Congress was the ambition and disappointed hope of his life. So with Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, in regard to the Presidency of the United States. They were said to be too great for the position, which, of course, was intended as a high political compliment, meritoriously given to offset their disappointment. The compliment belongs with equal propriety to the subject of our sketch in his life-long aspirations for Congressional honors.
With his peculiar talents he doubtless would have shone more in the popular branch of the National Legislature than in the Senate. He was, by nature and education, the people's representative. But as a politician, in his own interest and for his own ends, he was a failure. There were plenty of men, with half his talent, that could and did beat him to death at the wheel of political fortune. Yet he was a king among his peers, though never crowned, but a king "for a' that."
He was the Whig candidate for Congress in 1844; and to show his popularity, though a Whig, and his party, on a strict party vote, in the minority by several hundred votes in the Congressional District, yet he swept it, and entered Nauvoo with a majority of between four and five hundred votes. But there the vote was solid against him. Joe Smith had a revelation the day before that the Mormons must vote for the Democratic candidate. And so he was beaten by the Mormons, who belonged to no party, but were up for bargain and for sale. Mr. S. would not soil his honor by making a bid for their vote.
He was candidate again, in 1850, against the Hon. Thompson Campbell. Again he carried the district, entering Jo Daviess, his competitor's own county, with a majority of between three and four hundred votes. But the local feeling there for the home candidate overcame the majority, and defeated him again. When it is remembered what partisan odds he had to overcome in these two contests, amounting to a diversion of a thousand or more Democratic votes, and would have been triumphantly elected in the one case but for the treachery of the Mormons, and in the next but for the local feeling in his competitor's home county, preferring a home candidate, with the wholesale bid of Campbell for the abolition vote in certain localities, touching the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; we say, taking these things into the account, they exhibit the immense power and popularity of Mr. S.
Was he too honest for a politician? Aye, that was it. He reposed too much confidence in the professions of political friends. They took advantage of confidences ingenuously imparted, and slew him at the gate of triumphal entry. And some did it who had eaten bread from his professional hands. Such is life in this world of strife. Once when the election returns revealed their perfidious betrayal of him he cried out with a voice that could be heard from far: "Three cheers for Judas Iscariot! hurrah! hurrah!! hurrah!!!"
He was a life-long Whig and Republican, and did much heavy work for his party, but official recompense never came—a marked example of the proverbial ingratitude of political parties. Others entered into his labors and took his reward.
After months of severe suffering with malignant erysipelas, he paid the debt that all must pay, which balanced the books for this world, except that the balance sheet, if left unstruck by the hand and seal of the death-king, would show him a heavy creditor of his country. He died during the December term of the Stephenson County Circuit Court, A. D. 1864, his Honor, Benj. R. Sheldon, presiding.
The Hon. Thos. J. Turner, a contemporary of the deceased at the bar, arose in Court and said:
"It is difficult for me to find words to express what we all feel on this solemn occasion. Hon. Martin P. Sweet is dead. We shall not again hear from his lips the burning eloquence that in times past has thrilled the court and the bar, as he held up to view the enormities of crimes which he had been called upon to prosecute; or the melting pathos with which he captivated the sympathies of jury and people, while defending those he regarded innocent. Few men ever possessed that magnetic power which chains an audience in a greater degree than did our departed friend.