All who knew him in the Senate will bear witness to his wonderful industry, his perfect probity, and the personal purity of his life. No differences of opinion can obscure the fame of these qualities, or keep them from being a delight to his friends and an example to his country. Nor can any of us forget how, amid peculiar trials, he was courageous in devotion to the National Union. No pressure, no appeal, no temptation, could sway him in this patriotic allegiance. That fidelity which belonged to his nature shone here as elsewhere. He was no holiday Senator, cultivating pleasure rather than duty, and he was above all suspicion in personal conduct. Calumny could not reach him. Nothing is so fierce and unreasoning as the enmities engendered by political antagonists; but even these never questioned that he was at all times incorruptible and pure. Let this be spoken in his honor; let it be written on his monument. Nor can the State that gave him to the national service and trusted him so long fail to remember with pride that he was always an honest man. With this completeness of integrity there was a certain wild independence and intensity of nature which made him unaccommodating and irrepressible. Faithful, constant, devoted, indefatigable, implacable, he knew not how to capitulate. Dr. Johnson, who liked “a good hater,”[227] would have welcomed him into this questionable fellowship. Here I cannot doubt. Better far the opposite character, and even the errors that may come from it. Kindred to hate is prejudice, which was too often active in him, seeming at times, especially where we differed from him, to take the place of reason. On nothing was this so marked as Slavery. Here his convictions were undisguised; nor did they yield to argument or the logic of events. How much of valuable time, learned research, and intellectual effort he bestowed in support of this dying cause, the chronicles of the Senate attest. How often have we listened with pain to this advocacy, regretting deeply that the gifts he possessed, and especially his sterling character, were enlisted where our sympathies could not go! And yet I cannot doubt that others would testify, as I now do, that never on these occasions, when the soul was tried in its depths, did any fail to recognize the simplicity and integrity of his nature. Had he been less honest, I should have felt his speeches less. Happily, that great controversy is ended; nor do I say anything but the strict truth, when I add that now we bury him who spoke last for Slavery.