name and by his life maintains his reputa tion, is deserving of praise, but that high honor still should be accorded to him who first founds the family name." This higher praise McDuffic deserved. It has been beautifully said by another, that " giants seem to grow in groups. There are seed-plats which foster them like the big trees of California, and they nourish and develop one another, and seem to put men on their mettle." On the one side of the Savannah, over in Georgia, we find Howell Cobb, Alexander Stephens, and Robert Toombs. "Across the river, in Carolina, dwelt Calhoun and McDuffie." And now that I have reached a conclu sion in summing up the life of McDuffie, I am sure I will be pardoned if I quote from the glowing tributes paid to him by writers who were familiar with his life and who ad mired him for his splendid intellect, match less eloquence, high character, and lofty pa triotism. Says Sparks: "His fame is too broad to be claimed alone by South Caro lina. Georgia is proud of giving him birth, and the nation cherishes his glory." The venerable jurist who wrote the " Bench and Bar of South Carolina," and from whose able work I have so freely quoted in pre paring this sketch, in a splendid eulogy paid to McDuffie, reached a climax of eloquence in these words : " With a thousand times more honesty, McDuffie has surpassed the most brilliant efforts of France's greatest orator, Mirabeau. McDuffie, with a head as clear as a sunbeam, with a heart as pure as honesty itself, and with a purpose as firm as a rock, never spoke unaccompanied with a passionate conviction of right, which made his arguments as irresistible as the rushing flood of his own Savannah." Major Burt, to whom I have already referred,
gives McDuffie high praise as an orator. Indeed, what he says of him sounds almost like the language of exaggeration. How ever, though Mr. Burt was one of McDuffic's warmest friends and greatest admirers, still he was a man of discriminating taste and excellent judgment. Then, too, as a lead ing member of Congress for ten years, and as a prominent member of the South Caro lina bar for over fifty years, he had a fine opportunity for hearing the distinguished man of the nation. To McDuffie he paid the following splendid tribute : " Able and graceful as was his written composition, faultless as was his elocution, majestic as was his whole intellect, it was his eloquence that gave him his great superiority. I have heard, and heard often, the orators of the greatest repute in this country during the last half century. Many of them were greatly and justly distinguished for the graces and elegances of rhetoric and elocu tion; some of them were eloquent. The speeches of Calhoun were philosophical and grand; the speeches of Webster were logi cal, massive, and masterly; the speeches of Clay and Preston were polished and bril liant. But Greece had but one Demosthe nes, Rome had but one Cicero, and America has had but one McDuffie." Hon. W. J. Bryan, in his speech from our Court House steps recently, attributed to Abbeville County a widespread reputation as the birth place and home of John C. Calhoun; he might well have added that Abbeville has had two other sons whose reputation is world-wide, — one of them the foremost law yer of the South, James Louis Petigru, and the other the distinguished statesman, worthy of a place by the side of Calhoun, General George McDuffie.
