agony and grief, followed presently by the low, touching wail from the
stricken heart of the nation. And then, the louder and the longer for
the delay, came the cry for vengeance, which burst from the lips of a
whole people. The promptness and dispatch with which the British frigate
acted indicated deliberate design; and the suspicion instantly flashed
across the public mind that the consular authorities of England in our
port were privy to its execution. The outbreak in Norfolk was terrible.
Had Col. Hamilton, the consul, not been long and intimately known and
loved by the people, he would have been taken from his house and
gibbeted on the square, as an expiation of the blood of our countrymen,
wantonly shed, in a time of peace, by a British captain. An unfortunate
British officer, who came up from one of the four frigates in the bay,
had well-nigh been torn in pieces by the infuriated people. In such a
conjuncture the ordinary forms of government were overlooked, and the
citizens in full assembly, the venerable Mathews in the chair,
appointed, as in the days of the Revolution, a Committee of Safety. A
preamble, setting forth in becoming terms the outrage on the Chesapeake,
was adopted, and it was resolved that there should be no intercourse
with the British frigates in our waters, or with their agents, until the
decision of the federal government was known, under the penalty of being
deemed infamous; and the Committee of Safety, consisting of fourteen of
our most worthy citizens, some of whose descendants are now within the
sound of my voice, were authorized to take such measures as the
emergency demanded.[6]
As soon as Commodore Douglas read the resolves of the Norfolk meeting,
he addressed an insolent note to the mayor of the borough, in which he
declared that if the resolutions were not _instantly annulled_, he would
prohibit every vessel bound in or out of Norfolk from proceeding to her
place of destination. This letter was written on board the Bellona
frigate, on the third of July. "You are aware," said this haughty
Briton, "that the British flag never has, nor ever will be insulted
with impunity." After some further remarks, he adds: "It therefore rests
with the inhabitants of Norfolk either to engage in a war, or remain on
terms of peace." And he closed his letter by saying that he had
proceeded with his squadron, which consisted of four fifty-gun frigates,
to Hampton Roads, to await the answer of the mayor of Norfolk, which he
hoped would be forwarded without delay.
It is in this stage of the proceedings, which he probably regulated from
the first, that I shall introduce Mr. Tazewell to your notice. No
community was ever placed in a more delicate dilemma. The stoppage of
our commerce would produce great inconvenience, and there was no force
which the federal government could command at all competent to raise the
embargo; and at any moment blood might be shed. The people, meantime,
were in a tempest of rage. I have heard, from men who saw those times,
that, if the British commodore had put his threat in execution--if, in
so doing, as would have been inevitable, he had taken another human
life, or shed another drop of American blood, not only would war have
followed, but something worse than war, which, even at this distance of
time, we tremble to contemplate. The blood of innocent Englishmen would
have been shed everywhere as a propitiation to the manes of our murdered
countrymen. Under these circumstances Tazewell dictated the celebrated
letter of the mayor of Norfolk, which was admired over the whole
country, not only for its spirit, but for the admirable tact with which
it put the British commodore in the wrong. That letter, which was
written on the Fourth of July, begins with this paragraph:
"Sir, I have received your menacing letter of yesterday. The day on
which this answer is written ought of itself to prove to the subjects of
your sovereign that the American people are not to be intimidated by
menace; or induced to adopt any measures except by a sense of their
perfect propriety. Seduced by the false show of security, they may be
sometimes surprised and slaughtered, while unprepared to resist a
supposed friend. That delusive security is now passed forever. The late
occurrence has taught us to confide our safety no longer to anything
than to our own force. We do not seek hostility, nor shall we avoid it.
We are prepared for the worst you may attempt, and will do whatever
shall be judged proper to repel force, whensoever your efforts shall
render any act of ours necessary. Thus much for the threats in your
letter."
