Volume 14 — THE LATE SOLOMON FOOT, SENATOR FROM VERMONT.

Speech in the Senate, on his Death, April 12, 1866.

MR. PRESIDENT,—There is a truce in this Chamber. The antagonism of debate is hushed. The sounds of conflict have died away. The white flag is flying. From opposite camps we meet to bury the dead. It is a Senator we bury, not a soldier.

This is the second time during the present session that we have been called to mourn a distinguished Senator from Vermont. It was much to bear the loss once. Its renewal now, after so brief a period, is a calamity without precedent in the history of the Senate. No State before has ever lost two Senators so near together.

Mr. Foot, at his death, was the oldest Senator in continuous service. He entered the Senate in the same Congress with the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade] and myself; but he was sworn at the executive session in March, while the two others were not sworn till the opening of Congress at the succeeding December. During this considerable space of time I have been the constant witness to his life and conversation. With a sentiment of gratitude I look back upon our relations, never from the beginning impaired or darkened by difference. For one brief moment he seemed disturbed by something that fell from me in the unconscious intensity of my convictions; but it was for a brief moment only, and he took my hand with a genial grasp. I make haste also to declare my sense of his personal purity and his incorruptible nature. Such elements of character, exhibited and proved throughout a long service, render him an example for all. He is gone; but these virtues “smell sweet and blossom in the dust.”

He was excellent in judgment. He was excellent also in speech; so that, whenever he spoke, the wonder was that he who spoke so well should speak so seldom. He was full, clear, direct, emphatic, and never was diverted from the thread of his argument. Had he been moved to mingle actively in debate, he must have exerted a commanding influence over opinion in the Senate and in the country. How often we have watched him tranquil in his seat, while others without his experience or weight occupied attention! The reticence which was part of his nature formed a contrast to that prevailing effusion where sometimes the facility of speech is less remarkable than the inability to keep silence; and, again, it formed a contrast to that controversial spirit which too often, like an unwelcome wind, puts out the lights while it fans a flame. And yet in his treatment of questions he was never incomplete or perfunctory. If he did not say, with the orator and parliamentarian of France, the famous founder of the “Doctrinaire” school of politics, M. Royer-Collard, that respect for his audience would not permit him to ask attention until he had reduced his thoughts to writing, it was evident that he never spoke in the Senate without careful preparation. You remember well his commemoration of his late colleague, only a few short weeks ago, when he delivered a funeral oration not unworthy of the French school from which this form of eloquence is derived. Alas! as we listened to that most elaborate eulogy, shaped by study and penetrated by feeling, how little did we think that it was so soon to be echoed back from his own tomb!

Not in our debates only did this self-abnegation show itself. He quietly withdrew from places of importance on committees to which he was entitled, and which he would have filled with honor. More than once I have known him insist that another should take the position assigned to himself. He was far from that nature which Lord Bacon exposes in pungent humor, when he speaks of “extreme self-lovers,” that “will set an house on fire and it were but to roast their eggs.”[24] And yet it must not be disguised that he was happy in the office of Senator. It was to him as much as his “dukedom” to Prospero. He felt its honors and confessed its duties. But he was content. He desired nothing more. Perhaps no person appreciated so thoroughly what it was to bear the commission of a State in this Chamber. Surely no person appreciated so thoroughly all the dignities belonging to the Senate. Of its ceremonial he was the admitted arbiter.

There was no jealousy, envy, or uncharitableness in him. He enjoyed what others did, and praised generously. He knew that his own just position could not be disturbed by the success of another. Whatever another may be, whether more or less, a man must always be himself. A true man is a positive, and not a relative quantity. Properly inspired, he will know that in a just sense nobody can stand in the way of another. And here let me add, that, in proportion as this truth enters into practical life, we shall all become associates and coadjutors rather than rivals. How plain, that, in the infinite diversity of character and talent, there is place for every one! This world is wide enough for all its inhabitants; this republic is grand enough for all its people. Let every one serve in his place according to his allotted faculties.

In the long warfare with Slavery, Mr. Foot was from the beginning firmly and constantly on the side of Freedom. He was against the deadly compromises of 1850. He linked his shield in the small, but solid, phalanx of the Senate which opposed the Nebraska Bill. He was faithful in the defence of Kansas, menaced by Slavery; and when at last this barbarous rebel took up arms, he accepted the issue, and did all he could for his country. But even the cause which for years he had so much at heart did not lead him into debate, except rarely. His opinions appeared in votes, rather than in speeches. But his sympathies were easily known. I call to mind, that, on first coming into the Senate, and not yet personally familiar with him, I was assured by Mr. Giddings, who knew him well, that he belonged to the small circle who would stand by Freedom, and the Antislavery patriarch related pleasantly, how Mr. Foot, on his earliest visit to the House of Representatives after he became Senator, drew attention by coming directly to his seat and sitting by his side in friendly conversation. Solomon Foot by the side of Joshua R. Giddings, in those days, when Slavery still tyrannized, is a picture not to be forgotten. If our departed friend is not to be named among those who have borne the burden of this great controversy, he cannot be forgotten among those whose sympathies with Liberty never failed. Would that he had done more! Let us be thankful that he did so much.

