Homes of American Statesmen; With Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches

Finally, we see the patriot soldier and civilian, a bowed and white-haired old man, in his secluded Hermitage, which is situated near the scenes of his earliest labors and triumphs. The companion of his love, who had shared in his struggles, but was not permitted to share in his latest glory, is with him no more; children they had none; and he moves tranquilly towards his grave alone. No! not alone: for travellers from all lands visit his retreat, to gaze upon his venerable form; his countrymen throng his doors, to gather wisdom from his sayings, – his friends and neighbors almost worship him, and an adopted family bask in the benignant goodness of his noble heart – his great mind, too, "beaming in mildest mellow splendor, beaming if also trembling, like a great sun on the verge of the horizon, near now to its long farewell." Thus, the orphan, the emigrant, the Indian fighter, the conquering General, the popular President, the venerated Patriarch, goes to the repose of the humble Christian.

What were the sources of Jackson's pre-eminent greatness, of his invariable success, of his resistless personal influence, of his deep hold upon the minds of his fellows? He was no orator, he was no writer, he had in fact no faculty of expression, he was unsustained by wealth, he never courted the multitude, he relied upon no external assistances. What he did, he achieved for himself, without aid, directly, and by the mere force of his own nature. Neither education, nor family, nor the accidents of fortune, nor the friendship of the powerful, helped to raise him aloft, and push him forward in his career. The secret of his elevation, then, was this, – that he saw the Right and loved it, and was never afraid to pursue it, against all the allurements of personal ambition, and all the hostility of the banded sons of error. There have been many men of a larger reach and compass of mind, and some of a keener insight and sagacity, but none, of a more stern, inflexible, self-sacrificing devotion to what they esteemed to be true. He carried his life in his hand, ready to be thrown away at the call of honor or patriotism, and it was this unswerving integrity, which commended him so strongly to the affections of the masses. Whatever men may be in themselves, their hearts are always prone to do homage to honesty. They love those whom they can trust, or only hate them, because their justice and truth stands in the way of some cherished, selfish object.

Jackson's will was imperious; the report does not follow the flash more rapidly than his execution of a deed followed the conception of it; or rather his thought and his act were an instinctive, instantaneous, inseparable unity. Like a good marksman, as soon as he saw his object he fired, and generally with effect. This impulsive decision gave rise to some over-hasty and precipitate movements, but, in the main, was correct. What politicians, therefore, could only accomplish if at all by a slow and cunning process of intrigue, what diplomatists reached by long-winded negotiations, he marched to, without indirection, with his eye always on the point, and his whole body following the lead of the eye. We do not mean that he was utterly without subtlety, – for some subtlety is necessary to the most ordinary prudence, and is particularly necessary to the forecast of generalship, – but simply that he never dissimulated, never assumed disguise, never carried water on both shoulders, as the homely phrase has it, and never went around an obstacle, when he could level it, or push it out of the way. The foxy or feline element was small in a nature, into which so much magnanimity, supposed to be lionlike, entered.

The popular opinion of Jackson was, that he was an exceedingly irascible person, his mislikers even painting him as liable to fits of roaring and raving anger, when he flung about him like a maniac; but his intimate friends, who occupied the same house with him for years, inform us that they never experienced any of these strong gusts; that, though sensitive to opposition, impatient of restraint, quick to resent injuries, and impetuous in his advance towards his ends, he was yet gentle, kindly, placable, faithful to friends and forgiving to foes, a lover of children and women, only unrelenting when his quarry happened to be meanness, fraud or tyranny. His affections were particularly tender and strong; he could scarcely be made to believe any thing to the disadvantage of those he had once liked, while his reconciliations with those he had disliked, once effected, were frank, cordial and sincere. Colonel Benton, who was once an enemy, but afterwards a friend of many years, gives us this sketch of some of his leading characteristics:

"He was a careful farmer, overlooking every thing himself, seeing that the fields and fences were in good order, the stock well attended, and the slaves comfortably provided for. His house was the seat of hospitality, the resort of friends and acquaintances, and of all strangers visiting the State – and the more agreeable to all from the perfect conformity of Mrs. Jackson's disposition to his own. But he needed some excitement beyond that which a farming life could afford, and found it for some years in the animating sports of the turf. He loved fine horses – racers of speed and bottom – owned several – and contested the four mile heats with the best that could be bred, or bought, or brought to the State, and for large sums. That is the nearest to gaming that I ever knew him to come. Cards and the cock-pit have been imputed to him, but most erroneously. I never saw him engaged in either. Duels were usual in that time, and he had his share of them, with their unpleasant concomitants; but they passed away with all their animosities, and he has often been seen zealously pressing the advancement of those, against whom he had but lately been arrayed in deadly hostility. His temper was placable, as well as irascible, and his reconciliations were cordial and sincere. Of that, my own case was a signal instance. There was a deep-seated vein of piety in him, unaffectedly showing itself in his reverence for divine worship, respect for the ministers of the Gospel, their hospitable reception in his house, and constant encouragement of all the pious tendencies of Mrs. Jackson. And when they both afterwards became members of a church, it was the natural and regular result of their early and cherished feelings. He was gentle in his house, and alive to the tenderest emotions; and of this I can give an instance, greatly in contrast with his supposed character, and worth more than a long discourse in showing what that character really was. I arrived at his house one wet, chilly evening in February, and came upon him in the twilight, sitting alone before the fire, a lamb and a child between his knees. He started a little, called a servant to remove the two innocents to another room, and explained to me how it was. The child had cried because the lamb was out in the cold, and begged him to bring it in – which he had done to please the child, his adopted son, then not two years old. The ferocious man does not do that! and though Jackson had his passions and his violences, they were for men and enemies – those who stood up against him – and not for women and children, or the weak and helpless, for all of whom his feelings were those of protection and support. His hospitality was active as well as cordial, embracing the worthy in every walk of life, and seeking out deserving objects to receive it, no matter how obscure. Of this I learned a characteristic instance, in relation to the son of the famous Daniel Boone. The young man had come to Nashville on his father's business, to be detained some weeks, and had his lodgings at a small tavern, towards the lower part of the town. General Jackson heard of it – sought him out – found him, took him home to remain as long as his business detained him in the country, saying, 'Your father's dog should not stay in a tavern while I have a house.' This was heart! and I had it from the young man himself, long after, when he was a State Senator of the General Assembly of Missouri, and as such nominated me for the United States Senate at my first election in 1820 – his name was Benton Boone, and so named after my father. Abhorrence of debt, public and private, dislike of banks and love of hard money – love of justice, and love of country, were ruling passions with Jackson; and of these he gave constant evidences in all the situations of his life."

