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56th Congress, 1 SENATE. [Document 
 
 2d Session. t i No. 230. 
 
 MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER 
 
 Cushman Kellogg Davis 
 
 (Late a Senator from Minnesota), 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 FIFTY-SIXTH CONGRESS, 
 Second Session. 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OF] [I I . 
 
 I90I. 
 
JUL ao 1901 
 D.ofD. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Proceedings in the Senate 5 
 
 Prayer by the Chaplain 7 
 
 Address of — 
 
 Mr. Nelson, of Minnesota 9 
 
 Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts i 7 
 
 Mr. Morgan, of Alabama 25 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Wyoming 34 
 
 Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts 3S 
 
 Mr. Daniel, of Virginia 4S 
 
 Mr. Spooner, of Wisconsin 55 
 
 Mr. Pettigrew, of South Dakota 63 
 
 Mr. McCumber, of North Dakota 66 
 
 Mr. Foster, of Washington 69 
 
 Mr. Towxe, of Minnesota 72 
 
 Proceedings in the House S3 
 
 Address of — 
 
 Mr. Fletcher, of Minnesota : S6 
 
 Mr. Jenkins, of Wisconsin 92 
 
 Mr. Tawnev, of Minnesota 95 
 
 Mr. Underwood, of Alabama 102 
 
 Mr. McCLEARV, of Minnesota 105 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Missouri 1 14 
 
 Mr. Parker, of New Jersey 116 
 
 Mr. Heatwole, of Minnesota 1 iS 
 
 Mr. Spalding, of North Dakota 1 23 
 
 Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota 12S 
 
 Mr. Wm. Ai.hen Smith, of Michigan 13S 
 
 Mr. Morris, of Minnesota 141 
 
 Mr. Gamble, of South Dakota 151 
 
 Mr. Eddy, of Minnesota 155 
 
 3 
 
Death of Hon. Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 Proceedings in the Senate. 
 
 December 3, 1900. 
 
 Mr. Nelson. Mr. President, it is my sad duty to announce 
 to the Senate the death of my late colleague, Senator Cushman 
 K. Davis, at his home in St. Paul, Minn., on the 27th of 
 November last, at 9 o'clock in the evening, after a lingering 
 illness of more than two months. In his death our nation has 
 lost one of its foremost public servants and Minnesota one of 
 the noblest and best of her sous. 
 
 On some future occasion I shall ask the Senate to set aside 
 a day for the consideration of tributes to the memory of my 
 deceased colleague. On this occasion I offer the resolutions 
 which I send to the desk, and ask for their immediate 
 consideration. 
 
 The President pro tempore. The resolutions submitted by 
 the Senator from Minnesota will be read. 
 
 The Secretary read the resolutions, as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That the Senate has heard with deep regret and profound 
 sorrow of the death of the Hon. Cushman Kellogg Davis, late a 
 Senator from the State of Minnesota. 
 
 Resolved, That the Secretary communicate a copy of these resolutions 
 to the House of Representative-. 
 
 The resolutions were considered by unanimous consent, and 
 unanimously agreed to. 
 
 5 
 
6 Proceedings in the Senate. 
 
 Mr. Allison. Mr. President, I offer an additional resolution, 
 which I ask to have read and considered at this time. 
 
 The President pro tempore. The resolution submitted by 
 the Senator from Iowa will be read. 
 
 The Secretary read the resolution, as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That as a further mark of respect to the memory of the 
 deceased, Hon. John Henry Gear and Hon. Cushman Kellogg Davis. 
 the Senate do now adjourn. 
 
 The resolution was unanimously agreed to; and (at 3 o'clock 
 and 46 minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned until Tuesday, 
 December 4, 1900, at 12 o'clock meridian. 
 
 December 4, 1900. 
 
 A message from the House of Representatives, by Mr. \Y. J. 
 Browning, its Chief Clerk, transmitted to the Senate resolu- 
 tions on the death of Hon. Cushman K. Davis, late a Senator 
 from the State of Minnesota; Hon. John H. Gear, late a Sena- 
 tor from the State of Iowa; Hon. John H. Hoffecker, late a 
 Representative from the State of Delaware, and Hon. William 
 D. Daly, late a Representative from the State of New Jersey. 
 
 December 15, 1900. 
 
 Mr. Nelson. Mr. President, I desire to give notice that on 
 Saturday, the 12th day of January next, at the close of the 
 routine morning business, I shall submit resolutions commemo- 
 rative of the life and services of my late distinguished colleague, 
 Senator Davis. I wish also to say that I shall ask the Senate 
 at that time to suspend all other business for the purpose of 
 paying tribute to his memory. 
 
 February 4, 1901. 
 
 A message from the House communicated to the Senate the 
 resolutions of the House commemorative of the life and public 
 services of Hon. Cushman Kellogg Davis, late a Senator 
 from the State of Minnesota. 
 
MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 January 12, 1901. 
 
 The Chaplain, Rev. \V. H. Milburn, D. D., offered the fol- 
 lowing prayer: 
 
 We bless Thee, our Father, that through the growing 
 influence of Thy Son and of Thy Holy Spirit the sentiment 
 of brotherly kindness among men has grown and is increasing, 
 and finds itself with emphatic expression in this the highest 
 political body of the nation. And now, as we come about the 
 lately open grave of the late eminent senior Senator from 
 Minnesota to pay the tribute of respect and affection to his 
 memory, may all the best and noblest traits of his character 
 come out, and may we respond to them with genuine and 
 affectionate admiration and appreciation. 
 
 Let Thy blessing rest upon all the Senators, those who are 
 detained at home by infirmity and indisposition, those who 
 are here and to be present, and may this be a memorable 
 day in the history of the Senate as it engraves the name and 
 recollection of our departed friend and brother high among 
 the statesmen of the nation. We humbly pray, through Jesus 
 Christ, our Savior. Amen. 
 
 Mr. Xelson. Mr. President, I offer the resolutions which I 
 send to the desk. 
 
 The Presiding Officer. The Secretary will read the reso- 
 lutions. 
 
 7 
 
8 Proceedings in the Senate. 
 
 The Secretary read the resolutions, as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That it is with deep regret and profound sorrow that the 
 Senate hears the announcement of the death of Hon. Cushman Kellogg 
 Davis, late a Senator from the State of Minnesota. 
 
 Resolved, That the Senate extends to his family and to the people of 
 the State of Minnesota sincere condolence in their bereavement. 
 
 Resolved, That, as a mark of respect to the memory of the deceased, 
 the business of the Senate be now suspended to enable his associates to 
 pay fitting tribute to his high character and distinguished services. 
 
 Resolved, That the Secretary transmit to the family of the deceased and 
 to the governor of the State of Minnesota a copy of these resolutions, 
 with the action of the Senate thereon. 
 
 Resolved, That the Secretary communicate these resolutions to the 
 House of Representatives. 
 
 Resolved, That, as an additional mark of respect, at the conclusion of 
 these exercises the Senate do adjourn. 
 
Address of Mr. Nelson, of Minnesota 
 
 Address of Mr. Nelson, of Minnesota. 
 
 Mr. President: Senator Cushman Kellogg Davis, of 
 Minnesota, died in the sixty-third year of his age, at his home 
 in St. Paul, on the 27th day of November, A. D. 1900, after a 
 lingering sickness of more than two months. He died in the 
 public service, in the full maturity of his great mental vigor, 
 at a time when he was better equipped than ever to serve his 
 country, and at a time when his country stood in need of his 
 sound judgment, profound wisdom, and vast experience in 
 public affairs. 
 
 He was born at Henderson, Jefferson County, N. Y. , on the 
 1 6th day of June, A. D. 1838. On his maternal side he was a 
 direct descendant of Mary Allerton, the last survivor of that 
 heroic band that landed from the Mayflower, and his paternal 
 ancestry was also of good Puritan stock. When he was 2 
 months old his parents moved to the neighborhood of Wau- 
 kesha, Wis., where his father engaged in the pursuit of farm- 
 ing for the next fifteen years, during which period he led the 
 usual life of a farmer's son on the farm. 
 
 He was an intellectual and highly-gifted youth, and his 
 vigorous mental faculties were trained and developed in the 
 district school, in Carroll College, and in Michigan University, 
 from whence he graduated in 1857. He immediately thereafter 
 took up and followed the study of the law, became a member 
 of the Waukesha bar in 1859, and remained in active practice 
 till 1862, when he entered the Army as first lieutenant of Com- 
 pany B, of the Twenty-eighth Wisconsin Regiment, in the civil 
 war. He served with distinction in the Army until 1864, when. 
 on account of poor health, he was compelled to resign. 
 
io Life arid Character of Cuskman K. Davis, 
 
 In 1865 he moved to St. Paul, Minn., and took up the prac- 
 tice of the law, and soon became noted as one of the ablest, 
 most prominent, and most eloquent members of the bar, with a 
 large and lucrative practice. 
 
 He was a member of the legislature in 1867, United States 
 attorney for Minnesota from 1868 until 1873, and governor of 
 the State in 1874 and 1875. He was one of the regents of the 
 State University from 1S82 till 1898, and in 1887 was elected 
 United States Senator, and reelected in 1893 and 1S99. He 
 was chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in the 
 United States Senate from March, 1897, till his death, and was 
 one of the commissioners who negotiated the treaty of Paris 
 with Spain. 
 
 This, in brief, is the mere outer shell of his extensive public 
 career, and gives us but a scant clew to his greatness and 
 worth. To trace his life, the development of his vigorous 
 mind, and its wonderful resources from youth to manhood, 
 from a great lawyer to a profound statesman and leader, is 
 to scan a human epic, marvelous and inspiring in its progress 
 and grand and enduring in its results and outcome. He was 
 equipped with a mind of the first order, eager, thirsty, and 
 searching. In his youth he was a most ardent and omnivorous 
 student, to whom his lessons were but the doorsteps to the 
 great sanctuary of knowledge, which he was ever exploring. 
 He became a devouring student of history, philosophy, and 
 poetry at a time when most youths are tethered to their arith- 
 metic, their grammar, and their geography. And so it came 
 to pass that when he finally parted with his alma mater he car- 
 ried away with him a much richer and a much greater wealth 
 of human knowledge than that embraced in the college curric- 
 ulum. 
 
 The trend of his mind and its comprehensive development 
 
Address of Mr. Nelson, of Minnesota. n 
 
 inevitably turned him to the legal profession, and it was in this 
 field that he first made his mark and first scored his great vic- 
 tories. He was a most profound lawyer, win; mastered the 
 great fundamental principles of the law that govern human 
 affairs, and he had the intuitive faculty to correctly apply these 
 to the manifold transactions of an ever-expanding civilization. 
 In practice he was always ready, and always a complete master 
 of the evidence, the facts, and the law of his case, and his elo- 
 quence was of a character to instruct, impress, and convince 
 both court and jury, and he was equally at home and equally 
 strong both in a nisi prius and in an appellate court. I can 
 truthfully bear witness to these facts, for it has been my 
 privilege to contend with him at the bar and to hear him 
 while I was sitting as one of the judges in a court of impeach- 
 ment. 
 
 When he was first elected to the Senate he was easily and 
 without dispute the foremost member of the bar in Minne- 
 sota. And though he was a most busy lawyer he never 
 allowed the law to congeal the innate kindness of his noble 
 and sympathetic heart. He was always kind and helpful to 
 the young and struggling practitioner, and he never turned 
 away a penniless client who had a meritorious case. He 
 loved the profession, and he was beloved and admired by 
 his associates, young and old. Few lawyers can point to a 
 grander, a more successful, or a nobler career at the bar. 
 
 Though absorbed in his profession, and ever a busy lawyer, 
 he nevertheless always kept in touch with public affairs, and 
 was always ready to lead and to guide the impulse and heart 
 of our people in their aspirations for relief and reform. I well 
 remember, when in the early seventies there was a great up- 
 rising among the people of the Northwest against the exac- 
 tions of the railroads, how he became the acknowledged leader 
 
12 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 of the movement, and how, in his great speech entitled " Mod- 
 ern feudalism," he voiced in most eloquent and convincing 
 terms the grievances complained of and the reforms desired 
 by the masses of the people. That speech, which he delivered 
 in many places, and his attitude on those great questions of 
 public concern led him into the governor's chair, came near 
 sending him to the United States Senate at that time, and 
 forever endeared him to all our people, who from that day 
 never ceased to have confidence in his integrity, his wisdom, 
 and his honesty of purpose. While the movement which he 
 thus led did not result in all the relief and reforms he and 
 the masses hoped for, yet it resulted in establishing the fact, 
 which had been in dispute, that railroad corporations are the 
 servants of the public and are amenable to public control. 
 
 After one term in the executive chair he again resumed his 
 calling as a lawyer with more success and greater vigor than 
 ever before. And in the meanwhile, though not in office, he 
 remained one of the acknowledged leaders of the Republican 
 party in the State, and was always ready and active to battle 
 for the cause and for the best interests of the people. 
 
 In 1S87, in obedience to a universal and pressing demand of 
 our people, the legislature elected him to the United States 
 Senate. And he came here, in the maturity of his great 
 power and vast experience, better equipped and better fitted 
 for the great work before him than most men who enter the 
 Senate. He came here in middle life, with a most vigorous 
 mind, an accomplished lawyer, a profound student, and a 
 learned scholar, well versed in public affairs. He at once 
 became prominent and one of the leaders of the Senate, but it 
 was not until he became chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
 Relations and our coutroversj- with Spain became acute that 
 his true forum was found and his great abilities w r ere given 
 
Address of Mr. Nelson, of Minnesota. 13 
 
 that field of statesmanship and diplomacy for which he was so 
 well gifted and equipped. In that place and in that field he- 
 was easily the first and our recognized leader and guide. Ni 1 
 one was better versed than he in the diplomatic history of 
 our country, and no one had studied more deeply and was 
 more familiar than he with all the complicated and varied 
 relations of our country with foreign nations. 
 
 His speeches and his reports on our relations with England, 
 with Spain, on our war with Spain, and on the treaty of Paris 
 were epics of wisdom • and eloquence scarcely ever excelled. 
 He exhausted and rendered clear and lucid the most profound 
 and most intricate problems of diplomacy and statecraft. When 
 he had spoken there was little, if anything, more to be said on 
 the subject. While he seemed listless and indifferent to the 
 mere routine work of the Senate, yet when great questions were 
 at stake and great problems were to be solved he was always 
 vigilant and always on the alert. He studied and passed upon 
 public affairs, both at home and abroad, with the instinct and 
 purpose of a statesman, and never in the spirit of a mere time- 
 server or politician. His entire heart and his whole soul were 
 wrapped up in his great work, and he was so absorbed by it that 
 he seemed at times oblivious to all else. He was an orator of 
 the highest and best type, clothing the most profound thoughts 
 in the most choice and most chaste of rhetoric. His speeches, 
 unlike most orators', were even more impressive, more captivat- 
 ing, and more convincing in the reading of them than in the 
 delivery. In his case the hearing served to whet the appetite 
 for the reading of his speeches, and the reader always dis- 
 covered beauties of thought and diction that had escaped him 
 in the delivery. His oratory was classic, but of a modern type, 
 fraught with facts and arguments of the most convincing and 
 exhausting character. 
 
14 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 While his work at the bar and in the public service absorbed 
 most of his time and attention, yet he always devoted a share 
 of his time to the pursuit and study of literature and history. 
 He was a profound Shakespearean scholar, thoroughly familiar 
 with the life and all the works of that great genius. His book 
 entitled "The Law in Shakespeare" shows how thoroughly he 
 entered into the spirit and how fully he mastered and under- 
 stood the broad and profound range of human knowledge and 
 human wisdom possessed by that great high priest of tragedy, 
 comedy, and song. He not only discovered the ' ' law ' ' in 
 Shakespeare, but he also fathomed that profound analysis of the 
 motives and mainsprings of human action so preeminent in the 
 great poet. 
 
 He, himself of an heroic turn of mind, naturally and irre- 
 sistibly became attracted to that most wonderful and most 
 startling of modern heroes, Napoleon. He was one the most 
 thorough and most profound students of the life, the mission, 
 and the work of this great man — familiar with ever} - phase of it 
 so far as known to human vision. There was scarcely a book 
 upon Napoleon, in English or in French, that he did not have 
 in his library and had not read and mastered. The study of the 
 life of the great hero in all its varied phases charmed him, 
 chastened him, and buoyed his spirit in the somber and perplex- 
 ing moments of his life. There are trying and tempestuous 
 moments in the lives of men when the music of the hurricane is 
 a solace, a relief, and a rest. To him Napoleon was the spirit in 
 that mighty whirlwind that crushed the feudalism of ages and 
 paved the way to the democracy of modern times. He dearly 
 loved a good novel, not so much for the mere story as for the 
 insight it afforded him of mental and moral evolutions, and espe- 
 cially for the great relief and rest it gave him from the study of 
 the difficult and profound problems entailed upon him as a 
 
Address of Mr. Nelson, of Minnesota. 15 
 
 lawyer, a legislator, and a statesman. Many a long and weary 
 night, when he was too tired to sleep, he bathed his aching 
 brows and found relief in Dickens, Thackeray, Bryant, Elliott, 
 Cooper, Irving, Scott, and other great novelists. These were a 
 sweet lullaby to his weary but restless spirit. 
 
 In the field of history he was a profound student and a great 
 explorer, with a tenacious memory and a discriminating and 
 analytic judgment. He was versed in the history of all the 
 leading nations of ancient and modern times, and he was espe- 
 cially familiar with and at home in the history of our own coun- 
 try, of England, and of France. His great knowledge in this 
 field was a supplement to his training as a lawyer, and it was 
 because he was thus doubly equipped that he was so thorough, 
 exhaustive, and effective in diplomacy and all that pertained to 
 our foreign affairs. 
 
 The society that charmed him most and to which he was 
 most devoted was the fine and extensive collection of books in 
 his own library. Here he felt thoroughly at home and was 
 never lonesome. His books were a part of his life, and his 
 dear associates. Here, more than anywhere else, he loved to 
 meet his friends, to converse with them on literature, history, 
 and affairs of state, and to introduce them to his mute com- 
 panions. Here he seemed possessed of an inspiration that 
 made him more charming and nearer and dearer to his friends 
 than anywhere else. It was his holy of holies, sacred to him, 
 and. because of that fact, sacred to those who communed with 
 him there. 
 
 His patriotism was of the loftiest and purest kind. He loved 
 his country, not as a heathen loves his idol, but as a parent 
 loves his child. He loved his country because it is noble and 
 just, and because it is the home of liberty, tempered with law, 
 wholesome, blessed, and untarnished. He abhorred all show 
 
1 6 Life and Character of Cuskman K. Davis. 
 
 and .sham, and scorned all posing and display. There was 
 nothing trifling nor fictitious in his nature. He was sincere, 
 conscientious, and fearless, both in private and public life, and 
 while he was most kind and approachable to all, yet he was 
 choice and deliberate in his friendships. He looked for loyalty 
 and good faith, and once assured of that he yielded his whole 
 heart and his whole soul, under all emergencies, to his friends. 
 To me he was on all occasions most kind and helpful. 
 
 I feel his loss most deeply. His death has left a void in my 
 heart which none can fill. We all miss him in the Senate — 
 miss him for his goodness, kindness, and great worth; miss him 
 for his wisdom, his eloquence, and noble example. His death 
 was a great bereavement, not only to his friends and his asso- 
 ciates, but to the entire country. There are some gaps in the 
 line of battle that can be easily filled, but that gap in the line 
 of battle he held when he passed away no one can fill as com- 
 pletely and as truly as he did. No public man had a warmer 
 place in the hearts of the people than he had. I have never 
 seen a larger funeral than his. It was attended in large num- 
 bers by young and old, in all walks of life, from all parts of the 
 State. They came in no perfunctory mood, but in a spirit of 
 heaviness, grief, and sorrow, as though each had been bereaved 
 of his dearest and most beloved of friends. There were many 
 beautiful flowers placed as tokens of grief and affection over his 
 remains, but the most impressive and most inspiring tokens 
 were the silent tears that trickled on the cheeks of so many sad 
 faces on that day. His mortal remains have been laid away in 
 their final resting place, but the spirit of his life, his mission, 
 and the great work he wrought will remain with us as a token, 
 as an example, and as an inspiration for all time to come. 
 
 When can his glory fade? 
 Oh, the brave charge he made. 
 
Address of Mr, Hoar, of Massachusetts. 17 
 
 Address of Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts. 
 
 Mr. President: There is 110 Senator who would not be glad 
 to lay a wreath of honor and affection on the monument of 
 Cushman K. DAVIS. That, however, is more especially the 
 right of his colleague and his successor and the members of 
 the great committee where he won so much of his fame. I 
 ought to say but a few words. 
 
 The Senate, as its name implies, has been from the begin- 
 ning, with few exceptions, an assembly of old men. In the 
 course of nature many of its members die in office. That has 
 been true of thirty-eight Senators since I came to the Capitol. 
 Others, a yet larger number, die soon after they leave office. 
 Of the men with whom I have served in this Chamber fifty- 
 eight more are now dead, making in all ninety-six, enough and 
 to spare to organize another Senate elsewhere. To that num- 
 ber has been added every Vice-President but two. Upon those 
 who have died in office eulogies have been pronounced in this 
 Chamber and in the House. The speakers have obeyed the 
 rule demanded by the decencies of funeral occasions — nil de 
 mortuis nisi bouum — if not the command born of a tenderer 
 pity for human frailty — jam parce sepulto. But in general, 
 with scarcely an exception, the portraitures have been true and 
 faithful. They prove that the people of the American States, 
 speaking through their legislative assemblies, are not likely to 
 select men to represent them in this august assembly who are 
 lacking in high qualities either of intellect or of character. 
 However that may be, it is surely true of Mr. Davis that what- 
 ever has been or will be said of him to-day, or was said of him 
 when the news of his death first shocked the country, is just 
 S. Doc. 230 2 
 
i8 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 what would have been said when he was alive by any man who 
 knew him. I have served with him here nearly fourteen years. 
 I have agreed with him and I have differed from him in regard 
 to matters of great pith and moment which deeply stirred the 
 feelings of the people, as they did mine, and doubtless did his 
 own. I never heard any man speak of him but with respect 
 and kindness. 
 
 Of course, Mr. President, in this great century which is just 
 over, when our Republic — this infant Hercules — has been grow- 
 ing from its cradle to its still youthful manhood, the greatest 
 place for a live man has been that of a soldier in time of war 
 and that of a statesman in time of peace. Cushman K. Davis 
 was both. He did a man's full duty in both. No man values 
 more than I do the function of the man of letters. No man 
 reveres more than I do the man of genius who in a loving and 
 reverent way writes the history of a great people, or the poet 
 from whose lyre comes the inspiration which induces heroic 
 action in war and peace". But I do not admit that the title of 
 the historian or that of the poet to the gratitude and affec- 
 tion of mankind is greater than that of the soldier who saves 
 nations, or that of the statesman who creates or preserves them, 
 or who makes them great. I have no patience when I read 
 that famous speech of Gladstone, he and Tennyson being 
 together on a journey, when he modestly puts Mr. Tennyson's 
 title to the gratitude of mankind far above his own. Glad- 
 stone, then prime minister, declared that Tennyson would be 
 remembered long after he was forgotten. That may be true. 
 But whether a man be remembered or whether he be forgotten; 
 whether his work be appreciated or no; whether his work be 
 known or unknown at the time it is accomplished, is not the 
 test of its greatness or its value to mankind. The man who 
 keeps this moral being, or helps to keep this moral being we 
 
Address of Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts. 19 
 
 call a State in the paths of justice and righteousness and happi- 
 ness, the direct effect of whose action is felt in the comfort and 
 happiness and moral life of millions upon millions of human 
 lives, who opens and constructs great highways of commerce, 
 who makes schools and universities not only possible but 
 plenty, who brings to pass great policies that allure men from 
 misery, and poverty, and oppression, and serfdom in one world, 
 to free, contented, happy, prosperous homes in another, is a 
 great benefactor to mankind, whether his work be accomplished 
 with sounding of trumpets, or stamping of feet, or clapping of 
 hands, or the roar and tumult of popular applause, or whether 
 it be done in the silence of some committee room, and no man 
 know it but by its results. 
 
