The Congressional Globe, Volume 13, Part 1: Twenty-Eighth Congress, First Session Page: 28
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28
CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE.
surrounded by his family and friends, and received
all the care and aid which love and skill could give.
I discharge a mournful duty, Mr. President, in
bringing this deplorable event to the formal notice of
the Senate; in offering the feeble tribute of my ap-
plause to the many virtues of my deceased colleague,
and in asking for his memory the last honors which
the respect and affection of the Senate bestow upon
the name of a. deceased brother.
Lewis Field Linn, the subject of this annuncia-
tion, was born in the State of Kentucky, in the year
1795, in the immediate vicinity of Louisville. His
grandfather was Colonel William Linn, one of the
favorite officers of General George Rodgers Clark,
and well known for his courage and enterprise in the
early settlement of the Great "West. At the age of
eleven he had fought in the ranks of men, in the de-
fence of a station in Western Pennsylvania, and was
seen to deliver a deliberate and effective fire. He
was one of the first to navigate the Ohio and Missis-
sippi from Pittsburg* to New Orleans, and back
again—a daring achievement, which himself and some
others accomplished for the public service, and
amidst every species of danger, in the year 1776.*
He was killed by the Indians at an early period;
leaving a family of young children, of whom the
worthy Colonel William Pope (father of Governor
Pope, and head of the numerous and respectable
family of that name in the West) became the guar-
dian. The father of Senator Linn was among these
children; and, at an early age, skating upon the ice
near Louisville, with three other boys, he was taken
prisoner by the Shawaneeindians, carried off, and
detained captive for three years, when all four made
their escape "and returned home, by killing their
guard, traversing some hundred miles of wilderness,
and swimming the Ohio river. The mother of Sen-
ator Linn was a Pennsylvanian by birth; her maid-
en name Hunter; born at Carlisle; and also had he-
roic blood in her veins. Tradition, if not history,
preserves the recollection of her courage and conduct
at Fort Jefferson, at the Iron Banks, in 1781, when
the Indians attacked and were repulsed from that
post. Women and boys were men in those days.
The father of Senator Linn died young, leaving
this son but eleven years of age. The cares of an
elder brother supplied (as far as such a loss could be
supplied,) the loss of a father; and under his au-
spices the education of the orphan was conducted.
He was intended for the medical profession, and re-
ceived his education, scholastic and professional, in
the State of his nativity. At an early age he wa3
qualified for the practice of medicine, and com-
menced it in the then Territory, now State, of Mis-
""The next effort at this perilous navigation was made by
Colonels Gibson and Linn—the latter the grandfather of the
present Dr. Lmn, of St. Louis, now in the Senate of the
United States from Missouri. These gentlemen descended
the Mississippi in 177b, from Pittsburg to New Orleans, by
the orders of Virginia, it is presumed, to obtain military
stores for the troops stationed at the former place. So ex-
traordinary an adventure may well require particular coiv
formation to the mind of the reader; and it can be furnished
in the most remarkable manner. John .Smith, now or lately
of Woodfoid county, in this State, was, m 1776, engaged m
reconnoitenng this country, in company with James Rarrod,
ko eminently distinguished in the history of Kentucky dif-
ficulties ond dangers. On their return, the companions sep-
arated—Harrod to go to North Carolina, and Smith to Peter's
creek on the Monongahela. While travelling on the bank
of the Ohio, the latter discovered Gibson and party descend-
ing it; who hailed Smith, and prevailed on him to embark in
this, one of the boldest of Western adventures. The party
succeeded in the object, and obtained a supply of 156 kegs
of gunpowder from New Orleans, which Smith helped to
carry round the Falls to the mouth of Bpar Grass creek, in
the spxiiig of 1777. Each man carried thiee kegs along the
portage, one at a time. The powder was delivered at
Wheeling first, and thenre conveyed to Pittsburg. Inde-
pendently of this particularity ot service, solemnly asserted
on oath, in a deposition at law, by a respectable party in the
transaction, it was frequently mentioned by Colonel Lmn in
his lifetime, and is still known as his information m the fami-
ly left by this gallant and energetic man/'—Butler's Histoiy
of Kentucky, pages 166, 1^0,
souri; and was immediately amongst the foremos
of his profession. Intuitive sagacity supplied in
him the place of long experience; and boundless be-
nevolence conciliated universal esteem. To all his
patients he was the same; flying with alacrity to
every call, attending upon the poor and humble as
zealously as on the rich and powerful, on the
stranger as readily as on the neighbor, discharging
to all the duties of nurse and friend as well as of
physician, and wholly regardless of his own inter-
est, or even of his own health, in his zeal to serve
and to save others.
The highest professional honors and rewards were
jpfore him. Though commencing on a provincial
theatre, there was not a capital in Europe or Ameri-
ca in which he would not have attained the front
rank in physic or surgery. But his fellow-citizens
perceived in his varied abilities capacity and apti-
tude for service in a different walk. He was called
into the political field by an election to the Senate of
his adopted State. Thence he was called to the per-
formance of judicial duties, by a federal appoint-
ment to investigate land titles. Thence he was
called to the high station of Senator in the Congress
of the United States—first by an executive appoint-
ment, then by three successive almost unanimous
elections. The last of those elections he received
but one year ago, and had not commenced his du-
ties under it—had not sworn in under the certificate
which attested it—when a sudden and premature
death put an end to his earthly career. He entered
this body in the year 1833: death dissolved his con-
nexion with it in 1843. For ten years he was a be-
loved and distinguished member of this body; and
surely a nobler or a finer character never adorned
the chamber of the American Senate.
