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OCR for page 79
4
The Government
C~zIls upon
the Academy
ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (~863—iS67)
The method by which the Academy intended to carry out its stated
purpose, to investigate and report on any subject of science or art
when so requested by any department of the government, had been
devised by Bache. In his first report to Congress he described how he
had arrived at it:
It was obvious that the only effective and prompt mode of action by members
scattered over the United States, as were the fifty named in the charter, must
be through committees. Action must originate with committees and be
perfected by discussion in the general meetings of the academy or in the
classes or sections—decisions to be finally pronounced by the entire body.
. . . LI]n important cases, where consultation and discussion must be had,
there will be little difficulty in effecting meetings, while in most cases corre-
spondence amply suffices for the settlement of the questions involved, and to
bring out the results in the form of a report with suggestions.
NAS, Annual Reportior 1863, p. 2.
79
OCR for page 80
80 / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (1863—1867)
Alexander Dallas Bache, Presi-
dent of the Academy, ~863-
~867 (From the archives of the
Academy).
Early Problems and Activities
A formal letter from Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase,
received shortly after the organization meeting had adjourned, April
~4, ~863, asked the Academy to report on the feasibility of achieving
"uniformity of weights, measures, and coins, considered in relation to
domestic and international commerce." Was there some way of com-
bining the convenient decimal system of coinage with the largely
arbitrary and irrational weights and measures of this country so as to
establish a uniform system and uniform nomenclature of weights,
measures, and coins?
On May 4, Bache appointed Joseph Henry chairman of a commit-
tee of eight, with the metrologist John H. Alexander, Fairman
Rogers, Wolcott Gibbs, Arnold Guyot, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., William
Chauvenet, and John Torrey as members. At its subsequent meetings
the committee made plans for an extended survey of the weights and
measures of the principal commercial countries of the world, ex-
pressed itself strongly in favor of adopting the French metric system,
unanimously agreed that an attempt be made to arrive at an interna-
OCR for page 81
The Government Calls upon the Academy 1 {3 ~
tional or universal system of weights and measures that all nations
might accept, and requested more time for its studies.2
The question of uniformity of weights and measures had first been
raised in Colonial America, and later by Presidents and Secretaries of
the Treasury of the young Republic, but without resolution. After
almost three years, Henry's committee had found no universal system
more practicable or possible than the metric system; and on ~an-
uary 27, ~866, it recommended to the Secretary of the Treasury the
introduction and use of that system in this country, the preparation
and distribution to the custom houses and the states of metric stan-
dards of weights and measures, and authorization of its use in the Post
Office Department. On July 28, Congress enacted the first of the
legislation that authorized, but did not make mandatory, all three
recommendations of the committee. On a subject influenced as much
by emotion as by mechanical science as committee member John H.
Alexander observed not even the tireless efforts of the National
Bureau of Standards in the years after its establishment in egos were
to achieve more than the Academy had.3
Nine other requests were made by federal agencies that first yearn
On May 8, ~863, the Navy Department, through Adm. Charles H.
Davis as Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, asked the Academy to
investigate protection for the bottoms of iron ships from injury by salt
water. Wolcott Gibbs's committee, appointed the next day, reported to
the Academy seven months later that a metallic coating or alloy was
commonly used to prevent or arrest corrosion of the metal, and that
poisonous substances in paint or varnish were used to destroy ac-
cumulations of plants or animals on ship bottoms. It pointed out that
no reliable systematic experiments had ever been made to determine
more effective materials or methods. The Smithsonian was willing to
provide a laboratory to make such experiments and tests if the Navy
Department or Congress defrayed the necessary expenses. The com-
mittee was discharged early the next year.5
2 Ibid., pp 3-4, i~-~2
~ NAS, Annual Reportfor 1866, pp. 3-4; J. H. Alexander, Report on the Standards of Weight
and Measure for the State of Matyland, and on the Construction of the Yard-Measures
(Baltimore: John D. Toy, printer, ~845), p. 2.
4 A resume' of the organization and resolutions of these Academy committees appears
in the Annual of the National Acaclemy of Sciences for 1863-1864, pp. 34-4~, with their
deliberations and correspondence; in Frederick True, A History of the First Half-Century
ofthe NationalAcademy of Sciences, 1863-1913 (Washington: ~ 9~3), pp. 20~ 95.; and in the
Academy register, "National Academy of Sciences, Committee Papers, ~863-'64."
5 NAs,AnnualReportfor 1863, pp. 4-5, 2 ~-23. See also Nathan Reingold, "Science in the
(Continued, p. 84)
OCR for page 82
82 / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (~863—~867)
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The first request for an Academy committee came in this letter from Secretary of the
Treasury Chase, asking for a report on the feasibility of achieving "uniformity of
weights, measures, and coins...." (From the archives of the Academy).
OCR for page 83
The Government Calls upon the Academy 1 83
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OCR for page 84
84 / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (1863—1867)
Another request was made that same day, May 8, through Davis as a
member of the Permanent Commission. He asked for an investigation
of magnetic deviations in iron ships and means for better correction
of their compasses. Bache chaired the committee, appointed on May
so, and made his report, with seven subreports, on January 7, 1864. A
member of Davis's Bureau of Navigation, working with the commit-
tee, suggested taking out one of the two binnacles in the pilot houses
of the vessels, and this ended some of the interference. The deviation
of compasses in iron-clad ships, and in wooden vessels as well, was
further corrected when the degree of local attraction from adjacent
engines, boilers, iron riming. and other metal items was accurately
determined.6
~~ a,
The next request came on May As, from Bache as Superintendent
of the Office of Weights and Measures in the Coast Survey. He asked
for an evaluation of Joseph Saxton's new alcoholometer; and then, as
President of the Academy, appointed {ohn Frazer to direct the
project. Saxton's meter, which he freely offered to the government,
proved to be simpler, more portable, and less liable to breakage than
the standard Tralles instrument used by the Treasury in the assess-
ment of revenues; and the Academy recommended its adoption.7
The Academy's report on Matthew Fontaine Maury's two publica-
tions, Wind and Current Charts and Sailing Directions, was less favorable.
