The Tupelo journal., 1902-09-05
BILL APPS LETTER.
Speaks of Some of the Great Men
of the Past.
Thinks Daniel Webster the Grandest
Man This Country Ever due
A speech the Publishers
Refuse to Print.

"Say nothing unkind concerning
the dead-speak no evil of the Dead"
is the translation of a Latin maxim
that is more than 1000 years old.
Nevertheless, history is made up OF
the character and deeds of notable
and great men, and it is u duty to
study them and profit by their ex-
ample. That Latin maxim was in
tended, no doubt, to apply to our
neighbors who had recently died, and
not to the great public men whose
acts and deeds made up history. The
world had a perfect right to analyze
and criticize the characters of Alex
ander and Caesar and Cromwell n
Bonaparte and Benedict Arnold, but
even these were not settled until a
century or more had passed after
their death. Bonaparte is not set
tied yet, and English, French and
American historians are still ham
mering away at his character and his
deeds. That he was a scourge to
mankind and the age in which he
lived, and a traitor to his devoted
wife, and all to crafty his selfish
ambition, no reflective man can
doubt. The disposition to idolize
great warriors handicaps all young
historians and captivates the people
when one of these fighting men of
fers for office. 1t was this that
elected Taylor and Harrison and
Jackson. How Roosevelt will get
along with his war record for kill
ing bears remains to be seem, but 1
reckon he is relying more on being a
historian and slandering men after
they are dead. He will lose nothingu up
north by telling lies on Jefferson Da-
Wis. He belongs to the same school
of historians that Prof. Goodwin
Smith does-that lying Englishman
who wrote a history of the United
States that was taught in Northern
colleges and said that the rstsettlers
of Virginia were r~enegrades from
England-mostly convicts who were
given choice of the gallows or of ex-
lie to Virginia, and strange to say
they chose the exile.
But L was Eliminating about these
last words of Daniel Webster, who, in
my opinion, was the greatest man
the country ever produced, not the
greatest, but the grandest-the most
godlike. He made many great
speeches, but the greatest of all was
that delivered at Capon Springs,
where he was brave enough to quail
ify all his previous u~tterances con-
corning the rights of the states and
to declare that any state had the
right tt withdraw from the union
when it was unjustly treated, and
that the state was the sole judge of
that. For this he was denied the
privilege of speaking again in Faneuil
hall. For this he was sacrificed in
verse by Whittier. For this that
speech was left out of his published
works-the publishers saying that it
would greatly damage their sale to
have it in. This brings me to the
text 1 started to write about, for 1
have received three letters from cul-
tured gentlemen who tell me that Il
still live" were not Webster's last
words, but there were two more that
the editor suppressed, and those two
were more brandy" These gentle
men concur in saying that Webster
was very fond of brandy and in his
last days INDUCED too much, and dur
ing his last illness his physician kept
him alive on brandy. The morning
he died his physician called and, find
ing him alive, but apparently uncon-
scious, said to the attendant: HE
cannot live but a little while, but if
he should live until eight o'clock, give