Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell | Page 2

in the service of your fathers that he won his great
reputation as a lawyer; and to them and to you, disregarding the
obvious dictates of personal interest and ambition, he clung for almost
two-thirds of a century, as to his friends and neighbors, and to your city
as the abode of his brilliant manhood, and the home of his declining
years; and he has left his children and grandchildren, those dear objects
of his love on whom his eyes rested in the dying hour, to live and to die
among you. Indeed, so intimately connected was his name with the
name of your city for sixty years, the first words that rose on the lips of
travelled men in our own country and in England, were inquiries
respecting Mr. Tazewell. The generation of men who smiled at his wit,
whose tears flowed at his bidding, who relished his wonderful
colloquial powers, who regarded with a sense of personal triumph his
marvellous displays at the Bar and in the public councils, and who
looked up to him in the hour of danger as their bulwark and defence,
have, with here and there a solitary exception, long preceded him to the
tomb. Those men were your fathers. He performed the last sad rites at

their graves, as, one by one, year after year, they passed away; and you,
their sons and successors, and, I rejoice to add, their daughters and
granddaughters, have now met to pay a tribute to his memory. To honor
the illustrious dead is a noble and a double office. It speaks with one
accord and in a language not to be mistaken, the worth of those who
have gone before us, and the worth of those who yet survive.
In contemplating a human life which is older than the Commonwealth
in which we live--a life stretching almost from century to century, and
that century embracing the American Revolution, and sweeping yet
onward with its unexpired term beyond the present moment--even if the
humblest figure filled the canvas, the review of its history would far
exceed the time allotted for my present office; but if that figure be
prominent, if he made his mark upon some of the great events of his
age, or influenced the opinions of masses of men, or moved before
them in any remarkable attitude of genius, of massive intellect, or of
public service, the task is proportionably enlarged. And the only
method that is left us is to point out the striking traits of the general
portraiture, and to let the minor incidents take care of themselves. It is
in such a spirit I shall treat the theme you have assigned me.
It appears to me that the life of Mr. Tazewell may be divided into three
striking periods: The first, extending from his birth to his settlement in
Norfolk in 1802; the second, from the settlement in Norfolk to the close
of his term as Governor of the Commonwealth; and the third, thence to
his death.
It is common to associate the birth of an eminent man with the
memorable events that were contemporaneous with it, and to dwell
upon the influence which those events may be supposed to have exerted
upon his life and character. In this respect the life of Mr. Tazewell was
remarkable. Four months before the seventeenth day of December,
1774, when he was born, his father had been present at the August
Convention of 1774, the first of our early conventions, which deputed
Peyton Randolph, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Edward
Pendleton, Benjamin Harrison, and Richard Henry Lee to the first
Congress which met in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia, and but two

months had elapsed since the adjournment of the Congress; and while
the infant was in the nurse's arms, his father was drawing, probably in
the same room with him, a reply to the conciliatory propositions of
Lord North, to be offered in the House of Burgesses. His youthful ears
were stunned by the firing of the guns of the Virginia regiments drawn
up in Waller's Grove, when the news of the passage by Congress of the
Declaration of Independence of the Fourth of July, 1776, reached
Williamsburgh; and, as he was beginning to walk, he was startled by
the roar of cannon when the victory of Saratoga was celebrated with
every demonstration of joy throughout the land. As a boy of seven he
heard the booming of the distant artillery at Yorktown; and he might
have seen the faces of the old and the young brightening with hope,
when the Articles of Confederation, which preceded the present Federal
Constitution, having been ratified at last by all the States, became the
first written charter of the American Union. In his ninth year the treaty
of peace with Great Britain, which