Saturday's telegraph heralded through the
South the most afflicting intelligence it has borne since the birth of our new Republic.
It announced the demise of a great and good man, whom our people loved, venerated, and trusted, probably to an extent greater than any of her statesmen.
If ever a country or cause could boast its ‘"representative man,"’ surely here was the person to whom the
South could point as here, not only as presenting an admirable type of the
Southern gentleman in all the domestic and social relations of that beautiful character, but as a statesman so imbued with the instincts and principles of Southern politics, that none ever could or ever did doubt for a moment, in any public emergency or at any crisis, where
John Tyler stood.
Long connected with public affairs, and mingling in the strifes of parties and the contentions of men, he never lost his character or incurred an instant's suspicion as a State-Rights man. His father before him, one of the wisest and most honored of the Revolutionary sages, had signalized his devotion to State independence by voting in the Virginia Convention of 17SS with that large, that immortal majority, which resisted the ratification of the
Federal Constitution — not that he opposed the scheme of Union, but that he distrusted the nationalism which lay covert in that instrument, and which, as we have since found, by its silent machinations, has undermined the power of more than half the States, and now, throwing off all disguise, is with terrible bloodthirstiness seeking, by armies and confiscations, to subjugate the rest.
Indoctrinated by the teachings of so illustrious and so wise a progenitor, and faithful to his golden tenets,
Mr. Tyler's life has been a barometer, in some sort, of the vicissitudes of State-Rights politics in the country.
Fidelity in that line of politics, would now seem, in retrospect, to have been the essential condition of consistency and of lasting political success in the public men of the
South; and he may be considered a fortunate man whose antecedents and surroundings in youth, embarked him in that straight and narrow path to office, to honor, and to renown.
It was her fidelity to the
State-Rights cause which long gave
Virginia so large a control in the affairs of the late Union; and those of her sons who have adhered to these principles most faithfully, like herself, through evil and through good report, have been the men most successful, and to the vulgar eye, most fortunate, in their public life.
Mr. Tyler was a distinguished illustration of this truth.
At an early age he had received from
Virginia the highest mark of her consideration, in his election as
Governor of the
Commonwealth after which, he was promoted by being delegated as one of her ambassadors, March 4, 1862, to the Senate of the United States.
In this body he faithfully maintained his political consistency, even through the trying ordeal of
General Jackson's administration and irresistible popularly.
To the measures of that popular chieftain infringing the rights of the States he opposed a consistent resistance, never with passion and anger, always with firmness and dignity.
One single extract from his great speech against the
Force Bill will illustrate the whole tenor of this opposition: "Since I have held a place on this floor I have not courted the smiles of the
Executive: but whenever he had done any act in-violation of the constitutional rights of the citizen, or trenching upon the rights of the Senate, I have been found in opposition to him. When he appointed a corps of editors to office, I thought it was my duty to oppose his course.
When he appointed a minister to a foreign court without the sanction of the-law, I also went against him, because, on my conscience, I believed that the act was wrong.
Such was my course, acting as I did, under a sense of the duty I owed to my constituents; and I will now say, I care not how loudly the trumpet may be sounded, nor how low the priests may band their knees before the object of their idolatry, I will be at the side of the
President, crying in his car, 'Remember, Philip, thou art mortal.' His own State was, unfortunately, at one time not so true to her creed as her servant; and on her instructing him to cast a vote, of immaterial importance in itself, but indirectly rebuking the conduct of
State-Rights Senators, (we allude, of course, to
Benton's Expunging Resolutions,) the resigned his appointment, in February, 1836, and retired to private life.
He did not again emerge into public view until his nomination in 1840 by the Whig party as their candidate for the Vice-Presidency, in conjunction with
Gen. Harrison for the Presidency.
The success of that party in that memorable campaign would have subjected so thorough a State-rights man as
Mr.Tyler to no embarrassment, if events had permitted him to remain in the office to which he had been chosen.
But the lapse of little more than a month brought him into very different relations to the country, and to the party which had placed him in power.