Asked by the Navy in May ~ 863 for recommendations regarding their
proposed discontinuation, the Academy reported that they "embrace
much which is unsound in philosophy, and little that is practically
useful," and recommended that they be discontinued in their current
form. Although the report was fundamentally sound, the fervor of
the committee's public condemnation of the volumes as "a most
wanton waste of valuable paper" and the committee's refusal to
concede that the "little" that was practically useful was nonetheless
extraordinarily useful, revealed the depth of determination within
the new Academy to nourish the nascent professionalism of American
science.8
Civil War: The Permanent Commission of the Navy Department," Isis 49:312-313
(1958)
6 NAS, Annual Report for 1863, pp. 5-6, 23-96.
7 Ibid., pp. 6, 96-97
8 Ibid., pp. 98-112; True, A History of the First Half-Century of the National Academy of
~ -
~czences, pp. 219-225.
The committee's recommendation in its draft report is even more severe: "much
which is unsound in philosophy and devoid of scientific value, and little that is
practically useful" (NAS Archives: NAS: Committee on Wind and Current Charts and
Sailing Directions: 1864).
OCR for page 85
The Government Calls upon the Academy 1 85
Maury, appointed Superintendent of the Depot of Charts and
Instruments in the Bureau of Navigation in ~84~, had won interna-
tional acclaim as the "Pathfinder of the Seas" with the publication of
his Wind and Current Charts between ~847 and ~860. Based on a
systematic compilation of data in naval and merchant ship logbooks,
the Charts provided navigators with the first rational basis for comput-
ing routes on an ocean whose winds and currents varied significantly
with the seasons. Using Maury's Charts, mariners effected dramatic
reductions in sailing times, and as a result saved millions of dollars a
year.
Between ~850 and ~858 Maury also published eight editions of
Sailing Directions to accompany the Charts. The Sailing Directions con-
tained several charts suggesting optimum routes between major ports
computed from the data in the Wind and Current Charts. In addition,
the Sailing Directions included almost nine hundred pages dealing with
Maury's theories on subjects ranging from the laws of atmospheric
circulation and rainfall to the effects of marine organisms on ocean
currents.
Much of the theoretical material had appeared originally in a popu-
lar book that Maury produced in ~855, The Physical Geography of the
Sea, which went through six editions in its first four years and was
translated into six languages. Although it is still considered a mile-
stone in the marine sciences, its amateurish approach to science,
reckless generalizations, and careless contradictions have drawn nega-
tive evaluations from scientists both here and abroad.9
With the outbreak of the Civil War in ~86~, Maury had resigned
from the Depot to return to his native Virginia. Two years later,
Academy incorporator Adm. Charles H. Davis, Chief of the Bureau
of Navigation, initiated the request that the new Academy evaluate
the opinion of "hydrographers and scientific men" that Maury's
"charts and sailing directions published . . . at the expense of the
government, are . . . prolix and faulty, both in matter and arrange-
ment, to such an extent as to render the limited amount of original
information which they actually contain costly and inaccessible."
In response, Bache appointed F. A. P. Barnard chairman of a com-
mittee of twelve to prepare a report. Adopted by the Academy in
January ~864, the committee's report more than fulfilled the Lazza-
9 NAS, Annual Report for 1863, pp. 98, ~ on- ~ ~ I; Frances L. Williams, Matthew Fontaine
Maury: Scientist of the Sea (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, ~963),
pp. ~78-~95, 693-698; Susan Schlee, The Edge of an Unfamiliar World: A History of
Oceanography (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., ~973), pp. 38-40, 58-63.
OCR for page 86
86 / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (~863—~867)
roni's often-expressed hope that the Academy would serve as a
watchdog against those they considered the "charlatans" of science.~°
The committee found that "the original design of the work was
simple, and was of a nature purely practical. In its prosecution,
however, EMaury seemed] to have been tempted to extend his labors
into higher and more varied fields . . . such as marine zoology . . . the
form of the ocean's bed, the specific gravity of sea water in different
latitudes, ocean climatology, and the like...."
Referring explicitly to the wide circulation of Maury's works,
which had given them "a kind of adventitious repute . . . as partaking
as much of the nature of scientific inventions as of practical aids to
navigation," the committee went on to denigrate nearly every aspect
of the publications "in their present form."
Maury's "fanciful" scientific pronouncements were unacceptable
and contradictory. Further, the committee considered the more prac-
tical sections of the works poorly organized and unnecessarily de-
tailed. The publication of an "appalling mass of tabulated statistics,"
for example, was a waste of the government's money. The practical
navigator had no use for them; he was interested only in the conclu-
sions. ~ ~
Not mentioned in the committee's report or in any of the pertinent
official correspondence was the Lazzaroni's bitterness toward Maury.
The "savants," as he called them, resented his neglect of the as-
tronomical potential of the Depot, his attempted jurisdictional in-
roads on the programs of the Coast Survey and the Smithsonian, and,
perhaps above all, the enormous success and scientific authority
enjoyed by one "without scientific education or experience, and with
small scientific pretensions."