The same distinguished authority has drawn a picture of Jackson's retirement from the Presidency, with which we close our remarks:

"The second and last term of General Jackson's presidency expired on the 3d of March, 1837. The next day at twelve he appeared with his successor, Mr. Van Buren, on the elevated and spacious eastern portico of the capitol, as one of the citizens who came to witness the inauguration of the new President, and no way distinguished from them, except by his place on the left hand of the President-elect. The day was beautiful: clear sky, balmy vernal sun, tranquil atmosphere; and the assemblage immense. On foot, in the large area in front of the steps, orderly without troops, and closely wedged together, their faces turned to the portico – presenting to the beholders from all the eastern windows the appearance of a field paved with human faces – this vast crowd remained riveted to their places, and profoundly silent, until the ceremony of inauguration was over. It was the stillness and silence of reverence and affection, and there was no room for mistake as to whom this mute and impressive homage was rendered. For once the rising was eclipsed by the setting sun. Though disrobed of power, and retiring to the shades of private life, it was evident that the great ex-President was the absorbing object of this intense regard. At the moment that he began to descend the broad steps of the portico to take his seat in the open carriage that was to bear him away, the deep, repressed feeling of the dense mass broke forth, acclamations and cheers bursting from the heart and filling the air, such as power never commanded, nor man in power ever received. It was the affection, gratitude, and admiration of the living age, saluting for the last time a great man. It was the acclaim of posterity breaking from the bosoms of contemporaries. It was the anticipation of futurity – unpurchasable homage to the hero-patriot who, all his life, and in all the circumstances of his life – in peace and in war, and glorious in each – had been the friend of his country, devoted to her, regardless of self. Uncovered and bowing, with a look of unaffected humility and thankfulness, he acknowledged in mute signs his deep sensibility to this affecting overflow of popular feeling. I was looking down from a side window, and felt an emotion which had never passed through me before. I had seen the inauguration of many presidents, and their going away, and their days of state, vested with power, and surrounded by the splendors of the first magistracy of a great republic; but they all appeared to me as pageants, brief to the view, unreal to the touch, and soon to vanish. But here there seemed to be a reality – a real scene – a man and the people: he, laying down power and withdrawing through the portals of everlasting fame; they, sounding in his ears the everlasting plaudits of unborn generations. Two days after I saw the patriot ex-President in the car which bore him off to his desired seclusion: I saw him depart with that look of quiet enjoyment which bespoke the inward satisfaction of the soul at exchanging the cares of office for the repose of home.

RUFUS KING

When in the year 1803, after having served his native country with distinguished ability for more than seven years as Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States at the Court of St. James, Rufus King returned to New-York, the city of his adoption, he found his political friends in a hopeless minority, and the rule of party absolute, exclusive, and even vindictive. Mr. King had trained himself from early life to the duties of a Statesman, and to that end neglected no study, and above all, no self-discipline that might qualify him for the career he desired to pursue. After serving several years as a Delegate from Massachusetts in the Continental Congress (from 1785 to 1789), and having, as a member of the Convention called for the purpose, been actively instrumental in forming the Constitution of the United States, Mr. King became in 1788 a resident of the city of New-York, where he had married two years before, Mary, the only child of John Alsop, a retired merchant of that city. Mr. King was much known in New-York, for the Continental Congress during his term of service held its sessions there; and the character he had established for himself on the score of talent and capacity, may be estimated by the fact, that he, with General Schuyler for a colleague, was selected as one of the first Senators of the United States from the State of New-York, under the new constitution.

His services proved so acceptable, that on the expiration of his first term, in 1795, he was re-elected, and it was in the second year of his second term – in 1796, that he was appointed by Washington Minister to England.

In that post Mr. King continued throughout the residue of General Washington's administration, through the whole of that of John Adams, and, at the request of President Jefferson, through two years of his administration, when, having accomplished the negotiations he had in hand, Mr. King asked to be, and was, recalled.

During this long residence abroad, remote from the scene of the angry partisan politics which disturbed the close of Washington's term, and the whole of that of Mr. Adams, and which resulted, in 1800, in the entire overthrow of the old Federal party, and the success of Mr. Jefferson and the Republican party – Mr. King had devoted his labors, his time and his talents, to the service of his whole country, and was little prepared, therefore, either by taste or temper, for participation in the angry broils which, on his return home, he found prevailing throughout the Union. Adhering, as he did to the end, to the political principles of his early life, he never doubted, nor saw occasion to change the faith which had made him a Federalist, when the name included the Telfairs and Habershams of Georgia, the Pinkneys and Rutledges of South Carolina, the Davieses and the Sitgreaves of North Carolina, the Washingtons and the Marshalls of Virginia, the Carrolls and the Hindmans of Maryland, the Bayards and the Kearnys of Delaware, the Tilghmans and the Binghams of Pennsylvania, the Patersons and the Stocktons of New Jersey, the Jays and Hamiltons of New-York, the Woolcots and the Johnsons of Connecticut, the Ellerys and Howells of Rhode Island, the Adamses and Otises of Massachusetts, the Smiths and Gilmans of New Hampshire, the Tichenors and Chittendens of Vermont. But that faith was now in "dim eclipse." The popular air was in another direction, and Mr. King was of too lofty a character to trim his bark to the veering breeze. Having acquired, or rather confirmed by his residence in England (where country life is better understood and more thoroughly enjoyed, probably, than any where else) a decided taste for the country Mr. King soon determined to abandon the city, where – having no professional pursuits nor stated occupation – he found few attractions, and make his permanent abode in the country. After looking at many points on the Hudson River and on the Sound, he finally established himself at the village of Jamaica, in Queens county, Long Island, distant about twelve miles from the city of New-York. In comparison with some of the places which he had examined on the waters of the Sound and the North River, Jamaica offered few inducements of scenery or landscape. But it did offer what to him, and especially to his wife, were all-important considerations – proverbial healthiness, and ready access to church, schools and physicians. Mrs. King's health was already drooping, and from the quiet, regular life of the country, its pure air, and the outdoor exercise to which it leads, and of which she was so fond, the hope was indulged that she might be completely restored. The property purchased by Mr. King, consisting of a well-built, comfortable and roomy house, with about ninety acres of land, is situated a little to the west of the village, on the great high road of the Island from west to east. It is a dead level, of a warm and quick soil, readily fertilized, the ridge or back-bone of Long Island bounding it on the north. He removed his family thither in the spring of 1806, and at once commenced those alterations and improvements which have made it what it now is – a very pretty and attractive residence for any one who finds delight in fine trees, varied shrubbery, a well cultivated soil, and the comforts of a large house, every part of which is meant for use, and none of it for show.

