EULOGY ON SENATOR LINN: SPEECHES OF MR. BENTON AND MR.
CRITTENDEN.
IN SENATE: _Tuesday, December 12, 1843_.--
The death of Senator LINN.
The journal having been read, Mr. Benton rose and said:
"Mr. PRESIDENT:--I rise to make to the Senate the formal
communication of an event which has occurred during the
recess, and has been heard by all with the deepest regret. My
colleague and friend, the late Senator Linn, departed this life
on Tuesday, the 3d day of October last, at the early age of
forty-eight years, and without the warnings or the sufferings
which usually precede our departure from this world. He had laid
him down to sleep, and awoke no more. It was to him the sleep
of death! and the only drop of consolation in this sudden and
calamitous visitation was, that it took place in his own house,
and that his unconscious remains were immediately surrounded by
his family and friends, and received all the care and aid which
love and skill could give.
"I discharge a mournful duty, Mr. President, in bringing this
deplorable event to the formal notice of the Senate; in offering
the feeble tribute of my applause to the many virtues of my
deceased colleague, and in asking for his memory the last honors
which the respect and affection of the Senate bestow upon the
name of a deceased brother.
"LEWIS FIELD LINN, the subject of this annunciation, was born
in the State of Kentucky, in the year 1795, in the immediate
vicinity of Louisville. His grandfather was Colonel William
Linn, one of the favorite officers of General George Rodgers
Clark, and well known for his courage and enterprise in the
early settlement of the Great West. At the age of eleven he
had fought in the ranks of men, in the defence of a station in
western Pennsylvania, and was seen to deliver a deliberate and
effective fire. He was one of the first to navigate the Ohio and
Mississippi from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and back again--a
daring achievement, which himself and some others accomplished
for the public service, and amidst every species of danger, in
the year 1776. He was killed by the Indians at an early period;
leaving a family of young children, of whom the worthy Colonel
William Pope (father of Governor Pope, and head of the numerous
and respectable family of that name in the West) became the
guardian. The father of Senator LINN was among these children;
and, at an early age, skating upon the ice near Louisville, with
three other boys, he was taken prisoner by the Shawanee Indians,
carried off, and detained captive for three years, when all four
made their escape and returned home, by killing their guard,
traversing some hundred miles of wilderness, and swimming the
Ohio River. The mother of Senator LINN was a Pennsylvanian by
birth; her maiden name Hunter; born at Carlisle; and also had
heroic blood in her veins. Tradition, if not history, preserves
the recollection of her courage and conduct at Fort Jefferson,
at the Iron Banks, in 1781, when the Indians attacked and were
repulsed from that post. Women and boys were men in those days.
"The father of Senator LINN died young, leaving this son
but eleven years of age. The cares of an elder brother[5]
supplied (as far as such a loss could be supplied) the loss of
a father; and under his auspices the education of the orphan
was conducted. He was intended for the medical profession, and
received his education, scholastic and professional, in the
State of his nativity. At an early age he was qualified for the
practice of medicine, and commenced it in the then territory,
now State, of Missouri; and was immediately amongst the foremost
of his profession. Intuitive sagacity supplied in him the place
of long experience; and boundless benevolence conciliated
universal esteem. To all his patients he was the same; flying
with alacrity to every call, attending upon the poor and humble
as zealously as on the rich and powerful, on the stranger as
readily as on the neighbor, discharging to all the duties of
nurse and friend as well as of physician, and wholly regardless
of his own interest, or even of his own health, in his zeal to
serve and to save others.
[5] General now Senator Henry Dodge.
"The highest professional honors and rewards were before him.
Though commencing on a provincial theatre, there was not a
capital in Europe or America in which he would not have attained
the front rank in physic or surgery. But his fellow-citizens
perceived in his varied abilities, capacity and aptitude for
service in a different walk. He was called into the political
field by an election to the Senate of his adopted State.
