FOOTNOTES:
[1] The various spellings are Tan'swell, Ta'rswell, Tassell, Taswell, Tazewell. Tarswell is another abbreviation of Tankersville.
[2] Judge Benjamin Waller.
[3] Mr. Wickham married Mr. Tazewell's aunt, a half sister of Judge Henry Tazewell.
[4] For a sketch of Mr. Tazewell and Gen. Taylor, as they appeared at this early period of their career, see the graphic picture drawn by the hand of Mr. Wirt, in the Old Bachelor, [Appendix No. 3]. Tazewell is the Sidney, and Gen. Taylor the Herbert of the piece.
[5] See [Appendix No. 3].
[6] The committee were Thomas Mathews, Thomas Newton, Jr., Luke Wheeler, Theodoric Armistead, Richard E. Lee, Moses Myers, William Pennock, William Newsum, Thomas Blanchard, Daniel Bedinger, Seth Foster, J.W. Murdaugh, Richard Blow, and Francis S. Taylor.
[7] Tazewell Taylor, Esq.
[8] For his views of public duty see [Appendix No. 4].
[9] This speech Mr. Tazewell was surprised to learn from the public prints, was regarded as a great effort. In a letter dated the 3d of February, 1825, a few days after the delivery of the speech, he writes to a friend in Virginia as follows: "The newspapers and my Virginian friends have done me irreparable mischief in the too lavish encomia they have bestowed upon my speech, as you call it. Believe me, I was very much in the situation of him who had been talking prose all his life without knowing it. I had no conception that I had made a speech, and really thought I had merely given a clear and distinct exposition of a matter of public law as familiar to me as the doctrine of dower, and concerning which I had no more doubt. And it was with infinite astonishment I first saw the strong panegyric heaped upon my argument here. So true is this, that on the evening after I had concluded it, I wrote to my friend Wickham, telling him if his eye should see anything of it through the newspapers, he would wonder how so much A B C knowledge could be tolerated here, but that I saw it was necessary to state it, and therefore he must not think me so much of a pedant as he might otherwise be disposed to do. Had the thing been suffered to pass unnoticed, I might have hoped at some time or other to gain some credit for a speech when I saw an occasion offered to make one; and I have vanity enough to believe that I could make a much better almost any day of the week." He complains of the bad Latin the papers put in his mouth, and of such expressions as "three twins," &c., &c. I grieve to think that so few specimens of Mr. Tazewell's arguments are to be found in print. I have heard from him year after year, in conversation, arguments on current or general topics, which, if emblazoned through the press, would make a fair reputation for a speaker, and he all unconscious at the time that he was making any considerable effort.