A FINANCIAL CRASH.
A WONDERFUL MEMORY--A NATION WITHOUT DEBT--CRUSHING THE NATIONAL
BANK--RISE OF STATE BANKS--INFLATED CURRENCY--GRAND FLARE-UP--TAKE CARE
OF YOURSELF--COMMENCING ANEW--FAILING TO REACH AN OBTUSE HEART--KING
ALCOHOL DOES HIS WORK--PRENTISS AND FOOTE--LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG--A
NOBLE SPIRIT OVERCOME--CHARITY COVERETH A MULTITUDE OF SINS.
The rare combination of the elements of the mind in Mr. Prentiss is
only occasionally met with in time. Judgment, imagination, and memory
were all transcendent and equal in their respective powers. With such a
mind, everything possible to man may be accomplished. The invention is
rapid; the combining and applying responds as rapidly; the fitting and
the proper wait on these in the judgment, and the emanation of the
whole is perfect. The imagination conceives, the memory retains, and
the judgment applies. The consummate perfection of all of these
elements in one mind, assures greatness. Charles James Fox, one of
England's ablest statesmen, said this combination, organized in the
brain of Napoleon, was more complete than had existed with any man
since the days of Julius Cæsar, and would have made him transcendently
great in anything to which he might have addressed his powers. As a
poet, he would have equalled Homer; as a lawyer, the author of the
Pandects; as an architect, Michael Angelo; as an astronomer, Newton or
Galileo; as an actor, Garrick, or his beloved Talma--as he had equalled
Cæsar and Hannibal, and greatly surpassed Marlborough, Frederick the
Great, and Charles XII.; as an orator, Demosthenes; and as a statesman,
the greatest the earth ever knew.
This combination in the mind of Prentiss, with the great development of
the organ of language, made him the unrivalled orator of his age. His
powers of memory were so great as to astonish even those eminently
gifted in the same manner. In reading, he involuntarily committed to
memory, whether of prose or poetry. He seemed to have memorized the
Bible, Shakspeare, Dryden, Ben Jonson, Byron, and many others of the
modern poets. The whole range of literature was at his command: to read
once, was always to remember. This capacity to acquire was so great
that he would in a month master as much as most men could in twelve.
It appeared immaterial to what he applied himself, the consequence was
the same. Scientific research, or light literature; the ordinary
occurrences of the day, recorded in the newspapers, or detailed by an
occasional visitor--all were remembered, and with truthful exactness.
Dates, days, names, and events fastened upon his memory tenaciously,
and remained there without an effort. Hence, the fund of information
possessed by him astonished the best informed, who were gray with years
and reading. The exuberance of his imagination continually supplied new
and beautiful imagery to his conversation; and in private intercourse,
such was the rich purity of his language, and his ideas so bold and
original, that all were willing listeners: no one desired to talk if
Prentiss was present and would talk.
The disasters which followed the commercial crisis of 1837 crushed
almost every interest in Mississippi: especially was this true of the
planting, the great interest of the State. On the healthy condition of
him who tills the soil depends that of every other interest. The rapid
rise in cotton, commencing in 1832, from the increased demand all over
the world for cotton fabrics, caused a heavy immigration to the fertile
cotton-lands of the West, and particularly to the extensive and newly
acquired lands of Mississippi. The world was at peace, and great
prosperity was universal; money was cheap, or rather its
representative, bank paper. The system of finance, so wisely conceived
and put in practical operation subsequently to the war of 1812, had
been disturbed by being made an element in the political struggles of
party. It had paid the war debt, and all the expenses of the
Government--furnished a uniform currency, equal to, and at the holder's
will convertible into coin. Its face was the nation's faith, and its
credit equal in New York, London, and Calcutta. A surplus fund was
accumulating in the United States Treasury, and the unexampled instance
of a nation out of debt, and with an accumulating surplus of money in
her treasury, was presented to the world by the United States.