 I am not ready to admit that even Shakespeare worked on a 
 higher plane, or was a greater power on earth, than King Alfred 
 or George Washington, even if it be that he will survive them 
 both in the memory of man. The name of every man but one 
 who fought with Leonidas at Thermopylae is forgotten. But is 
 .Eschylus greater than Leonidas, or Miltiades, or Themistocles? 
 The literature of Athens preserves to immortality the fame of 
 its great authors. But it was Solon, and Pericles, and Miltiades 
 that created and saved and made great the city, without which 
 the poets could not have existed. Mr. Tennyson himself came 
 nearer the truth than his friend, Mr. Gladstone, when he said: 
 
 He 
 That, through the channels of the state, 
 Conveys the people's wish, is great; 
 His name is pure; his fame is free. 
 
 There have been soldiers whose courage saved the day in 
 great decisive battles when the fate of nations hung in the 
 scale, yet whose most enduring monument was the column of 
 smoke which rose when their death shot was fired. There 
 
20 Life and Character of Cuskman K. Davis. 
 
 have been statesmen whose silent influence has decided the 
 issue when the country was at the parting of the ways, of 
 whose service history takes no heed. The great Ohio Terri- 
 tory, now six imperial States, was twice saved to freedom 
 by the almost unnoticed action of a single man. With all 
 respect for the man of letters, we are not yet quite ready to 
 admit that the trumpeter is better than the soldier, or the 
 painter greater than the lion. 
 
 There is no need of many words to sum up the life and 
 character of Cushman Davis. His life was in the daylight. 
 Minnesota knew him. His country knew him and loved him. 
 He was a good soldier in his youth, and a great Senator in 
 his maturer manhood. What can be said more, or what can 
 lie said better, to sum up the life of an American citizen? 
 He offered his life for his country when life was all before 
 him, and his State and his country rewarded him with their 
 highest honor. The great orator and philosopher of Rome 
 declared in his youth, and repeated in his age. that death 
 could not come prematurely to a man who had been consul. 
 This man surely might be accounted ready to die. He had 
 discharged honorably life's highest duty, and his cup of honor 
 and of glory was full. 
 
 We are thinking to-day of something more than a public 
 sorrow. We are mourning the loss of a close and delightful 
 companionship, a companionship which lightened public care 
 and gave infinite pleasure to private iutercouse. If he had 
 never held office, if his name had never been heard even beyond 
 the boundaries of a single municipality, he would have been 
 almost anywhere a favorite and foremost citizen. He was, 
 in the first place, always a gentleman, and a true gentleman 
 always gives tone to any company in which he is found, 
 whether it be among the rulers of States or the humblest 
 
Address of Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts. 21 
 
 gathering of friendly neighbors. Lord Erskine said on a great 
 occasion : 
 
 It is impossible to define in terms the proper feelings of a genii. 
 but their existence has supported this country for mam ayes, and sin- 
 might perish if they were lost. 
 
 Certainly our friend had this quality. He was everywhere a 
 gentleman. He met every occasion in life with a simple and 
 quiet courtesy. There was not much of deference in it. There 
 was no yielding or supplication or timidity in it. I do not 
 think he ever asked favors, though no man was more willing 
 to grant them. But there is something more than this in the 
 temper of which I am speaking. The man who possesses it 
 gives unconsciously to himself or to his associates tone to every 
 circle, as I just said, in which he is found. So, wherever he 
 was, his manner of behavior prevailed, whatever might have 
 happened to the same men if they had been left alone. 
 
 Senator Davis was a man who kept well his own counsel. 
 He was a man to whom it was safe for other men to trust their 
 counsel. His conversation, to which it was always a delight to 
 listen, had no gossip in it. Still less had it ever anything of 
 ill nature or sarcasm. He liked to share with a friend the 
 pleasure he took in finding some flower or gem of literature 
 which, for long ages till he found it in some out-of-the-way 
 nook, had- 
 
 Blushed unseen, 
 And wasted its sweetness on the desert air. 
 
 He had what Jeremy Taylor calls ' ' the great endearment of 
 prudent and temperate speech." 
 
 His conversation was sparkling and witty and full of variety, 
 but no spark from him was ever a cinder in the eye of his 
 friend. 
 
 He had a learning rare among public men, and, for its 
 
22 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 variety, rare, I think, among scholars. He would bring out 
 bits of history, full of interest and instruction, from the most 
 obscure sources, in common conversation. He was an excellent 
 Latin scholar. He had read and mastered Tacitus, and a man 
 who has mastered Tacitus has had the best gymnastic training 
 of the intellect, both in vigor and style, which the resources of 
 all literature can supply. 
 
 One secret of his great popularity with his companions here — 
 a popularity I think unexcelled; indeed, I incline to think 
 unequaled by that of any other man with whom I have served — 
 is that to which the late Justin Morrill owed so much. He 
 never debated. He rarely answered other men's arguments, 
 never with warmth or heat. But he was exceedingly tena- 
 cious of his own opinion. He was, in the things he stood for, 
 as unyielding as flint and true as steel. But his flint or steel 
 never struck out a spark by collision with any other. He 
 spoke very rarely in debate in general; only when his official 
 place on his committee, or something which concerned his own 
 constituents especially, made speaking absolutely imperative. 
 Then he gave his opinion as a judge gives it, or as a delegate 
 to some great international council might be supposed to give 
 it; responsible for it himself, but undertaking no responsibility 
 for other men's opinion or conduct; never assuming that it was 
 his duty or within his power to convert, or change, or instruct 
 them, still less to chastise them. Whether that way be the best 
 way for usefulness in a deliberative body, especially in a legis- 
 lative body of a great popular government, I will not undertake 
 now to say. Certainly it is not the common way here or else- 
 where. It is very rare, indeed, that any man possessing the 
 great literary and oratorical power of Mr. Davis, especially a 
 man to whom nobody ever thought of imputing timidity 
 or undue desire to enjoy public favor, or want of absolute 
 
Address of Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts. 23 
 
 confidence in his own opinions, will be found to refrain from 
 employing these qualities to persuade or convince other men. 
 
 He had a rare and exquisite gift which, if he had been a 
 man of letters and not a man engaged in a strenuous public 
 life, would have brought him great fame. Once in a while 
 he said something in private, and more rarely, though once or 
 twice, in a public speech, which reminded you of the delicate 
 touch of Hawthorne. His likening President Cleveland and 
 Mr. Blount, looking upon the late royalty of the Sandwich 
 Islands with so much seriousness, to Don Quixote and Sancho 
 Panza taking in great earnest the spectacle of a theatrical 
 representation at a country fair and eager to rescue the dis- 
 tressed damsel, was one of the most exquisite felicities of the 
 literature of the Senate. 
 
 He had great pride in his ancestry, and was a great lover of 
 the history of New England and Plymouth, from which they 
 came, though he never gave himself airs on account of it. He 
 was a descendant of Robert Cushman, the preacher of the Pil- 
 grims, whose service was in a thousand ways of such value to 
 the little colony at Plymouth. Yet it had never happened to 
 him to visit the scenes with which the feet of his ancestors had 
 been so familiar, until a few years ago he did me the honor to 
 be my guest in Massachusetts, and spent a few days in visiting 
 her historic places. He gazed upon Boston and Plymouth and 
 Concord reverently as ever Moslem gazed upon Mecca or the 
 feet of palmer stood by the holy sepulcher. That week to him 
 was crowded with a delight with which few other hours in his 
 life could compare. I had hoped that it might be my fortune 
 and his that he might visit Massachusetts again, that her peo- 
 ple might gather in her cities to do him honor, and might learn 
 to know him better, and might listen to the sincere eloquence 
 of his voice. But it was ordered otherwise. 
 
24 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 There are other things his country had hoped for him. She 
 had hoped a longer and higher service, perhaps the highest 
 service of all. But the fatal and inexorable shaft has stricken 
 him down in the full vigor of a yet strenuous manhood. The 
 great transactions in which he had borne so large a part still 
 remain incomplete and their event is still uncertain. 
 
 There is a painting which a great Italian master left unfin- 
 ished. The work was taken up and completed by a disciple. 
 The finished picture bears this inscription: "What Titian left 
 unfinished Palma reverently completed and dedicated to God." 
 So may our beloved Republic find always, when one servant 
 leaves his work unfinished, another who will take it up and 
 dedicate it to the country and to God. 
 
Address of Mr. Morgan, of Alabama. 25 
 
 Address of Mr. Morgan, of Alabama. 
 
 Mr. President: If the purpose of these obsequies was only 
 to eulogize the friend who so well deserved the esteem of his 
 colleagues and so moved the Senate at all times with regard 
 and affection for his generous and unliable traits, I would 
 accomplish my part of this melancholy duty by repeating in 
 your hearing the simple call of recognition, "The Senator 
 from Minnesota," which never failed to attract the attention 
 of the Senate or to give us pleasure. 
 
 If Cushman K. Davis were here to-day to receive that rec- 
 ognition from the Chair, in this important time of serious 
 counsel and debate, the Senate would feel stronger and safer in 
 forming the new lines of public policy and duty upon which 
 we must enter, so that we shall not fall short of the demands 
 that have fallen upon us to try the strength of our courage, 
 our fidelity to our country, and our confidence in the plan 
 and principles of republican government. 
 
 His absence from the Senate is keenly felt at this time be- 
 cause the conditions for which we are now engaged in provid- 
 ing were, in a large part, created by measures in which he had 
 a leading influence. 
 
 It is, perhaps, as just a tribute to his abilities and acquire- 
 ments as could be stated to say of him that he was fully 
 equipped for the questions that have arisen from the war with 
 Spain, questions that are new to us and now excite anxious 
 inquiry. 
 
 The Senator from Minnesota always remembered the dignity, 
 honor, and restraining influence of that high official title. 
 
 It has a singular place of distinguished honor among the 
 titles that have been bestowed by governments upon public 
 
26 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 servants who have been intrusted with powers of great magni- 
 tude. 
 
 The Roman senators, with all their power and glory, and the 
 French senators for life, in the wide scope of their power and 
 influence, have not been representatives of great sovereignties 
 in a grand council of States, such as the Senate of the United 
 States, which sits as a high court of final jurisdiction on all 
 questions of impeachment, and is coordinate with the Chief 
 Executive in the treaty-making power, and has a voice that 
 can not be stifled in the enactment of all the laws for the gov- 
 ernment of this grand Union of equal States. 
 
 The history of the American Senate includes in its list of 
 Senators who have passed away many illustrious names that are 
 not darkened by comparison with any lawmakers who have ever 
 lived. 
 
 But it is not the illustrious men who have occupied this great 
 forum that have given to the Senate its real or entire value 
 in the estimation of the world. That estimate is due to the 
 character of the labors of the great body of Americans who 
 have held commissions in this high council of sovereign States, 
 which opened with the establishment of the Government of the 
 United States and has continued in uninterrupted organization, 
 without one moment of interregnum. 
 
 The Senate is the only permanent controlling body in the 
 Government of the United States. There is always a quorum 
 of qualified Senators in commission, and the transfer of the 
 executive power from the hands of one President to another, 
 and of the political power from one Congress to another, by 
 elections, has no effect upon the Senate to suspend its powers 
 under the Constitution, but only in some cases to suspend their 
 full exercise, to await the concurrent action of other depart- 
 ments of the Government. 
 
Address oj Mr. Morgan, <>/ Alabama. 27 
 
 In this sense the Senate is the custodian of the vital and 
 continuing power of the Federal Republic, while the States, 
 as perfect civil governments, arc the repositories of the sov- 
 ereignty of the people. 
 
 In this great function the Senate is endowed by the Con- 
 stitution with a power and majesty that no other tribunal has 
 ever worn, and in comparison with which the mythical power 
 derived from a strain of royal blood or the prerogatives of an 
 imperial scepter are only a deceptive refuge of nations that 
 have no faith in themselves. The Senator who appreciates 
 the honor of a commission in this body, and is sensible of 
 the duties it enjoins and of the wide opportunity it offers for 
 bestowing blessings on his country and the world, will sedately 
 reckon with himself upon the fitness of his conduct and the 
 pure impartiality and justice of his utterances and his votes 
 upon all occasions and with reference to all questions that 
 arise. He will not set his personal success, or renown, as a 
 star in the heaven of his ambitious aspirations, to which he 
 will direct the course of his journey. He will be content to 
 do the duty that falls to him faithfully, according to his 
 ability, and leave the reward, that never fails, to the judg- 
 ment of his colleagues and the approval of the people. 
 
 Of the man}- great and worthy men who have held commis- 
 sions in the Senate only a few have reached the zenith of fame. 
 
 When we turn over the leaves of our statute books and 
 examine the vast number of laws whose real authors are 
 forgotten, and see the care and wisdom bestowed in their 
 enactment and the history they record, and the strength, 
 harmony, and justice of this wonderful system of statutory 
 jurisprudence, we bow with reverence to the memory of these 
 great but silent artificers of a true and noble temple of justice, 
 in which wisdom, truth, and virtue preside. The stars differ 
 
28 Life and Character of Cushman A". Davis. 
 
 in magnitude, but every star that is set in the firmament adds 
 its ineffable light to the heavens, though no human hand can 
 place them in their true position on a map. 
 
 Mr. Davis won a high place in the Senatorial galaxy, 
 which is distinctly marked with the imperishable legend of 
 "plain duty honestly performed with laborious care," and is 
 crowned with the light of brilliant endowments. 
 
 He left nothing to chance and never omitted to dig the 
 foundations of his structures to what he believed was the solid 
 rock of truth. He was among the toilers of the Senate to 
 whose industry in research the country owes a safe deliverance 
 from many unseen dangers and an honest debt of gratitude. 
 We are paying only a part of that debt in these obsequies. 
 The people will pay the balance in ample rewards of fame. 
 
 A standard has been established by the growth of opinion 
 in the Senate and the country, the advanced line of which 
 is at least as high as an}' nation has established for the highest 
 rank in statesmanship and forensic eloquence. Three great 
 Senators have occupied that line without dissent, and others 
 who have passed away are noted by our country for places 
 on that line. 
 
 It is not expected that any will surpass Clay, Webster, and 
 Calhoun, and it is not within the scope of the true Senato- 
 rial aspiration to reach sublimer heights than these immortals 
 occupy, but their example stands as an invitation to all who 
 fully value the honor, and dutifully toil to reach this supreme 
 distinction to which they have attained. 
 
 This door is closed to any man whose motive is mere self- 
 assertion, and who prefers notoriety to renown. The brilliant 
 Senator, whose early death we deplore, ma}" have had very high 
 aspirations, for he had great abilities, but he sought his honors 
 through toil, fidelity, and holy love of his native land. 
 
Address of Mr. Morgan^ of Alabama. 29 
 
 Perhaps his strongest sentiment, with reference to his con- 
 duct as a Senator, was a dutiful regard for the dignit) 
 reputation of this great tribunal. He sank himself in his 
 character of Senator. 
 
 In his associations in the Senate and on committees his def- 
 erence to the rights and opinions of his colleagues was sin- 
 cere, courteous, and graceful. I do not recall an incident in 
 all his career in which he was discourteous or brusque toward 
 an opponent. Xot that he avoided any stress of earnest 
 contention in debate, nor that he yielded his convictions to 
 the opposing views of anyone, however highly thought of as 
 authority, but because he felt that the freedom of discussions, 
 which he always approved, is an illusion when it is cramped by 
 the weight of high authority and is sometimes destroyed by 
 the use of epithets, censoriousness, irritating criticism, and 
 grosser forms of detraction. 
 
 Mr. Davis never so far forgot the high office he held as to 
 use his powers, which were ample, as a learned and able man, 
 to force an opponent to the wall or to subject him to ridicule. 
 When a Senator is thus assailed, if he is in the line of duty, 
 the blow falls upon a sovereign State. Such a blow he would 
 never wantonly inflict. 
 
 When he was placed at the head of the Committee on For- 
 eign Relations he reached a field of opportunity in which his 
 abilities would find their highest development in the service 
 of the country. 
 
 He was a careful and deeply interested student of the history 
 of our diplomatic relations with foreign countries. His tastes 
 for eloquent literature and his legal acumen in the analysis oi 
 statutes and treaties, worded with the highest skill to cover or 
 else to leave open debatable ground, led him into profound 
 studies of the history and art of diplomacy. 
 
30 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 He took a proud interest in the history of the single cen- 
 tury of American diplomatic correspondence, and traced with 
 enthusiasm the ground over which our infant Republic led 
 the ancient empires of the earth as a pioneer in new lines of 
 progress that led, without faltering, up to the highest planes 
 of Christian civilization that have yet been occupied. 
 
 When he took that chairmanship he had unusual wealth of 
 preparation for the discharge of its duties, and he soon made a 
 record of such high value in his reports that the Senate relied 
 upon his judgment and accepted his advice with unusual confi- 
 dence. While he was chairman of that committee he was 
 invited by the President of the United States, in company with 
 two of his Senatorial colleagues and other distinguished per- 
 sons, to negotiate a treaty of peace with Spain. 
 
 I will not attempt to present the history of that remarkable 
 negotiation, in which the highest skill and learning were 
 employed, and the most anxious and trying appeals to inter- 
 national forbearance and sensibility were addressed to our 
 commissioners. It was not an effort to repress the wrath of 
 contending nations, verging to the point of armed collision, 
 but the demanding of justice for the stronger, at the close of 
 an armistice that followed the most sudden and complete over- 
 throw of sovereign power in lost possessions that had occurred 
 in modern times. 
 
 The proud Empire that had held all Europe obedient to her 
 pleasure and other continents and archipelagoes as feudatories 
 was yielding her last possessions in the East and West Indies to 
 a Republic that was younger by a century than any vice-royalty 
 she had established in the Western Hemisphere. This advance 
 from despotism to liberty was on the ground of her inability 
 to do the justice to her dependencies that is required by the 
 advance in human liberty now demanded by the code and creed 
 
Address of Mr. Morgan, of Alabama. 31 
 
 of all Christendom, and the United States were constrained 
 to lead it. 
 
 It was an occasion to move the sympathies of the European 
 nations to their greatest depths, and they looked on with 
 scrutinizing jealousy while the diplomatic contest continued at 
 Paris. 
 
 In that noble body of American commissioners Mr. Davis 
 was conspicuous for his learning, his tact, and his fearless 
 advocacy of the right. It was a contest so notable that it will 
 stand for a high precedent in later ages, ami so satisfactory 
 in the argument and the results that it has silenced criticism 
 and has excited the admiration and invoked the good will of 
 all the nations. 
 
 It was a task of self-denial that was never before presented 
 to a conquering power — that we claim nothing for war in- 
 demnity, while paying for all the public property surrendered, 
 and for all the devastations of a long civil war that Spain 
 had inflicted upon our own people. 
 
 This task was assumed and this expenditure of more than 
 $200,000,000 was made for no other reason — besides the pres- 
 ervation of our domestic peace — than to give the people of the 
 Spanish islands the relief from despotism that can only be 
 found in a government republican in form, one of whose 
 cardinal principles is the divorce of church and state. 
 
 This great task was assumed by our commissioners in the 
 treaty of Paris, and we are now engaged in working it out 
 by the repression of a rebellious oligarchy among some of the 
 people whom we undertook to redeem from the iron heel of 
 the Spanish Empire. 
 
 Then, as now, the motive is the same, the high resolve is 
 unchanged, and the decree is final, that the spirit of repub- 
 lican constitutional liberty, which has driven out monarchy, 
 
32 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 will also expel the curse of political brigandage and of sec- 
 tarian and class rule from these islands, thereby providing that 
 the people shall, indeed, be free and self-governing. 
 
 Doubtless this was the triumph that the noble American 
 Senator had hoped to share with his colleagues in the accom- 
 plishment of this wurk that caused him to express, with tears. 
 on his dying bed the pathetic words: "Oh, that I could live 
 for three years to serve my country ! ' ' 
 
 He did not live, but "his works do follow him." 
 
 Two great and novel alternatives were presented to our 
 commissioners in the negotiations at Paris as to Porto Rico and 
 the Philippines, alike. They were whether we should annex 
 those islands or whether we should abandon them to Spain. 
 
 The choice of annexation was inevitable, yet it was a great 
 trial. Spain claimed the Philippines with the anxiety of a 
 lion deprived of its prey, and we resisted that claim with the 
 firmness that had already inscribed on our banners ' ' Deliver- 
 ance to the oppressed." 
 
 On that commission and afterwards in the Senate Mr. Davis 
 and his Senatorial colleagues stood by this great purpose, and 
 it became the supreme law of the land. 
 
 The fame that is thus interwoven with these events will 
 grow brighter as time grows longer and nations grow greater 
 and divine truth spreads its dominion over the nations now 
 in darkness. That it taxes us with new duties that may be 
 perilous is the just result and the honorable compensation, 
 the true recompense of reward, for the wonderful increase of 
 power that has been almost suddenly bestowed upon us. 
 
 "To whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be 
 required," is as true of nations as it is of men. 
 
 The treaty of Paris places upon this Republic its first cru- 
 cial test, its real trial of strength. In war we won our 
 
Address of Mr. Morgan, of Alabama. 33 
 
 liberties from the proudest nation in the world. In war we 
 settled a new basis of those liberties upon broader founda- 
 tions. In war we have expanded our territories half around 
 the world and have defended the freedom of religion in the 
 heart of pagan China. In war we have prospered as no other 
 nation has prospered, even in peace. Yet our mission is 
 peace; our people love peace, and in all our wars we have 
 only conquered peace for our own country and our own peo- 
 ple, until the treaty of Paris made us the almoners of this 
 blessing to other oppressed people. The real burden that 
 this great trust imposes upon our Republic in the treaty of 
 Paris is to provide peace and prosperity to the people that it 
 incorporated with the people of the United States. 
 
 Mr. Davis assumed his share of this national duty with 
 alacrity and without any misgivings as to the future. He 
 felt the common impulse of the American people, that obedi- 
 ence to duty will not permit us to shrink from this noble 
 task. It has required war, which vicious combinations may 
 protract; but a war that ends in firmly established peace and 
 secures constitutional liberty and the freedom of religion to 
 the people realizes the highest duty of Christian benevolence. 
 Rich argosies, ladened with the wealth of the earth and the 
 oceans, will come and go between the East and the West. 
 and the breath of peace will fill their ample sails. 
 
 The nations that were strangers and enemies will become 
 neighbors, and friendship will unite them in fellowship as 
 they exchange the bounties of all productive industry. 
 
 In their memories honored names will be familiar as the 
 friends of humanity. 
 
 Among these none will be more beloved than our commis- 
 sioners who concluded the treaty of Paris, and among these 
 no name will be revered above that of Cushman K. Davis. 
 S 1 )nc 230 -\ 
 
34 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 Address of Mr. Clark, of Wyoming. 
 
 Mr. President: Truly there is "a prince and a great man 
 fallen this day in Israel." 
 
 When the news was flashed along the wires that Cushman 
 K. Davis had reached the end of his earthly labors and had 
 entered into God's rest, we could hardly realize that our honored 
 and beloved colleague had passed forever from our mortal fellow- 
 ship. In the meridian of his life, in the full enjoyment of his 
 wonderful mental faculties, at a time when his country so greatly 
 needed his services, it seemed that " his sun had set while it was 
 yet day. ' ' His passing seemed so premature that it was difficult 
 for us to believe, as we had been taught, that ' ' the judgments of 
 the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 
 
 The life of Cushman K. Davis, Mr. President, from young 
 manhood to the end, is strongly interwoven with the history of 
 his State and nation. Reared and educated in the new West, he 
 early acquired that breadth of mind and honesty of purpose 
 which are so often produced in a virgin country, and he escaped 
 the narrowing influences and real provincialism that often are 
 found in older communities and more densely settled sections. 
 To his naturally elastic mind his earlier environments gave an 
 ever broadening horizon. It was most natural that he should, 
 in the time of his country's peril, offer himself as a defender of 
 her integrity, for he had a sublime belief in the great American 
 Republic; and this confidence in his nation and her future 
 increased from year to year until his death. It is no wonder that 
 in war he should have served her with gallantry and distinction. 
 It was his nature, and he could not have done otherwise. From 
 youth to death his highest ambition was for the honor, the integ- 
 rity, and the glory of his country. 
 
