From 1806, the period of my entrance upon this noble theatre, with short
intervals, to the present time, I have been engaged in the public
councils at home or abroad. Of the services rendered during that long
and arduous period of my life it does not become me to speak; history,
if she deign to notice me, and posterity, if the recollection of my
humble actions shall be transmitted to posterity, are the best, the
truest, and the most impartial judges. When death has closed the scene,
their sentence will be pronounced, and to that I commit myself. My
public conduct is a fair subject for the criticism and judgment of my
fellow men; but the motives by which I have been prompted are known only
to the great Searcher of the human heart and to myself; and I trust I
may be pardoned for repeating a declaration made some thirteen years
ago, that whatever errors--and doubtless there have been many--may be
discovered in a review of my public service, I can with unshaken
confidence appeal to that divine Arbiter for the truth of the
declaration that I have been influenced by no impure purpose, no
personal motive; have sought no personal aggrandizement; but that in all
my public acts I have had a single eye directed and a warm and devoted
heart dedicated to what, in my best judgment, I believed the true
interests, the honor, the union, and the happiness of my country
required.
During that long period, however, I have not escaped the fate of other
public men, nor failed to incur censure and detraction of the bitterest,
most unrelenting, and most malignant character; and though not always
insensible to the pain it was meant to inflict, I have borne it in
general with composure and without disturbance, waiting as I have done,
in perfect and undoubting confidence, for the ultimate triumph of
justice and of truth, and in the entire persuasion that time would
settle all things as they should be; and that whatever wrong or
injustice I might experience at the hands of man, He to whom all hearts
are open and fully known, would by the inscrutable dispensations of His
providence rectify all error, redress all wrong, and cause ample justice
to be done.
But I have not meanwhile been unsustained. Everywhere throughout the
extent of this great continent I have had cordial, warm-hearted,
faithful, and devoted friends, who have known me, loved me, and
appreciated my motives. To them, if language were capable of fully
expressing my acknowledgments, I would now offer all the return I have
the power to make for their genuine, disinterested, and persevering
fidelity and devoted attachment, the feelings and sentiments of a heart
overflowing with never-ceasing gratitude. If, however, I fail in
suitable language to express my gratitude to them for all the kindness
they have shown me, what shall I say, what can I say, at all
commensurate with those feelings of gratitude with which I have been
inspired by the State whose humble representative and servant I have
been in this chamber?
I emigrated from Virginia to the State of Kentucky now nearly forty-five
years ago; I went as an orphan boy who had not yet attained the age of
majority; who had never recognized a father's smile, nor felt his warm
caresses; poor, penniless, without the favor of the great, with an
imperfect and neglected education, hardly sufficient for the ordinary
business and common pursuits of life; but scarce had I set my foot upon
her generous soil when I was embraced with parental fondness, caressed
as though I had been a favorite child, and patronized with liberal and
unbounded munificence. From that period the highest honors of the State
have been freely bestowed upon me; and when in the darkest hour of
calumny and detraction I seemed to be assailed by all the rest of the
world, she interposed her broad and impenetrable shield, repelled the
poisoned shafts that were aimed for my destruction, and vindicated my
good name from every malignant and unfounded aspersion. I return with
indescribable pleasure to linger a while longer, and mingle with the
warm-hearted and whole-souled people of that State; and when the last
scene shall forever close upon me, I hope that my earthly remains will
be laid under her green sod with those of her gallant and patriotic
sons....
That my nature is warm, my temper ardent, my disposition--especially in
relation to the public service--enthusiastic, I am ready to own; and
those who suppose that I have been assuming the dictatorship, have only
mistaken for arrogance or assumption that ardor and devotion which are
natural to my constitution, and which I may have displayed with too
little regard to cold, calculating, and cautious prudence, in sustaining
and zealously supporting important national measures of policy which I
have presented and espoused....
I go from this place under the hope that we shall mutually consign to
perpetual oblivion whatever personal collisions may at any time
unfortunately have occurred between us; and that our recollections shall
dwell in future only on those conflicts of mind with mind, those
intellectual struggles, those noble exhibitions of the powers of logic,
argument, and eloquence, honorable to the Senate and to the nation, in
which each has sought and contended for what he deemed the best mode of
accomplishing one common object, the interest and the most happiness of
our beloved country. To these thrilling and delightful scenes it will be
my pleasure and my pride to look back in my retirement with unmeasured
satisfaction....
May the most precious blessings of Heaven rest upon the whole Senate and
each member of it, and may the labors of every one redound to the
benefit of the nation and to the advancement of his own fame and renown.
And when you shall retire to the bosom of your constituents, may you
receive the most cheering and gratifying of all human rewards,--their
cordial greeting of "Well done, good and faithful servant."