When Mr. King took possession of his purchase, the house, grounds and fences were after the uniform pattern, then almost universal in the region. He soon changed and greatly improved all. The house, fronting south, was in a bare field, about one hundred yards back from the road, and separated from it by a white picket fence. A narrow gravel path led in a straight line from a little gate, down to the door of the house, while further to the east was the gate, through which, on another straight line, running down by the side of the house, was the entrance for carriages and horses. Two horse-chestnut trees, one east and the other west of the house, and about thirty feet from it, were, with the exception of some old apple trees, the only trees on the place; and the blazing sun of summer, and the abundant dust of the high road at all seasons, had unobstructed sweep over the house and lawn, or what was to become a lawn. Not a shrub or bush was interposed between the house and the fence, to secure any thing like privacy to the abode. On the contrary, it seemed to be the taste of the day to leave every thing open to the gaze of the wayfarers, and in turn to expose those wayfarers, their equipages, and their doings, to the inspection of the inmates of all roadside houses. Mr. King, who had cultivated the study of Botany, and was a genuine admirer of trees, soon went to work in embellishing the place which was to be his future home, and in this he was warmly seconded by the taste of Mrs. King. The first step was, to change the approach to the house, from a straight to a circular walk, broad and well rolled; then to plant out the high road. Accordingly, a belt of from twenty to thirty feet in width along the whole front of the ground, was prepared by proper digging and manuring, for the reception of shrubs and trees; and time and money were liberally applied, but with wise discrimination as to the adaptedness to the soil and climate, of the plants to be introduced. From the State of New Hampshire, through the careful agency of his friend, Mr. Sheaffe of Portsmouth, who was vigilant to have them properly procured, packed, and expedited to Jamaica, Mr. King received the pines and firs which, now very large trees, adorn the grounds. They were, it is believed, among the first, if not the first trees of this kind introduced into this part of Long Island, and none of the sort were then to be found in the nurseries at Flushing. Some acorns planted near the house in 1810, are now large trees. Mr. King indeed planted, as the Romans builded – "for posterity and the immortal gods," for to his eldest son, now occupying the residence of his father, he said, in putting into the ground an acorn of the red oak – "If you live to be as old as I am, you will see here a large tree;" and, in fact, a noble, lofty, well-proportioned red oak now flourishes there, to delight with its wide-branching beauty, its grateful shade, and more grateful associations, not the children only, but the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of him who planted the acorn. Mr. King possessed, in a remarkable degree, all the tastes that fit one for the enjoyment of country life. He had a large and well selected library, particularly rich in its books relating to the Americas, and this library remains unbroken. With these true, tried, unwavering and unwearying friends – and such good books are – Mr. King spent much time; varying, however, his studious labors with outdoor exercise on horseback, to which he was much addicted; and in judgment of the qualities, as well as in the graceful management of a horse, he was rarely excelled. He loved, too, his gun and dog; was rather a keen sportsman, and good shot; though often, when the pointer was hot upon the game, his master's attention would be diverted by some rare or beautiful shrub or flower upon which his eye happened to light, and of which – if not the proper season for transplanting it into his border – he would carefully mark the place and make a memorandum thereof, so as to be enabled to return at the fitting time, and secure his prize. In this way he had collected in his shrubberies all the pretty flowering shrubs and plants indigenous to the neighborhood, adding thereto such strangers as he could naturalize; so that during a visit made to him many years after he began his plantation, by the Abbé Corréa, then Minister from Portugal to this Government, but even more distinguished as a man of letters, and particularly as a botanist – the learned Abbé said he could almost study the Flowers and the Trees of the central and eastern portion of the United States in these grounds. Mr. King loved, too, the song of birds – and his taste was rewarded by the number of them which took shelter in this secure and shady plantation, where no guns were ever allowed to be fired, nor trap nor snare to be set. The garden and the farm also came in for their share of interest and attention; and nowhere did care judiciously bestowed, and expenditure wisely ordered, produce more sure or gratifying results.

About the year 1817 Mr. King turned his attention to the importation of some cattle of the North Devon breed. In the preceding year he received as a token of a friendship contracted during his residence in England, from Mr. Coke of Holkham (the great English Commoner, and warm friend of America in the revolutionary contest, and always interested in whatever might promote the welfare of the people in whose early struggle for their rights he had sympathized), two beautiful cows of the North Devon breed, as being particularly adapted, as Mr. Coke supposed, to the light, level soil of the southern slope of Long Island, – similar in these qualities to that of his own magnificent domain at Holkham, in Norfolk. Mr. King was so much pleased with these animals, so beautiful in themselves, of a uniform mahogany color, with no white marks, finely limbed almost as deer, with regularly curved and tapering horns, of extreme docility, and easily kept, that in 1817 he imported several more, and was thus enabled to preserve the race in purity, and measurably to supply the demand for the pure stock, which is now widely scattered throughout the country.