Address of Mr. Clark, of Wyoming. -^S 
 
 Mr. President, my first acquaintance with Senator DAVIS 
 dates back but for a decade, but at the very threshold of oui 
 acquaintance I was struck, as all of us must have been, with 
 his wonderful fund of information, political and general, his 
 accuracy of mind and statement, his grasp upon great questions 
 of state, and his unbending and unyielding Americanism. He 
 was one of the gentlest and most unassuming of men, tolerant 
 of the opinion of others and yet confident in his own judg- 
 ment. Day by day compelled to meet and grapple with the 
 difficult and knotty problems of the present, almost his sole 
 recreation was in delving into the history, the philosophy, and 
 the romance of the past. He was a master of ancient as well 
 as of modern literature. To sit at his fireside, political life and 
 legal problems being brushed for the time aside, and to hear 
 from his lips the gathered treasures of his reading was of itself 
 a liberal education; quiet and modest, assuming nothing to 
 himself, I think it will be the opinion of all that no member of 
 this body had a greater fund of general information than he. 
 A student in the true sense of the term, nothing seemed to 
 escape his observation and inquiry. 
 
 Of his career at the bar I shall say nothing, except to observe 
 that none in all the great Northwest was more honored and 
 successful than he. He loved his chosen profession, and she 
 richly rewarded his devotion. From the trial court to that of 
 last resort he deserved and received the highest respect, not 
 only for his great legal attainments, but for his unswerving 
 honesty of purpose as well, and this esteem and respect of 
 bench and bar is a far higher reward to the true lawyer than 
 money, emoluments, and fees, no matter how high they may 
 be heaped. But it is of his work as Senator during the last 
 three years I desire especially at this time to speak. During 
 that time he has been chairman of the great Committee on 
 
36 Life and Character of Oushman A'. Davis. 
 
 Foreign Relations of this Senate, and he gave to the affairs and 
 duties of that committee his unremitting attention and labors. 
 It will never he told or known how closely his duties pressed 
 upon him, but the country well knows and will always enjoy 
 the fruits of his careful and continual labors. He was a Sena- 
 tor whose voice was too seldom heard in this Chamber, and yet 
 he was a master of constitutional and international law. We 
 who listened to his great speech in executive session on the 
 war resolution of 1898 and the report accompanying it will 
 never forget it, and a great regret ever since has been that, 
 because of the peculiar rules and procedure of this body, such 
 a clear exposition, both as to law and fact, of that great ques- 
 tion with which this nation then had to deal should have been 
 lost to the country. 
 
 As chairman of his committee his work was continuous, 
 eager, and efficient. I do not think it too much to say that in 
 all the deliberations of that committee during the past three 
 years, in all the important and delicate questions arising, he 
 was not only the chairman, but the guiding spirit. His intense 
 Americanism, his patriotism, his belief in his country, were 
 always to the fore and seemed a propelling force, not only of 
 that committee, but of this Senate, as well in the troublesome 
 days from the beginning of the Spanish war until its close. 
 His work as a member of the peace commission at Paris was a 
 fitting close to his labors during the war. He and his distin- 
 guished colleagues taught the world a new diplomacy and 
 proved its strength — the diplomacy unknown before that war, 
 a diplomacy of honest, open, frank, and truthful statement; 
 and the result of their labors placed our nation, in the eyes of 
 the world, where she rightfully belonged — in the van of nations. 
 
 Mr. President, I regret that I am unable to do justice to the 
 life and services of Senator Davis. What I have said has been 
 
Address Oj Mr. Clark, of Wyoming . 37 
 
 because of my love for him and of my admiration and appre- 
 ciation of his public services. England's cynic poet said, in 
 speaking of eulogies and epitaphs: 
 
 When all is done, upon the tomb is seen, 
 
 Not what he was, but what he should have been. 
 
 Such- is not the truth with respect to our tributes to our 
 departed friend, because in his ardent love of country, his devo- 
 tion to public duty, his services in this body, what he should 
 have been that he was. He quietly rests in his beautiful home 
 city, the lamented son of his State and the Republic he loved. 
 He gloried in his nation's past, and he looked forward with 
 hope and confidence to her future. May his hope be justified, 
 and may he rest in peace. 
 
38 Life and Character of Cushman A". Davis. 
 
 Address of Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts. 
 
 Mr. President: "Death," said one of the wisest of men, 
 "hath this also: That it openeth the gate to good fame, and 
 extinguisheth envy." Bacon, I conceive, meant more by envy 
 than the mere jealousy of one man toward another. He in- 
 tended, we may suppose, that general lack of just appreciation 
 from which every man of distinction, especially in public serv- 
 ice, often suffers in his lifetime. And he rightly says that 
 death openeth the gate to good fame, which is but another way 
 of declaring that it is the first attempt to do justice to a man's 
 career and services. It is a common error that eulogies, espe- 
 cially those spoken in the freshness of grief, are necessarily as 
 little to be believed as the epitaph held by Lord Byron to be 
 typical of falsehood. This error springs from another equally 
 common, that criticism means fault-finding, whereas true criti- 
 cism, which alone is of value, consists quite as much in pointing 
 out beauties as in enumerating defects. Therefore it follows 
 that the eulogy fulfills the kindly function of criticism, the 
 other having been already amply performed during the life- 
 time of him whose virtues are celebrated in a funeral oration. 
 Thus the balance is made even, and in the two combined, his- 
 tory, looking down long hence with calm and patient eyes, 
 will find the man and do him justice. If, in the first burst of 
 sorrow, eulogy is overstrained, history can be trusted to set it 
 right. At the worst, excess of praise is a good fault, for the 
 chances are very great that the living man in his public life got 
 less praise than he was entitled to and far more of misunder- 
 standing than anyone deserves. Even if he did not endure in 
 his public service the worst forms of calumny and detraction, 
 he is certain to have suffered by comparisons made with a past 
 
Address of Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts. 39 
 
 which never existed, whose trailing clouds of glory are often 
 conjured up by the envy of which Bacon speaks in order to 
 make the living man of the moment look small and earthy. 
 So it may be said that men act wisely to speak well of the 
 newly dead, for thereby they do more than testify to their sor- 
 row, inasmuch as they in some degree help to set the balance 
 straight, and thus give their mite toward the advancement of 
 the final truth. 
 
 I have been moved to make these imperfect suggestions 
 because as I have thought of Senator Davis, whose untimely 
 death has brought so much sorrow to those who knew him, I 
 have felt that he was a man who failed to receive in life a full 
 appreciation. I do not mean by this that he was not amply 
 honored, admired, and beloved by the great State which sent 
 him here, or that he failed of understanding and appreciation 
 in this Chamber, where his best work was done. Still less 
 would I suggest that he did not receive, in due measure, the 
 recognition which is witnessed by election to great public 
 place, for I have known no one who held the office of Senator 
 more highly than he, or who had a more exalted conception of 
 the dignity and power of the Senate. Least of all do I mean 
 that he suffered peculiarly from unfair criticism and ignoble 
 aspersion of motive or conduct. On the contrary, I should 
 think that he was exceptionally fortunate in these respects, and 
 had it been otherwise, he was a man who knew that life was a 
 battle, who did not fear blows, and who never complained or 
 whimpered over the chances of war. When I say that he did 
 not receive in his lifetime a just and full appreciation, in pro- 
 portion to his ability and his achievement, I mean that he did 
 not receive it from the country at large, and I say this because 
 I know both the achievement and the ability and rate them 
 very highly. 
 
40 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 Others here and elsewhere will trace his career and tell of the 
 offices he held and the honors he won far better than I could 
 hope to do. Of his more intimate and personal qualities as a 
 friend and an associate I shall not trust myself to speak. I 
 desire only to explain why I think he was not fully appreciated 
 as a public man and why I rate so highly his achievement. 
 The first question is easily answered. Senator Davis lacked 
 his due meed of appreciation in life for two reasons, one gen- 
 eral and one particular. He suffered from the conventional 
 tendency to belittle men of the present because the}' can not, 
 without thought and trouble, be brought for judgment into 
 proper perspective with the past and because there are many 
 minds to which the belittling process is agreeable. He also 
 suffered from a defect in himself. In an age when the art of 
 advertisement of both men and wares has been carried to the 
 highest pitch of noise and color he had neither the desire nor 
 the faculty of advertising himself, either by lusty shouting or 
 by stealthy suggestion. He was essentially modest, and shrank 
 from even speaking in public except when it was a duty or a 
 necessity. 
 
 A proper estimate of his ability and his achievement can not 
 be so briefly given and supported as the explanation of their 
 imperfect recognition. Indeed, it is not easy to analyze mind 
 and character within the limits which this occasion requires. 
 Yet, without an attempt, at least, in this direction I should fail 
 entirely in what I most wish to say. 
 
 My friendship with Senator Davis began when I entered the 
 Senate, nearly eight years ago. I soon came to know him 
 well, and the knowledge bred affection, for he was a very lova- 
 ble man, a loyal friend, a delightful companion, full of humor, 
 sense, and originality. Our views 011 the public matters upon 
 which we were engaged were usually in accord, and we had 
 
Address of Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts. 41 
 
 many other subjects upon which we sympathized, so that I 
 came to pass many hours in his company and to talk with him 
 about man}- topics. 
 
 I desire to speak of him now in the two aspects from which 
 I learned to know best his unusual mental powers and one of 
 which will give him place in the history of our time. I wish 
 to speak of him as a statesman and man of letters — high titles, 
 indeed, but he deserved them both. 
 
 First, then, as a man of letters. He was not a writer of 
 books. A life given to war, to the law, and to politics left 
 him no opportunity to enter upon a field where I am sure he 
 might have won a distinction which he would have valued above 
 all others. A lecture upon Hamlet, an address upon Madame 
 Roland, a little volume upon the Law of Shakespeare, was all 
 that he found time for in this direction. It is also true that he 
 made no pretense to profound scholarship, to which, indeed, no 
 man can lay claim unless he has devoted his life to its pursuit. 
 Yet was he none the less a man of letters— was so by his wide 
 reading, his cultivation, and his love of learning for its own 
 sake. He had received a liberal education in the days when 
 those words meant simply a classical education, and, what is far 
 more uncommon, he had retained its teachings. I do not know 
 whether he had kept up his Greek or not, but he never let go 
 his Latin; and after leaving college he had taught himself 
 French and Italian so that he read both with absolute ease and 
 fluency — no small feat to be performed by a boy who went from 
 the college to the camp and then fought his way up at the bar 
 and in politics amid the sharp competition of a young and grow- 
 ing State. I remember a summer afternoon, when the Senate 
 was engaged in one of those contests where physical persistence 
 counted more than intelligence, passing by his desk and seeing 
 there two books lying open face down with which he had been 
 
42 Life and Character of Cuskman K. Davis. 
 
 beguiling what, without impropriety, I may call the tedium of 
 the occasion. I had the curiosity and took the liberty to look 
 at the books in order to see what they were. One was an 
 Italian work on international law; the other was Juvenal. As 
 I put them down I wondered how many of the glib writers, or 
 of the superior persons who in paragraph and speech utter the 
 conventional sneer about the ignorance of American Senators 
 and Congressmen, would wear away hot and weary hours by 
 reading for instruction an Italian law book, and for pleasure 
 the fierce and virile verses of the great Roman satirist. And be 
 it remembered it was all done for love and not for show, for I 
 never knew a man of equal attainments who paraded them less. 
 He was widely read in the literature of France and Italy, and 
 still more widely in the ample and subtle speech which was his 
 own heritage. He read thoroughly, and had a memory of iron 
 grasp. Again and again I have been astonished at his sudden 
 and apt quotations from writers little read and seldom quoted. 
 Like all men of broad cultivation, he had particular fields 
 and special subjects in which he was peculiarly interested and 
 upon which he was more deeply read than elsewhere. One of 
 these was history, and more especially the period of the French 
 revolution — Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars. He had made 
 a very complete collection of books relating to Napoleon, and 
 everything he bought he read. On this subject he was an 
 authority and an expert, not for any particular purpose, but 
 because the man and the time fascinated him and from sheer 
 love of historical research. He delighted, as all men of 
 thought and imagination must delight, in the great pageant of 
 human history, but in the sensual pleasure of the music and 
 the banners and the glittering arms he never forgot to ask 
 whither the columns were marching and what their movements 
 meant. 
 
Address of Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts. 43 
 
 His other specialty was Shakespeare. He studied and loved 
 him, knew him through and through, and drew from him that 
 intense delight which comes to all lovers of the greatest genius 
 which has appeared among men. A little instance will show at 
 once his knowledge and his devotion to the mighty poet. Sen- 
 ator Davis once defended a judge in au impeachment case. The 
 point involved was the power of the court to punish for contempt, 
 and Davis cited in support of his position the splendid lines in 
 Henry IV, where the chief justice defends his action in punish- 
 ing the Prince of Wales for contempt of the judicial office and 
 authority. He said the quotation produced a great effect, as 
 well it might. Senator Davis also wrote, as I have said, a little 
 book, called the Law of Shakespeare, a very learned and inter- 
 esting study, which never gained the notice and reputation it 
 merited, because it was printed and bound like a law book, when 
 it was really literary and historical. 
 
 But that which more than all else makes me speak of Senator 
 Davis as a man of letters is that he loved literature for its own 
 sake. A man may be well informed in many ways; he may 
 have read many books and on his own subjects be learned, and 
 yet he may have no literature, to borrow Dr. Johnson's phrase. 
 Books are not necessarily literature any more than the applica- 
 tion of paint and colors is necessarily the work of an artist. 
 Painting a fence and painting the Sistine Chapel are both 
 painting, but one is useful, everyday trade, and the other is a 
 great art, the work of a towering genius. A census report is 
 a book, and it is valuable, but it is not literature. In its 
 highest expression literature is the greatest art of which the 
 human race has shown itself capable. As Mr. Barrett Wendell 
 so well puts it, "It is the lasting expression in words of the 
 meaning of life." It must combine thought, wit, humor, 
 fancy — all that can appeal to the heart, the senses, and the 
 
44 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 imagination — and it must go forth clothed in all the beauties 
 which style and form can give it. It must exist for its own 
 sake and be its own all-sufficient excuse for being. This was 
 the literature which Senator Davis knew and rejoiced in and 
 admired. This was what he read so widely in all languages, 
 and especially in his own. This was what he loved purely 
 for its own sake. And from this it follows that what he read 
 most was poetry — that which is supreme in literature. Iu 
 poetry he loved most what was greatest and best, and so he 
 came to find what was good in all and judge aright the whole 
 scale. 
 
 Despite the fact that he wrote little or nothing, I have'dwelt 
 upon him as a student and a man of letters for several reasons. 
 His tastes and acquirements in this direction show the quality 
 of his mind; such knowledge and love of literature are enno- 
 bling qualities worthy of remembrance, and such accomplish- 
 ments in a distinguished public man are honorable to American 
 public life. Senator Davis also illustrates the fact that although 
 there are few, comparatively, who can rival him in extent of 
 reading or breadth of cultivation, there are many, very many, 
 men in the public service who share his love of learning and of 
 literature, in which the}- find the same pleasure and instruction 
 that he found in the hours stolen from the engrossing cares of 
 a life of action. 
 
 His generous learning and wide reading helped Senator Davis 
 as a statesman, that other aspect of his life of which I wish to 
 speak briefly. That he was a statesman in the best acceptance 
 of that term can not be gainsaid. He dealt with large ques- 
 tions in a large way. He looked before and after, not to sigh 
 for what is not, but that he might deal successfully with the 
 present and prepare wisely for the future. Like most men 
 learned in the law, his tendencies were conservative, but he did 
 
Address of Mr. Lodge, of Massachusetts. 45 
 
 not shrink from innovation, nor was he the slave of precedent. 
 The past, which he had studied so faithfully, was to him a wise 
 teacher, not an unbending tyrant. He was not oik- of those 
 who hide dislike of the present and distrust of the future under 
 the guise of loyalty to the past. Although a man of strong will 
 and masterful temper, he was ever open to new ideas. Above 
 all, he had the two attributes essential to the highest statesman- 
 ship — sentiment and imagination. Without these gifts a man 
 may be most successful, he may rise to the head of the state, he 
 may do fine and enduring work, hut he will never meet the 
 greatest questions in the greatest way; and he may encounter a 
 situation in which, despite his powers, he will fail solely from 
 this deficiency in two qualities which are not practical, but 
 which are none the less essential. Sir Robert Walpole was one 
 of England's greatest ministers. He was the man for the time; 
 he did the work England needed; his splendid good sense, his 
 stead}' courage, his knowledge of men, and his executive capac- 
 ity can not be overpraised. Yet Walpole could never have 
 climbed to the heights which the elder Pitt scaled so easily, for 
 he lacked the fervid sentiment and the soaring imagination of 
 his great successor. These qualities of sentiment and imagina- 
 tion, combined with his learning, his long training at the bar, 
 and his experience in public affairs, and supported as they were 
 by an intellect which was singularly quick and resourceful, 
 enabled Senator Davis to do his remarkable work of the last 
 few years. When he came to the head of the Committee on 
 Foreign Relations the country was just entering upon a new 
 epoch; a period of change was beginning of which the end is 
 still far distant. In the hurrying events which have crowded 
 so fast upon us in the last four years Senator Davis played an 
 important part. It is too soon to tell in detail or rightly to 
 estimate what that part was in all the incidents which led to 
 
46 Life and Character of Cushman A". Davis. 
 
 the Spanish war, in the making of peace, and in the solution of 
 the problems which war and peace and our own strides toward 
 economic supremac}^ have brought upon us. 
 
 In all that he did in shaping our policy he was helped by 
 his knowledge and his studies, by much careful thought, and 
 by an imagination which enabled him to project his vision 
 into the future. But that which was his surest guide was a 
 sentiment embodied in a profound patriotism and an intense 
 Americanism. I do not mean that he was peculiarly Ameri- 
 can because he held certain opinions on certain public ques- 
 tions, or that he was more patriotic than others who differed 
 with him radically upon those same questions. What I mean 
 is that he had a faith in his people and their destiny which 
 nothing could shake, and that he never had a shadow of doubt 
 or distrust as to their entire ability to meet any responsibility 
 and any question bravely, justly, and victoriously. He had 
 proved his patriotism, like many other brave men, on the 
 field of battle, and he hardly ever referred to it. But his 
 love of country and everything connected with its history 
 was with him a passion. He took a deep satisfaction in his 
 direct descent from one of the Plymouth Pilgrims, and he was 
 prouder of the name of Robert Cushman signed to the com- 
 pact of the Mayflower than if it had been inscribed among 
 those of William's knights on the walls of Battle Abbey. His 
 thoughts were always upon the great questions now before 
 the United States, and in the last hours his country and her 
 fortunes were uppermost in his mind as the shadows closed 
 about him. He was not a man who cried his own virtues and 
 proclaimed his own deeds in the market place, but he did 
 his work — great work, as the time demanded — strongly and 
 well. He will find his place and his reward in the pages of 
 historv. when the story of these momentous vears is told. 
 
Address of Hit. Lodge, of Massachusetts. 47 
 
 That monument is for other hands than ours to build. We can 
 only bear imperfect witness to what he was to us who knew 
 him, and then leave his memory to 
 
 The silent melody of thought that sings 
 A ceaseless requiem to the sainted dead. 
 
48 Life and Character of Cushman A". Davis. 
 
 Address of Mr. Daniel, of Virginia. 
 
 It is a privilege which I appreciate, sad indeed, Mr. President, 
 but all the more in consonance with the feelings which I bring 
 to this mournful hour, to pay my respects to the memory of 
 our dead friend and colleague, Cushman Kellogg Davis, of 
 Minnesota. 
 
 He stood in the front rank of the lawyers and publicists of 
 this country. He was an ornament of this body, as he was 
 one of its most useful, able, and respected members. He was 
 beloved here as he was beloved at home, and while the nation 
 and the State alike deplore the loss of a noble and faithful pub- 
 lic sen-ant, those who had the privilege of association with him 
 in his daily tasks mourn for him as a delightful companion and 
 as a trusted friend whom they will know no more on earth 
 forever. 
 
 The eminence which he had won was attained by the appli- 
 cation of brilliant natural faculties to studious pursuits, and 
 was the fitting reward of just and honorable labors. He was 
 well equipped for public life. Before he came here he had 
 been a legislator in his own State and had become its governor. 
 He long practiced law in Minnesota, had achieved great success 
 in his profession, and enjoyed a high reputation for learning, 
 integrity, and sound judgment. As an advocate and as a coun- 
 selor alike he had few equals. His mind was filled with techni- 
 cal lore, but, as well, with the large and equitable spirit of that 
 jurisprudence which is gathered from the wisdom of the world 
 and is applied in the affairs of men in all nations. There was 
 no case of legal controversy, whether in the nisi prius or the 
 appellate courts, or in an international tribunal, in which he 
 
Address of Mr. Daniel, of Virginia. 49 
 
 would not have been the peer of any antagonist who could 
 possiblj have been arrayed against him. 
 
 He was a lover and a student of literature as well as of the 
 law. His mind had been enriched and ripened by his famil- 
 iarity with its masters, and he was the profounder and ablei 
 lawyer because of his accomplishments in letters. 
 
 The subjects to which he addressed his attention in his 
 career as a Senator here he studied to their depths, and when 
 he -*;ioke upon them he was sure to develop them in their bear- 
 ings with perspicuity, and to render a worthy and valuable 
 contribution to their consideration. Erudite, analytical, log- 
 ical, trenchant, always chivalrous, and often brilliant as he was, 
 he never spoke without attracting deep, interested attention; 
 and while he did not speak often, he always spoke with power, 
 and frecpiently with rare and engaging eloquence. 
 
 As an adviser on public matters he was patient, painstaking, 
 wise, prudent, and considerate. His character possessed the 
 elements which befit the statesman. He looked upon all sides 
 of a question and weighed the "pros" and ''cons" with judi- 
 cial discernment and discretion. While his mind worked 
 quickly and with instinctive justice, he was too experienced 
 and too wise to let loose mere impulsive apprehensions; and his 
 conclusions on any subject were apt to be in consonance with 
 the best possible, practicable attainment. 
 
 He was never extreme and never erratic; he was always 
 courteous and always independent and manly. He had a high 
 and honorable sense of conviction and of responsibility, with 
 a certain reserve that modestly emphasized rather than dimin- 
 ished the dignity and weight of his opinions. The play of fine 
 fancy sometimes fringed his serious discourses with phospho- 
 rescent fire, but never an unseemly word or misplaced levity 
 marred or belittled his utterances. 
 S. Doc. 230 4 
 
50 Life and Character of Cuskman I\. Davis. 
 
 A few years ago Mr. Davis delivered a short series of four 
 lectures <m international law before the faculty and students of 
 the University of Minnesota. They are couched in that clear 
 and sententious language which few could use so well; and they 
 sum up the leading questions of international law which have 
 arisen in our national history. No better brief of them could be 
 produced, and I know of no source which contains so much apt 
 learning for the American student so compactly stated. 
 
 His facility as an orator, his wisdom as a thinker, and his 
 knowledge of affairs I once had agreeable opportunity to note at 
 the Military Academy, West Point, when I had the honor to be 
 associated with him as one of the Board of Visitors appointed by 
 the President of the Senate. After we reached the Academy he 
 was called on to make an address before the graduating class, 
 with but few hours for preparation. To the "occasion sudden" 
 he was fully equal. In that short time he wrote and delivered 
 a polished and well-considered address which bore no mark of its 
 hasty conning and which was filled witli the worthy reflections 
 and the fine spirit which well became such an occasion. 
 
 "Our gentle master," Shakespeare, had for him that mag- 
 netic attraction which has brought the world to his feet and 
 which he will ever possess without a peer for all spirits ' ' touched 
 to fine issues." He calls him " the first of men;" and we may 
 well say of Mr. Davis, as was said of Lord Chief Justice Camp- 
 bell, that "he has the glory of placing a stone on the lofty cairn 
 of our immortal bard," for he has written of him in a work 
 which will lose nothing in comparison with that of the great 
 English jurist and author on the same subject. Indeed, it is 
 far more complete in illustration of the law in Shakespeare, and 
 abounds in fine passages of historical and literary criticism. 
 
 It was written as the work of winter evenings and as an 
 incident to the studv of the works of him "who converted the 
 
Address of Mr. Daniel, of Virginia. 51 
 
 elements which awaited his command into entertainments," and 
 the members of that profession of which he was a shining light 
 can not turn to its pages without feeling that he has made 
 princely payment of the debt which, it has been said, every 
 lawyer owes to his calling. 
 
 Those who have amused themselves in reading the curious 
 books of the iconoclasts, which make laborious effort to show- 
 that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespearian plays, as well as 
 those who find in the master's work inherent evidence of his 
 identity, will sympathize with Mr. Davis's sharp rebuke of 
 their heresy where he says: 
 
 And now comes some one and says that here is proof that Shakespeare 
 is a mere alias for Francis Bacon. It is difficult to touch or let alone this 
 vagary with any patience. 
 
