Famous Americans of Recent Times

Famous Americans of Recent
Times

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James Parton
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Title: Famous Americans of Recent Times
Author: James Parton
Release Date: June 29, 2004 [eBook #12771]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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AMERICANS OF RECENT TIMES***
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FAMOUS AMERICANS OF RECENT TIMES
By
JAMES PARTON
Author of "Life of Andrew Jackson," "Life and Times of Aaron Burr,"
"Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin," etc.
1867

[Illustration: J.C. Calhoun]

CONTENTS
HENRY CLAY

DANIEL WEBSTER
JOHN C. CALHOUN
JOHN RANDOLPH
STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE
JAMES GORDON BENNETT AND THE NEW YORK HERALD
CHARLES GOODYEAR
HENRY WARD BEECHER AND HIS CHURCH
COMMODORE VANDERBILT
THEODOSIA BURR
JOHN JACOB ASTOR

NOTE
The papers contained in this volume were originally published in the
_North American Review_, with four exceptions. Those upon
THEODOSIA BURR and JOHN JACOB ASTOR first appeared in
_Harper's Magazine_; that upon COMMODORE VANDERBILT, in
the _New York Ledger_; and that upon HENRY WARD BEECHER
AND HIS CHURCH, in the Atlantic Monthly.

HENRY CLAY.
The close of the war removes the period preceding it to a great distance
from us, so that we can judge its public men as though we were the
"posterity" to whom they sometimes appealed. James Buchanan still
haunts the neighborhood of Lancaster, a living man, giving and
receiving dinners, paying his taxes, and taking his accustomed exercise;
but as an historical figure he is as complete as Bolingbroke or Walpole.
It is not merely that his work is done, nor that the results of his work
are apparent; but the thing upon which he wrought, by their relation to
which he and his contemporaries are to be estimated, has perished. The
statesmen of his day, we can all now plainly see, inherited from the
founders of the Republic a problem impossible of solution, with which
some of them wrestled manfully, others meanly, some wisely, others
foolishly. If the workmen have not all passed away, the work is at once
finished and destroyed, like the Russian ice-palace, laboriously built,
then melted in the sun. We can now have the requisite sympathy with
those late doctors of the body politic, who came to the consultation

pledged not to attempt to remove the thorn from its flesh, and trained to
regard it as the spear-head in the side of Epaminondas,--extract it, and
the patient dies. In the writhings of the sufferer the barb has fallen out,
and lo! he lives and is getting well. We can now forgive most of those
blind healers, and even admire such of them as were honest and not
cowards; for, in truth, it was an impossibility with which they had to
grapple, and it was not one of their creating.
Of our public men of the sixty years preceding the war, Henry Clay
was certainly the most shining figure. Was there ever a public man, not
at the head of a state, so beloved as he? Who ever heard such cheers, so
hearty, distinct, and ringing, as those which his name evoked? Men
shed tears at his defeat, and women went to bed sick from pure
sympathy with his disappointment. He could not travel during the last
thirty years of his life, but only make progresses. When he left his
home the public seized him and bore him along over the land, the
committee of one State passing him on to the committee of another,
and the hurrahs of one town dying away as those of the next caught his
ear. The country seemed to place all its resources at his disposal; all
commodities sought his acceptance. Passing through Newark once, he
thoughtlessly ordered a carriage of a certain pattern: the same evening
the carriage was at the door of his hotel in New York, the gift of a few
Newark friends. It was so everywhere and with everything. His house
became at last a museum of curious gifts. There was the counterpane
made for him by a lady ninety-three years of age, and Washington's
camp-goblet given him by a lady of eighty; there were pistols, rifles,
and fowling-pieces enough to defend a citadel; and, among a bundle of
walking-sticks, was one cut for him from a tree that shaded Cicero's
grave. There were gorgeous prayer-books, and Bibles of exceeding
magnitude and splendor, and silver-ware in great profusion. On one
occasion there arrived at Ashland the