Chapter XCIII

DEATH OF LEWIS WILLIAMS, OF NORTH CAROLINA, AND NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER.

He was one of those meritorious and exemplary members whose labors are among the most useful to their country: diligent, modest, attentive, patriotic, inflexibly honest--a friend to simplicity and economy in the working of the government, and an enemy to all selfish, personal, and indirect legislation. He had the distinction to have his merits and virtues commemorated in the two Houses of Congress by two of the most eminent men of the age--Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams--who respectively seconded in the House to which each belonged, the customary motion for funeral honors to his memory. Mr. Adams said:

"Mr. Speaker, I second the motion, and ask the indulgence of
the House for the utterance of a few words, from a heart full
to overflowing with anguish which no words can express. Sir,
my acquaintance with Mr. Williams commenced with the second
Congress of his service in this House. Twenty-five years have
since elapsed, during all which he has been always here at his
post, always true to his trust, always adhering faithfully to
his constituents and to his country--always, and through every
political vicissitude and revolution, adhered to faithfully by
them. I have often thought that this steadfastness of mutual
attachment between the representative and the constituent was
characteristic of both; and, concurring with the idea just
expressed with such touching eloquence by his colleague (Mr.
Rayner), I have habitually looked upon Lewis Williams as the
true portraiture and personification of the people of North
Carolina. Sir, the loss of such a man at any time, to his
country, would be great. To this House, at this juncture, it
is irreparable. His wisdom, his experience, his unsullied
integrity, his ardent patriotism, his cool and deliberate
judgment, his conciliatory temper, his firm adherence to
principle--where shall we find a substitute for them? In the
distracted state of our public counsels, with the wormwood and
the gall of personal animosities adding tenfold bitterness to
the conflict of rival interests and discordant opinions, how
shall we have to deplore the bereavement of _his_ presence, the
very light of whose countenance, the very sound of whose voice,
could recall us, like a talisman, from the tempest of hostile
passions to the calm composure of harmony and peace.

"Mr. Williams was, and had long been, in the official language
which we have adopted from the British House of Commons, the
_Father_ of the House; and though my junior by nearly twenty
years, I have looked up to him in this House, with the reverence
of filial affection, as if he was the father of us all. The
seriousness and gravity of his character, tempered as it was
with habitual cheerfulness and equanimity, peculiarly fitted him
for that relation to the other members of the House, while the
unassuming courtesy of his deportment and the benevolence of
his disposition invited every one to consider him as a brother.
Sir, he is gone! The places that have known him shall know him
no more; but his memory shall be treasured up by the wise and
the good of his contemporaries, as eminent among the patriots
and statesmen of this our native land; and were it possible for
any Northern bosom, within this hall, ever to harbor for one
moment a wish for the dissolution of our National Union, may
the spirit of our departed friend, pervading every particle of
the atmosphere around us, dispel the delusion of his soul, by
reminding him that, in that event, he would no longer be the
countryman of Lewis Williams."

Mr. Clay, in the Senate, who was speaker of the House when the then young Lewis Williams first entered it, bore his ample testimony from intimate personal knowledge, to the merits of the deceased; and, like Mr. Adams, professed a warm personal friendship for the individual, as well as exalted admiration for the public man.

"Prompted by a friendship which existed between the deceased and
myself, of upwards of a quarter of a century's duration, and
by the feelings and sympathies which this melancholy occasion
excites, will the Senate allow me to add a few words to those
which have been so well and so appropriately expressed by my
friend near me [Mr. Graham], in seconding the motion he has
just made? Already, during the present session, has Congress,
and each House, paid the annual instalment of the great debt of
Nature. We could not have lost two more worthy and estimable men
than those who have been taken from us. My acquaintance with the
lamented Lewis Williams commenced in the fall of 1815, when he
first took his seat as a member of the House of Representatives
from the State of North Carolina, and I re-entered that House
after my return from Europe. From that period until his death,
a cordial and unbroken friendship has subsisted between us;
and similar ties were subsequently created with almost every
member of his highly respectable family. When a vacancy arose
in the responsible and laborious office of chairman of the
Committee of Claims, which had been previously filled by another
distinguished and lamented son of North Carolina (the late Mr.
Yancy), in virtue of authority vested in me, as the presiding
officer of the House, I appointed Mr. Williams to fill it.
Always full of labor, and requiring unremitting industry, it was
then, in consequence of claims originating in the late war, more
than ever toilsome. He discharged his complicated duties with
the greatest diligence, ability, impartiality, and uprightness,
and continued in the office until I left the House in the year
1825. He occasionally took part in the debates which sprung up
on great measures brought for the advancement of the interests
of the country, and was always heard with profound attention,
and, I believe, with a thorough conviction of his perfect
integrity. Inflexibly adhering always to what he believed to
be right, if he ever displayed warmth or impatience, it was
excited by what he thought was insincere, or base, or ignoble.
In short, Lewis Williams was a true and faithful image of the
respectable State which he so long and so ably served in the
national councils--intelligent, quiet, unambitious, loyal to the
Union, and uniformly patriotic. We all feel and deplore, with
the greatest sensibility, the heavy loss we have so suddenly
sustained. May it impress us with a just sense of the frailty
and uncertainty of human life! And, profiting by his example,
may we all be fully prepared for that which is soon to follow."

Mr. Williams reflected the character of his State; and that was a distinction so obvious and so honorable that both speakers mentioned it, and in doing so did honor both to the State and the citizen. And she illustrated her character by the manner in which she cherished him. Elected into the General Assembly as soon as age would permit, and continued there until riper age would admit him into the Federal Congress, he was elected into that body amongst the youngest of its members; and continued there by successive elections until he was the longest sitting member, and became entitled to the Parliamentary appellation of Father of the House. Exemplary in all the relations of public and private life, he crowned a meritorious existence by an exemplary piety, and was as remarkable for the close observance of all his christian obligations as he was for the discharge of his public duties.