 One is inclined simply to protest in the words of Shakespeare's epitaph: 
 " Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare 
 To digg the dust enclosed heare," 
 and pass on, deeming all secure against a desecration worse than that 
 which the poet cursed. 
 
 Respecting his good taste in the fitting application of the fine 
 
 thoughts of others, which, indeed, he seldom needed, so ready 
 
 were his own, I may use his own language in reference to 
 
 another and say: 
 
 These emblems of his industry are woven into his style like the bees into 
 the imperial purple of Napoleon's coronation robes. 
 
 1 low beautifully does he speak of the comparison between the 
 first edition of Hamlet, in 1603, and the final revision of 1623, 
 as showing how the hand of the master wrought upon his work. 
 
 "It is," said he, "as if some sculptor with an enchanter's 
 power had wrought upon an unadorned Milan cathedral in one 
 night, so that the morning showed thousands of carvings and 
 statues where the day before were only walls of unadorned 
 simplicity." 
 
 On the 2d of July, 1897, Mr. Davis delivered an address on 
 
52 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 the battlefield of Gettysburg, at the unveiling of the statue 
 erected by the State of Minnesota in honor of the First Regi- 
 ■ ment of Minnesota Volunteers. 
 
 It was the thirty-fourth anniversary of that mighty conflict 
 in which the regiment from the State which our friend repre- 
 sented had done a deed of splendid valor and paid the martyr's 
 tribute, suffering more than any other command of either side 
 in killed and wounded — more, indeed, than any command in 
 any battle of the civil war. Two hundred and fifteen out of 
 262 fell in that awful cataclysm. Yet, as he said, "Only 47 
 were unhurt, but they stood in line, and not one man was miss- 
 ing. ' ' Not one of all the brave battalions of the North and 
 South that threw themselves against the walls of fire on that 
 dreadful day won greater honor than the First Regiment of 
 Minnesota; and I may say of him who then spoke for them 
 that their orator spoke as nobly as they fought, and like a 
 knightly champion of a reunited people. 
 
 I wish, indeed, Mr. President, it were fitting for me to read 
 all of that speech here. It is the rich, fragrant, mellow, sun- 
 colored fruit of a tree deeply rooted in generous soil. It would 
 better fill my brief time upon this floor than anything I could 
 say. It was a message of peace and honor in the outstretched 
 hand of true fraternity. It was the sage, the seer, the patriot, 
 the honest man that spoke. No vainglorious outburst was there, 
 and no condescension. But forbearance, toleration, modera- 
 tion, self-restraint, patriotism — broad as the lines of the great 
 Republic, warm as its firesides, vital in every part — honoring 
 all men according to St. Paul's injunction. 
 
 May I be permitted, Mr. President, to read a few passages 
 from that noble utterance? Said he: 
 
 Nearly 160,000 fronted each other here. Neither waged a war of foreign 
 invasion. They were brothers deeply angered. But that brotherhood was 
 
Address of Mr. Daniel, of Virginia. 53 
 
 ail assurance of fraternal reunion at some time when war should cease and 
 the resistless forces of reconciliation should assert themselves, as the} 
 have done, thanks be to Him who has guided and protected this nation 
 
 Again, he said: 
 
 Neither army was fighting for a monarchy, fir to establish one. Each 
 was pouring out its blood for its own constitutional government — for the 
 right of man to govern himself in a republic. This fact is ever to be 
 remembered in considering the philosophy of that great war. The irritat- 
 ing cause which produced it never for a moment seduced the men of either 
 side from allegiance to the constitutional conception of their forefathers 
 that governments exist only by the consent of the governed, and that this 
 right can be most efficaciously established and preserved by an elective 
 republic. 
 
 And yet, again: 
 
 And it was this transcendental fealty which so soon reunited us in one 
 family by the combined efforts of men in whom hostility had been ap- 
 peased, and closed that awful chasm which our evil-wishers abroad pre- 
 dicted would always divide us by a fixed and impassable gulf. The same 
 earthquake force which opened that abyss closed it again, and we stand 
 now, here and everywhere, upon solid ground — holy ground here, because 
 it is a tomb where the hosts of valor and patriotism have ' ' set up their 
 everlasting rest." It is also a field of resurrection whence has arisen the 
 Genius of a restored Union. 
 
 He who thus spoke over the dust of his fallen comrades 
 presents himself to my mind as the highest type of the Ameri- 
 can citizen; and as we contemplate him there on the heights, 
 where angered brethren imbued the field in each other's blood, 
 and hear the sweet small voice of love rise from a whisper to a 
 bugle call in his utterances, we seem — 
 
 * * to see our flag unfurled, 
 
 Our champion waiting in his place 
 For the last battle of the world — 
 
 The Armageddon of the race. 
 
 Mr. President, he, too, has passed to the tabernacles of 
 everlasting rest, followed by honest tears, which flow as 
 did his own noble speech from the purest fountain of our 
 
54 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 being — -dews which rise upon the mountain top, descended from 
 the heavens. 
 
 Dead! While his voice was living yet 
 
 In echoes round the pillared dome. 
 Dead! While his blotted page lay wet 
 
 With themes of state and love of home. 
 
 " When I die," said little Nell, "put something near me that 
 loved the light and had the sky above it always. " " Crown me 
 with flowers," said Mirabeau in his last hour. 
 
 Innocent childhood, mature manhood, and the world-weary 
 old man go alike as equals to the tomb, and yet with the same 
 ever rising yearning spirit. Gaudy monuments there seem a 
 sacrilege. Fulsome praise is repellaut. The uppermost thought 
 that comes to me as I say ' ' farewell ' ' to our dead friend is that 
 throughout his service here, and in all his public life, he held 
 all his countrymen in his heart, and spoke no word that leaves 
 a thorn in any bosom. May I not lay this fact, as a flower that 
 bloomed forth from his own being, upon his tomb? The virtue 
 which he possessed and of which it is the token has had the sky 
 above it always. 
 
Address of Mr. Spooner, of Wisconsin. 55 
 
 ADDRESS OF MR. SPOONER, OF WISCONSIN. 
 
 Mr. President: Painfully conscious that I can utter on this 
 occasion no adequate tribute to the character and career of our 
 departed colleague, I yet must speak here some earnest and 
 tender words of my long-time friend. My memory of him 
 carries me back to a time anterior to his removal from Wis- 
 consin to Minnesota, when he was connected with the supreme 
 court of Wisconsin, and availing himself of the great law 
 library of that State in preparing for the practice of his chosen 
 profession. I see him now as I saw him then, and I remember 
 that he was considered one of the ablest, most brilliant, and 
 promising young men in the State of Wisconsin. The judges 
 of the court, all distinguished jurists, were especially fond of 
 him, regarded him as singularly gifted and able, and confi- 
 dently predicted for him a great career. 
 
 In 1870, when I removed to the northern border of Wiscon- 
 sin, less than 20 miles from his home, he had already achieved 
 eminence in the profession and was accounted one of the 
 leaders of a brilliant and learned bar. He had first won dis- 
 tinction as a lawyer by the audacity, skill, and eloquence with 
 which he had conducted the defense in a famous murder case, 
 and, after the lapse of over thirty years, the ability and 
 resourcefulness which upon that trial attracted the attention 
 of Minnesota to his brilliancy and capacity is still a theme of 
 conversation among the lawyers and laymen of that day. 
 
 As a lawyer he was remarkably well grounded in legal 
 principles. He had not only studied the science of the law, 
 but he had explored and mastered the history of the law. 
 There are lawyers who know more of decisions and what is 
 
56 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 called "case law," but there are not many who have more 
 thoroughly mastered the science of the law or are more 
 familiar with its fundamental principles and the philosophy 
 and reasons underlying them. 
 
 He possessed a rare faculty of generalization, and also of 
 analysis, without the narrowness and tendency to technicality 
 which sometimes characterize the analytical mind. 
 
 He was not as a lawyer in any sense a specialist, and I do 
 not remember a man who had greater professional versatility. 
 There seemed to be no branch of the law in which he was not 
 at home. It is quite impossible to say that he was stronger in 
 one phase of the practice than in another. 
 
 His arguments in the courts of last resort were luminous and 
 weighty. In the examination and cross-examination of wit- 
 nesses he was an artist, and in the argument of a cause to a 
 jury he was powerful and persuasive. From the beginning of 
 his career he was distinguished for a choice and abundant 
 vocabulary, which was always subject to his command. 
 
 I have heard from him arguments addressed to the court 
 upon questions of law and to juries upon questions of fact 
 which I thought then, and think now, could not be excelled 
 by anyone for strength, learning, and eloquence. There was 
 a quality in his voice, a charm in his manner, and a beauty in 
 his diction which was peculiar to him. 
 
 No man was ever more devoted to the interests intrusted to 
 his care or more assiduous in the preparation necessary to the 
 completest discharge of professional duty. 
 
 He seemed to have been born with a passion for reading. 
 In the early years, when his professional duties and burdens 
 were most exacting and pressing, I doubt if there was a night 
 when his library was accessible in which he did not, laying 
 aside all thought of law and courts and clients, seek and find 
 
Address of Mr. Spooner, of Wisconsin. 57 
 
 recreation and refreshment in some volume of the classics, or of 
 history, or in the pages of Shakespeare, or in the poems of the 
 Bible. He could say with Gibbon: 
 
 My early aud invincible love of reading I * * * would not exch 
 
 for the treasure of India. 
 
 Never since I first knew him would he willingly exchange 
 an hour with his books in the quiet of his library for any 
 social function or assembly. 
 
 He read with great discrimination and with fine apprecia- 
 tion of the literary quality of the author aud of his thought, 
 however subtle. And he read to good purpose, for his capa- 
 cious and retentive memory was an inexhaustible storehouse, 
 in which there was no rubbish and from which at his will 
 came jewels of rare beauty to enrich his speech at the bar. 
 in the Senate, on the hustings, and in the daily intercourse 
 with his fellows. 
 
 He had rare felicity in the use of language. Every word 
 he used fitted in its place, and was chosen to give precise 
 expression to the thought which he intended to convey. 
 This seemed in him a gift. It characterized him in his early 
 life, and I doubt if he ever uttered even a short speech in 
 which there was not some sentence which challenged admi- 
 ration for its perfection and fastened itself in the memory 
 of the listener as a model. This was as true of his unpre- 
 meditated utterances as it was of those which were carefully 
 prepared. While his style was classic and never common- 
 place, there was an utter absence of apparent word stud}'. 
 
 While his well-earned fame at the bar for learning, ability, 
 and eloquence was established, it was circumscribed, and the 
 larger fame which he won and which will live iu the history 
 of the nation was achieved in the domain of statesmanship 
 after he took his seat in this body. Few men ever came 
 
58 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 here with better natural endowment and preliminary training 
 for the distinguished discharge of the high duties pertaining 
 to this place than did he. 
 
 He never seemed to me in the Senate quite the man in 
 physical strength and health he was when I had known him 
 at the bar. His voice had lost something of the ringing and 
 resonant quality which had impressed me in earlier years, 
 and he seemed less aggressive and less inclined to contest 
 and to speech. He came to prefer the study of great ques- 
 tions in the line of his inclination and special duty, and to 
 speak only when it seemed absolutely necessary. He was a 
 great constitutional lawyer, and he made of himself here 
 a great international lawyer. I have not known one in pub- 
 lic life who knew more accurately, in general and in detail, 
 the great transactions of this Government, from the begin- 
 ning, in its international relations. He was content, having 
 expressed fully his views and the reasoning by which he 
 reached his conclusions upon a measure of which he was in 
 charge, or in support of a policy which he proposed, to leave 
 it without further special advocacy to the arbitrament of the 
 Senate. 
 
 He made some great speeches in this body worthy of any 
 period in its history, which will stand for accuracy, wealth 
 of learning, beaut}- of diction, and strength of argumentation 
 as models. Some of the best speeches I ever heard him deliver 
 were upon topics involving our foreign relations, which, though 
 of remarkable beauty of expression, evidencing complete mas- 
 tery of the subject, listened to by a full Senate with rapt 
 attention, are lost to the world because in the public interest 
 they were spoken in the secrecy of executive session. I recall 
 several such which would have added to his fame, and which 
 it is a pit}* were not preserved. 
 
Address of Mr. Spooner, of Wisconsin. 59 
 
 His was a daring mind. He had no time for inconsequen- 
 tial thought. Mentally "he walked the mountian ranges." 
 No problem in the domain of international law or diplomacy 
 was too complicated or monumental for his mental grasp. 
 There was about him nothing of mental or moral timidity. 
 He shrank from no responsibility; no specter or phantom dan- 
 ger had terror for him. Once convinced of the true course, he 
 would guide the craft whose rudder was in his hands through 
 any sea with unshaken nerves and will as firm as adamant. 
 
 His Americanism was intense, and his faith in the gran- 
 deur of our national future was absolute and implicit. He 
 was not unmindful of perils, but he was undaunted by them. 
 An idealist, he was also an eminently practical statesman. 
 A lover of liberty and constitutional government, he realized 
 that each is a development, and that "in the corrupted cur- 
 rents of this world ' ' it can sometimes, alas, only be attained 
 through training and struggle and sacrifice, and too often 
 only through the shedding of blood. 
 
 Inexorable in maintaining the rights of his country and 
 safeguarding its interests, he was scrupulous in insisting upon 
 that courtesy and justice in the conduct of our foreign rela- 
 tions which are as essential to peace and good will between 
 governments as they are among men. He knew that among 
 nations, as among men, calmness and dignity of action best 
 befit strength and power, and he was insistent upon the 
 punctilious observance by his own Government in all cases 
 of the etiquette usual in international intercourse, and in 
 this more than once, in my judgment, he served the country 
 better than its people know. 
 
 This man, sometimes imperious in his intercourse with 
 equals, was always considerate, even tender, with the lowly 
 and the humble. 
 
60 Life and Charade)' of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 He had unfaultering faith in the stability of this Govern- 
 ment. It was based upon an unfaltering faith in the people. 
 
 He was a sincere friend of labor, but he insisted always 
 upon the observance, by even - class, of those laws and prin- 
 ciples which are essential to the preservation of public secur- 
 ity and good government. 
 
 I shall not forget, as the funeral cortege proceeded, on a 
 bleak and wintry day, from .the home which he loved to the 
 grave in which he rests, how, as it passed the works of a great 
 corporation, the men who toil there, quitting the furnace, the 
 forge, and the bench, stood in line, with bowed, bared heads, 
 with sorrow in each face, a touching tribute to the dead states- 
 man who, they knew, had been in life their true and thoughtful 
 friend. 
 
 He was loyal to the point of devotion in his friendships, and 
 just and tolerant to every fair foe. 
 
 I noted in him many years ago, when brought for a time into 
 contact with him in the city of his home, his love for children 
 and their love for him. He answered a remark by me once 
 upon the subject with this quotation: 
 
 Better to be driven out from among men than to be disliked by children. 
 
 He was a politician, Mr. President, in the lofty sense, in the 
 honorable sense, in that sense which is requisite to the best 
 statesmanship. He despised political intrigue and backbiting. 
 
 He was a religious man in his convictions. I know from 
 conversation with him long ago that he had had, as many of us 
 have had, more or less of skepticism. It long ago disappeared, 
 and I was not surprised, but confirmed, in my understanding of 
 his attitude by reading recently this utterance of his upon the 
 subject to Rev. Dr. Samuel G. Smith, of St. Paul, his friend: 
 
 It is a great deal better to have these things discussed by the friends of 
 the church rather than by her enemies, but it is not new — Voltaire had 
 
Address of Mr. Spooner, of Wisconsin. 61 
 
 much tn say on the subject. The heart of the question is not in any di 
 about the history of the books of the Bible. I am very familiar with the 
 Bible. Job is the noblest poem ever written, and there is much of the 
 loftiest eloquence in the Prophets. Nor is it in the literature of the Bible 
 that the problem of faith rests. I know human history, and 1 know that 
 in the first century something happened that destroyed the old world and 
 gave birth to the new. The resurrection of Jesus would account for that 
 change, and I do not know of any other adequate solution that has ever 
 been proposed. 
 
 I read this as evidence of his faith, and as an example of that 
 generalization, broad and strong,' which was characteristic of 
 him. 
 
 He loved the duties of the Senate, and he delighted in the 
 companionship of the Senate. After he was stricken with the 
 illness from which he died, and a few days before the election, 
 I called upon him. He had suffered intensely, and his nerves 
 were shaken. As I bade him good-bye I sought to cheer him, 
 and prophesied his certain presence at the opening of the ses- 
 sion of the Senate. In a low voice he said to me, " It is a great 
 body, a great body; good-bye." To me these were his last 
 words. 
 
 It is said that in the delirium which preceded his release 
 from pain and his entering into rest he constantly talked of the 
 Senate and of the great affairs here, which were in a measure 
 committed to his charge, and expressed a wish to live a few- 
 years longer, that he might help to work out some of the half- 
 solved problems which press upon us, and to which he had given 
 anxious and laborious thought. It was not to be. 
 
 We have missed him; we will miss him; aud those of us who 
 served with him here will remember him with admiration for 
 his learning and his genius, and with affection for his kindli- 
 ness and the charm of his comradeship. Truly, Mr. President, 
 he was a man of "great and shining parts" — student, soldier, 
 lawyer, orator, scholar, statesman — in each of these excelling. 
 
62 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 Happily, Mr. President, no man is indispensable to any State 
 or country. Minnesota, who loved and honored him and who 
 was by him loved and honored in return, will be represented in 
 this Chamber by strong, able, patriotic, and eloquent men; but, 
 depreciating no one, it will not be strange if she shall not be 
 able, taking him all in all, to send here another Cushman K. 
 Davis. 
 
Address of Mr. Pettigrew, of South Dakota. 
 
 Address of Mr. Pettigrew, of south Dakota. 
 
 Mr. President: Senator Davis belonged to the Northwest, 
 though claimed by the State which honored itself in honoring 
 him. We of the Northwest looked to him as a leader devoted to 
 its interests and fully comprehending and sympathizing with its 
 wants. In a larger sense he belonged to the nation as one of the 
 nation's distinguished servants. 
 
 Yet he was distinctively a product of the newer portion of i iur 
 realm, emerging from childhood, through the intervening years 
 of youth, into the maturity of manhood surrounded by those 
 progressive people who subdued a wilderness and impressed the 
 vigor of their constructive capabilities upon expanding minds. 
 
 Born in Henderson, in the State of New York, on the 16th of 
 June, 1838, Mr. Davis was taken by his parents from his native 
 State to the Territory of Wisconsin when but a few mouths old , 
 and there his family enrolled themselves among the pioneers who 
 created a State that has already furnished the country with many 
 noble examples of patriotic ability. 
 
 During that period in life when the mind receives its lasting 
 impressions Mr. Davis imbibed the rudiments of that knowledge 
 which in its fullness made him a masterful leader among men. 
 His adopted State was at that time the abode of an unusual pro- 
 portion of rising representatives of statecraft, endowed with 
 conspicuous mental capacity. Growing to manhood in the midst 
 of influences thrown off from the discussions of men of strong 
 intellectuality, during the formative years of a new Common- 
 wealth, Mr. Davis's receptive mentality absorbed the teaching 
 of the conspicuous men of the times, and these furnished the f< mn - 
 dation for that broader knowledge, acquired through a habit of 
 
64 Life and Character of Ciishntan K. Davis. 
 
 industrious research, which formed, in the maturity of his years, 
 the eminent scholar and profound statesman to whose memory we 
 are to-day bestowing the affectionate tribute of sincere words. 
 
 Senator DAVIS'S education was begun in the common schools 
 of the young State of Wisconsin, and from these he passed to a 
 local college in Waukesha, his home town. From this college he 
 entered the University of Michigan, graduating therefrom in 1857. 
 
 Fresh from the honors of university life, he became a student 
 in the law office of Alexander Randall, afterwards governor of 
 the State. A few years of studious application to legal research 
 fitted Mr. Davis for the profession of a lawyer, and he opened 
 an office and entered upon the career that made him conspicuous 
 among the leading men of the nation. 
 
 When the storm of the civil war broke upon the country Mr. 
 Davis abandoned the avocations of peace and became one of that 
 vast army which the North sent forth to grapple in titanic strug- 
 gle with their brethren of the South. Broken in health, he was 
 compelled to abandon military life in 1S64, retiring from the Army 
 as a lieutenant in the Twenty-eighth Wisconsin Infantry. 
 
 After abandoning the profession of arms Mr. Davis resumed 
 the practice of law at St. Paul, Minn., which city remained his 
 home up to the time of his lamented death. In the succeeding 
 years he filled many public positions of responsibility, being a 
 State legislator, United States district attorney, governor of his 
 State, and finally his constituency elevated him to a seat in this 
 body, and twice affirmed their confidence in his representative 
 ability. During thirteen important years in our history Senator 
 Davis honored this Chamber with his presence, and so strongly 
 had he endeared himself to his associates that when he was sum- 
 moned hence to enter another life he left within the scene of his 
 national successes a profound sense of irreparable loss. 
 
 During the sixty-two years which marked the span of his 
 
Address of Mr. Pettigrew, of South Dakota. 65 
 
 useful career the gravest national questions have arisen and the 
 most serious perils have beset the life of the Republic. Since 
 reaching man's estate Mr. Davis has been an active factor in 
 the solution of these public problems, either upon the field of 
 war's strife or in the peaceful councils of the people. Death 
 found him in the midst of the crowning- achievements of his 
 public life, and that he was loath to go and leave his work 
 unfinished is attested by those who ministered to his sufferings 
 and watched in sorow while the soul separated itself from the 
 tenement we had loved and honored as the personification of rare 
 mental gifts and true worth in man. 
 
 I am a mourner at the shrine of a friendship that has existed 
 during many years and reaches beyond the barrier of death. 
 Having known Mr. Davis intimately in the public and private 
 walks of life — in the forum, in the home and social circle, and 
 in the seclusion of confidential intimacy — I bear testimony to 
 the greatness of his mind and the goodness of his heart, to his 
 unswerving integrity, to his fidelity to principle, to the presence 
 of mental endowments that elevated him to a conspicuous 
 position among the statesmen and philosophers of our advanced 
 era. Sincerely do I hope that the example of his public and 
 private life may remain among and with us as we bear the 
 burdens of earthly pilgrimage and sanctify the hour when we 
 stand again in the presence of the departed. 
 S. Doc. 230 5 
 
66 Life and Character of Cushman K Davis. 
 
 ADDRESS OF MR. MCCUMBER, OF NORTH DAKOT.. 
 
 Mr. President: While those qualities which make the sol- 
 dier or the patriot, the scholar or the statesman, instinctively 
 command our admiration and honor, they are not always the 
 ones which most deeply impress or enshrine a noble character 
 in the affections of his associates or engender the deepest 
 reverence and esteem. 
 
 These great qualities of soul and brain manifested in the life 
 of Cushman Kellogg Davis were happily combined with the 
 gentle and tender impulses of a sympathetic heart to an extent 
 seldom equaled in any one individual — the elements of a sage 
 counselor and a generous friend. 
 
 While I have watched with pride and honor the public career 
 of this star of my native State whose lustrous character shone 
 over all this great nation, my close personal acquaintance has 
 been limited to a few years only. That short period, however, 
 has been sufficient to know the man, for the character of every 
 individual is like a divinely builded palace, whose majestic 
 proportions and harmonious form, reflecting the beauty and 
 sublimity of the soul of the architect, may be comprehended in 
 a single glance; or like the finished work of some grand artist, 
 which, while it reflects upon the canvas lofty ideals which 
 speak like angels of sympathy to the souls of men, yet shows 
 the labored touch of every stroke of the magic brush. 
 
 So was the real life of Senator Davis known to all who had 
 the honor of his acquaintance, the privilege of his personal 
 friendship, the more delicate details ever traceable in the 
 grander structure of the whole. 
 
 Though firm and strong, his firmness was so blended with 
 gentleness that, while his whole character stood out grand and 
 
Address of Mr. McCumber, of North Dakota. 67 
 
 imposing, it was softened like some great mountain peak half 
 veiled in morning mists. 
 
 His generosity was not of the latent quality which required 
 an exciting stimulus to develop its activity, but was ever alert 
 and active, and responded as naturally and as surely as the mag- 
 net to the pole. In his kindness and gentleness you felt the 
 glow and fire of sincerity, which inspired absolute confidence. 
 
