ANECDOTE OF GEN. HANCOCK-GEN. HANCOCK AT THE BATTLE OF CHERUBUSCO-HORSE SHOT UNDER HIM AT CHANCELLORSVILLE-ASSAULT ON MARYE'S HEIGHTS, DEC. 13, 1862-THE BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG IN 1862 GEN. HANCOCK'S POSITION-THE RESPONSIBILITY-CHARGES DENIED THE HABEAS CORPUS-THE APPLICATION FOR DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION. DOUGHERTY'S GREAT SPEECH NOMINATING HANCOCK ORATION OF MAJOR DANIEL-THE LETTERS OF ACCEPT- ANCE-GEN. HANCOCK'S LETTER -LETTER OF ACCEPT- ANCE OF HON. WM. H. ENGLISH-GEN. HANCOCK FOUR YEARS AGO-HIS LETTERS TO GEN. SHERMAN ON THE THE LIVING. STATESMEN OF THE PAST. GEN. GARFIELD'S PRIVATE CHARACTER-GEN. HANCOCK AS A CIVIL MAGISTRATE-GEN. HANCOCK AT WASHINGTON IN 1867-GEN. HANCOCK AT ANTIETAM-A FALSE MAG- NANIMITY-ROSECRANS ON HANCOCK-GEN. HANCOCK RECEIVING THE NEWS OF HIS NOMINATION-HANCOCK AND ENGLISH FORMALLY NOTIFIED OF THEIR NOMINA- TION-NEARLY THREE MILLION SOLDIERS - NUMBER FURNISHED BY EACH STATE AND TERRITORY DURING JEFFERSON-MRS. JAMES MADISON MRS. JAMES MONROE-MRS. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS—MRS. AN- DREW JACKSON-MRS. MARTIN VAN BUREN-MRS. WIL- LIAM HENRY HARRISON-MRS. JOHN TYLER-MRS. JAS. K. POLK-MRS. ZACHARY TAYLOR-MRS. MILLARD FILL- MORE-MRS. FRANKLIN PIERCE-MISS HARRIET LANE WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK. CHAPTER I. BIOGRAPHY. HIS BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. HERE are some maxims that grow more pre THER cious with age because they seem to apply more forcibly every day to the ordinary transactions of life. One of these is that of the ancient philosopher who declared that most history was false except in its dates and names, and that much fiction was true except in its dates and names. The life of WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK is an experience that sometimes reads like romance and reality combined. It is a succession of lessons to young and to old, and we can read none of it without feeling that Hancock was raised among good people and by careful parents, who had instilled their own domestic methods into his early training. The impression his experience makes upon me revives another saying of the great Roman freedman, Terence, who, more than two thousand years ago, wrote, "I am a man and have an interest in everything that concerns bumanity." The ancestral homestead of General Hancock, on the maternal side, stands in Montgomery Co., Pa., half a mile east of Lansdale and about twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia. The old portion of the house was erected in 1728, and the new portion in 1764. In this house the mother of General Hancock resided at the time of her marriage to the General's father. The county in which this historic homestead stands was named after General Montgomery, who fell at Quebec, and whose monument stands in St. Paul's Churchyard, New York. At the time of his marriage, Mr. Benjamin Franklin Hancock-father of General Hancock-was living in what was afterwards the birth-place of General Hancock, some three miles east of Lansdale. It stands about half a mile east of the Square, and it is a solid, well-preserved building, of fine appearance. When young Ilancock was a year old, his father removed from this old mansion to a house of less pretensions, somewhat nearer to Montgomery Square, where he resided and taught school under the same roof. The school-house residence is still standing, but greatly altered in appearance. Two years later, young Hancock's father removed to Norristown, and there taught school and practiced law till he died, at the age of sixty-seven years. |