Philosophic in his temperament and wise in his conduct, governed in all his actions by reason and judgment, and deeply imbued with Bible images, this virtuous and patriotic man (whom Mr. Jefferson called “the last of the Romans”) had long fixed the term of his political existence at the age which the Psalmist assigns for the limit of manly life: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” He touched that age in 1828; and, true to all his purposes, he was true to his resolve in this, and executed it with the quietude and indifference of an ordinary transaction. He was in the middle of a third senatorial term, and in the full possession of all his faculties of mind and body; but his time for retirement had come the time fixed by himself; but fixed upon conviction and for well considered reasons, and as inexorable to him as if fixed by fate. To the friends who urged him to remain to the end of his term, and who insisted that his mind was as good as ever, he would answer that it was good enough yet to let him know that he ought to quit office before his mind quit him, and that he did not mean to risk the fate of the Archbishop of Grenada. He resigned his senatorial honors as he had worn them-meekly, unostentatiously, in a letter of thanks and gratitude to the General Assembly of his State, and gave to repose at home that interval of thought and quietude which every wise man would wish to place between the turmoil of strife and the stillness of eternity. He had nine years of this tranquil enjoyment, and died without pain or suffering, June 29, 1837-characteristic in death as in life. It was eight o’clock in the morning when he felt that the supreme hour had come, had himself full dressed with his habitual neatness, walked in the room and lay upon the bed, by turns conversing kindly with those who were about him, and showing by his conduct that he was ready and waiting, but hurrying nothing. It was the death of Socrates, all but the hemlock, and in that full faith of which the Grecian sage had only a glimmering. He directed his own grave on a point of sterile ridge (where nobody would wish to plough), and covered with a pile of rough flint-stone (which nobody would wish to build with), deeming this sterility and the uselessness of this rock the best security for that undisturbed repose of the bones which is still desirable to those who are indifferent to monuments.
In almost all strongly marked characters there is usually some incident or sign, in early life, which shows that character and reveals to the close observer the type of the future So it was with Mr. Macon. His firmness, his patriotism, his self-denial, his devotion to duty, and disregard of office and emolument; his modesty, integrity, self-control, and subjection of conduct to the convictions of reason and the dietates of virtue, all so steadily exemplified in a long life, were all shown from the early age of eighteen, in the miniature representation of individual action, and only confirmed in the subsequent public exhibitions of a long, beautiful, and exalted career.
He was of that age, and a student at Princeton College, at the time of the Declaration of American Independence. A small volunteer corps was then on the Delaware. He quit his books, joined it, served a term, returned to Princeton, and resumed his studies. In the year 1778 the Southern States had become a battle-field, big with their own fate, and possibly involving the issue of the war. British fleets and armies appeared there, strongly supported by the friends of the British cause; and the conquest of the South was fully counted upon. Help was needed in these States; and Mr. Macon, quitting college, returned to his native county in North Carolina, joined a militia company as a private, and marched to South Carolina-then the theatre of the enemy’s operations. He had his share in all the hardships and disasters of that trying time; was at the fall of Fort Moultrie, surrender of Charleston, defeat at Camden, and in the rapid winter retreat across the upper part of North Carolina. He was in the camp on the left bank of the Yadkin when the sudden flooding of that river, in the brief interval between the crossing of the Americans and the coming up of the British, arrested the pursuit of Cornwallis and enabled Greene to allow some rest to his wearied and exhausted men. In this camp, destitute of everything and with gloomy prospects ahead, a summons came to Mr. Macon from the Governor of North Carolina, requiring him to attend a meeting of the General Assembly, of which he had been elected a member, without his knowledge, by the people of his county. He refused to go, and the incident being talked of through the camp, came to the knowledge of the general. Greene was a man himself and able to know a man. He felt at once that, if this report was true, this young soldier was no common character, and determined to verify the fact. He sent for the young man, inquired of him, heard the truth, and then asked for the reason of this unexpected conduct this preference for a suffering camp over a comfortable seat in the General Assembly. Mr. Macon answered him, in his quaint and sententious way, that he had seen the faces of the British many times, but had never seen their backs, and meant to stay in the army till he did. Greene instantly saw the material the young man was made of and the handle by which he was to be worked. That material was patriotism, that handle a sense of duty; and laying hold of this handle, he quickly worked the young soldier into a different conclusion from the one that he had arrived at. He told him he could do more good as a member of the General Assembly than as a soldier; that in the army he was but one man, and in the General Assembly he might obtain many, with the supplies they needed, by showing the destitution and suffering which he had seen in the camp; and that it was his duty to go. This view of duty and usefulness was decisive. Mr. Macon obeyed the Governor’s summons, and by his representations contributed to obtain the supplies which enabled Greene to turn back and face Cornwallis-fight him, cripple him, drive him further back than he had advanced (for Wilmington is south of Camden), disable him from remaining in the South (of which, up to the battle of Guilford, he believed himself to be master), and sending him to Yorktown, where he was captured and the war ended.