Thus the committee declined even to assent to the universally
acclaimed value of Maury's practical work: "It is claimed for the
routes . . . that they have served very greatly to shorten passages
'a True, A History of the First Half-Centur7 of the National Academy of Sciences, pp. 2 ~ 2-2 23;
Henry to Bache, August 9, ~838, in Nathan Reingold, Science in Nineteenth-Centu7y
America: A Documentary Histoty (New York: Hill & Wang, ~964), pp. 8~-88.
NAS,Annual Reportfor 1863, pp. 98-99, 102, coy, ~12.
12 M. F. Maury to W. Blackford, ~847, in Maury MSS, Letter Books, vol. 3 (Library of
Congress, MS Division), quoted in Schlee, p. 36; Benjamin A. Gould, "Memoir of James
Melville Gilliss," in NAS, Biographical Memoirs 1:155; Reingold, Science in Nineteenth-
Century America, pp. ~45-~46; A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A
History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, ~ 957), pp. ~ of- ~ o7, ~ 36, ~ 84; Lillian B. Miller et al., The Lazzaroni:
Science and Scientists in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (Washington: Smithsonian Institu-
tion Press, ~ 97 2 ), pp. 97- ~ o3.
OCR for page 87
The Government Calls upon the Academy 1 87
between distant ports on almost every sea. Whether these claims are
well or ill founded is not a question for this committee to settle." After
pointing out that improvements in naval architecture had greatly
shortened sailing times, the committee did acknowledge that it was
"very possible that a happier choice of route may have contributed to
the same end." If so, the valuable results "presumed" to have been
attained should be placed within the reach of every navigator.
Admiral Davis, on receiving the committee's report, discontinued
further publication of both the Wind and Current Charts and Sailing
Directions. When publication was resumed two decades later, it was in a
greatly simplified form, Pilot Charts, as had been recommended in the
committee's report.~3
On August ~7, ~863, the Secretary of the Treasury sought the
Academy's advice on plans for preventing the counterfeiting of the
new greenbacks, first issued the year before and since authorized in
the hundreds of millions. The report of John Torrey's committee,
ready on January 7, was not, as customary, read to the Academy, but
presented confidentially to the Secretary of the Treasury.~4 In ~865
the committee became known openly as the Committee on Prevention
of Counterfeiting; however, its reports, all confidential, continued to
be submitted directly to the Secretary of the Treasury.
Early in ~864, the Surgeon General, whose purview included re-
sponsibility for the purity of whiskey, asked for a report on the tests
used for that purpose. The committee, appointed on January ~4
under Silliman, Jr., was the first to seek and obtain an appropriation,
in the amount of $3,500, for its investigation, only to find the funds
unnecessary. As its report a year later explained, "in the present
condition of chemical science," no tests were possible for determining
the age of whiskey or other spiritous liquors as a condition of purity,
and common adulterations were readily detectable.~5
~3 NAS, Annual Report for 1863, pp. ~o7-~o8; 1884, pp. 58, 6~; Williams, Matthew
Fontaine Maury, p. ~95.
i. NAS, Annual Report for 1863, p. 7; 1864, p. 3.
George C. Schaeffer, of the Bureau of Navigation, on this committee at the request
of the Treasury, was the third non-Academy member to be appointed under Article II,
Section 4, of the Academy Constitution: "It shall be competent for the President, in
special cases, to call in the aid, upon committees, of experts, or men of remarkable
attainments, not members of the Academy" See Secretary of the Treasury to Bache,
August 3~, ~863, in "National Academy of Sciences, Committee Papers, ~863-'64."
The first expert had been Samuel B. Ruggles, a New York lawyer, historian, and
public servant, on the Committee on Weights and Measures. The second was William P.
Trowbridge, Assistant Superintendent of the Coast Survey, then with the Corps of
Engineers, on the Committee on Magnetic Deviation.
t5 NAS, Annual Report for 1864, p p. ~ -2, 5.
OCR for page 88
88 / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (~863—~867)
On February ~9, ~864, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles asked
that three Academy members (Fairmar~ Rogers, F. A. P. Barnard, and
Joseph Saxton were named) join three members of the Navy Depart-
ment and three from the Franklin Institute to constitute a commission
to oversee experiments on the expansion of steam and submit a final
report to the Academy for its judgment.
At issue was the widely held belief that the expansion of highly
compressed steam in engine cylinders would provide sufficient pres-
sure to permit an overall reduction in the amount of steam required,
thus reducing fuel costs. The Navy's request to the Academy grew out
of a feud between proponents of designs incorporating this principle
and Benjamin F. Isherwood, Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Steam
Engineering. Isherwood, a pioneer in naval engineering research,
had found through meticulous experimentation that, although the
principle of steam expansion was correct, numerous practical difficul-
ties, such as the loss of heat through cylinder stalls and condensation
of the steam, would more than offset its theoretical advantages.