The political economist, from this fact, would naturally infer that the
people were heavily taxed: not so; there was not on earth a people who
contributed, in proportion to their means, so little to the support of
their Government. The tax-gatherer of the nation was never seen or
known in the house of any citizen; he knew not that he contributed one
dollar to the public treasury. So admirably was the source of revenue
contrived, that no man knew or felt he paid a national tax. The Bank of
the United States received and disbursed the moneys arising from
customs, or tariffs upon imports, without one cent of expense to the
Government; affording at the same time every healthy facility to the
commerce of the country--holding in check and confining the local State
banks to a legitimate business--and was the most complete and perfect
fiscal agent ever organized. In the struggle for party ascendency, the
idea was conceived of using the bank in aid of one of the factions
which divided the country. The machinators of this scheme failed to
accomplish it, and, being in power at the time, determined to destroy
it, upon the plea of its unconstitutionality, and of having been used
to overturn the Government--that is, the party in power. It was
declared dangerous to the liberties of the country.
At the expiration of its charter, then approaching, it was refused a
renewal. So intimately was it connected with every interest in the
country, that its passing out of existence threatened universal
bankruptcy. Its branches located at every important commercial point,
its credit was universally employed. It furnished exchange at almost a
nominal rate upon every commercial city of the world, and permeated
every transaction, giving health and vigor as the circulating fluid
does the animal system.
Suddenly to arrest and destroy this, was universal ruin. But to serve
the behest of party in a double form, it was crushed. But a substitute
was proposed by the party interested, and upon whom the responsibility
rested--the creation of State banks without limit, which were
recommended to discount liberally to the people, and supply the wants
created by the withdrawal of the capital and accommodations of the
national bank. This recommendation was literally and instantly obeyed.
In every State where the dominant party held control--and they did so
throughout the South and West--the legislatures made haste to create,
without limit, State banks, with power to flood the country with
irresponsible bank paper. Each assumed that it must supply not only its
portion, but the entire amount of the banking capital withdrawn, and
double or treble the circulation. The natural consequence was immense
inflation of the currency, or circulating medium, and the rapid
appreciation of every species of property in price. Everybody and every
interest flourished most prosperously--gaunt poverty had fled the land,
and bloated abundance laughed in every home. Suddenly men sprang into
importance who a little while before were humble artizans or employed
in the meanest capacities. A new El Dorado had been discovered;
fortunes were made in a day, without enterprise or work; and unexampled
prosperity seemed to cover the land as with a golden canopy--forests
were swept away in a week; labor came in crowds to the South to produce
cotton; and where yesterday the wilderness darkened over the land with
her wild forests, to-day the cotton plantation whitened the
earth--production was quadrupled--labor doubled in value, land rose to
fearful prices, the wildest extravagance obtained; costly furniture,
expensive equipages, ostentatious display--all were contributing to
hasten the catastrophe. The wise saw what was impending, and the
foolish thought it impossible. All of this was based on credit. The
banks were irresponsible, for they were without capital: they had
created a credit and loaned it in the shape of bank paper to every one.
Finally, the hour came when all was to be paid for. The banks
failed--like the fame of woman, a whisper destroys it; so a whisper
blew away the banks. They could not redeem their promises to pay. These
were no longer available for currency: they had driven from the country
the coin, and there was no money. The merchants failed, the planters
failed, money appreciated to the gold standard, and property
correspondingly depreciated; and ruin--financial ruin--swept over the
country as a consuming fire.
Nowhere was this destruction so complete as in Mississippi. The people
of the State had been collected from all the States of the West and
South. There was no common bond but interest; a healthy public
sentiment, which must result from a homogeneous population, was
unknown; there was no restraining influence upon the conduct of men,
save only the law, and, for the want of efficient administration, this
was almost powerless. Every one was making haste to be rich;
speculation was wild, and everyday was witnessing transactions of
doubtful morality. Society was a chaos, and _sauve qui peut_, or, take
care of yourself, the rule. Every one who owed money, however
inconsiderable the sum, was ruined. Under such circumstances, Prentiss
determined on removing from Mississippi, and selected New Orleans for
his future home. The civil law, or Roman Code, was the law in
Louisiana, and materially differed from the common or English law,
which was the law of authority in Mississippi. Very few lawyers coming
from the common-law States, have ever been able to succeed in
Louisiana, especially after having practised in other States for any
length of time. They have not only to learn the civil law, but to
unlearn the common. Some, who did not know the extraordinary powers of
Prentiss's mind, feared he, like many others who had made the attempt,
would fail; but, almost from the moment of his advent at the New
Orleans bar, his success was complete. To realize the expectations of
the public, required abilities and attainments of the highest order.