 With a patriotism unbounded, his youthful vigor and man- 
 hood's prime, the best of his life and thought, were dedicated 
 to his country's good. That same devotion to nation mani- 
 fested in his enlistment and sen-ice through the civil war was 
 characteristic of his whole life. 
 
 The associates of Senator Davis in the last session of Con- 
 gress know how unremittingly were his labors in the verv face 
 of the enemy of life. The advent of an insidious disease to 
 which his physical health was rapidly yielding and which was 
 soon to claim him for its own seemed rather to intensify than 
 diminish his zeal. One thought with him was supreme — his 
 country needed his service. 
 
 The words of the poet might well have been dedicated to him: 
 
 Oh, think how to his latest day, 
 
 When death just hovering claimed his prev. 
 
 With Palinure's unaltered mood, 
 
 Firm at his dangerous post he stood. 
 
 Each call for needful rest repelled, 
 
 With dying hand the rudder held. 
 
 But his love of country was not a blind devotion. He 
 admired the true, generous, and brave in all countries, and 
 held his own as rigidly to his ideal of national honor and dut\ 
 as he did the highest or lowest nation of the world. 
 
 His great success in the field of politics was not the result of 
 that tact, skill, and diplomacy, by so man) - understood to be- 
 an essential to successful political advancement. 
 
68 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 His tact was the ardor of his convictions of right and 
 unswerving loyalty to those convictions ; his diplomacy the 
 directness and simplicity of his utterances ; his skill was his 
 scholarly attainments and thorough knowledge of all the great 
 political questions of the day. 
 
 As a jurist he ever interpreted law by the standard of 
 justice — the soul which should permeate every human code — 
 and never deflected that standard except toward the side of 
 mercy. His arguments, like his character, were seldom 
 aggressive, but ever clear and persuasive. 
 
 As a young man he gave his youthful vigor and strength of 
 manhood in war that no star should be lost to the firmament 
 of American nationality. In his later years he gave that 
 counsel to his country which broadened its national horizon 
 and raised it to a higher, broader, and nobler position among 
 the powers of the world. 
 
 The tribute of Sir Walter Scott to Fox, in his last resting 
 place, most fittingly portrays the noble nature of Cushman 
 Kellogg Davis and his country's loss in this era of great 
 national changes : 
 
 For talents mourn, untimely lost, 
 When best emploj'ed, and wanted most ; 
 Mourn genius high, and lore profound, 
 And wit that loved to play, not wound ; 
 And all the reasoning powers divine, 
 To penetrate, resolve, combine; 
 And feelings keen, and fancy's glow — 
 They sleep with him who sleeps below. 
 
Address of Mr. Foster, of Washington. 69 
 
 Address of Mr. Foster, of Washington. 
 
 Mr. President: Senator Davis was my near neighbor for 
 twenty-five years, and, while it is impossible for me to add to 
 the eloquent and just tributes already spoken in his memory, 
 I feel constrained to contribute a few neighborly remarks bear- 
 ing witness to his many sterling attributes of mind and heart. 
 
 Over a quarter of a century ago, when I first met him, he was 
 a rising and ambitious young lawyer, who was attracting friends 
 as well as attention. That he was a confiding and tenacious 
 friend those who know him best gladly testify; but of all his 
 notable qualities his strict integrity first challenged my 
 admiration. 
 
 His briefs were perfect, and his thoroughness as a lawyer was, 
 in my humble opinion, the substantial foundation of his success 
 at the bar. His intellect was ever clear and vigorous. He had 
 the power to grasp great intellectual problems, and his prophetic 
 solution of delicate and grave international questions in his 
 riper years stirred the pride of his former neighbors, who pre- 
 dicted a brilliant career for him when he was yet burning the 
 midnight lamp during and before his achievements as United 
 States district attorney of Minnesota, nearly thirty years ago. 
 
 And yet Senator Davis did not reach the pinnacle of his 
 power by sudden nights, but rather by steady, persistent plod- 
 ding and continued application. Day by day, year by year, his 
 abilities and knowledge increased until he developed into a 
 great lawyer — a foremost statesman. He was a notable advo- 
 cate of the rights of good citizenship and early gained and held 
 the confidence of a large circle of friends. This priceless confi- 
 dence of his friends continued to the end, consoling him on his 
 bed of sickness and spreading flowers on his tomb. 
 
70 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 While this worthy son of a great Commonwealth was a 
 profound scholar, he was a most affable and genial companion 
 and neighbor. In his infrequent moments of leisure his genial 
 spirit and generous hospitality warmed the hearts of his friends 
 and had the pleasing effect of placing the most humble and 
 timid on a level of most charming equality. His friendships 
 were so strong that the severest tests and rudest shocks could 
 not break them. Only the settled conviction that a flagrantly 
 unworthy act had been committed caused him to withdraw the 
 abiding confidence reposed by him in his friends. 
 
 His library was stored with choice volumes, and the young 
 men who have had the opportunity of enjoying and profiting 
 by his varied knowledge of men and affairs may well count 
 themselves fortunate. Those partaking of the feast of reason 
 spread by him for his friends will ever remember his remarkable 
 familiarity with the thoughts and writings of men of profound 
 learning of all ages, as well as his interesting conceptions of 
 the teachings of nature. At one time, during an interesting 
 discussion, he would make use of a plain illustration of the com- 
 nii hi people, next a simile evolved from his own extended 
 experience, and then a classical surprise, pertinent and ever 
 pleasing. His reasoning was clear and concise, his position 
 absolute and definite. Gradually interest in his literary attain- 
 ments and legal ability spread beyond the middle West and 
 throughout the country in general, until he was known every- 
 where for his bright intellect, his patriotism, and conscientious 
 performance of public duty. 
 
 He was considerate of every man's opinion, and, as a friend 
 and lawyer, this made him an agreeable associate. He was 
 tenacious and unyielding, after reaching conclusions, and in 
 many notable instances time has demonstrated the correctness 
 of his opinions and the soundness of his mature judgment. 
 
Address of Mr. Foster, of Washington. 71 
 
 With Senator Davis convictions were sacred, and that he had 
 the courage of his convictions his public acts and deeds amply 
 testify. In expressing his convictions he was fearless, forcible, 
 and courageous. 
 
 The fidelity with which Senator Davis discharged his public 
 duties is the subject of frequent and earnest commendation 
 among his admirers, but as a former neighbor I deem it an 
 honor to bear witness to his attention to small things. In the 
 little courtesies of life he was thoughtful and considerate. He 
 displayed a disposition to help and perform those slight acts of 
 kindness that cement and firmly hold our friendships. When 
 news reached him, for instance, of an old friend living in a far 
 distant part of the country having been chosen to a seat in this 
 Chamber, he found time, although burdened with grave respon- 
 sibilities of far-reaching importance, to write full particulars 
 touching upon the duties of a newly elected Senator. 
 
 His career has been ended abruptly, at a time when his 
 splendid talents were most keenly appreciated and could least 
 lie spared. That his death should occur at this particular time 
 is, indeed, peculiarly sad. 
 
 As an eminent authority on constitutional and international 
 law and diplomacy, his services to his country were of inesti- 
 mable value during the uncertain and eventful days before and 
 during the late war with Spain, and as these last services to his 
 country are yet fresh in the minds of a grateful people, the 
 generous appreciation now manifested adds to the crowning 
 patriotic achievements of his public life. 
 
72 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 ADDRESS OF MR. TOWNE, OF MINNESOTA. 
 
 Mr. President : The language of eulogy has many times 
 awakened the echoes of these august walls. Often in this place 
 have affection, gratitude, and admiration paid their unstinted 
 tribute to great talents, exalted character, valiant deeds, and 
 useful service. Here whatever is high in purpose or excellent 
 in performance has again and again been celebrated by all that 
 is noble in thought and eloquent in speech. 
 
 To-day, with whatsoever humbleness a voice may raise itself 
 to mingle with these mighty memories, there is that in the 
 subject of this observance which vindicates propriety by trans- 
 forming presumption into duty. His countrymen at large had 
 hardly reached a just appreciation of the native genius and the 
 vast and varied acquirements of Cushman Kellogg Davis 
 when envious death obscured the light whose radiance had but 
 begun to shine in its peculiar sphere and with its own original 
 luster. The people of his Commonwealth, among whom he 
 lived his simple, unostentatious, busy life in a familiar associa- 
 tion of more than thirty years, had come to know him well. 
 
 His name is a household word throughout the State of 
 Minnesota. His varied endowments, his wide and accurate 
 scholarship, his versatile capacity, were common knowledge, 
 and when he was called, as his fellow-citizens knew he some 
 time must be, to a large opportunity upon the theater of the 
 national history they looked confidently forward to a career 
 that should leave all his countrymen as well assured as they 
 themselves already were of his right to a place in the pantheon 
 of American greatness. 
 
Address of Mr. Towne, of Minnesota. 73 
 
 In everyday life Mr. Davis was democratic and unconven- 
 tional, genial and approachable, though never without that 
 unobtrusive suggestion of dignity which almost seems to be the 
 peculiar property of the true American gentleman. His sim- 
 plicity was as unaffected as his self-respect was unmistakable. 
 He had withal a lively sense of humor which, playing above an 
 illimitable expanse of miscellaneous information, lighted up his 
 conversation like sunshine upon a diversified landscape. 
 
 At the bar he early attained to eminence. Always a student 
 in whatever interested him, he had an extensive acquaintance 
 with the literature of jurisprudence, although the structure of 
 his mind inclined him toward the exposition of principles rather 
 than the mere aggregation of cases. His arguments to courts 
 were models of legal reasoning and logical method; while in 
 addresses to juries his intimate knowledge of human nature, his 
 faculty of illustration, and his felicity of speech made him an 
 opponent to be dreaded. As a trial lawyer he excelled in the 
 arrangement of the order of his proofs, in his command of the 
 rules of evidence, and in the art of examining witnesses, ex- 
 hibiting with other merits in this last department that rare dis- 
 cretion which knows how to resist allurements toward excessive 
 cross-examination. 
 
 Senator Davis was a conspicuous example of the scholar in 
 politics. His reading, both in history and in general literature, 
 was comprehensive and minute; but in this respect, as in 
 others, he followed the instinct of his own taste and preference 
 rather than any hard and fast programme of study. His library 
 was his most congenial habitat. Thither with unerring cer- 
 taiutv he might be traced in the intervals of professional 
 engagements or public business. His books had gathered about 
 him in answer to the call of his mind for companionship and 
 counsel. He bought no volumes by job lot to fill shelf room 
 
74 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 and make a brave appearance. He knew each one of them like 
 a friend. He handled them lovingly. He felt at home among 
 them. Could they be marshaled in the order in which they 
 came to him, their character and sequence would be at once an 
 index to his many-sided capacities and a history of his growth. 
 His earl}' love for the classics abided with him from his 
 college days to the last. Ovid, and Livy, and Horace, and 
 Virgil were customary relaxations; and I recall an occasion 
 when, in selecting the contents of his valise for a journey, 
 even a box of his favorite brand of cigars was compelled to 
 give place to a copy of Sallust and a volume of Pliny's letters. 
 On his return from Paris two years ago he brought with him, 
 as a trophy prized scarcely less than the famous treaty itself, 
 a French edition of the entire extant L,atin literature. Many 
 Senators will, no doubt, remember his remarkably happy and 
 read} - rendering of a passage in one of Juvenal's satires which 
 he made impromptu during the Hawaiian debate in the Fifty- 
 third Congress. Having quoted as follows: 
 
 Sed quo cecidit sub crimine; quisnam 
 Delator? quibus judiciis; quo teste probavit? 
 Nil linrum; verbosa et grandis epistola venit 
 A Capreis. Bene habet; mil plus interrogo. 
 
 He thus proceeded: 
 
 My friend from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar] requests me to translate that. 
 He does not need it, of course. But another Senator [Mr. Washburn] 
 suggests that some of the rest of us do. I will not attempt to give a literal 
 translation, but I will give an accurate paraphrase, which will show its 
 application: "Into what crime has he fallen? By what informer has he 
 been accused? What judge has passed upon him? What witness has 
 testified against him? Not one or any of these. A verbose and turgid 
 message has come over from Capri. That settles it. I will interrogate no 
 further." 
 
 Those who have not forgotten the circumstances under 
 which this speech was made will understand that this passage 
 
Address of Mr. Toitme, of Minnesota. 75 
 
 is a good witness to much more than a familiarity with a 
 latin classic. 
 
 With all his various and wide excursions in the domain of 
 general literature, there were some spots he specially loved 
 to visit, a few nooks he made almost his own. A boyhood 
 enthusiasm for Napoleon stimulated an interest in that won- 
 derful man and all that concerned him, and led to the col- 
 lection of many rare portraits of the great Corsican ami of 
 several hundred volumes dealing with his life and times. 
 
 It is probable that no other private library in this country 
 can show so large a Napoleonic bibliography as that left by 
 Senator Davis; and I question whether any living American 
 other than Professor Sloane has at his instant command such a 
 rich fund of accurate information concerning the first Emperor 
 of the French as that which so often charmed and astonished 
 the friends who were fortunate enough to be in the Senator's 
 company when this absorbing topic was introduced and his 
 mood was fertile. 
 
 It is doubtful whether Mr. Davis found in any other author 
 quite so keen a delight as in Shakespeare. Himself gifted with 
 a yivid, yet sane imagination, exquisitely sensitive to the music 
 and rhythm of perfect verse, prone to comprehensive general- 
 ization, and profoundly studious of the psychology of human 
 character, the atmosphere of the incomparable poet-dramatist 
 was most congenial to him. In his early manhood the study of 
 Shakespeare was. as he has told us in a published essay, habit- 
 ual. This study was not only con amore; it was critical, com- 
 parative, and exhaustive. Its results in one department of 
 criticism he made known in a volume called The Law in Shake- 
 speare, which remains, I believe, the best and most thorough 
 exposition of this branch of Shakespearean learning. One pas- 
 sage from the "introduction" of this volume I will quote as 
 
76 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 an example of Senator Davis's literary style and of his method 
 of thought: 
 
 There was everything in that romantic age to stir the imagination. 
 There was a spirit of chivalry abroad which marched in quest of some- 
 tiling more substantial than moldy relics and fulfilled vows sworn to 
 something grander than the achievement of pious absurdities. Frobisher 
 had sailed northward into the silence of the eternal seas of ice. El Dorado 
 lifted against the western skies its shafts and domes of gold. The Armada 
 had vanished like a portentous phantom, smitten by the valor of English- 
 men, and chased far off into the Hebridean fogs bv the waves of the 
 exasperated sea, which fought for its island nursling. Hawkins, pirate 
 and admiral, had thrown his fortune into the pit which threatened to 
 swallow up his country, and had died under the displeasure of his stingy 
 yet magnificent queen. Raleigh, having seen his dreams of the New 
 World die out, lay in the Tower writing his history, doubtless smoking 
 tne consoling weed while awaiting the end of so much bravery, so much 
 rashness, and so many cares, in the summons of "eloquent, just, and 
 mighty Death." 
 
 1 Ir.ike had spoiled the seas and the cities thereof. Captain John Smith 
 had told of great empires in the West and their swarthy emperors. Marv, 
 Queen of Scots, that changeful enchantress, as we see her now — at one 
 time the French lily, all sweet, and pure, and fragrant, and again the 
 Scottish thistle, spinous and cruel to all who touched her — had woven 
 the cords of love into the chains of empire, and had pressed the cup of 
 her sorceries to the lips of main- men, until her own glorious head bowed 
 to " the long divorce of steel." 
 
 Little argument is needed to show that the author of this 
 paragraph might have entered upon almost any department of 
 literature, whether creative, critical, or historical, with abso- 
 lute assurance of distinction. 
 
 Senator Davis's facility in modern languages was very unus- 
 ual for an American public man. He had for literary purposes 
 a practical mastery of French, a knowledge of Italian only 
 slightly less, and a very serviceable use of Spanish. One of 
 the most valued sets of books in his collection was a complete 
 and uniform edition of the Italian poets, through which in 
 leisure hours he wandered, ever with senses alive to each pecul- 
 iar beauty, from Dante and Petrarch to Leopardi. Contrary to 
 
Address of Mr, Towne, of Minnesota. 77 
 
 the general impression, even among his friends, he knew and 
 read the German language: but his admiration for its literature 
 was confined to its poetry, chiefly the folk-songs, Heine, and 
 the lyrics of Schiller. 
 
 One of the favorite subjects of his youthful investigation was 
 destined to afford Mr. Davis his chief avenue of distinction in 
 public life. I think it probably true that no contemporary 
 statesman excelled him in acquaintance with the literature of 
 international law, or in the ability to state its principles aud to 
 argue their application. All the elementry works on the sub- 
 ject in English. French, and Italian were familiar to him, and 
 he was profoundly versed in diplomatic precedents and history. 
 His conceded preeminence as an international lawyer in this 
 body, where several of his colleagues were justly ranked high 
 in the same branch of learning, is the strongest certificate to 
 his abilities and attainments. These qualifications were recog- 
 nized early in his Senatorial service, and it is well known that 
 many successive Secretaries of State availed themselves of his 
 great store of knowledge, always courteously at their com- 
 mand. 
 
 He himself has told me of one occasion whereon Secretary 
 Blaine, by producing at a Cabinet meeting the particulars of a 
 certain diplomatic precedent upon which Mr. Davis had hap- 
 pened while reading a French authority, was able at a critical 
 moment to secure the adoption of a procedure that, in all 
 probability, avoided the extremity of war with a South Ameri- 
 can State. The reports which, as member and as chairman of 
 the Committee on Foreign Relations, he has submitted to the 
 Senate during the last ten years form a very valuable literature 
 on many important topics in international law. 
 
 Only those in the very highest places of responsibility can 
 testify how intimate and constant a reliance had been placed 
 
78 Life and Character of Cushman A'. Davis. 
 
 on .Senator Davis from the first mutterings premonitory of the 
 Spanish-American war down to almost the very day of his 
 death. Credible report has attributed to him the greater part 
 of that masterly polemic in diplomacy whereby our peace com- 
 missioners at Paris, in a long series of interchanged notes with 
 some of the ablest and astutest international lawyers in Europe, 
 achieved a result which, even by those of us who do not ap- 
 prove the policy, must be admitted to constitute a signal 
 triumph of dialectic skill. 
 
 Death found Cushman K. Davis at the zenith of his powers 
 and at the summit of his opportunities. He stood at the head 
 of the committee which at the present critical juncture in our 
 history is the most prominent committee of the highest gov- 
 ernmental body in the world. If the policy on which his party 
 has entered is to be pursued, the unexpired portion of his cur- 
 rent term, comprising the next four years, must be all-impor- 
 tant in the shaping and adjustment of that policy as related to 
 numerous and complicated international interests. This was 
 a situation calculated to appeal to his highest ambition, to 
 stimulate his greatest potencies, to spread before his mental 
 vision the most satisfying prospect of worthy and enduring 
 fame. 
 
 Yet here, on the threshold of the consummation of his career, 
 at the very entrance to that fair field for whose delights and 
 glories all his past seemed to have been a designed prepara- 
 tion, inscrutable fate had ordained that he should pause. No 
 one realized the tragic pathos of the catastrophe more fully 
 than did he; yet he bore the sorrow of it with a moral heroism 
 equal to the physical courage which he opposed to the stoutest 
 assaults of pain. He might wince, but he would not cry out; 
 he could express regret, but he did not complain. And when 
 his feet touched the waters of the river bevond which lies 
 
Address of Mr. Towne, of Minnesota. 79 
 
 "that undiscovered country," the glance that sought inquir- 
 ingly the farther shore was a glance that felt no shade of 
 fear. 
 
 As a young man he had for a time yielded to the influence 
 of that irreligious skepticism which was often the too hasty 
 refuge of minds strongly impressed by the wonderful develop- 
 ment of the physical sciences shortly after the middle (if the 
 nineteenth century. But as he grew older, and as his reading 
 broadened and his habit of introspection strengthened, the 
 thought that all the preparation of the centuries is purposeless 
 and that the end of innumerable universes is mere nothingness 
 gave no comfort to his soul and found no justification in his 
 reason. 
 
 Familiar with the ancient philosophies and with the general 
 principles of recent science, he found in both of them that 
 which, while it yielded no exclusive basis for a particular 
 creed, yet gave ample support to the sweet assurances of the 
 Christian religion respecting the future life. The Grecian 
 thinkers had reached conclusions summarized in the well- 
 known lines of Addison's Cato: 
 
 It must be so, — Plato, thou reasoneth well! 
 
 Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
 
 This longing after immortality? 
 
 Or whence this secret dread and inward horror 
 
 Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul 
 
 Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 
 
 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 
 
 'Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 
 
 And intimates eternity to man. 
 
 Modern cosmogony, in sweeping away the ancient fond 
 
 delusion that the sun, the moon, and the unnumbered stars, 
 
 "still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims," circle obediently 
 
 about the earth, the central home of specially created man, 
 
 merely to give him light and to serve as pleasing object-, of 
 
So Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 his aesthetic contemplation, has substituted a doctrine infinitely 
 more flattering to his consequence and in itself strongly pro- 
 bative of his immortality. It shows the human drama to have 
 begun in the primordial chaos among the whirling atoms of 
 diffused universes, the raw material of unborn worlds. 
 
 By the operation of forces of which the finite mind can 
 not begin to grasp either the subtlety or the power, through 
 reaches of time for which even the strongest symbols of our 
 speech are weak as aids to the faltering imagination, the laws 
 of the Eternal Beneficence evolved the order of celestial sys- 
 tems and the mysterious phenomena of life. At the culmina- 
 tion of the long ascent of being stands man, the consummate 
 product of a creative process that began before ' ' the morning 
 stars sang together." Even- resource and agency of nature 
 is tributary to him — first to develop the body, next to nurture 
 the mind, and finally to culture the soul and fortify it for its 
 career through the yet unsounded spaces of spiritual progress. 
 
 In his primitive condition man's whole anxiety was to pro- 
 cure the means of mere physical existence and security. By 
 and by the chief concern of this very existence and security 
 came to be the higher things of the mind. Now we are 
 beginning dimly to realize that the spiritual life is the highest 
 of all, the goal toward which the vital principle has been climb- 
 ing through all the seons gone. There is not an analogy in 
 nature that does not justify the belief that the perfection of 
 this spiritual life is the very flower and purpose of creation. 
 This fact crowns existence. This is the master key to what 
 otherwise is a maze of unintelligible phenomena. This, in- 
 deed, "vindicates the ways of God to man." 
 
 With such inferences the teachings of the Prophet of Naza- 
 reth are in full accord. To know God is, he declared, to have 
 eternal life. When man entered upon the pursuit of this 
 
Address of Mr, Towne, of Minnesota. 8i 
 
 knowledge he began the final stage of his destiny. The 
 founding of Christianity was incomparably the most signifi- 
 cant event since the very beginning of things. Said Senator 
 Davis, not long before his death, in language which has 
 already been quoted by the Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. 
 Spooxer] : 
 
 I know human history, and I know that in the first century something 
 happened that destroyed the old world and gave birth to the new. The 
 resurrection of Jesus would account for that change, and I do not know of 
 any other adequate solution that has ever been proposed. 
 
 Thus, it seems to me, the conclusions of philosophy, the 
 rationale of science, and the teachings of revealed religion 
 point unerringly to immortality. In this supreme conviction 
 our great friend departed. Though we may mourn the loss 
 of his companionship, let us find more than consolation in the 
 thought that the soul whose labors seemed so untimely inter- 
 rupted here is still serenely following, in a more congenial 
 environment, its divinely appointed part in the eternal 
 harmon}'. 
 
 Mr. President, I respectfully ask for the adoption of the 
 resolutions. 
 
 The resolutions were unanimously agreed to: and (at 3 
 o'clock and 38 minutes p. m. ) the Senate adjourned. 
 S. Doc. 230 6 
 
Proceedings in the House 
 
 December 3, 1900. 
 
 Mr. Tawnky. Mr. Speaker, it becomes my painful duty 
 to officially announce to this House the death of that distin- 
 guished statesman, scholar, and accomplished diplomat, Senator 
 Ctjshman Kellogg Davis, of Minnesota. His death occurred 
 at his home, in St. Paul, Tuesday evening of last week, at 
 about 1 1 o'clock. For several weeks he struggled heroically 
 against a disease which at last proved too formidable for him 
 to longer resist, and he yielded with a prayer upon his lips for 
 the future glory of his country. 
 
