"The eloquent words of Mr. Lamar so touched the hearts of the people of the North that they may fairly be said to have been of themselves an important influence in mitigating the estrangements of a generation."
The following letter explains my absence from the Senate when Judge Lamar's death was announced:
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 29, 1893
My Dear Madam:
I was kept in bed, under the orders of my physician, the day the death of your husband was announced to the Senate. I regret exceedingly that I could not be in my place to express my sense of the great public loss and my warm personal admiration for his great qualities of intellect and of heart. I served with him in the House of Representatives for more than four years, and in the Senate for more than eight years. It was a stormy and exciting time. We differed widely on very grave questions, and this difference was more than once very sharply manifested in public; but the more I knew him, the more satisfied I became of the sincerity of his patriotism, of his profound and far-sighted wisdom, of the deep fountain of tenderness in his affectionate and simple heart, and of his brave and chivalrous quality of soul. I was more than once indebted to him for very great kindness indeed, under circumstances when I do not think he supposed it would ever come to my knowledge.
Some of his judgments on the Supreme Bench are characterized by marvellous beauty and felicity of style. He maintained his place on that great tribunal to the satisfaction of his friends and that admiration of his countrymen, in spite of failing health and of the fact that the best years of his life had been given to other studies than that of the law.
It is a good omen for our country that the friends and disciples of Charles Sumner unite with the people of Mississippi in their reverence for this noble and manly character.
I am faithfully yours,
GEORGE F. HOAR
Mrs. Lamar.
CHAPTER XVI SOME SOUTHERN SENATORS
Another most delightful Democrat, with whom it was my pleasure to form quite intimate relations, was Senator Howell E. Jackson of Tennessee. He had been in the Confederate service. I think he did not approve Secession, but like most others who dwelt in the South, thought his allegiance primarily due to his State. He was an admirable lawyer, faithful, industrious, clear-headed and learned in the law. He had been a Whig before the war, and, like other Southern Whigs, favored a moderate protective tariff. He was anxious to have the South take her place as a great manufacturing community, for which her natural resources of iron and coal and her great water power gave her such advantages. He was opposed to the Republican measures of Reconstruction and to placing the negro on a political equality with the whites. But he also discountenanced and condemned any lawless violence or fraud.