The philosophy of history has not yet laid hold of the battle of Guilford, its consequences and effects. That battle made the capture of Yorktown. The events are told in every history: their connection and dependence in none. It broke up the plan of Cornwallis in the South, and changed the plan of Washington in the North. Cornwallis was to subdue the Southern States, and was doing it until Greene turned upon him at Guilford. Washington was occupied with Sir Henry Clinton, then in New York with twelve thousand British troops. He had formed the heroic design to capture Clinton and his army (the French fleet cooperating) in that city, and thereby putting an end to the war. All his preparations were going on for that grand consummation when he got news of the battle of Guilford, the retreat of Cornwallis to Wilmington, his inability to keep the field in the South, and his return northward through the lower part of Virginia. He saw his advantage an easier prey-and the same result, if successful. Cornwallis or Clinton, either of them captured, would put an end to the war. Washington changed his plan, deceived Clinton, moved rapidly upon the weaker general, captured him and his seven thousand men, and ended the Revolutionary war. The battle of Guilford put that capture into Washington’s hands; and thus Guilford and Yorktown became connected; and the philosophy of history shows their dependence, and that the lesser event was father to the greater. The State of North Carolina gave General Greene twenty-five thousand acres of western land for that day’s work, now worth a million of dollars; but the day itself has not yet obtained its proper place in American history.
The military life of Mr. Macon finished with his departure from the camp on the Yadkin, and his civil public life commenced on his arrival at the General Assembly, to which he had been summoned that civil public life in which he was continued above forty years by free elections-Representative in Congress under Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and long the Speaker of the House; Senator in Congress under Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams; and often elected President of the Senate, and until voluntarily declining; twice refusing to be Postmaster-General under Jefferson; never taking any office but that to which he was elected; and resigning his last senatorial term when it was only half run. But a characteristic trait remains to be told of his military life one that has neither precedent nor imitation (the example of Washington being out of the line of comparison): he refused to receive pay or to accept promotion, and served three years as a private through mere devotion to his country. And all the long length of his life was conformable to this patriotic and disinterested beginning: and thus the patriotic principles of the future Senator were all revealed in early life. and in the obscurity of an unknown situation. Conformably to this beginning, he refused to take anything under the modern acts of Congress for the benefit of the surviving officers and soldiers of the Revolution, and voted against them all, saying they had suffered alike (citizens and military), and all been rewarded together in the establishment of independence; that the debt to the army had been settled by pay, by pensions to the wounded, by half-pay and land to the officers: that no military claim could be founded on depreciated continental paper money, from which the civil functionaries who performed service, and farmers who furnished supplies, suffered as much as any. On this principle he voted against the bill for Lafayette, against all the modern Revolutionary pensions and land bounty acts, and refused to take anything under them (for many were applicable to himself).
