Mr. Benton called his sketch, which appears in his Thirty-years' View, "Retiring of Mr. Macon." It is well done, and interesting also because it is what one great man said of another. Yet I confess with some mortification that I have never seen it in print in North Carolina except in Benton's book.
To the foregoing admirable sketch by Benton I subjoin the following copious extracts from the Memoir of Nathaniel Macon by Weldon N. Edwards, published in July, 1862:
Nathaniel Macon was born on the 17th of December, 1758, in the county of Bute, of the then province of North Carolina, in the part of it now Warren, within a few miles of the present village of Warrenton, of poor and respectable parents. His great-grandfather was a Huguenot and came over from France to escape the persecutions consequent upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. His father, Gideon H. Macon, was born in Virginia, whence he came to North Carolina. His mother was a native of North Carolina and a daughter of Edward Jones, of Shocco. He lost his father in early boyhood, and was left, with many brothers and sisters, in the care of his widowed mother, with such moderate means of support as to require the utmost care and industry to get on even tolerably in the world. He assisted in all the domestic offices and labors common with boys at that day. He acquired the rudiments of education in the neighborhood, at what was called an "old-field school." The application, progress, and good habits of the boy gave such promise of the future man that it was resolved to make every effort to give him a thorough education, and he was accordingly sent to Princeton College, New Jersey. His own inclinations eagerly seconded the hopeful purpose of his friends. While there, he prosecuted his studies with fond diligence, and sought all the avenues to useful knowledge with unflagging zeal. Nor did he relax his efforts in this respect after his return home, devoting to such books as were within his reach all the time he could spare from the ordinary duties of life; but he met with great difficulties, owing to the scarcity of books and his own poverty. In the latter part of his life he was often heard to say that his eyesight failed him sooner than it otherwise would have done, in consequence of his reading so much by firelight in his youth and early manhood, being then too poor to buy candles, his small patrimony having been exhausted during his minority in his support and education.
His love for North Carolina was sincere and thorough. In all that concerned her character, her institutions, her welfare, he felt an ever-wakeful solicitude. Although he received his collegiate education in a distant State, he ever after gave a decided preference to the seminaries of his own loved North Carolina. When his son-in-law, William Eaton, Sr., in the year 1823 was about to send two of his sons to Cambridge, he dissuaded him from it and advised him to send them to the University of North Carolina, because, among other reasons, they would there make acquaintances of many of the future men of the State, and contract friendships that would be of service to them in the part they were destined to act in the great drama of life.
He studied law, but never applied for a license to practice. There is now in possession of his grandson, William Eaton, Jr. (who shared his confidences and affections, and is a worthy representative of his principles and virtues), an old London-bound edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, which was used by him, and which is highly valued as a family relic. Like all persons of taste, he admired the classic elegance of this celebrated work, but regarded its author as too subservient to power, and wanting in manliness and independence. He considered Sir Edward Coke a much better friend to English liberty. * * * * * * * * *
Stability and consistency were strong points in Mr. Macon's character, formed upon his uncompromising adherence to principle and unswerving fidelity to duty. In his conversation he was easy and unaffected, in his manners and dress a decided model of republican simplicity, pretentious in nothing; all who approached him felt conscious of receiving the civility and respect demanded by the nicest sense of propriety. To these characteristics did he owe much of that firm hold upon the confidence and esteem of his countrymen which sustained him in the severe trials always to be met in the great battle of life. His was an enduring popularity; it never waned; it existed in as much vigor and freshness at the close of his life as at any former period; it lived after him, and it is the source of the highest gratification to his numerous friends and admirers that he is still often quoted as the bright exemplar of "the honest man and the wise and virtuous statesman." * * * * * * * * *
Though so long honored, and so many years the depositary of public honors and public trusts, Mr. Macon's was the rare merit of never having solicited any one to vote for him, or even intimated a wish that he should; and though no one shared more fully the confidence of a large circle of influential friends, his is the praise of never having solicited the slightest interest for his own preferment. Public honors sought him; he prized them only as the reward of faithful and virtuous performance, and regarded place as the means merely of bringing him in nearer contact with public duty. He made no popular harangues, seeking to avoid temptation of being betrayed into promises which he could not or would not fulfill, or into protestations which his heart would not sanction. He was never found rambling through his Congressional District, seeking to engineer himself into popular favor by means which self-respect and a just sense of the rights of others forbade. His rule was to attend punctually, once a year, if health permitted, the first court held in each county in his district after his return from Congress. There he met his constituents, there he received their greetings and heard their complaints; there, without simulation, gave a full account of his stewardship. In his intercourse with them he was easy, frank, and communicative, never withholding his opinion upon matters of public concernment, and always inviting them to the exercise of the utmost freedom of thought and of speech as the highest privilege of freemen and the surest guard of liberty. He never attended what, in his own characteristic language, he called "a man-dinner," regarding all such political pageants as having too much deceptious exterior, and as being too little calculated to better the popular heart or enlighten the popular mind. And when, upon his retirement from Congress, a large portion of his old constituents tendered him the compliment of a public dinner, he declined it in a brief note, saying that "he had never been at such a show, and that he had already received the most gratifying proofs of their good-will and esteem."