While thus enjoying with the real zest of a cultivated mind, and of a disposition keenly alive to the aspect, the voices and the beauties of nature, the pleasures of a country life; Mr. King was not unmindful of, nor indifferent to the great and interesting contemporaneous drama of politics, which, although mainly played out in Europe, swept our republic too at last into its vortex. His early training, early instruction, and early and eminent successes in public life, made it alike unsuitable and impossible for him to withdraw himself wholly from the scene. And accordingly, although never in the whole course of his life seeking office, or putting himself forward, Mr. King was frequently appealed to, in his retirement, by political friends, sometimes consulted by political opponents, – while he was in the habit of receiving with elegant and cordial hospitality at Jamaica, distinguished visitors, both of his own country, and from abroad. Among such visitors was the Abbé Corréa, as already stated, about the period when, as Secretary of State to President Monroe, John Quincy Adams was asserting in his correspondence with the English Minister the right of the United States to the free navigation of the St. Lawrence. After discussing with Mr King in the library, the points of international law brought up by this claim, – in the course of which, somewhat to the surprise of the Abbé, Mr. King evinced entire familiarity with the analogous points brought up and settled, as regards European rivers, in the then recently held Congress of Vienna; and maintained the position, that what was law between states in Europe conterminous to great navigable streams, must be law here; and that what Great Britain had assented to, and had joined in requiring others to assent to, in respect to the Rhine, she must assent to in respect to the St. Lawrence, – the Abbé proposed a walk in the grounds, and once there, laying aside politics, diplomacy, and international law, the two statesmen were soon very deep in botany and the system of Linnæus, and agriculture, and in all the cognate questions of climate, soils, manures, &c., and seemed quite as eager in these pursuits, as in those grave and more solemn questions of state policy, which occupy, but do not, in the same degree, innocently and surely reward the attention and interest of public men. It was on occasion of this visit, that the Abbé Corréa expressed his gratification at finding in the plantation of Mr. King so large a collection of the plants and shrubs indigenous to that part of our country, – a gratification enhanced, as he added, by the previous discussions in the library, in the course of which he had such demonstration of Mr. King's varied and comprehensive, yet minute knowledge of the great public questions which had agitated Europe, and of the more recent, as well as more ancient expositions of international law applicable thereto.

Previously to this period, however, Mr. King had been recalled to public life. At the commencement of the war of 1812 with Great Britain, Mr. King, though disapproving both of the time of declaring, and of the inefficiency in conducting, the war, and reposing little confidence either in the motives or the abilities of the administration, did nevertheless feel it his duty, the sword being drawn, to sustain, as best he might, the cause of his country. Among the first, and for a time most discouraging results of the war, was the stoppage of specie payments by all the banks south of New England. The panic in New-York unavoidably was very great; and very much depended upon the course to be taken by its banks and its citizens, as to the effect to be produced upon the national cause and the national arm, by the suspension of payments. In this emergency, appealed to by his former fellow-citizens, Mr. King went to the city, and at the Tontine Coffee House, at a general meeting called to deliberate on the course to be taken by the community in regard to the banks, and in general in regard to the rights and duties alike, of creditors and debtors under the circumstances, he made a speech to the assembled multitude, in which, after deploring the circumstances which had forced upon the banks the necessity of suspension, he went on to show that it was a common cause, in which all had a part, and where all had duties. That the extreme right of the bill-holder, if enforced to the uttermost against the banks, would aggravate the evil to the public, although possibly it might benefit a few individuals; while, on the other hand, good to all, and strength and confidence to the general cause, would result from a generous forbearance, and mutual understanding that, if the banks on their part would restrict themselves within the limits as to issues and credits recognized as safe previous to the suspension, the community at large on their part, might, and possibly would continue to receive and pass the bills of the banks as before, and as though redeemable in coin. He urged with great power and earnestness the duty of fellow-citizens to stand shoulder to shoulder in such an emergency, – when a foreign enemy was pressing upon them, and when, without entering into the motives or causes which led to the war, about which men differ, – all Americans should feel it as their first and foremost obligation to stand by their country. The particular province of those he addressed was not so much to enlist in the armed service of the country, as to uphold its credit, and thus cherish the resources which would raise and reward armies; and if New-York should on this occasion be true to her duty – which also he plainly showed to be her highest interest – the clouds of the present would pass away, and her honor and her prosperity, with those of the nation of which she formed part and parcel, would be maintained and advanced. The effect of this address was decisive, and to an extent quite unprecedented in any commercial community under such circumstances; confidence was restored, and the course of business went on almost unruffled and undisturbed.

In 1813, Mr. King, after a lapse of seventeen years from his former service as a Senator of the United States, was again chosen by the Legislature of the State of New-York, as one of its Senators in Congress; and from the moment he resumed his seat in the Senate, he took leave, for the remainder of his life, of the undisturbed enjoyments of his rural abode; for a large portion of his time was necessarily spent at Washington, it being part of his notion of duty, never to be remiss in attendance upon, or in the discharge of, any trust committed to him. Still, his heart was among his plantations and his gardens, and even when absent, he kept up a constant correspondence with his son and his gardener, and always returned with fond zest to this quiet home.