 This is not the appropriate time to speak of the illustrious 
 character and distinguished public services of Senator Davis. 
 We will hereafter ask the House to devote a portion of its time 
 to the paying of such tributes to his memory as are befitting 
 his remarkable career of public usefulness, not only in the 
 Senate of the United States, but also in the councils and 
 administrative affairs of his adopted State. 
 
 His death has occurred at a time when his great ability and 
 learning were most needed and when his country could least 
 afford to lose him. 
 
 As a further mark of our esteem tor the distinguished dead, 
 I now offer the following resolutions. 
 
 The Clerk read as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That the House has heard with profound sorrow of the de ith 
 of the Hon. Cushman K. Davis, a Senator of the United S 
 the State of Minnesota. 
 
 83 
 
84 Proceed higs in the House. 
 
 Resolved, That as a further mark of respect to the memories of the late 
 Representatives HoFFECKER and Daly and the late Senators GEAR and 
 Davis, this House do now adjourn. 
 
 Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the Senate 
 and transmit a copy thereof to the families of the deceased Senators and 
 Representatives herein named. 
 
 The resolutions were unanimously agreed to; and accordingly 
 (at 4 o'clock and 22 minutes p. m. 1 the House adjourned. 
 
 MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE. 
 
 A message from the Senate by Mr. Parkinson, one of its 
 clerks, announced that the Senate had passed the following 
 resolution: 
 
 Resolved, That the Senate has heard with deep regret and profound 
 sorrow of the death of the Hon. Cushman KeixoGG Davis, late a 
 Senator from the State of Minnesota. 
 
 Resolved, That the Secretary communicate a copy of these resolutions 
 to the House of Representatives. 
 
 Resolved, That as a further mark of respect to the memory of the 
 deceased the Senate do now adjourn. 
 
 January 10, 1901. 
 
 Mr. Eddy. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for the 
 present consideration of the following resolution. 
 
 The clerk read as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That Saturday, February 2, 1901. at 3 o'clock p. m., be 
 assigned for the consideration of resolutions of respect to the memory 
 of the late Cushman K. Davis, a distinguished member of the United 
 States Senate from the State of Minnesota. 
 
 The Speaker. Is there objection? [After a pause.] The 
 Chair hears none. 
 
 The resolution was agreed to. 
 
MEMORIAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 February 2, igoi. 
 
 The Speaker pro tempore. Without objection, the special 
 order set for 3 o'clock will be taken up now. The Chair hears 
 no objection. 
 
 Mr. Eddy. I call up the special order, and offer the following 
 resolutions: 
 
 The Clerk read as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That it is with deep regret and profound sorrow that the 
 House of Representatives hears the announcement of the death of Hon. 
 Ccshman Kellogg Davis, late a Senator from the State of Minnesota. 
 
 Resolved, That the House extends to his family and to the people of the 
 State of Minnesota sincere condolence in their bereavement. 
 
 Resolved , That, as a mark of respect to the memory of the deceased, the 
 business of the House be now suspended, to enable his associates to pay 
 fitting tribute to his high character and distinguished services. 
 
 Resolved, That the Clerk transmit to the family of the deceased and to 
 the governor of the State of Minnesota a cop}- of these resolutions, with 
 the action of the House thereon. 
 
 Resolved, That the Clerk communicate these resolutions to the Senate. 
 
 Resolved, That, as an additional mark of respect, at the conclusion of 
 these exercises the House do adjourn. 
 
 The Speaker pro tempore. The question is on agreeing to 
 the resolutions. 
 
 The question was taken, and the resolutions were unani- 
 mously agreed to. 
 
 85 
 
86 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 Address of Mr. Fletcher, of Minnesota, 
 
 Mr. Speaker: Cushman Kellogg Davis was born at Hen- 
 derson, N. Y.. June 16, 1S38, and died at St. Paul November 2- , 
 1900. 
 
 During his birthyear his parents removed to Wisconsin and 
 settled on a farm in the vicinity of Waukesha. Here the child 
 developed into a sturdy youth, dividing his time between the 
 common schools and the farm, cultivating simple tastes, and 
 learning lessons of self-restraint and self-reliance. Ere long he 
 grew impatient of the isolation and monotony incident to a 
 farmer's life at that time; his gifted intellect awoke as from a 
 sleep; he sought a wider horizon; he hungered to know and 
 solve the problems which confronted him on all sides. 
 
 By happy chance a college training was opened before him. 
 The eagerness with which he entered upon his preparation for 
 college, and the unwearied diligence with which he pursued it 
 bespoke the secret cravings of his soul. In three years from 
 this first serious resolve to put himself upon a higher plane he 
 had accomplished the preparatory stage and matriculated at the 
 University of Michigan. From this institution he graduated 
 with the very highest honors in 1857. Returning to Waukesha 
 he began the study of law and was admitted to the bar in i860 — 
 that memorable year in which the North asserted the indivisi- 
 bility of the Union by the election of Abraham Lincoln, accepted 
 the challenge of the South, and submitted the integrity of the 
 nation to the dreadful arbitrament of arms. 
 
 Mr. Davis had barely entered into the practice of his profes- 
 sion before the third call for volunteers in our civil war came, 
 revealing to the North the magnitude of the terrible struggle 
 then pending. Shutting the door of his law office, he enlisted 
 
Address of Mr. Fletcher, of Minnesota. 87 
 
 in the service, and served for two years in the Army of the 
 Tennessee throughout their campaigns in Kentucky, Arkansas, 
 and Mississippi. During this period malaria had crept into his 
 blood, fever had assailed him, and the hardships of the service 
 had so worn upon him that he was incapable of discharging the 
 duties expected of him. Accordingly, he resigned his commis- 
 sion as first lieutenant of Company B. Wisconsin Volunteers, 
 and came to his father's house. Rest, recreation, and favoring 
 climatic conditions speedily wrought encouraging results, and in 
 a few months his complete restoration to health was assured. 
 
 Casting about for a place to make his home, and carefully 
 considering many localities, he decided to establish himself 
 in St. Paul, and there he has lived and toiled for a generation. 
 Beginning at the lowest round of the ladder, without money, 
 with limited acquaintance, with no adventitious aids, but with 
 simple faith in himself, he steadily climbed that ladder until, 
 at the end of his life, the luster of an international reputation 
 shone squarely in his face. Mr. Davis never ceased to be 
 glad that he had cast his lot in the then far Northwest. He 
 loved St. Paul and was proud of Minnesota. 
 
 Friendships multiplied apace; he won an enviable position 
 at the bar; he became a potent factor in shaping the policy 
 of the State, and the manifestations of public confidence in 
 him were frequent' and unmistakable. His law practice in- 
 creased in scope and importance, and great interests were so 
 freely and unreservedly intrusted to his keeping that civic 
 honors, which he enjoyed and could have secured, save for 
 the unwillingness to accept them, were often thrust aside. 
 However, he was elected a member of the State legislature, 
 was appointed attorney-general of the State, made governor, 
 and three times was commissioned to represent Minnesota in 
 the T'nited State-. Senate. 
 
88 Life and Charade?- of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 In the last position the man and his opportunity met. For- 
 tunate meeting! Here his ability was put to the test, and all 
 the resources which study and reflection had stored were 
 taxed to their utmost. As the ocean liner must be hauled 
 out into the deep sea before its ponderous engines are given 
 liberty of action, so the Senate was to Mr. Davis a congenial 
 place, and his joyful activity in that body gave ample proof 
 of his appreciation of the good fortune that had fallen to him. 
 In what esteem his associates already held him is evidenced 
 by their prompt and unusual action in giving him a com- 
 manding position at the very start. 
 
 He was not assigned to the lowest end of some relatively 
 unimportant committees — a sort of probationary state where 
 the new member grows familiar with his environment, acquires 
 confidence, and looks to time and change for promotion — 
 but to him was accorded the chairmanship of the Com- 
 mittee on Pensions. The varied and exacting duties incident 
 to this position he discharged with unwearied diligence 
 and unruffled patience. What legislation he originated and 
 secured, what abuses corrected and justice promoted, what 
 friction of conflicting laws and interpretations disappeared, 
 and what obstacles his hand removed for the better discharge 
 of this branch of public business will never be known. He 
 retired from this position, however, with net gains to himself 
 everywhere. The country had come to admire and trust 
 him, while his associates in the Senate had learned that, 
 endowed with great intellectual force, he was a sound and 
 safe legislator. 
 
 During the Venezuelan contention, and later as chairman of 
 the Committee on Foreign Relations during the Spanish war, 
 and yet again as commissioner at the peace conference, the 
 part which Senator Davis played has stamped him as one of 
 
Address of Mr. Fletcher, of Minnesota. 89 
 
 the foremost men of this generation. His diplomatic skill, 
 his familiarity with international law, and his quick insight 
 into the strength or weakness of any matter under considera- 
 tion were freely called into requisition and were never disap- 
 pointing. If the files of the State Department were available, 
 the special subjects of investigation with which he has been 
 charged for the past six years, and the labor involved in their 
 investigation, would disclose a record of signal public service. 
 They belong to an unwritten record, traceable only in the 
 policy of the nation. 
 
 Senator Davis was not an orator in the- common acceptation 
 of that term; his cast of mind was philosophic — convincing 
 rather than moving his hearers. He was a profound student 
 of the histories and relations of states, and yet, in the use of 
 our Anglo-Saxon tongue, in the forceful and symmetrical 
 unfolding of a subject, the marshaling of fact and illustration, 
 I do not believe that his superior can be found in the history 
 of the American Senate. 
 
 In forming the estimate of the life of a fellow-man what dif- 
 fering measurements are employed! The standpoint of many 
 rests wholly on worldly possessions, and the first inquiry that 
 rises to their lips is, Was he rich? What were his investments 
 and his style of living, or how much power did he wield? How 
 much fame did he enjoy? How much popular applause did he 
 receive? Another accepts a man's actions as the sole criterion 
 of his worth. What has he accomplished, is the question. 
 Has he written a book or founded a city or commanded an 
 army? Did he instruct the ignorant, and was he kind to the 
 unfortunate? Undoubtedly the latter is a higher standpoint of 
 judgment than the former. Possessions, however great, are 
 outside of a man, while his conduct forms a most important 
 part of him. Vet there is something behind possession- and 
 
go Life and Character oj Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 performance — a life finer and more powerful than that of out- 
 ward expression. Shall we name it character? Character is 
 the net result of every man's life. Not what he knows, not 
 what he has acquired, but what he is constitutes his essence 
 and personality. 
 
 Character is fundamental; without it individual achievement 
 is simple mockery. Associate with this a tireless industry and 
 trained intellect, with opportunity, and the career of Mr. Davis 
 is rendered prophetic. He was indeed a manly man — honest 
 and pure-minded, charitable and humane. He was actuated 
 by the highest ideals of conduct, and lived in the sunshine of 
 confiding neighbors. Perhaps the distinguishing characteristic 
 of his mind was a certain equipoise — a knowledge of intrinsic 
 value, an ability to find happiness in the common blessings of 
 life, and a willingness to strike a balance between the pleasures 
 and the pains that make up every life. Taken as a whole — 
 
 A man that fortune's buffets and rewards 
 
 Has ta'en with equal thanks; 
 
 Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled 
 
 That they are not a pipe for fortune's fingers 
 
 To sound what stops she pleases. 
 
 To most men the reaching of what Webster calls " the upper 
 story" of the legal profession absorbs all their time and em- 
 ploys all their energies. Not so with Mr. Davis. He roamed 
 in many fields. He became a linguist, a Shakespearean scholar, 
 and tasted what was best of the literatures of many lands. At- 
 tracted years ago by the career of Bonaparte, he faithfully read 
 what the world had to say of this wonderful military hero. 
 Through this biography he familiarized himself with the Code 
 Napoleon, and, back of this, made a profound study of Roman 
 law; so when the coveted opportunity, somewhat delayed, at 
 last came and its door was flung wide open before him, he 
 passed through its threshold equipped. But one day, a few 
 
Address of Mr. Fletcher, of Minnesota. 91 
 
 weeks ago, death found him in the field at work, with shining 
 sickle, gathering the harvest which his labor had forecast, and 
 before high noon his life sped away. Thousands will grieve- 
 over his taking off. The North Star State lost in him its fore- 
 most citizen, and the nation a stalwart defender and vigilant 
 friend. 
 
 But I will detain the House no longer. My simple tribute, 
 inadequate though it be, I offer to the memory of my friend, 
 with a full heart and in all sincerity of purpose and thought. 
 What Mr. Davis said of another, with little paraphrase, may 
 be spoken of him: In far-off time to come, when the hoary sanc- 
 tity of age shall have made our institutions venerable, their 
 annalist will gather into the golden urn of History the achieve- 
 ments of Cushjian Kellogg Davis. 
 
92 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 Address of Mr. Jenkins, of Wisconsin. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: Under all circumstances I feel it to be a duty 
 to say at least a few words upon this solemn occasion, as a par- 
 tial tribute by the people of the State of Wisconsin, whom I 
 have the honor, in part, to represent, to the memory of a man 
 who in life was highly respected by the people of the State of 
 Wisconsin, and whose untimely death was universally deplored 
 by the American people. 
 
 The late Senator Cushman K. Davis was a respected and 
 honored citizen of the State of Wisconsin before going to the 
 State of Minnesota to reside, and he kept up his acquaintance 
 with the people of the State of Wisconsin by his prominence in 
 the public affairs of the State of Minnesota. The people of 
 the State of Minnesota, appreciating his manly qualities, legal 
 ability, and fitness for public life, called him to the highest 
 positions within their gift, and in so doing made no mistake, 
 for he creditably filled every position he occupied to the entire 
 satisfaction of the people of his State, and when called by the 
 legislature of the State of Minnesota to represent that State in 
 the .Senate of the United States, he took a leading position in 
 that body and soon forged his way to the front — an honor 
 to his State and country. 
 
 For a long time the State of Minnesota had stood high 
 throughout the country on account of the great ability of her 
 public servants, both' local and national, but it was reserved to 
 the late Senator Davis to add still further to the high standing 
 of that progressive State. 
 
 His illness was painful news to the people of the United 
 States, and his untimely death was mourned by all. Great as 
 is this nation, his death was a loss and siucerelv felt. He was 
 
Address of Mr. Jenkins, of Wisconsin. 93 
 
 a typical American, and his footsteps should be followed by 
 those desirous of being successful public men. His life shows 
 what study, application, and earnest work will accomplish. 
 Starting on a common level with humanity at large, at his 
 death he had reached the topmost round of the ladder of public 
 tame. He was called to his home beyond the grave at a time 
 when his services were of special value to the nation. ' 
 
 Well equipped for the duties of his position, he was a leader 
 among great men. Age and experience not only fitted him for 
 public life, but made him conservative and a molder of public 
 opinion, assisting him to a commanding position among his 
 political associates, the statesmen of the nation. 
 
 Realizing that he is no more, that his position must be filled 
 by another, his services lost to the nation, the representatives 
 of the people, called here together in the National Legislature 
 to honor his memory, can truthfully say of him: A soldier who 
 pledged his life to the perpetuity of the Union, brave and noble 
 on all occasions; a brilliant and able lawyer; a devoted friend; 
 a safe counselor; a close and untiring student, possessed of a 
 broad and logical mind; keen and interesting in debate, an 
 orator of ability ; a statesman wdiose record is a part of the his- 
 torv of this great nation, whose public life as soldier and states- 
 man was honorable and beneficial to the country and creditable 
 to himself. We can well afford to pause in our legislative work 
 to pay a tribute of respect to such departed worth. 
 
 The history of this nation has grown important and rapidly 
 during the past fifty years, and the late Senator Davis con- 
 tributed his share, both as soldier and statesman, to its 
 development, maintenance, and prosperity. 
 
 The name of Cushman K. Davis will be dear to the 
 hearts of the people for a long time, and it will remain 
 forever preserved as a part of the history of this nation 
 
94 Life and Character of Cttshman K . Davis. 
 
 through his efforts as a faithful, able public servant. His 
 death was sincerely mourned by the people of the State of 
 Minnesota, with whom he had lived so long and whom he had 
 loved so well and had so honorably and ably represented in 
 public life. Knowing his worth, they full} - realized the diffi- 
 culty of selecting his successor, and they chose wisely and well. 
 
 Regarding his death as a great loss to their State, in 
 common with the people of the State of Minnesota, the 
 people of Wisconsin mourn his departure and honor his 
 memory, as they honored, loved, and respected him in life. 
 
 In common with the people of my State, I had known 
 of the late Senator Davis, of Minnesota, for a number of 
 years, but was never closely or intimately acquainted witli 
 him. At the opening of the Fifty-fourth Congress we were 
 brought together by official duties and became reasonably 
 well acquainted, and soon I began to have a high regard 
 for his ability and his devotion to public duties. 
 
 A close reasoner, he never yielded to sentiment, and while 
 maintaining due regard for the rights of all, the growth and 
 advancement of the United States was paramount at all times, 
 and with him to be convinced of the justice of a national meas- 
 ure was to be invincible. He was extremely valuable as a legis- 
 lator, and it caused him no effort to execute his high obligations 
 with vigilance and according to the highest standard of truth. 
 Never once did he stop to inquire how his course in public life 
 was going to affect his political standing, and he never pros- 
 tituted the public good for party advantage or personal gain. 
 
 No words can be wasted in speaking well of the departed 
 Senator, aud I will cheerfully yield the balance of my time to 
 tin ise who can speak more in detail of the distinguished dead 
 than myself, who were closer to him in life than I was, but who 
 have no greater regard for his life and memory than myself. 
 
Address of Mr. Tawney, of Minnesota. 95 
 
 Address of Mr. Tawney, of Minnesota. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: Centuries ago the immortal singer of Israel, 
 in a passion of amazement and grief, exclaimed, "How are 
 the mighty fallen! The glory of Israel is slain upon thy 
 high places." And well he might weep, for the dead he 
 mourned were "swifter than eagles; they were stronger than 
 lions." Many generations have since then "joined that 
 innumerable caravan that moves to the silent halls of death," 
 but to-day a nation, numbering some ten thousand for ever} 1 
 one of that ancient race, finds solace in its inimitable and 
 inconsolable grief. 
 
 "How, indeed, are the mighty fallen!" A great crisis in 
 the affairs of a splendid nation had been reached; new prob- 
 lems had been presented to her chief counselors for solution; 
 she had but just launched out upon new and untried seas. 
 No one feared; everyone looked onward into the future with 
 rejoicing, for there, in the guiding position among those to 
 whom the management of our foreign policies and to whom 
 the formulation of our new domestic policies was committed, 
 sit one profoundly learned in the histories and relations of the 
 nations; one profoundly conscious of the spirit and of the 
 powers of the American people. 
 
 He, together with his associates, would wisely and fearlessly 
 face every difficulty and bravely meet and overcome every 
 obstacle. He would suffer no disastrous measures nor unwise 
 policies to be inaugurated or enforced by the land of his fathers 
 and his pride. But, behold! while the nation unconsciously 
 relied largely upon his knowledge, foresight, and wisdom, the 
 mighty one has fallen. Strange it is that at the moment 
 
96 Life and Character of Cushman A". Davis. 
 
 when he was most needed, in the hour when he had risen 
 to the sphere of his most brilliant usefulness, he should be 
 removed, suddenly and almost without warning, from the 
 scenes of his great power and lofty service, removed forever 
 from the walks and haunts of men. He has joined the silent 
 senate of the dead, and those who would still be guided by 
 his wisdom must seek it in the dying echoes of his sympa- 
 thetic voice. 
 
 Those accustomed to search among the affairs of nations 
 for signs of an overruling Providence will strive in vain to 
 reconcile such dispensations as this with the goodness and 
 wisdom of God. The death of Senator Davis at this par- 
 ticular juncture in the important events which have recently 
 transpired in our national history is, and must remain, a part 
 of that inscrutable mystery of evil which has appalled and 
 fascinated and illuded men from the first until now. Here, 
 as always, 
 
 We can but trust that good will fall, 
 
 At least, far off, at last to all, 
 
 And every winter change to spring. 
 
 This, in some ways, peerless hero of the hour; this foremost 
 of all the sons of Minnesota; this friend, in soul larger than 
 his kind, was first and chiefly a great intellect. He resem- 
 bled every man far more than he differed from any, but such 
 difference as there was between him and others can best be 
 understood as a difference of thought, power, and knowledge. 
 He was a mine in the service of his nation. He had no love 
 for abstractions nor for the useless subtleties of speculative 
 thought, but he loved the knowdedge that comes from obser- 
 vation and study, the knowledge of fact which is the only 
 proper ground of theory. In constitutional and international 
 law, in national histories and diplomacy, he possessed a store 
 
Address of Mr. Tawney \ of Minnesota. 97 
 
 of sheer learning so vast that his colleagues and his country- 
 men had come to look upon him as an invaluable counselor. 
 
 In the power of grasping and analyzing complex interna- 
 tional situations and in the rapidity and farsightedness of his 
 diplomacy he had few equals and perhaps no superior. As 
 one of the American representatives upon the Peace Commis- 
 sion at Paris, the brilliancy of his diplomatic tactics made him 
 the center of interest both in Europe and in America. His 
 work as a member of this body and its beneficent consequences 
 to the millions inhabiting our newly acquired possessions will 
 stand forever as one of the greatest achievements of any Amer- 
 ican statesman of his day and generation. In all the compli- 
 cations which have arisen by reason of our new acquisitions of 
 territory, in all the discussions upon the question of whether 
 or not the treaty by which this territory became the absolute 
 property of the Union should be ratified, his knowledge and 
 wisdom was relied upon by many of his colleagues in the 
 Senate, as well as by a very large part of his countrymen. 
 
 So thorough was his habit of preparation, so complete and 
 exhaustive all his powers of grasping details and weighing 
 evidence, that many had come to accept his conclusions with- 
 out investigation as being beyond dispute. And yet perhaps 
 no American statesman of his clay influenced and fascinated 
 his countrymen so entirely by his intellect as did Senator 
 DAVIS. He rarely ever appealed to sentiment, although he 
 was not deficient in either pathos or humor, the twin children 
 of sentiment. It was the subtlety and cogency of irresistible 
 logic, the overwhelming comprehensiveness of his grasp of 
 .facts, on which he relied mainly in his efforts to influence the 
 judgment of his colleagues and of his countrymen. It was 
 these qualities that caught the attention and moved the judg- 
 ment of others. It is perhaps not too much to say that he 
 S. Doc. 230 7 
 
98 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 possessed a genius for understanding legal principles aud ap- 
 plying them to complex aud difficult situations. 
 
 Owing to this predominant intellectuality, Senator Davis was 
 not a man of petty pride nor ambition. He never labored for 
 effect alone. There was a simplicity and directness about him 
 which commended itself to everyone who knew him. He was 
 retiring and studious, not forward nor vociferous, and as a 
 consequence, while universally admired aud trusted, he never 
 sought to become a popular leader. Except to intimate and 
 personal friends, he did not display the warmth of personal 
 feeling and generous sentiment which appeals so strongly to 
 the public heart and usually solicits a ready response. 
 
 This great man seems to have died without realizing the lofti- 
 ness of that esteem in which he was held by the American 
 people. The surprise and pleasure with which he received the 
 innumerable expressions of interest in his welfare during the 
 first stages of his last illness were at once beautiful and pathetic. 
 At no time in his life was it possible for him to study his own 
 powers, to rejoice in the brilliancy of his own achievements, or 
 to gloat over the richness of his own knowledge like a miser 
 over his gold. His chief interest and delight was always his 
 fellow-men. From them he drew the riches of his wisdom; to 
 them he devoted his services. A man's best wisdom always 
 comes from his intercourse with his fellow-men, and no man 
 realized this more clearly or felt it more keenlj- than did Sena- 
 tor Davis. "I believe a man's power," he once said, "is in 
 direct ratio to his sympathetic understanding of the wants of 
 the common people." 
 
 In his long and eventful political career this great man. 
 never once resorted to the arts of the demagogue; on the 
 contrary, he more than ouce proved by word and act that his 
 greatest interest was in the country as a whole. At the time 
 
Address of Mr. Tawney, of Minnesota, 99 
 
 of the Chicago riots, when asked to support a curtain resolu 
 tion declaring that the detachment of Pullman palace or sleep- 
 ing cars from mail trains should not constitute an offense 
 against the United States, he said, among other things, in that 
 memorable telegram : 
 
 I will not support the resolution; you might as well ask me 
 
 tn dissolve this Government. 
 
