Part 32

_Henry Clay._--Slightly the senior of Benton, Henry Clay (1777-1852) was in public life for an even longer time. By birth he was a Virginian. In the face of early hardship he rose to be Senator from Kentucky (1806-1807); from 1811 until 1852, for forty-one years, he was almost steadily in the eye of the nation. A leader of the Whig party, he sided with his great opponent, Calhoun, against the more timid Madison, in precipitating the second war with England; and he was prominent in the negotiations for peace that followed. Clay was four times Speaker of the House of Representatives, and four times unsuccessful candidate for President of the United States. The influence which he had shown over juries in Kentucky he likewise exercised in the national legislature. In the management of conflicting interests, and in furthering the measures of his party, he had a genius for detecting what was possible or expedient. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Tariff Compromise of 1833, and the Slavery Compromise of 1850 were largely owing to him. He was a master in effecting legislation. According to Blaine, “Mr. Webster argued the principle, Mr. Clay embodied it in a statute.” Among his celebrated speeches were those on the New Army Bill (1813), on the Seminole War (1819), and on the Tariff (1824). At his death, a colleague, Joseph R. Underwood, said in the Senate:

The character of Henry Clay was formed and developed by the influence of our free institutions. His physical and mental organisation eminently qualified him to become a great and impressive orator. His person was tall, slender, and commanding; his temperament ardent, fearless, and full of hope; his countenance clear, expressive, and variable--indicating the emotion which predominated at the moment with exact similitude; his voice cultivated and modulated in harmony with the sentiment he desired to express ...; his eye beaming with intelligence, and flashing with coruscations of genius; his gestures and attitudes graceful and natural. These personal advantages won the prepossessions of an audience, even before his intellectual powers began to move his hearers; and when his strong common sense, his profound reasoning, his clear conceptions of his subject in all its bearings, and his striking and beautiful illustrations, united with such personal qualities, were brought to the discussion of any question, his audience was enraptured, convinced, and led by the orator as if enchanted by the lyre of Orpheus.

_John Caldwell Calhoun._--The character and intellect of John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850) were admired even by those who least cared for his opinions. A South Carolinian of Scotch-Irish extraction, he graduated from Yale, in 1804, with the highest honours. He towered in political life from 1808 until he died: as leader of the war party under Madison; in upholding the doctrine of nullification--that is, the right of each state to resist a Congressional enactment which the state might deem injurious; in the annexation of Texas; and in the defence of slavery. Calhoun was fearless and precise in the discharge of his duties as Secretary of War under Monroe, reducing expenses, and rendering petty defalcation impossible. He was Vice-President in 1825. His ruling ideas are contained in his “Disquisition on Government” and “Discourse on the Government of the United States” (in the first volume of his works), and in speeches before the Senate--for example, on Nullification and the Force Bill (1833) and on the Slavery Question (1850). He was thus characterised by Webster:

The eloquence of Mr. Calhoun ... was plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise; sometimes impassioned--still always severe. Rejecting ornament, not seeking far for illustration, his power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the clearness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his manner.... His demeanour as a Senator is known to us all--is appreciated, venerated by us all.

_Hayne and Randolph._--When Calhoun was Vice-President, his spokesman in the Senate was a fellow Carolinian, Robert Young Hayne (1791-1840), who was a soldier in the War of 1812, but who, in his vindication of state rights, refused the Attorney-Generalship of the country to be Attorney-General of South Carolina. He also retired from the Senate to be Governor of his State. In his unlucky debate with Webster in 1830 he carried sectional jealousy--of the South against New England--into the question concerning the sale of public lands in the West. Graceful in person, of a fine countenance, industrious, commonly amiable, Hayne “had a copious and ready elocution, flowing at will in a strong and steady current, and rich in the material that constitutes argument.” His prejudices, however, could distract him from the subject in hand. The bellicose Virginian, John Randolph of Roanoke (1773-1833), was in Congress at the age of twenty-six. His bitterness toward England seems excessive. Eccentric, singular also in appearance, biting and unexpected in retort, he was a figure of interest when he came to the Senate in 1825. His duel with Henry Clay is a matter of unpleasant history. Enthusiastic contemporary estimates of him by Paulding and others have not worn well.