Of this letter Tazewell was appointed to be the bearer, and, attended by
a friend whose son is now a leading member of our bar,[7] delivered it
to Commodore Douglas on board the Bellona frigate in the presence of the
captains of the fleet. An account of the scene is fortunately preserved
by his own pen in a letter to the Mayor; and it is plain to see that the
British captains, among whom was Sir Thomas Hardy, to whom Lord Nelson
addressed in his dying moments that affectionate request, surprised and
overwhelmed by the address and ability of Tazewell, recanted all their
threats; and in their letter of the 5th breathed nothing but amity and
peace. Whoever will read the letter of Commodore Douglas of the 3d of
July, and his letter of the 5th, will see the most amusing instance of
backing out in the annals of diplomacy. The federal government now took
the case in hand, and the committee of safety in an eloquent address
resigned the authority with which they had been invested by the people.
One of the obvious results of the peace of 1815 with Great Britain was
the active employment of our commercial marine. During the war the seeds
of new enterprises had been sown, and much of that capital which had
previously been employed in navigation had been diverted, and fresh
capital was required in its place. There was a general desire for the
creation of new banks; and as the principles of banking, which have
become more familiar since, were in 1816 comparatively unknown to those
who composed a majority of the assembly, it was important that Norfolk
should be ably represented in the assembly. At this time the existing
banks, which had suspended during the war, had not resumed the payment
of specie. On the subject of banks, Tazewell though brought up by men
who had been almost ruined by a paper currency and hated the name, his
own father having been one of the most active statesmen in forcing a
resumption of specie payments after the peace of 1783, was not unwilling
that commercial men should employ the agency of banks under proper
restrictions; and having been elected by the people of Norfolk to the
House of Delegates without his knowledge and during his absence from
home, he took his seat in that body in 1816. Let it be remembered, that
when he took this trust from the people of Norfolk, he was constantly
engaged in the highest duties of his profession; that he was not only
employed in courts, but was consulted by foreign clients--by the
merchants of London and by the Court of Rome; and that his absence from
town in the performance of his duties in the assembly would result in
the loss of thousands at a time when he was far from being a wealthy
man; and we will have some idea of the principles which guided his
conduct in respect of the public service. He sought nothing--he asked
nothing from public bodies or from the people, but he recognized the
obligation resting on every citizen to serve his country; and when an
emergent case occurred, and he was called out by the people, he never
declined office, but entered into it at every personal sacrifice,
performing its duties with such success and such ability as to leave an
impression upon the times in which he lived.[8] He practically defeated
the wild banking schemes of the session by the insertion of a specie
clause which was readily adopted by the friends of those measures, but
which, as was designed, made their schemes impracticable.
But his great effort in the assembly of 1816 was his speech on the
Convention bill of that year. He spoke in reply to the late Gen. Smythe
of Wythe; and in an argument of uncommon power, which formed one of the
eloquent traditions of the House when I took my seat in it twelve years
later, he answered the objections urged against the existing
constitution, and sustained that instrument in all its length and
breadth. His speech produced a wonderful effect upon all who heard it.
The late Philip Doddridge, one of the ablest and most decided of all Mr.
Tazewell's opponents in state and federal politics, but ever abounding
in that magnanimity which flourishes most in the finest minds, always
spoke of the argument of Mr. Tazewell in reply to Gen. Smythe as
extraordinary--as surpassing any that he ever heard in a deliberative
assembly. He told me so in conversation, and he afterwards spoke of it
in the same exalted strain in the House of Delegates and in the
Convention of 1829. The result of the Convention discussion was, that,
though a bill calling a Convention passed the House by a small majority,
it was lost in the Senate; and a compromise was effected between the
East and the West by reorganizing the basis of representation in the
Senate on white population according to the census of 1810. In this as
on most other occasions the testimony magnifying the speeches of
Tazewell come from a hostile quarter.
