Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 11.pdf/456

This page needs to be proofread.

Calhoun as a Lawyer and Statesman. in the State which bears the impress of his renown, should furnish an occasion for such an instructive illustration of his character as shall inspire in the minds of all his country men, genuine respect and admiration for his courage and self-abnegation, toleration when approval of his opinions is withheld, and uni versal pride in the greatness of this illustri ous American." At the same time, Hon. T. F. Bayard wrote : " So long as the pure name and white fame of Mr. Calhoun shall; be cher ished in the hearts of our people, unscru pulous ambition and unworthy political methods will be rebuked, and the public conscience strengthened in admiration of that homebred integrity, simple and lucid wisdom, and lofty personal honor, of which he was so noble a type and exemplar." In July last Hon. J. L. M. Curry said: "With the rugged honesty and fearlessness of John Knox, an acutely analytical and metaphysical mind, Scotch relish for gen eral principles and abstract truths, Calhoun pursued truth with indomitable will and un swerving devotion, and his speeches were ignited logic, the embodiments of his own moral and mental characteristics." Hon. John W. Daniel of Virginia, writes : "The high character of John C. Calhoun, and his great abilities as a logician and statesman, have made a deep and lasting impression upon the age in which he lived. He was profound, earnest, sincere, manly and truthful to the uttermost, and he is one of the loftiest and most heroic figures of his time. With a prophetic spirit, surpassed in none, he foresaw and endeavored to fore stall the great catastrophe of the impending conflict on the race issue. Whatever may be the judgment of his opponents on the questions which culminated in sectional war, it will be agreed that no one more ably maintained his own than he did, and that no one more commands the respect of man kind." Hon. J.J. Darlington, a prominent lawyer

423

of Washington, D.C., and the author of the standard law-book, " Darlington on Personal Property," says : " Mr. Calhoun seems to me to have been unquestionably the ablest logician who appears in the list of states men our country has thus far furnished. With regard to his private life and char acter, he was, of the great triumvirate, the one who made the least display of religious professions, and yet the one whose life would have been consistent with membership in the strictest of our religious denominations." Dr. W. M. Grier, an eloquent preacher and leading Southern educator, writes : " Take Mr. Calhoun in all his make-up and he towered above his fellows as a statesman. Broad in his sympathies, he was no haughty, ambitious sectionalist, though so regarded by many; profoundly acquainted with the fundamental law of the land, he understood its wide relations and was jealous of its honor; loving the whole country as an ardent patriot, his indignation was aroused whenever legislation offered its protection to special interests in one section to the hurt of other sections." Bill Arp, the famous Southern writer and humorist, writes : " It pleases me to say that Mr. Calhoun was my father's ideal of a great statesman, and I was brought up to have profound reverence for him. When I was a lad often years, Mr. Calhoun stayed over night in our village of Lawrenceville, and my father visited him and took me with him. The great man placed his hand upon my head and said kind words which I have never forgotten." Judge Logan E. Bleckley, the distin guished Georgia writer and jurist, says : "In Mr. Calhoun vast and wonderful in tellectual power was misled by its own subtlety and refinement. It was associated with moral power, equally vast and admir able, which enabled him to mislead a large band of devoted followers who, incapable of fully understanding him, were content to walk by faith where they could not walk by