Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

I had occasion to look at Mr. Winthrop's address some little time ago, and, opening the volume containing it in the middle, I read a page or two with approval and delight thinking it was Mr. Winthrop's. But I found, on looking back to the beginning that it was Senator Daniel's.

Mr. Daniel speaks too rarely in the Senate. He is always listened to with great attention. He speaks only on important questions, to which he always makes an important contribution. He has the old-fashioned Virginia method of speech, now nearly passed away,—grave, deliberate, with stately periods and sententious phrases, such, I suppose, as were used in the Convention that adopted the Constitution, or in that which framed or revised the Constitution of Virginia.

Mr. Daniel was a Confederate soldier. He is a Virginian to his heart's core. He looks with great alarm on the possibility that the ancient culture and nobility of the South, and the lofty character of the Virginian as he existed in the time of Washington and Marshall and Patrick Henry may be degraded by raising what he thinks an inferior race to social or even political equality.

But he retains no bitterness or hate or desire for revenge by reason of the conflict of the Civil War. He delivered an address before the President of the United States, the Supreme Court, the representatives of foreign Governments, the two Houses of Congress and the Governors of twenty-one States and Territories, on the 12th of December, 1900, on the occasion of the celebration of the Centennial Anniversary of establishing the seat of Government at Washington. That remarkable address was full of wise counsel to his countrymen. Coming from a representative of Virginia, who had borne arms and been badly wounded in the Civil War, it had a double value and significance. Mr. Daniel declared the cheering and hopeful truth that great races are made of a mixture of races, and that the best and bravest blood of the world's great races is mixed in the American. He appealed eloquently to the circumstances which should stir the heart of the whole people to a new and loftier love of country. He pointed out that the differences in forty- five great Commonwealths are not greater than ought to be expected, and indeed not greater than is healthy. He pointed out the National strength, the power of our great Republic stands at the dawn of a new century, with every man under its flag a freeman and ready to defend it. He called upon his countrymen to stand by the Monroe Doctrine, to be ready to defend it, if need be, in arms. He then specially appealed to the people to foster the inventive genius of the country, and repeated Mr. Jefferson's lofty prophecy that in some future day—

"The farthest star in the heavens will bear the name of Washington, and the city he founded be the Capital of the universal Republic."

Isham G. Harris entered the Senate the same day I did. I counted him always among my friends, although we had some sharp passages. I cannot describe him better than by reprinting here what I said of him in the Senate after his death.

"Mr. President, the great career of Senator Harris is well known to his countrymen. He has been for more than a generation a striking and conspicuous figure in our public life. His colleague, his successor, the men of his own political faith, the people of the great State which he served and honored and loved so long, will, each in their own way, portray his character and record their esteem and affection.

"My tribute must be that of a political opponent. So far as I have been able to exert any influence upon the history of my country during the long conflict now happily past, it has been in opposition to him, to the party to which he belonged, to the opinions which he held, I am sure, quite as zealously and conscientiously as I hold my own.

"We entered the Senate on the same day. He was a Southerner, a Democrat and a Confederate. I was born and bred in New England, a Republican, and an Abolitionist. We rarely spoke in the same debate except on different sides. Yet I have no memory of him that is not tender and affectionate, and there is nothing that I can honestly say of him except words of respect and of honor.

"He was a typical Southerner. He had the virtues and the foibles that belonged to that character in the generation the last of whom are now passing from the stage of public action. He was a man of very simple and very high qualities. He was a man of absolute frankness in public behavior and in private dealing. The thought that was in his heart corresponded absolutely with the utterance of his lips. He had nothing to conceal. I was about to say he was a man without the gift of diplomacy; but he was a man with the gift of the highest diplomacy—directness, simplicity, frankness, courage—qualities which make always their way to their mark and to their goal over all circumlocutions and ambiguities.