Chapter XXIV: The Silver-Tongued Orator

JOHN A. QUITMAN--ROBERT J. WALKER--ROBERT H. ADAMS--FROM A COOPER-SHOP TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE--BANK MONOPOLY--NATCHEZ FENCIBLES--SCOTT IN MEXICO--THOMAS HALL--SARGENT S. PRENTISS--VICKSBURG--SINGLE-SPEECH HAMILTON--GOD-INSPIRED ORATORY--DRUNK BY ABSORPTION--KILLING A TAILOR--DEFENCE OF WILKINSON.

John A. Quitman came to Mississippi in early life. He was a native of the State of New York; had, at first, selected a location in Ohio, but, not being pleased, he determined on coming South, and selected Natchez for his future home. His father was a Prussian; a minister of the German Lutheran Church, and a very learned man. He had preached in seven kingdoms, and in every one in the language of the country. He came to the State of New York when young, and was the bearer of the recognition of the independence of the United States by Frederick the Great, of Prussia. He settled in one of the interior counties of New York, where was born and reared his distinguished son.

When young Quitman came to Natchez, he found the Bar a strong one; but determined to follow the profession of law, and after a short time spent in the office of William B. Griffith, he was admitted to the Bar, and opened an office. Regardless of the overwhelming competition, his open, frank manners soon made him friends, and the stern honesty of his character won the confidence of every one. In a short time, he married the only daughter of Henry Turner, a wealthy planter, and was received into copartnership by William B. Griffith, a lawyer of great ability and eminence, then in full practice at Natchez, and who had married the daughter of Judge Edward Turner, and the cousin of Quitman's wife. Quitman's rise to eminence was rapid in his profession, but more so in the public estimation as a man of great worth. His affability, kindness, and courtesy were so genial and so unaffected as to fasten upon every one, and soon he was the most popular man in the county.

Soon after Quitman, came Duncan and Robert J. Walker--the latter subsequently so distinguished as a senator in Congress from Mississippi, and still more distinguished as the Secretary of the Treasury during the Administration of Mr. Polk. A close intimacy grew up between Quitman and R.J. Walker. This intimacy influenced greatly the future of Quitman. Walker was from Pennsylvania, and had married Miss Bache, the niece of George M. Dallas, sister to the great Professor Bache, and great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin. Mrs. Walker was a lady of great beauty, of rare accomplishments, and distinguished for her modesty and womanly bearing. Mr. Bache, the father of Mrs. Walker, emigrated to Texas, was in the Senate of her Congress at the time she was received into the United States, and was the only man who voted against the union. He represented Galveston, and, after his death, that young city, in honor of his services, erected a monument to his memory.

Walker was of ardent temperament, great abilities, strong will, intense application, and was soon, at the Bar, among the first lawyers in the State. He wanted the softness and genial qualities of Quitman, but was superior to him mentally; and in prompt, decisive action his was the stronger character, and controlled. Quitman, being intimately associated with the leading men of the party supporting Mr. Adams, had adopted their opinions and politics; Walker was an ardent supporter of Jackson, and claimed to be the first man who brought forward his name for the Presidency, when he was a citizen of Pennsylvania. Soon after the election of General Jackson, Quitman, displeased with Mr. Clay, abandoned his Whig associates, and united himself with the Democratic party, and from that time until his death was a devoted Democratic partisan. These two men exercised, perhaps, more influence in the State than any others of their day.

Robert H. Adams and William B. Griffith, who were considered the ablest members of the Bar in the State, died young, and in the opening of their political career. Adams was a man of remarkable ability. He was a native of East Tennessee, and was a mechanic, with limited education, and without one single advantage save his talents. He came a stranger to Natchez, and in a few years was eminent in his profession, and intellectually one of the first men in the State--a man of fine appearance, with large head, and intellectual features. He was sent by the city of Natchez to the Legislature of the State, and such was the impression upon the members of his great abilities, that they, at the ensuing session, elected him to the United States Senate. He served but one session, but made, in that short period, a high reputation with the first minds of the nation. Returning home, he resumed his profession; and, after severe fatigue during the heated period of summer, he imprudently drank too freely of ice-water, and died from its effects.

There was, at this time, no man of more promise in all the country. He was but thirty-eight years of age, and, without patronage or patrimony, had risen from the cooper's shop to a distinguished position in the Senate of the United States.

Griffith preceded him to the grave one or two years, a victim of yellow fever.

