"There have been some passages in debate between Mr. Hardin and Mr. Clay, that for the occasion were racy and exciting, but I know that long years afterward they were on the very kindest terms. In 1844 Mr. Hardin and myself attended a Whig convention in Lexington. We left our saddlehorses at Frankfort, and went upon the railroad car, then drawn by horses. Just as we went to our bed-room, after the convention closed, Henry Clay, Jr., called upon us with a kind and pressing invitation from his father to dine with him in company with other friends the next day. We both had to decline with regret, as we were to go to Frankfort to breakfast, and from there, Mr. Hardin to an appointment he had made to speak in Anderson county, and I to one I had made in Shelby, near the Henry line. We, in substance, sent our regrets, and told Henry to tell his father that, while his other friends were discussing his viands, we would be discussing his merits before the people."

Mr. Hardin's labors during the campaign were great and powerful in effect. The contest was hotly maintained on both sides, in Kentucky, and Hardin bowed his crest to no competitor.

"I heard Ben Hardin, in 1844, make a public speech at Elizabethtown," says Hon. Alexander Craycroft. "I was quite young-not mature enough to sufficiently appreciate its merits. Rowan Hardin had spoken in the morning-his father followed in the afternoon. One passage in Mr. Hardin's speech yet lingers in my memory: Polk had spent his life like a little black-jack in the depth of the forest, secured by his own insignificance from the danger of storm and tempest. He had passed it with no higher ambition, and seeking no greater pleasure, than he could find on the shores of Duck river, while Henry Clay had walked the mountain tops for half a century—like a giant, baring his breast to every storm, and leaving his footprints in the living rock!'"

On another occasion he closed a speech of marvelous power and eloquence with this glowing sentence: "Elect Mr. Clay, and, like Simeon of old, I will be ready to depart in peace, mine eyes having seen my country's salvation!"

These meager specimens must be accepted as some hint of the tone and spirit of his speeches in the campaign-reports of which were rare in that day. Kentucky proved herself faithful to her great son at the election, and the credit was in part due to Mr. Hardin's tireless efforts. Nevertheless, the result was the overwhelming defeat of Mr. Clay. With that defeat ended for him every reasonable prospect of reaching the presidency. After that campaign, Mr. Hardin never took conspicuous part in a presidential election, and there practically terminated his active participation in national politics.

CHAPTER XXV.

SOME THINGS MR. HARDIN THOUGHT AND SAID OF OTHERS.

WHI

HILE Mr. Hardin was eminently a man of the people, in hearty sympathy with the honest sentiments and simple tastes of the masses, yet he entertained a just estimate and appreciation of the talents of the great men who were his contemporaries, or whose names and fame were connected with the history of his country. "It has been a great desideratum with me," he once remarked, "in reading the debates of the Virginia convention, and the debates of the convention that made the Constitution of the United States, to know the particular history and description of the men who figured in those conventions. If I ever worried a gentleman in my life it was Mr. Madison when I first went to Congress to get from him the personal anecdotes and reminiscences of the incidents of the time of the formation of the Federal Constitution with which his mind was well stored."

Mr. Hardin's opportunities for observing the eminent men of his generation—a generation notably fruitful of talent-had been exceptional. His long public service in State and National councils, coupled with his own prominence in every body to which he belonged, brought him in contact or association with the brightest men in public life. In 1849 he said, "I have been personally acquainted with every distinguished man, I believe, who has figured in public life from the year 1815 up to this time." This opportunity for observation, coupled with his excellent judgment of character and talent, render his deliberate opinions of especial value.

Before Horace Greeley had advised the "young man" to "go west" ex-President Buchanan forsook his Pennsylvania home and came to Kentucky. "I recollect very well," said Mr. Hardin, in 1849, "that some thirty-seven or thirty-eight years ago the celebrated James Buchanan, late secretary of State under Mr. Polk, commenced the practice of law in the town of Elizabeth. There I became acquainted with him, and at that time I discovered in him a man of fine education and respectable talents. In the course of a few months he began to look unhappy, and as if he was experiencing some disappointment.

His

father had given him a large landed estate in Hardin county, about which there was some difficulty. At length he made me his attorney

at law and attorney in fact, and went back and settled in Pennsylvania, where he was raised. Ten or fifteen years afterward I met him in Congress, and over and over again have we laughed when he told me this story:

"I went to Kentucky," said he, "expecting to be a great man there, but every lawyer I met at the bar was my equal, and more than half of them my superiors, so I gave it up."

Rufus Choate, of Massachusetts, was Mr. Hardin's colleague in the Twenty-third Congress, and won national fame as an orator by his efforts at that period. Hardin greatly admired him. Mr. Choate made a characteristic and eloquent speech on the subject of the removal of the deposits, one of the exciting questions during General Jackson's administration. "It was with relation to this speech," said Mr. Brown, in his biography of the Massachusetts statesman, "that the anecdote is told of Benjamin Hardin, 'old Ben Hardin,' as he was called, of Kentucky, who then heard Mr. Choate for the first time. I give it in the words of one who was present. Mr. Hardin was an old stager in politics. A strong-minded, though somewhat rough, individual, who was not disposed to much leniency in his criticisms of younger members, he was, like Mr. Choate. Whig in politics; and some days after the speech of Mr. Choate he made an elaborate argument on the same question and on the same side."