He was my friend; but I speak not the language
of friendship when I speak his praise. A debt of
justice is all that I can attempt to discharge: an im-
perfect copy of the true man is all that I can attempt
to paint.
A sagacious head, and a feeling heart, were the
great characteristics of Dr. Linn. He had a judg-
ment which penetrated both men and things, and
gave him near and clear views of far distant events.
He saw at once the bearing—the remote bearing of
great measures, either for good or for evil; and
brought instantly to their support, or opposition,
the logic of a prompt and natural eloquence, more
beautiful in its delivery, and more effective in its ap-
plication, than any that art can bestow. He had
great fertility of mind, and was himself the author
and mover of many great measures,—some for the
benefit of the whole Union—some for the benefit of
the Great West—some for the benefit of his own
State—many for the benefit of private individuals.
The pages of our legislative history will bear the
evidences of these meritorious labors to a remote and
grateful posterity.
Brilliant as were the qualities of ljis head, the
qualities of his heart still eclipse them. It is to
the heart we look for the character of the man; and
what a heart had Lewis Linn ! The kindest, the
gentlest, the most feeling, and the most generous
that ever beat in the bosom of bearded [man ! And
yet, when the occasion required it, the bravest and
the most daring also. He never beheld a case of
human wo without melting before it; he never en-
countered an apparition of earthly danger without
giving it defiance. Where is the friend, or even the
stranger, in danger, or distress, to whose succor he
did not fly, and whose sorrowful or perilous case
he did not make his own ? When—where—was he
ever called upon for a service, or a sacrifice, and
rendered not, upon the instant, the one or the other, "
as the occasion required?
The senatorial service of this rare man fell upon
trying times—high party times—when the collisions
of party too often embittered the ardent feelings of
generous natures; but who ever knew bitterness, or
party animosities in him ? He was, indeed, a party-
man as true to his party as to his friend and his
country; but, beyond the line of duty and of princi-
ple beyond the debate and the vote—he knew no
party, and saw no opponent. Who among us all,
even after the fiercest debate, ever met him without
meeting the benignant smile and the kind salutation?
Who of us all ever needed a friend without finding
one in him ? Who of us all was ever stretched up-
on the bed of sickness without finding him at its
side? Who of us all ever knew of a personal
difficulty of which he was not, as far as possible,
the kind composer ?
Such was Senator Li.vn, in high party times, here
among us. And what he was here, among us, he
was everywhere, and with everybody. At home
among his friends and neighbors; on the high road
among casual acquaintances; in foreign lands among
strangers; in all, and inevery of these situations, he
was the same thing. He had kindness and sympa-
thy for every human being; and the whole voyage
of his life was one continued and benign circumnavi-
gation of all the virtues which adorn and exalt the
character of man. Piety, charity, benevolence, gen-
erosity, courage, patriotism, fidelity, all shone con-
spicuously in him, and might extort'from the be-
holder the impressive interrogatory, For what place
was this man made ? Was it for the Senate, or the
camp? For public or for private life? For the bar
or the bench ? For the art which heals the diseases
of the body, or that which cures the infirmities of the
State ? For which of all these was he bom ? And
the answer is, For all. He was born to fill the
largest and most varied circle of human excellence;
and to crown all these advantages, Nature had given
him what the great Lord Bacon calls a perpetual
letter of recommendation—a countenance, not only
good, but sweet and winning—radiant with the vir-
tues of his soul—captivating universal confidence;
and such as no stranger could behold—no traveller,
even in the desert, could meet, without stopping to
reverence, and saying: Here is a man in whose
hands I could deposite life, liberty, fortune, honor.
Alas ! that so muchoexcellence should have perished
so soon ! that such a man should have been snatched
away at the early age of forty-eight, and while all
his faculties were still ripening and developing!
In the life and character of such a man, so exu-
berant in all that is grand and beautiful in human
nature, it is difficult to particularize excellences or
to pick out any one quality, or circumstance, which
could claim pre-eminence over all others. If I
should attempt it, I should point, among his meas-
ures for the benefit of the whole Union, to the
Oregon Bill; among his measures for the benefit of
his own State, to the acquisition of the Platte
Country; among his private virtues, to the love and
affection which he bore to that brother—the half-
brother only—who, only thirteen years older than
himself, had been to him the tenderest of fathers.
For twenty-nine years I had known the depth of
that affection, and never saw it burn more brightly
than in our last interview, only three weeks before
his death. He had just travelled a thousand miles
out of his way to see that brother; and his name
was still the dearest theme of his conversation—a
conversation, strange to tell! which turned, not upon
the empty and fleeting subjects of the day, but upon
things solid and eternal—upon friendship, and upon
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United States. Congress. The Congressional Globe, Volume 13, Part 1: Twenty-Eighth Congress, First Session, book, 1844; Washington D.C.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth2367/m1/52/?rotate=270: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.