In 1819, Mrs. King, whose health had been long declining, died, and was buried with all simplicity in the yard of the village church; where together they long had worshipped, and which stood on ground originally forming part of Mr. King's property. At the time of her death, all the children had left the paternal roof, and settled in life with their own families around them; and solitude, therefore, embittered the loss to Mr. King of such a companion. And she was eminently fitted by similarity of tastes and acquirements, to share with her husband the cares and the pleasures of life, as well as its weightier duties. She was in an especial manner a lover of the country, and had cultivated the knowledge which lends additional charms to the beauties and the wonders of the vegetable creation. Over all these beauties, her death cast a pall; and although he repined not, it was easy to see how deep a sorrow overshadowed his remaining years. Yet he nerved himself to the discharge of his public duties with unabated zeal and fidelity; and when re-elected in 1820 to the Senate, was punctual as always at his post, and earnest as ever in fulfilling all its requirements. His own health, however, before so unshaken, began to fail; and at the closing session of 1825, Mr. King, in taking leave of the Senate, announced his purpose of retiring from public life; having then reached the age of seventy years, of which more than one half had been spent in the service of his country, from the period when he entered the Continental Congress in 1784, to that in which he left the Senate of the United States in 1825. But John Q. Adams, who had become President, pressed upon Mr. King the embassy to England. His enfeebled health and advanced age induced him at once to decline, but Mr. Adams urged him to refrain from any immediate decision, and to take the subject into consideration after he should return home, and then determine. Recalling with lively and pleasant recollection the years of his former embassy to England, and hoping assuredly to be able – if finding there the same fair and friendly reception before extended to him – to benefit his country by the adjustment of some outstanding and long-standing points of controversy between the two nations; influenced too, in a great degree, by the opinion, of eminent physicians, that for maladies partaking of weakness, such as he was laboring under, a sea-voyage could hardly fail to be beneficial, Mr. King, rather in opposition to the wishes of his family, determined to accept the mission, – first stipulating, however, that his eldest son, John A. King, should accompany him as Secretary of Legation. It is proof of the strong desire of the then administration to avail of Mr. King's talents and character, and of the hope of good from his employment in this mission, that an immediate compliance with this request was made; and the gentleman who had been previously nominated to, and confirmed by, the Senate, as Secretary of Legation, having been commissioned elsewhere, Mr. John A. King was appointed Secretary of Legation to his father.

The voyage, unhappily, aggravated rather than relieved the malady of Mr. King; his health, after he reached England, continued to decline, and he therefore, after a few months' residence in London, asked leave to resign his post and come home. He returned accordingly, but only to die. He languished for some weeks, and finally, having been removed from Jamaica to the city for greater convenience of attendance and care, he died in New-York, on the 29th of April, 1827.

As with Mrs. King, so with him – in conformity with the unaffected simplicity of their whole lives – were the funeral rites at his death. Borne to Jamaica, which for more than twenty years had been his home, the body was carried to the grave by the neighbors among whom he had so long lived, – laid in the earth by the side of her who had gone before him, to be no more separated for ever; and a simple stone at the head of his grave, records – and the loftiest monument of art could do no more – that a great and a good man, having finished his course in faith, there awaits the great Judgment. Children, and grandchildren, have since been gathered in death around these graves, which lie almost beneath the shadow of trees planted by Mr. King, and within sight of the house in which he lived.

It was desired, if possible, to introduce a glimpse of the pretty village church into the engraving, but the space was wanting.

Mr. John A. King, the eldest son of Rufus King, now occupies the residence of his father, and keeps up, with filial reverence and inherited taste, its fine library, and its fine plantations. The engraving presents very accurately the appearance of the house; the closely shaven lawn in its front, and the noble trees which surround it, could find no adequate representation in any picture.

CLAY

The Dryads are plainly no American divinities. A reverence for trees and groves, for woods and forests, is not an American passion. As our fathers and many of ourselves have spent the best of our strength in wrestling with, prostrating, using up the leaf-crowned monarchs, gray with the moss of age ere Columbus set foot on Cat Island, to expect us to love and honor their quiet majesty, their stately grace, were like asking Natty Bumpo or Leather-stocking to bow down to and worship Pontiac or Brandt, as the highest ideal of Manhood. An uncouth backwoodsman lately stated our difficulty with immediate reference to another case, but the principle is identical: "When I was a boy," said he, plaintively, "it was the rule to love rum, and hate niggers; now they want us to hate rum, and love niggers: For my part, I stick to the old discipline." And so it were unreasonable to expect the mass of Americans now living, to go into heroics over the prospect of a comely and comfortable mansion, surrounded by a spacious lawn or "opening" of luxuriant grass, embracing the roots and lightly shaded by the foliage of thrifty and shapely trees.

Why is it, then, that the American's pulse beats quicker, and his heart throbs more proudly as, walking slowly and thoughtfully up a noble avenue that leads easterly from Lexington, – once the capital and still the most important inland town in Kentucky, – he finds the road terminating abruptly in front of a modest, spacious, agreeable mansion, only two stories in height, and of no great architectural pretensions, and remembers who caused its erection, and was for many years its owner and master?

That house, that lawn, with the ample and fertile farm stretching a mile or more in the distance behind them, are hallowed to the hearts of his countrymen by the fact, that here lived and loved, enjoyed and suffered, aspired and endured, the Orator, the Patriot, the Statesman, the illustrious, the gifted, the fiercely slandered, the fondly idolized Henry Clay.

A friend who visited Ashland as a stranger in May, 1845, thus writes of the place and its master:

"I have at last realized one of my dearest wishes, that of seeing Mr. Clay at Ashland. I called on him with a friend this morning, but he was absent on his farm, and Charles, his freed slave, told us he would not be at home till afternoon; so we returned to Lexington, and, at five P.M., we retraced our steps to Ashland. Mr. Clay had returned; and meeting us at the door, took hold of our hands before I could even present a letter of introduction, and made us welcome to his home. His manners completely overcame all the ceremonies of speech I had prepared. We were soon perfectly at home, as every one must be with Henry Clay, and in half an hour's time we had talked about the various sections of the country I had visited the past year, Mr. Clay occasionally giving us incidents and recollections of his own life; and I felt as though I had known him personally for years.