To shun all ostentatious display and the emptiness of pride was, with him, a principle; and to do good to his fellow-men, and to society, a rule of action which he scrupulously observed, always abstaining, in the employment of his faculties, and in the use of the abundant goods with which frugal industry had blessed him, from the gratification of any passion, the indulgence of which prudence forbade to others less favored by fortune—thus teaching, by both precept and example, the necessity of temperance, frugality and industry, as the surest and best foundation for contentment and plenty.
Of generous and unsuspicious nature, he never looked with uncharitableness on the actions of his fellow-men, but, with the strength and armor of a well-balanced mind, gave to them the calmest consideration and assigned to each its appropriate place in the scale of good and evil. Of philosophic mind, subdued temper, and great self-command, he met the incidents and accidents of life, not with stoic indifference, but with quiet submission—yielding nothing to passion, less to despondency, and looking to passing events as to a school for instruction, and deducing from them useful lessons to guide him in the pathway of life.
Of him it may be emphatically said, that he thought for himself, but reposing, with confidence, on his discriminating sense of justice and integrity of purpose, he gave to all subjects the fullest deliberation, and never jumped to conclusions in advance of his judgment. But when he had formed an opinion he adhered to it with a fearless and virtuous inflexibility which yielded to no importunity or persuasion. This, with some, subjected him to the charge of obstinacy.
"Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes."
* * * * * * * * * * *
He was chary of promises, but always punctual and exact in performance; would give his bond or note to no man, contract no debts, would buy nothing without paying for it. "Pay as you go" was a law to him which he inflexibly observed. He mastered all his wants and kept them in strict subjection to reason. He would lend money to a friend, but never take interest. He classed labor among the virtues, never called for help in anything he could do himself, labored often in his fields at the head of his slaves, during the intervals allowed from public duties, and topped all his own tobacco, when at home at the proper season, till the infirmities of age rendered him unable to stand the heat of the sun. He was fond of the chase and indulged in his favorite amusement, the pursuit of the fox and the deer, as long as he lived.
He spoke often in Congress—seldom long. His speeches were always to the point, strong, practical, sententious, often furnishing materials for the rhetorical displays of others. A most distinguished member once characterized his speeches as "dishes of the best material served up in the best manner." Unless prevented by bad health, he was always in his seat, voted on every question, was punctual in attendance upon committees, and ever ready at the call of duty.
He was fond of reading, but his favorite study was man. "He made choice of human nature for the object of his thoughts." To this predilection did he owe that consummate knowledge of the human character, and those practical lessons of wisdom (of so much consequence in the conduct of life) which gave him rank among the "wisest and best."
