DAVID A. BOKEE. His paternal ancestors, ABRAHAM Bockee. and WOLFERT WEBBER, were among the earliest settlers in New-York, and were among the nine grantees of a large tract of land in Dutchess and the adjoining counties, called the " Nine Partners' Grant." WOLFERT WEBBER was an alderman of the outer ward of New-York as early as 1668, and was considered one of the most substantial and useful citizens of his time. ONE of the most glorious results of a free [ and patriotism, to need any eulogium here Government is the kindly influence it exerts in the development of Intellect. Under its institutions the want of rank, fortune, or early scholastic training, opposes no insurmountable obstacles to advancement. The ardent soul and the energetic mind may gaze upward, and move onward in the pathway of hope and honorable ambition, unfettered by prejudices, and unimpeded by social distinctions. Man, with virtuous purposes, may avail himself of all his faculties to become great, honored, and useful, with every thing to excite his action, and no conventional barriers to check him in his noble career! The blessings of living under such a Government cannot be too deeply impressed upon those who enjoy them; more particularly the rising generation, into whose hands its guardianship must fall, and whose sacred duty it will become to transmit the institutions of their country unimpaired to their successors-an inviolalable legacy. The subject of this sketch had the misfortune to lose his father before he was five years old, and the care of him devolving upon relatives, he obtained only the advantages of a common school education. While at school he was distinguished for his aptness, especially in mathematics, in which science his attainments soon reached the extent of his teacher's capacity to instruct him. At the early age of twelve years he left school to battle with the world alone, without the aid of friends or fortune. Entirely We know of no means better calculated through his own exertions he obtained a to enhance the respect and affection of a situation in a counting-house, and, sustained citizen for his Government than by pointing by the indomitable perseverence of his charout the incentives to virtuous ambition which acter, and a proud spirit of independence, its institutions offer, especially as illustrated he was soon enabled, by his industry, inin the career of those who have attained antegrity, and intelligence, to win the confihonorable distinction, under disadvantages which in a less favored country would be deemed insurmountable. It is the biography of SELF-MADE MEN which affords the most useful lessons to the youth of a country like ours. They are thus taught the rewards of perseverance and merit, and the vanity of mere social position and adventitious aids in the struggle for honor and distinction. It is, therefore, with undisguised pleasure that we present to our readers the subject of this brief memoir, as emphatically a SELF-MADE MAN, and one who is destined, we hope, to a long career of public usefulness. DAVID A. BOKEE was born in the city of New-York, in October, 1805. He is descended from the old Knickerbockers, a race too well known for their deep energy of character, their strong minds, their honesty dence and esteem of his employers. Since the time of entering their service, a period of about thirty-three years, Mr. Bokee has been connected with the mercantile interests of New-York, and has been universally known and respected among that honorable and important class of citizens who are engaged in commercial pursuits. At eighteen years old Mr. Bokee's mercantile acquirements were of a nature to fit him for a better position than it was in the power of his employers to afford him; and an opportuuity offering to establish himself in business, he removed to Georgetown, South Carolina, where his mercantile knowledge, his integrity of character, and habits of industry, won him popularity and esteem, so that he was early elected, and frequently served, as an alderman of the town. During his residence in Georgetown, Mr. Bokee en- | he won enviable applause for his honesty and joyed the first opportunity of distinguishing independence. himself for patriotic attachment to the Union. The sheriff of the county being in ill-health, it devolved upon Mr. Bokee as deputy to fill his place, during the hottest of the nullification strife in South Carolina; and his prompt, fearless, and considerate discharge of his duties made such an impression upon the friends of the Union, that he was nominated as their candidate for the office of sheriff at the ensuing election, and, notwithstanding the excitement which existed, and the prejudices arrayed against him as a Northern man, he was only beaten by some fifty votes! Mr. Bokee was married in Georgetown, S. C., and has six children. In the year 1834 he returned to this State, and took up his residence in the city of Brooklyn. He immediately formed a connection with one of the largest and most respectable mercantile houses in Pearl street, New-York, with which he remained until he was induced to take a situation as an Under-writer in Wall street, in