 The American people will not soon forget how this message 
 brought them to a realizing sense of threatened danger thereto- 
 fore unobserved. 
 
 He was a statesman who knew the principles of government 
 upon .which our nation's greatness rests. He was a director 
 and counselor of leaders rather than a popular leader himself. 
 Senator Davis was not, however, the man of narrow interests 
 my words may seem to describe. He studied more subjects 
 than the affairs of nations and the principles of law. He 
 himself once said: 
 
 The men who have achieved success are the men who have worked, 
 read, thought, more than was absolutely necessary. It is the 
 
 superfluous knowledge that equips a man for everything that counts most 
 in life. There would be fewer wasted opportunities if there was more real 
 ability to grasp them when they present themselves. We can not have 
 too much knowledge. I believe in superfluous knowledge. It is super- 
 fluous knowdedge that differentiates us. 
 
 Senator Davis lectured on Hamlet and Madame Roland. 
 He wrote a book on the law of Shakespeare — a book which is 
 regarded as a great contribution to Shakespearean literature. 
 Nor was he simply a reader of fine literature; he was also the 
 master of a fine literary style. Wherever time and the occa- 
 sion permitted he could summon to our delight the most beauti- 
 ful English. One of my colleagues has said: " I think I never 
 heard a speaker to whom it gave me more pleasure to listen." 
 He rarely delivered an address which was not ennobled by his 
 
ioo Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 imagination and sweetened by poetic fancy. He adorned every 
 subject he touched in the treatment of which adornment was 
 appropriate. As a public orator he was serious, earnest, and 
 fair-minded. His wonderful lucidity and logical power were 
 always persuasive, often irresistible. He was candid and earn- 
 est and displayed such an appearance of reserve power in his 
 manner and style of address that all listened eagerly and acted 
 promptly to his suggestions. 
 
 As a parliamentary orator he must be assigned a very high 
 rank. He gave, perhaps, a more careful and systematic study 
 to public questions, especially those involving our relations to 
 foreign nations, than any of his associates, and came to every 
 discussion in which he took part with elaborate and complete 
 preparation. He could toil desperatel}-. ' ' I have slight faith, ' ' 
 he once said, "in what they call genius." In such work Davis 
 was apt, rapid, and skillful, possessing a rare power to readily 
 absorb ideas and facts. In debate he was preeminently fair and 
 candid, stooping to no unworthy advantage, making no per- 
 sonal allusions, appealing to no prejudices or passions. He was 
 quicker to see the strong points of his adversary than to see the 
 weak ones, and this gave to his arrangement of facts and argu- 
 ments on his own side that weighty marshaling that made his 
 hearers forget any lack of complete strength in his own position. 
 
 Senator Davis was not, however, a parliamentary leader. 
 The qualities of candor, fairness, and sincerity, which made him 
 so great, so convincing, and so admirable as an orator, did not 
 tend to make him great as a parliamentarian. He was not one 
 of those who stand and struggle for party whether right or 
 wrong. He believed his party always right, but his soul's alle- 
 giance was to truth rather than to party. In the quality of his 
 mind, in temperament, and in the form of his ambition, Davis 
 was rather a statesman than a parliamentarian. 
 
Address of Mr. Tawney, of Minnesota. 101 
 
 In the range of his life Davis was unusual. Born at Hen 
 derson, X. Y.; a university graduate at 19; a lawyer, in Wauke- 
 sha. Wis., at 22: a first lieutenant of Wisconsin volunteers 
 during the war; a lawyer in St. Paul; a member of the Miune- 
 sota legislature; United States district attorney; governor of 
 Minnesota; delegate to the Republican national convention, 
 1SS4; United States Senator, 1SS7; chairman of the Senate 
 Committee on Foreign Relations; American peace commissioner 
 at Paris, 1898; delegate to the Republican national convention. 
 June, 1900, and on November 28, 1900, gone to " the undiscov- 
 ered country from whose bourn no traveler returns." 
 
 At his death he seemed to be entering for the first time on 
 that great field of action for which all his life was a splendid 
 preparation. Undoubtedly, had he lived but a few months 
 longer, he would have signalized his name as never before in the 
 service of his country, and brought newer and greater honors to 
 himself, his State, and the world. 
 
 I always admired the great statesman for all the traits to 
 which reference has been made; for all that will make his name 
 immortal to his countrymen and to the world; and. possibly 
 more than all, I admired him for his quiet manner, for his sim- 
 ple manliness, and for the kindly interest which he always mani- 
 fested toward others, and especially toward the young men of 
 the legal profession. 
 
 He thought purely, spoke kindly, acted generously; and were 
 everv one for whom he did some loving service to speak the 
 word of love he feels, the earth could not contain the chorus 
 and heaven would be filled with song. 
 
 Charity and toleration characterized his attitude tow T ard all 
 creeds and believers. Here was one who, through all the sun- 
 light and shadow of life, loved iustice, acted mercifully, and 
 walked liumblv with his God. 
 
Life and Character of Cushman A". Davis. 
 
 Address of Mr. Underwood, of Alabama. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: When we meet to mourn the loss of those 
 with whom we have been associated in public or private life, it 
 is but natural that we should forget the differences that at 
 times, perchance, separated us, and remember those qualities of 
 mind and soul that united us in our mutual endeavors, strug- 
 gles, and undertakings; but in passing down the highway of 
 life it is our rare good fortune at times to meet a fellow-traveler 
 whose greatness of character and nobility of soul raises him 
 above the ordinary contentions and jealousies of those about 
 him, and whose purity of life and earnestness of purpose draws 
 us close to him in the bonds of personal friendship, even while 
 we are contending most earnestly for the accomplishment of 
 different undertakings or the success of conflicting ambitions. 
 Such a man was Cushman K. Davis, the late Senator from the 
 State of Minnesota. 
 
 I can not say that it was my good fortune to know him inti- 
 mately, and yet he was a friend of my father's, and I have 
 known him from my childhood. My early recollections of him 
 are vague and indefinite, but I shall ever remember the kind- 
 ness and consideration with which he greeted me when I 
 recalled my identity to him some years ago when I first came 
 
 to Washington as a member of this House. 
 i 
 He was always kind and gentle to those with whom he was 
 
 associated, evidently preferring, unless a sense of duty com- 
 pelled him to act otherwise, to do injury to himself rather than 
 hurt the sensibilities or put a stumbling-block in the way of 
 those about him. This was one of the distinctions that singled 
 him out from other men, and I know of no characteristic in 
 
Address of Mr. Underwood, oj Alabama. 103 
 
 man that points more surely to the possession of nobilitj of 
 character and purity of purpose than that which impels him to 
 show consideration for others and leads him to acts of self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 And yet, with all his gentleness of character, no man ever 
 doubted his personal and moral courage. He was not hasty in 
 action, but when he once undertook the leadership of a cause 
 there was never any question of his turning backward, and his 
 associates knew that he would uphold and maintain the under- 
 taking he believed in and championed with the desperate deter- 
 mination of a man who does not know how to surrender. 
 
 Senator Davis was horn in New York .State on the 16th day 
 of June, 1838. A few months after his birth his father moved 
 to a farm near Waukesha, Wis., and it was here that he spent 
 the days of his childhood and early youth. At that time his 
 home was on the frontier, which gave him those surroundings 
 that have developed the qualities of earnestness of purpose and 
 determination of character in many of our greatest men. He 
 was educated at Carroll College and the Michigan University, 
 from which he graduated in 1857 with a scholastic training that 
 rendered him good service in the intellectual battles in which 
 he was destined to engage in the time to come. 
 
 He was admitted to the bar in the State of Wisconsin in 
 1859, and practiced his profession until the beginning of the 
 civil war. when he entered the Army as a first lieutenant in a 
 Wisconsin regiment and served with distinction. Soon after 
 the close of the civil war he moved to St. Paul., Minn., and 
 began the practice of the law. He soon acquired a large prac- 
 tice, and at the time of his election to the United States Senate 
 was regarded as the foremost lawyer in his adopted State. 
 
 He was a member of the legislature, United States district 
 attorney, and governor of the State of Minnesota before he was 
 
104 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 elected to the Senate in 1887, which position lie held continu- 
 ously from that time to the day of his death. 
 
 He served in every position to which he was called by his 
 people with distinguished ability and an unfaltering desire to 
 promote the welfare and happiness of those who had commis- 
 sioned him to represent them. 
 
 His most notable service to his country was rendered as 
 chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate at 
 the time of the declaration of war against Spain and as one of 
 the commissioners appointed by our Government to negotiate 
 the treaty of Paris at the close of hostilities in the late war. . 
 
 Nature endowed him with an intellect of the highest order; 
 industry gave him an education that far surpassed that of mi 1st 
 of his associates; his frontier training, his seryice in the Army, 
 and his experience as a successful lawyer and great adyocate 
 deyeloped, broadened, and fully equipped him for the great 
 tasks his country called on him to perform. 
 
 In the death of Cushman K. Davis, not only his State but 
 his country has suffered a severe loss. He was taken from us 
 in the hour of his foremost success and greatest usefulness. 
 Those who knew him will mourn the loss of a true friend ; his 
 countrymen will deplore the death of a learned and upright 
 statesman, and history will make a place for him for the great 
 achievements he accomplished. 
 
 Were a star quenched cm high, 
 
 For ages would its -light 
 Still travel downward from the sky — 
 
 Shine on our mortal sight. 
 So when a great man dies, 
 
 For years beyond our ken, 
 The light he leaves behind him lies 
 
 Upon the paths of men. 
 
Address of Mr. McCleary, of Minnesota. 105 
 
 ADDRESS OF MR. MCCLEARY, OF MINNESOTA. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: "Death is ever, in my opinion, bitter and 
 premature to those who are engaged in some immortal work. 
 Those who live from day to day immersed in pleasure finish 
 each day the whole purpose of their existence; while those 
 who look forward to posterity and endeavor by their exer- 
 tions to hand down their names to future generations, to such 
 death is always premature, as it carries them off from some 
 unfiushed design." 
 
 These words of Pliny the Younger seem peculiarly appropri- 
 ate as an expression of the feeling of the nation that death 
 came prematurely to Cushman Kkllogg Davis. Death 
 found him a member of the United States Senate, at the head 
 of its great Committee on Foreign Relations, at a critical 
 period of his country's history, in the midst of a work which 
 he by common consent was better fitted than anyone else to 
 continue and conclude in his country's interest. He was ap- 
 proaching, too, the harvest time of that generous fame toward 
 which he justly aspired and in preparation for which he so 
 long and honorably wrought. 
 
 He better and more clearly than almost anyone else under- 
 stood the nature and magnitude of the international questions 
 before the country, and it was not immodesty in him to recog- 
 nize his own superior fitness to lead in their solution. It was 
 in this spirit that in one of the last of his conscious moments 
 he uttered the pathetic wish, "Oh, that I might live five years 
 more for my country's sake." 
 
 In addressing the Roman populace on the occasion of Cae- 
 sar's funeral his friend Mark Antony said: "The evil that 
 
106 Life and Character of Cuskman K. Davis. 
 
 men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their 
 bones." And Griffith, in speaking to Queen Catharine rela- 
 tive to the death of Cardinal Wolsey, said: "Men's evil 
 manners live in brass, their virtues we write in water." But 
 it must be remembered, sir, that in each of these cases the 
 speaker was addressing an audience hostile to the person whose 
 praises he was about to speak. 
 
 The sentiment quoted constituted in each case an introduc- 
 tion calculated to disarm resentment toward the dead. It was 
 in no sense intended by the poet as the statement of a general 
 truth. He knew human nature too well and had too much 
 respect for it, with all its infirmities, to ascribe to it such un- 
 kindness. More consonant with both the justice and the gen- 
 erosity of human nature is the maxim of the old philosopher, 
 " De mortuis nil nisi bonmn." From the bosom of the grave 
 springs no feeling but " fond regret and tender recollection." 
 
 The principal events of Senator Davis's life have been so 
 admirably stated, in the exercises of the Senate some weeks ago 
 and here to-day, that I shall not repeat them. I propose to 
 speak of my departed friend as he impressed me and as I re- 
 member him. 
 
 I think of him most frequently as I so often found him — alone, 
 apparently musing, quietly puffing his cigar, solace of his many 
 hours. Often, finding him thus, in his committee room or else- 
 where, have I felt a delicacy about breaking in upon his 
 thoughts. But I can hear even now his cheery voice bidding 
 me welcome and inviting me to be seated. And he was so en- 
 tirely candid that I never doubted the sincerity of the welcome 
 thus given. 
 
 It need hardly be said in this presence that Senator Davis 
 was a man of scrupulous integrity. He trod no devious paths. 
 While never loquacious, he was always frank. He had high 
 
Address of Mr. McCleary, of Minnesota. 107 
 
 ideals of public duty. Elected to the legislature and to the 
 governorship of the State and three times to the United States 
 Senate, he never in any of those contests appealed to motives 
 other than the highest. 
 
 Senator Davis was an exceptionally methodical man. That 
 was one reason why he accomplished so much and with such 
 apparent ease. It was his practice, for example, to reach his 
 committee room in the Senate every morning promptly at 8.30. 
 There he would meet his stenographer, read his letters, and in- 
 dicate briefly the character of the answer to each. The answers 
 to these letters he read and signed each evening at the close of 
 the session of the Senate. He answered every letter that he 
 received, and complied with ever}' request, whether it came 
 from rich or poor, if it was reasonably possible. Amid all his 
 cares and weighty responsibilities, he was punctilious in the 
 discharge of even the smallest duties and courtesies. 
 
 To private citizens who desired to see him on business, his 
 injunction was, " Meet me in my committee room at 9 o'clock 
 in the morning." And he insisted upon promptness on the 
 part of those who wished thus to see him. This insistence 
 was not due to pride or to an imperious will, though he had a 
 proper and reasonable share of both. It was due to his recog- 
 nition of the necessity for his transacting business promptly 
 and systematically in order that all the numerous and impor- 
 tant duties resting upon him might be possible of performance. 
 
 After disposing of his correspondence and receiving those 
 who called upon him on official or other business, .Senator 
 Davis usually devoted the remainder of the forenoon to the 
 study of the legislative matters in which he was interested. 
 It thus became possible for him to spend in the Senate 
 Chamber itself most of the time of the daily session, extend- 
 ing from 12 to 5, well prepared to meet its exacting duties. 
 
io8 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 Except in very rare and important cases he would not 
 attend to business in the evening. His evenings were sacred 
 to his family, his friends, and his books. He had the very 
 sane notion that in most callings by proper management one 
 can and should earn his living in the daytime. Even in the 
 early days of his professional life, when he had the usual 
 struggle which a young man of limited financial resources lias 
 to expect, he never took his law books or his cases home with 
 him. Xo man cared less for the frivolities of society, but no 
 man liked better to spend an evening with friends. 
 
 He was a lover of books. With Milton, he recognized that 
 a good book is "the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, 
 embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." 
 
 He was so fond of books that he did not like to borrow 
 them. He wanted to own them. From time to time as 
 means permitted he bought the books he liked. In his home 
 in St. Paul and in his other home in Washington the walls 
 of several rooms became lined with his precious tomes, many 
 of them in elegant bindings. 
 
 In his library he spent, perhaps, his happiest hours. He 
 could truthfully say: 
 
 That place that doth contain 
 My hooks, the best companions, is to me 
 A glorious court, where hourly I converse 
 With the old sages and philosphers. 
 
 And in this eternal court, "wide as the world and multitudi- 
 nous as its days," what exalted companionship he chose and 
 kept — in art, Shakespeare: in action, Napoleon! Making such 
 choice where choice was free, he revealed his own inherent 
 nobility. 
 
 Senator Davis was preeminently a student. It was entirely 
 in keeping with his character and habits that each of his four 
 
Address of Mr. McCleary, of Minnesota. 109 
 
 famous lectures on international law, delivered in October, 
 [897, to the faculty and students of the Universit) of Minne- 
 sota, began with the words, "Mr. Dean and _/f//0H/-students. " 
 There was nothing of pretense or condescension in these words. 
 They stand for two facts — his never-failing; interest in young 
 people and his never-ending studentship. 
 
 While he did not underestimate the importance of the achieve- 
 ments of science or fail to appreciate ami enjoy many of the 
 beauties of nature, he was not especially interested in natural 
 science. For him it was indeed true that the greatest study 
 for mankind is man. He took special delight, therefore, in 
 history and literature. 
 
 In college he took the regular classical course, and never 
 lost his faith in it as the best of all college courses for mental 
 development. .Speaking once to a bright young man, he said: 
 
 Go and take a thorough classical course in college. Then come to me, 
 and I'll make a lawyer of you. 
 
 In commenting recently on his life and work, the Philadel- 
 phia Public Ledger well said: 
 
 He was a splendid example of the worth of the scholar in American 
 political and legislative life. 
 
 He loved "the wisdom of the old days." He believed in 
 what he himself so happily denominated "superfluous knowl- 
 edge." His career demonstrated anew that knowledge is in- 
 deed power. His favorite evening recreation was reading. As 
 the fabled Antaeus, when thrown to the ground by Hercules, 
 renewed his strength by contact with his mother, Earth, and 
 rose up stronger for each new encounter, so our friend was 
 wont, after each day's toil, to renew his strength and rekindle 
 his inspiration by traveling "the green shades of Academus" 
 and holding "high converse with the mighty dead." 
 
1 10 Life and Character of Cushtnan K. Davis. 
 
 He had a marvelous memory. But his ability to retain im- 
 portant facts and phrases was not simply a feat of memory; it 
 was the faculty of a trained mind in properly disposing of his 
 mental acquirements so that they might be available when 
 needed. In this connection the words of his talented friend, 
 Rev. Samuel G. Smith, of St. Paul, are suggestive and signifi- 
 cant : 
 
 [n summing him up account must be taken of a power he had, in com- 
 mon with the greatest minds, of applying certain general conceptions to 
 various fields of thought and life. His guesses were of more value than 
 the painful researches of most men. 
 
 Senator Davis's oratory was of the classic type, both in mat- 
 ter and in method. His speeches exhibit great breadth of com- 
 prehension and exquisite beauty of expression. They are 
 marked by richness of imagery, copiousness of vocabulary, 
 felicity of language, and grace of diction. 
 
 The exordium of an address delivered on the battlefield of 
 Gettvsburg on July 2, 1897, on the occasion of the unveiling of 
 the statue erected by the State of Minnesota to commemorate 
 the never-to-be-forgotten charge made there by the First Regi- 
 ment Minnesota Infantry Volunteers on the 2d day of July, 
 [863, will serve as an illustration of his style: 
 
 How lovingly Peace, enrobed in her imperial mantle of golden harvests, 
 reigns over this delicious landscape! The refulgent armor of war now 
 rusts beneath our feet. The cannon that we see here in position among 
 the ranks which sleep in the invincible array of death are silent forever. 
 Peace now holds an unbroken sway over our dear land. And yet thirty- 
 four years ago to-day she fled affrighted from this scene. The fiery char- 
 iots of War were reaping here her fields and were gathering a harvest of 
 men into that tabernacle of never-ending rest, wherein all grains and 
 fruits and flowers and men and all living things must be garnered at last. 
 
 Senator Davis was a man of courage and resolution. A 
 marked illustration of this was given in his famous telegram of 
 about July 1, 1894. The country was in the midst of deep 
 
Address of Mr. McCleary, of Minnesota. in 
 
 business depression. Untold thousands of men were out of 
 
 employment. A labor conflict of giant proportions was in 
 
 progress. The strength of our institutions was being t 
 
 and anxiety was in the hearts of all men who loved their coun 
 
 try. A resolution was introduced in the United States Senate 
 
 the object of which was to allow strikers to stop all railway 
 
 traffic, providing they did not interfere with the carriage of the 
 
 United States mails. A committee, assuming to speak in the 
 
 name of the workingmen of Duluth, wired Senator Davis 
 
 requesting him t<> support the resolution. The message 
 
 arrived after he had gone to bed. Without waiting to dress. 
 
 and without seeming to have any anxiety but to do his duty, 
 
 he wrote in pencil and sent back by the messenger an answer 
 
 in which he unequivocally refused to support the resolution, 
 
 saying: 
 
 I have received your telegram. I will not support the resolution. It is 
 against vour own real welfare. It is also a blow at the security, peace, 
 and rights of millions of people who never harmed you or your associates. 
 My duty to the Constitution and the laws f. >rbids me to sustain a resolu- 
 tion to legalize lawlessness. The same duty rests upon you and vour 
 associates. The power to regulate commerce among the several States is 
 vested by the Constitution in Congress. Your associates have usurped 
 that power at Hammond and other places, and have destroyed commerce 
 between the States in these particular instances. You are rapidly ap- 
 proaching the overt act of levying war against the United States, and you 
 will find the definition of that in the Constitution. I trust that wiser 
 thoughts will again control. You might as well ask me to vote to dis- 
 solve the Government. 
 
 This message, instinct with the courage of a patriot and the 
 kindness of a father, was published at once in all the news- 
 papers of the country, and was everywhere regarded as "the 
 word fitly spoken." Dread vanished. All felt safe on learn- 
 ing that so strong, so just, so gentle a soul was in the halls 
 of power. 
 
 While his charity and loving-kindness were world-wide in 
 
1 12 Life and Character of Cushman A'. Dan's. 
 
 their embrace, Senator Davis was intensely American in his 
 faith and affections. In the language of the New York Sun: 
 
 The key to Senator Davis's attitude on all important questions of 
 domestic or foreign policy was his sincere and invincible belief that this 
 Republic had always been adequate, and always will be adequate, to every 
 emergency at home and abroad. 
 
 In the same tenor spoke the Chicago Times-Herald: 
 
 No public man of the day looked to the future with greater confidence 
 or bad greater contempt for the bogy of imperialism than Senator Davis. 
 
 He knew that it is true of nations as of men that ' ' to whom- 
 soever much is given, of him shall much be required." He did 
 not believe that, in the purposes of Him who holds the fate of 
 nations in the hollow of His hand, this nation, "the heir of all 
 the ages," was designed to live unto itself alone. The seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries he saw as the period of its 
 gestation and birth, and the nineteenth century as the period 
 of its growth and development: and with prophetic vision he 
 saw that in the twentieth century his country was to take up its 
 burden of world-work. 
 
 Sweeping the ages with far-seeing eye, he witnessed the birth 
 of man in distant Asia. He followed human migration west- 
 ward into Europe, across Europe to the shores of the Atlantic, 
 across that ocean to the eastern coast of America, thence across 
 the continent to the Pacific, and now recently he beheld this 
 country reach across the peaceful ocean and touch hands with 
 Asia again. He knew the story of this world-encircling move- 
 ment, the history of which is the history of the onward and 
 upward march of civilization. And he felt that it was well for 
 this, the youngest and strongest of the great nations, to return 
 to the ancient home, like a young and prosperous man to the 
 home of his mother, to share with her the fruitage of his labors 
 and to give her of his strength. 
 
Address of Mr. McCleary, of Minnesota. 113 
 
 Mr. Speaker, we knew him, we loved him, we have lost him. 
 
 We miss him and we mourn him; but we mourn not as they 
 
 who are without hope. We believe that — 
 
 Since He who knows our frame is just. 
 Somewhere, somehow, meet we must. 
 
 "At what employment would you have death find you? For 
 my part I would have it in some humane, beneficent, public- 
 spirited, noble action." Thus asked and answered Epictetus 
 the Stoic. Had the question been put to him whose life 
 and death we commemorate to-day, our departed friend would 
 undoubtedly have answered in the spirit of the old Roman 
 philosopher. And, sir, such was indeed the event. He was at 
 his post of duty, serving his country and his kind, when " God's 
 finger touched him and he slept." 
 S. Doc. 230 8 
 
ii4 Life and Character of Cuskman K. Davis. 
 
 Address of Mr. Clark of Missouri. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : It is in harmony with the eternal fitness of 
 things that Missouri's voice should mingle with that of Min- 
 nesota in paying tribute to Cushman Kellogg Davis, because 
 these two magnificent Commonwealths are bound together by a 
 strong tie by reason of having been represented at the other 
 end of the Capitol by the same man, that illustrious statesman 
 and heroic soldier, James Shields, who was a major-general in 
 two wars and the only man living or dead who was ever sent 
 to the Senate of the United States by three different States. 
 
