The Presidential campaign of 1848—and the concurrent return of the
Mexican soldiers—seems but yesterday. We were in Nashville, where the
camp fires of the two parties burned fiercely day and night, Tennessee
a debatable, even a pivotal state. I was an enthusiastic politician on
the Cass and Butler side, and was correspondingly disappointed when the
election went against us for Taylor and Fillmore, though a little
mollified when, on his way to Washington, General Taylor grasping his
old comrade, my grandfather, by the hand, called him “Billy,” and
paternally stroked my curls.
Though the next winter we passed in Washington I never saw him in the
White House. He died in July, 1850, and was succeeded by Millard
Fillmore. It is common to speak of Old Rough and Ready as an ignoramus.
I don’t think this. He may not have been very courtly, but he was a
gentleman.
Later in life I came to know Millard Fillmore well and to esteem him
highly. Once he told me that Daniel Webster had said to him: “Fillmore,
I like Clay—I like Clay very much—but he rides rough, sir; damned
rough!”
I was fond of going to the Capitol and of playing amateur page in the
House, of which my father had been a member and where he had many
friends, though I was never officially a page. There was in particular
a little old bald-headed gentleman who was good to me and would put his
arm about me and stroll with me across the rotunda to the Library of
Congress and get me books to read. I was not so young as not to know
that he was an ex-President of the United States, and to realize the
meaning of it. He had been the oldest member of the House when my
father was the youngest. He was John Quincy Adams. By chance I was on
the floor of the House when he fell in his place, and followed the
excited and tearful throng when they bore him into the Speaker’s Room,
kneeling by the side of the sofa with an improvised fan and crying as
if my heart would break.
One day in the spring of 1851 my father took me to a little hotel on
Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol and into a stuffy room, where a
snuffy old man wearing an ill-fitting wig was busying himself over a
pile of documents. He turned about and was very hearty.
“Aha, you’ve brought the boy,” said he.
And my father said: “My son, you wanted to see General Cass, and here
he is.”
My enthusiasm over the Cass and Butler campaign had not subsided.
Inevitably General Cass was to me the greatest of heroes. My father had
been and always remained his close friend. Later along we dwelt
together at Willard’s Hotel, my mother a chaperon for Miss Belle Cass,
afterward Madame Von Limbourg, and I came into familiar intercourse
with the family.
The general made me something of a pet and never ceased to be a hero to
me. I still think he was one of the foremost statesmen of his time and
treasure a birthday present he made me when I was just entering my
teens.
The hour I passed with him that afternoon I shall never forget.
As we were about taking our leave my father said: “Well, my son, you
have seen General Cass; what do you think of him?”
And the general patting me affectionately on the head laughingly said:
“He thinks he has seen a pretty good-looking old fogy—that is what he
thinks!”