CHAPTER V. PROMINENT REPRESENTATIVES OF 1827.
The Hall of the House of Representatives (now used as a National Gallery of Statuary) was a reproduction of the ancient theatre, magnificent in its effect, but so deficient in acoustic properties that it was unfit for legislative occupation. It was there that Henry Clay, then Speaker of the House, had welcomed General Lafayette as "the Nation's Guest." The contrast between the tall and graceful Kentuckian, with his sunny smile and his silver-toned voice, and the good old Marquis, with his auburn wig awry, must have been great. His reply appeared to come from a grateful heart, but it was asserted that the Speaker had written both his own words of welcome and also Lafayette's acknowledgment of them, and it became a subject of newspaper controversy, which was ended by the publication of a card signed "H. Clay," in which he positively denied the authorship, although he admitted that he had suggested the most effective sentences.
Ladies had been excluded from the galleries of the House originally, in accordance with British precedent. But one night at a party a lady expressed her regret to Hon. Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts, that she could not hear the arguments, especially his speeches. Mr. Ames gallantly replied that he knew of no reason why ladies should not hear the debates. "Then," said Mrs. Langdon, "if you will let me know when next you intend to speak, I will make up a party of ladies and we will go and hear you." The notice was given, the ladies went, and since then Congressional orators have always had fair hearers—with others perhaps not very fair.
The House was really occupied, during the administration of John Quincy Adams, in the selection of his successor. At first the political outlook was rather muddled, although keen eyes averred that they could perceive, moving restlessly to and fro, the indefinite forms of those shadows which coming events project. Different seers interpreted the phantasmal appearances in different fashions, and either endeavored to form novel combinations, or joined in raking common sewers for filth wherewith to bespatter those who were the rivals of their favorite candidates. It was then that Congressional investigating committees became a part of the political machinery of the day. The accounts of President Adams when, in former years, he was serving the country in Europe as a diplomatist; the summary execution of deserters by order of General Jackson, when he commanded the army in Florida; the bills for refurnishing the White House; the affidavits concerning the alleged bargain between the President and his Secretary of State, and the marriage of General Jackson to Mrs. Robards before she had been divorced from Mr. Robards, were, with many other scandals, paraded before the public.
Daniel Webster had been recognized in advance as the leader of the House by his appointment as chairman of the committee to inform Mr. Adams that he had been elected President. This Mr. Webster did verbally, but Mr. Adams had prepared a written reply, which had been copied by a clerk and bore his autograph signature.
Mr. Webster was at that period of his life the embodiment of health and good spirits. His stalwart frame, his massive head, crowned with a wealth of black hair, his heavy eye-brows, overhanging his great, expressive, and cavernous eyes, all distinguished him as one of the powers of the realm of the intellect—one of the few to whom Divinity has accorded a royal share of the Promethian fire of genius. His department was ceremonious, and he made a decided impression on strangers. When Jenny Lind first saw him, she was much impressed by his majestic appearance, and afterward exclaimed, "I have seen a man!"
His swarthy complexion gained him the epithet of "Black Dan." He was very proud of his complexion, which he inherited from his grandmother, Susannah Bachelder (from whom the poet Whittier also claimed descent), and he used to quote the compliment paid by General Stark, the hero of Bennington, to his father, Colonel Ebenezer Webster: "He has the black Bachelder complexion, which burnt gunpowder will not change." Although majestic in appearance, Mr. Webster was not really a very large man; in height he was only about five feet ten inches. His head looked very large, but he wore a seven and five-eighth hat, as did Mr. Clay, whose head appeared much smaller. His shoulders were very broad and his chest was very full, but his hips and lower limbs were small.
Mr. Webster had his first great sorrow then. His eldest, and at that time his only, daughter died at Washington, and the next year her mother followed her to the grave. This estimable lady, whose maiden name was Grace Fletcher, was one year older than Mr. Webster, and was the daughter of a New Hampshire clergyman. While on her way to Washington with her husband, the December after he had been re-elected United States Senator by a nearly two-thirds vote in each branch of the "General Court" of Massachusetts, she was taken fatally ill at the house of Mr. Webster's friend, Dr. Perkins, where they were guests.
