The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-10-08

writer. and the paper, printed in a
country village. soon exercised a pow
erful influence in the State and
throughout the South. He also enter
ed upon the practice of law, and IN
a little while he was the greatest adj
vocate in Alabama. These changes
i'm his life were due to financial losses.
He was urged to avail himself of the
benefits of the bankrupt law, but he
sternly refused. and paid every cent
he owed within a very few years.
In 1914 Dixon II. Lewis resigned his
seat in the Twenty eighth Congress
to become a Senator at the other end
of the Capitol, and Yancey was elect
ed to the vacancy. He was then thirty
years of age. When he got to Wash
ington Mr.. Calhoun, whom he had OPP
posed in his youth, but with whom
he was now in general accord. was
Secretary of State. and sent him word
mot to do his best in his first encoun-
ter" Thomas l.. Clingman, member
from North Carolina and a Wing,
made a bitter speech against the pol
icy of the Southern Democrats, and
Yancey was selected to reply. OF his
speech a literary gentleman who was
present wrote:
Great was the expectation in reia-
tion to Yancey's talents as an orator,
but it fell infinitely below what truth
and Justice warrant. His diction is
rich and flowing; he is at once terri
bly, severe in denunciation and satire
and again overpoweringly cogent in
argument and illustration, but ever
Gignified and statesmanlike. He is
comparable to no predecessor, be-
cause no one ever united so many
qualities of the orator. He stands
alone, and has attained a name and
an elevation which is glorious and UNI
approachable."
Clingman was a peppery man, game
as a fighting cock, and as a result of
the debate, he and Yancey had a hos
tile meeting and exchanged shots af-
ter the usual correspondence. Cling
man fired first, and when Yancey re-
turned the fire the constables had ar
rived on the field and were within a
few feet of him to make arrest.
Stephen A. Douglas was also mem
Der of the Twenty-eighth Congress
and there sprang up between him and
Yancey a warm and cordial personal
friendship that even withstood the
passions that were engendered by the
Kansas troubles. If Yancey had seer
the North and West as they actually
were, if he had had the personal ex-
perience and the personal contact with
those peoples Douglas had, it is al.
together probable that Yancey woulo
have abandoned the punctilio and EN-.
braced Douglas idea of popular SOW
ereignty." That would have made
Douglas President in 1861. Douglas
and Tilden were the only two mer
of that period who had clear con
ception of the situation. They knew
that all the constitutions and all tn;
laws in the world would never make
another slave State unless it was IL
that region we now know as Okla
homa and Indian Territory. Nature
had made Kansas a grain State, and
therefore, a free State, for the climate
In which corn and wheat flourish is M
| home for the African. Cotton, cane
and rice are his crops. He is a fail
ure in the tobacco patch, in the corn
field, and in the wheat belt. Yancey
/ too, knew that Kansas would never
be slave State, whatever its consti
tuition and laws, but he was contend
ing for the punctilio of the law: H.
said: ''The Constitution gives me thu
/ right to take my slaves to Kansas am
hold them there as slaves" If thu