The age-herald., 1900-04-14
BEN TILLMAN OF
 SOUTH CAROLINA

Correspondence of the Courler-Journal
 Washington, April S--It is very great pity that Ben Tillman's character has not behind it the genius of George MeDuffie. No other man in the senate has so strong, so pronounced Individuality, no man ever sat in either house-unless Thad Stevens be the exception-who was so frank, so blunt, so brusque. In the continental con gress Bee, Butler, Gadsden, Izard, Lau- rens, Motte. Pinckney. Rutledge represent ed South Carolina. In the later senates the Buffers. Gailard, Hayne, Calhoun, Preston, McDuffie. Hammond and Hamp- ton spoke for what might we'll be dubbed "the cock of the south." Sir James Macin- tosh said of Edmund Burke, "Gibbon might have been taken from corner of his mind" So Ben Tillman can not think a small fraction of the statesmanship that Calhoun or Hayne could dream, and yet. like Gibbon, Ben Tillman is no slouch He is much of a man.
 shall never forget the day Tillman made his maiden speech in the senate. He was a holy terror. His seat was in the extreme back row on the democratic side but he spoke from the front row-as now recollect from Morgan's desk, which
 
 mans immediate predecessor. The senate was nearly full-at least seventy-five members present. The cousins-Hoar and Sherman, side by side-were conspicuous on the republican wing The attention was as grave and as respectful as you ever saw in church. Here was new light. a new face, a new voice. Until witnessed that scene I had a vague con
 70 hot nr0faned by the barbarous Gaul. Now I think l can see the curule chair raised to brain the intruder. r
 The most dignifed senator of our his- tory came from South Carolipa-Jonn C' Calhoun, the one finer presiding ofncer than Aaron Burr, John c. Breckinridge. And from South Carolina came, in the per- son of Ben Tillman, the senator who acts in the senate as he would in precinct pri- mary in Edgefield county. Old Joseph Henry Walker-and may he be returned to the next congress-once made speech in his shirt-seeves on the house side. What would happen if a seantor drew his coat' in the midst of a debate it is impossible to conjecture, but Ben Tillman Is liable to do it any day when the weather provokes.
 The occasion I speak of was when Till man brought his pitchfork with him and proclaimed it. If John c. Calhoun had been vice president that speech would not have been concluded It was coarse and vituperative. It was insulting; it was con- temptuous of the senate. It was scandal ous. It was a denunciation of the presi- dent of the United States. In short, boiled fo itS octi if meant "You fellows and the president and his cabinet are a band of thieves. I am here, the one honest man sought in Sodom, but I am man enough and honest enough to save the whole show" It is a calamity that Archie Dixon was not there to call him to order-the Archie Dixon of the fifties
 No senator called him to order. Perhaps they thought with Sancho Panza, it was waste of father to shave ass, and may hap, they thought with Edmund Burke that it was mighty unproftable to shear a wolf. I remember that I wrote a letter to the Courier-Journal that night and at- tempted to descripe the scene. I thought then, and I know now, that it was the in- tial of a new epoch so far as concerned the OnIlSu SldleS senate. b1dlne lnfeW to In6 winds the tradition of the senate-that a new member must be seen and not heard the first two sessions. So much to flinders did he break that rule that our young sen ator from Indiana has twice played to a full house his first session. But Tillman broke the whole senatorial decalogue. It is true that years ago Henry s. Foote drew a pistol on old Tom Benton, in the senate, and would have shot him if he had not been restrained; it is true that Stephen A. Douglas condoned, if be did not approve, the caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks, but there was no such breach of senatorial etiquette in those days as when Ben Tillman marched down the aisle with his pitchfork on his shoulder and de- nounced the president of the United States.
 Old Lge Hise used to indulge some rather emphatic cussing in his stump speeches and also in his arguments before a jury. They were the volcanic explosions of the sense of justice that dictated the dissent- ing opinion in the Maysville railroad case. Ben Tillman laughs in his speeches-and such a laugh, There is laugh ringing in my ear now, ringing in my dreams It came from the throat of my boyhood sweet heart as she ran up stairs when her father honest man-came out of his bed, inno- cent of drawers, and engaged me in a dis cussion that he closed with the dogmatism, '.I am going to prove to the world that Ben Franklin was a damned old fool" Then laughed; but I was thinking of the laugh of that pretty girl that ran upstairs. And it in nowise echoed Ben Tilman'S laugh, which can only be called sardonic.
 Ben Tillman laughs without mirth. They are mighty dangerous men Ito go projecin' wi " who laugh that way. When Tilman laughs in his speeches your flesh creeps. Now, there is John Harlan-and did you know that R. B. Hays spoiled the best stump speaker in all America when he put