His election to the Senate of the United States in 1824 was one of the
severest trials of his life. Having withdrawn alike from the inferior
and appellate courts, he anxiously desired to spend the reminder of his
days in the bosom of his family, and to mingle no more in public
affairs. To undertake any special service in behalf of his country was
always a grateful employment; but to leave his home for months, and to
be engaged in the monotonous routine of deliberative bodies, was most
distasteful to him; but, true to the great maxim of his life--never to
seek or to decline a public trust--he accepted the appointment; and took
his seat in the early part of January, 1825. A casual view of his career
in that body, which extended from 1825 to 1833--a period of nearly eight
years--during which he held, at least in the estimation of Virginia, if
not of the whole Union, the foremost place, would alone occupy the brief
hour allotted me on the present occasion. The exciting questions of that
exciting period would pass in review; and the ashes are too thinly
spread over the smouldered fires of those days yet to be trodden with
safety, and certainly not with pleasure by some of those who hear me,
and who heartily joined in decreeing a tribute to the memory of Mr.
Tazewell. I will merely allude to two or three speeches and writings,
which the student of history may consult as specimens of parliamentary
ability, and as eminently displaying the caste of Mr. Tazewell's
intellectual character as well as his views on political subjects.
His _début_ in the Senate was made on the bankrupt bill of that
session--not a regular speech, but a searching examination of the
details of the bill, which he exposed with such effect that its friends
substantially gave it up in despair. His first serious speech was
delivered on the 21st day of the same month in which he had taken his
seat, on his own motion to strike out the third section of the bill for
the suppression of piracy in the West India seas, which had been
reported from the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and had been introduced
by a forcible speech from its chairman, who was also his colleague--a
name to be pronounced with respect by every Virginian--the venerable
James Barbour then the acknowledged head of the Senate. The section
proposed to be stricken out authorized the President of the United
States in a time of profound peace to declare, on the representations of
a naval officer, any of the ports of Spain in the West Indies in a state
of blockade. The bill was likely to pass without serious opposition,
when it arrested the attention of Mr. Tazewell, who, then fresh from his
great discussions of the law of prize, exposed the danger of its
provisions in an argument which at once placed him at the head of the
Senate, and was read, though in a mutilated report, by the whole
country, with admiration and applause. The effect of the speech may be
seen in the fact that the obnoxious section, though upheld by the
eloquent and patriotic patron of the bill, by the gallant Hayne and by
others, was stricken out by the decisive vote of 37 to 10. Had it
remained in the bill, in less than ninety days it might have produced a
war with Spain.[9]
On the election of Mr. John Quincy Adams to the Presidency, and
especially after the delivery of his first message to Congress, he
became hostile to his administration, and opposed its prominent
measures. His most remarkable performance was his speech on the
exclusive constitutional competency of the executive to originate
foreign missions without the advice and consent of the Senate. As a
constitutional thesis, without respect to the time of delivery,--for,
although Mr. Adams asserted the power, he at the same moment waived its
exercise,--as a specimen of his manner of treating a great
constitutional question when numerous authorities and precedents are to
be examined and set aside, this speech deserves to be studied. With the
exception of Gen. Marshall's speech in the case of Jonathan Robbins, it
stands preëminent in our political literature as a model of profound
research, of thorough argumentation, and of overwhelming strength. The
reader at this day feels that he is borne along by a force which is not
only equal to the occasion, but above it, and which it is vain to
resist. The speech is no mean system of logic and of the rules of
evidence in itself. And in connection with this speech I may mention the
speech on the same subject, which he delivered some years later, in
reply to Mr. Livingston, and in which the topic is discussed with new
illustrations. These two speeches alone survive in any fulness of all
his forensic exertions. The speech which Mr. Tazewell himself thought
the best he ever delivered in the Senate, was on some one of the
bankrupt bills of his term of service; but of this speech not a passage
can now be found.
