DEATH OF SENATOR PORTER, OF LOUISIANA: EULOGIUM OF MR. BENTON.
MR BENTON. I rise to second the motion which has been made to render
the last honors of this chamber to our deceased brother senator,
whose death has been so feelingly announced; and in doing so, I
comply with an obligation of friendship, as well as conform to the
usage of the Senate. I am the oldest personal friend which the
illustrious deceased could have upon this floor, and amongst the
oldest which he could have in the United States. It is now, sir,
more than the period of a generation--more than the third of a
century--since the then emigrant Irish boy, Alexander Porter, and
myself, met on the banks of the Cumberland River, at Nashville, in
the State of Tennessee; when commenced a friendship which death only
dissolved on his part. We belonged to a circle of young lawyers and
students at law, who had the world before them, and nothing but
their exertions to depend upon. First a clerk in his uncle's store,
then a student at law, and always a lover of books, the young Porter
was one of that circle, and it was the custom of all that belonged
to it to spend their leisure hours in the delightful occupation
of reading. History, poetry, elocution, biography, the ennobling
speeches of the living and the dead, were our social recreation; and
the youngest member of the circle was one of our favorite readers.
He read well, because he comprehended clearly, felt strongly,
remarked beautifully upon striking passages, and gave a new charm to
the whole with his rich, mellifluous Irish accent. It was then that
I became acquainted with Ireland and her children, read the ample
story of her wrongs, learnt the long list of her martyred patriots'
names, sympathized in their fate, and imbibed the feelings for a
noble and oppressed people which the extinction of my own life can
alone extinguish.
Time and events dispersed that circle. The young Porter, his law
license signed, went to the Lower Mississippi; I to the Upper. And,
years afterwards, we met on this floor, senators from different
parts of that vast Louisiana which was not even a part of the
American Union at the time that he and I were born. We met here in
the session of 1833-'34--high party times, and on opposite sides of
the great party line; but we met as we had parted years before. We
met as friends; and, though often our part to reply to each other in
the ardent debate, yet never did we do it with other feelings than
those with which we were wont to discuss our subjects of recreation
on the banks of the Cumberland.
I mention these circumstances, Mr. President, because, while they
are honorable to the deceased, they are also justificatory to myself
for appearing as the second to the motion which has been made. A
personal friendship of almost forty years gives me a right to appear
as a friend to the deceased on this occasion, and to perform the
office which the rules and the usage of the Senate permit, and which
so many other senators would so cordially and so faithfully perform.
In performing this office, I have, literally, but little less to do
but to second the motion of the senator from Louisiana (Mr. Barrow).
The mover has done ample justice to his great subject. He also had
the advantage of long acquaintance and intimate personal friendship
with the deceased. He also knew him on the banks of the Cumberland,
though too young to belong to the circle of young lawyers and
law students, of which the junior member--the young Alexander
Porter--was the chief ornament and delight. But he knew him--long
and intimately--and has given evidence of that knowledge in the
just, the feeling, the cordial, and impressive eulogium which he has
just delivered on the life and character of his deceased friend and
colleague. He has presented to you the matured _man_, as developed
in his ripe and meridian age: he has presented to you the finished
scholar--the eminent lawyer--the profound judge--the distinguished
senator--the firm patriot--the constant friend--the honorable
man--the brilliant converser--the social, cheerful, witty companion.
He has presented to you the ripe fruit, of which I saw the early
blossom, and of which I felt the assurance more than thirty years
ago, that it would ripen into the golden fruit which we have all
beheld.
