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of right as well, made of Thomas Jefferson the typical American and the like qualities made of John Daniel the typical Jeffersonian Democrat.

As his colleagues said of Daniel, he was not an incessant talker; but when he talked the Senate listened; for he never spoke unless he had something to say. He dealt as a rule with great questions and spoke only after careful preparation and prolonged meditation upon his theme. These questions he handled in such masterly fashion, with argument so convincing, with eloquence so persuasive, with a temper so lofty and serene, that his discourses will long remain documents worthy of admiration and study. His argument against the Force Bill of 1890, his exposition of the Monroe Doctrine upon the occasion of Cleveland's Venezuelan Message, his plea for Congressional recognition of the Belligerency of Cuba are permanent additions to American political literature. In each case he dealt with a problem of great and abiding interest; in each case it was necessary to set forth in clear order a vast complex of facts and to carry a long train of intricate argument to a convincing end; in each case it was Daniel's aim to crystalize his conclusion in some memorable phrase, which should make permanent lodgment in the minds of his hearers. It is only by careful reading of these documents that we come to appreciate their luminous clearness, their energetic forcefulness, their perfect artistry. Here are a few samples of his method; but remember that they are samples only and give you no adequate conception of the vigor and the beauty of the whole. Of the Force Bill:

* It is not

"Behind this bill crouches the empire. * by anything I say that I hope to affect a vote. But these sacred principles of American liberty neither came from me nor derive any sanction by me. They are my right, they are my people's rights, they are my country's rights. They have flowed down from the headwaters of the AngloSaxon race; they have been achieved by the battles of a thousand years; and that for which our country is most famous is the fact that it has been the sternest and the truest of that race in their defense."

Of possible war with Spain:

"It is said that this means war. I deny it. I do not wish to see the American people involved in war. I look upon war as one of the greatest calamities that can befall the human race. But there is one other much greater calamity, and that is for the high public spirit of a nation to be so deadened that it can look upon plunder and pillage and murder and arson with indifference and can stifle the truth for venal considerations. It is worse than war for the public spirit of that nation to be so deadened that it hesitates or delays one instant to go forward and to do any act of high and great justice because of fear of war." Of the Monroe Doctrine:

*

"With us are the Law and the Prophets, and behind us are the intelligent, patient, and patriotic masses of a great people, whose approval of American principles is unmistakable. I fully agree with those who caution us against inflammatory and irritating speeches. But common sense looks at facts as they are, and it is a fact so plain that he who runs may read that this nation will not recede from the Monroe Doctrine. It is not to be expected of us who have time-honored principles to vindicate, an obvious and wise policy to subserve, and a noble aspiring nation to uphold in its dignity as the paramount power of the Western Hemisphere, to speak in whispers, to start at shadows, or to mope in pusillanimous silence when the corridors of the Capitol are ringing with denunciations of our course, and with ill-conceived belittlements of our fixed faith."

Not the least interesting outcome of Daniel's senatorial career is the steady development in his own nature of that spirit of high-hearted Americanism which made him in his later years a great national figure in our public life. So gradual was the change that it may be doubted whether he himself was conscious of that tidal stream in his own soul, which bore him forward into new seas of emotion and belief. It is when we read his public utterances in their chronological order that we

come to see how far the Federal Senator has voyaged from the port whence the Confederate Major first set sail. It would be too long to trace out his route in its completeness; we can spare time to look at only a few of the landmarks left by him along the shore.

Here is Daniel the law student of 1866, Final Orator of the Jefferson Society of the University of Virginia, as he makes his valedictory to his fellow-students:

"From first to last Virginia was foremost in the picture by the flashing of the guns; and though her fair domain has been reddened with the heart's blood of her children and blackened with the ashes of happy homesteads, we rejoice today as we rebuild our ruins and scatter roses o'er our brothers' graves that all have preserved unstained their sacred honor."

