Mr. Stevens was no ordinary man. At the bar he was astute and eloquent rather than profound, but in the Legislature of Pennsylvania and in the management of the affairs of that State, where for a period he actively participated and was a ruling mind, he was often rash and turbulent, and had, not without cause, the reputation of being a not over scrupulous politician. Personally my relations with him, though not intimate, were pleasant and friendly. I was first introduced to him at Harrisburg in 1836, when he was a member of the convention that revised the Constitution of Pennsylvania. We occasionally met in after years. He expressed himself pleased with my appointment in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, and, notwithstanding we disagreed on fundamental principles, he complimented my administration of the Navy Department, and openly and always sustained my positions, and particularly so on the subject of the blockade, on which there were differences in the Administration. In the Pennsylvania convention of 1836 he was probably the most eloquent speaker, but his ideas were often visionary and radical. He ultimately refused to sign the Constitution because the colored people were denied the elective franchise. Severe as he exhibited himself toward the rebels during and subsequent to the civil war, Mr. Stevens was not by nature, as might be supposed, inhuman in his feelings and sympathies toward his fellow men. To the colored race he seemed always more attached and tender than to the whites, perhaps because they were enslaved and oppressed. He was opposed to slavery, to imprisonment for debt, and to capital punishment. There were strange contradictions in his character. In his political career he had ardent supporters, though many who voted with him had not a high regard for his principles. His course and conduct in the Legislature and government of Pennsylvania did much to debauch the political morals of that State, and in the celebrated "buck-shot war" he displayed the bold and reckless disregard of justice and popular rights that distinguished the latter years of his Congressional life, when he became the acknowledged leader of the radical reconstruction party in Congress. In his political career and management, though strongly sustained by a local constituency, he had experienced a series of disappointments. The defeat of John Quincy Adams, whom he greatly admired, in 1828, and the election of General Jackson, against whom his prejudices were inveterate, were to him early and grievous vexations.