DEATH OF EX-SENATOR HAYNE OF SOUTH CAROLINA: NOTICE OF HIS LIFE
AND CHARACTER.
Nature had lavished upon him all the gifts which lead to eminence
in public, and to happiness, in private life. Beginning with the
person and manners--minor advantages, but never to be overlooked
when possessed--he was entirely fortunate in these accessorial
advantages. His person was of the middle size, slightly above it
in height, well proportioned, flexible and graceful. His face was
fine--the features manly, well formed, expressive, and bordering
on the handsome: a countenance ordinarily thoughtful and serious,
but readily lighting up, when accosted, with an expression of
kindness, intelligence, cheerfulness, and an inviting amiability.
His face was then the reflex of his head and his heart, and ready
for the artist who could seize the moment to paint to the life. His
manners were easy, cordial, unaffected, affable; and his address so
winning, that the fascinated stranger was taken captive at the first
salutation. These personal qualities were backed by those of the
mind--all solid, brilliant, practical, and utilitarian: and always
employed on useful objects, pursued from high motives, and by fair
and open means. His judgment was good, and he exercised it in the
serious consideration of whatever business he was engaged upon, with
an honest desire to do what was right, and a laudable ambition to
achieve an honorable fame. He had a copious and ready elocution,
flowing at will in a strong and steady current, and rich in the
material which constitutes argument. His talents were various, and
shone in different walks of life, not often united: eminent as a
lawyer, distinguished as a senator: a writer as well as a speaker:
and good at the council table. All these advantages were enforced
by exemplary morals; and improved by habits of study, moderation,
temperance, self-control, and addiction to business. There was
nothing holiday, or empty about him--no lying in to be delivered of
a speech of phrases. Practical was the turn of his mind: industry
an attribute of his nature: labor an inherent impulsion, and a
habit: and during his ten years of senatorial service his name was
incessantly connected with the business of the Senate. He was ready
for all work--speaking, writing, consulting--in the committee-room
as well as in the chamber--drawing bills and reports in private,
as well as shining in the public debate, and ready for the social
intercourse of the evening when the labors of the day were over.
A desire to do service to the country, and to earn just fame for
himself, by working at useful objects, brought all these high
qualities into constant, active, and brilliant requisition. To do
good, by fair means, was the labor of his senatorial life; and I can
truly say that, in ten years of close association with him I never
saw him actuated by a sinister motive, a selfish calculation, or an
unbecoming aspiration.
Thus, having within himself so many qualities and requisites for
insuring advancement in life, he also had extrinsic advantages,
auxiliary to talent, and which contribute to success in a public
career. He was well descended, and bore a name dear to the
South--the synonym of honor, courage, and patriotism--memorable for
that untimely and cruel death of one of its revolutionary wearers,
which filled the country with pity for his fate, and horror for
his British executioners. The name of Hayne, pronounced any where
in the South, and especially in South Carolina, roused a feeling
of love and respect, and stood for a passport to honor, until
deeds should win distinction. Powerfully and extensively connected
by blood and marriage, he had the generous support which family
pride and policy extends to a promising scion of the connection.
He had fortune, which gave him the advantage of education, and of
social position, and left free to cultivate his talents, and to
devote them to the public service. Resident in Charleston, still
maintaining its colonial reputation for refined society, and high
and various talent, he had every advantage of enlightened and
elegant association. Twice happily married in congenial families
(Pinckney and Alston), his domestic felicity was kept complete, his
connections extended, and fortune augmented. To crown all, and to
give effect to every gift with which nature and fortune had endowed
him, he had that further advantage, which the Grecian Plutarch never
fails to enumerate when the case permits it, and which he considered
so auxiliary to the advancement of some of the eminent men whose
lives he commemorated--the advantage of being born in a State where
native talent was cherished, and where the community made it a
policy to advance and sustain a promising young man, as the property
of the State, and for the good of the State. Such was, and is, South
Carolina; and the young Hayne had the full benefit of the generous
sentiment. As fast as years permitted, he was advanced in the State
government: as soon as age and the federal constitution permitted,
he came direct to the Senate, without passing through the House of
Representatives; and to such a Senate as the body then was--Rufus
King, John Taylor of Caroline, Mr. Macon, John Gaillard, Edward
Lloyd of Maryland, James Lloyd of Massachusetts, James Barbour of
Virginia, General Jackson, Louis McLane of Delaware, Wm. Pinkney of
Maryland, Littleton Waller Tazewell, Webster, Nathan Sandford, of
New York, M. Van Buren, King of Alabama, Samuel Smith of Maryland,
James Brown, and Henry Johnson of Louisiana; and many others, less
known to fame, but honorable to the Senate from personal decorum,
business talent, and dignity of character. Hayne arrived among
them; and was considered by such men, and among such men, as an
accession to the talent and character of the chamber. I know the
estimate they put upon him, the consideration they had for him,
and the future they pictured for him: for they were men to look
around, and consider who were to carry on the government after they
were gone. But the proceedings of the Senate soon gave the highest
evidence of the degree of consideration in which he was held. In
the very second year of his service, he was appointed to a high
duty--such as would belong to age and long service, as well as to
talent and elevated character. He was made chairman of the select
committee--and select it was--which brought in the bill for the
grants ($200,000 in money, and 24,000 acres of land), to Lafayette;
and as such became the organ of the expositions, as delicate as
they were responsible, which reconciled such grants to the words
and spirit of our constitution, and adjusted them to the merit and
modesty of the receiver: a high function, and which he fulfilled to
the satisfaction of the chamber, and the country.