Experiments under the commission's direction continued for many
years but, owing to a curtailment of appropriations were never
concluded. is
At the end of March ~864, the Secretary of the Treasury again
asked the Academy for another report, this time on the suitability of
aluminum bronze and similar materials that had been suggested for the
manufacture of cent pieces. At the request of the Secretary, Bache
was appointed to a committee under John Torrey, which was set up on
April ~ I. John Saxton, a member of the committee, at once began
preparing a number of bars of copper-aluminum in varying propor-
tions, sending them to the assayer of the Mint with instructions as to
the experiments he was to make. But that summer a German journal
published results of a study by G Moreau on the same alloys, so fully
answering the questions that only the brief report of the assayer was
necessary to complete the investigation.~7
Another committee that first year, on which Frazer, Fairman
Rogers, and Rutherfurd served, was appointed on May 2 at the oral
request of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to report on the boiler
explosion that had occurred two weeks before on the U.S. gunboat
16 True,A History of the First Half-Century of the NationalAcademy of Sciences, pp. 226-227;
Edward W. Sloan Ill, Benjamin Franklin Isherwood: Naval Engineer (Annapolis: U.S.
Naval Institute, ~966), pp. 79-9~, ~39-~40; NAS, Annual Report for 1864, pp. 2, 5-7;
Thomas Coulson, The Franklin Institute from 1824 to 1949 (Philadelphia: Igloo, p. ~4.
17 NAS, Annual Report for 1864, pp. 2, 7-9; G. Moreau, "Uber die Eigenschafter der
Aluminiumbronze," Polytechnisches f ournal 171 :434-442 ( ~ 864).
OCR for page 89
The Government Calls upon the Academy 89
Chenango in New York harbor. In the "very elaborate report" (as the
Annual Report noted), presented to the Academy for transmittal on
August 5, the committee made clear it did not think much of the
design of the boilers on the Chenango but agreed that the failure to
brace the boilers according to specifications had clearly been the
primary cause of the explosion.
If few of the Academy investigations that first year were truly
scientific or exercised to any degree the special competence of the
members it was because the problems reflected the uncertain rela-
tionship between science and the federal government. In ~863 the
Coast Survey, the agricultural elements in the Patent Office, elements
of the Corps of Engineers, and the Naval Observatory were the only
scientific departments in the federal structure. The Smithsonian had
set up a useful weather-reporting agency and carried on other serv-
iceable wartime tasks, and the Permanent Commission was handling
possibly the only real scientific problem, that of sifting from the ideas
of an inventive citizenry those of potential immediate use. It was not
until the Academy was asked to study the organization of the geologi-
cal surveys in ~878 that it was called upon for an evaluation within its
. .
specla. . province.
The first annual meeting of the Academy (as distinguished from
the organization meeting of the incorporators in April ~863), January
4-~2, ~864, was held in rooms of the Capitol made available by the
President of the Senate, with two yeomen of the Coast Survey attend-
ing the assembled members. Nineteen answered the roll call the first
day and nine more arrived on the second and third days.~9 Most of the
other members were kept away by their wartime duties, the distance
to Washington, or their academic obligations.
The opening session began with a brief visit from Senator Wilson
and ended that afternoon with two invitations. One was from Secre-
tary of the Treasury Chase to a reception for the Academy members
NAS, Annual Report for 1864, pp. 3, lo- ~4.
Bache might well have added himself to the committee in view of his monumental
work as head of a Committee on Explosions of Steam Boilers appointed by the Franklin
Institute two decades before. See Bruce Sinclair, Philadelph?a's Philosopher Mechanics: A
History of the Franklin Institute: 1824-1865 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, ~ 974), pp ~ 7°- ~ 94
is "Minutes of the Academy," January ~ 864, pp. 24-54.
At the opening session were Agassiz, Bache, both Barnards, Caswell, Chauvenet,
Davis, Gilliss, B. A. Gould, Henry, Hilgard, Mahan, Newton, Peirce, I. Rodgers,
F. Rogers, Rutherfurd, Saxton, and Totten. Attending for the first time the next day
were John Alexander, A. A. Gould, LeConte, and Winlock, and on Wednesday, Hall,
Humphreys, Silliman, Jr., Strong, and Torrey.
OCR for page 90
go / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (~863—~867)
the next evening; and the other was for a second reception two
evenings later at the home of Secretary of State William H. Seward.
The members spent much of the first three days with little debate,
making minor changes in or approving as printed the Constitution
and Bylaws of the Academy that had been under revision since
April.20 The assembly heard the first reports from the committees
appointed the year before. The one on Maury's charts produced
three days of discussion before it was approved. At the scientific
session, Agassiz and Benjamin Peirce read long papers on "individual-
ity among animals" and "on the elements of mathematical theory of
quality."
After greeting the twenty-two members assembled on Friday, ~anu-
ary 8, Bache opened the meeting with the announcement of President
Lincoln's invitation to a reception at the White House at 1:00 P.M. that
day, brought by his adjutant, Col. John M. Hay.2i No record of that
reception has been found, but other evidence suggests that the
President had already met and formed a liking for Henry. The
Smithsonian towers were being used by the Army for visual-signaling
tests, and Lincoln, who often visited the building for these tryouts,
had become friendly with Henry. "He has shown a comprehensive
grasp of every subject on which he has conversed with me," Henry
told Lucius E. Chittenden, the Register of the Treasury, in ~86z,
while the President said of him, "I had the impression the Smithsonian
was printing a great amount of useless information. Professor Henry
has convinced me of my error. It must be a grand school if it produces
such thinkers as he is.... I wish we had a few thousand more such
men."22
The morning continued in accordance with the order of business
prescribed in the Bylaws, ending near noon when Bache called on
Benjamin Gould to prepare a biographical memoir of Joseph Hub-
bard, Professor of Mathematics and leading astronomer at the Naval
Observatory the first Academy member to die. Hubbard was only in
his fortieth year, and his untimely death on August ~6, ~863, was
attributed to the "miasmal" site on which the Observatory was located.
