You Irish-descended people of the Northern States are proud of Shields, the son of an Irish emigrant, who, if my memory serves me aright, helped to direct the destinies of three American commonwealths and was United States Senator from all three. But I like to think of another Irishman, Matthew Lyon by name, the son of an humble Wicklow peasant, who was sold as a slave to the New England plantations because he, an Episcopalian, dared to raise his voice and his arm in defense of the rights of his Catholic neighbors and kinsmen in the County of Wicklow; and he bought his freedom with a black bull, which, according to family tradition, he first stole, and he became a United States Senator from Vermont, and cast the vote, against the wishes of his constituents, which made Thomas Jefferson President of this country over Aaron Burr and by so doing altered the entire course of our country’s history; and while he was in jail in a town in Vermont for his attacks on the odious alien and sedition laws, he issued a challenge for a duel to the President of the United States, and being released, he moved down to Kentucky and became a Congressman; and later, having quarreled with all his neighbors there, he moved on to Arkansas and was named as Arkansas’ first territorial delegate to Washington, and he might have moved still further west and might have filled still more offices had he not in the fullness of his maturity, when he was seventy years young, been thrown from a mule and had his neck broken. I like to think of Matthew Lyon and his career because he, also, was an ancestor of mine. (Applause and laughter.)