Quitman and Walker came now prominently before the people. They resided in Natchez, and there was a strong prejudice in the east and the north of the State against the people of that city and the County of Adams. There were quite a number of families, in the city and county, of large fortunes. These were exclusive in their associations. With one or two exceptions they belonged to the Whig party, but none of them aspired to political preferment.

There was but one bank in the State--this was located in Natchez, and was under the control of these men of fortune. It had at the time of obtaining its charter paid an extravagant bonus to the State, upon condition no other bank should be chartered for the period granted to this. It was a monopoly, and was charged with great partiality in its management. Its accommodations were for the few, and these only granted for the purpose of enhancing the already bloated wealth of the stockholders, directors, and their special pets. This exclusive aristocracy was odious to the fierce democratic feelings of the masses. They counted their wealth by millions; their homes were palaces; their pleasure-grounds Edens; and all this was the fruit of an odious and oppressive monopoly. This fallacious and most ridiculous idea fastened itself upon the minds of the masses, and was fostered and encouraged by many who knew better, but who were willing to pander to the popular taste for popular preferment. R.J. Walker seized hold upon this popular whim, and leading the multitude, succeeded in procuring charters for several other banks, in defiance of the vested rights of the Bank of Mississippi.

Stephen Duncan was the president of the bank, and, under his advice, the directors surrendered the charter, and wound up the business of the bank. Duncan was one of the best business-men in the Union. From very small beginnings he had amassed an immense fortune--was a man of rare sagacity and wonderful energy. He was the cousin of Walker, but was always opposed to him in politics. This was the commencement of the era which culminated in the repudiation of the State's obligations and the general ruin of her people. It was about this period that Jefferson Davis first made his _debut_ as a public man in the State, with William M. Gwinn, and Henry S. Foote, McNutt, J.F.H. Claiborne, and Albert Gallatin Brown. Quitman was made chancellor of the State, and disappointed sadly his friends. His administration of this branch of the judiciary was weak and wild; a vast number of his decisions, or awards in chancery, were overruled, and, in disgust, or from a consciousness that a chancery judgeship was not his speciality, resigned. His mind was greatly overrated: it was neither strong, logical, nor brilliant. His classical attainments were of the first order, and I doubt if the Union furnished two better or more finished linguists than John A. Quitman and H.S. Foote.

Walker and Davis were the leading minds of the period. They were both men of education, extended reading; both men of fine oratorical powers; both men of strong will, ripe judgment, and exceedingly tenacious of purpose. Walker was many years the senior of Davis, and was in advance of him some years as a successful politician. Foote, as an orator, was greatly the superior of all of these; but there was in him want of judgment, want of fixed principles and fixity of purpose. When first appearing before the people of the State, he carried the multitude with him as a tempest drives a feather. In a contest for Governor he came out in opposition to Quitman, drove him from the canvass, and triumphed over Davis, who was placed by his party in nomination to fill the place of Quitman. This triumph was evanescent: he left the position, perhaps, the most unpopular man in the State.

Quitman's abilities were almost exclusively military. This proclivity of mind manifested itself in very early life. He organized a volunteer company, the Natchez Fencibles, soon after he came to the Bar, and took great pride in its drill and soldierly bearing and appearance. He seized with avidity the opportunity the Mexican war presented, and there greatly distinguished himself. After the termination of this war, he was engaged (very little to the honor of his sagacity) in endeavoring to organize a filibustering expedition against the Island of Cuba. In this he signally failed. He was elected to Congress, where he was principally distinguished by his extreme Southern views, but gained little or no reputation as a politician or statesman.

In the qualities of heart, Quitman was surpassed by no man; his moral character was unstained. In sincerity and devotion to his friends, no man was his superior. He had acquired large wealth by his marriage--this he had increased by judicious management, and none more freely used it for the benefit of his friends or the public interest. He was especially generous toward poor, enterprising young men; such instances of assistance rendered are innumerable. His friends never deserted him. To his command, during the Mexican war, he was exceedingly profuse with his means in aiding their necessities and supplying their wants. He was universally commented upon as the most munificent officer of the army. He was ambitious and courageous; and this ambition knew no bounds.

