On the Correspondence of Governor D. D. Tompkins. 231 



speaking of the period during the year 1814, when Governor Tomp- 

 kins' exertions for the defense of New York city had been most earnest 

 and self-sacrificing, Ingersoll writes: "Governor Tompkins was at 

 that period the pivot, on which the success of the war and of the Union 

 turned more than on any other individual. * * * His speech to 

 the legislature, September 27, 1814, was commensurate with the 



And yet I cannot refrain from illustrating to you by an example, the 

 facility with which the most important character in a war may be 

 utterly ignored. With this opinion of InixersoH's i n vour minds as to 

 the value of the services of Governor Tompkins in the war of 1812, con- 

 trast the history of this war in two volumes, entitled " The Second War 

 with England/' It was written in 1853, while Ingersoll's had been 

 published in 1849. The author of this history makes no mention of 

 New York as a State, or of Governor Tompkins in his table of con- 

 tents, and only once did I find his name casually mentioned in the 

 work, and with no discrimination to his praise even then. The author 

 of this later history was not a citizen of a distant state of the Union, 

 but of the State of New York, one who was honored two years after its 

 publication with the office of Secretary of State, the Hon. Joel T. 

 Headley. No such blunder should have been possible then. It will 

 be of very improbable occurrence now that the State possesses these 

 original records of Governor Tompkins' life. 



Bolton, in his voluminous history of Westchester county, speaking 

 of Governor Tompkins, observes that " Whenever the history of that 

 war shall be written for posterity, his name \\ ill till an ample space." 

 You will all agree with Bolton, that evidently, therefore, Mr. Headley's 

 history is not the one which has been written for posterity. And I am 

 sure that you are already felicitating the State and yourselves, that in 

 possessing Governor Tompkins' official correspondence, it has acquired 

 the materials by means of which it can become acquainted, can make 

 known and perpetuate the knowledge of the honorable deeds of one of 

 her first citizens, as acknowledged by a citizen of another State, though 

 they were disregarded by a historian of our own State. ^ ^ 



my own, on this mora/ hero o/tfew York, I will now give you the 

 voice of history already speaking in 1881, as compared with the 

 silence of Mr. Headley's History of the war. The History of the 

 United States, edited by Wni. C. Bryant, contains this paragraph on 

 Governor Tompkins : 