"Mr. Clay has lived at Ashland forty years. The place bore the name when he came to it, as he says, probably on account of the ash timber, with which it abounds; and he has made it the most delightful retreat in all the West. The estate is about six hundred acres large, all under the highest cultivation, except some two hundred acres of park, which is entirely cleared of underbrush and small trees, and is, to use the words of Lord Morpeth, who staid at Ashland nearly a week, the nearest approach to an English park of any in this country. It serves for a noble pasture, and here I saw some of Mr. Clay's fine horses and Durham cattle. He is said to have some of the finest in America; and if I am able to judge I confirm that report. The larger part of his farm is devoted to wheat, rye, hemp, &c., and his crops look most splendidly. He has also paid great attention to ornamenting his land with beautiful shade trees, shrubs, flowers, and fruit orchards. From the road which passes his place on the northwest side, a carriage-road leads up to the house, lined with locust, cypress, cedar, and other rare trees, and the rose, jasmine, and ivy, were clambering about them, and peeping through the grass and the boughs, like so many twinkling fairies, as we drove up. Mr Clay's mansion is nearly hidden from the road by the trees surrounding it, and is as quiet and secluded, save to the throng of pilgrims continually pouring up there to greet its more than royal possessor, as though it were in the wilderness."

Here let the house, the lawn, the wood, the farm, pass, if they will, from the mind. They are all well in their way, and were doubtless well adapted in his time to smooth the care-worn brow, and soothe the care-fraught breast of the lofty, gallant, frank, winning statesman, who gave and still gives them all their interest. Be our thoughts concentrated on him who still lives, and speaks, and sways, though the clay which enrobed him has been hid from our sight for ever, rather than on the physical accessories which, but for him, though living to the corporal sense, are dead to the informing soul.

For it was not here, in this comfortable mansion, beneath those graceful, hospitable, swaying trees, that The Great Commoner was born and reared; but in a rude, homely farm-house,[19 - See vignette title-page to this volume.] which had any man given five hundred dollars for, he would have been enormously swindled, unless he paid in Continental money, – in a primitive, rural, thinly peopled section of Hanover County (near Richmond), Virginia; where his father, Rev. John Clay, a poor Baptist preacher, lived, and struggled, and finally died, leaving a widow and seven young children, with no reliance but the mother's energies and the benignant care of the widow's and orphan's God. This was in 1782, near the close of the Revolutionary War, when so much of the country as had not been ravaged by the enemy's forces, had been nearly exhausted by our own, and by the incessant exactions of a protracted, harassing, desolating, industry-paralyzing civil war. The fifth of these seven children was Henry, born on the 12th of April, 1777, who remained in that humble home until fourteen years of age, when his mother, who had married a second time, being about to remove to Kentucky, placed him in a store at Richmond, under the eye of his oldest brother, then nearly or quite of age, but who died very soon afterwards, leaving Henry an orphan indeed. He was thus thrown completely on his own exertions, when still but a child, and without having enjoyed any other educational advantages than such as were fitfully afforded by occasional private schools, in operation perhaps two or three months in a year, and kept by teachers somewhat ruder than the log tenement which circumscribed their labors. Such was all the "schooling" ever enjoyed by the ragged urchin, whose bright summer days were necessarily given to ploughing and hoeing in the corn-fields, barefoot, bareheaded, and clad in coarse trowsers and shirt, and whose daily tasks were diversified by frequent rides of two or three miles to the nearest grist-mill, on a sorry cob, bestrode with no other saddle than the grain-bag; whence many of his childhood's neighbors, contrasting, long afterward, the figure he cut in Congress, at Ghent, in Paris or London, with that which they had seen so often pass in scanty garb, but jocund spirits, on these family errands, recalled him to mind in his primitive occupation as The Mill-Boy of the Slashes, by which sobriquet he was fondly hailed by thousands in the pride of his ripened renown.

Forty-five years after his childish farewell to it, Henry Clay stood once more (in 1840), and for the last time, in the humble home of his fathers, and was rejoiced to find the house where he was born and reared, still essentially unchanged. Venerable grandames, who were blooming matrons in his infancy, had long since indicated to their sons and daughters the room wherein he was born; and the spring whence the family had drawn their supplies of water wore a familiar aspect, though the hickory which formerly shaded it, and was noted for the excellence of its nuts, had passed away. Over the graves of his father and grandparents the plough had passed and repassed for years, and he only fixed their position by the decaying stump of a pear-tree, which had flourished in his childhood, and often ministered to his gratification. Beyond these, nothing answered to the picture in his memory, and he would not have recognized the spot, had he awoke there unconscious of the preceding journey. Familiar groves and orchards had passed away, while pines which he left shrubs, just dotting with perennial green the surface of the exhausted "old fields," unhappily too common throughout the Southern States, had grown up into dense and towering forests, which waved him a stately adieu, as he turned back refreshed and calmed, to the heated and dusty highway of public life.

The boy Henry, spent five years in Richmond, – only the first in the store where his mother had placed him; three of the others in the office of Mr. Clerk-in-Chancery Peter Tinsley; the last in that of Attorney-General Brooke. From Mr. Tinsley, he learned to write a remarkably plain, neat, and elegant hand, – more like a schoolmistress's best, than a great lawyer and politician, and this characteristic it retained to the last. From Mr. Tinsley, Mr. Brooke, and perhaps still more from the illustrious Chancellor Wythe, who employed him as his amanuensis, and repaid him with his friendship and counsel, young Clay derived his knowledge of the principles of Common Law, whereof he was, all his life, a devoted champion. At length, in November, 1797, when still lacking some months of his legal majority, he left Richmond and Virginia, for the location he had chosen – namely, the thriving village of Lexington, in the then rapidly growing Territory of Kentucky – the home of his eventful adult life of more than half a century. How he here was early recognized and honored as a Man of the People, and rapidly chosen (1803) member of the Legislature, once (1806) appointed to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate, and soon after (1809) elected out of, and by the legislature, to fill another and longer vacancy in that same dignified body; chosen in 1811 a Member of the more popular branch of Congress, and, immediately on his appearance on its floor, elected its Speaker – probably the highest compliment ever paid to a public man in this country – appointed thence (1814) a Plenipotentiary to Göttingen (afterwards changed to Ghent), to negotiate a Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, which was signed near the close of that year; re-elected, immediately on his return, to a seat in the House, and to the Speakership, which he retained thenceforth (except during a temporary retirement from public life, rendered necessary by heavy pecuniary losses as an indorser), down to March 3d, 1825, when he finally retired from the House on being appointed Secretary of State by President John Q. Adams; quitting this station for private life on the Inauguration of President Jackson in 1829, returning to the Senate in 1831, and continuing one of its most eminent and influential members till 1842, when he retired, as he supposed for ever; but was returned, by an unanimous vote of the Legislature, in 1849, and dying a Senator in Washington on the 29th of June, 1852, aged more than seventy-five years, of which more than half had been spent in the public service, and nearly all, since his majority, in active, ardent, anxious familiarity with public men and public measures, – this is no place to set forth in detail. The merest glance is all we can give to the public, official career of Henry Clay.