There is a part on the stage known as “the walking gentleman,” who has very little to say, but always appears well. Mr. Foot might seem, at times, to have adopted this part, if we were not constantly reminded of his watchfulness in everything concerning the course of business and the administration of Parliamentary Law. Here he excelled, and was master of us all. The division of labor, which is the lesson of political economy, is also the lesson of public life. All cannot do all things. Some do one, others do another,—each according to his gifts. This diversity produces harmony.

The office of President pro tempore among us grows out of the anomalous relations of the Vice-President to the Senate. There is no such officer in the other House, nor was there in the House of Commons until very recently, when we read of a “Deputy Speaker,” which is the term by which he is addressed, when in the chair. No ordinary talent can guide and control a legislative assembly, especially if numerous or excited by party differences. A good presiding officer is like Alexander mounted on Bucephalus. The assembly knows its master, “as the horse its rider.” This was preëminently the case with Mr. Foot, who was often in the chair, and for a considerable period our President pro tempore. Here he showed special adaptation and power. He was in person “every inch” a President; so also was he in every sound of the voice. He carried into the chair the most marked individuality that has been seen there during this generation. He was unlike any other presiding officer. “None but himself could be his parallel.” His presence was felt instantly. It filled this Chamber from floor to gallery. It attached itself to everything done. Vigor and despatch prevailed. Questions were stated so as to challenge attention. Impartial justice was manifest at once. Business in every form was handled with equal ease. Order was enforced with no timorous authority. If disturbance came from the gallery, how promptly he launched the fulmination! If it came from the floor, you have often seen him throw himself back, and then with voice of lordship, as if all the Senate were in him, insist that debate should be suspended until order was restored. “The Senate must come to order!” he exclaimed; and, like the god Thor, beat with hammer in unison with voice, until the reverberations rattled like thunder in the mountains.

The late Duc de Morny, who was the accomplished President of the Legislative Assembly of France, in a sitting shortly before his death, after sounding his crier’s bell, which is the substitute for the hammer among us, exclaimed from the chair: “I shall be obliged to mention by name the members whom I find conversing. I declare to you that I shall do so, and I shall have it put in the ‘Moniteur.’ You are here to discuss and to listen, not to converse. I promise you that I will do what I say to the very first I catch talking.” Our President might have found occasion for a similar speech, but his energy in the enforcement of order stopped short of this menace. Certainly he did everything consistent with the temper of the Senate, and he showed always what Sir William Scott, on one occasion, in the House of Commons, placed among the essential qualities of a Speaker, when he said that “to a jealous affection for the privileges of the House” must be added “an awful sense of its duties.”[25]

Accustomed as we have become to the rules which govern legislative proceedings, we are hardly aware of their importance in the development of liberal institutions. Unknown in antiquity, they were unknown also on the European continent until latterly introduced from England, which was their original home. They are among the precious contributions which England has made to modern civilization; and yet they did not assume at once their present perfect form. Mr. Hallam tells us that even as late as Queen Elizabeth “the members called confusedly for the business they wished to have brought forward.”[26] But now, at last, these rules have become a beautiful machine, by which business is conducted, legislation moulded, and debate in all possible freedom secured. From the presentation of a petition or the introduction of a bill, all proceeds by fixed processes, until, without disorder, the final result is reached and a new law takes its place in the statute-book. Hoe’s printing-press or Alden’s type-setter is not more exact in operation. But the rules are more even than a beautiful machine; they are the very temple of Constitutional Liberty. In this temple our departed friend served to the end with pious care. His associates, as they recall his stately form, silvered by time, but beaming with goodness, will not cease to cherish the memory of such service. His image will rise before them as the faithful presiding officer, by whom the dignity of the Senate was maintained, its business advanced, and Parliamentary Law upheld.

He had always looked with delight upon this Capitol,—one of the most remarkable edifices of the world,—beautiful in itself, but more beautiful still as the emblem of that national unity he loved so well. He enjoyed its enlargement and improvement. He watched with pride its marble columns moving into place, and its dome as it ascended to the skies. Even the trials of the war did not make him forget it. His care secured those appropriations by which the work was forwarded to its close, and the statue of Liberty installed on its sublime pedestal. It was natural that in his last moments, as life was failing fast, he should long to rest his eyes upon an object that was to him so dear. The early light of morning had come, and he was lifted in bed that with mortal sight he might once more behold this Capitol; but another Capitol already began to fill his vision, fairer than your marble columns, sublimer than your dome, where Liberty without any statue is glorified in that service which is perfect Freedom.