Virginia citizen. (Irvington, Va.) 1891-1921, 1904-07-29

NOCddNcll nlSbdhtu SSIlUldJe, anu OF
John Tyler, the president, Historian
Roosevelt appears to know nothing
whatever. Tyler was neither weak
man intellectually nor vacillating
man morally. Had he been these he
would have succeeded himself as
President of the United States. Had
he fallen in with the bank men, as
his present successor has fallen in
with the stand-patters, he, too, would
have had the unanimous nomination
for President of the party that had
elected him Vice President. He was
rended by his party because of his
steadfast adherence to principle.
They said he betrayed the Wings,
when every Wing knew he was
opposed to the bank at the time he
was nominated, just as every Demo
crat knew Grover Cleveland was
opposed to l6 to l when he was
nominated. Tyler's resignation of a
seat in the Senate rather than obey
the instructions of the Virginia Leg
islature to vote for the famous
''Expunging Resolution" was an act
of civic heroism altogether as admir-
able and sublime as the military
heroism that charged up San Juan.
One of Tyler's colleagues in the
Senate from Virginia was Benjamin
w. Leigh, whom Henry A. Wise
thought greater debater than
Webster himself. He went to the
Senate the successor of William O.
Rives, who was INSTRUCTED" out of
his seat by the Virginia legislature
that is, he resigned rather than
obey the instructions, and this same
William q. Rives was the successor
of Tyler when he was "instructed"
out. Leigh was an anti Jackson
man and made a powerful speech
against the 'Expunging" resolution.
He was the chief actor in one of the
most dramatic and thrilling scenes
ever enacted in that body. He was
debating the constitutional iuIunc-
ton "to keep journal" aud in his
account of that occasion, Gov. Wise
says, that Leigh from every source of
written language proved the power
of the verb. "He went to the Ten
Commandments, to the Old and the
New Testaments, to standard profane
writer's, to prose and to poetry, to
prove that it had peculiar strength
of meaning, always conveying the
the same idea of preservation, and
continual preservation. And he
closed with this terrific assault on
Benton, upon whom he gazed with
the blistering eye of hate and the
withering eye of contempt-"And,
Mr. President, in that catechism
which learned at my mothers
knee, | was taught 'to keep-to keep
to keep my hands from picking
and stealing, and my tongue from
evil speaking!"
The effect was terrific. Every one
thought of that episode in Benton's
school life when he was charged
with the larceny Of $40 note from
one of his class mates. What a
Titan the old statesman must have
been to survive such mess Of scan
DIAL that grew out of the finding of
the money secreted in his cravat.
Another Senator from Virginia
was John Randolph, of Roanoke,
more famous as a member of the
House of Representatives, and it was
he Tyler defeated for reelection to
the Senate. He was Americas lierc-
est debater and one of the ablest. A
perfect master of the English
tongue, absolutely independent in
thought, fearless of political conse-
quence to himself. insubordinate
always, free lance ever, an aristo-
crat in personal demeanor, demo-
crat in philosophic speculation, he
was one of the very remarkable men
of our history, genius and a mad
man, thinker and scholar. He
was thrice armed in his knowledge
of the past, in his capacity for terri
BILE invective, in his mastery of
withering sarcasm. Never was there
a public man so much feared. In
him nature played one of her whim-
sical tricks-his was the intellect of
a giant in the body of a valetudina-
rian-to the Forum as Narses to the
field.
James NJ. Mason was another
Virginia Senator, and, L believe, he
held her commission in that great
council longer than any other indi-
vidual. Here was the Roman, Had
the Conscript fathers, who sat in
curule chairs, in dignity and in
despair, when the adventurous Gaul
profaned the Forum-had they to
choose fit colleague from all the
Industrious who have made our coun-
try great, they would not select
Calhoun, nor Thurman, but when
they came to this splendid old VIr-
ginia gentleman they would pause
him they would find imbued with
their invincible spirit; him they
would clothe with their immortal
grandeur.
And his colleague for years was
yet wiser man, one of the wisest of u
wonderful generation, that Robert
Nj. IL. Hunter, chairman of the
Finance Committee, Southern man
without fear and a Democrat with
out reproach, who, for all practical
purposes committed "the crime of
'73," twenty years before 1878, and
two years before John Sherman first
set foot in the District of Columbia.
lie ought to have been President.
Thomas S. Martin was born in
ls47 and educated at the Virginia
Military Institute and the University
of Virginia. He was cadet of the
former school when the great war
of lS6l-'65 was raging. and that in
stitution supplied to the Southern
armies 8 major generals, 81 brigadier
generals, 80 colonels. and l17 can