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.
CHAPTER VI. THE POLITICAL MACHINE.
As the time for another Presidential election approached, the friends of General Jackson commenced active operations in his behalf. The prime mover in the campaign was General John Henry Eaton, then a Senator from Tennessee. He had published in 1818 a brief life of the hero of New Orleans, which he enlarged in 1824 and published with the title, "The Life of Andrew Jackson, Major- General in the Service of the United States, comprising a History of the War in the South from the Commencement of the Creek Campaign to the Termination of Hostilities Before New Orleans." The facts in it were obtained from General Jackson and his wife, but every incident of his life calculated to injure him in the public estimation was carefully suppressed. It was, however, the recognized text- book for Democratic editors and stump speakers, and although entirely unreliable, it has formed the basis for the lives of General Jackson since published.