Mr. Webster had begun at that time to be disturbed about his money matters, although he should have been in a prosperous pecuniary condition. His professional income could not have been less than twenty thousand dollars a year, and he had just received seventy thousand dollars as his five per cent. fee as counsel for the claimants before the Commissioners on Spanish Claims, but he had begun to purchase land and was almost always harassed for ready money.
Edward Everett, who was a member of the Massachusetts delegation in the House, had won early fame as a popular preacher of the gospel, as a professor at Harvard College, and as the editor of the North American Review. Placed by his marriage above want, he became noted for his profound learning and persuasive eloquence. At times he was almost electrical in his utterances; his reasoning was logical and luminous, and his remarks always gave evidence of careful study. As a politician Mr. Everett was not successful. The personification of self-discipline and dignity, he was too much like an intellectual icicle to find favor with the masses, and he was deficient in courage when any bold step was to be taken.
George McDuffie, who represented the Edgefield District of South Carolina, had been taken from labor in a blacksmith's shop by Mr. Calhoun and became the grateful champion of his patron in the House. He was a spare, grim-looking man, who was an admirer of Milton, and who was never known to jest or to smile. As a debater he had few equals in the House, but he failed when, during the discussion of the Panama Mission question, he opened his batteries upon Mr. Webster. The "expounder of the Constitution" retorted with great force, reminding the gentleman from South Carolina that noisy declamation was not logic, and that he should not apply coarse epithets to the President, who could not reply to them. Mr. Webster then went on to say that he would furnish the gentleman from South Carolina with high authority on the point to which he had objected, and quoted from a speech by Mr. Calhoun which effectively extinguished Mr. McDuffie.
Tristram Burgess, of Rhode Island, who had a snowy head and a Roman nose, was called "the bald eagle of the House." Although under fifty years of age, his white hair and bent form gave him a patriarchal look and added to the effect of his fervid eloquence and his withering sarcasm. A man of iron heart, he was ever anxious to meet his antagonists, haughty in his rude self-confidence, and exhaustive in the use of every expletive of abuse permitted by parliamentary usage. In debate he resembled one of the old soldiers who fought on foot or on horseback, with heavy or light arms, a battle-axe or a spear. The champion of the North, he divided the South and thrashed and slashed as did old Horatius, when with his good sword he stood upon the bridge and with his single arm defended Rome.
George Kremer, of Pennsylvania, was probably the most unpopular man in the House. An anonymous letter had appeared just before the election of President [Adams] by the Representatives denouncing an "unholy coalition" between Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, by which the support of the friends of the latter had been transferred to the former, "as the planter does his negroes, or the farmer his team and horses." Mr. Clay at once published a card, over his signature, in which he called the writer "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard, and a liar." Mr. Kremer replied, admitting that he had written the letter, but in such a manner that his political friends were ashamed of his cowardice, while the admirers of Mr. Clay were very indignant—the more so as they suspected that Mr. James Buchanan had instigated the letter.
Mr. Henry W. Dwight, of Massachusetts, a good specimen of "a sound mind in a sound body," gave great attention to the appropriation bills, and secured liberal sums for carrying on the various departments of the Government. His most formidable antagonist was a self-styled reformer and physical giant, Mr. Thomas Chilton, of Kentucky, who had been at one period of his life a Baptist preacher. He declared on the floor in debate that he was pledged to his constituents to endeavor to retrench the expenses of the General Government, to diminish the army and navy, to abridge the number of civil and diplomatic officials, and, above all, to cut down the pay of Congressmen. He made speeches in support of all these "reforms," but did not succeed in securing the discharge of a soldier, a sailor, a diplomatist, or a clerk, neither did he reduce the appropriations one single cent. The erratic Mr. David Crockett was then a member of the House, but had not attracted public attention, although the Jackson men were angry because he, one of Old Hickory's officers in the Creek War, was a devoted adherent of Henry Clay for the Presidency. One of his colleagues in the Tennessee delegation was Mr. James K. Polk, a rigid and uncompromising Presbyterian, a political disciple of Macon, and a man of incorruptible honesty.
