The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-01-11
BRILLIANT CAREER OF
SEARGEANT s. PRENTISS
He Was One of the Most Extraordinary Characters
America Has Ever Produced.

Justice Marshall paid him the extrava
giant compliment, Young man, if you
were not the greatest of orators / would
pronounce you the ablest of lawyers"
1t is much to be doubted if Marshall
ever said thai. 1t was not the way he
talked; but the mere suggestion that the
great Chief Justice so expressed himself
is a tribute to the genius of Prentiss. BY
this time his fame was national, and the
Wings drafted him for the stump, and
thousands hung on his words in every
quarter of the Union as the Union then
was.
In 1896 he was elected to Congress, and
the Democrats, who held that the election
was void because there was no vacancy,
caused his seat to be contested. His
speech in his own behalf before the
House of Representatives was perhaps
his greatest effort--at least, it has been
most exploited. He was not yet thirty
years of age, and the audience as select
as the country could then produce. The
opposition to him was led by eminent
men of great talents and great place. In
its ranks was Legare, of South Carolina;
Hunter, of Virginia; Cilly, of Maine;
Howard, of Maryland Bronson, of New
York. Opposed to them were Thomas
Corwin, Richard Menifee, Henry A.
Wise, Willard Fillmore, George Evans,
Caleb Gushing. In the audience were
Clay, Webster, Hugh l.. w hite Thomas
Ewing, and John M. Clayton. Edward
Everett was there. aid SO was John
Quincy Adams, who remembered Henry
and Otis. In the presence was Mrs. Gen.
Eaton, who made a President, and was
yet lovely in the charms that had dis
rupted q Cabinet.
The speech of Prentiss surpassed ex-
pectation and was a mastery presenta-
ton of the law, as we'll as brilliant
presentation of the politics of the case.
Reading it more than three score years
after it's delivery one is struck with the
radical States right sentiment it
breathes and is even startled that he
employs the term Coufederacy when
speaking of the Union of the States
There was no report of the speech, for
the reason that the officials appointed to
that duty declared that they were so
thrilled by the voice and the manner of
the man that it was simply impossible for
them to do other than gaze on him and
listen to his burning periods Afterward
he wrote the speech when his lnspira-
ton was gone, but the written speech
is an extraordinary production. 1t has
this for its closing paragraph:
You sit here, twenty-five sovereign
States in judgment of the most sacred
right of a sister State-that which is to
State what chastity is to a woman, or
honor to a man. Should you decide
oi,1-f I,lat tnaT~ frnY hnT- hTnT fl1a
richest jewel which sparkles there, and
forever bow her head in shame and dis
honor. But if your determination is
taken, if the blow must fall, if the Con-
stitution must bleed, l have but one re-
quest on her behalf to make: When you
decide that she cannot choose her own
representation, at the same moment blot
from the star spangled banner of this
Union the bright star that glitters to the
name of Mississippi but leave the
stripes behind, fit emblem of her degra-
dation."
The question was taken, and the result
tie, Mr.. Speaker Polk gave the casting
vote, and it was against Prentiss, who
never forgave him; and in 1914 he char
acteriZed the then Democratic candidate
for President Of the United States as ''a
blighted burr that has fallen from the
name of the war-horse of the Hermit
age
Prentiss returned to Mississippi, and
made an exhaustive canvass of the dis
trict. He was triumphantly elected, and
served a single term in the American
Congress.
After his term expired Prentiss visited
Boston and accepted an invitation to
make an address in Faneuil Hall. 1t was
a place sacred to liberty long >efore the
embattled farmers resisted the invading
British at Lexington, and had resounded
to the eloquent words Of Otis and the
stern admontions of Sam Adams before
the repeal of the stamp act. 1t was the
rostrum upon which had appeared most
of the great men of New England and
some of the greatest men of America.
Here Storey, Webster and Choate had
pleaded for the Constitution; here Par
ker, Phillips, and Andrews had de-
nounced African slavery, for which New
England was more than a fair share, re-
sponsible; here Summer, Wilson, and
Ashum had baptized the new born Re-
publican party that was to hold the reins
of government many decades, recruit, or
pay armies more puissant than those Of
the great Napoleon and overthrow the
most formidable military force that ever
menaced government.
But 1T was the hall that refused a
funeral to Lincoln, son of Boston, a
child of New England, who fell for his
country at Chapultepec, and the hall that
barred its portals to Webster, the great
est of the great.
Prentlss was child of New England,
VINO had gone among a high spirited and
reckless population on the confines of
civilization. fascinated them by his elo-
Quence, and captivated them by his cour-
age. He had carved his name high-he
had succeeded. He was but thirty years
of age, and the spoiled child of his party
and the spoiled child of his section. He
was the champion of the political senti
ment that had long maintained in Mas
sachusetts. and he was the victim OF
Democratic injustice. 1t is small wonder
that Boston wanted to hear this orator
speak from the platform that Rufus