Upon his return from Mexico, I met him in New Orleans, in company with that ill-starred man, General Shields, of Illinois, and who, Irishman as he was, fell fighting to fasten upon the South the fetters she now wears. We had not conversed ten minutes before, taking my arm, he walked apart from his visitors and Shields, and commenced to converse upon the consequences of the war. Turning to me, he remarked: "General Scott is greatly wanting in ambition, he has no daring aspirations; he has thrown away the finest opportunity ever presented to man for aggrandizement. Had I commanded the army, and accomplished this great success, I would have established an empire, and made of Mexico a great nation. He had only to say so, and the Mexicans were ready to crown him emperor. He could have made dukes, marquises, lords, and barons of his officers, and endowed them with principalities; the soldiers would have remained with him; and in six months, enough from the United States and Europe would have joined his standard, to have held in check the lawless brigands who make anarchy for the country. The spoils of the Church would have rewarded the soldiers; immigration would have poured into the country, and his name and fame have been commensurate with time. Everything invited him to the act; he could not or would not see it--he had but one idea, 'This will make me President!' and a lifetime of glory and power was sacrificed for the empty hope of four years filling the Presidential chair."

It was a grand conception, but he seemed to take no account of the difficulties which would have interposed. He assumed that the United States would have been content with the great outrage, and have sanctioned the act; and that European nations would have immediately recognized the new empire. I knew him well enough to know that he would have attempted the enterprise and braved the consequences; but doubt whether he or Scott had the talent for the accomplishment of such an undertaking. General Quitman was one of the unfortunates who received a portion of the poison prepared for some victim or victims at Washington upon the inauguration of Mr. Buchanan. It was not immediately fatal, but he never fully recovered from it, and in a few months after sank into the grave.

No man ever died more regretted by his personal friends than John A. Quitman. He was in every relation of life a true man, chivalrously brave, nobly generous, and sternly faithful to all that ennobles human nature. Had his brain been equal to his soul, he had been the world's wonder. It was said of him by one who knew and loved him:

"His spirit has gone to the Spirit that made him,
The rest of the virtuous, chivalric, and brave;
He sleeps where the friends of his early youth laid him,
And green grows the laurel that springs by his grave."

Duncan Walker practised law with his brother until elevated to the Bench of the criminal court for the city of Natchez and County of Adams. He served with distinguished capacity for only one or two years, when he was prostrated by a severe attack of yellow fever. From this he never entirely recovered. Retiring from the Bench, he directed his attention to planting in Lower Louisiana; but his health continuing to decline, he was induced to try for the winter the climate of Cuba. It was but a few weeks after reaching there that he died at St. Jago de Cuba. Judge Walker was distinguished for great purity of character as well as superior legal attainments. His modesty was almost feminine; yet he was a man of remarkable firmness and decision. By many he was thought superior intellectually to his more distinguished and prominent brother. Few men may be truthfully termed superior to R.J. Walker.

In 1826, there came to Natchez, from Maine, a youth who was a cripple. He was without acquaintances or recommendations, and also without means. He was in search of a school, and expressed his intention of making the South his future home. His appearance was boyish in the extreme, for one who professed to be twenty years of age. At that time most of the planters in the region of Natchez employed private teachers in their families, who resided with the family as one of the household. A lady near Natchez, the widow of Judge Shields, was desirous of employing a teacher, and tendered the situation to the young Yankee. Mrs. Shields had grown-up sons, young men of fine attainments, and who subsequently distinguished themselves as men of sterling worth. They were soon delighted with the young stranger, who was busily employed in his new vocation with their younger brothers. I remember to have heard Mr. Thomas Shields say the young man teaching at his mother's was a most remarkable man, and narrate some instances of his great powers of memory, accompanied with facts which came within his own knowledge. These were so very extraordinary, that notwithstanding the high character for integrity borne by Shields, there were many who doubted them.

There lived at no great distance from Mrs. Shields, a planter, Mr. Thomas Hall. This man was a coarse and illiterate overseer for some years in the county, but having carefully husbanded his earnings, was enabled, in company with James C. Wilkins, to commence planting upon an extensive scale. At the time this young man was teaching at Mrs. Shields', Hall had accumulated quite a fortune, and was a man of comparative leisure. His mind was good, and now that he had an abundance of the world's goods, and was becoming a man of consideration in the community, he felt, in his intercourse with his educated neighbors, the want of that cultivation which would make him their equal. This had made him morbidly sensitive, and whenever an opportunity presented, he improved it in acquiring all the information possible.

On Saturdays the young schoolmaster would frequently ride over and converse with Hall. The strong mind and coarse but cordial manners of Hall pleased him. He was a specimen of the Southerner possessing salient points, and was a study for the Down-Easter. Never before had he met such a specimen, and it was his delight to draw him out, little deeming he was filling the same office for his friend. They were mutually agreeable the one to the other, and their association grew into intimacy. Each to their friends would speak of the other as a remarkable man. Assuredly they were; for neither had ever met such specimens as they presented to each other. They sometimes joined in a squirrel-hunt about the plantation of Hall. The schoolmaster's lameness compelled him to ride, while Hall preferred to walk. After a fatiguing tramp upon one occasion, they sat down upon the banks of Cole's Creek, where Hall listened with great delight to the conversation of his companion. Suddenly Hall started up, and exclaimed, with more than his usual warmth:

"You have taught me more than I ever knew before meeting with you; but I ought not to say what I am going to say. You, sir, were never made for a schoolmaster. By the eternal God!"--Hall was a Jackson man--"you know more than any man in the county, and you have got more sense than any of them, though you are nothing but a boy. Now, sir, go to town and study law with Bob Walker; he's the smartest of any of them. In two years you will be ahead of him. If you haven't got the money to pay your way, I have, and you shall have it."

The term for which he had engaged was now expiring, and, as Hall had requested, he went into the office of Robert J. and Duncan Walker, and commenced the study of law.

This Yankee youth was Sargent S. Prentiss. Prentiss remained in the office of Walker for one year, and was a close student. When admitted to the Bar, he went to Vicksburg and opened an office. At that time Vicksburg was a new place, and presented peculiar inducements to young professional men. The country upon the Yazoo River--and indeed the entire northern portion of the State--had but recently been quit of its Indian population, and was rapidly filling up with an active and enterprising people. The soil was fertile, and the production of cotton, to which it is so eminently suited, was daily growing in importance. Vicksburg was the market-point. Trade was increasing daily, and rapidly filling up the town with mercantile men. The young and enterprising were hurrying thither, and in a few years there was met here more talent and more enterprise than at any other point in the State. The Bar had Prentiss, John Guion, McNutt, Sharkey, the three Yergers, Anderson, Lake, Brook, Burwell, and many others of distinction, including the erratic H.S. Foote.

The entire population was a live one, and every branch of business was pushed with a _vim_ commensurate with the abilities and enterprise of the population. The planters of the immediately adjacent country were men of intelligence and character, and were animated with the spirit of the people of the town, forming on the whole a community of almost reckless enterprise. It was at such a time and in the midst of such a people that young Prentiss had made his selection of a home, and a field for the future exercise of his professional abilities.

Young, ardent, and ambitious, he sought to rival his seniors at the Bar. Unwilling to wait on time, he aspired to leap at once to this equality. It was the daring of genius, and of a genius which counted as only a stimulant the obstacles intervening. To grapple with giants, such as he found in Guion, Yerger, Sharkey, McNutt, and Lake, would have intimidated a less bold and daring mind; but Prentiss courted the conflict _con amore_, and applying all his herculean powers with the vigor of youth and the ardency of enterprise, he soon found himself quite equal to any competitor.

When an infant, a fever settled in his leg, causing it to wither from the knee to the foot, and doomed him through life to lameness. Like Byron, he was sensitive upon the subject of this physical defect. It was a serious obstacle to his locomotion, and in speaking compelled a sameness of position injurious to the effect of his oratory. Scarcely had two years elapsed from the time of his admission to the Bar before his fame as a lawyer and advocate was filling the State. His business had increased to such an extent as to require his undivided attention, as he was employed in almost every important suit in that section of the State. His qualities of heart were as conspicuous as those of his brain, which had endeared him to the people of Vicksburg perhaps more than any other citizen. This social and professional popularity caused him to be elected to the Legislature of the State. He belonged to the Whig party, which was largely in the minority in the Legislature, but was powerful in talent.

Before this time, Colonel Adam L. Bingaman, of Adams County, had been the acknowledged leader of this party. He was a man of rare qualifications for a popular leader--highly gifted by nature in mind and personal appearance, which was most splendid and commanding, with a polished education and fascinating manners, and by nature an orator. Added to these advantages, he was a native of the State, the representative of great wealth, and with extensive family influence. These two met as friends personally and politically in the Legislature.

Prentiss--though known as a great lawyer and a powerful advocate at the Bar--had until now taken but little part in politics. None knew of his proficiency as a politician or as a popular political orator, and, long accustomed to the eloquence and the debating abilities of Bingaman, the lead was accorded to him as usual. Party excitement was fierce, and involved every one. The Democracy, armed with numbers and men of great abilities, felt secure in their position. They had no fears that any powers possessed by any man or set of men could operate a change in public opinion dangerous to their supremacy in the State.

Socially, Prentiss knew no party distinction. With all who were gentlemen he mingled, not as a partisan, but as a man. The kindness of his nature won upon all equally, and it was soon discovered that a personal favor to Prentiss would sometimes override party allegiance. His personal friends were all gentlemen, and once within the magic influence of his social circle was enough to bind him to the heart of every one. The session had made but little progress before his powers as an orator were beginning to be felt.

During an exciting debate, in which Bingaman had, as usual, taken the lead, when all the ablest of the Democracy had, as they supposed, exhausted the argument and demolished the position of their adversaries, and the House seemed impatient for the question, Prentiss rose, and claimed the attention of the chair. His clear and succinct statement of the pending question put a new phase upon it, and the House seemed surprised.

He proceeded then to debate the question; and very soon he was in _medias res_, and his bold and lucid argument won the attention of every one. The position of the Democracy was dissected to the separation of every fibre; its character and future effects denounced and exposed in a strain of invective eloquence which thrilled to every heart. Turning from this to the national policy of the Democracy, then in power, and which the measure under consideration was intended to aid and sustain, his powers seemed to expand with the magnitude of the subject, as he went on to analyze the policy and the measures of the Government, and to demonstrate the disastrous consequences which must follow these remotely, if not immediately, corrupting, undermining, and ultimately destroying the Constitution, and, of consequence, the Government. He spoke for three hours; his peroration was so grandly eloquent as to bring down the House and galleries in a round of applause.

From that day forward, Prentiss was the great man of the House and of the State. A fire in a prairie never spread or ran faster than his fame; it was on every tongue, in every newspaper. Such fame from one speech had never been won by any man in America, save Patrick Henry. Single-speech Hamilton, of the British Parliament, astonished England; but he was never afterward heard of, and is known to this day as "single-speech Hamilton." As with Henry, this was but the beginning of a fame which was to grow and expand into giant proportions. Prentiss was now a national man. Soon after this, he visited Boston and New York during an exciting political campaign. Throughout the North, wherever he appeared and spoke, he bore the palm from every rival.

The speech of Prentiss in Faneuil Hall will long be remembered as perhaps the finest specimen of oratory ever listened to in that venerable hall. It was at the time said by the men of the North to surpass the best efforts of Fisher Ames. Subsequently he spoke in New York, and for three hours held spell-bound an immense audience.

The writer was informed by a venerable judge, of New Jersey, that he had never believed any man possessed such powers of oratory as to interest him and chain his attention for that length of time. Hearing this young man from the wilds of Mississippi could do so, he embraced the first opportunity of hearing him. When he reached the place, he found the assemblage very great, and with difficulty he succeeded in reaching a point where he might hear well. He was unable to procure a seat, and was compelled to stand, thoroughly jammed by the crowd. He took out his watch to time him, as he commenced, and noting the minute, he essayed to replace his watch: something said arrested his attention and his hands from their work of putting the watch in its fob.

"There was something, sir, in his eye," said he, "which startled me, and then the words came bubbling up spontaneously as spring water, so full of power, so intensely brilliant, and his figures so bold, original, and illustrating, and the one following the other in such quick succession; the flights of imagination, so new, so eloquent, and so heart-searching--that I found it impossible to take my eyes from his face, or my ears from drinking in every word. At one time, so intense were my feelings under the effect of his words and the powerful impression they were making on my mind, that I thought I should faint. I forgot the presence of the crowd, and, though seventy years of age, felt no fatigue from my standing position. In truth, sir, I was unconscious of the time--equally so of the presence of any one but the speaker. I perceived that his physical man was failing under his effort, and so intense was my sympathy that I found myself breathing rapidly and painfully; and yet, when he exclaimed, 'My powers fail!' and sank into his seat completely exhausted, I regretted the necessity which compelled him to stop. It was not until then that I found my hand still holding my watch at the opening of its pocket, where, in my excitement, I had forgotten to deposit it. I looked, and I had been standing unmoved in the same position and intently listening for three hours and fifteen minutes. Near me stood one old as myself--a friend, a neighbor, and a minister of the gospel; he was livid with excitement, and his lips trembled as he said to me: 'Will you ever doubt again that God inspires man?'"

Notwithstanding the immense Democratic majority in the State, the Whigs determined to run Prentiss for Congress: the election, at that time, was by general ticket, and there were two members to be elected: the Whig nomination was Prentiss and Wood; the Democratic, Claiborne and Gholson.

Claiborne was a native of the State, and the son of General Ferdinand Claiborne, a young man of very superior abilities, and at the time a member of Congress. McNutt was the Democratic candidate for Governor. The campaign was a most animated one, and Prentiss addressed the people in very nearly every county in the State; the people, _en masse_, flocked to hear him, and his name was in every mouth. The Democratic nominees did not attempt to meet him on the stump. His march through the State was over the heads of the people, hundreds following him from county to county in his ovation. McNutt alone attempted to meet him and speak with him, and he only once. McNutt was a Virginian, and was a man of stupendous abilities; he was a lawyer by profession, and was Governor of the State. Next to Poindexter, he was the ablest man who ever filled the chair. Unfortunately, like most of the young and talented of that day in the West, he was too much addicted to the intoxicating bowl. Upon the only meeting of these, Prentiss and McNutt, the latter, in his speech, urged as a reason for the rejection or defeat of the former his dissipated habits, admitted his great abilities, his masterly genius, pronounced him the first man of the age intellectually, but deplored his habits, which were rendering him useless, with all his genius, learning, and eloquence.

Prentiss, in reply, said: "My fellow-citizens, you have heard the charge against my morals, sagely, and, I had almost said, soberly made by the gentleman, the Democratic nominee for the chief executive office of this State: had I said this, it would have been what the lawyers term a misnomer. It would be impossible for him to do or say anything soberly, for he has been drunk ten years; not yesterday, or last week, in a frolic, or, socially, with the good fellows, his friends, at the genial and generous board--but at home, and by himself and demijohn; not upon the rich wines of the Rhine or the Rhone, the Saone or the Guadalquivir; not with high-spirited or high-witted men, whose souls, when mellowed with glorious wine, leap from their lips sublimated in words swollen with wit, or thought brilliant and dazzling as the blood of the grape inspiring them--no; but by himself: selfish and apart from witty men, or ennobling spirits, in the secret seclusion of a dirty little back-room, and on corn-whiskey!--these only, communing in affectionate brotherhood, the son of Virginia and the spirits of old Kentucky! Why, fellow--citizens, as the Governor of the State, he refused to sign the gallon-law until he had tested, by experiment, that a gallon would do him all day!

"Now I will admit, fellow-citizens, that sometimes, when in the enjoyment of social communion with gentlemen, I am made merry with these, and the rich wines of glorious France. It is then I enjoy the romance of life. Imagination, stimulated with the juice of the grape, gave to the world the Song of Solomon, and the Psalms of that old poet of the Lord--glorious old David.

"The immortal verse of wandering old Homer, the blind son of Scio's isle, was the inspiration of Samian wine; and good old Noah, too, would have sung some good and merry song, from the inspiration of the juice of the vine he planted, but having to wait so long, his thirst, like the Democratic nominee's here, became so great, that he was tempted to drink too deeply, and got too drunk to sing; and this, I fancy, is the true reason why this distinguished gentleman never sings.

"Perhaps there is no music in his soul. The glug-glug-glug of his jug, as he tilts and pours from its reluctant mouth the corn-juice so loved of his soul, is all the music dear to his ear, unless it be the same glug-glug-glug as it disappears down his capacious throat. Now, fellow-citizens, during this ardent campaign, which has been so fatiguing, I have only been drunk once. Over in Simpson County I was compelled to sleep in the same bed with this distinguished nominee--this delight of the Democracy--this wonderful exponent of the principles and practices of the unwashed Democracy--and in the morning I found myself drunk on corn-whiskey. I had lain too close to this soaked mass of Democracy, and was drunk from absorption."

This was more than the Governor could stand, and, amidst the shouts and laughter of the assembled multitude, he left the stand, and declined to meet again, before the people, the young Ajax Telemon of the Whig party.

The memory of that campaign will probably never be forgotten in Mississippi. Mothers, in stories of Prentiss, tell it now to their children, and it and he have become a tradition of the early days of Mississippi. The election terminated in the choice of Prentiss and Wood, by a small majority; but the certificate was given, through the basest fraud, to Claiborne and Gholson.

This was contested before the House of Representatives in Congress assembled, and the contestants permitted to be heard on the floor of the House. It was here, in the presence of the assembled wisdom of the nation, Prentiss was to sustain the reputation which had preceded him, and gloriously did he do it. When he rose to commence his speech, all was silent, and every face expressed deep and excited expectation. The unfortunate deformity of his leg was forgotten, in viewing the noble contour of his head and face. Young, and for the first time in such a presence--standing there the impersonation of the State of Mississippi, demanding justice for her at the hands of the nation--he seemed conscious of the responsibility, and confident of his power to sustain this. There was little preliminary in his remarks opening the matter. He went at once, and as a strong man conscious of the right, to the core. He demonstrated, beyond a doubt, his election, and proceeded in a strain of burning invective to expose the fraud of the returning officer, who had shamefully disregarded the popular voice, and shamelessly violated the law he was sworn to obey, in giving the certificate to his defeated competitors. Never did the corruption of party receive so severe an exposition, or a more withering rebuke, than in this speech.

