Richard Hickman Menefee, who with Henry Clay and Thomas F. Marshall
form the great triumvirate of early Kentucky orators, was born at
Owingsville, Kentucky, December 4, 1809. He was educated at
Transylvania University, and graduated from the law school of that
institution in 1832. He practiced his profession at Mt. Sterling,
Kentucky, for several years, when, in 1836, he was elected to the
Kentucky legislature. In the legislature he won a wide reputation as
an orator, and rapidly became known as the most gifted man of his age
in Kentucky. In the summer of 1837 Menefee made the race for Congress
and, after an exciting campaign, it was found that he had defeated his
opponent, Judge Richard French. In the lower House of Congress Menefee
and Sargeant S. Prentiss of Mississippi were the two young men that
compelled the country's attention and admiration as orators. In 1838
William J. Graves, a Kentucky member of the House, killed Jonathan
Cilley, representative from a Maine district, and the friend of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a duel near Washington City. Menefee was one
of Graves's seconds. This affair of honor was so bitterly condemned on
all sides that Congress was compelled to enact the anti-duelling law.
In July, 1838, the people of Boston tendered Daniel Webster a great
home-coming banquet, in Faneuil Hall, and Menefee responded very
eloquently to a toast to Kentucky. One more session of Congress and he
returned to Kentucky, entering upon the practice of law at Lexington,
where cases pressed fast upon him. He met Henry Clay in the great
Rogers will case of 1840, and Clay got the jury's verdict. Cassius M.
Clay placed Menefee in nomination for the United States Senate in the
Kentucky legislature of 1841, but his ill-health made his election a
hazardous action. A short time before his death he drew up the mature
reflections of his life, in the form of a diary, and this, only
recently published, has added to his fame. Menefee died at Lexington,
Kentucky, February 20, 1841. Thomas P. Marshall pronounced an eulogy
upon him which has taken its rightful place among the masterpieces of
American oratory; and in 1869 a Kentucky county was carved out of
several other counties and named in his honor. While he was not a
constructive statesman, Menefee's fame as an orator seems to grow
greater with the passing of the years.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Speeches and Writings of Thomas F. Marshall_, by W.
L. Barre (Cincinnati, 1858); _Richard Hickman Menefee_, by John
Wilson Townsend (New York, 1907).