On the sixth day of the meeting, after formal adoption of the
20 The Constitution and Bylaws adopted in January ~864 appear in NAS, Annual Report
for 1863, pp. ~ ~ 3-~ ~ 8, and here as Appendix C.
2~ All twenty-two members, the largest day's assemblage, attended the President's
reception. Davis, A. A. Gould, Mahan, Peirce, J. Rodgers, and Totten, at earlier
meetings, were absent that day.
22 Quoted in Geoffrey T. Hellman, The Smithsonian, Octopus on the Mall (Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott Co., ~967), p. 83.
OCR for page 91
The Government Calls upon the Academy 1 91
revised Constitution and Bylaws, the members proposed and elected
the first foreign associates to the Academy, ten in number. Among
them were Michael Faraday; the Irish mathematician Sir William
Hamilton; and Sir David Brewster, physicist and correspondent with
Henry for many years. From Germany were chosen Robert Bunsen,
chemist and inventor; Friedrich W. A. Argelander, astronomer; and
Karl Ernst von Baer, biologist. Three French scientists were honored:
Michel Chasles, mathematician; lean B. Elie de Beaumont, geologist;
and the entomologist Henri Milne-Edwards. The Italian astronomer
Giovanni Plana was also elected.
The next to the last day of the meeting had been declared an open
date, and Gen. John Barnard took the members on a tour of the
fortifications around Washington under his command. On the final
day, Bache read to the Academy in assembly again the draft of the
first annual report of the Academy, addressed to the President of the
Senate and Speaker of the House. Then, with the reading of scientific
papers by Bache, Henry, Rutherfurd, both Barnards, and two read
on behalf of the absent Stephen Alexander, the Academy adjourned.
Benjamin Silliman, Jr., who had returned to New Haven several
days before, wrote Bache of his pleasure in the sessions:
The Washington meeting appears to me as a complete success .I enjoyed it
exceedingly and such I found to be the feelings of all with whom I conversed.
. . . As far as we have gone things are in an admirable train it remains for
us to render ourselves indispensable to Govt. & to show them there is such a
thing as disinterested expert advice and a pure scientific tribunal who will
judge matters on their merits. The thing is I think hardly yet dawned upon
the Secy. of State and is not firmly rooted any where in Official Soil. But it will
become so if we do our duty ably & impartially on the subjects now before us.23
Henry too was pleased, but characteristically cautious. As he wrote in
his private journal that week, the meeting had gone off
very smoothly and more harmony prevailed than was expected.... The
Academy, if well conducted, will produce important results in the way of
advancing American science and also, in serving the government, but the fear
is, that it will be governed by clerks and that unworthy members will exert an
evil influence.24
23Silliman, Jr., to Bache, January lo, 1864 (NAS Archives: "National Academy of
Sciences, Committee Papers, 1863-'64," Committee on Iron Ship Bottoms).
24 Joseph Henry's Locked Book, January 16, 1864, pp. 68-69. The Locked Book
(Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives) is a collection of over one
hundred pages of extracts from a diary and copies of correspondence apparently made
by his daughter Mary after his death. The originals presumably no longer exist.
(Continued overieaf)
OCR for page 92
go / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE `~863—~867'
The laziness and Death of Bache
Henry was worried about Bache, who alone had the quality of leader-
ship necessary to hold the membership together, and whose sick
headaches, to which he had long been subject, had recently increased
in severity, possibly as a result of pressure arising from his labors for
the Permanent Commission and his many other offices and affairs.
That spring, just four months after the Academy meeting and shortly
before his fifty-eighth birthday, Bache fell seriously ill. His strenuous
efforts had become, as Henry said, "too much for his physical
endurance,j' and he was ordered to bed. His friends filled in for him
whenever possible. Hilgard acted for Bache at the Coast Survey, and
Henry took over supervision of the Permanent Commission, signing
Bache's name to the reports, and by frequent visits or letters reassur-
ing him and Mrs. Bache that all the institutions in which he was
interested the Coast Survey, Lighthouse Board, the Smithsonian,
the Commission, and the Academ~were prospering.25
To distract her fretting husband as he seemed to mend, Mrs. Bache
considered taking him on an overland journey to California that
summer, but was persuaded by Henry it was impossible "on account
of the Indians" and because no military troops were going out as
escort. Later in the year she took her husband to Paris.26 The trip
offered distraction but no cure, and Bache remained an invalid for
the next two years.
The meeting of the Academy in New Haven that August, with
Vice-President James D. Dana in the chair and twenty-one members
present, provided the occasion for Henry to honor a promise he had
made Bache after the organizational meeting the year before. Despite
his misgivings about its manner of founding, he had written Bache,
The quoted lines, in slightly different form, appear also in "Henryana," p. 2~6, a
2gs-page looseleaf volume of brief extracts from Henry's journals, Locked Book,
notebooks, and correspondence, also presumably compiled by Mary Henry, and in the
Joseph Henry Papers.
25 Henry to Bache, September 9, ~864 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution
Archives). In a letter to Mrs. Bache on July ~6, Henry had told her that the reports of
the Permanent Commission then totaled 228, all by members of the Academy ("Hen-
ryana," p. 2~9). Besides countless queries briefly answered, formal reports, the last
dated September ~865, totaled almost 300.
Because of Henry's presence at the Smithsonian, and the location of the Permanent
Commission there, government agencies developed the habit, deplored by Henry, of
calling on the Smithsonian instead of the Academy.