Mr. President, this is no vain or empty ceremonial in which the
Senate is now engaged. Honors to the illustrious dead go beyond
the discharge of a debt of justice to them, and the rendition of
consolation to their friends: they become lessons and examples
for the living. The story of their humble beginning and noble
conclusion, is an example to be followed, and an excitement to be
felt. And where shall we find an example more worthy of imitation,
or more full of encouragement, than in the life and character of
Alexander Porter?--a lad of tender age--an orphan with a widowed
mother and younger children--the father martyred in the cause of
freedom--an exile before he was ten years old--an ocean to be
crossed, and a strange land to be seen, and a wilderness of a
thousand miles to be penetrated before he could find a resting-place
for the sole of his foot: then education to be acquired, support
to be earned, and even citizenship to be gained, before he could
make his own talents available to his support: conquering all these
difficulties by his own exertions, and the aid of an affectionate
uncle--(I will name him, for the benefactor of youth deserves to
be named, and named with honor in the highest places)--with no
other aid but that of an uncle's kindness, Mr. Alexander Porter,
sen., merchant of Nashville, also an emigrant from Ireland, and
full of the generous qualities which belong to the children of
that soil: this lad, an exile and an orphan from the Old World,
thus starting in the New World, with every thing to gain before
it could be enjoyed, soon attained every earthly object, either
brilliant or substantial, for which we live and struggle in this
life--honors, fortune, friends; the highest professional and
political distinction; long a supreme judge in his adopted State;
twice a senator in the Congress of the United States--wearing all
his honors fresh and glowing to the last moment of his life--and
the announcement of his death followed by the adjournment of the
two Houses of the American Congress! What a noble and crowning
conclusion to a beginning so humble, and so apparently hopeless!
Honors to such a life--the honors which we now pay to the memory
of Senator Porter--are not mere offerings to the dead, or mere
consolations to the feelings of surviving friends and relations;
they go further, and become incentives and inducements to the
ingenuous youth of the present and succeeding generations,
encouraging their hopes, and firing their spirits with a generous
emulation.
Nor do the benefits of these honors stop with individuals, nor
even with masses, or generations of men. They are not confined to
_persons_, but rise to _institutions_--to the noble republican
institutions under which such things can be! Republican government
itself--that government which holds man together in the proud
state of equality and liberty--this government is benefited by the
exhibition of the examples such as we now celebrate, and by the
rendition of the honors such as we now pay. Our deceased brother
senator has honored and benefited our free republican institutions
by the manner in which he has advanced himself under them; and we
make manifest that benefit by the honors which we pay him. He has
given a practical illustration of the working of our free, and
equal, and elective form of government; and our honors proclaim the
nature of that working. What is done in this chamber is not done in
a corner, but on a lofty eminence, seen of all people. Europe, as
well as America, will see how our form of government has worked in
the person of an orphan exiled boy, seeking refuge in the land which
gives to virtue and talent all that they will ever ask--the free use
of their own exertions for their own advancement.
Our deceased brother was not an American citizen by accident of
birth; he became so by the choice of his own will, and by the
operation of our laws. The events of his life, and the business of
this day, shows this title to citizenship to be as valid in our
America as it was in the great republic of antiquity. I borrow the
thought, not the language of Cicero, in his pleading for the poet
Archias, when I place the citizen who becomes so by law and choice
on an equal footing with the citizen who becomes so by chance. And,
in the instance before us, we may say that our adopted citizen has
repaid us for the liberality of our laws; that he has added to the
stock of our national character by the contributions which he has
brought to it in the purity of his private life, the eminence of
his public services, the ardor of his patriotism, and the elegant
productions of his mind.
And here let me say--and I say it with pride and satisfaction--our
deceased brother senator loved and admired his adopted country,
with a love and admiration increasing with his age, and with his
better knowledge of the countries of the Old World. A few years ago,
and after he had obtained great honor and fortune in this country,
he returned on a visit to his native land, and to the continent
of Europe. It was an occasion of honest exultation for the orphan
emigrant boy to return to the land of his fathers, rich in the goods
of this life, and clothed with the honors of the American Senate.
But the visit was a melancholy one to him. His soul sickened at
the state of his fellow man in the Old World (I had it from his
own lips), and he returned from that visit with stronger feelings
than ever in favor of his adopted country. New honor awaited him
here--that of a second election to the American Senate. But of this
he was not permitted to taste; and the proceedings of this day
announce his second brief elevation to this body, and his departure
from it through the gloomy portals of death, and the radiant temple
of enduring fame.