"In this discussion," remarked Mr. Hardin, "I have observed a rule which I prescribed to myself twenty-five years ago, that is, never to listen to a man speaking on the same side of a question I am on, whom I am to follow; because if I did I would fall into his mode of expression, and my ideas would lose their original cast and symmetry. In observing this rule one exception has occurred in this debate. When the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Choate) took the floor day or two ago, I determined to remain in my seat a few moments and hear the plan of his argument unfolded, but in a moment or two it became too late to leave my place. I was charmed, spellbound, and never moved until he had concluded his speech. I felicitate myself on having heard him, for never did any orator furnish his auditors with a richer intellectual feast or one more pleasing to the finer passions of the heart. For strength and vigor of argument it has not been excelled in this House; and for all ornaments which decorate an argument-style, imagery, and melody of voice-I never heard its equal."

Hon. S. S. Cox, in alluding to the effect of this speech on Hardin, says: "The large-hearted and broad-humored Kentuckian threaded delightfully the labyrinthine beauty of Choate's rhetoric, and saw something in the legal dialectician and in the Gothic style of his multifarious oratory that enamored him by a witchery beyond the reach of art."

It was in a debate with Mr. Clay in Congress in 1816 that Hardin won the soubriquet of "Kitchen Knife." Kitchen Knife." That "Kitchen Knife" having been used on Mr. Clay, there was a consequent diminution of cordiality between the two. The extent of the estrangement or its duration is unknown. When, however, after the election of John Quincy Adams, Mr. Clay was assailed by the calumnious charge of bargain and intrigue, Mr. Hardin became his zealous defender. He was prompted partly by State pride and partly by his belief that the charge was slanderous.

Mr. Clay brooked no rivalry, especially among the Whig politicians of Kentucky. So autocratic was he that the amiable Crittenden more than once had a personal breach with him. Mr. Hardin regarded Mr. Clay's conduct among his Whig colleagues as tyrannical and overbearing. While the Whig party was still a great political force, Mr. Hardin remarked that Mr. Clay would grind it to dust by his domineering spirit. Mr. Hardin was not alone in his distrust of Mr. Clay's leadership. Governor John Pope, on one occasion (after uniting with the Whig party), was discussing the result of the Harrisburg convention of 1840 in which Mr. Clay was defeated for the presi dential nomination, and in reply to a question as to what would have been the result of Mr. Clay's success, he said: "We should have witnessed in America all the extravagancies of the Bonaparte dynasty, and hazarded all the calamities it brought upon France." Said Tom Marshall: Death, tribute, or the Koran was his motto."

Mr. Webster, with less will-power than Mr. Clay, and at all times dutifully following the latter's leadership, in some respects was a stronger man. Webster, though less impassioned in his oratory, was by a warm nature drawn personally nearer his friends than Mr. Clay to his. Webster was loved, while as to Clay love was more largely mixed with admiration.

Mr. Hardin was inclined to measure Mr. Clay from a professional standpoint. Too proud to admit himself an inferior in any arena, he especially felt himself Mr. Clay's superior in lawyership. Yet he was far from seeking to elevate himself by depreciating the great states

man-and honestly admired and on many occasions testified to his talents. He esteemed the great "Commoner," not only as a lawyer and statesman, but also as a skillful manipulator of short cards. He said he had often played cards with Mr. Clay, but always on his side, carefully avoiding ever becoming his adversary.

Whatever may have been the inner personal relations between Clay and Hardin, it is certain that the latter was attached to Mr. Webster, and highly appreciated his great ability. "I recollect the first time I ever saw Daniel Webster and heard him speak," said Mr. Hardin, within a year or two of Webster's death. 'The conversation he and I had about it we have laughed over twenty times since. He started off in his speech as cold as an icicle, and as pure as if it hung from the temple of the maiden goddess Diana. His language was pure, but his manner cold. I remarked to him: Sir, if you will come and settle in Kentucky, and learn our mode of speaking, you will be an orator equal to any Greece or Rome ever produced.' The last time I saw him, he said: 'Would to God I had taken your advice.""

John Quincy Adams was a cold man, without warm personal friends or social feeling. Mr. Hardin and he were so entirely dissimilar that antipathy early took the place of indifference. The former, in a speech in Congress, apologized for voting for Adams in 1828: "I supported John Quincy Adams' election because his defeat was based on proving bargain, sale, and corruption against six or seven of the best men in Kentucky, and I was determined to stand up for Kentucky. I supported him, however, with tears in my eyes." Mr. Hardin and Governor John Pope were rivals in the local politics of Kentucky. Adams and Pope were brothers-in-law, having married a couple of handsome English girls who were sisters. This circumstance must not be overlooked in estimating Hardin's opinion of Adams.

While Mr. Crawford was secretary of the treasury in Mr. Monroe's cabinet, mismanagement of that department was charged by Mr. Cook, an Illinois Congressman. In the course of his reply to remarks by Cook, Mr. Hardin, alluding to Crawford, said: “I have the utmost confidence in that officer-as much as I can have in any man, and in the correctness of his conduct." This estimate of Craw-! ford was very just. The impression to be gathered of him from many concurrent sources is, that he was a big-brained, large-bodied, greathearted man, who deserved a better fate than befell him.