USA > Tennessee > Notable men of Tennessee, from 1833 to 1875, their times and their contemporaries > Part 23
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heavy artillery, or charged with the very lightest arms, provided he drove him from his position, and sent him flying from the field. The rapidity with which he answered the points of his adversary was one secret of Jones' triumphs. He spent but little time in answer to any point, and then passed on to an- other and another, and so of all, and when through with them, he had time to make counter attacks. His confidence in himself never failed. Then, he did what many speakers fail to do; when he made a good point he drove it home, with tremendous force and with a triumphant air.
Jones as a stump speaker was not specially noisy. He spoke with much ease to himself, with a clear, loud voice, and with distinct articulation and enunciation, and therefore he could with ease be heard on the outskirts of a large crowd. There was no great physical exertion on his part, wearying to himself and painful to his hearers. His speaking, while it was most animated and dashing, yet had a smoothness that took away all sense of uneasiness on the part of his audience. Polk was the more violent of the two. Even in telling his anecdotes, in his humor and in the utterance of his deepest emotions and passions, there was in Jones an air and manner of gentleness. There was never any shrieking, any piercing cries, any un- natural postures, any horrid contortions of face or body. He was in all his moods as dignified as any humorous and anecdote telling public speaker can be.
What then was the secret of his power? It was (in part) his voice, his delightful manner, his easy, flowing speech, his clearness of statement, his boldness in the avowal of opinions, his ingenuity in turning points against his adversary, and his inexhaustible humor which kept his audience at all times in sympathy with him. These explain only in part the ascendency of this man over the minds and hearts of men. There was in fact a kind of hypnotism that brought them under his spell. He got down in the very life and hearts of the people. It was the seasoning and the dressing of the food that he served, to- gether with the delightful service of it, and not the dainty and superior quality of the material, that gave to it its flavor and its piquancy.
Polk, having equal faculties for speaking with Jones, and in the highest-the intellectual-being his superior, it is evident
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that the signal victories of Jones were won by his superior skill and power in the use of those faculties.
But if an inferior man, with scarcely an equal average equip- ment in all the arts of speaking, could gain, day by day, in two long canvasses such decided victories as to be acknowledged by nearly all men then, as well as now, surely such a man must have been more than common. It will not do to account for this discomfiture, in more than two hundred pitched battles, of one of the confessedly greatest debaters of the State, by the cry of buffoon, clown, mountebank. The mere statement of these facts, while not placing Jones on the highest plane of intellectuality, does elevate him to a respectable position in that regard, and to the first place as a joint debater before popular assemblies. It was an intellectual impossibility for such successes to have been achieved without more than com- mon ability. It is inconceivable, if Jones were only a political juggler. At his advent in the political world, he was regarded with wonder, and still the wonder grew as he continued his triumphal career for two years.
The desire to know more of Mr. Polk is most natural. But few of this generation ever heard him speak or ever saw him. He was scarcely of medium height, being not more than 5 feet 7 or 8 inches tall. He was slight in body, but trim, straight, and graceful. His head was large with a decidedly intellectual cast, and his eyes were very large, of a brown or hazel color, very striking and handsome and with a benignant expression. In dress he was faultlessly neat. Indeed I considered him a very handsome man, at least a very distinguished looking one. Notwithstanding his delicate body, he was capable of the great- est physical endurance, as was evident from the almost incredi- ble amount of labor he performed in his three canvasses of the entire State in 1839, 1841, and 1843. His voice was loud and good, though his intonation was somewhat unusual, but not disagreeable. He spoke with fluency, clearness, earnestness, and rapidity. More, he spoke with elegance, and with great point- edness and power. As a debater, in the presentation and mar- shaling of facts he was ingenious, lucid, and masterly. This was his strong point. Very seldom has any public speaker been able to present a long array of facts so impressively, and at the same time so attractively and with such irresistible power. An-
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drew Johnson could not have done so, because he did not possess the charm of manner, the elegance of language, the lucidness of statement, nor the compactness of argument. In a word, Mr. Polk was universally regarded in his day as a very great public speaker and a most skillful debater. Looking back at his canvass of 1839, I very much doubt whether there was a man in the State, on either side, who could have produced such a profound impression on the public mind. As before remarked, after his defeat by Jones, he never seemed to have the position as a man of rare ability that he previously had, and I think in this regard injustice has been done to his memory. It is an ac- knowledged fact that while he was President he was master of his own administration, and shaped and guided its policy as he thought best. It was stronger and accomplished more than William Henry Harrison's, or Tyler's, or Taylor's, or Fillmore's, or Pierce's, or Buchanan's, or Hayes', or Arthur's, or Benjamin Harrison's, and possibly even Monroe's. He was in fact Prime Minister as well as President. By a war, brought on by his own act, he added to our dominions a vast territory of incalculable value.