For our business is not here with Tariffs, Banks, Vetoes, and Presidential contests or aspirations. Our theme is the man Henry Clay, – what he was intrinsically, and in his daily dealings with, and deportment toward, his fellow-beings. If there be a better mode of developing his character than Plutarch's, we have not now time to ascertain and employ it, so we must e'en be content with that.

A tall, plain, poor, friendless youth, was young Henry, when he set up his Ebenezer in Lexington, and, after a few months' preliminary study, announced himself a candidate for practice as an attorney. He had not even the means of paying his weekly board. "I remember," he observed in his Lexington speech of 1842, "how comfortable I thought I should be, if I could make £100 Virginia money, per year; and with what delight I received my first fifteen shilling fee. My hopes were more than realized. I immediately rushed into a lucrative practice."

Local tradition affirms that the Bar of Lexington, being unusually strong when Mr. Clay first appeared thereat, an understanding had grown up among the seniors, that they would systematically discountenance the advent of any new aspirants, so as to keep the business remunerating, and preserve each other from the peril of being starved out. It was some time, therefore, before young Clay obtained a case to manage in Court; and when he did appear there, the old heads greeted the outset of his argument with winks, and nods, and meaning smiles, and titters, intended to disconcert and embarrass him. So they did for a few minutes; but they soon exasperated and roused him. His eyes flashed, and sentence after sentence came pouring rapidly out, replete with the fire of eloquence and genius. At length, one of the old heads leaned across the table and whispered to another, "I think we must let this young man pass." Of course they must! – the case was as plain as the portliest of noses on the most rubicund of faces. Henry Clay passed, nem. con., and his position and success at that Bar were never more disputed nor doubted.

General Cass, in his remarks in the Senate on the occasion of Mr. Clay's death, has the following interesting reminiscence:

"It is almost half a century since he passed through Chilicothe, then the seat of government of Ohio, where I was a member of the Legislature, on his way to take his place in this very body, which is now listening to this reminiscence, and to a feeble tribute of regard from one who then saw him for the first time, but who can never forget the impression he produced by the charms of his conversation, the frankness of his manner, and the high qualities with which he was endowed."

That an untaught, portionless rustic, reared not only in one of the rudest localities, but in the most troublous and critical era of our country, when the general poverty and insecurity rendered any attention to personal culture difficult, almost impossible, and graduating from a log school-house, should have been celebrated for the union in his manners, of grace with frankness, ease with fascination, is not unworthy of remark. Of the fact, those who never knew Mr. Clay personally, may have abundant attestations, which none others will need.

While in Europe as a negotiator for Peace with Great Britain, Mr. Clay was brought into immediate and familiar contact, not only with his associates, the urbane and cultivated John Quincy Adams, whose life had been divided between seminaries and courts; the philosophic Gallatin and the chivalric Bayard, but also with the noble and aristocratic Commissioners of Great Britain, and with many others of like breeding and position, to whom the importance of their mission, its protracted labors and its successful result, commended our Plenipotentiaries. A single anecdote will illustrate the impression he every where produced. An octogenarian British Earl, who had retired from public life because of his years, but who still cherished a natural interest in public men and measures, being struck by the impression made in the aristocratic circles of London by the American Commissioners, then on their way home from Ghent, requested a friend to bring them to see him at his house, to which his growing infirmities confined him. The visit was promptly and cheerfully paid, and the obliging friend afterwards inquired of the old Lord as to the impression the Americans had made upon him. "Ah!" said the veteran, with the "light of other days" gleaming from his eyes, "I liked them all, but I liked the Kentucky man best." It was so every where.

One specimen has been preserved of Mr. Clay's felicity of repartee and charm of conversation, as exhibited while in Paris, immediately after the conclusion of Peace at Ghent. He was there introduced to the famous Madame de Stael, who cordially addressed him with – "Ah, Mr. Clay! I have been in England, and have been battling your cause for you there." "I know it, madame; we heard of your powerful interposition, and are grateful and thankful for it." "They were much enraged against you," said she: "so much so, that they at one time thought seriously of sending the Duke of Wellington to command their armies against you!" "I am very sorry, madame," replied Mr. Clay, "that they did not send his Grace." "Why?" asked she, surprised. "Because, madame, if he had beaten us, we should have been in the condition of Europe, without disgrace. But, if we had been so fortunate as to defeat him, we should have greatly added to the renown of our arms."

At his next meeting with "Corinne," at her own house, Mr. Clay was introduced by her to the conqueror at Waterloo, when she related the above conversation. The Duke promptly responded that, had it been his fortune to serve against the Americans, and to triumph over them, he should indeed have regarded that triumph as the proudest of his achievements.

Mr. Clay was in London when the tidings of Waterloo arrived, and set the British frantic with exultation. He was dining one day at Lord Castlereagh's, while Bonaparte's position was still uncertain, as he had disappeared from Paris, and fled none knew whither. The most probable conjecture was that he had embarked at some little port for the United States, and would probably make his way thither, as he was always lucky on water. "If he reaches your shores, Mr. Clay," gravely inquired Lord Liverpool (one of the Ministers), "will he not give you a great deal of trouble?" "Not the least," was the prompt reply of the Kentuckian; "we shall be very glad to receive him; to treat him with all hospitality, and very soon make him a good democrat." A general laugh here restored the hilarity of the party.