Very soon after he commenced, the Senate chamber was deserted, and the Vice-President and Secretary were left alone. Webster, Benton, Calhoun, Clay, Wright, and Evans came in and ranged themselves near him. Every space large enough, in the chamber, lobby, and galleries, was filled with a listener, and all were still and unmoving, however painful their position, until the enunciation of the last word of that wonderful oration. The speech occupied two hours and forty minutes, and the peroration was thrilling. When exhausted, and closing, he lifted his eyes to the national flag, floating above the Speaker's chair, and said, in an almost exhausted voice, "If, Mr. Speaker, in obedience to the necessities and corrupt behest of party, you are determined to wrest from Mississippi her rights as a sister, and coequal in this union of States, and turn from their seats her representatives constitutionally chosen, and place in their stead the repudiated of her people, strike from the flag which waves above you the star which represents her there; but leave the stripes, apt emblem of your iniquity and her degradation."

An adjournment was immediately moved; the painful excitement was relieved, the spell was broken, and from every side, and from every party, came men to congratulate him. Webster was the first to stretch forth his hand, and with more animation than was his wont, said, in his deep, sonorous tones, "New England claims her own, and is proud of her son."

The House, notwithstanding the demonstrative proof, and its enforcement by the powerful and unanswerable argument of Prentiss, sent the election back to the State, to be determined by a new election. In this, Prentiss and Wood were triumphantly elected. He was not again a candidate, retiring for the time from politics, and giving his undivided attention to his profession.

It was always a matter of astonishment, to all who could never make of a political enemy a personal friend, why it was that Prentiss, so bitter in his political denunciations of political partisans, and so bitter a partisan, should yet, among the opposition, have so many warm admirers and most devoted friends. His nature was sensitive, generous, and confiding. There was no malice festering in his heart, and in his opposition, he was only so to the politics, not the personal qualities of the man. By these he judged of the man, and the character of these regulated his conduct toward him. He did not pass through life without enemies. The man to whom this is possible is one of no positive points in his character, no strength of will, no fixity of purpose, and of but little intellect. Such men never occupy the public attention--are altogether negative, as well in action as in mind. The enemies of Prentiss were such from envy, or political hatred. His great abilities, when brought in contact with those suing for popular favor, so shrivelled and dwarfed them as to inspire only fear and hatred. But men of this character were scarce in that day in Mississippi. Such was the tone of society, and such the education of her sons, that traits so dishonorable rendered odious the man manifesting them, and those of talent and education emigrating to the country soon caught this spirit as by inoculation. If there were any who were influenced by such base and degrading motives, and who felt these a part of their nature, they most generally could command policy enough to conceal them.

No community is long in discovering the genuine from the counterfeit character. It did not require months to learn all the heart, all the nature of Prentiss. Too frequently are great abilities coupled with a mean spirit, and transcendent genius underlaid with a low, grovelling nature; but these may be known by the peculiar form or development of the cranium. The high coronal developments discover the intense moral organization: the lofty and expansive forehead, the steady, unblenching eye, and the easy self-possession of manner are all indications of high moral organization, and the possession of a soul superior to envy, malice, and vindictive hatred, and one to which little meannesses are impossible. Such a head and such a soul had S.S. Prentiss. His whole character was in his face, and so legible that the most illiterate could read it. This won to him like natures, and all such who knew him were instinctively his friends.

Judge Wilkinson was such a man, and though as ardently Democratic as Prentiss was Whig, and as uncompromising in his principles, yet these two were friends in the loftiest sense of the term. Judge Wilkinson had a difficulty with a tailor in Louisville, Kentucky, who attempted an imposition upon him to which he would not submit. A quarrel ensued, and the knight of the needle and shears determined on revenge. Collecting about him his ready associates, they went to the hotel where Wilkinson lodged, and waylaid him at the door between the dining-parlor and the reception-room, and attacked him on his coming in from supper. In the rencontre three of the assailants were killed, and the remainder of the gang fled. Immediately surrendering himself, he was incarcerated and held for trial: although assaulted with murderous intent, and acting clearly in self-defence, he was denied bail. He was a stranger, and the prejudices of the court and the people of Louisville were so manifest that he demanded and obtained a change of venire.

