Just beyond these, leaning on their Deckhard rifles, stood three men who would have attracted attention anywhere—the celebrated backwoodsman who left an engraved record to designate the spot where he had “cilled a bar” (45); another, equally famous, who relates in his autobiography that he killed one hundred and five bears in less than a year (46); and still another who shot thirty-two of these “varmints” during one winter within seven miles of Nashville (47).
I was much interested in the appearance of a number of intelligent-looking men who sat together, engaged in earnest conversation. There were the man who founded the first educational institution in the Mississippi valley (48); the first minister who preached regularly to a Tennessee congregation (49); the bishop whose journal forms a valuable contribution to the history of early times in this state (50); the president of the first non-sectarian college chartered in the United States (51); the classmate of Daniel Webster who founded the first academy for females in Tennessee (52); and the eminent educator who declined successively the presidency of seven universities and colleges in other states, in order that he might continue his chosen work in this (53).
Immediately in rear of these were the illustrious savant who first mapped the Gulf Stream, and demonstrated the feasibility of a submarine cable (54); the first state geologist of Tennessee (55); a distinguished surgeon who served professionally in the armies of three countries (56); and the young physician who, while perishing in a snow-storm on Mont Blanc, kept a record of his sensations for the benefit of science (57).
Just across the aisle sat the first chief justice of Tennessee (58); the judge who, after having been chief justice of Kentucky, removed to this state and became the greatest criminal advocate in the history of its bar (59); the first judge who was ever impeached in Tennessee (60); the eminent jurist who wrote President Jackson’s farewell address (61); and the judge whose singular death from the attack of an infuriated turkey-gobbler was regarded by the early settlers as retributive justice for official oppression (62).
A literary group was composed of “the father of Tennessee history” (63); the famous printer whose name a short-lived commonwealth once bore (64); the English author who founded a colony in this state which was named for the scene of his best-known book (65); a Tennessee editor who was afterward elected to a seat in the British parliament (66); the author of “Hymns to the Gods” (67); and “Sut Lovengood” (68).
In a prominent position in the center of the hall were a man who was governor of two states of the Union (69); a governor of Tennessee who was buried in two states (70); the first man who became governor by virtue of his position as speaker of the Senate (71); one who was elected governor, but never inaugurated (72); a governor who was presented by a grand jury as a public nuisance (73); one to whom a celebrated author referred as having given to his official station “the ill-savor of a corner grocery” (74); the only person present at the death of Henry Clay except the members of his immediate household (75); the editor famous as “the fighting parson” (76); and the man who, by casting the entire vote of the state at a national convention, although he was merely a chance bystander, gave a new word to Tennessee politics (77).
A distinguished looking body was composed of the revolutionary general to whom 25,000 acres of land in Tennessee were granted by legislative enactment (78); a famous fighter under Jackson who was said to have been “a great general without knowing it” (79); a naval officer who was master of a vessel at twelve years of age, and whom one of the best-known of American poets has styled
“The sea-king of the sovereign west
Who made his mast a throne” (80);
the Tennessee postmaster to whom Andrew Jackson bequeathed a sword (81); the colonel of the famous “Bloody First” (82); and the “grey-eyed man of destiny” (83).