Fame had heralded his name and powers to every one: all had and did
expect from him more than from any other man, and none were
disappointed. From this time forward he eschewed politics, and devoted
himself to his profession.
Some years before leaving Mississippi, Prentiss had married Miss
Williams, of Adams County. This lady was the daughter of James C.
Williams, a large planter; her mother was a Percy, descended from the
proud Percys of Northumberland, and was a most accomplished and
intellectual woman. Her position was the first among the first, and her
birth, blood, and attainments entitled her to the distinction. Her
daughter, grown up under her eye and training, was the mother's equal,
and fit companion for the man of her choice.
Prentiss had lost everything in the general crash, and was commencing
anew, with a growing family to provide for. His business rapidly
increased, and his displays at the Bar were frequent and wonderful.
Some of these, recited here, might, if such a necessity existed, serve
to illustrate his wonderful powers; but there are parties living whose
feelings might suffer, and hence I forbear. It is my earnest wish, in
recording these recollections, to offend no one; nor will I "set down
aught in malice."
The ardent and excitable temperament of Prentiss, combined with his
social qualities, required constant excitement. When employed with the
duties of his profession, or engaged in any matter of business
pertaining to politics, or his relations in any capacity with the
world, requiring attention, he was sufficiently excited to afford
escape for the restlessness of his mind; nor did this man seem fatigued
in such occupations sufficiently to require repose and rest. On the
contrary, it seemed to whet his desire for fiercer and more consuming
excitement. Whenever he went abroad, the crowd followed him, and the
presence of the increasing mass stimulated his feelings to mild, social
delight, and this led him too frequently to indulge beyond a proper
temperance in the exhilaration of wine. This, superadded to the fire of
his genius, was wearing fearfully his vigorous physique.
For the first time, in the case of fraud against James Irwin, in which
he made one of the most powerful efforts of his life, he manifested
mental as well as physical fatigue. It was my good fortune to listen to
that speech made to a New Orleans jury. I had listened many times to
his speeches, and had thought some of these could never be surpassed by
any man, not even by himself, and especially that delivered in Faneuil
Hall, Boston, and the one delivered from the steps of the court-house
at Vicksburg, after returning from his political campaign when a
candidate for Congress. But this one was even grander and more powerful
than any I had ever heard from him. Returning from the court-house with
him upon that occasion, I remarked a flagging in the brilliancy of his
conversation. For a moment he sat silent in the carriage, and then
remarked: "I was never so much fatigued; I am afraid I am getting old.
I have not an idea in my brain."
"Certainly, you have poured out enough to-day to empty any brain," was
my reply; "and you should be content not to have another for a month.
But I am sorry your invective was so severe."
"Ah! my old friend," he continued, "he deserved it all! From my heart I
feel he deserved it all! The magnitude of his iniquities inspired the
rebuke, and I exhausted my quiver in the attempt to pierce his shame;
but I failed. The integuments of his sensibility are armor against the
shafts from my bow; and I feel the failure, but I don't regret the
attempt: the intention was as sincere as the failure has been signal."
"Why, what do you mean?" I asked; "for, assuredly, you have to-day made
the most powerful and telling speech of your life."
"Yes, telling upon the audience, perhaps, but not upon the victim--he
escapes unscathed. I care nothing for the crack of the rifle, if the
bullet flies wide of the mark. I wanted to reach his heart, and crush
it to remorse; but I have learned his moral obtusity is superior to
shame. I have failed in my attempt."
This speech was followed by a challenge to Prentiss from the son of
Irwin. This was promptly accepted, and a meeting was only prevented by
the interference of parties from Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
The settlement was honorable to both parties. Soon after, young Irwin
died by his own hand. He was a youth of brilliant parts, and promised a
future of usefulness and distinction.
The habits of Prentiss were daily growing worse--the excitement he
craved he found in the intoxicating bowl. The influence of his lovely
and loving wife greatly restrained him; but when she was away, he was
too frequently surrounded by his friends and admirers, and in social
conviviality forgot the prudence of restraint, and indulged to excess.
