CHAPTER 7.

Yancey and Hilliard.

From 1840 to 1860, inclusive, Southern political ideas were seeking an inevitable geographical centre. What Paris was to the French revolution, Virginia to the American revolution, Boston to the Abolitionists, Montgomery, Alabama, through twenty years of activity of local influences, became to the Southern movement, of 1861.

Mr. Henry Washington Hilliard was the foremost political character of Montgomery, the recently chosen capital of the State, when Mr. Yancey took up his abode there. The town was small, but the county, to which it had given its name, produced one million dollars more in agricultural commodities than Butler, Ohio, of corresponding area and population and the chief corn growing county of all the upper Mississippi Valley. The town, too, was the shipping and receiving port of other highly prosperous counties. Yancey and Hilliard were super-typical men, exponents of the happiest of modern civilizations.

The political debates joined between these two, for twenty years, erected in their common home its centripetal political influence. Their debates were more frequent and of more orderly arrival, covered, a larger territory and a richer one, were attended more universally by the domiciled population, were more anxiously observed from beyond the State and were an oratorical display more impressive than distinguished stump speaking elsewhere, it is believed, even in America.

Nor is the effect of the oratory of such leaders difficult to explain, silent of its force as may be the written chronicles of their times. The standard histories know it not; the most voluminous of encyclopedias ignore the names of "Yancey" and “Hilliard.” Commerce in literature fears the prejudices of the age of accumulation, too careless of the real strength of States. But the educated men who listened to Yancey and Hilliard were classical scholars, who revered the American government created from history. Oratory was their school. It comported happily with the ease of physical existence about them. In the eye to eye and face to face ordeal of orators the affections of the audience were invoked, and the intellectual nourishment society required was supplied. The impartation of knowledge by the art of making truth beautiful, skilfully picking 'the lock of curiosity to unfasten the door of fancy," was a genuine social advancement. So were the people prepared to meet, calmly, radical changes in their habits of life and to meet, bravely, unlooked for emergencies of their country. Under unparalleled tests, they proved to be resourceful, with a capacity of adaptation of which even they had been in unconscious possession.

Mr. Hilliard was the personal friend and associate of not a few of the men of letters as well as the famous politicians of the United States, and, in the most select social circles from Boston to New Orleans, he was an ornament. He was six years older than Yancey. Born in 1808, in Cumberland county, North Carolina, he was carried, by his parents, in his infancy, to reside at Columbia, South Carolina, and, at the customary age, was placed under Dr. Cooper, at the college there. Graduating, he entered the law office of William Campbell Preston to prepare for the bar, and, after a year's application to his studies, removed to Athens, Georgia, to continue their pursuit. So well known were his literary attainments, that at the age of twenty-three he was chosen to a professorship in the University of Alabama. The next year, by appointment, he delivered before the General Assembly an address on the life and character of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, the last of the Independency Signers, which was printed at the public cost.

In 1834 Mr. Hilliard took up his abode at Montgomery, and entered upon the practice of the law. He also took out a license as an itinerant preacher of the Methodist church, occupied the pulpit irregularly, but always, in that position, attracted overflowing congregations. He served in the Legislature as a Whig, and was chosen three times in succession to Congress as a Whig. His maiden speech in the House of Representatives, was an extraordinary success. He was offered the mission to Portugal by the Whig administration, of 1841. Declining this, he accepted, the next year, the mission to Belgium. He received the compliment of an appointment as one of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institute while he sat in Congress.

The earnest citizens who made up the opposing parties lead by Yancey and Hilliard claimed, respectively, superiority for their leader over his rival. Whenever the debate was joined and the reminiscences were talked over, as was the wont for days afterwards, by those who had heard, the Democrats continued to allege that Hilliard had evaded Yancey's citations of history and had not contradicted his forebodings, while the Whigs declared Yancey had failed to break the force of Hilliard's warning that public affairs were in as favorable condition as could be expected, and that an exigency requiring extraordinary action of the people and the States had not arisen and did not threaten to arise. All agreed, however, that there was no match for the one save in the other. In their contests the people never ceased to remember, that each spoke the truth as he saw it, and that if either accepted office, the office would be used to emphasize the very principles propounded before them, and for no other object; that the office, if accepted, would be honored by the holder. Differing much in temperament, the two leaders maintained, always, a profound respect for each other. This mutual feeling was well grounded. Each knew the high breeding of the other; both were classical scholars and too well informed to be betrayed into loose statements of facts or to be deceived; both were courageous, ever maintaining the bearing of the gentleman. The leaders were personal friends at the outset of their public collisions and remained in that attitude towards each other

until their separate political courses at length merged into one. (Letter of H. W. Hilliard.)

