It was hard on Sargent, and I shall always think better of him that instead of shaking Mississippi dust from his shoes, then and forever, he returned to the territory a few months later, quietly took up the life of a planter, and bore a not unworthy part in the task of building up the new community, notably aiding in the establishment of the first banking house in the territory in 1809. He endured much from the malice of others, but gave none in return. He died while on a visit to New Orleans, June 3, 1820, and his ashes sleep on the site of his old plantation home, near Natchez. II. GOVERNOR WILLIAM C. C. CLAIBORNE Exit Sargent—enter Claiborne. Exit the man whose record as governor, whether through native fault or inexorable fate, was a conspicuous failure, and enter one whose story throughout was that of brilliant success. In characteristics, the two men were the very antipodes, each of the other. The one, of austere temperament, and stern, unbending manner; the other of warm and genial nature, in demeanor gracious and inviting. Claiborne possessed in preëminent degree the ready tact, the power of always saying and doing the right thing, in which the other was so noticeably wanting. William Charles Cole Claiborne was a native of Virginia, born in Sussex county. At the age of fifteen he went to New York, then the seat of government, and there was given employment by the clerk of the Congress. It was his good fortune while in that work to attract the attention of a number of leading men, who became his friends for life. Jefferson especially took him as a protégé, and gave him books to read and good advice. He read law in his spare moments, went to Tennessee, was admitted to the bar there, and took part in the first constitutional convention of the state. He received appointment as Judge of the State Supreme Court, by Governor Sevier, when he was in his twenty-second year, and a few months later was elected to Congress. Claiborne was in Congress as member from Tennessee when the petition from Mississippi against Sargent was presented; was on the committee to which it was referred, and strongly recommended the change of the form of government in the territory. He is known to have censured Sargent’s course, and there is proof that Sargent subsequently doubted whether his motives in so doing were free from self-interest. It is not, however, necessary to think of Claiborne as guilty of meanness of this sort. He was no place-hunter, nor one who, at any time in his life, placed self-seeking above principle. He was an ardent Jeffersonian, and his sympathy was naturally with the party opposing the governor. He was young, too, twenty years Sargent’s junior, and his rapid advancement had doubtless rendered him a trifle “bumptious.” But from his standpoint, the contentions between Sargent and his people were quite unnecessary, and should not be tolerated. [Illustration: WILLIAM C. C. CLAIBORNE