The trial came off at Harrodsburg. Prentiss, learning the facts and the situation of his friend, volunteered immediately to defend him in court, and to befriend him in any manner possible to him. The celebrated Ben Hardin was employed to assist in the prosecution. The eyes of all Mississippi and Kentucky were turned to Harrodsburg when this trial commenced. Others volunteered--and among these was John Rowan--to assist in the defence. But the case for Wilkinson was conducted exclusively by Prentiss. It continued for some days. John Rowan--so celebrated in the State for his talents and great legal learning, as well as for his transcendent abilities as an advocate--sat by, and trusted all to Prentiss.

There were many sparrings in the course of the trial between Hardin and Prentiss upon points in the law of evidence, and as to the admissibility or rejection of testimony, as also upon many points of the criminal law of England, whether changed or not by statutory provisions of the State.

In one of these, Rowan handed an open authority to Prentiss, and was taunted by Hardin for the act, by saying: "Give your friend all the aid you can: he needs it."

"I only preserved the book open at the page where Mr. Prentiss had marked the law," said Rowan: "he requires no aid from me, brother Hardin. With all your learning and experience, he is more than a match for you."

This Hardin was not long in discovering, and especially did he feel it when Prentiss came to reply to his address to the jury. So long accustomed to defy competition as a criminal lawyer, Hardin was not only surprised at the tact and masterly talent displayed by his adversary, but he was annoyed, and felt that to maintain his prestige as the great criminal lawyer of Kentucky, he must put forth all his powers. He had done so; and in his summing up before the jury he seemed more than himself. When he had concluded there were many who deemed conviction sure.

Prentiss followed, and in his grandest manner tore to tatters every argument and every position advanced and assumed by Hardin. Towering in the majesty of his genius in one of those transcendent flights of imagination so peculiar to him, when his illustrations in figures followed each other in such quick and constant succession as to seem inexhaustible, he turned suddenly upon Hardin, and, stooping his face until it almost touched that of the stern old Kentuckian, he hissed forth: "Dare you, sir, ask a verdict of such a jury as is here sitting upon this testimony?--you, sir, who under the verdict of nature must soon appear before the awful bar to which you now strive prematurely to consign this noble, this gallant young man! Should you succeed, you must meet him there. Could you, in the presence of Almighty God--He who knows the inmost thoughts--justify your work of to-day? His mandate is not to the gibbet. Eternal Justice dictates there, whose decrees are eternal. Do you think of this? Do you defy it? If not--if you invoke it, do it through your acts toward your fellow-man. Have you to-day done unto this man as you would he should do unto you? I pause for a reply--none. Then shudder and repent, for the record even now is making up against you in that high court from which there is no appeal. You, gentlemen of the jury, are no hired advocates: you are not laboring for blood-money. Though your responsibility to your God is equal to his, you will not go to the bar of your Creator with blood--guiltless blood--upon your consciences. You will not, as he will, in that awful presence, on that eventful day, look around you for the accusing spirit of him whom you consigned to the gibbet with a consciousness of his innocence of murder. How will it be with you? (turning again to Hardin.) Ah! how will it be with you? Still silent. Despite the hardness of his features, mercy like a halo sweeps over them, and speaks to you, gentlemen, eloquently: 'Acquit the accused!' Look over yonder, gentlemen: within these walls is one awaiting your verdict in tearless agony--she who but for this untoward event would now have been happy as his bride: she who has cheered him in his prison-cell daily with her presence and lovely soul! Hers, not his fate, is in your hands. To him death is nothing: the brave defy death--the good fear it not; then why should he fear? But she! O God! it is a fearful thing to crush to death with agony the young, hopeful, and loving heart of virtuous woman. His death is only terrible in her future. Go with her, gentlemen, through life; contemplate the wan features of slow decay: see in these the one eternal, harrowing thought; list to the sigh which rives the heart; watch the tear which falls in secret; see her sink into the grave; then turn away, look up into heaven, and from your heart say: 'O God! I did it.' You will not; you cannot; you dare not."

Hardin's conclusion was tame, and without effect; the demonstrations on the part of the jury dispirited him, and his concluding speech had none of the power of his opening. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, without hesitation. Wilkinson was immediately discharged, and in company with his friends was repairing to the hotel, when, in the warmth of his emotion, he said, laying his hand on the shoulder of Prentiss: "How shall I pay you, my friend, for this great service you have done me?"

"By never mentioning pay again," was the prompt and decisive reply.