Speaking more in detail of the art of oratory illustrated by each after his own method: Hilliard studied the construction of sentences and the manner of delivery. His diction was elegant and his utterance extremely fluent. His tall figure, ever graceful, handsome features, brilliant eyes, distinguished appearance, indeed, and well trained voice assisted his words, as may be imagined. He grouped his facts well, avoided wounding the prejudices of his hearers, seldom employed the great power of sarcasm he was known to possess, and told of the defeat of his party as if it were a triumph. The Democrats charged against him, that while he advanced with the point of his lance concealed under a garland of roses, he often succeeded in unsettling the convictions of the unwary by the argument the flowers concealed. He had a richer fancy than Yancey, employed more art and was more adroit. He had the self-confidence of culture and the subtlety of conscious power. He was courteous, animated and brilliant. Hilliard's friends likened Yancey to the levelling rush of the storm; Yancey's friends likened Hilliard to the repose of nature when the rainbow spans the sky.

Those now living who best remember Yancey's oratory compare it to the oratory of no one else. They remember that, by his speech, complex things were made smooth and the warm blooded enthused, while even tamer natures were transported, but they do not admit that the rules of the school of oratory were brought much into the result. His oratory was his own straight forward, common sense, impassioned. He was ardent rather than ingenious, he had passion and employed it, he left no suspicion that he spoke to please, and never left an audience with the belief on their minds that he had exhausted his ability to discuss the subject. He never approached the line of the breakdown in words, voice or manner; there was no suggestion of a lost link in his discourse and never a sign of drudgery in the effort. Always thoroughly informed on his subject, it was sometimes remarked that, nevertheless, he did not employ syllogisms. But a careful reading of his speeches will, perhaps, explain this criticism. The faculty of analysis and generalization was so

developed with him, that he lead the listener to a generalized result who had not marked the process. Thus, he covered a great deal of ground in a short space of time. He never attempted to find the level of his audience, and the speech delivered, in 1858, before a few hundred planters at the little hamlet, Benton, Lowndes county, Alabama, will be preferred, doubtless, by the student of the theme, to the speech on practically the same subject, delivered in 1860, to an overflowing audience at Cooper Institute, New York.

Those hundreds of addresses by which Mr. Yancey shaped the public opinion of the South were delivered, generally, in the open air, the orator mounted upon a rough plank stand under the shade of forest trees. The whole figure of the man and every motion were exposed to the gaze of all. Beecher relates that, his consent having been solicited by some pious women of his congregation to draw a silk screen across the place he stood to preach, to conceal from view a part of his body, he replied that he had need in his oratory for his foot. Yancey's physical man was in his favor. There was a fine finish of muscular development with no tendency to bulkiness. The chest was broad, neck full and rather long, with a head neither large or small but remarkable for the symmetry of the contour. His movements were nervous and graceful and his appearance that of a man capable of great endurance of labor.

The exordium to his speech was delivered with marked solemnity, in long sentences of Saxon words and few adjectives, the utterance rapid, the tones conversational and every syllable of every word distinctly audible to the largest audience. The exordium to one of his more notable political addresses was of two sentences, of nearly equal length, making one hundred and sixty words, in which he stated the argument he was about to make. It is related of Preston, that when he defended a beloved and venerable judge, impeached before the Senate of South Carolina, because of an ungovernable infirmity, the advocate advanced up the aisle of the chamber slowly, step by step, shaking his long finger toward the President of the court and, posing under the judgment seat, brought to a climax there his magnificent imagery. The next day, even the next hour, few could recall the words or