which position he has formed an extensive and favorable acquaintance among the leading merchants of the city. In 1839 Mr. Bokee was elected an Alderman of the City of Brooklyn, and remained in the Board until he became senior member and President thereof. He also served, for successive terms, with much credit to himself, and efficiency for the party, as Chairman of the Young Men's Whig Committee, and of the Whig General Committee of Brooklyn. On the adoption of the new Constitution, when Kings county became a senatorial district, he was nominated by the Whig party as their candidate, and elected to the State Senate by fourteen hundred majority, notwithstanding that the Whigs of his county had been defeated but a few months before in the Judicial elections. As a Senator, Mr. Bokee was distinguished for his industry, perseverance, and business trlents, and for his fearless and manly advocacy of whatever he thought to be right. For these qualities he was selected as chairman of several important special committees, and particularly of the Committee of Investigation on the affairs of the Canal Bank, in which capacity he made an able report, exposing so completely the monstrous frauds of that institution as to excite public indignation against it to the highest degree, while Ere he had closed his senatorial career, his well-deserved popularity, and the high order of talents he had evinced, pointed out Mr. Bokee to the Whigs of his district as their most eligible candidate for Congress. He accordingly received the nomination, and was elected triumphantly, over two opponents, by a majority of between two and three thousand votes! The first session of his attendance in the National Legislature was one of the stormiest through which our country has ever passed, and will be remembered as long as the history of the Republic shall exist. The long-smouldering embers of dissension on the question of African slavery burst into a flame which threatened the dissolution of the Union and the destruction of our glorious Institutions. The wisest statesmen, and the purest patriots of the age, aroused by a sense of the imminent danger to American liberty, threw their mightiest energies into the conflict, and, forgetful of previous differences, of personal ambition and of party strife, labored nobly together, with hearts united as one by the holiest sentiments of patriotic devotion, to rescue their beloved country from the impending peril! Side by side with these, with all his energies bent to useful ends, and disdaining, in the frankness and fearlessness of his nature, the slightest concealment of his opinions, was DAVID A. BOKEE, always a patriot, and friend of the Union! In the protracted debates of the session Mr. Bokee took no prominent part: a natural diffidence of his abilities as a public speaker, for which his previous career was not such as to have qualified him, and an appreciable modesty, deterred him from attempts at rhetorical display in an arena where the first orators of the age were pitted together; but his talents, his judgment, his industry, and his business habits soon gained him the respect and appreciation of his fellow members; and his services in the passage of the Compromise measures through the House of Representatives were as essential as those of any member thereof. It was in great part through his exertions that the New-York delegation cast so large a number of votes for those measures, and had the emergency demanded it, through his perseverance and tact two more notes were ready to have been given in their favor. Mr. Bokee's energy of character, business | feelings and sentiments among the colonists, qualifications, and untiring industry were sensibly and favorably felt, during his labors as a Representative, especially where the interests of his immediate constituents or his own State were concerned; and his frank manners, generous disposition, and gentlemanly deportment made him a universal favorite with his compeers and associates. During the last session of Congress Mr. Bokee on more than one occasion gave evidence of a readiness and power in debate entirely unlooked for even by his warmest friends and admirers, who were aware of the absence of all pretension on his part as a public speaker, and which afford promise of extended usefulness in his rising career as a statesman. In connection with this subject it will not be inappropriate for us to refer to an oration delivered on the Fourth of July last by Mr. Bokee in Brooklyn, which ranks in our estimation among the most eloquent and patriotic ever delivered on that glorious occasion, and a few extracts from which our readers will readily excuse. and paints forcibly the powerful causes which brought them, through compromise and mutual concession, into one harmonious and united nation. "The colonies which were planted in North America, and which at the commencement of that noble struggle which resulted so gloriously to them, were commenced at different periods, by different persons, and for different purposes. They were from each other, separated by an unexplored wilderness filled with wild beasts, and wild men, much more to be