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Volume CXXXI, Number 24 |
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Fessenden & Hyde
KID WONGSRICHANALAI
COLUMNIST
For the past year our series has traveled from Bowdoin College's 19th century world to the battlefields of Mexico, Virginia, and the United States Senate. Our series has focused on two individuals: one a senator named William Pitt Fessenden, Class of 1823, the other a soldier and an adventurer named Thomas Worchester Hyde, Class of 1861. We have also recounted the stories of other Bowdoin graduates- Sam Fessenden, son of the Senator who was a member of Hyde's graduating class, and Franklin Pierce, Class of 1824, the pathetic man who was never capable of earning the office of the Presidency, which he ascended to in 1853. These individuals were one generation apart but they all lived the era of Civil War America and contributed greatly to that time of uncertainty.
Each of their lives took a different path and the curtain
had to set sooner for some of them. The first to pass away was, ironically,
the youngest one, Sam Fessenden whose life was ended suddenly on the field
of Second Bull Run in 1862. As a passionate adventurer Sam had seen more
of America than many of his classmates for before he was a Bowdoin student
he had been a Union man, running away to Kansas to fight for freedom.
Always found where the danger was greatest his was the story of the tragedy
of war.
The next from this group to pass into the great unknown was Sam's father,
William Pitt Fessenden. Long a member of the United States Senate and
a man whose integrity was unquestionable, whose stubbornness was legendary,
the elderly Fessenden had led a life of pain and loneliness.
Fighting secessionists in the years before the Civil War,
arguing sense into radical Republicans and funding the War as the Chair
of the Senate Finance Committee during the early and middle part of the
Civil War, Fessenden became a member of Lincoln's cabinet in 1864 and
for eight months served as a capable Secretary of the Treasury. After
Lincoln's death Fessenden was branded a conservative for his refusal to
help convict President Andrew Johnson of "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Friends became foes in trying to get the Senator to swing his vote for
a "guilty" sentence. Despite pressure and threats to his life,
Fessenden remained firm in his convictions. Sacrificing his career to
see justice served, his "not guilty" vote helped to save Johnson
and the country from undergoing the consequences of a successful impeachment
trial.
Many of Fessenden's friends, seeing him as a traitor to
the Party, continued to hold a grudge, especially in Maine. He remained,
however, a Republican and campaigned for Grant's election in 1868. He
continued in the Senate until 1869, doing his job as he saw fit, and regaining
the friendship of some old enemies. In April of 1869 he left Washington
for Maine and on September 8th, amidst a raging storm William Pitt Fessenden
passed away. The cause of death was a rupture in his lower intestine.
He was sixty-two years old.
Of Fessenden's career, future Speaker of the House of Representatives
Thomas Brackett Reed noted in a resolution to the Maine Senate:
As a stateman [sic] he was a friend of liberty when her
friends were few. He was tried on many critical occasions and was equal
to all, and at last crowned a life of long service by steadfastly enduring
for what he thought right the reproaches of friends and the praise of
foes. The example of his stainless character and of the steady courage
with which he met obloquy for the sake of convictions, in its effect upon
the lives of those who come after him, will carry his influence and power
to centuries which his name may never reach.
William Pitt Fessenden's story was one of sacrifice and
bold integrity.
Franklin Pierce's, unfortunately, was not. His life was marked by weakness
and personal tragedy. Of all the men we have brought forth in this series,
his future was the one with the most potential. He rose to the highest
office in the land and yet his failures overshadowed his very few achievements.
After his wife of thirty years died in December of 1863 he was left alone.
When in the following spring his old friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, himself
a Bowdoin graduate from the class of 1825, died, Pierce was left a broken
and disgraced man. Denied a place as one of Hawthorne's pallbearers due
to his outspoken position against the Northern war effort, Pierce was
branded a traitor and forgotten. He turned to the bottle and at the end
of his life found God before falling ill and dying on October 8, 1869,
a month after Fessenden.
In his last public address, Pierce said simply of his career,
"I do not believe that I ever saw a day when I would not have made
any possible, personal sacrifice to maintain the Constitution of my country
and the Union based upon it."
The last to pass away, from our select few, was Thomas W.
Hyde who was also the most successful of the group. Entering the Civil
War with great enthusiasm and vigor, Hyde emerged with even more faith
in the Union cause. He had few regrets during his years in the Army of
the Potomac- one of them was the tragic death of his commanding general
and friend, John Sedgwick, killed by a sniper at Spotsylvania in 1864.
In later years Hyde would write, "I look on it now as my proudest
distinction that I was enabled to so serve with him [Sedgwick] while he
lived." Tom Hyde, the son of a wealthy merchant, himself to become
one of the richest men in Maine looked back at his life and admitted that
his greatest honor had not been the accumulation of his wealth but rather
the friendship of a man named Sedgwick.
Hyde remained a dedicated Republican and had a long list
of achievements after his war service- for which he was promoted to the
rank of brigadier general. He served as a mayor, a bank official, a state
senator, president of the Maine Senate, and a director of the Maine Central
Railroad. His greatest achievement, which earned him his fortune and his
spot in Maine history, however, was the founding of Bath Iron Works. In
1891, as a tribute to his actions at the Battle of Antietam, twenty-nine
years earlier, Hyde was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The
inscription read:
HYDE, THOMAS W.
Rank and organization: Major, 7th Maine Infantry. Place and date: At Antietam,
Md., 17 September 1862. Entered service at: Bath, Maine. Birth: Italy.
Date of issue: 8 April 1891. Citation: Led his regiment in an assault
on a strong body of the enemy's infantry and kept up the fight until the
greater part of his men had been killed or wounded, bringing the remainder
safely out of the fight.
Always a force in his state while he was alive, Tom Hyde
departed from the world in 1899. He was fifty-eight years old. His story
was one of youthful energy and zeal.
And so we close yet another series. As stated when this
journey began, my purpose was to bring to life the stories of Bowdoin's
lesser-known personalities, who in some way had a hand in the Civil War.
Hopefully the journey has been informative for you, the reader. But I
have failed to tell you the entire story of their lives and also of the
lives of the hundreds of Bowdoin men who were alive and participated in
the War Between North and South. No newspaper series can hope to do that.
It should simply be remembered that from these halls there emerged many
generations who played prominent and not so prominent roles in their times.
Like us, those soldiers, writers, politicians, and scientists, marched
forth from Bowdoin College, sought out their paths in life, did the best
they could with their ability and, in turn, made their alma mater proud.
Kid Wongsrichanalai
December 28, 2001
Bangkok, Thailand.
Some editing (by the Orient staff) may have occurred before
this piece was published. To view a full version of the entire series
(including source citations) please visit my website. (This site includes
the Chamberlain and Howard Series and is updated weekly during the school
year) at: http://www.bowdoin.edu/~kwongsri
Also, please send comments and ideas to: kwongsri@bowdoin.edu