_Daniel Webster._--The prince of American orators, and one of the great orators of modern times, was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, on January 18, 1782. His ancestry was Scotch. He had the stinted education of a village school whose doors were open for a short term in winter. Yet he could never recollect the time when he could not read the Bible; and this and the few other books that he could obtain he perused so often that he virtually had them by heart. He was fond of committing passages to memory. But at Exeter, where he prepared for college, there was one thing which he could not do: “I could not speak before the school.” The efforts of his father made it possible for him to attend Dartmouth College. He read by himself with the avidity of a Lowell--but he also pursued with good intent the regular course of studies. Finishing this course in 1801, he studied law, earned a little money by teaching in Maine, and at length entered the office of Christopher Gore in Boston--“a tall, gaunt young man, with rather a thin face, but all the peculiarities of feature and complexion by which he was distinguished in later life.” There followed some years of practice with meagre remuneration, but of unceasing study. In 1813 he was sent to Congress from New Hampshire. His speech in that year on the repeal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees elicited praise from Chief Justice Marshall, and throughout the country. Webster immediately advanced to the front rank of debaters. It is baffling even to suggest the range and importance of his subsequent labours. When the famous Dartmouth College case, apparently a forlorn hope, was carried before the United States Supreme Court in 1818, Webster’s opening argument as junior counsel brought an unlooked for settlement in favour of the College; since then the case has furnished a ruling precedent in interpreting the Constitutional clause which prohibits state interference with the terms of a past contract. In 1820 he was engaged on the revision of the Massachusetts State Constitution. From 1823 to 1827 he was in the House of Representatives; from 1827 to 1841, and again from 1845 to 1850, in the Senate. He was Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler, and under Fillmore. Through supposed concessions to slavery in his speech of March 7, 1850, on the Constitution and the Union, he estranged his best friends in the North, and had to endure the taunt of faithlessness in Whittier’s “Ichabod.” Historians, however, have justified the loftiness of his statesmanship even here. He died as Secretary of State under Fillmore, October 24, 1852.

During his reply to Hayne in 1830, when Webster uttered his encomium on the State of Massachusetts, strong men were moved to tears. One cannot read it at this distance without strange emotion. Passages in the second address at Bunker Hill, or the argument in Knapp’s trial--the passage on the conscience of the murderer, or more especially that at the end on the universal sense of duty--rise to the point where the ethical and æsthetic values of eloquence are one and eternal. One might go on to mention his eulogy on “Adams and Jefferson,” his “First Settlement of New England”--but we should hardly finish a mere enumeration of the speeches he delivered during his forty years of public life.

Consider [said Choate] the work he did in that life of forty years--the range of subjects investigated and discussed; composing the whole theory and practice of our organic and administrative politics, foreign and domestic; the vast body of instructive thought he produced and put in possession of the country; how much he achieved in Congress as well as at the bar; to fix the true interpretation, as well as to impress the transcendent value of the Constitution itself ...; how much to establish in the general mind the great doctrine that the government of the United States is a government proper, established by the people of the States, not a compact between sovereign communities ...; to place the executive department of the government on its true basis ...; to secure to that department its just powers on the one hand, and on the other hand to vindicate to the legislative department, and especially to the Senate, all that belonged to them ...; to develop the vast material resources of the country, and push forward the planting of the West ...; to protect the vast mechanical and manufacturing interests ...; how much for the right performance of the most delicate and difficult of all tasks, the ordering of the foreign affairs of a nation, free, sensitive, self-conscious ...; how much to compose with honour a concurrence of difficulties with the first power of the world.

His style is simple, clear, free from tricks, unstudied in its details, the easy outflow of a mind nourished on choice and repeated reading, with the English Bible as its main source; not avoiding allusion to himself, but quickly mounting with the subject to universal application; not deficient in grace, yet on the whole massive, orderly, and neglectful of lighter emotions. In private life Webster was genial. He was fond of the open country, delighting in the rod and gun. “Black Dan” he was familiarly called, on account of his deep-set, lustrous eyes, over-shadowing brows, and commanding, swarthy countenance. The proportions and majesty of his head were in keeping with the dignity of his figure.

_William Lloyd Garrison._--With the main agitator of the Abolitionist movement there was no thought of compromise. Orator as well as writer, William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), though the herald of self-restraint, and preaching the doctrine of non-resistance, carried his principles to their extreme length. He condemned the churches for their tolerance of slavery, and disliked the Constitution for permitting it. He favoured ending the Union, if the national disease could be removed by amputation. He could not tolerate gradual treatment or the doubtful promise of an incomplete cure.

_Charles Sumner._--Garrison’s brave, handsome, and gifted friend, and the friend of Longfellow, Charles Sumner (1811-1878), was trained in the law under Judge Story. It was partly through Whittier’s influence that he entered politics, but when he succeeded Webster in the Senate his place as a leader was assured. The infamous assault upon him by Brooks in 1856, during the debate over the affairs of Kansas, left Sumner incapacitated until 1859. When “the eloquent vacant chair” was filled again, crowds gathered whenever announcement was made that Sumner would speak. His intellect was not equal to that of his illustrious predecessor; yet his sound judgment and winning personality, aided by a captivating delivery, put him, in the Senate, at the head of the new Republican party. His “Orations” have been published in eight volumes.

