accordingly in 1879. But
it effected little more than to change the name of the Free
Soil party. Few Whigs or Democrats united to the movement.
A secret organization called Americans, or Know-Nothings,
swept the Commonwealth like a wave, electing all the State
officers, and, with scarcely an exception, the entire Legislature.

The candidate for Governor nominated by the Republicans at
Worcester, himself joined the Know-Nothings, and labored to
defeat his own election.

The next year the attempt was more successful. On the 10th
of August, 1855, a meeting without distinction of party was
held at Chapman Hall, in Boston, which was addressed by Mr.
Hoar, George Bliss, Franklin Dexter, William Brigham, Lyman
Beecher, Richard H. Dana, Jr., Charles F. Adams, Henry Wilson,
Stephen C. Phillips, and others. On the 30th of the same
month, a meeting of conference committees was held, representing
the American or Know-Nothing party, the Know-Somethings, an
antislavery organization which had held a National Convention
at Cleveland in June, and the Chapman Hall Convention. This
conference appointed a committee of twenty-six to call a State
Convention, at the head of which they placed Mr. Hoar. This
State Convention was held at Worcester, nominated Julius
Rockwell for Governor, and the organization which it created
has constituted the Republican party of Massachusetts to the
present day.

The part taken in calling this Convention, and in promoting
the union which gave it birth, was Mr. Hoar's last important
public service. His failing health prevented his taking an
active share in the Presidential campaign of 1856.

I prefer, in putting on record this brief estimate of a character
which has been to me the principal object of reverence and
honor in my life, to use the language of others, and not
my own. From many tributes to my father's character, from
persons more impartial than I can be, I have selected two
or three.

I cannot quote at length Ralph Waldo Emerson's sketches of
Mr. Hoar, who was his near neighbor and intimate personal
friend for many years. They are noble and faithful as portraits
of Van Dyke or Titian. One of them is a speech made in Concord
town-meeting on the third day of November, 1856, the day after
Mr. Hoar's death. The other was contributed to the _Unitarian
Monthly Religious Magazine,_ then edited by Rev. Dr. Huntington,
afterward Bishop of New York. Mr. Emerson says in one of
them: "His