dreaded than the most savage and dangerous animals, and had little communication or sympathy for each other. They were neither all of one race or language, nor was there a community of interest or religion to bind them together as one people. So far from this, there existed among some of them strong feelings of hostility, growing out of those embittered religious contests that had disturbed the peace of England before they had left their parent land, for these then western wilds. The Cavalier of Virginia, Maryland and South Carolina, saw in the NewEnglander the same sturdy, bigoted Puritan, who had kindled his ire, and against whom he had drawn his sword in the conflicts between Puritanism and Prelacy, or Protestantism and Papistry in Old England. And the Puritan beheld his old The exordium of Mr. Bokee is classic, and enemies settled upon the same continent, but at in good taste : "There are times and seasons when it is proper for men, in travelling the journey of life, to pause and take a retrospect of the past, that they may see what progress they have made, and whether they have deviated from the right course; and that they may also look forward and take as extensive a survey of their future route, as their own vision and the surrounding objects will permit. No wise man, indeed, will allow himself to neglect these proper occasions of self-examination in regard to the past, and serious contemplation of the fu ture. "The same may be said of nations. With them there are recurrences of important epochs, when the people are emphatically called upon to pause and reflect; to contemplate the past and survey the future. Can there be a more fitting occasion for such a pause and for such examination than upon the arrival of another national birthday? This is an annual resting-place, and it will be well for us to seize the opportunity it offers to deepen the impression and refresh our recollections of the events with which it is in every mind associated. Circumstances of a momentons character that have lately transpired, and are now agitating the public mind, give additional interest to these events, and add greatly to the duty of the American people rightly to appreciate the blessings which flow from them, and which have made us a great and happy nation." such a distance, and beyond such intervening ob- "Between these, and the staid, cool, and imperturbable settlers of New-Amsterdam, there was little affinity or intercourse, and sometimes even hostilities. Such were the disjointed members of that confederacy which was afterwards formed, and which eventually became a well-cemented Union. " And what, let me ask you, fellow-citizens, were those causes-powerful, indeed, they must have been which overcame the repulsive force of these scattered members, and united them in a firm, fraternal, national band? What were the causes which brought the Cavalier, the Roundhead, and the sturdy Dutchman to forget former antipathies, to embrace as brothers, and to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to stand by each other in the deadly conflict they had embarked in ? "It was the love of Liberty; it was a firm resolve never to be deprived of the rights of freemen." Of the difficulties which the early revolutionists encountered, especially those who were in favor of declaring the colonies independent, he speaks eloquently and feelingly, and accords to John Adams, from whose autobiography he quotes some extracts not generally known, all the credit which is so eminently due him, as one of the fathers of the Revolution. Mr. Adams The orator then gives a brief but comprehensive view of the first settlement of the American colonies; refers to the diversity of ❘ was for independence, and the following fime passage from Mr. Bokee's orationing as fully as we could wish from this throws light upon that period of his career, admirable address. Briefly, but clearly, and tends still more to consecrate his memory in the hearts of his countrymen : But there were those who were faithful to the cause, that were unprepared for the great step which was taken in the Revolution, declaring the Colonies independent, and were even shocked at the suggestion of such a procedure! Will you believe it, fellow-citizens, that when this idea first got out through a private letter which had been intercepted, and published by order of General Gage, the author was shunned, even by members of the Congress of '76, as a dangerous person! Mr. Adams was the writer of that letter, and after its publication, he says, 'I was avoided like a man having the leprosy. I walked the streets of Philadelphia in solitude, borne down by the weight of care and unpopularity. And this account is confirmed by Dr. Rush, who says, 'I saw this gentleman (Mr. Adams) walk the streets of Philadelphia alone, after the publication of his intercepted letter in our newspapers, in 1775, an object of nearly universal scorn and detestation! Such, fellow-citizens, was the odium which in Philadelphia fell upon those who dared even to hint at independence, as late as the fall of 1775, some months after the battle of Bunker's Hill, and after General Washington had