Thence he was called to the performance of judicial duties,
by a federal appointment to investigate land titles. Thence he
was called to the high station of senator in the Congress of
the United States--first by an executive appointment, then by
three successive almost unanimous elections. The last of those
elections he received but one year ago, and had not commenced
his duties under it--had not sworn in under the certificate
which attested it--when a sudden and premature death put an end
to his earthly career. He entered this body in the year 1833;
death dissolved his connection with it in 1843. For ten years he
was a beloved and distinguished member of this body; and surely
a nobler or a finer character never adorned the chamber of the
American Senate.
"He was my friend; but I speak not the language of friendship
when I speak his praise. A debt of justice is all that I can
attempt to discharge: an imperfect copy of the _true man_ is all
that I can attempt to paint.
"A sagacious head, and a feeling heart, were the great
characteristics of Dr. LINN. He had a judgment which penetrated
both men and things, and gave him near and clear views of far
distant events. He saw at once the bearing--the remote bearing
of great measures, either for good or for evil; and brought
instantly to their support, or opposition, the logic of a prompt
and natural eloquence, more beautiful in its delivery, and more
effective in its application, than any that art can bestow.
He had great fertility of mind, and was himself the author
and mover of many great measures--some for the benefit of the
whole Union--some for the benefit of the Great West--some for
the benefit of his own State--many for the benefit of private
individuals. The pages of our legislative history will bear the
evidences of these meritorious labors to a remote and grateful
posterity.
"Brilliant as were the qualities of his head, the qualities of
his heart still eclipse them. It is to the heart we look for
the character of the man; and what a heart had LEWIS LINN! The
kindest, the gentlest, the most feeling, and the most generous
that ever beat in the bosom of bearded man! And yet, when the
occasion required it, the bravest and the most daring also.
He never beheld a case of human woe without melting before
it; he never encountered an apparition of earthly danger
without giving it defiance. Where is the friend, or even the
stranger, in danger, or distress, to whose succor he did not
fly, and whose sorrowful or perilous case he did not make his
own? When--where--was he ever called upon for a service, or a
sacrifice, and rendered not, upon the instant, the one or the
other, as the occasion required?
"The senatorial service of this rare man fell upon trying
times--high party times--when the collisions of party too often
embittered the ardent feelings of generous natures; but who ever
knew bitterness, or party animosities in him? He was, indeed,
a party man--as true to his party as to his friend and his
country; but beyond the line of duty and of principle--beyond
the debate and the vote--he knew no party, and saw no opponent.
Who among us all, even after the fiercest debate, ever met him
without meeting the benignant smile and the kind salutation? Who
of us all ever needed a friend without finding one in him? Who
of us all was ever stretched upon the bed of sickness without
finding him at its side? Who of us all ever knew of a personal
difficulty of which he was not, as far as possible, the kind
composer?
"Such was Senator Linn, in high party times, here among us. And
what he was here, among us, he was every where, and with every
body. At home among his friends and neighbors; on the high road
among casual acquaintances; in foreign lands among strangers; in
all, and in every of these situations, he was the same thing. He
had kindness and sympathy for every human being; and the whole
voyage of his life was one continued and benign circumnavigation
of all the virtues which adorn and exalt the character of man.
Piety, charity, benevolence, generosity, courage, patriotism,
fidelity, all shone conspicuously in him, and might extort from
the beholder the impressive interrogatory, '_For what place
was this man made?_' Was it for the Senate, or the camp? For
public or for private life? For the bar or the bench? For the
art which heals the diseases of the body, or that which cures
the infirmities of the State? For which of all these was he
born? And the answer is, 'For all!' He was born to fill the
largest and most varied circle of human excellence; and to crown
all these advantages, Nature had given him what the great Lord
Bacon calls a perpetual letter of recommendation--a countenance,
not only good, but sweet and winning--radiant with the virtues
of his soul--captivating universal confidence; and such as no
stranger could behold--no traveller, even in the desert, could
meet, without stopping to reverence, and saying 'Here is a man
in whose hands I could deposit life, liberty, fortune, honor!'
Alas! that so much excellence should have perished so soon! that
such a man should have been snatched away at the early age of
forty-eight, and while all his faculties were still ripening and
developing!