The more this indulgence was tolerated, the more exacting it became.
The great strength of his nervous system had successfully resisted the
influence of these indulgences, and after potations deep and long, it
was remarked that they had no inebriating effect upon him. This nervous
strength by degrees yielded to the power of alcohol, and as he advanced
in life it was apparent the poison was doing its work.
Now it was that he found it necessary, in order to stimulate his genius
to its wonted activity and vigor, on occasions demanding all his
powers, to resort to artificial stimulants. His friends urged upon him
temperance, to forbear altogether, to visit his mother and friends in
Maine, recreate amidst the scenes of his childhood, and to do so in
company with his wife and his lovely children, for they were all a
parent could wish them to be. He promised to do so. Sad memory brings
up our last meeting, and when the subject of his intemperance was the
theme of our parting conversation. We stood together upon the portico
of the St. Charles Hotel; he was preparing to leave for Maine; I was
leaving for my home in the country.
"You still keep the old cane," he said, taking from my hand his gift
many years before.
"I shall do so, Prentiss, while I live."
He continued to view the head, upon which our names were engraved, and
a melancholy shade gathered upon his features. "Oh, were I," said he,
"to-day, what I was the day I gave you this!" and he paused many
minutes; still the shade darkened, and his voice trembled as he
proceeded: "We were both young then, and how light our hearts were! We
have gathered about us household gods, and we worship them; how sad to
think we shall have to leave them! You married long before I did. Your
children will grow up while yet you live; I shall never see mine other
than children."
"Say not so, Prentiss. You are yet young. You have but one thing to do,
and you will live to see those boys men; and what may you not expect of
them, with such a mother to aid you in rearing them!"
"I know what you mean, and I know what I will; but, like Laocoon in the
folds of the snake, the serpent of habit coils around me, and I fear
its strength is too powerful for mine. Perhaps, had my angel of to-day
been my angel when first a man, I had never wooed the scorpion which is
stinging me to death; but all I can do I will. This is all I can
promise. Keep this stick to remember me: it will support you when
tottering with the weight of years, and with strength will endure. When
age has done her work, and you are in the grave, give it to your son to
remember us both. Farewell."
With a clasp of the hand we parted, never to meet again. Not long
after, he died at Natchez, and, in the family cemetery of the Sargents,
sleeps near the city.
But few of the speeches of Prentiss were ever reported, and though they
are like and have the ring of the true metal, yet not one of them is
correctly reported. The fragment given in a former chapter is the
report of one who heard it, and who wrote it the very hour of its
delivery, to myself, that the information of the acquittal might be
communicated to the friends of the lady Judge Wilkinson was about to be
married to, who resided in my immediate neighborhood. There is not a
word of it in the reporter's speech, which was some time after written
out from notes. These speeches, with the traditions of his fame, will
serve to perpetuate his memory as perhaps the most gifted man, as an
orator, that adorned his generation.
In stature he was below the ordinary standard, and his lameness seemed
to dwarf even this. His head was large, round, and high; his forehead
expansive, high, and rising almost perpendicularly above his eyes,
which were gray, deep set, and brilliant; his nose was straight and
beautifully chiselled, thin, and the nostrils large, and swelling and
expanding when excited. In speaking, his eyes blazed with a most
peculiar expression. His chin was broad, square, and strong. His mouth
was the most striking feature of his face--large and flexible, with a
constant twitching about the corners. The entire contour of the face
indicated humor, combined with firmness. This latter trait was also
indicated in the large, strong under jaw--no trait was more prominent
in his character than this. Yet he was slow to anger, and always
conciliatory in language and manners. He was charitable in the extreme
toward others for any laches in principle; always ready to find an
excuse for the short-comings of others. Yet no man adhered more closely
and more steadily to his principles and opinions. He never gave an
insult, unless greatly provoked, but never failed to resent one; always
loath to quarrel, but, once in, bore himself like a man, and a brave
one. The high oval crown of his head confessed high moral qualities;
here the moral organs were in wonderful development. Too generous to be
malicious, he was ever ready to forgive, and too noble to permit his
worst enemy to be slandered in his presence.