Mr. Polk was but little spoken or thought of for the Presi- dency, outside of Tennessee, previous to his nomination in 1844. His nomination came about in this wise. The Southern Demo- crats, under the skillful leadership of Mr. Calhoun, had deter- mined to annex Texas to the United States, and to that end they had determined also that Mr. Van Buren, who was by long odds the most prominent candidate for that position, and who was openly opposed to annexation, should be defeated in the nominating convention. For this purpose they artfully secured the adoption of the rule requiring two-thirds of the delegates to make a nomination. That killed Mr. Van Buren's chances, as it was designed to do, for in no contingency after his letter in opposition to the annexation of Texas, could he get the requisite two-thirds with the solid South against him. Much less could General Cass, the next prominent candidate, get a two-thirds vote. Therefore after balloting and balloting in vain for these two men, Mr. Polk's name was presented, as had been previously arranged, and his nomination put through with a shout.
Mr. Polk's election was but little less anomalous. Mr. Clay, the opposing candidate, had taken early in the canvass, in his
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Raleigh letter, decided ground against the annexation of Texas. Later on, in what was called his Alabama letter, with the view of reconciling his friends in the South, some of whom were dis- contented with his position-the feeling in favor of annexation becoming daily stronger and stronger in that section-he modi- fied or changed his position, by saying he would be glad to see Texas annexed, provided it could be accomplished, without war with Mexico, and without national dishonor, and with some other conditions. That letter defeated him. The election ultimately depended upon the vote of the State of New York. The race there was very close. The Abolitionists-then a mere handful- held the balance of power. They were displeased with Mr. Clay for his change of position. They were violently opposed to the annexation of Texas, because they saw in it the extension of slavery and the growth of the slave power. They therefore deliberately cast their votes for Mr. Birney, their own candi- date, and withheld them from Mr. Clay, with whom they agreed in general in politics, and thus gave by a very small plurality the vote of New York to Mr. Polk. If they had voted for Mr. Clay, as most of them intended doing previous to his second letter, he would have carried the State of New York and been elected. Thus the small band of Abolitionists of New York secured the election of Mr. Polk, the open advocate of annexa- tion, and the defeat of Mr. Clay, the enemy of that scheme, or at least a doubtful friend. Every vote cast for Birney in the existing conditions was a vote taken from Mr. Clay, and, in its effect, a vote for Mr. Polk. But annexation was bound to come in spite of Mr. Clay and Mr. Van Buren, and in spite of the Whigs and Abolitionists. It was the "manifest destiny" of the country, guided by the genius of Mr. Calhoun and the Southern Democrats. The country, and especially the South, demanded the liberty of sharing in that magnificent territory enriched by the blood of Milam, Crockett, Travis, Bowie, and Hanning, and won by the valor of Houston.
Mr. Polk's private character was exceptionally good. There was not a blot nor a stain on it. He was gentle and lovable. When he made the canvass of 1839, Bailie Peyton, then a dis- tinguished Member of Congress, was to have been his opponent, as he (Peyton) himself said in substance in a speech in Greene- ville. I never knew why he was not, but suppose Governor Cannon would not get out of the way. If Peyton had been
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the candidate, the result almost certainly would have been differ- ent. He was a fiery, daring, stirring speaker, with infinite humor and wit, and considerable eloquence. He had the courage to dare and the will to do anything that his judgment approved. He was not the equal of Polk in statesmanship, nor as a debater, but he possessed a dash, a brilliancy, a manly bearing that more than made up for the lack of these, and which Polk would have dreaded more than he did Jones. The wit and humor of Peyton were irresistible. Besides, he was a noble and chivalrous gentleman of the highest type. The reaction against Jackson in Tennessee began in 1835, and resulted in giving the vote of the State to Hugh Lawson White for President, and then in 1837 to Cannon for Governor, and was still going on in 1839, when Polk arrested and checked it for the time being. But it was only checked. It again swelled into majestic proportions in 1840, when Harrison rode in triumph on the crest of the tide of popular indignation, and carried the State by thirteen thousand majority.