Here is the Daniel of 1877, now a member of the State Senate, speaking from the same platform and once more to an audience of students:

*

"Revere the Past; but remember that we cannot live in it. As Christ said of the Sabbath, so may we say of the Past-it was made for man, not man for it. * * We failed to conquer the form; be it ours to strive to conquer the souls of our Northern brethren, with a sublimer faith, a more gracious courage, a broader magnanimity. Magnanimity of the conqueror is a generous concession; magnanimity of the conquered is an heroic achievement. The form of Saxon Harold was conquered at Senlac; his soul lives and conquers still in the blood of our conquering race."

In 1890 he delivered before the General Assembly of Virginia and by their invitation a discourse on the life and character of Jefferson Davis. He discussed the legality of Secession and the causes of its overthrow:

"The United States have been unified by natural laws, kindred to those which unified the South in secession, but

* * *

greater because wider spread. Its physical constitution.
answered in 1861 for the Northern mind that written con-
stitution to which the South appealed. The Mississippi
river, natural outlet to the sea for a new-born empire, was
to it a greater interpreter of that constitution than the
opinions of statesmen who lived before the great republic
spanned the Father of Waters.
We are not of
the North but of the South; yet now like all Americans we
are both of and for the Union, bound up in its destinies,
contributing to its support, seeking its welfare. As he
was the hero in war who fought the bravest, so he is the
hero now who puts the past in its truest light, does jus-
tice to all, and knows no foe but him who revives the
hates of a bygone generation."

Six years later he is addressing the Senate of the United. States on the occasion of President Cleveland's Venezuelan message:

"The British Minister, George Canning, boasted in 1823 that he had called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old. If those who sympathize with Great Britain in this generation possess Canning's prescience, they must know that this Republic will not permit those balances to be disturbed by the weight of an iron hand, nor that New World to be made the prey of European adventurers; they must know that America's answer was final; they must know that if all Europe were to form itself again into a new conspiracy of kings to make spoil of any portion of the American continents, under any kind of cloak or pretext, and were to lay hands of violence for that purpose upon any, even the weakest of our neighbors, the United States would rise and face embattled Europe as one man, American sailors would scourge the sea from pole to pole, and six millions of American soldiers would spring to their guns."

Again in 1900 Daniel was the spokesman of the Senate at the joint assembly of the two houses of Congress, met to celebrate the centennial of the first session of that body.

"Great peoples are made of the mixture of races, like the beautiful bronzes which are composed. of many metals. The brightest and bravest blood of the world's great races is mixed in our blood. This is the only great nation that ever passed through its formative conflicts without inflicting in a single case the penalty of death for a political cause. Does not this fact alone speak volumes for free thought, for free speech, for the government of the people, for the high character of the American? If we have had strife it has been the proud and lofty strife of the brave and the true, who can cherish honor, who can cherish principle, who can cherish love, but who cannot cherish hate. And be this never forgotten; our only strife was over the heritage which empire foisted upon our ancestors against their will and which the republic has removed forever. Great problems lie before us-Race Problem, Trust Problem, Philippine Problem. We may well view these and others with deep solicitude and anxious reflection. But if our problems be mighty, they grow out of our might and have the mighty to deal with them. They come to those who have never been confounded by problems and have never dodged one; who have solved problems just as great or greater than any now presented; who have left them all behind with monuments of their solution builded over them."

These citations have been chosen to illustrate the gradual evolution of Daniel's conception of the problems of American statecraft. They exhibit also, better than any formal analysis could do, the slow transformation of his oratorical style. That style remained to the end affluent, ornate, earnest, serious; the part of the jester, the part of the wit, the part of the cynic, the part of the buffoon-these were not Daniel's parts. But we may see how year by year useless ornament was pruned away; how year by year his periods were packed closer and closer with thought; how year by year he seemed to lift his auditors to higher planes of feeling and meditation. What had been florid became simple; what had been intricate became direct; what had been abstract became concrete. It would be too

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