Lawton T. Hemans
Published: 2015-07-14
Total Pages: 692
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Excerpt from Life and Times of Stevens Thomson Mason: The Boy Governor of Michigan On several occasions I have heard Mr. Hemans remark, "There seems to be no work in Michigan covering the period from 1837 to 1845, the most eventful years of the State, as it was the period of her birth, and filled full of the trials subsequent to such an event." He said he could never find data on the political parties of that time, nor on Governor Mason and other prominent men of the day, unless by consulting old newspapers and pioneer collections. He determined to gather together all these fragments of historical knowledge, even if in an unsatisfactory manner to himself, place them together in one work and call it the "Life and Times of Stevens T. Mason - the Boy Governor." When a child, Mr. Hemans had been told that Governor Mason, the first Governor of this State, had died in a gutter after an evening's debauch. As he grew to young manhood and stood before the beautiful painting of the Governor in Representative Hall at Lansing and gazed upon that face so full of culture and refinement, the desire was born in his heart to try and refute this criticism and other calumnies heaped upon the Boy Governor. As he began collecting and reading, he became more and more convinced that many unjust remarks had been showered upon Governor Mason, that the beautiful, upright conscientious character of the man had never been shown in its true light. Mr. Hemans' desire grew stronger as his knowledge became deeper in his subject, and I really know that he had the greatest love and admiration for Governor Mason. We all know that if love fills our hearts our hardest task becomes easy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.