_Thaddeus Stevens._--While Sumner was in the Senate, Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868), a less admirable character, led the Republicans in the House. He also was a bitter foe of slavery, and was urgent with Lincoln to emancipate the negroes. “A clear, logical, and powerful debater,” he was feared for his mordant invective. Influential with the rank and file of politicians, he rejoiced in the borrowed title of the “Great Commoner.”

_Wendell Phillips._--Of course the trumpet of the Abolitionists was the impassioned Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), ever supporting the hands of Garrison, and similarly uncompromising. On graduating from Harvard in 1831, he studied law; but he refused to engage in its practice, since this would entail his swearing to uphold a national Constitution which tolerated slavery. He was a master of sarcasm, irony, and epigram, of choice and varied wit; serene in the presence of his enemies, capturing and holding their attention. When the Civil War was over, and the cause of Abolition won, he turned to the remedy of other evils, speaking in favour of woman’s rights, and championing labour reform. In the guise of a general redresser of wrongs he lost prestige as well as something of his own sense of dignity.

_Rufus Choate._--The most famous of a famous family, Rufus Choate (1799-1859) was distinguished for his pleading at the bar, his literary attainments, and, during the time that he was there (1841-1845), the exercise of his talents in the Senate. A pupil of no less a lawyer than William Wirt, Choate, in his unrivalled success with juries, and his stirring if florid occasional addresses, was indebted not alone to his natural ardour and personal magnetism, but also to thorough analysis and unremitting preparation. His eulogy on Webster at Dartmouth College, July 27, 1853, was the tribute of an eminent graduate of that institution to the noblest.

_Stephen A. Douglas._--Stephen Arnold Douglas (1813-1861) was born in Brandon, Vermont, studied law in Canandaigua, New York, continued this study in Ohio, and proceeded thence to Illinois to teach, and to practise his calling of lawyer. He was in the United States Senate from 1847 to 1861, doing his best to avert the Civil War. In 1858 and 1860 the “Little Giant” boldly appeared before audiences in the South and denied the right of any state to secede from the Union. His speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854) shows his attitude of _laissez-faire_ in the matter of slavery. When he matched his wits with Lincoln in their joint debate, he unintentionally hastened his antagonist’s advance toward the Presidency.

_William H. Seward._--Cautious, clear, incisive, firm in his grasp of the laws of political history, William Henry Seward (1811-1872) foresaw what Douglas could not, that the struggle with slavery was an irrepressible conflict. In New York State, of which he became Governor, he was the untiring enemy of political opportunism in every shape. An unsuccessful aspirant in 1860 for the Presidency, he eventually overcame his lack of confidence in Lincoln, and as Lincoln’s Secretary of State was of inestimable service in maintaining our relations with England during the course of the Rebellion. His “Diplomatic History of the Civil War in America” was published posthumously.

_Salmon P. Chase._--Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Portland Chase (1808-1873), was not a facile speaker, but, tall and commanding, one of the handsomest men in the Senate, he was both dignified and impressive. Like Choate, he graduated from Dartmouth and studied with William Wirt. As a practising lawyer he engaged (1837) in the defence of persons on trial for alleged violation of the Fugitive Slave Act; in the debate upon the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854) he advocated “free soil,” and insisted upon “the absolute divorce of the General Government” from all connection with slavery. He was a Senator both before and after holding the governorship of Ohio, and again just before Lincoln summoned him into the Cabinet. In 1864 he was made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a position which he honoured till his death.

_Edward Everett._--In the delivery of Edward Everett (1794-1865) “there was nothing in manner, person, dress, gesture, tone, accent, or emphasis too minute for his attention.” From boyhood he had the gift of eloquence, which he developed by assiduous practice. Taking high honours at Harvard when but seventeen, he went into the Unitarian ministry, and began preaching at the Brattle Street Church in Boston, with immediate success. Invited to assume a chair at Harvard, he studied abroad in preparation, and then from 1819 to 1825 taught Greek. He left his professorship to become a member of the House of Representatives. Ten years later he was elected Governor of Massachusetts. In 1841 General Harrison appointed him Minister to England; on his return he accepted the presidency of Harvard. He succeeded Webster as Secretary of State under Fillmore; and in the national election of 1860, representing the forces that desired a compromise between North and South, he was candidate for Vice-President of the United States. During his stay in the Senate Everett also was heard on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. His orations were published in four volumes. His “Lecture on the Character of Washington” (1856), frequently repeated, and his “Eulogy on Webster” (1859) were among his most splendid efforts. He made a remarkable address at Gettysburg, though it now seems academic beside that of Lincoln on the same occasion.

