Sergeant Smith Prentiss, who came to Washington during the Van Buren Administration to claim a seat in Congress as a Representative from Mississippi, was the most eloquent speaker that I have ever heard. The lame and lisping boy from Maine had ripened, under the Southern sun, into a master orator. The original, ever-varying, and beautiful imagery with which he illustrated and enforced his arguments impressed Webster, Clay, Everett, and even John Quincy Adams. But his forte lay in arraigning his political opponents, when his oratory was "terrible as an army with banners;" nothing could stand against the energy of his look, gesture, and impassioned logic, when once he was fairly under way, in denouncing the tricks and selfish cunning of mere party management. The printed reports of his speeches are mere skeletons, which give but a faint idea of them. Even the few rhetorical passages that are retained have lost much of their original form and beauty. The professional stenographers confessed themselves utterly baffled in the attempt to report him, and he was quite as unfitted to report himself. Indeed, he complained that he never could reproduce the best thoughts, still less the exact language, of his speeches.
The principal antagonist of Mr. Prentiss, in the courts of Mississippi, was Joseph Holt, a young Kentucky lawyer, who had acquired a national reputation for oratory by a speech which he made in the National Democratic Convention of 1836, when he advocated the nomination of Colonel Richard M. Johnson in a speech of great beauty and power. His arguments were persuasive, the tones of his voice were melodious, and he insinuated himself and his cause into the hearts of his audience, rather than carried them by storm. Devoted to the South and its peculiar institution, he was welcomed in the State of Mississippi, and soon took a prominent position at the bar of its higher courts.
William Rufus King, of Alabama, who was elected President pro tempore of the Senate while Colonel Johnson was Vice-President, was a prim, spare bachelor, known among his friends as "Miss Nancy King." When a young man he had accompanied the Minister to Russia, William Pinkney, to St. Petersburg, as Secretary of the Legation of the United States. Residing there for two years, he acquired the formal manners of the Court of the Emperor Alexander, with a diplomatic craftiness which he always retained. He was a courteous presiding officer, as was thus oddly exemplified while he occupied the chair. The two Senators from the State of Arkansas pronounced the name of their State differently. Mr. King punctiliously observed the difference, invariably recognizing one as "the gentleman from Ar-kan-sas," and the other as "the gentleman from Ark-an-sas."
Mr. Van Buren was much exercised by a difficulty in the Pennsylvania Legislature, which the State militia was called out to quell, and which it was thought might result in a demand for the intervention of United States troops. Thaddeus Stevens, then an ardent Whig, was a leader in the attempt to force eleven illegally elected members into the House at the point of the bayonet, the troops having their muskets loaded with buckshot. When the enterprise collapsed, Stevens jumped from a back window of the Capitol and ran off to Gettysburg, where he remained without claiming his seat for about a month, when he came in and offered to take the oath, but the House resolved, with great solemnity, that the seat was vacant, although others who had been out nearly as long were admitted without hesitation.
A prominent young Virginia lawyer, named William Smith, who practiced at Culpepper Court-House, became interested in a mail-route between Washington City and Milledgeville, Georgia, and he grew to be an extensive contractor. Many of his mail-routes were but little more than bridle-paths, over which the mails were carried on horseback. With an eye to the main chance, and with a laudable desire to extend the mail facilities of Virginia, Mr. Smith managed to secure a large number of "expeditions" through Parson Obadiah Bruin Brown, commonly called "Parson Obadiah Bruin Beeswax Brown," the Superintendent of the contract office of the Post-office Department. In place of the horseback system stage lines would be substituted, and this service would be frequently "expedited" without much of a view to "productiveness," from one trip to three or six trips per week. All of these "expeditions" were noted by stars (* *) at the bottom of Smith's vouchers, which, interpreted, meant "extra allowance." So frequently did these stars appear in the Virginia contractor's accounts that he soon came to be known in the Post-office Department as "Extra Billy" Smith, and it adhered to him in after life, when he became a member of the House of Representatives and afterward Governor of Virginia. He still lives at Warrenton, a hale and hearty old man.
Mr. Van Buren had an abundance of political nicknames. He was "the sweet little fellow" of Mr. Ritchie of the Richmond Inquirer, and "the Northern man with Southern principles" of the Charleston Courier; Mr. Clinton baptized him "the Political Grimalkin;" Mr. Calhoun, "the Weazel;" while he helped himself to the still less flattering name of "the follower in the footsteps"—that is, the successor of his predecessor, a sort of masculine Madame Blaize,
"Who strove the neighborhood to please,
With manners wondrous winning,
And never followed wicked ways,
Except when she was sinning."
who clad all the hungry and naked office-holders "that left a pledge behind" of supporting him; and, like that good dame, led the way to all those who came behind her.
The Southern nullifiers, who had been "squelched" by General Jackson, began to revive under the more genial rule of Mr. Van Buren, and they established an "organ" called the Washington Chronicle. It was edited by Richard K. Cralle, who came from Leesburg, Virginia. He was a well-educated gentleman, ultra in his opinions on free trade and Southern rights; but those who were enthusiastic in their praises of his editorials did not subscribe to the Chronicle, or if they did, never condescended to pay their subscriptions. So the paper ruined its printers and then gave up the ghost, Mr. Calhoun securing a department clerkship for Mr. Cralle.
[Facsimile] Tristram Burgess TRISTRAM BURGESS was born at Rochester, Massachusetts, February 26th, 1770; was a Representative in Congress from Rhode Island from December 1st, 1825, until March 3d, 1835; was defeated as the Whig candidate for Congress, and afterward as the Whig candidate for Governor, and died at Providence, Rhode Island, October 13th, 1853.