Those members of that party who are unable to lift their minds out of the ruts of old and obsolete prejudices, and to shake off, in the new existence into which we have entered, the crust and rotten garments of the grovelling and grub-worm partisans in which our. Southern people once fretted, crawled, and quarrelled, may be unable to look upon
Mr. Tyler as any other than a traitor to the Whig party; but the vast many of our genuine Southern people, interpreting the past by the lurid lights of the present, now excuse his conduct, in whatever any of them might have thought it blameable, to his acknowledged and approved State-Rightism.
In respect to the particular matter in which he so deeply offended the political party which had placed him in power, his refusal to approve the character of a Federal National Bank; there is no Southern member of that party who will not now accord to his conduct the most heartfelt approval.
And, truly, if we look away from the partisan aspects of his administration, that of
John Tyler was one of the most illustrious that has marked the annuals of
America.
It was a peculiarity of
Mr. Tyler, that though not pretending to, himself, nor enjoying the reputation of great intellect, he was always found true to every crisis in which he was placed, and delivered speeches on great public question that are invariably quoted as among the ablest that were elicited.
In making up his Cabinet he exhibited none of that jealousy of distinguished intellect which so often characterizes men of even high capacity.
It was not that he felt the necessity of strong support in conducting his ‘"administration without a party"’ between the Sylla of Democracy and the Charybdis of Whiggery; but it was out of the genuine magnanimity of his nature, that he assembled around him the very ablest men that his limited range of choice permitted.
Though confined in selecting his Cabinet to the few able men of the country not committed to one or the other of its great parties, and thrown of course to a partial extent upon men not as conspicuously before the public as their talents would have justified, he drew around him an Administration as brilliant an ever adorned the
Government of the
United States; indeed, it may be said that no Gov-
ernment and no age has ever been able to boast statesmen of greater intellect or of loftier character than Upahur and
Calhoun.
The South at least will never cause to do hom age to these illustrious men, and to their true and generous chief, for the service which they rendered her in bringing into the
Union and thereby into her present Confederacy, despite of British diplomacy and Northern fanaticism, the splendid domain and the sterling people of
Texas.
However afflicting it may have been to any schemes of party, thrice fortunate at least was it for the good cause of the
South, that
John Tyler held the
Federal reins of power in the eventful fifteen months preceding the 4th of March, 1855; at which date, having finished a good work, he retired again to private life.
We come down to the crisis which has sundered the
Union and enveloped the
South in the perils and horrors of war. Had there been any return from that bourne which is entered through the portals of the grave, what a host of the great Southern dead would have rushed back to take part for their country in the bloody drama now transpiring, and which many of them so vividly foresaw!
There was one man belonging to a by-gone generation who had not yet passed the inexorable portals, and whom these solemn events startled from his retirement.
Though past the allotted three score years and ten,
Mr. Tyler again appeared upon the stage of public affairs in February last as a member of the Virginia Convention.
His course in that body and in the Peace Congress convened at
Washington in the same month, is familiar to the people of the
South.
It was marked by the same fidelity to the creed of State-Rights and State sovereignty which had signalized his previous career, and by that brilliancy of intellect which great occasions seemed always to evoke from him.
His celebrated speech in answer to, and in exposure and annihilation of,
George W. Summers, was probably one of the ablest of his life, as it was one of the most powerful of the many which the present times have called forth.
His election to Congress last November in the district embracing the
Capital of the
Confederacy, over competitors of conceded talents and popularity, attested the high appreciation in which the people held his last services to his country.
He died last Saturday morning, at his rooms in the
Ballard House.
He had been suddenly stricken down by disease on the Sunday morning before, while sitting at the public breakfast table, surrounded by his charming and affectionate family.
He had reached the age of seventy-one years, ten months and nineteen days, having been born on the 29th March, 1790. He fell with harness on, at the post of duty, in the midst of arduous service full of honors and full of years.
But for his extreme age, he was endowed with precisely the qualities of heart, of head and of principle, which must have secured for their possessor the supreme honors of the new Confederacy.
