E-text prepared by Curtis A. Weyant, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
By
Author of "Life of Andrew Jackson," "Life and Times of Aaron Burr,"
"Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin," etc.
1867
[Illustration: J.C. Calhoun]
The papers contained in this volume were originally published in theNorth American Review, with four exceptions. Those upon THEODOSIABURR and JOHN JACOB ASTOR first appeared in Harper's Magazine; thatupon COMMODORE VANDERBILT, in the New York Ledger; and that uponHENRY WARD BEECHER AND HIS CHURCH, in the Atlantic Monthly.
The close of the war removes the period preceding it to a greatdistance from us, so that we can judge its public men as though wewere the "posterity" to whom they sometimes appealed. James Buchananstill haunts the neighborhood of Lancaster, a living man, giving andreceiving dinners, paying his taxes, and taking his accustomedexercise; but as an historical figure he is as complete as Bolingbrokeor Walpole. It is not merely that his work is done, nor that theresults of his work are apparent; but the thing upon which he wrought,by their relation to which he and his contemporaries are to beestimated, has perished. The statesmen of his day, we can all nowplainly see, inherited from the founders of the Republic a problemimpossible of solution, with which some of them wrestled manfully,others meanly, some wisely, others foolishly. If the workmen have notall passed away, the work is at once finished and destroyed, like theRussian ice-palace, laboriously built, then melted in the sun. We cannow have the requisite sympathy with those late doctors of the bodypolitic, who came to the consultation pledged not to attempt toremove the thorn from its flesh, and trained to regard it as thespear-head in the side of Epaminondas,—extract it, and the patientdies. In the writhings of the sufferer the barb has fallen out, andlo! he lives and is getting well. We can now forgive most of thoseblind healers, and even admire such of them as were honest and notcowards; for, in truth, it was an impossibility with which they hadto grapple, and it was not one of their creating.
Of our public men of the sixty years preceding the war, Henry Clay wascertainly the most shining figure. Was there ever a public man, not atthe head of a state, so beloved as he? Who ever heard such cheers, sohearty, distinct, and ringing, as those which his name evoked? Menshed tears at his defeat, and women went to bed sick from puresympathy with his disappointment. He could not travel during the lastthirty years of his life, but only make progresses. When he left hishome the public seized him and bore him along over the land, thecommittee of one State passing him on to t