There is no surer test of merit than is found in the favorable opinions of the wise and the good, formed in the unrestricted freedom of social intercourse, when the seal of reserve is unloosed, and neither the pride of ostentation nor the dread of criticism or censure invites to concealment. Impressed with this truth, with a view to impart deeper interest to this sketch, by stamping the seal of verity upon the high and noble traits it portrays, recourse is had to the correspondence of eminent and distinguished statesmen, to whom all the avenues of knowledge were opened by close intimacy and long association in public life. Thomas Jefferson, whose monument is to be found in the Declaration of Independence, and in the enduring popular veneration which he so largely shared, but a few weeks after his first inauguration as President of the United States, in 1801, thus writes to Mr. Macon: "And in all cases when an office becomes vacant in your State, as the distance would occasion a great delay, were you to wait to be regularly consulted, I shall be much obliged to you to recommend the best characters. There is nothing I am so anxious about as making the best possible appointments, and no case in which the best men are more liable to mislead us by yielding to the solicitations of applicants. For this reason your own spontaneous recommendation would be desirable." Thus did Mr. Jefferson stake an important portion of his administrative duties upon his high estimate of Mr. Macon's integrity and wisdom. Again, in another letter to Mr. Macon, the 24th of March, 1826, Mr. Jefferson says: "My grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, the bearer of this letter, on a journey to the North, will pass two or three days, perhaps, in Washington. I cannot permit him to do this without presenting him to a friend of so long standing, whom I consider as the strictest of our models of genuine republicanism. Let him be able to say, when you are gone, but not forgotten, that he had seen Nathaniel Macon, upon whose tomb will be written, 'Ultimus Romanorum!' I only ask you to give him a hearty shake of the hand, on my account, as well as his own, assuring you he merits it as a citizen, to which I will add my unceasing affection to yourself." * * * * * * *
Of Mr. Macon's claims to distinction, and to take rank on the roll of fame among the first of those who embellish the pages of American history, that sagacious statesman, John Randolph of Roanoke, whose perception of character was rarely at fault, in a letter to Mr. Macon, 14th December, 1828, thus speaks: "Your kind letter of the 10th is just now received. Many, many thanks for it. I am truly concerned at the causes which justly occasion you uneasiness; yet, when I reflect, I know of no man in the United States whom I would so soon be as yourself. There is no one who stands so fair in the public estimation; and, with the single exception of General Washington, there is not one of your times who will stand so fair with posterity as yourself. There are various sorts of reputations in the world. Some are obtained by cringing and puffing, some are actually begged for and given as an alms to importunity, some are carried by sheer impudence. No one has had a better opportunity of observing this than yourself; and there is no keener observer."
Upon such testimonials as these, from such high and pure sources, the reputation of this just and virtuous man may safely repose. They bespeak a name and a fame which dignify humanity, and invest his memory with a usefulness scarcely less to be prized than his services while living.
This sketch would be imperfect did it not notice the suggestive fact that in his latter years Mr. Macon had painful misgivings for the future of his country. 'Tis true he did not parade his opinions before the public gaze, preferring rather to encourage, not to alarm, the popular mind; but often when his thoughts were turned on what he deemed the political distempers and proclivities of the times, did he say to a friend in his own pregnant language: "I am afraid of all my labors have been for nothing"—obviously referring to his hardships in the tented field and his arduous and well-directed labors in the councils of his country, having devoted to these patriotic offices the greater part of a long life, commencing before manhood and ending with its close. At one period he reposed with entire confidence on the conviction that popular rights and public liberty were effectually secured by the Constitution of the United States, but this hopeful reliance failed him as early as 1824. In a debate, at that period, in the Senate of the United States, on the bill for a subscription to the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, Mr. Macon said: "I rise with a full heart to take my last farewell of an old friend that I have always admired and loved—the Constitution of the United States. * * * In times of old, whenever any question touching the Constitution was brought forward, it was discussed day after day; that time is now passed. * * * Do a little now and a little then, and by and by you will render the government as powerful and unlimited as the British government was. We go on deciding these things without looking at the Constitution; and I suppose we will, in a few years, do as was done in England. We shall appoint a committee to hunt for precedents. My heart is full when I think of all this; and what is to become of us I cannot say. * * * My fears may be groundless; they may be nothing but the suggestions of a worn-out old man; but they are sincere, and I am alarmed for the safety of this government."
In vain did he then, as often before, raise his warning voice against the dangers of inroads upon the Constitution. And now that the direst calamities are upon us, resulting from its utter overthrow and its base prostitution by wicked men to the worst and most wicked purposes—how loudly do they proclaim the unerring sagacity of his gifted and far-reaching mind!
In person Macon was above the middle size, of florid but fair complexion, keen blue eyes, animated but kindly countenance, not very good-looking, but possessed of a symmetrical form and strength of body. His manners were simple and unostentatious, but not without sufficient dignity and firmness.
He was married early in life to Miss Hannah Plummer, of Warren, his own county.
A good story is told of the way he won her. He proposed in her presence to his rival that they should settle their claim to her hand by a game of cards. This was agreed to and Macon lost. He then raised up his hands, and with eyes fixed on the object of his affection, exclaimed: "Hannah, notwithstanding I have lost you fairly, love is superior to honesty: I cannot give you up." He won, and was married to her October 9th, 1783.
He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1791, and served continuously until 1815, when he was elected to the Senate. He was also a trustee of the University and a justice of the peace, both of which offices he gave up in 1828, at the time he resigned his seat in the Senate.