26 Henry to Bache, July ~6, ~864; Henry to Mrs. Bache, July 30, ~864; Henry to Mrs.
Bache, August 3~, ~864 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
OCR for page 93
The Government Calls upon the academy I 93
I will however do anything in my power to advance the reputation and
influence of the National Academy. I am sure with proper management it is
capable of much good....27
All went well at the meeting until the third day, when nominations
were made for three new members to fill the places of Joseph
Hubbard and the two who had refused membership, Dahlgren and
Boyden. One of the six names proposed was that of Spencer F. Baird,
Henry's Assistant Secretary at the Smithsonian museum since Also
and an indefatigable worker. Baird was, however, a descriptive rather
than a research scientist, a point that some who opposed his nomina-
tion held against him. Agassiz, as much for this reason as for Baird's
competition with him for government specimens for their museum
collections, insisted on his removal from the list.28
Agassiz felt secure in his privileged place in American science and
certain of his influence in the Academy, and was therefore dismayed
when, at Henry's intercession and with the support of Agassiz's col-
leagues, Dana and Gray, Baird was elected on the third ballot. So
heated had been the discussion that the next day A. A. Gould, Henry,
Peirce, Gibbs, and Gray, hearing the Secretary read his notes, joined
in a protest "against too elaborate minutes going on the records of the
Academy"; and on Peirce's recommendation a motion was made and
adopted to exclude all debates from the "Minutes."29 The angry
Agassiz was only slightly mollified by the election of his fellow Swiss,
the paleobotanist Leo Lesquereux, and John C. Dalton, physiologist at
New York's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
After the meeting Agassiz reproached Henry for his part in the
"insult" to him, to which Henry, in a long and warm letter of good
counsel, replied that he had sided with the majority of the naturalists
who, fearing "that the few who organized the academy intend to
govern it," would have resigned had Agassiz prevailed.50 Reporting
the episode to Bache, Henry said he had urged Agassiz not to try
27 Henry to Bache, August At, ~863 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution
Archives).
,28 Henry to Bache, August ~5, ~864 Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution
Archives); original notes for "Minutes" of August 5 (NAS Archives: Meetings: ~864);
Edward Lurie, Louis Afgassiz: A Life in Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
~ 960), p 34 ~
29 "Minutes of the Academy," August ~864, p. 67.
50 Henry to Agassiz, August ~3, ~864, in A. Hunter Dupree, "The Founding of the
National Academy of Sciences A Reinterpretation," American Philosophical Society,
Proceedings 101 :439 (October ~ 957).
OCR for page 94
94 / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (1863 - 1867)
single-handedly to elevate the standard of American science lest it
endanger the Academy. As he told Bache:
Drs. Torrey, Guyot, Alexander `>f Princeton, and many tither members of the
Academy are true men, on whom you may always depend to do what is just
and proper but they have said that they would rather leave the Academy, than
be continually subjected to the annoyances off disputes as to the policy and
government of the establishment.
And he appealed to Bache to get well soon, for the Academy stood in
need of his judicious direction.
As the time for the Washington meeting in January ~ 865 ap-
proached, Dana, pleading "imperfect health," could not bring himself
to preside over the assembly; and in his absence Benjamin Peirce was
elected President pro tem. Seven months later, at the August ~865
meeting, admitting to an abhorrence of"the labor and fatigue" of
administrative duties, Dana submitted his resignation as Vice-
President; and at the same meeting a colleague of Agassiz at Cam-
bridge, Jeffries Wyman, long resentful of Agassiz's authoritarian
ways, resigned his membership.32
Both meetings in ~865 had been otherwise uneventful, filled each
day with administrative matters, minor revisions of the Constitution
and Bylaws, committee reports, and expression of concern about the
sparse attendance, which on occasion fell as low as eight and did not
rise above twenty-two. The January meeting had been "slimly at-
tended . . . because of the hard times," Henry wrote in his journal,
and confessed to Bache that he had "looked forward to it with some
anxiety.... considerably solicitous as to the course Prof. Agassiz was
about to pursue in regard to the institution," but all had been
harmonious and pleasant.
Though in many ways he is impulsive and may in certain cases be some-
what imprudent, yet his connection with this institution will result in good.
He is a man of rare genius and is capable of giving us hints and suggestions
of much value in the management of the establishment.
,~ Henry to Bache, September 9, ~864 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution
Archives).
52"Minutes of the Academy," August ~865, pp. ~os-~o6; Daniel C. Gilman, Life of
fames Dwight Dana, Scientific Explorer, Mineralogist, Geologist, Zoologist, Professor in Yale
University (New York: Harper & Brothers, ~899), pp. 329, 362-363; True, A History of
the First Half-Cent1lry of the National Academy of Sciences, p. So and note.
55 Henry, Locked Book extract from journal, January At, ~865; Henry to Bache,
January ~7, ~865 Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
OCR for page 95
The Government Calls upon the Academy 1 95
In an effort to obtain greater attendance at the scientific meetings
open to the public, the Academy began inviting distinguished as well
as promising fellow scientists, many of whom later became academi-
cians.34 A newspaper reporter described the liveliness of one of those
sessions- -and the incomprehensibility of the papers he heard:
The excitability of the scientific gentlemen, and their peculiar manners, do
not seem to impress the unlearned spectators favorably. They discourse about
subjects which its auditors little understand, in a manner which sounds to
them like some of Munchausen's travels.35
The meetings did become more spirited, and as attendance rose,
LeConte proposed that the Council of the Academy consider electing
corresponding members to each of the sections to participate in all
open sessions. Discussions of this proposal at the next meeting led
Josiah Whitney to recommend successfully the appointment of a
committee to consider enlarging the number of Academy members.36
Although it would be well, said the majority report of LeConte,
Lesley, and Rutherfurd, "to avail ourselves of the labor and influence
of many students of science who will otherwise not be in sympathy
with the Academy," it appeared inexpedient to ask Congress to
amend the charter, "as it would be entirely uncertain that Legislation
would stop with the alteration desired by the Academy." Instead, they
recommended that the increase be effected under that section of the
charter authorizing "domestic members," who would not be con-
sidered corporate or "ordinary members." A minority report by
committee chairman Wolcott Gibbs and Hilgard demurred, consider-
54 For a listing of members' attendance at meetings during the Academy's first three
years, see NAS Archives: Meetings: Attendance: ~863-~866.
