The desperate struggle of 1820-21, between the North and the South, relative to the admission of Missouri into the Union; the equally fierce contest respecting the Tariff in 1832-33; the Mexican War, and the acquisition of vast territory, by the dismemberment of a foreign empire, which led to the most violent and angry of all the quarrels between the two sections; constitute the fourth, fifth and sixth crises in the stormy history of the United Sections. The seventh and last great crisis, grew out of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the rise of the Republican party, as it is called; and consisted in the secession of the Southern States, and the war of coercion. Each of these seven crises had, of course, its prelude and its sequel, without which it cannot be comprehended, or seen how it followed the preceding, and how it led to the succeeding crises in the chain of events. Now some of these crises are most imperfectly understood by the public, and, in some respects, most perfectly misunderstood, such as the first two for example; others, and especially the fourth, or the great Compromise of 1820, are overlaid with a mass of lying traditions such as the world has seldom seen; traditions invented by politicians, and industriously propagated by the press and the pulpit. If these traditions were cleared away, and the facts which lie beneath them in the silent records of the country brought to view, the revelation would be sufficient to teach both sections of the Union the profoundest lessons of humiliation and sorrow. If patiently and properly studied, the history of the United States is, perhaps, fraught with as many valuable lessons for the warning and instruction of mankind, as that of any other age or nation since the fall of Rome, since the Flood, or since the fall of man.
[RICHARD H. MENEFEE]
Richard Hickman Menefee, who with Henry Clay and Thomas F. Marshall form the great triumvirate of early Kentucky orators, was born at Owingsville, Kentucky, December 4, 1809. He was educated at Transylvania University, and graduated from the law school of that institution in 1832. He practiced his profession at Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, for several years, when, in 1836, he was elected to the Kentucky legislature. In the legislature he won a wide reputation as an orator, and rapidly became known as the most gifted man of his age in Kentucky. In the summer of 1837 Menefee made the race for Congress and, after an exciting campaign, it was found that he had defeated his opponent, Judge Richard French. In the lower House of Congress Menefee and Sargeant S. Prentiss of Mississippi were the two young men that compelled the country's attention and admiration as orators. In 1838 William J. Graves, a Kentucky member of the House, killed Jonathan Cilley, representative from a Maine district, and the friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a duel near Washington City. Menefee was one of Graves's seconds. This affair of honor was so bitterly condemned on all sides that Congress was compelled to enact the anti-duelling law. In July, 1838, the people of Boston tendered Daniel Webster a great home-coming banquet, in Faneuil Hall, and Menefee responded very eloquently to a toast to Kentucky. One more session of Congress and he returned to Kentucky, entering upon the practice of law at Lexington, where cases pressed fast upon him. He met Henry Clay in the great Rogers will case of 1840, and Clay got the jury's verdict. Cassius M. Clay placed Menefee in nomination for the United States Senate in the Kentucky legislature of 1841, but his ill-health made his election a hazardous action. A short time before his death he drew up the mature reflections of his life, in the form of a diary, and this, only recently published, has added to his fame. Menefee died at Lexington, Kentucky, February 20, 1841. Thomas P. Marshall pronounced an eulogy upon him which has taken its rightful place among the masterpieces of American oratory; and in 1869 a Kentucky county was carved out of several other counties and named in his honor. While he was not a constructive statesman, Menefee's fame as an orator seems to grow greater with the passing of the years.
Bibliography. Speeches and Writings of Thomas F. Marshall, by W. L. Barre (Cincinnati, 1858); Richard Hickman Menefee, by John Wilson Townsend (New York, 1907).
KENTUCKY: A TOAST
[From Richard Hickman Menefee, by John Wilson Townsend (New York, 1907)]
Mr. Chairman:
I cannot remain silent under the sentiment which has just been announced and so enthusiastically received. That sentiment relates not to myself but to Kentucky—dearer to me than self. Of Kentucky I have nothing to say. There she is. In her history, from the period when first penetrated by the white man as the dark and bloody ground, down to the present, she speaks. The character to which that history entitles her is before the world. She is proud of it. She is proud of the past; she is proud of the present. And her pride is patriotic and just. As one of her sons, I ask to express in her name, the acknowledgments due to the complimentary notice you have taken of her, a notice not the less complimentary from its association with the name of Massachusetts.