William Greenleaf Eliot

WILLIAM GREENLEAF ELIOT WRITTEN FOE MY CHILDREN LEST THEY FORGET PREFACE THE following narrative of over fifty years of labor in the interest of a higher civilization of religion, morality, and learning has been pre pared in the belief that the facts therein presented are worthy of permanent record. Although the story is intended primarily as a personal memoir, incidentally it relates to events of historical im portance, and depicts life in the West during its formative period under conditions that will not recur. The materials used in the preparation of this memoir have been obtained from Dr. Eliots dia ries, correspondence, sermons, reports, and other documents, published and unpublished, in the study of which contemporaneous history has been consulted. In the diaries occur frequent intervals of days, months, and years. The record for 1849, the year of pestilence in St. Louis, is quite full and that from 1861 to the close of 1862 contains under the head of Suggestions the original draft of the military order creating the Western Sanitary Commission, and of the tiii PREFACE complexion, in particular of the negro. Under slavery he mitigated, so far as his great influence extended, the hard lot of the blacks. Though having no part with the extremists who declared the Constitution of the United States to he a covenant with death and an agreement with hell he was actively anti-slavery, and from the out break of the Civil War was zealously loyal. In the Western Sanitary Commission, which came into existence through his suggestion, he was always a leader in collecting and applying the millions which flowed through its channels to the relief of the soldiers in the field. His youngestbrother, a gallant officer, was killed at Chancel lorsville at the head of his men. His brother Thomas, in Congress, became conspicuous for wisdom and ability in the difficult time of recon struction. William, in Missouri, played a part not less honorable and important in carrying through the struggle and in bringing to pass afterward a proper settlement. Lincoln and his cabinet offi cers and generals received his advice with respect. In particular, Dr. Eliots interest was great in education. The first free school west of the Mis sissippi was begun under his direction, and no one deserves more than he to be regarded as the father of the public school system in Missouri. Washington University, a cluster of educational institutions conceived after the broadest stan dard, containing at the present moment thousands PREFACE k the original record book o the Commission, and from reports issued by its secretary during the holding of the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair, which reports were completed and issued in book form at the close of the Civil War. The book referred to is simply a collection of reports, and contains many uninteresting details. It was the hope of the gentlemen composing the Board of the Western Sanitary Commission that the secretary, Kev. J. Gr. Forman, would at some time re write the account of the work of the Commission in more attractive literary form, but he did not live to accomplish the task. In preparing this memoir the writer has taken especial satisfaction in presenting Dr. Eliots work in the cause of emancipation, as for many years his conservative attitude was misunderstood and misconstrued by persons of more radical ideas. As a matter of fact he expressed in thepulpit and on the rostrum sentiments that would have entailed swift retribution if uttered in the heat of debate by one less honored and respected. Impassioned but never passionate, he appealed to the reason and conscience, and men could not gainsay him. A man of deep and tender affections, whose intensity of feeling was only equaled by his x PBEFACE strong power of self-control, Dr. Eliot was reti cent in the expression of his own emotions...