Nor would it be practicable to present here even a condensed view of the
reports which he drew either as the head or as a member of the Committee
of Foreign Affairs. Almost any one of those reports would have built up
a respectable reputation for its author. I shall only specify his report
on the Panama mission, which mainly settled the public mind in relation
to that measure; and his report on the Colonization Society, in which,
incidentally--and by the way, he demonstrated conclusively the
constitutional right of the United States to acquire territory. When it
is remembered that Mr. Jefferson took a different view of this question
at the time of the acquisition of Louisiana, and believed an amendment
to the constitution necessary to the validity of the purchase; the
originality as well as the ability of Mr. Tazewell appear in a favorable
light.
Meantime his reputation had been extending far and wide. In Virginia
some of our older politicians had not become, nor were they ever, fully
reconciled to him in consequence of his course during the
administrations of Jefferson and Madison; but these were gradually
disappearing from the stage, and he now seemed to be regarded by the
great body of the people as the most popular man of his time; and he was
reëlected unanimously to the Senate, or, to speak with strictness, with
only four scattering votes. One instance may show the height on which he
stood at this time. His second election to the Senate was made the order
of the day for the 1st of January, 1829: the day had come; the order was
about to be read from the chair; and I was about to rise in my place in
the House of Delegates to nominate him for reëlection, when a gentleman,
advanced in life, who had rendered valuable service to his country,
hailing, too, from a central part of the State, came to my seat and
implored me to allow him, as the crowning honor of his life, to nominate
Mr. Tazewell for reëlection. I think I may safely affirm, from close
observation at the time both at home and abroad, that the abilities and
character of Mr. Tazewell were held in higher estimation, and even
veneration, in Virginia and out of it, at this period, than those of any
of her statesmen since the retirement of Jefferson and Madison from the
public service. It was a commingled feeling of admiration, awe, and
pride.
It is a coincidence in the lives of Mr. Tazewell and his father, that
the father was elected to the Senate of the United States to fill a
vacancy caused by the resignation of John Taylor of Caroline; and that
the son, after an interval of thirty years from the election of the
father, was chosen to fill the vacancy in the Senate made by the
resignation of the same individual; and that father and son were twice
elected president of the Senate.
The views of Mr. Tazewell on the important topics which arose out of
the efforts of South Carolina in relation to the tariff policy of the
federal government, can only be alluded to in the briefest manner. He
was opposed to the doctrine of nullification as expounded by the South
Carolina school of politicians, and did not regard it as a peaceful and
constitutional mode of redress; while he condemned the doctrines of the
Proclamation of Gen. Jackson as destructive of the rights of the States,
and as opposed to the true theory of our federal system. In a series of
numbers which appeared in the Norfolk Herald and were republished in the
Richmond Enquirer, he traced in the most elaborate of his compositions
extant the history of the formation of the present federal constitution,
and expounded its theory in a strain of argument as nearly approaching a
demonstration as topics of that nature allow. These articles were
published in pamphlet form at the time; and, with the exception of the
numbers of Senex which appeared in the Herald and Enquirer, and were
republished in pamphlet in England, and reviewed in the London
Quarterly, on the policy of Mr. Adams' administration respecting the
West India trade, are the only serial contributions, as far as I know,
he ever made to the periodical press.
The only one of the vexed questions which harassed the administration of
Gen. Jackson that Mr. Tazewell, after his retirement from the Senate,
discussed in public, was the removal of the deposits from the Bank of
the United States by the Treasury order of October, 1833. The reasons of
the Secretary of the Treasury for issuing that order were communicated
in detail to Congress on the 3d of December following; and his report
was discussed in both Houses for several months with an ability and
warmth never before displayed in a congressional discussion. The people
caught the excitement; and public meetings were held in all the
commercial cities; and memorials were forwarded to Congress urging the
immediate restoration of the deposits to the vaults of the bank. Each
memorial, as it was received by a Senator or Representative, was honored
with a speech from some master spirit. And now the most menacing
monetary crisis occurred which the country had ever seen. In a little
less or more than six months the Bank of the United States had shortened
its line of discounts ten millions of dollars; and all the State banks
in self-defence were compelled to follow the example of that great
institution. Confidence ceased to exist. No man in business could look
ahead a single day without fear and trembling. Men spoke in whispers,
and walked doubtfully as if the earth might quake beneath their feet.
