Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis | Page 7

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 spirit with the wise men of the ages. He
had conned his books as jealously as a miner peering for gold, and had
not left a panful of earth unwashed. He had collected the purest ore of
truth and the richest gems of thought, until he was able to crown

himself with knowledge. Blessed with a felicitous power of analysis
and a prodigious memory, he ransacked history, ancient and modern,
sacred and profane; science, pure, empirical, and metaphysical; the arts,
mechanical and liberal; the professions, law, divinity, and medicine;
poetry and the miscellanies of literature; and in all these great
departments of human lore he moved as easily as most men do in their
particular province. His habit was not only to read but to reread the best
of his books frequently, and he was continually supplying himself with
better editions of his favorites. In current, playful conversation with
friends he quoted right and left, in brief and at length, from the classics,
ancient and modern, and from the drama, tragic and comic. In his
speeches, on the contrary, he quoted but little, and only when he
seemed to run upon a thought already expressed by some one else with
singular force and appositeness. He was the best scholar I ever met for
his years and active life, and was surpassed by very few, excepting
mere book-worms. He has for many years been engaged in collecting
extracts from newspapers, containing the leading facts and public
documents of the day; but he never commonplaced from books. His
thesaurus was his head.
I have but little personal knowledge of Mr. DAVIS as a lawyer. It was
never my good fortune to be associated with him in the trial of a cause;
nor have I ever been present when he was so engaged. But at the time
of his death he filled a high position at the bar, and was chosen to lead
against the most distinguished of his brethren. On public and
constitutional questions, as distinguished from those involving only
private rights, he was a host, and in the argument of the cases which
grew out of the adoption of the new constitution of Maryland he won
golden laurels, and drew extraordinary encomiums even from his
opponents in that angry litigation. He was thoroughly read in the
decisions of the federal courts, and especially in those declaring and
defining constitutional principles.
Possessed of a mind of remarkable power, scope, and activity; with an
immense fund of precious information, ready to respond to any call he
might make upon it, however sudden; wielding a system of logic
formed in the severest school, and tried by long practice; gifted with a

rare command of language and an eloquence well nigh superhuman;
and withal graced with manners the most accomplished and refined,
and a person unusually handsome, graceful, and attractive. Mr. DAVIS
entered public life with almost unparalleled personal advantages.
Having boldly presented himself before the most rigorous tribunal in
the world, he proved himself worthy of its favor and attention. He soon
rose to the front rank of debaters, and whenever he addressed the House
all sides gave him a delighted audience.
I shall not attempt a review of the topics discussed in the thirty-fourth
and thirty-fifth Congresses. The day was fast coming when contests for
the Speakership and battles over appropriation bills, ay, even the fierce
struggle over Kansas, would sink into insignificance, and Mr. DAVIS,
with that political prescience for which he was always remarkable,
seemed to discern the first sign of the coming storm. The winds had
been long sown, and now the whirlwind was to be reaped. The
thirty-sixth Congress, which had opened so inauspiciously, and which
his vote had saved from becoming a perpetuated bedlam, met for its
second session on the 3d of December, 1860, with the clouds of civil
war fast settling down upon the nation. In the hope that war might yet
be averted, on the fourth day of the session, the celebrated committee
of thirty-three was raised, with the lamented Corwin, of Ohio, as
chairman, and Mr. DAVIS as the member from Maryland. When the
committee reported, Mr. DAVIS sustained the majority report in an
able speech, in which, after urging every argument in favor of the
report, he boldly proclaimed his own views, and the duties of his State
and country. In his speech of 7th February, 1861, he said:
"I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate