or the praise that cometh from man have ever eclipsed this object in my eye. Many of my choicest Christian friends have frequently advised me to seek some more active life than that of the ministry; and have (I have no doubt honestly) suggested that I could be useful to the church and to the world by becoming a politician, and thus make my talents bear upon some of the important moral subjects involved in the legislation of the present day. I have always believed that I had some natural adaptation of mind for such and similar pursuits; and nothing but the conviction that it was difficult to keep a conscience void of offense toward God and man ever induced me to abandon the law and to turn an unwilling ear to the solicitations which have been offered by many estimable friends. If I now thought, or had thought, that I could have been preserved faithful to God by such a consecration of my talents, I would not have hesitated, or now hesitate, a mo

ment to make that disposition of my abilities. I am as sensible of my imperfections as any individual can be, and especially of that levity of temperament over which I have prayed and wept, and hence I have seriously apprehended that this might be a great. hindrance to my usefulness in the ministry. These thoughts are honestly submitted and I ask your advice."

These words show that under the lightness of temperament there was, after all, a deep seriousness; and that a genuine selfcriticism was habitual with him.

It was very soon after this that the wavering judgment settled, not upon the ministry, but upon the law; for it was the next year that he returned to Ohio and began the study of the law; in 1842 he was admitted to the bar; and in 1843 he formed a law partnership with Nathaniel Massie of Chillicothe. "He made his maiden speech," says one biographer, "in Hillsborough, in the presence of several of the most distinguished members of the bar in Southern Ohio. All gave him high commendation for this effort, the jury according him the verdict without leaving their seats; and such was the impression upon the Hon. Thomas L. Hamer, who was present, that he said, Galloway, retire with your laurels; you will never be able, in any further effort, to equal or surpass this.""

The next year he was elected by the Legislature Secretary of State-that office, under the old constitution, being filled in that way; and he at once moved to Columbus, which was thenceforth his home. This was in 1844-the year that Henry Clay was not elected a memorable year in the politics of Ohio. Galloway was thirty-three years old and he had seen a good deal of the world in one way and another; for during his teaching experience he had been in great request as a lecturer and speaker upon education and temperance. The days of the Washingtonian movement were just passing and Galloway had entered into that with great enthusiasm, speaking everywhere, in churches and halls and school houses, and leading great numbers of the victims of drink to reform their habits. In the letter from which I have quoted he tells his brother that between 80 and 100 persons signed the pledge in the meetings which he held in Kentucky.