Prominent among the Representatives from the State of New York were Messrs. Gulian C. Verplanck and Thomas J. Oakley, members of the legal profession, who were statesmen rather than politicians. Mr. George C. Washington, of Maryland, was the great-nephew of "the Father of his country," and had inherited a portion of the library at Mount Vernon, which he subsequently sold to the Boston Athenaeum. Messrs. Elisha Whittlesey and Samuel Vinton, Representatives from Ohio, were afterwards for many years officers of the Federal Government and residents at Washington. Mr. Jonathan Hunt, of Vermont, a lawyer of ability, and one of the companions chosen by Mr. Webster, was the father of that gifted artist, William Morris Hunt, whose recent death was so generally regretted. Mr. Silas Wright, of New York, was then attracting attention in the Democratic party, of which he became a great leader, and which would have elected him President had he not shortened his life by intemperance. He was a solid, square-built man, with an impassive, ruddy face. He claimed to be a good farmer, but no orator, yet he was noted for the compactness of his logic, which was unenlivened by a figure of speech or a flight of fancy.
The Supreme Court then sat in the room in the basement of the Capitol, now occupied as a law library. It has an arched ceiling supported by massive pillars that obstruct the view, and is very badly ventilated. But it is rich in traditions of hair-powder, queues, ruffled shirts, knee-breeches, and buckles. Up to that time no Justice had ever sat upon the bench in trousers, nor had any lawyer ventured to plead in boots or wearing whiskers. Their Honors, the Chief Justice and the Associate Justices, wearing silk judicial robes, were treated with the most profound respect. When Mr. Clay stopped, one day, in an argument, and advancing to the bench, took a pinch of snuff from Judge Washington's box, saying, "I perceive that your Honor sticks to the Scotch," and then proceeded with his case, it excited astonishment and admiration. "Sir," said Mr. Justice Story, in relating the circumstance to a friends, "I do not believe there is a man in the United States who could have done that but Mr. Clay."
Chief Justice John Marshall, who had then presided in the Supreme Court for more than a quarter of a century, was one of the last survivors of those officers of the Revolutionary Army who had entered into civil service. He was a tall, gaunt man, with a small head and bright black eyes. He used to wear an unbrushed long- skirted black coat, a badly fitting waistcoat, and knee-breeches, a voluminous white cambric cravat, generally soiled, and black worsted stockings, with low shoes and silver buckles. When upward of seventy years of age he still relished the pleasures of the quoit club or the whist table, and to the last his right hand never forgot its cunning with the billiard cue.
Nor did the Chief Justice ever lose his relish for a joke, even at his own expense. In the Law Library one day he fell from a step- ladder, bruising himself severely and scattering an armful of books in all directions. An attendant, full of alarm, ran to assist him, but his Honor drily remarked, "That time I was completely floored."
Bushrod Washington, who had been appointed to the Supreme Court by President John Adams, was by inheritance the owner of Mount Vernon, where his remains now lie, near those of his illustrious uncle, George Washington. He was a small, insignificant-looking man, deprived of the sight of one eye by excessive study, negligent of dress, and an immoderate snuff-taker. He was a rigid disciplinarian and a great stickler for etiquette, and on one occasion he sat for sixteen hours without leaving the bench. He was also a man of rare humor.
Christmas was the popular holiday season at Washington sixty years ago, the descendants of the Maryland Catholics joining the descendants of the Virginia Episcopalians in celebrating the advent of their Lord. The colored people enjoyed the festive season, and there was scarcely a house in Washington in which there was not a well- filled punch bowl. In some antique silver bowls was "Daniel Webster punch," made of Medford rum, brandy, champagne, arrack, menschino, strong green tea, lemon juice, and sugar; in other less expensive bowls was found a cheaper concoction. But punch abounded everywhere, and the bibulous found Washington a rosy place, where jocund mirth and joyful recklessness went arm in arm to flout vile melancholy, and kick, with ardent fervor, dull care out of the window. Christmas carols were sung in the streets by the young colored people, and yule logs were burned in the old houses where the fireplaces had not been bricked up.
[Facsimile]
With great respect
I am yrs. v. truly. [?]
H. Clay
HENRY CLAY, born in Virginia, April 12th, 1777; United States
Senator from Kentucky, 1806-1807, and again 1810-1811; Representative
from Kentucky, 1811-1814; negotiator of the treaty of Ghent, 1815;
Representative in Congress, 1815-1820, and 1823-1825; Secretary of
State under President Adams, 1825-1829; United States Senator from
Kentucky, 1831-1842, and 1844, until he died at Washington City,
June 29th, 1852.