“Sir, I proudly plead guilty to the ‘soft impeachment.’ I was born in East Tennessee--on the banks of the Watauga--which in the Indian vernacular means ‘beautiful river:’ and beautiful river it is. I have stood upon its banks in my childhood, and looking into its glassy waters, beheld there mirrored, a heaven with moon and planets and trembling stars, and looking upward, have beheld the heaven, which the heaven below reflected. Away from its rocky borders, stretches a vast line of cedar, pine and hemlock evergreens, back to the distant mountains--more beautiful than the groves of Switzerland--reposing on a back-ground as perfect in grandeur as the cloud-lands of the Sierra Nevada of the far West. “There stands the towering Roan, the Black, and the magnificent Smoky mountains, upon whose summits the clouds gather of their own accord, even on the brightest day. There I have seen the great spirit of the storm lie down in his pavilion of clouds and darkness to quiet slumbers. Then I have seen him awake at midnight and come forth like a giant refreshed with repose, arouse the tempest, and let loose the red lightnings that flash for hundreds of miles along the mountain tops swifter than the eagle’s flight in heaven. Then I have seen those lightnings stand and dance like angels of light to the music of Nature’s grand organ, whose keys were touched by the fingers of Jehovah, and responded in notes of thunder resounding through the universe. Then I’ve seen the darkness drift away, and morning get up from her saffron bed, and come forth like a queen robed in her garments of light, and stand tip-toe on the misty mountain heights. And while black night fled away to his bed-chamber at the pole, the glorious sun burst forth upon the vale and river where I was born. O, glorious land of the mountains and sun-painted cliffs! How can I ever forget thee?”