But to hasten to a conclusion. Polk was a small and appar- ently a delicate man. But he was vital with energy and am- bition. His endurance was almost phenomenal. He entered the contest of 1841, determined to win, but he soon found he had a competitor very different from good old Governor Can- non. The two ambitious competitors opened the canvass in Wilson County in March. Soon they were in East Tennessee. They canvassed the State, county by county, from Johnson to Shelby. In some places, and possibly at all, they spoke five hours a day. In those days there were no railroads, and there- fore they had to travel altogether on horseback or in private conveyances. They spoke every day, and generally had to go twenty-five or thirty miles to reach the appointment for the next day. What an immense strain on the vital powers !
In the canvass of 1841, the speaking apparently closed be- yond the mountains. But Polk secretly made a second list of appointments for himself in East Tennessee, and slipped off to fill them. While he was on his way, driving furiously for- ward to reach them, Jones was informed of, or suspected his design, and he also immediately set off for the distant appoint- ments-nearly three hundred miles away. Jones, whip in hand, spurred onward night and day, giving neither sleep to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids. What was the surprise and con-
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fusion of Polk to find Jones at his first appointment, ready to reproach and taunt him, as he did, with telling effect, for his cowardice in trying to avoid meeting him face to face. Jones thus gained an additional advantage over Polk. In the last days of August I heard them on this flying trip, before a great crowd, at Bull's Gap, near the corner of Greene, Hawkins, Jefferson, and Grainger Counties. Jones was bold and confident, having the air of a conqueror. Polk, on the other hand, was careworn, irritable, indeed mad, as his party was mad all over the State. He complained in doleful tones of Jones' levity and want of dignity in the debates, in telling anecdotes. Jones retorted by reminding him of how he drove poor old Cannon almost distracted with his stories, his mimicries, and his grim- aces two years before, and how gay he then was, and how dignified and sedate he was now.
It was at Bean's Station, I believe, that an incident happened which was never forgotten by those who were present. Polk was complaining, as usual, of the levity of Jones' discussions, and said that if a stranger from another State should happen to be present he would not dream that his competitor was seek- ing the high office of Governor, judging from his manner, but would suppose he was acting the leading part in the ring of a circus. "Yes," said Jones, in his reply, "I will accept the position assigned to me by my competitor of master of the ring, will get down into the sawdust, with whip in hand, and bring out the pony, but my competitor must perform the other part-wear the spangles, put on the red cap, and take the place of the little fellow that goes around on the pony. When I raise my long whip [raising his hand as if in the act of cracking it] and crack it, and give the word of command, then go." In a moment he shouted, "Go!" The crowd caught the idea, and imagining they saw Polk flying around the ring on the pony, in wild uproar cried out, "Monkey, Monkey! Baboon, Baboon !"
Such a scene as followed, it is rarely given to mortals to witness-the wild, tumultuous laughing and yelling that seized and held the crowd! That afternoon the people went home laughing, they awoke the next morning laughing, and for a long time afterward, whenever they thought of Polk with a red cap flying roand the ring in a circus, they continued to laugh.
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Polk was petrified. It is believed he never rode the pony afterward, nor attended another circus !
The two canvasses of 1841 and 1843 were exceedingly ex- citing. Very large and eager crowds everywhere greeted the speakers. Curiosity and expectation stood on tiptoe! The discussions were more than animated-they were hot, spirited, intensely earnest. They awakened the keenest and the most bitter interest throughout the State. Finally this interest spread beyond the State, and extended to the outer borders of the Union. These contests, in their duration, though not in the greatness of the subjects discussed, were the most marked political campaigns ever conducted in this country. Treating the two canvasses as one, they lasted eight months of active speaking, with nearly two hundred pitched battles. The joint debate, justly so celebrated, between Lincoln and Douglas, em- braced just seven days.