Six years afterwards he had the great debate with Mr. Webster--a
contest of many days, sustained to the last without losing its
interest--(which bespoke fertility of resource, as well as ability
in both speakers), and in which his adversary had the advantage of
a more ripened intellect, an established national reputation, ample
preparation, the choice of attack, and the goodness of the cause.
Mr. Webster came into that field upon choice and deliberation,
well feeling the grandeur of the occasion; and profoundly studying
his part. He had observed during the summer, the signs in South
Carolina, and marked the proceedings of some public meetings
unfriendly to the Union; and which he ran back to the incubation
of Mr. Calhoun. He became the champion of the constitution and the
Union, choosing his time and occasion, hanging his speech upon a
disputed motion with which it had nothing to do, and which was
immediately lost sight of in the blaze and expansion of a great
national discussion: himself armed and equipped for the contest,
glittering in the panoply of every species of parliamentary and
forensic weapon--solid argument, playful wit, biting sarcasm,
classic allusion; and striking at a new doctrine of South Carolina
origin, in which Hayne was not implicated: but his friends were--and
that made him their defender. The speech was _at_ Mr. Calhoun,
then presiding in the Senate, and without right to reply. Hayne
became his sword and buckler, and had much use for the latter to
cover his friend--hit by incessant blows--cut by many thrusts: but
he understood too well the science of defence in wordy as well
as military digladiation to confine himself to fending off. He
returned, as well as received blows; but all conducted courteously;
and stings when inflicted gently extracted on either side by
delicate compliments. Each morning he returned re-invigorated to
the contest, like Antæus refreshed, not from a fabulous contact with
mother earth, but from a real communion with Mr. Calhoun! the actual
subject of Mr. Webster's attack: and from the well-stored arsenal of
his powerful and subtle mind, he nightly drew auxiliary supplies.
Friends relieved the combatants occasionally; but it was only to
relieve; and the two principal figures remained prominent to the
last. To speak of the issue would be superfluous; but there was much
in the arduous struggle to console the younger senator. To cope with
Webster, was a distinction: not to be crushed by him, was almost
a victory: to rival him in copious and graceful elocution, was to
establish an equality at a point which strikes the masses: and Hayne
often had the crowded galleries with him. But, equal argument! that
was impossible. The cause forbid it, far more than disparity of
force; and reversed positions would have reversed the issue.
I have said elsewhere (Vol. I. of this work), that I deem Mr.
Hayne to have been entirely sincere in professing nullification
at that time only in the sense of the Virginia resolutions of
'98-'99, as expounded by their authors: three years afterwards he
left his place in the Senate to become Governor of South Carolina,
to enforce the nullification ordinance which the General Assembly
of the State had passed, and against which President Jackson put
forth his impressive proclamation. Up to this point, in writing
this notice, the pen had run on with pride and pleasure--pride in
portraying a shining American character: pleasure in recalling
recollections of an eminent man, whom I esteemed--who did me the
honor to call me friend; and with whom I was intimate. Of all
the senators he seemed nearest to me--both young in the Senate,
entering it nearly together; born in adjoining States; not wide
apart in age; a similarity of political principle: and, I may add,
some conformity of tastes and habits. Of all the young generation
of statesmen coming on, I considered him the safest--the most
like William Lowndes; and best entitled to a future eminent lead.
He was democratic, not in the modern sense of the term, as never
bolting a caucus nomination, and never thinking differently from
the actual administration; but on principle, as founded in a
strict, in contradistinction to a latitudinarian construction of
the constitution; and as cherishing simplicity and economy in the
administration of the federal government, in contradistinction to
splendor and extravagance.
With his retiring from the Senate, Mr. Hayne's national history
ceases. He does not appear afterwards upon the theatre of national
affairs: but his practical utilitarian mind, and ardent industry,
found ample and beneficent employment in some noble works of
internal improvement. The railroad system of South Carolina, with
its extended ramifications, must admit him for its founder, from the
zeal he carried into it, and the impulsion he gave it. He died in
the meridian of his life, and in the midst of his usefulness, and in
the field of his labors--in western North Carolina, on the advancing
line of the great iron railway, which is to connect the greatest
part of the South Atlantic with the noblest part of the Valley of
the Mississippi.
The nullification ordinance, which he became Governor of South
Carolina to enforce, was wholly directed against the tariff system
of the time--not merely against a protective tariff, but against
its fruits--undue levy of revenue, extravagant expenditure; and
expenditure in one quarter of the Union of what was levied upon the
other. The levy and expenditure were then some twenty-five millions
of dollars: they are now seventy-five millions: and the South, while
deeply agitated for the safety of slave property--(now as safe, and
more valuable than ever, as proved by the witness which makes no
mistakes, _the market price_)--is quiet upon the evil which produced
the nullification ordinance of 1832: quiet under it, although that
evil is three times greater now than then: and without excuse, as
the present vast expenditure is the mere effect of mad extravagance.
Is this quietude a condemnation of that ordinance? or, is it of the
nature of an imaginary danger which inflames the passions, that it
should supersede the real evil which affects the pocket? If the
Hayne of 1824, and 1832, was now alive, I think his practical and
utilitarian mind would be seeking a proper remedy for the real
grievance, now so much greater than ever; and that he would leave
the fires of an imaginary danger to die out of themselves, for want
of fuel.