taken command of the American army! Am I not then borne out, in saying that the labor of those great men who prepared the public mind for separation from the mother country-who led the way to independence, and who toiled in Congress to sustain the army and the conflict in the long years of a doubtful struggle, and of gloomy prospects-was no holiday labor, no drawing-room amusement? Nothing less than the most sacred conviction of the just ness of their cause, the inborn love of liberty which belongs to freemen, and a firm reliance on the goodness and justice of that Providence who had ever watched over the destinies of North America, could have sustained and encouraged them in those times that literally and emphatically 'tried men's souls.' "But they were borne up through all trials, hardships, and difficulties, and had the satisfaction of seeing their country take her place among the nations of the earth, as their acknowledged equal. And here a reflection is forced upon us. John Adams was the first Minister who represented the United States at the Court of St. James, after the peace of '83, and the acknowledgment by Great Britain of our independence; and what a contrast must there have been in his feelings when he stood before George the Third, the proud representative of a nation of freemen, and when he walked the streets of Philadelphia, 'an object of nearly universal scorn and detestation,' because he had in a private letter dared to hint at independence! Amply was he then repaid for all the odium that had been attempted to be cast upon him for being six months in advance of some other members of Congress, and well might he afford to forget their scorn and contumely." The want of space prevents us from quot and in eloquent and energetic terms, Mr. Bokee describes the difficulties which surrounded the framers of the Constitution : "The Constitution was brought into existence by compromise. Had each member of the Convention, and each section of the country adhered pertinaciously and unyieldingly to its own views and wishes, the delegates must have separated without accomplishing the glorious work which stands as an everlasting monument of their forbearance, conciliatory spirit and wisdom. What the condition of this country would now have been had they thus separated, and what the contrast between what it would have been and what it now is, I must leave to the imagination of those who may reflect upon the subject. May our own and all future generations prove themselves not less wise, patriotic and conciliatory than those who left us the inestimable legacy of the Constitution and the Union." The following passage is exceedingly fine, and will be read with feelings of admiration and pleasure by every friend of the Union: "Could the genius of America then have taken our fathers up into an exceeding high mountain, and showed them the United States as the coun try then was, almost entirely covered with boundless forests through which the wild beasts and the red man roamed undisturbed; and then, by shifting the scene, exhibited the United States as they now are, stretching from ocean to ocean, and from the St. John's to the Rio del Norte, covered with splendid cities and flourishing towns; our lakes, rivers and canals teeming with commerce; our railroads running in every direction, through valleys, over rivers, ascending mountains, creeping along frightful precipices, and leaping fearful chasms; our boundless fields of wheat, corn, cotton and other productions of the earth; the three or four millions of people multiplied into twentyfour, among whom intelligence is communicated from one extremity to the other, not only with the speed of lightning, but by lightning itself; what would have been their wonder and amazement! Surely they would have thought that what they saw was not reality, but a vision, a dream, a hallucination, conjured up by spirits of the air, by some Prospero and his tricksy Ariel. But we, fellow-citizens, find the vision sober reality. Never, in any part of the globe, since the earth was given to man for his habitation, have there been such astonishing changes, improvements, and increase in the physical comforts of man, as have been witnessed in this country within the sixty-two years that have passed away since the ratification, by the people, of the Constitution of the United States. I wish I could say that there had been a corresponding increase in the patriotic attachment of the people to the simplicity of republican institutions, and an equal improvement in the moral and religious character of the country; but I fear, that if we greatly excel our fathers in physical comforts, we fall behind them in some of those moral qualities which are essential to form a truly and permanently great nation. "And now, let me ask, my friends,' if we are prepared to tear to pieces that Constitution which was formed with so much labor and with such a patriotic surrender of prejudices and sectional feelings, under whose protection the American people have run so splendid a career of national prosperity? Are we prepared to rend that UNION asunder, and scatter its fragments to the winds of heaven, which our fathers made such efforts to establish? Are we' prepared to condemn that noble work which they looked upon with so much pride and exultation, and pronounced good? Are we ready to destroy that which has caused the forests of the West to disappear like the mist before the morning sun, and the tide of population to flow on, like the irresistible sweep of the ocean, driving before it the wilderness, the buffalo and the red man, and carrying with it industry, agriculture and the arts, intelligence, education and religion?