Mr. Jones' speaking was simple, direct and straightforward. He never played with metaphors or figures of speech. There was no attempt at great oratory. There were no eagle flights, no grand pyrotechnic diplays. It was addressed and adapted to the average intelligence of Tennessee audiences of that day. The plainest mind could comprehend him. He did not shoot above the heads of his audience.
I need not say that Jones was elected Governor in both these elections. In popular estimation he became a political hero. His name was often mentioned in connection with the vice-presidency. In 1851 he was elected one of the Senators of the United States from Tennessee. As far back as 1839, he had proclaimed himself for Mr. Clay for President. This was at the time when Mr. Clay was still suffering from the enmity of the overshadowing influence of General Jackson. In both of his canvasses with Polk he daily declared himself for Mr. Clay for the presidency, and called on his competitor and indeed dared him to name his candidate for that position among the Dem- ocrats. At Jonesboro, as John S. Mathes relates, while Jones was daring Polk to name his candidate, old Adam Broyles spoke up in the audience and said he would name the candidate and the next president also ; it would be James K. Polk! And sure enough it was !
Jones' devotion to Clay suffered no abatement while that
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patriot lived. After he became Senator, during the protracted illness of Mr. Clay, he was daily at his bedside-one of the few having that privilege-and in his last moments he was standing by when the spirit of that great patriot and statesman took its flight from the earth.
In 1854 Jones, as Senator, voted for the repeal of the Missouri compromise measure, along with every Democratic Senator of the South, except Sam Houston, and separated him- self from his colleague, John Bell, thus swapping horses while crossing a stream. He from that time forward was a Democrat. He once had declared that there was a great chasm-dark, deep, and wide-that separated him from the Democratic party, which it was impossible for him to cross, yet somehow or an- other he got over it.
The claim made by some at this time that Jones was a mere shallow clown is contrary to both history and tradition. Men can believe a good deal, but not everything. If those who per- sist in saying that Jones was a mere mountebank would admit that while he was not the equal of Polk in argument, or logic, in learning and statesmanship, in breadth of intellect and knowledge of public affairs, yet that he possessed an active, versatile, dexterous mind, great readiness and resources in de- bate, and wonderful power in turning points against an oppo- nent, I could readily agree with them-indeed I have already said the same things. But when they attempt to make of him a mere ninny, almost a shallow fool, they set at naught the judg- ment of the tens of thousands of persons all over the State who heard him, the intelligent as well as the ignorant; they set at naught the tradition which has come down to this day, and they make of Mr. Polk a very weak man, to be vanquished in two hundred debates by such a buffoon and simpleton.
The subsequent career of Jones was not specially brilliant. In 1848 he supported Taylor for President and in 1852 he was one of the special champions of General Scott. This was the canvass (that of 1852) in which John H. Crozier, William G. Swan, James and William Williams of our own State, and Toombs and Stephens of Georgia, quit the Whig party, and went over to the support of the Democratic party. It was the canvass in which Gentry and Brownlow refused to support Scott, but cast their votes for Webster without ceasing to be
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Whigs. The action of all these was based on the ground that Scott was not believed to be true to the South on the Slavery question.
As before stated, Jones was elected in 1851-52 to a seat in the United States senate and served one term. In 1856 he abandoned the Whig and joined the Democratic party, although he had once boasted that there was a great chasm-deep, wide, and impassable-that separated him from that party. Yet with supreme agility he bounded over it!
I am asked what became of Jones, after his retirement from the Senate, and his wonderful bound across the impassable chasm described by him. The answer is briefly given. When he retired from the Senate, he was last seen slowly, sadly pass- ing down the decline on the other side of the chasm, disappearing below the political horizon, hastening to his early setting, and no man ever saw him more politically.
To abandon figures of speech, Mr. Jones' political career closed with his term in the United States Senate, which was not brilliant. He lived but a few years afterward, dying in the very maturity of his powers, leaving many friends in the State to mourn his loss, among whom were many old Whigs, who remem- bered with gratitude the glories of 1841 and 1843.