"In the life and character of such a man, so exuberant in all
that is grand and beautiful in human nature, it is difficult to
particularize excellences or to pick out any one quality, or
circumstance, which could claim pre-eminence over all others.
If I should attempt it, I should point, among his measures for
the benefit of the whole Union, to the Oregon Bill; among his
measures for the benefit of his own State, to the acquisition
of the Platte Country; among his private virtues, to the love
and affection which he bore to that brother--the half-brother
only--who, only thirteen years older than himself had been to
him the tenderest of fathers. For twenty-nine years I had known
the depth of that affection, and never saw it burn more brightly
than in our last interview, only three weeks before his death.
He had just travelled a thousand miles out of his way to see
that brother; and his name was still the dearest theme of his
conversation--a conversation, strange to tell! which turned, not
upon the empty and fleeting subjects of the day, but upon things
solid and eternal--upon friendship, and upon death, and upon
the duties of the living to the dead. He spoke of two friends
whom it was natural to believe that he should survive, and to
whose memories he intended to pay the debt of friendship. Vain
calculation! Vain impulsion of generosity and friendship! One of
these two friends now discharges that mournful debt to him: the
other[6] has written me a letter, expressing his '_deep sorrow
for the untimely death of our friend_, Dr. LINN.'"
[6] General Jackson.
Mr. BENTON then offered the following resolutions:
"_Resolved unanimously_, That the members of the Senate, from
sincere desire of showing every mark of respect due to the
memory of the Hon. LEWIS F. LINN, deceased, late a member
thereof, will go into mourning, by wearing crape on the left arm
for thirty days.
"_Resolved unanimously_, That, as an additional mark of respect
for the memory of the Hon. LEWIS F. LINN, the Senate do now
adjourn."
"Mr. CRITTENDEN said: I rise, Mr. President, to second the
motion of the honorable senator from Missouri, and to express my
cordial concurrence in the resolutions he has offered.
"The highest tribute of our respect is justly due to the
honored name and memory of Senator Linn, and there is not a
heart here that does not pay it freely and plenteously. These
resolutions are but responsive to the general feeling that
prevails throughout the land, and will afford to his widow and
his orphans the consolatory evidence that their _country_ shares
their grief, and mourns for their bereavement.
"I am very sensible, Mr. President, that the very appropriate,
interesting, and eloquent remarks of the senator from Missouri
[Mr. BENTON] have made it difficult to add any thing that will
not impair the effect of what he has said; but I must beg the
indulgence of the Senate for a few moments. Senator Linn was
by birth a Kentuckian, and my countryman. I do not dispute the
claims of Missouri, his adopted State; but I wish it to be
remembered, that I claim for Kentucky the honor of his nativity;
and by the great law that regulates such precious inheritances,
a portion, at least, of his fame must descend to his native
land. It is the just ambition and right of Kentucky to gather
together the bright names of her children, no matter in what
lands their bodies may be buried, and to preserve them as her
jewels and her crown. The name of Linn is one of her jewels; and
its pure and unsullied lustre shall long remain as one of her
richest ornaments.
"The death of such a man is a national calamity. Long a
distinguished member of this body, he was continually rewarded
with the increasing confidence of the great State he so
honorably represented; and his reputation and usefulness
increased at every step of his progress.
"In the Senate his death is most sensibly felt. We have lost a
colleague and friend, whose noble and amiable qualities bound
us to him as with 'hooks of steel.' Who of us that knew him can
forget his open, frank, and manly bearing--that smile, that
seemed to be the pure, warm sunshine of the heart, and the
thousand courtesies and kindnesses that gave a 'daily beauty to
his life?'
"He possessed a high order of intellect; was resolute,
courageous, and ardent in all his pursuits. A decided party
man, he participated largely and conspicuously in the business
of the Senate and the conflicts of its debates; but there was a
kindliness and benignity about him, that, like polished armor,
turned aside all feelings of ill-will or animosity. He had
political opponents in the Senate, but not one enemy.
"The good and generous qualities of our nature were blended in
his character;
'---- and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world--_This was a man_.'"
The resolutions were then adopted, and the Senate adjourned.