SENATE CHAMBER, June
15, 1850.
GENTLEMEN—Gladly
would I have joined you on next Monday, at the social board, and united most
cordially in doing special honor to that able, accomplished, incorruptible, and
Roman-like statesman to whom you have tendered a public dinner at Tammany Hall,
in recognition of his eminent public services and his extraordinary personal
merits. But I find it impossible to be with you on that occasion, urgent
official duties detaining me here.
I have known the
worthy gentleman to whom you are about to do special honor most intimately for
more than three years past. I have seen him tried as I have never seen any
other public man tried. I have beheld him amid scenes well calculated to test
his moral courage, his disinterestedness, his regard for principle, and his
love of country. And never have I seen him so demean himself as not to command
the respect of his adversaries, and to endear himself still more strongly to
his friends and admirers. Honest, truthful, firm, sagacious, watchful,
accomplished, courteous, magnanimous, he is such a man as would have adorned
the pages of history in any age or country. Well does he deserve all the honors
which he has earned, and all that a grateful country may hereafter bestow. His
faithful and unyielding devotion to sound constitutional principles throughout
the present anti-slavery agitation have commended him "to the permanent
gratitude and respect of the nation," and I agree with you most heartily,
that "at this time, when the efforts of every patriot are concentrated to
the peaceable adjustment of all sectional controversies, we should not be
unmindful of the solicitude which public men must feel for such evidences of
popular approval as will tend to sustain them in their struggles against
fanatical and factious agitators."
Permit me, if you
please, to offer you the following sentiment:
"The union of
all good men, of all parties, and of all sections, against faction and
factionists."
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