CHAPTER XLVIII.

POSTHUMOUS.

WHEN the news of the death of General Jackson reached Washington, the President of the United States ordered the departments to be closed for one day, and Mr. Bancroft, the Secretary of the Navy and Acting Secretary of War, directed public honors to be paid to the memory of the ex-President, at all the military and naval stations.

In every large town in the country there were public ceremonies in honor of the deceased, consisting usually of an oration and a procession. In the city of New York the entire body of the uniformed militia, all the civic functionaries, the trades and societies, joined in the parade. Mr. Van Buren was invited to deliver the oration. In declining the invitation, he said that no one had had better opportunities than himself to observe the character of the departed, and no one, among the millions who mourned his death, would cherish his memory longer or more reverently. He announced his intention "to prepare, at a proper time, a suitable memoir of his conduct and principles."

Among those who were invited to attend the commemoration in New York, was Chief Justice Taney. This gentleman used the following language in replying to the committee: "The whole civilized world already know how bountifully he was endowed by Providence with those high gifts which qualified him to lead, both as a soldier and a statesman. But those only who were around him in times of anxious deliberation, when great and mighty interests were at stake, and who were with him also in the retired scenes of domestic life, in the midst of his family and friends, can fully appreciate his innate love of justice, his hatred of oppression in every shape it would assume, his magnanimity, his entire freedom from any feeling of personal hostility to his political