His political principles were deep-rooted, innate, subject to no change and to no machinery of party. He was democratic in the broad sense of the word, as signifying a capacity in the people for self-government; and in its party sense, as in favor of a plain and economical administration of the Federal Government, and against latitudinarian constructions of the Constitution. He was a party man, not in the hackneyed sense of the word, but only where principle was concerned; and was independent of party in all his social relations, and in all the proceedings which he disapproved. Of this he gave a strong instance in the case of General Hamilton, whom he deemed honorable and patriotic; and utterly refused to be concerned in a movement proposed to affect him personally, though politically opposed to him. He venerated Washington, admired the varied abilities and high qualities of Hamilton, and esteemed and respected the eminent Federal gentlemen of his time. He had affectionate regard for Madison and Monroe; but Mr. Jefferson was to him the full and perfect exemplification of the republican statesman. His almost fifty years of personal and political friendship and association with Mr. Randolph is historical, and indissolubly connects their names and memories in the recollection of their friends, and in history, if it does them justice. He was the early friend of General Jackson, and intimate with him when he was a Senator in Congress under the administration of the elder Mr. Adams; and was able to tell Congress and the world who he was when he began to astonish Europe and America by his victories. He was the kind observer of the conduct of young men, encouraging them by judicious commendation when he saw them making efforts to become useful and respectable, and never noting their faults. He was just in all things, and in that most difficult of all things, judging political opponents, to whom he would do no wrong, not merely in word or act, but in thought. He spoke frequently in Congress, always to the point, and briefly and wisely; and was one of those speakers whom Mr. Jefferson described Dr. Franklin to have been a speaker of no pretension and great performance, who spoke more good sense while he was getting up out of his chair, and getting back into it, than many others did in long discourses; and he suffered no reporter to dress up a speech for him.
He was above the pursuit of wealth, but also above dependence and idleness; and, like an old Roman of the elder Cato’s time, worked in the fields at the head of his slaves in the intervals of public duty, and did not cease this labor until advancing age rendered him unable to stand the hot sun of summer-the only season of the year when senatorial duties left him at liberty to follow the plough or handle the hoe. I think it was the summer of 1817-that was the last time (he told me) he tried it, and found the sun too hot for him— then sixty years of age, a Senator, and the refuser of all office. How often I think of him when I see at Washington robustious men going through a scene of supplication, tribulation, and degradation, to obtain office, which the salvation of the soul does not impose upon the vilest sinner. His fields, his flocks and his herds yielded an ample supply of domestic productions. A small crop of tobacco-three hogsheads when the season was good, two when bad-purchased the exotics which comfort and necessity required and which the farm did not produce. He was not rich, but rich enough to dispense hospitality and charity, to receive all guests in his house, from the President to the day-laborer-no other title being necessary to enter his house but that of an honest man; rich enough to bring up his family (two daughters) as accomplished ladies, and marry them to accomplished gentlemen-one to William Martin, Esq., and the other to William Eaton, Esq., of Roanoke, my early schoolfellow and friend for more than half a century; and, above all, he was rich enough to pay as he went and never to owe a dollar to any man.
He was steadfast in his friendships and would stake himself for a friend, but would violate no point of public duty to please or oblige him. Of this his relations with Mr. Randolph gave a signal instance. He drew a knife to defend him in the theatre at Philadelphia, when menaced by some naval and military officers for words spoken in debate and deemed offensive to their professions; yet, when Speaker of the House of Representatives, he displaced Mr. Randolph from the head of the Committee of Ways and Means because the chairman of that committee should be on terms of political friendship with the administration-which Mr. Randolph had then ceased to be with Mr. Jefferson’s. He was above executive office, even the highest the President could give; but not above the lowest the people could give, taking that of justice of the peace in his county, and refusing that of Postmaster-General at Washington. He was opposed to nepotism, and to all quartering of his connections on the government; and in the course of his forty-years’ service, with the absolute friendship of many administrations and the perfect respect of all, he never had office or contract for any of his blood. He refused to be a candidate for the Vice-Presidency, but took the place of Elector on the Van Buren ticket in 1836. He was against paper money and the paper system, and was accustomed to present the strong argument against both, in the simple phrase that this was a hard-money government, made by hard-money men, who had seen the evil of paper money and meant to save their posterity from it. He was opposed to securityships, and held that no man ought to be entangled in the affairs of another, and that the interested parties alone those who expected to find their profit in the transaction should bear the bad consequences, as well as enjoy the good ones, of their own dealings. He never called any one “friend” without being so, and never expressed faith in the honor and integrity of a man without acting up to the declaration when the occasion required it. Thus, in constituting his friend, Weldon N. Edwards, Esq., his testamentary and sole executor, with large discretionary powers, he left all to his honor, and forbade him to account to any court or power for the manner in which he should execute that trust. This prohibition was so characteristic, and so honorable to both parties, and has been so well justified by the event, that I give it in his own words, as copied from his will, to-wit:
“I subjoin the following, in my own handwriting, as a codicil to this my last will and testament, and direct that it be a part thereof that is to say, having full faith in the honor and integrity of my executor above named, he shall not be held to account to any court or power whatever for the discharge of the trust confided by me to him in and by the foregoing will.”