The magnetism of Mr. Clay's manner and conversation have perhaps received no stronger testimony than that of Gen. Glascock, a political antagonist, who came into Congress from Georgia, during the fierce struggle which followed the removal of the Deposits. "Gen. Glascock," said a mutual friend, at a party one evening, "shall I make you acquainted with Mr. Clay?" "No, Sir!" was the prompt and stern response; "I choose not to be fascinated and moulded by him, as friend and foe appear to be, and I shall therefore decline his acquaintance."

Mr. Clay had a natural repugnance to caucuses, conventions, and the kindred contrivances whereby great men are elaborated out of very small materials, and was uniformly a candidate for Congress "on his own hook," with no fence between him and his constituents. Only once in the course of his long Representative career was he obliged to canvass for his election, and he was never defeated, nor ever could be, before a public that he could personally meet and address. The one searching ordeal to which he was subjected, followed the passage of the "Compensation Act" of 1816, whereby Congress substituted for its own per diem a fixed salary of $1,500 to each Member. This act raised a storm throughout the country, which prostrated most of its supporters. The hostility excited was especially strong in the West, then very poor, especially in money: $1,500 then, being equal to $4000 at present. John Pope (afterward Gen. Jackson's Governor of Arkansas), one of the ablest men in Kentucky, a federalist of the old school, and a personal antagonist of Mr. Clay, took the stump as his competitor for the seat, and gave him enough to do through the canvass. They met in discussion at several local assemblages, and finally in a pitched battle at Higbie; a place central to the three counties composing the district, where the whole people collected to hear them. Pope had the district with him in his denunciation of the Compensation Bill, while Clay retorted with effect, by pressing home on his antagonist the embittered and not very consistent hostility of the latter to the war with Great Britain, recently concluded, which uniformly had been very popular in Kentucky. The result was decisive: Mr. Clay was re-elected by about six hundred majority.

That excited canvass was fruitful of characteristic incidents like the following:

While traversing the district, Mr. Clay encountered an old hunter, who had always before been his warm friend, but was now opposed to his re-election on account of the Compensation Bill. "Have you a good rifle, my friend?" asked Mr. Clay. "Yes." "Did it ever flash?" "Once only," he replied. "What did you do with it – throw it away?" "No, I picked the flint, tried it again, and brought down the game." "Have I ever flashed but upon the Compensation Bill?" "No!" "Will you throw me away?" "No, no!" exclaimed the hunter with enthusiasm, nearly overpowered by his feelings; "I will pick the flint, and try you again!" He was afterward a warm supporter of Mr. Clay.

An Irish barber in Lexington, Jerry Murphy by name, who had always before been a zealous admirer and active supporter of Mr. Clay, was observed during this canvass to maintain a studied silence. That silence was ominous, especially as he was known to be under personal obligation to Mr. Clay for legal assistance to rescue him from various difficulties in which his hasty temper had involved him. At length, an active and prominent partisan of the speaker called on the barber, with whom he had great influence, and pressed him to dispel the doubt that hung over his intentions by a frank declaration in favor of his old favorite. Looking his canvasser in the eye, with equal earnestness and shrewdness, Murphy responded; "I tell you what, docthur; I mane to vote for the man that can put but one hand into the Treasury." (Mr. Pope had lost one of his arms in early life, and the humor of Pat's allusion to this circumstance, in connection with Mr. Clay's support of the Compensation Bill, was inimitable.)

Mr. Clay was confessedly the best presiding officer that any deliberative body in America has ever known, and none was ever more severely tried. The intensity and bitterness of party feeling during the earlier portion of his Speakership cannot now be realized except by the few who remember those days. It was common at that time in New England town-meetings, for the rival parties to take opposite sides of the broad aisle in the meeting-house, and thus remain, hardly speaking across the line separation, from morning till night. Hon. Josiah Quincy, the Representative of Boston, was distinguished in Congress for the ferocity of his assaults on the policy of Jefferson and Madison; and between him and Mr. Clay there were frequent and sharp encounters, barely kept within the limits prescribed by parliamentary decorum. At a later period, the eccentric and distinguished John Randolph, the master of satire and invective; and who, though not avowedly a Federalist, opposed nearly every act of the Democrat Administrations of 1801-16, and was the unfailing antagonist of every measure proposed or supported by Mr. Clay, was a thorn in the side of the Speaker for years. Many were the passages between them in which blows were given and taken, whereof the gloves of parliamentary etiquette could not break the force: the War, the Tariff, the early recognition of Greek and South American Independence, the Missouri Compromise, &c. &c., being strenuously advocated by Mr. Clay and opposed by Mr. Randolph. But of these this is no place to speak. Innumerable appeals from Mr. Clay's decisions, as Speaker, were made by the orator of Roanoke, but no one of them was ever sustained by the House. At length, after Mr. Clay had left Congress, and Mr. Randolph been transferred to the Senate, a bloodless duel between them grew out of the Virginian's unmeasured abuse of the Kentuckian's agency in electing J.Q. Adams to the Presidency; a duel which seems to have had the effect of softening, if not dissipating Randolph's rancor against Mr. Clay. Though evermore a political antagonist, his personal antipathy was no longer manifested; and one of the last visits of Randolph to the Capitol, when dying of consumption, was made for the avowed purpose of hearing in the Senate the well-known voice of the eloquent Sage of Ashland.

On the floor of the House, Mr. Clay was often impetuous in discussion, and delighted to relieve the tedium of debate, and modify the sternness of antagonism by a sportive jest or lively repartee. On one occasion, Gen. Alexander Smythe of Virginia, who often afflicted the House by the verbosity of his harangues and the multiplicity of his dry citations, had paused in the middle of a speech which seemed likely to endure for ever, to send to the library for a book from which he wished to note a passage. Fixing his eye on Mr. Clay, who sat near him, he observed the Kentuckian writhing in his seat as if his patience had already been exhausted. "You, sir," remarked Smythe addressing the Speaker, "speak for the present generation; but I speak for posterity." "Yes," said Mr. Clay, "and you seem resolved to speak until the arrival of your auditory."