There was once a quarrel between Prentiss and that erratic man of
wonderful genius, H.S. Foote. This culminated in a hostile meeting, in
which Foote was wounded. In their impulsiveness these two were very
like, as also in the generosity of their natures. Neither bore the
other malice beyond the conflict, and neither ever permitted an insult
to be offered to the name of the other in his absence. A short time
after this affair, Prentiss was with some friends in Cincinnati. There
is always to be found men who swell their importance by toadying men of
character and eminence. Such are as frequently found in Cincinnati as
elsewhere.
One of these had sought out Prentiss, and was attempting to make
himself agreeable to him by abusing Foote: this abuse wound up by
denouncing the distinguished Mississippian as a dog. Prentiss turned
sharply upon him with the exclamation: "If he is a dog, sir, he is our
dog, and you shall not abuse him in my presence!" The discomfiture of
the toady may be easily imagined; he slunk away, nor did he again
obtrude his unwanted presence upon Prentiss during his stay.
Few men have ever so fastened themselves upon the affections of their
friends as did Prentiss: his qualities of heart and head were
fascinating, almost beyond humanity; none ever met him for a day and
went away unattached; strangers, who knew him not, listening to him,
not only admired, but loved him. He never lost a friend; and all his
enemies were political, or from envy. In the society of ladies he was
extremely diffident and unobtrusive, and always apprehensive lest he
should be unable to entertain them agreeably.
On one occasion, not long before our final parting, he said he had
committed two great errors in his life: leaving his native home to find
one in the South, and not marrying when he first commenced the practice
of law. "My constitution was strong and suited to a northern climate,
and there home-influences would have restrained propensities that have
grown with indulgence, and are threatening in their consequences. I
feel this: I am not the strong man I was; mind and body are failing,
and the beautiful lines of our friend Wild are constantly recurring to
my mind:
"'My life is like the autumn leaf,
Which trembles in the moon's pale ray:
Its hold is frail, its date is brief,
Restless, and soon to pass away.'
"Why did not Wild give his life to literature, instead of the musty
maxims of the law. Little as he has written, it is enough to preserve
his fame as a true poet; and though he has been a member of Congress,
and a distinguished one, a lawyer, and a distinguished one, his fame
and name will only be perpetuated by his verse, so tender, so touching,
and so true to the feelings of the heart. It is the heart that he lives
in. Ah! it is the heart only which forms and fashions the romance of
life; and without this romance, life is scarcely worth the keeping.
"'Tis midnight--on the mountains brown
The cold round moon shines deeply down;
Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light,
So wildly, spiritually bright;
Who ever gazed upon them shining,
And turned to earth without repining,
Nor wished for wings to flee away,
And mix with their eternal ray?'
"We feel as Byron did when he imagined these lines. I see him with
upturned eyes gazing on the blue expanse above, watching the stars;
thinking of heaven; feeling earth, and hating it, and his soul flying
away from it, to meet and mingle in the firmament above him with the
spiritually bright and heavenly pure brilliants sparkling on her
diadem. How mean--how miserably mean this earth, and all it gives! One
diamond in a world of dirt. The soul that loves and contemplates the
eternal--shall it shake off at once the miserable clod, and in a moment
glisten among the millions, pure, bright, and lovely as these? There is
but one idea of hell--eternal torture! But every man has his own idea
of heaven: yet, with all, its chiefest attribute is eternal happiness.
The wretch craves it for rest; he who never knew care or suffering,
desires it for enjoyment; and the wildest imagination sublimates its
bliss to love and beauty. And God only knows what it is, or in what it
consists. But we shall know, and I, in a little time. On Him who gave
me being I confidently rely for all which is destined in my future."
His spirit was eminently worshipful. The wisdom and goodness of God he
saw in every creature; he contemplated these as a part of the grand
whole, and saw a union and use in all for the harmony of the whole; he
saw all created nature linked, each filling and subserving a part, in
duties and uses, as designed, and, his mind filled with the
contemplation, his soul expanded in love and worship of the great
Architect who conceived and created all.
With all this might of mind and beauty of soul, there lurked a demon to
mar and destroy. It worked its end: let us draw a veil over the
frailties of poor human nature, and, in the admiration of the genius
and the soul, forget the foibles and frailties of the body.