55 New York Evening Post, August 30, ~ 865 (NAS Archives: Meetings: ~ 865).
Academy members, too, had occasional difficulties at the meetings, as when "Benja-
min Peirce, after writing, correcting and erasing equations on a blackboard for an hour,
remarked that he was sorry that the only member who could understand them was in
South America." He referred to B. A. Gould, who went to Argentina in ~870 to
organize a government observatory and remained for fifteen years observing and
photographing the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere [dames McKeen Cattell,
"The Organization of Scientific Men," Scientific Monthly 14:574 (rune ~922)].
56 "Minutes of the Academy," January ~865, p. 86; August ~865, p. ~ ~6.
As Henry wrote to Bache on January ~7: "A proposition was made to admit at the
next meeting a number of new associates among whom will probably be included some
of those who have considered themselves wronged in not being named among the
original fifty members. I think the proposition will increase the stability and efficiency
of the establishment" ("Henry-Bache Correspondence, ~834-~867," Smithsonian In-
stitution Archives). The roster of the fifty "associates" invited to open sessions appears
in "Minutes of the Academy," August ~866, pp. ~54-~57; January ~867, pp. 2~8-223.
OCR for page 96
96 / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (1863 - 1867)
ing it inadvisable at that time to increase the membership. Tabled the
next year, too, was a proposal to ask Congress simply to change the
words of the charter from "not more than fifty members" to "not less
than fifty members."37 And there the matter rested.
Without presiding officers, owing to the protracted illness of Bache
and the precarious health of Dana that had led to his resignation,
Home Secretary Wolcott Gibbs opened the meeting in January ~866;
and then, upon Joseph Henry's election as the new Vice-President,
turned over the chair, "with the understanding," Henry insisted, "that
he would be permitted to retire as soon as the President should be
able to resume his duties, or his place could be filled by another."
"I only accepted the Vice Presidency of the Academy temporarily,"
Henry wrote to his wife from Boston that August, "because there was
no one except myself on whom the whole Academy at the time could
agree." Since March, Bache had been "past hope.... We cannot wish
his final departure be long delayed." There would probably be an
election at the next meeting, on which "the future of the Academy will
principally depend." Agassiz had already said he did not want the
office, and Peirce declared he wouldn't accept it. Henry had therefore
"suggested Dr. Barnard and probably either he or Rutherford will be
the man."39
Henry's further concern at that time was Bache's Coast Survey, the
most vigorous scientific agency in the government. In May ~865,
hearing that the Survey was already under sedge from office seekers,
Henry recommended Peirce to the Secretary of the Treasury, and
"since the future scientific character of the work twould] depend
upon his election," he urged Pearce not to decline the appointment
lest it be "filled, perhaps, by a politician, as in the case of the Patent
Office, the Mint, etc."40 On February ~4, ~867, Henry wrote Peirce
that Bache's death was near and again asked him to accept if offered
the appointment. On the twenty-third, he wrote in his journal that
unless Peirce accepted, "there will be a violent struggle for the
place."4t
37 '`Minutesof the Academy,"]anuary Mob, pp. ~47-~50; August ~866, p. ~56; August
~867, pp. 2~6-~7; correspondence in NAS Archives: Committee on Increasing Mem-
bership of Academy, ~865-~866.
58 NAS, Annual Report for 1866, p. I.
39 Letter, August ~4, ~866, in Papers, "Harriet Henry, ~825-~878" (Joseph Henry
Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
40 Henry to Wolcott Gibbs, May 30, ~865 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institu-
tion Archives).
4t Extract from Locked Book. Henry reported Peirce's acceptance in a letter to Gray on
March 8, ~867 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
OCR for page 97
The Government Calls upon the Academy 1 97
No requests had been received by the Academy during the last year
of the war, but committees labored that year and the next completing
the last of the earlier investigations asked for, and in ~866 it received
six new requests from the Treasury, War, and State Departments,
several of them~n counterfeiting the new paper money, on gauging
domestic distilled spirits, and on the provision of metric standards to
the states~xtensions of earlier work.42
One of particular interest was the request of Secretary of State
William H. Seward in July ~ 866 on behalf of the Minister of
Nicaragua. It asked for a study of means to improve the navigability
of the San Juan River and its port, in the hope that it might become
the Atlantic terminus of an "interoceanic transit" across the country.
If feasible, it would realize the dream of almost four centuries, a
"Passage to India."
The study had been proposed to the Nicaraguan Minister by Julius
Hilgard, then Acting Superintendent of the Coast Survey, who with
Gen. A. A. Humphreys of the Corps of Engineers, Adm. Charles H.
