The form of his head, and especially his forehead, indicated an imaginative mind, while the lines of his face marked deep thought. He was strictly honest in everything; was opposed to anything which wore the appearance of courting public favor, or seemed like a desire for office. His private life was exemplary, kind, and indulgent to his children and servants, and full of charity; severe upon nothing but the assumptions of folly, and the wickedness of purpose in the dishonest heart. In every relation of life he discharged its duties conscientiously, and was the enemy only of the vicious and wicked. He continued to reside upon his plantation in Lawrence County with his slaves, carefully providing for their every want until his death. He had attained the patriarchal age of threescore years and ten, and sank to rest in the solitude of his forest-home, peacefully and piously, leaving no enemies, and all the people of his State to mourn him.
CHAPTER XI.
POLITICAL CHANGES.
ASPIRANTS FOR CONGRESS—A NEW ORGANIZATION—TWO
PARTIES—A PROTECTIVE
TARIFF—–UNITED STATES BANK—THE
AMERICAN SYSTEM—INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS
—A GALAXY OF STARS—A SPARTAN
MOTHER’S ADVICE—NEGRO-DEALER—QUARTER
RACES—COCK-PITTING—MILITARY
BLUNDERS ON BOTH SIDES—ABNER GREEN’S
DAUGHTER—ANDREW JACKSON—GWINN—POINDEXTER—AD
INTERIM—GENERALS AS
CIVIL RULERS.
The remarkable excitement of the political contest between Troup and Clarke had the effect of stimulating the ambition of the young men of education throughout the State for political distinction. For some time anterior to this period, all seemed content to permit those who had been the active politicians in the Republican struggle with the Federal party to fill all the offices of distinction in the State without opposition. It would have been considered presumptuous in the extreme for any young man, whatever his abilities, to have offered himself as a candidate for Congress in opposition to Mr. Forsyth, R.H. Wild, Thomas