Mr. Bayard inherited the equable temperament shown by his father and his grandfather.  He was a warm-hearted man with a long memory for services done him, but he had a faculty of containing himself which few men exercise to the degree that he exercised it habitually, both in his public and private life.  The habit was so strong, in fact, that he indulged only on rare occasions that emotion which is necessary for the highest success as an orator.  The calmness of his thought shows itself in logic which, while it may invite confidence, does not compel admiration.  When he is moved, however, the freedom of his utterances from exaggeration and from that tendency to rant which mars many orations makes such periods as those with which he closes his speech on the Electoral Bill models of expression for all who wish to realize the highest possibilities of cumulative force.

The son of one United States Senator, James A. Bayard, of Delaware, and the grandson of another, Mr. Bayard represented well the family tradition of integrity.  Born in 1828, he succeeded to his father’s place in the Senate when forty-one years of age, and remained in the public service until within a short time of his death.  He was Secretary of State under the first Cleveland administration and ambassador to England under the second.  In the convention which nominated Mr. Cleveland in 1884, Mr. Bayard, who had been strongly supported for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1880, was so close to the presidency at the beginning of the balloting that his managers confidently expected his success.  He became much attached to President Cleveland, and in 1896 he took a course on the financial issue then uppermost, which alienated many of his friends, as far as friends could be alienated by the political action of a man whose public and private life were so full of dignity, simplicity, and the qualities which result from habitual good faith.  Mr. Bayard survived almost into the twentieth century as a last representative of the colonial gentlemen who debated the Federal Constitution.  Supposed to be cold and unapproachable, he was really warm in his friendships, with a memory which never allowed an act of service done him to escape it.  Few better men have had anything to do with the politics of the second half of the century.  He died in 1898.

W. V. B.

A PLEA FOR CONCILIATION IN 1876

("Counting the Electoral Votes,” United States Senate, January 24th, 1877)

Mr. President, I might have been content as a friend of this measure to allow it to go before the Senate and the country unaccompanied by any remarks of mine had it not been the pleasure of the Senate to assign me as one of the minority in this Chamber to a place upon the select committee appointed for the purpose of reporting a bill intended to meet the exigencies of the hour in relation to the electoral votes.