-that which has whitened every ocean and sea and river with our commerce, and brought the products of the whole world to our doors?-that which has made us a great, a prosperous, a brave and powerful people? Look around you: what do you now see, standing where you are, or upon the beautiful heights of our own city? Every ship and steamer of the thousands in view, every warehouse and dock of our own and the adjoining city, -every spire of the hundreds that point like so many fingers up to heaven, all, indeed, that goes to make up the great emporium of commerce,' is a monument to the wisdom of those who formed the CONSTITUTION and established the UNION, and a cogent argument in favor of their faithful maintenance. Palsied be the hand that would touch the first stone of that noble edifice to remove it from its place, and nerveless the arm that is outstretched to do it harm! Let him who would destroy our reverence and attachment for the UNION, and persuade us to do aught that should weaken its foundations, be anathema maranatha; let him walk an object of scorn and detestation in our midst, and be shunned by every good citizen as one infected with moral leprosy, a loathed lump of living corruption, whose touch is pollution, and whose breath is pestilence!" And in conclusion of our extracts, we commend the succeeding to the earnest attention of our countrymen: "And now, what is the remedy for the evils which threaten the integrity of the Union, and what are our duties as good citizens and Americans! The remedy is in faithfully adhering to and carrying out every requirement of the Constitution, and the execution of all and every law enacted by Congress, and especially those Compromise laws, one and all, entitled the adjustment measures,' for if these are not faithfully observed and executed, no one having seen what it has been my lot to see within the last two years, and who is not utterly incapable of judging of coming events by the shadows they cast before, can for a moment doubt that the secession of the entire South, and the for mation of a Southern Confederacy, would be the consequence. Our duties, then, are plain and palpable; listen to them from the lips of WASHINGTON himself, who speaks to us as a father in his ever memorable Farewell Address: 'It is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment toit, accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as the palladium of political safety our political and lous anxiety-discountenancing whatever may suggest a suspicion that it can, in any event, be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.' These are the words of wisdom; they are words uttered from the tomb; let us take heed that we obey their solemn injunctions. And, my friends, while we 'cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to the Union,' we must also cherish and cultivate a cordial respect, and kindly fraternal feeling for our brother Americans, to whatever section of the Union they may belong. We must indulge in no jealousies, no prejudices, no heartburnings towards any one, and especially of a sectional character. 'The name of American which belongs to you in your national capacity,' says the same warning voice of WASHINGTON, 'must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.' Without this respect and kindly feeling mutually maintained and cherished by Americans, there may be a union of the States, but there cannot be a cordial sympathy and brotherly union among the people; and they will be like man and wife, when all love is fled, bound together by the bonds-no longer silken bonds of matrimony, but becoming more and more averse to each other, and more and more restive under the restraints which those bonds impose." prosperity-watching for its preservation with jea In looking around for a suitable person to fill the important office of Naval Officer of the port of New-York, vacant by the death of the late and lamented Philip Hone, Esq., Mr. Fillmore fixed upon DAVID A. BOKEE, a selection creditable to the discrimination and judgment of the President, and an honor well deserved by the recipient thereof, and an appointment which cannot fail to give general satisfaction. Mr. Bokee is under the middle stature, a man of nervous, sanguine temperament, quick perceptions, clear, sound judgment, fine reasoning faculties, untiring industry, and indomitable perseverance; his disposition is open, frank, and generous. In the prime of life, with many warinly-attached friends, and a rising reputation, it is not hazarding too much to say that his career as a public man is destined to be both useful and brilliant. |