Receiving little in the way of encouragement, the Chairman of the late committee, as he dubiously looked around upon the forms of the silent majority—each of whom sat apparently buried in thought that touched the very depths,—again and for the last time addressed the presiding officer:
"Mr. President, I move that we adjourn."
Conclusions being again tried in wonted parliamentary form between the opposing forces, with like result as before, the venerable president,—by way of prelude first giving full vent to an exclamation nowhere to be found in the Methodist "book of discipline,"—at once indignantly vacated the chair, and literally shook the dust of the court-room from his feet. The others "stood not upon the order of their going," and although fifty years have come and gone, that identical Bar meeting in the old courthouse at Metamora is still in session,—never having been officially adjourned even to this day.
XLVII THE HAYNE-WEBSTER DEBATE RECALLED
THE PUBLIC CAREER OF LYMAN TRUMBULL—HE HEARS CALHOUN MAKE A MASTERLY SPEECH IN HIS OWN DEFENCE—TARIFF LAW THE SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION —MR. HAYNE'S REPLY.
Ex-Senator Lyman Trumbull called upon me at the Vice-President's Chamber a few months before his death. It was upon the occasion of his last visit to Washington. He pointed out to me with much interest the seat he had occupied for many years in the Senate. The Senators to whom I introduced him had all come in since his day. His associates in that chamber, with three or four exceptions, had passed beyond the veil.
The public career of Mr. Trumbull began nearly two-thirds of a century ago. He was distinguished as a judge, and later as an able and active participant in exciting debates in the Senate, extending from the repeal of the Missouri Compromise to the impeachment of President Johnson. He was a member when the sessions of the Senate were held in the old chamber, and Cass, Crittenden, Douglas, Tombs, and Jefferson Davis were among his early official associates. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee he had reported the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
In the course of my conversation with him upon the occasion first mentioned, I inquired whether he had ever met either Webster, Clay, or Calhoun. He replied that it was a matter of deep regret to him that he had never seen either Clay or Webster, but that he had in his early manhood heard a masterful speech from Mr. Calhoun. Mr. Trumbull had then just been graduated from an eastern college; and on his way to Greenville, Georgia, to take charge of a school, he spent a few days in Charleston, South Carolina. This was in 1833, and the speech of Mr. Calhoun was in vindication of his course in the Senate in voting for the Compromise Bill of Mr. Clay, which provided for the gradual reduction of the tariff. The alleged injustice of the tariff law then in force had been the prime cause of the "nullification" excitement precipitated by South Carolina at that eventful period. The proclamation of President Jackson, it will be remembered, proved the death-blow, and the nullification excitement soon thereafter subsided. Mr. Trumbull told me that he distinctly recalled John C. Calhoun, his commanding presence and splendid argument, as he addressed the large assemblage. As a clear-brained logician—whose statement alone was almost unanswerable argument—he thought Mr. Calhoun unsurpassed by any statesman our country had known. Mr. Trumbull added that at the close of Mr. Calhoun's speech before mentioned, amid great enthusiasm, "Hayne! Hayne!" was heard from every part of the vast assemblage. For an hour or more he then listened spell-bound to Robert Y. Hayne, the formidable antagonist even of Webster in a debate now historic. Mr. Trumbull said that of the two generations of public men he had heard, he had never listened to one more eloquent than Hayne.