And the event has proved that his judgment, as always, committed no mistake when it bestowed that confidence. He had his peculiarities-idiosyncrasies, if any one pleases-but they were born with him, suited to him, constituting a part of his character, and necessary to its completeness. He never subscribed to charities, but gave, and freely, according to his means the left hand not knowing what the right hand did. He never subscribed for new books, giving as a reason to the soliciting agent that nobody purchased his tobacco until it was inspected, and he could buy no book until he had examined it. He would not attend the Congress Presidential Caucus of 1824, although it was sure to nominate his own choice (Mr. Crawford); and, when a reason was wanted, he gave it in the brief answer that he attended one once and they cheated him, and he had said that he would never attend another. He always wore the same dress-that is to say, a suit of the same material, cut, and color superfine navy blue-the whole suit from the same piece, and in the fashion of the time of the Revolution; and always replaced by a new one before it showed age. He was neat in his person, always wore fine linen, a fine cambric stock, a fine fur hat with a brim to it, fair top-boots-the boot outside the pantaloons, on the principle that leather was stronger than cloth. He would wear no man’s honors, and when complimented on the report on the Panama mission, which, as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, he had presented to the Senate, he would answer, “Yes, it is a good report; Tazewell wrote it.” Left to himself, he was ready to take the last place and the lowest seat anywhere; but in his representative capacity he would suffer no derogation of a constitutional or of a popular right. Thus, when Speaker of the House, and a place behind the President’s Secretaries had been assigned him in some ceremony, he disregarded the programme, and, as the elect of the elect of all the people, took his place next after those whom the national vote had elected. And in 1803, on the question to change the form of voting for President and Vice-President, and the vote wanting one of the constitutional number of two-thirds, he resisted the rule of the House which restricted the Speaker’s vote to a tie, or to a vote which would make a tie-claimed his constitutional right to vote as a member, obtained it, gave the vote, made the two-thirds, and carried the amendment.
And, what may well be deemed idiosyncratic in these days, he was punctual in the performance of all his minor duties to the Senate, attending its sittings to the moment, attending all the committees to which he was appointed, attending all the funerals of the members and officers of the Houses, always in time at every place where duty required him; and refusing double mileage for one traveling when elected from the House of Representatives to the Senate or summoned to an extra session. He was an habitual reader and student of the Bible, a pious and religious man, and of the “Baptist persuasion,” as he was accustomed to express it.
I have a pleasure in recalling the recollections of this wise, just and good man, and in writing them down, not without profit, I hope, to rising generations, and at least as extending the knowledge of the kind of men to whom we are indebted for our independence and for the form of government which they established for us. Mr. Macon was the real Cincinnatus of America, the pride and ornament of my native State, my hereditary friend through four generations, my mentor in the first seven years of my senatorial, and the last seven of his senatorial life; and a feeling of gratitude and of filial affection mingles itself with this discharge of historical duty to his memory.
Originally published in 1854 and reprinted here in honor of Macon’s birthday, December 17.
