Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis | Page 6

DAVIS led off in the American movement. He was elected successively to the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, and thirty-sixth Congresses by the American party from the fourth district of Maryland. He supported with great ability and zeal Mr. Fillmore for the Presidency in 1856, and in 1860 accepted John Bell as the candidate of his party, though he clearly divined and plainly announced that the great battle was really between Abraham Lincoln, as the representative of the national sentiment on the one hand, and secession and disunion, in all their shades and phases, on the other. To his seat in the thirty-eighth Congress he was elected by the Unconditional Union party.
Since the adjournment of the thirty-eighth Congress he has been profoundly concerned in the momentous public questions now pressing for adjustment, and he did not fail on several fitting occasions to give his views at length to the public. Nevertheless, he frequently alluded to his earnest desire to retreat for awhile from the perplexing annoyances of public life. He had determined upon a long visit to Europe in the coming spring, and had almost concluded the purchase of a delightful country-seat, where he hoped to recruit his weary brain for years to come from the exhaustless riches of nature. When the thirty-ninth Congress met, and he read of his old companions in the work of legislation again gathering in their halls and committee-rooms, I think, for at least a day or two, he felt a longing to be among them. During the second week of the session he again entered this hall, but only as a spectator. The greeting he received--so general, spontaneous, and cordial--from gentlemen on both sides of the House, touched his heart most sensibly. The crowd that gathered about him was go great that the party was obliged to retire to one of the larger ante-rooms for fear of interrupting the public business. A delightful interview among old friends was the reward. He was charmed with his reception, and mentioned it to me with intense satisfaction. Little did you, gentlemen, then think that between you and a beloved friend the curtain that shrouds eternity was so soon to be interposed. His sickness was of about a week's duration. Until the morning of the day preceding his death, his friends never doubted his recovery. Later in the day very unfavorable symptoms appeared, and all then realized his danger. In the evening his wife spoke to him of a visit, for one day, which he had projected, to his old friend, Mrs. S. F. Du Pont, when he replied, in the last words he ever uttered, "It shows the folly of making plans even for a day." He continued to fail rapidly in strength until two o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, the 30th of December, when HENRY WINTER DAVIS, in the forty-ninth year of his age, appeared before his God. His death confirmed the opinion of Sir Thomas Browne, who declared, "Marshaling all the horrors of death, and contemplating the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian." He passed away so quietly that no one knew the moment of his departure. His was--
"A death, life sleep; A gentle wafting to immortal life."
Mr. DAVIS left a widow, Mrs. Nancy Davis, a daughter of John B. Morris, Esq., of Baltimore, and two little girls, who were the idols of his heart. He was married a second time on the 26th of January, 1857. His nearest surviving collateral relation is the Hon. David Davis, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who is his only cousin-german. To all these afflicted hearts may God be most gracious.
Thus has the country lost one of the most able, eloquent, and fearless of its defenders. Called from this life at an age when most men are just beginning to command the respect and confidence of their fellows, he has left, nevertheless, a fame as wide as our vast country. He died nineteen years younger than Washington and eight years younger than Lincoln. At forty-eight years of age Washington had not seen the glories of Yorktown even in a vision, nor had Lincoln dreamed of the presidential chair; and if they had died at that age they would have been comparatively unknown in history. Doubtless God would have raised up other leaders, if they had been wanting, to conduct the great American column, which He has chosen to be the bodyguard of human rights and hopes, onward among the nations and the centuries; but in that event the 12th and 22d days of February would not be, as they now are, held sacred in our calendar.
Mr. DAVIS had gathered into his house the literary treasures of four languages, and had reveled in