The result was a change in the party relations of those who lived in
towns without a parallel in our history. And it was soon seen that a new
party was forming in comparison of which the _tertium quid_ party of
Jefferson's administration was a mere bubble floating on the surface of
the stream. In that tempest was rocked the cradle of that large and
intellectual party, which assumed the appellation of Whig, which won
some splendid victories, which encountered some decisive defeats, which
then slept awhile, and which has recently burnished its armor anew for a
fresh campaign.
Richmond set the example among us of holding meetings of the people,
with a view of urging the restoration of the deposits to the Bank.
Watkins Leigh and Chapman Johnson made on that occasion an appeal to the
people of Virginia in favor of a restoration, which was heard from so
respectable a source with the attention it deserved. The Assembly then
in session, which, when elected, had been favorable to the
administration of Jackson, faltered in their faith, instructed the
senators in Congress to vote for a restoration of the deposits, and on
the resignation of Mr. Rives, who upheld the policy of the
administration, elected Mr. Leigh in his stead. Even the _Richmond
Enquirer_, its polar star momentarily obscured, was tossing helplessly
on that tempestuous sea.
In this state of things, some of the citizens of Norfolk, of both
parties, as those parties had previously stood, highly distinguished by
social position, by talents, by wealth, and by their intimate connection
with our banking institutions, called on Mr. Tazewell, and requested him
to take the chair at a public meeting to be held on the 8th of January,
1834. He consented to do so, and on taking the chair delivered one of
the most graceful, most nervous, and most eloquent speeches that ever
fell from his lips. In language not to be misunderstood, he denounced
the act of removing the deposits from the Bank of the United States,
advised their immediate restoration, and condemned the whole series of
the measures of the President of the United States in relation thereto.
A gentleman happening to be present who had heard Canning, Brougham, and
Sir Robert Peel from the hustings and in the House of Commons, declared
that the speech of Mr. Tazewell fully equalled their grandest efforts on
such occasions; and all who heard it pronounced it a wonderful work of
argument, eloquence, and declamation combined. A few days after the
meeting, Mr. Tazewell was elected Governor of the Commonwealth.
The conduct of Mr. Tazewell on this occasion I leave to history. It was
my misfortune to differ from him, and to strive against him in public
meetings, by resolutions, by speeches, and by essays in the public
prints, and to have been on the side of the victorious party; and I owe
it to candor to say that, after a deliberate investigation of the
arguments and the circumstances of that time with such faculties as God
has bestowed upon me, my views through the twenty-seven years that have
since passed remain unaltered; but now that my illustrious friend is
gone, and as I measure that chasm which his death has made in the
Commonwealth, leaving none equal to him or like him behind, and
especially in my own bosom--a chasm which, at my time of life, can
never, never be closed--I have looked with fear and trembling over all I
said and wrote on that occasion, and I am gratified to find that,
although I spoke with as great freedom of men and things as the
occasion, in my opinion, demanded, I spoke personally of Mr. Tazewell as
a son should speak of a father, and with that exalted respect with which
I ever regarded his colossal character.
Still, if Mr. Tazewell had been a man of narrow mind, our friendship
would have ended, and the instruction and delight which I have derived
from his conversation for the last twenty-seven years--a period in which
I have doubled my own age--would have been lost. But, independent
himself, and the proudest man I ever knew when the faintest shadow of
vassalage was sought to be cast upon him, he valued independence in
others, and his wide experience taught him that the friend who would not
hesitate to stand up firmly against him when he thought him wrong, would
be the last to skulk from his side in the hour of danger, and from the
defence of his memory when his head was low.