The effect of the defeats of Mr. Polk for the Governorship of Tennessee was the obscuration of his fame for a brief period. But the still potent influence in his behalf of his faithful friend, General Jackson, and the ever devoted friendship of his other Tennessee friends, exerted at a critical moment, when there was a deadlock in the national Democratic convention between Mr. Van Buren and General Cass-neither candidate being able to secure the requisite two-thirds vote-Mr. Polk's name being suddenly sprung on the convention, secured for him the nomi- nation and subsequently his election to the presidency. Not- withstanding his elevation to this high office, and the acquisition by his administration of very large and valuable territory, and notwithstanding the administration was marked with vigor, and by the adoption of measures of momentous consequences to the country, Mr. Polk has never been ranked in statesmanship with our great presidents. I think, indeed, that injustice has been done him by his countrymen. One reason of this was the fact that he was always a partisan in his official acts. He was
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never able to lift himself above party into the serene heights of liberal statesmanship.
He had been an active participant in the exciting and tempestuous scenes of Jackson's administration, and a part of Van Buren's ; he had heard himself reproached and denounced by the fiery Whig leaders-Prentiss, Marshall, Wise, Peyton- he had keenly felt the refusal of the Whigs to give him a vote of thanks when he was about to retire from the Speakership of the House, and he knew that S. S. Prentiss, amid the thundering applause of his political friends, had denounced him in the House as "the tool of the President and of his party," and al- though a very amiable man in private life, he could never forgive his political enemies for these wrongs, and he carried this feeling into the presidency.
DISTINGUISHED PERSONAGES OF LAST GENERA- TION WHOM I MET OR KNEW.
Andrew Jackson-General Winfield Scott-James K. Polk-Bailie Pey- ton-Felix Grundy-John J. Crittenden-William C. Preston-John C. Calhoun-President Taylor-Henry Clay-General Brooks-Joseph E. Johnston-General Hardee-General Garland-Albert Sydney John- ston-General Harney-General Sam Houston.
IN the following account of the distinguished national per- sonages whom I met or knew, the first in order of time, and perhaps in durability of fame, was Andrew Jackson. In 1835, while he was President, he was passing through East Tennessee, in his own carriage, on his way from Washington to the Her- mitage, when he stopped for a day in Greeneville, with his friend, John Dixon, a merchant of that place. News had been cir- culated in advance that he would be in Greeneville on that day and therefore the country people turned out in large numbers to see him. He held a reception, and the people passed him, one after another, and had a chance to shake his hand, and some of them to have a moment's conversation with him. I was then a boy, but I fell in line, and had the honor of receiving a graceful bow from the most dignified and august man of that generation. To see him once was to remember him forever. His air of majestic imperiousness, though united with the most princely and gracious manner, struck a kind of awe into the mind of the beholders. If ever a man was born to command men at first sight, he certainly was. Men involuntarily yielded him leadership. His very presence-I might almost say his terrible presence-excited awe-inspiring respect mingled with admiration.
The next national character I saw was General Winfield Scott. In 1838 I was a volunteer soldier under him in the Cherokee nation during the Indian disturbances, and holding an honorable position it became my duty to carry a dispatch from Red Clay, Ga., to him at his headquarters at Charleston, Tenn. During my stay I saw him mounted on a splendid large, black horse, in full uniform, followed by some or all of his staff,
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taking a ride. It is useless to say, as all persons already know, that he was an unusually tall and large and magnificent man- a figure of chivalry, or romance. Richard, the lion-hearted, as painted by Sir Walter Scott, in his flashing steel panoply, going into gay tournament, was not to the eye grander in car- riage or in mien than General Scott when mounted on his powerful charger. Several years after this I was taken to his headquarters in Washington, and introduced to him by an officer and a comrade of his in the War of 1812. We were received with impressive politeness, and spent a half hour with him in friendly, but dignified conversation. He doubtless was unusually complacent on that occasion, as the presidential can- vass of 1852 was then only six or eight months ahead, and he made no concealment of the fact that he would be a candidate for the Whig nomination. In this conversation he used the ex- pression, "the rich Irish brogue," so much referred to in the succeeding canvass, but whether or not for the first time I can- not say. His great weakness was his excessive vanity and love of show ; hence his nickname, "Old Fuss and Feathers." Ex- cepting his weakness and his foibles in this and in other respects, and his haughtiness he was a man of the highest merit and of first-class military ability. He displayed his military ability conspicuously in two wars in Mexico and in that of 1812, when he was only a very young man. His campaign in Mexico, from Vera Cruz to the capital, considering the smallness of his army, was one of the most remarkable triumphs of military genius of our history.
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