The Athens post. [volume] (Athens, Tenn.) 1848-1917, 1854-11-10
PARTY LEADERS.

seph G. Baldwin, author of the Flush of Times
of Alabama and Mississippi 1t is a remarka.
bic work and is destined to take very high
rank among works on American Political
History
THE DEATH OF RANDOLPH.
Randolph, in fast declining health, reached
Philadelphia, whittier he went to take passage
from that port He was too late for the Liv.
erpoo packet He exposed himself to the
inclemency Of the weather, took cold, which
aggravated his disease and hastened its fatal
termination. He was put to bed-his death.
bed-in his lodgings, at the City Hotel. The
idiosyncracies which had, of late years espe.
cially, marked his demeanor, distinguished the
last hours of his life. The sudden busts OF
petulance which disease wrung from him; the
affecting kindness and tenderness which dis.
ease could not wholly take from him; the
rambling conversation in the intervals of acute
suffering in some passages, as brilliant as ever
the last CLEANS of the sinking lamp; the
groanngs of remorse, which u review of his
past life, at the bar Of stern selfjudgment,
drew from his eontrite heart, the fervid
prayer; the hesitating hope; the trust qualified
| by selfcOndemnation in the Saviour, whose
name he professed; the concluding act, ere the
curtain fell upon the last scene Of earth,
when, propped up by pillows, he called wit
nesses to his confirmation of his will, provid-
ing for the freedom ana support of his slaves,
and the last conscious words, which fired his
eye and braced his sinking frame, rs, speaking
in this connection, he laid his skeleton hand
strongly upon the shoulder of his faithful
servant, John, and said with emphasizes
pecially for this man." And then-this last
charge upon his conscience of-his mind
wandered away to the light, and the scenes,
and the friends of the Early Day; and, the
mutterings of the voice growing gradually
| fainter, as he passed on into the thicker shad-
ows of the Dark Valley, the futtering pulse
stood still, and John Randolph of Roanoke
WAS numbered with the dead! (June "a, 1888,
aged sixty.)
They carried him back to his solitary home,
and buried HMM death rs in life, unsocial
and isolated-in the forest of Roanoke. In
the sol of the Virginia he loved so WELL they
laid the corse of her faithful and devoted son.
| They left him to rest, after the long fever of
his troubled dream of life was over, in an
humble and sequestered grave, beneath two
stately pines. There let him sleep on The
gloom of their shade, and the melancholy
signing of the wind through their boughs, are
fit emblems of the life which was breathed
out in sadness and in sorrow.
JACKSON.
It may well be doubted if the records of
ancient or of modern times exhibit TO us n
name, more distinguished for sublime and un-
faltering courage, than that of Andrew Jack.
son. He never seemed to rise to- but ever to
stand level with, the loftest exigencies-
There was nothing in the shape of danger or
responsibility which he feared to brave-not
to meet merely, but to go in quest of-not TO
endure, but to defy and to master. He was
chary of his fame. He loved applause; but
when did he pause in the execution of pur-
pose to count its cost to his reputation? Did
he ever falter when the chivalry and flower of
his early and later supporters deserted his
banner by battalions' If anything can appal
Il politicians heart or stay his hand, it is civil
war; But, in the case of South. Carolina, he
contemplated that result and prepared for it,
with the GOODNESS and determination of COM
mon place business matter. He stood forth
peculiar and original man, in the great attri-
butte of conceiving and executing purposes
and plans, from the very contemplation Of
which commonplace politicians shrink in
dismay.
Yet one thing this great man lacked. He
lacked the crownng virtue of magnanmity.
Generosity towards personal or political ene-
my, and charity for opposing opinion, were
not numbered among the virtues in his calen-
der We are panied to be forced BY truth to
say that the hero's character, of such robust
and stalwart proportions, and vital with such
massive and masculine strength, was incom-
plete. Like some Gothic tower, dimly seen
by starlight, it leaves the impression of power
akin to the terrific and sublime; but wants the
mid and softening light of this absent grace
to make it lovely to the contemplation ard
dear to the heart.
CLAY IN 1850.
AT this juncture, Henry Clay took his seat
in the Senate. His very presence there was
an event in the political history of the coun-
try. The old light was on his lofty brow,
and in his eye and in his voice were the fire
and the spell which could yet save his coun-
try. He seemed in view of the new work
before him, to breathe another youth. With
the wisdom of his ripe age, he seemed to
have caught from the past the vigor and the
prime of his meridian fire. There was patri-
was dormant patriotism. Clay walked it up.
Clay was the medium that poured the electric
current of the people upon the politicians and
the public councils. Never before had he
fully shown himself the man God had made
him. For fifty years he had never found
rival for a whole session, as an orator and
leader in deliberative assembly; but men had
compared him to himself, and had noted how
far he was, in this speech or that, from his
! high-water mark of excellence. Now he was
above hmself-above where the flood of his
sweeping and surge-ke eloqucnce had ever
gone before As n mere orator, he left the
great deeds of his youth and middle age be-
hind. But his oratory was the least remarka-
BILE of his claims to attention and gratitude.
He was eloquent in very;hing-instinct with
eloquence, us if possessed by its spirit-in
movement-in manner in writing-in speech
i'm tonc-above all, perhaps, in social inter-
course, ransfusing himself into others; now
in the closet, now at the mess table, now in
the committee room, in the drive, on the
street, every wherein every way-seeking
no repose-wanting none-it was the fever
and ianaticism of soul that carried him with
but one object before him-and yet that fever
and fanaticism presided over by a judgment
and tact that never forsook, never mised him.
All know the result All know how he
passed through the long agony of glory and
triumph. He conquered and the Union lived
Fate awarded him ample justice at the last
He had linked the most brilliant passages OF
his life TO the Union; the last link Of the chain,
too, he threw around its pillar His eloquent
| life wns brought TO its peroration, and that