EULOGY ON SENATOR LINN: SPEECHES OF MR. BENTON AND MR. CRITTENDEN.
In Senate: Tuesday, December 12, 1843.—
The death of Senator Linn.
The journal having been read, Mr. Benton rose and said:
"Mr. President:—I rise to make to the Senate the formal communication of an event which has occurred during the recess, and has been heard by all with the deepest regret. My colleague and friend, the late Senator Linn, departed this life on Tuesday, the 3d day of October last, at the early age of forty-eight years, and without the warnings or the sufferings which usually precede our departure from this world. He had laid him down to sleep, and awoke no more. It was to him the sleep of death! and the only drop of consolation in this sudden and calamitous visitation was, that it took place in his own house, and that his unconscious remains were immediately surrounded by his family and friends, and received all the care and aid which love and skill could give.
"I discharge a mournful duty, Mr. President, in bringing this deplorable event to the formal notice of the Senate; in offering the feeble tribute of my applause to the many virtues of my deceased colleague, and in asking for his memory the last honors which the respect and affection of the Senate bestow upon the name of a deceased brother.
"Lewis Field Linn, the subject of this annunciation, was born in the State of Kentucky, in the year 1795, in the immediate vicinity of Louisville. His grandfather was Colonel William Linn, one of the favorite officers of General George Rodgers Clark, and well known for his courage and enterprise in the early settlement of the Great West. At the age of eleven he had fought in the ranks of men, in the defence of a station in western Pennsylvania, and was seen to deliver a deliberate and effective fire. He was one of the first to navigate the Ohio and Mississippi from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and back again—a daring achievement, which himself and some others accomplished for the public service, and amidst every species of danger, in the year 1776. He was killed by the Indians at an early period; leaving a family of young children, of whom the worthy Colonel William Pope (father of Governor Pope, and head of the numerous and respectable family of that name in the West) became the guardian. The father of Senator Linn was among these children; and, at an early age, skating upon the ice near Louisville, with three other boys, he was taken prisoner by the Shawanee Indians, carried off, and detained captive for three years, when all four made their escape and returned home, by killing their guard, traversing some hundred miles of wilderness, and swimming the Ohio River. The mother of Senator Linn was a Pennsylvanian by birth; her maiden name Hunter; born at Carlisle; and also had heroic blood in her veins. Tradition, if not history, preserves the recollection of her courage and conduct at Fort Jefferson, at the Iron Banks, in 1781, when the Indians attacked and were repulsed from that post. Women and boys were men in those days.
"The father of Senator Linn died young, leaving this son but eleven years of age. The cares of an elder brother[5] supplied (as far as such a loss could be supplied) the loss of a father; and under his auspices the education of the orphan was conducted. He was intended for the medical profession, and received his education, scholastic and professional, in the State of his nativity. At an early age he was qualified for the practice of medicine, and commenced it in the then territory, now State, of Missouri; and was immediately amongst the foremost of his profession. Intuitive sagacity supplied in him the place of long experience; and boundless benevolence conciliated universal esteem. To all his patients he was the same; flying with alacrity to every call, attending upon the poor and humble as zealously as on the rich and powerful, on the stranger as readily as on the neighbor, discharging to all the duties of nurse and friend as well as of physician, and wholly regardless of his own interest, or even of his own health, in his zeal to serve and to save others.
"The highest professional honors and rewards were before him. Though commencing on a provincial theatre, there was not a capital in Europe or America in which he would not have attained the front rank in physic or surgery. But his fellow-citizens perceived in his varied abilities, capacity and aptitude for service in a different walk. He was called into the political field by an election to the Senate of his adopted State. Thence he was called to the performance of judicial duties, by a federal appointment to investigate land titles. Thence he was called to the high station of senator in the Congress of the United States—first by an executive appointment, then by three successive almost unanimous elections. The last of those elections he received but one year ago, and had not commenced his duties under it—had not sworn in under the certificate which attested it—when a sudden and premature death put an end to his earthly career. He entered this body in the year 1833; death dissolved his connection with it in 1843. For ten years he was a beloved and distinguished member of this body; and surely a nobler or a finer character never adorned the chamber of the American Senate.
"He was my friend; but I speak not the language of friendship when I speak his praise. A debt of justice is all that I can attempt to discharge: an imperfect copy of the true man is all that I can attempt to paint.
"A sagacious head, and a feeling heart, were the great characteristics of Dr. Linn. He had a judgment which penetrated both men and things, and gave him near and clear views of far distant events. He saw at once the bearing—the remote bearing of great measures, either for good or for evil; and brought instantly to their support, or opposition, the logic of a prompt and natural eloquence, more beautiful in its delivery, and more effective in its application, than any that art can bestow. He had great fertility of mind, and was himself the author and mover of many great measures—some for the benefit of the whole Union—some for the benefit of the Great West—some for the benefit of his own State—many for the benefit of private individuals. The pages of our legislative history will bear the evidences of these meritorious labors to a remote and grateful posterity.
"Brilliant as were the qualities of his head, the qualities of his heart still eclipse them. It is to the heart we look for the character of the man; and what a heart had Lewis Linn! The kindest, the gentlest, the most feeling, and the most generous that ever beat in the bosom of bearded man! And yet, when the occasion required it, the bravest and the most daring also. He never beheld a case of human woe without melting before it; he never encountered an apparition of earthly danger without giving it defiance. Where is the friend, or even the stranger, in danger, or distress, to whose succor he did not fly, and whose sorrowful or perilous case he did not make his own? When—where—was he ever called upon for a service, or a sacrifice, and rendered not, upon the instant, the one or the other, as the occasion required?
"The senatorial service of this rare man fell upon trying times—high party times—when the collisions of party too often embittered the ardent feelings of generous natures; but who ever knew bitterness, or party animosities in him? He was, indeed, a party man—as true to his party as to his friend and his country; but beyond the line of duty and of principle—beyond the debate and the vote—he knew no party, and saw no opponent. Who among us all, even after the fiercest debate, ever met him without meeting the benignant smile and the kind salutation? Who of us all ever needed a friend without finding one in him? Who of us all was ever stretched upon the bed of sickness without finding him at its side? Who of us all ever knew of a personal difficulty of which he was not, as far as possible, the kind composer?
"Such was Senator Linn, in high party times, here among us. And what he was here, among us, he was every where, and with every body. At home among his friends and neighbors; on the high road among casual acquaintances; in foreign lands among strangers; in all, and in every of these situations, he was the same thing. He had kindness and sympathy for every human being; and the whole voyage of his life was one continued and benign circumnavigation of all the virtues which adorn and exalt the character of man. Piety, charity, benevolence, generosity, courage, patriotism, fidelity, all shone conspicuously in him, and might extort from the beholder the impressive interrogatory, 'For what place was this man made?' Was it for the Senate, or the camp? For public or for private life? For the bar or the bench? For the art which heals the diseases of the body, or that which cures the infirmities of the State? For which of all these was he born? And the answer is, 'For all!' He was born to fill the largest and most varied circle of human excellence; and to crown all these advantages, Nature had given him what the great Lord Bacon calls a perpetual letter of recommendation—a countenance, not only good, but sweet and winning—radiant with the virtues of his soul—captivating universal confidence; and such as no stranger could behold—no traveller, even in the desert, could meet, without stopping to reverence, and saying 'Here is a man in whose hands I could deposit life, liberty, fortune, honor!' Alas! that so much excellence should have perished so soon! that such a man should have been snatched away at the early age of forty-eight, and while all his faculties were still ripening and developing!
"In the life and character of such a man, so exuberant in all that is grand and beautiful in human nature, it is difficult to particularize excellences or to pick out any one quality, or circumstance, which could claim pre-eminence over all others. If I should attempt it, I should point, among his measures for the benefit of the whole Union, to the Oregon Bill; among his measures for the benefit of his own State, to the acquisition of the Platte Country; among his private virtues, to the love and affection which he bore to that brother—the half-brother only—who, only thirteen years older than himself had been to him the tenderest of fathers. For twenty-nine years I had known the depth of that affection, and never saw it burn more brightly than in our last interview, only three weeks before his death. He had just travelled a thousand miles out of his way to see that brother; and his name was still the dearest theme of his conversation—a conversation, strange to tell! which turned, not upon the empty and fleeting subjects of the day, but upon things solid and eternal—upon friendship, and upon death, and upon the duties of the living to the dead. He spoke of two friends whom it was natural to believe that he should survive, and to whose memories he intended to pay the debt of friendship. Vain calculation! Vain impulsion of generosity and friendship! One of these two friends now discharges that mournful debt to him: the other[6] has written me a letter, expressing his 'deep sorrow for the untimely death of our friend, Dr. Linn.'"
Mr. Benton then offered the following resolutions:
"Resolved unanimously, That the members of the Senate, from sincere desire of showing every mark of respect due to the memory of the Hon. Lewis F. Linn, deceased, late a member thereof, will go into mourning, by wearing crape on the left arm for thirty days.
"Resolved unanimously, That, as an additional mark of respect for the memory of the Hon. Lewis F. Linn, the Senate do now adjourn."
"Mr. Crittenden said: I rise, Mr. President, to second the motion of the honorable senator from Missouri, and to express my cordial concurrence in the resolutions he has offered.
"The highest tribute of our respect is justly due to the honored name and memory of Senator Linn, and there is not a heart here that does not pay it freely and plenteously. These resolutions are but responsive to the general feeling that prevails throughout the land, and will afford to his widow and his orphans the consolatory evidence that their country shares their grief, and mourns for their bereavement.
"I am very sensible, Mr. President, that the very appropriate, interesting, and eloquent remarks of the senator from Missouri [Mr. Benton] have made it difficult to add any thing that will not impair the effect of what he has said; but I must beg the indulgence of the Senate for a few moments. Senator Linn was by birth a Kentuckian, and my countryman. I do not dispute the claims of Missouri, his adopted State; but I wish it to be remembered, that I claim for Kentucky the honor of his nativity; and by the great law that regulates such precious inheritances, a portion, at least, of his fame must descend to his native land. It is the just ambition and right of Kentucky to gather together the bright names of her children, no matter in what lands their bodies may be buried, and to preserve them as her jewels and her crown. The name of Linn is one of her jewels; and its pure and unsullied lustre shall long remain as one of her richest ornaments.
"The death of such a man is a national calamity. Long a distinguished member of this body, he was continually rewarded with the increasing confidence of the great State he so honorably represented; and his reputation and usefulness increased at every step of his progress.
"In the Senate his death is most sensibly felt. We have lost a colleague and friend, whose noble and amiable qualities bound us to him as with 'hooks of steel.' Who of us that knew him can forget his open, frank, and manly bearing—that smile, that seemed to be the pure, warm sunshine of the heart, and the thousand courtesies and kindnesses that gave a 'daily beauty to his life?'
"He possessed a high order of intellect; was resolute, courageous, and ardent in all his pursuits. A decided party man, he participated largely and conspicuously in the business of the Senate and the conflicts of its debates; but there was a kindliness and benignity about him, that, like polished armor, turned aside all feelings of ill-will or animosity. He had political opponents in the Senate, but not one enemy.
"The good and generous qualities of our nature were blended in his character;
'——and the elements So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world—This was a man.'
The resolutions were then adopted, and the Senate adjourned.