Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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 every thing 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 at 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 12,000 British troops. He had formed the heroic design to capture Clinton and his army (the French fleet co-operating) in that city, and thereby putting an end to the war. All his preparations were going on for that grand consummation when he got the 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 7000 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 25,000 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 any thing 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 the 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 any thing 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 in 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 which 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,