_Abraham Lincoln._--For a manual of literature the essential thing in the life of President Lincoln (1809-1865) is the ennoblement that went on in his eloquence, as his character developed under the increasing gravity and tension of his public career, and as his individual spirit became more and more identified with the agonising soul of a nation. The simplicity and directness of his mental operations are apparent in any of his earlier letters and speeches; they were sufficiently evident to those who heard his debate with Douglas. But his utterance gained in dignity and closeness of texture when his native impulses for good became free from idiosyncrasy, and when his innate moral rightness grew into a deep and conscious religion. In all literature there are few things more significant than the chastening of style that accompanied the chastening of Lincoln’s personality. There is a noticeable difference even between the manner of his first and that of his second inaugural address. In the meantime he had pronounced his speech at the dedication of the National Cemetery on the battlefield of Gettysburg, November 19, 1863. There, devoid of all pretence to rhetorical artifice, yet in the perfection of English style, Lincoln gave to the world a masterpiece of literature, issuing as it were from the life-blood of the people; a masterpiece in which art and life are married, and imaginative and literal truth are become one flesh. Says Mr. Bryce:

That famous Gettysburg speech is the best example one could desire of the characteristic quality of Lincoln’s eloquence. It is a short speech. It is wonderfully terse in expression. It is quiet, so quiet that at the moment it did not make upon the audience, an audience wrought up by a long and highly-decorated harangue from one of the prominent orators of the day, an impression at all commensurate to that which it began to make as soon as it was read over America and Europe. There is in it not a touch of what we call rhetoric, or of any striving after effect. Alike in thought and in language it is simple, plain, direct. But it states certain truths and principles in phrases so aptly chosen and so forcible, that one feels as if those truths could have been conveyed in no other words, and as if this deliverance of them were made for all time. Words so simple and so strong could have come only from one who had meditated so long on the primal facts of American history and popular government that the truths those facts taught him had become like the truths of mathematics in their clearness, their breadth, and their precision.

=Miscellaneous and Later Orators.=--It is obvious that the lives of many ante-bellum orators overlapped upon the era of Reconstruction; and the fifty years of political activity since the Civil War have brought forth an ever growing number of men concerned in affairs of state. However, there are few in this last to compare in eloquence with those of the preceding half-century. Among recognised orators a quieter tone on the whole has prevailed; not altogether that of Lincoln, nor yet that characteristic of the best speakers in the time of Madison and the younger Adams; nevertheless marking an improvement upon the flowery and pedantic effusions of an intermediate age represented by Choate, Winthrop, and, to a certain extent, Everett. The passage of laws and the expediting of other public business have come to depend more upon influence and effort exerted off the floor of the House and the Senate, and less upon forensic argument and persuasion. With the enormous growth of the population and the corresponding increase in the size of our legislative bodies, public orators have in most cases been satisfied, perforce, with a local reputation. The following are chosen miscellaneously.

John B. Gough (1817-1886) was an English editor, who fell a victim to alcoholism, and being rescued from his habit by a friend of temperance, dedicated himself to the cause of rescuing others. He lectured widely in America, enthralling large audiences by his descriptions of the ruin worked by alcoholic beverages, and by his graphic narratives of lapsing and reformed drunkards.

George William Curtis (1824-1892) was in youth (1842) attached to the community at Brook Farm. On returning from studies in Berlin and Italy, he became connected with the publishers of Putnam’s Magazine. The management of this periodical failing, Curtis assumed a financial liability for which he was not legally responsible, and spent twenty years in lecturing, to pay off the indebtedness. He was noted as editor of _Harper’s Monthly_, and as a writer for _Harper’s Weekly_ and _Harper’s Bazar_. He was a virile speaker on civil-service reform and other subjects involving the national welfare. Wherever he went he inculcated high political ideals. His “Orations and Addresses” were edited by Professor Charles Eliot Norton.

James G. Blaine (1830-1893), a Pennsylvanian, commenced life as an editor in Maine, became a member of the State Legislature there, and thence proceeded to Congress. He made a brilliant record as Speaker of the House of Representatives (1869-1875). In 1876 he was appointed United States Senator from Maine. Several times a Presidential possibility, he was the Republican nominee in 1884, when he was unexpectedly defeated by Cleveland. Blaine’s speech on the remonetisation of silver (1878) has been often cited. He was clear and forcible, save for a slight lisp, but his character was not such as to force conviction home.