Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1879-08-07
A Congressional "Reminiscences.
National Republican.

:
bers of each House from criticism
and abuse on the part of members
of the other branch, by making an
assault upon Senator Brownlow, of
Tennessee. In this he outraged not
only parliamentary law and usage,
but the proprieties of a chivalric
nature, if he possessed it, by strik
ing where no personal danger lurked
in the physical man assailed. But
Beck did not escape the intellectual
man, though he was safe from phys,
ical punishment. lie had de-
nounced Brownlow, while in Ten
nessee, as making Pandemonlum
of that State" and referred to
him as among those who are loathed
and execrated by the people
whose rights, liberty and honor
it was their duty TO protect.
He said that retributive JUS
.'tice was on their track. Some had
"been overtaken, the others would
"he. Hated aud despised, their on
sly refuge, if they can escape the
''penitentiary, seems TO be in the
s'Senate of the United States"
A few days after this TRADE SEN
ator Brownlow asked and obtained
unanimous consent of the Senate to
make reply to it, and consent being
given he did so by remarking:
There was a time in the history of
my life when Mr.. Beck would not
have dared to put this or any other
insult upon me, for fear that [ would
have taken from his hand the slave
whip, with which, as overseer on
Kentucky plantation, he was accus-
toned to whip negroes for pay, and
laid it across his back. The code
by which the gentlemen from Ken
lucky were governed in those days,
having in it certain principles of
honor, would not have reached low
enough down in the social scale to
find his level; for when he abandon
ed the honorable pursuit of hostler
in livery stable to become slave
driver he betrayed the possession
of qualities which the gentlemen of
old Kentucky never ceased to
despise. If the overseers of
Kentucky whipped the negroes IN
der their slave system of labor, the
gentlemen of Kentucky, be it said
to their credit, sometimes whipped
the overseers; they did not fight
with them. Their code of honor
forbade it. But both of these meth
DDS have gone out of date, and in
the upheavals of the civil war we
find men who were once overseers
aspiring to seats once filled by Clay
and Crittenden, denouncing the
Senate as a refuge for thieves, and
If it is a mere refuge from the pen
itentiary, why, l would ask, is Mr..
Beck so anxious to come to the
Senate Is he affrighted by the
rapidly closing career of his Demo
crotic compatriots, Boss Tweed,
Peter B. Sweeney, Connolly and
Hall =? Does the shadow of Sing
Sing reach all the way to Ken
lucky? Does it forewarn him Of
his impending doom, that he should
strive to find refuge, like the
guilty King of England, who ex-
claimed
"By the apostle Paul. shadows to-
night
Have struck more terror to the soul OF
Richard
Than had the substance OF ten thou
sand soldiers"
I am a refugee, and while the
short limit of my life endures can
not recover from it's outward signa.
These feeble limbs, that need assist
ancs to bring me to this Chamber
these palsied hands, that ask fol-
help to write my whispering voice,
that can not speak my thoughts, al
bear testimony to the fact am a
refugee. 1t is a towards part tc
call me one, but yet [ hold the
title as an honor.
After pressing Mr.. Beck in thi;
vein for some time-inserting hi'
knife of bitter sarcasm occasionally
and giving in an extra twist-anC
flashing him numerically with &
whip more dreadful than that of TIT
slave driver, he remarked: /" The
asperities of the war are not ye
, over, and [ doubtless share tn,
hatred which unrepentant rebel
still manifest toward Union men
E but [ am sustained by good con
} science and unfaltering trust il
: divine goodness, and I can stan(
that. My public acts are already
/ part of the history of my State an
! country, and I submit them to tn
! honest judgment of posterity. A
Daniel Webster once said of a con
t temptible foe: Il leave him;
laaye him in the worst nossih1a com