Davis of the Naval Observatory, and Henry M. Mitchell of the Coast
Survey as committee members, began an intensive study of a mass of
maps and documents provided by the minister. The report that
autumn found that the condition of the harbor and its continuous
silting made the project virtually hopeless. A survey by a Navy ship
sent there ire ~873 was to confirm the report. An isthmian canal would
have to be constructed elsewhere in Central America.43
Although sufficiently occupied with these investigations and studies
for the government, Bache's Academy, without Bache, continued to
mark time.
On February ~7, ~867, after three years of incapacitation, Alexan-
der Dallas Bache ended his long labors for the advancement of
American science. He was buried with impressive ceremony in the
Congressional Cemetery in Washington.
The meeting of the Academy in August ~867 convened with only
ten members attending the first day: Agassiz, Caswell, Coffin, Gibbs,
42 True, A History of the First Half-Centu~y of the National Academy of Sciences, pp.
239, 247, 33~
4SNAS AnnualReportforl866, pp.-6.
Despite the Academy and Navy reports, the Interoceanic Canal Commission of
~87~-~876, headed by Brig. Gen. A. A. Humphreys, Chief of Engineers and Academy
member, and the Isthmian Canal Committee of ~8gg-~go~, committed the United
States to the Nicaraguan isthmus as the only practicable route, and only the French
interest in Panama changed American policy. For the Academy committee that visited
the troubled Panama Canal in ~9~6, see Chapter 8, pp. 204-206.
OCR for page 98
98 / ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE (1863—1867)
Henry, Hilgard, Newton, John Rodgers, a recently elected member,
Columbia University physicist Ogden N. Rood, and W. D. Whitney.
The following day they were joined by J. G. Barnard, Dana, Hall,
Fairman Rogers, Peirce, Saxton, and Torrey.
During the sessions Vice-President Henry made the formal an-
nouncement of the deaths of Bache and of the Maryland metrologist
John H. Alexander, and then informed the assembly of Bache's
bequest of his estate to the Academy.
Bache's original will, made in March ~86e, had left the estate, upon
the death of his wife Nancy, to the administration of a "board of
direction" comprising Henry, Agassiz, and Peirce. The income of the
$40,000 estate was to be devoted to "the prosecution of researches in
physical and natural science by assisting experimentalists and ob-
servers," and administered by his designated representatives of
physics, natural history, and mathematics and their successors, any
two of whom in agreement might determine the subjects and sums for
research.
Four months after the founding of the Academy in ~863, Bache
had revised his will, leaving his estate vested in the Academy, which he
believed to be his most enduring achievement. The will named the
Academy trustee of the estate, which was to be administered by the
same board consisting of Henry, Agassiz, and Peirce.44
Bache's intentions were clear. When the incorporators of the
Academy were selected, Bache had sought working scientists in the
armed services and in federal agencies who would both strengthen
science and elevate its role in the government. But he knew that
unless the Academy could itself promote worthy research by actively
supporting it, the wider influence and effectiveness of the institution
would be jeopardized. His bequest and his choice of administrators
declared his aims and his hopes for the future of the Academy.
In the afternoon of the first day, proceeding with the principal
order of business, the selection of a new President, each of the
members present submitted names for the office. The tally showed
Henry with 9 votes, Peirce 9, Agassiz 6, Chauvenet 6, Dana 5,
F. A. P. Barnard 3, Rutherfurd 2, new member Gen. M. C. Meigs of
44 "Extract from the will ... March ~ 8, ~ 862.... Codicil, July ~ 5, ~ 863," NAS, Annual
Reportfor1867, pp. to-do.
In ~87~, a year after Mrs. Bache's death, the executors turned over to the Academy
the sum of $40,s~s.o7, yielding an annual income of approximately $2,500 (initially,
$2,423 in gold and $~62 in paper). See "Minutes of the Academy," August ~87~, pp.
348-35~; April ~873, p. 407; True, A History of the First Half-Century of the National
Academy of Sciences, pp. 33-34.
OCR for page 99
The Government Calls upon the Academy 1 99
the Corps of Engineers a, Gibbs a, and B. A. Gould and Rood ~ each.
At once, the "Minutes" noted, "Mr. Henry positively declined the
nomination," as did Agassiz a moment later. The next day Henry
reiterated his refusal and resigned as Vice-President as well, in order
to permit elections to both of the high offices. When the sessions
ended, it had been agreed to delay further balloting until the January
~868 meeting.45
Over the next several months Peirce became the leading candidate
for the presidency, and Henry reported "considerable unpleasant
feeling among our friends in Cambridge." Any tension within the
Academy was relieved at the meeting in January ~868, however. With
a single vote for Agassiz, that of Joseph Henry, Henry was unani-
mously elected to the presidency, and William Chauvenet to the
vice-presidency.46
45 "Minutes of the Academy," August ~867, pp. 2 lo- ~ I, 224-225.
46 Henry to Barnard, October 9, ~867 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution
Archives); "Minutes of the Academy," January ~868, p. 24~.
Mary Henry wrote in her diary: "Jan. 23d Thurs. a rainy day.... While [Prof.
Agassiz] was here, Dr. Gould came in & told us Father had been elected President of the
Academy. The election was unanimous, only one vote for you, Prof. A., said Dr. Gould.
Yes, said Prof. A., I had only one vote wh. probably came from the Prof. as he would
not vote for himself. Father has come home tired. He has accepted the Presidency as
the vote was so unanimous" ["Diary of Mary Henry, ~ 864- ~ 868," (Smithsonian Institu-
tion Archives)].
Representative terms from entire chapter:
joseph henry