 That such a career as that of Senator Davis is possible iu 
 this country is one of the crowning glories of our free institu- 
 tions. A farmer's son on the frontier, working with his own 
 hands and proud of the fact ; a graduate of a great university 
 and an honor to it by reason of his erudition ; a gallant soldier 
 while still a youth ; a leader at the bar of the Northwest, 
 where competition is intense and merciless, first as a country 
 lawyer, then as a practitioner iu a great city ; member of the 
 legislature, United States district attorney, governor of his 
 State at 36, an age at which most men are still struggling for a 
 solid footing ; thrice elected to the Senate of the United States, 
 each time for a full term ; chairman of the Committee on 
 Foreign Relations, and one of the commissioners who negotiated 
 the treaty of Paris, he died at 63, a time of life at which 
 European statesmen are considered young. There is only one 
 position in our system of government higher than that which 
 he held, and many deemed the highest not beyond his reach. 
 
 From the bare list of his employments it would seem that he 
 had no time for anything else ; yet he managed somehow to 
 reserve from his pursuits as a man of affairs leisure to keep up 
 
Address of Mr. Clark, of Missouri. 115 
 
 his literary studies to such an extent that he became an 
 accepted authority, and was universally recognized as lending 
 a new glory to the character of "the scholar in politics." 
 
 His golden opportunity came to him within the last three 
 years as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and 
 he seized it with resolute hand and brave, unfaltering heart, 
 thereby vastly increasing his fame. 
 
 In the years to come he will be remembered as a lawyer, 
 soldier, scholar, statesman, diplomat, bibliophile; but his 
 intense Americanism will form his clearest title to lasting 
 renown and to the gratitude of his countrymen. 
 
 Shakespeare's dictum — 
 
 The evil that men do lives after them ; 
 The good is oft interred with their bones, 
 
 is reversed in the case of Senator Davis. The good which he 
 wrought in the closing months of his life — and it was a great 
 good — will be referred to as a guide and inspiration by states- 
 men yet unborn in troublous crises involving the honor, the 
 dignity, and the safety of our puissant and beloved country. 
 The ' ' Davis amendment ' ' will constitute a landmark in our 
 history as imperishable as the "Wilmot proviso." Verily, his 
 works do follow him. 
 
 At the close of the long session of this Congress no member 
 of either House seemed fuller of lusty life, of high resolve, of 
 ennobling patriotism, than Cushman K. Davis. Before the 
 present session began his splendid career was closed. 
 
 Death takes us by surprise 
 
 And stays our hurrying feet ; 
 The great design unfinished lies, 
 
 Our lives are incomplete. 
 
 But in the dark unknown 
 
 Perfect their circles seem, 
 Even as a bridge's arch of stone 
 
 Is rounded in the stream. 
 
1 1 6 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 Address of Mr. Parker, of New Jersey. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: The loss of Cushman K. Davis is felt by the 
 whole country, to which he belonged. He was in life and 
 character the statesman. As a soldier, at the bar, as governor, 
 as Senator, and in high diplomatic functions that life was 
 devoted to his country's service, for which he was fullv fitted, 
 not only by his experience and training, but by his learning, 
 judgment, activity, will power, and that love of country that 
 must be at the root of all. 
 
 Among his great contemporaries it is not too much to say 
 that he was distinguished for the breadth and accuracy of his 
 learning, his knowledge of law, of men, and of the affairs of 
 state, his clearness of thought and expression, his force of 
 character, and his always dominating patriotism. He had been 
 a soldier; and war in all ages has done more than all the 
 schools to make statesmen, because it teaches promptness, self- 
 reliance, the need of looking ahead and of providing for emer- 
 gency, and the knowledge of mankind. He was a thorough 
 lawyer. As such soldier and lawyer and in his mastery of the 
 art of direct and clear statement he reminds us strongly of the 
 great judge whose memory we shall honor on John Marshall 
 day. 
 
 He went right to the heart of every subject. His learning 
 was for use, and never for ornament. While his studies were 
 in the whole domain of the knowable, his recreation, we are 
 told, was found in the works of Shakespeare and in the life of 
 Napoleon. From Shakespeare he had learned the use of words, 
 the unerring selection and employment of those edge tools of 
 speech with which he was wont to dissect a subject in a 
 
Address of Mr, Parker, of New Jersey. 117 
 
 sentence. In the history of Napoleon he came face to face 
 with the problems of modern civilization, amid the first rush of 
 the new social forces, the sudden conflict between kings and 
 people, tyranny and freedom, institutions and revolutions, and 
 he found his pleasure in following the workings of that master 
 mind, which, with all its shortcomings, resettled the laws and 
 government, as well as the map, of Europe. 
 
 He was brave. He never served the time. He dared to 
 speak his mind as he himself thought to be right. His words 
 rang through the country when he warned citizens of his native 
 State: 
 
 You are rapidly approaching the overt act of levying war on the United 
 States, and you will find the definition of that act in the Constitution. 
 
 In great matters of state he was trusted to lead. He drew 
 the declaration of war with Spain, and he was the first named 
 of the Senators on the commission that settled the treaty of 
 peace. 
 
 He died in harness, when we hoped for him long years of 
 usefulness and honor. He deserved well of the Commonwealth. 
 Through life his motto seemed to be: 
 
 Be just, and fear not: 
 Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, 
 Thy God's, and truth's. 
 
n8 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davi 
 
 ADDRESS OF MR. HEATWOLE, OF MINNESOTA. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: Nations, like individuals, are sometimes called 
 upon to pause at the threshold of the unknown and contemplate 
 the lives and characters of their great men, who, by the force 
 of their intellect and their indomitable will power, have achieved 
 good fortune for themselves and inscribed their names in the 
 temple of fame, who have led in the great battles of human 
 progress, and by their broad comprehension have planned and 
 accomplished a fuller and higher happiness for the people and 
 a brighter glory for their country. 
 
 We pause to-day to pay honor to the memory of Cushman 
 Kellogg Davis, late a Senator from the State of Minnesota, 
 and to offer tribute to the life and character of a great man. 
 It is with mingled feelings of sorrow and pleasure that I bring 
 a heart's sincere homage and lay it on the altar of friendship 
 in memory of a devoted friend, and say these words of one who 
 has done so much for his country. After the splendid eulogies 
 offered by his colleagues in the Senate Chamber little remains 
 but to repeat their rehearsal of his many attainments. 
 
 During the years I knew Senator Davis I learned to love 
 and respect him. I had opportunity to study his life and can 
 testify to the grandeur of his noble character. Senator Davis 
 went to the Northwest in early childhood with his parents, 
 who were pioneers in the settlement of that great section, and 
 who were among those who laid broad and deep the founda- 
 tions of the mighty States of a then new country. Possessing 
 rare gifts of intellect, young Davis made the most of his oppor- 
 tunities and acquired a broad and liberal education. 
 
 Early in his life came the great civil struggle. Mr. Davis, 
 responding to the country's call, was among those who marched 
 
Address of Mr. Heatwole, of Minnesota. ii>; 
 
 to battle under the Union flag. For nearly three years, on 
 many hard-fought fields, he attested his loyal devotion to his 
 lofty conception of patriotism and love of home and native 
 land. His life was simple and his manner gentle, but there 
 was that heroic stuff in his make-up which led him to brave 
 any danger and endure any hardship of camp or field when 
 duty demanded. While he was one of the bravest and truest 
 of those who fought for the Union cause, he harbored no bitter 
 resentment against those who were in arms on the other side 
 of that great struggle. His words have done much to cement 
 that new Union which had its resurrection from the graves of 
 fallen heroes. 
 
 Senator Davis was a thinker of the highest order, a great stu- 
 dent — exceptionally fond of books; a man of lofty intellect, and 
 cared more for learning than for display. He was thoroughly 
 trained in the law, a deep and earnest student of history, and 
 his mind was a complete storehouse of useful facts from which 
 he could readily draw in any emergency. He was thoroughly 
 versed in all questions of political economy and a perfect master 
 in the intricate questions involved in international relations. 
 Our country has produced few international lawyers of broader 
 scope of intellect than that possessed by Senator Davis. He 
 was broad enough to accord to other nations all the rights which 
 they could justly claim, while guarding with an ever-jealous care 
 the interest and honor of his own country. 
 
 1 luring his service in the Senate many grave questions have 
 arisen; many mighty problems have presented themselves, and 
 many new duties and new responsibilities have come to the 
 American people. Amid all the storms and passions of political 
 discussions his mind was calm and his words were those of sober- 
 ness and wisdom. When the clouds have been the darkest and 
 hung lowest over the horizon of American enterprise, his mind 
 
120 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 was bright and laden with a hope that looked above them and 
 saw the calm, clear sky of prosperity. 
 
 Amid all disturbance, whether in the islands of the sea, in 
 the war with Spain, or in the sad, dark hours of waiting and 
 disaster in China, Senator Davis, as chairman of the Senate 
 Committee on Foreign Relations and as a member of the Paris 
 Peace Commission, exercised a wisdom and prudence that 
 brought new glory to the American name and added new luster 
 to the history and achievements of the Republic. As citizens 
 of this great country we feel justly proud of the attainments of 
 our people and of the place which the United States of America 
 occupies among the nations of the earth. We are a glorious 
 nation, and he whose memory we honor to-day was in the front 
 rank of those who have done most to make it so and to point 
 out to us the grand possibilities of the future. 
 
 The death of Senator Davis removes from us one of the truest 
 of patriots and the wisest of counselors. As I have said before, 
 many grave questions have arisen and many new problems of 
 government, of human liberty, and of human destiny confront 
 us. The war with Spain, or rather the result of that war, has 
 brought new lands ami new peoples to us for guidance and good 
 government. The late troubles in China have brought the 
 world to a full realization of the wider scope of American influ- 
 ence in the settlement of the world's problems. While these 
 have added new glory, they have added new duties. 
 
 No nation ever had before it greater opportunities than are 
 presented to us to-day. Duty calls us to bless these lands and 
 peoples, recently acquired, with peace, happiness, and civil 
 liberty. Shall this grand hope be realized? Shall human 
 liberty rise from this last baptism of blood and fire to higher 
 and purer realms and send forth a clearer and stronger stream 
 to bless mankind, or shall it mark the downward turn of the 
 
Address of Mr. Heatwole, of Minnesota. 121 
 
 Republic and of human rights? These were the questions 
 which Senator Davis had so much at heart. He gave much 
 thought to them and their solution, and one can not estimate 
 the loss we have sustained in his death. 
 
 Those who best knew Senator Davis realized that it was his 
 highest aim to be among those who should lead our people to a 
 higher destiny; and standing to-day, as it were, in the very 
 presence of the dead leader, we should be inspired to the same 
 patriotic devotion to duty, and as the representatives of the 
 greatest nation of modern times should pledge ourselves anew 
 to the great principles of human liberty which he so ably 
 advocated. 
 
 Senator Davis was very dear to the people of Minnesota. 
 He was exceptionally popular with the masses, and held in 
 affectionate regard by them. They honored him by electing 
 him to the highest offices within their gift. But to whatever 
 post he was called he rilled it with honor to himself and with 
 the interests of the people at heart. Senator Davis belongs 
 not alone to Minnesota, not alone to the West, but to the whole 
 American people. He served his country and served it well; 
 and, as the representatives of the people, we come to-day to 
 crown him with the glory which he so well deserves. 
 
 He brought to the discussion and consideration of every 
 public question a rare wisdom and profound scholarship that 
 enabled him to look at every detail of such questions with the 
 keenest insight, and to see clearly the effects of the adoption of 
 certain policies. He had that rich gift of sound reasoning and 
 plain speech which enabled him to set his own knowledge so 
 clearly before others that they were convinced by the logic of 
 his arguments and won over by the kindliness of his persuasion. 
 His life will ever lie a bright example, and his writings and 
 speeches will live when he is forgotten. 
 
122 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 With tender hands devoted friends have consigned his dust 
 to earth, and we realize that a man of lofty character, sublime 
 life, and dauntless courage has gone from us; but the influ- 
 ence of his life and character still lives in the hearts of his 
 countrymen, and it has added to the great stream of mighty 
 influence a force that will broaden in its effects on the world's 
 course during future time. A true man, a kind friend, a wise 
 statesman, a ripe scholar, and a noble patriot has passed away. 
 "But so well had he performed life's work that when the sum- 
 mons came to join the innumerable caravan which moves to 
 that mysterious realm he was so sustained and soothed by an 
 unfaltering faith that he approached his grave like one who 
 wraps the draperies of his couch about him and lies down to 
 pleasant dreams." 
 
Address of Mr. Spalding^ of North Dakota. 123 
 
 ADDRESS OF MR. SPALDING, OF NORTH DAK01 
 
 Mr. Speaker: The State of North Dakota is highly hon- 
 ored by participating in these proceedings. Yet I realize that 
 after the eloquent tributes that have been here paid to the 
 memory of one of the greatest and most unselfish statesmen 
 of the present generation, and in the light of his long career 
 of usefulness just closed, nothing I may say can add to the 
 high esteem in which for so many years he was held by the 
 people of the Northwest, who knew him intimately, or by 
 the people of the whole country, before whom he appeared 
 as a commanding figure at a later date. 
 
 The people of Minnesota and those whom I have the honor 
 to represent are very closely associated, not only geographic- 
 ally, but in occupation and industries. The two States were 
 once parts of the same great Territory. The great cities of 
 Minnesota are the natural market places for the products of 
 the farms of North Dakota. The older and larger State 
 watches with solicitude the record that is being made by her 
 younger sister, and this feeling is reciprocal to a degree that 
 is perhaps unknown in any other section of the country. 
 
 Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of my constituents were 
 friends and acquaintances of Senator Davis, and they all 
 watched with pride and approbation his distinguished career, 
 rejoicing with the people of Minnesota at the honors which 
 he brought that State and the nation. They recognized in 
 him not a man who used his high trust to dispense patronage 
 through the appointing power or who sought office as an end 
 in itself. With him office was a means to an end, and the 
 fact that his ideals were high and his aspirations noble made 
 
124 Life and Character of Cushman A'. Davis. 
 
 contact with him inspiring and helpful. As a student of con- 
 stitutional and international law he was patient and untiring, 
 until in the end he became a recognized authority on these 
 important questions at home and abroad and was able to ren- 
 der invaluable service to his country at a critical period in 
 its history. 
 
 The man who is quick to recognize opportunity and, reen- 
 forced by courage and ability, has the disposition to embrace 
 it and to fully meet all its requirements and responsibilities 
 is the American — I may say the world — ideal of a statesman. 
 Such a man was Senator Davis. 
 
 To most opportunities come only in the humbler walks of 
 life; to some in local affairs, and only to the few is it given 
 to open the door to achievement in national and international 
 concerns. At rare intervals some are called to defend their 
 native land upon the tented field. But rare indeed is the man 
 who finds his sphere of action on all these stages, and still 
 more rare is he who faces each with its resulting duty with 
 sucb intelligence, fortitude, and courage as to come off con- 
 queror. Cushman K. Davis was one of these rare men. 
 
 Like so man} - of the men famous in American history, his 
 boyhood was passed on the farm. To what extent he owed 
 to the rigors and hardships of his early training his later 
 intellectual vigor may not be known, but doubtless to a very 
 great extent. 
 
 His school life barely passed when his country called to 
 arms. The Republic, in whose service he was to spend so 
 many noble years, was in danger. Though just beginning the 
 practice of his chosen profession, he did not hesitate. He 
 turned his back upon the allurements which that profession 
 possessed for one of his talent and ambition and marched to 
 war, where he served as a gallant soldier of the Union. What 
 
Address of Mr. Spalding, of North Dakota. 125 
 
 an opportunity! What a beginning for a great career! I have 
 no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that dearer to Senator Davis than 
 any of the distinguished honors which subsequently were bis 
 was the memory of bis humble sen-ice in camp and field in 
 defense of the eternal principles for which that war was waged. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, statesmen and reformers may moralize con 
 cerning the iniquity and barbarism of war and the best means 
 of promoting peace, but so long as human nature abides so 
 long will wars come, and the pride of man find its chiefest 
 gratification in military renown and in the acclaim which is 
 so willingly accorded the martial hero. As a soldier Sena 
 tor Davis performed a soldier's duty modestly, yet faithfully. 
 In itself a military career had for him no attractions. His 
 days of warfare over, he returned to civil life. 
 
 In the then frontier State of Minnesota that life was not 
 without opportunity, and he at once entered upon a career 
 that was to develop into magnificent proportions and show 
 itself rich in capacity of the noblest and highest character. 
 His analytical mind, studious habits, .mil faithfulness to even- 
 trust . combined with an intellectual culture that is seldom 
 attained by men in active public life, soon gave him promi- 
 nence at the bar. 
 
 From leadership at the bar he was called to the guberna- 
 torial chair, and then to the United States Senate, where he 
 served his country with enthusiastic devotion, combining the 
 learning of the lawyer, the polish of the man of letters, the 
 courage of never-failing conviction, the tact of ripening expe- 
 rience, and the wisdom of rapidly broadening statesmanship 
 with the patriotism of one who, more than all else, loved Ins 
 country. Upon these foundations he built a superstructure 
 which has touched the clouds. His committee in the Senate 
 was the committee of Sumner, Sherman, Mason, Hamlin, and 
 
126 Life and Character of Cushman A". Davis. 
 
 others of equal fame, but he held his high place with a dig- 
 nity which honored both it and him. 
 
 High as the American people hold the names of his illus- 
 trious predecessors, none exhibited greater tact or wisdom than 
 did the late Senator Davis. Xone were confronted with more 
 intricate problems for solution, and none met them with a 
 broader outlook for the future. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it is one of the characteristics of human nature 
 to forget the frailties and to enlarge on the virtues of our 
 public men as the sphere of their action recedes. The world 
 has changed since the days of the fathers. Steam, electricity, 
 and kindred inventions and discoveries bring people closer 
 together. 
 
 Many great statesmen of the past would hardly be recog- 
 nized if living to-day and compelled to submit to modern 
 social and political inspection. In their day the politician 
 and statesman were viewed from afar, and the fact alone that 
 one was a Senator was sufficient to surround him with a halo 
 of glory. 
 
 To-day the merest nothings spoken by the politician, as well 
 as the profoundest utterances of the statesman, are read in 
 every hamlet as soon as uttered; greatness is not exaggerated 
 as of old, and the statesman is recognized as human. 
 
 Senator Davis possessed many of the qualities of the states- 
 man of former days and the additional and more exacting qual- 
 ifications requisite in the modern statesman, and his talent 
 solved the problems which he encountered quite as intelligently 
 as did the wisdom of the fathers solve the problems of a former 
 period. He was essentially the man for his time, and the 
 world has gained because he lived in it. 
 
 Faithful as soldier, distinguished as governor, eminent as 
 Senator, by his skill, wisdom, and foresight as a commissioner 
 
Address of Mr. Spalding, of North Dakota. 127 
 
 and diplomat, he won fresh distinction for himself, reflected 
 greater credit upon his State, and brought most lasting honor 
 to his country, and. if accepted, most beneficial results to the 
 islands of the sea. 
 
 His services will never be forgotten, and let us hope that, 
 like that of the fathers, his record, too, will from year to year 
 acquire added luster. 
 
 On behalf of the people of my State — his old friends and 
 neighbors — I have thus briefly, and I know feebly, given 
 expression to their sense of the great loss which the nation 
 has suffered in the untimely death of Senator CuSHMAN K.' 
 Davis. 
 
128 Life and Character of Cushman A'. Davis. 
 
 ADDRESS BY MR. STEVENS, OF MINNESOTA. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: All who knew Cushman K. Davis well real- 
 ized his capabilities for usefulness to his State and to his 
 country. 
 
 His life and career illustrated and formed a notable part of 
 the progress and history of that section of our nation which 
 nourished and ever loyally and proudly supported him. 
 
 Every locality has its peculiar development in moral and 
 political influence and material progress. It generally has 
 suniL- personage who has led his fellows in their united action 
 for the public good, freely used his life and talents for the 
 common weal, and impressed his progressive ideals upon those 
 who may be subject to his influence. The life and character, 
 the labors, the power and fame of Cushman K. Davis seem 
 to occupy such a position to the vast Northwestern section of 
 our country. 
 
 Born of the sturdy stock of New England and northern New 
 York, he inherited the keen intellectual capacity, the untiring 
 mental activity, the fineness and thoroughness of culture, the 
 lofty patriotic ideals which marked the distinguished of that 
 powerful race. Removed in early youth to the northern fron- 
 tier of our country, he was reared amid the privations, the 
 struggles, and the successes of that environment. He acquired 
 that spirit of helpfulness and practicability, of independence 
 and largeness of view and purpose, that confidence in personal 
 and public growth and triumphs, which have attended the 
 development of the wonderful Northwest. 
 
 His education was received at its institutions, and he imbibed 
 the love of liberty and the adaptation of the most generous 
 
Address of Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota. 129 
 
 culture and the broadest learning to the amelioration of the 
 condition of his fellow-men. With this equipment the young 
 man commenced his life's work. When came the call to arms, 
 he freely and quickly offered himself to the service of his 
 country and performed his share in a modest, straightforward 
 way in that awful conflict. At its close, broken in health, he 
 again sought the invigorating climate of his beloved Northwest 
 and became a citizen of Minnesota. 
 
 He entered fully and zealously into all the spirit of those 
 stirring times. He performed his duties as a popular and 
 public-spirited citizen, as an ever rising, learned, and influen- 
 tial member of the bar, and as an enlightened public official in 
 whatever station he might be chosen to fill. 
 
 He was elected governor of Minnesota in 1874, when that 
 State was agitated over the contest between the producing 
 classes, with their hardships and burdens, on the one side, 
 and on the other the vast transportation interests, hampered 
 with unwise and unprofitable investments. He carried him- 
 self so safely and wisely that thenceforward the people 
 believed in him as their champion and their leader, while the 
 great business interests also realized his breadth, his wisdom, 
 and his integrity as a statesman. 
 
 He entered the Senate of the United States in iSsy.andat 
 once concerned himself in those questions affecting the wel- 
 fare of his people. The Dakotas possessed a population of 
 emigrants from the eastern sections of the country and the 
 northern nations of Europe. The} - had been accustomed to 
 a large measure of self-government, and were most practical 
 and progressive in adapting the forms and the spirit of the 
 older institutions to the peculiar conditions which confronted 
 them upon the vast prairies and mountains and forests of the 
 West. Such a people needed self-government to properly 
 S. Doc. 230 9 
 
130 Life and Character of Cuskman K. Davis. 
 
 develop and direct their own affairs, and Senator Davis 
 exerted his vigorous power, his influence and argument, and 
 contributed greatly to secure the much-desired boon. 
 
 He realized, too, that the people of the Northwest could 
 never reap the full reward of their exertions until their 
 products should reach the markets of the world by the easiest 
 possible route and at the least possible cost. So, his untiring 
 efforts early directed the attention of the nation to the 
 improvement of the lock and canal at the "Soo," in order 
 that the vast commerce of the Northwest might pursue its 
 natural pathway to the sea. 
 
 The splendid and beautiful cities of the lakes, the giant 
 industries of commerce and manufacturing and transportation 
 which center there, the happy and prosperous homes which 
 fill the golden Northwest — have made its face to shine and 
 its bosom to become the garden and granary of the world — 
 should all yield their thankfulness to the farsighted and 
 devoted statesmanship which in the beginning fostered and 
 developed their richest blessings. 
 
 For ten years he served on the important Committee of 
 Pacific Railroads, and his practical sense, his broad wisdom 
 and faith in the future of his people and his country, his 
 great abilities as a lawyer and man of affairs, were never 
 exerted to better advantage than in working out the method 
 of settlement between the Government and the Pacific Rail- 
 roads, so that the people should lose nothing by their gener- 
 osity and the growth of that vast portion of our country 
 should not be checked by inaction and folly. Much of the 
 credit for this splendid result belongs to the effective efforts 
 of Senator Davis. 
 
 There was one great work of statesmanship of which he was 
 always justly proud, and which should carry his name in grateful 
 
Address of Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota. 131 
 
 remembrance to the numberless thousands of its beneficiaries. 
 As chairman of the Committee on Pensions of the Senate- he 
 exerted his great skill and persistency in framing and enacting 
 the dependent-pension act of 1S90. Under its generous provi- 
 sions, up to the 1st dayof January, [91 >t . more than Sooo.ooo.ooo 
 have been disbursed among the needy and infirm veteran- of the 
 civil war and their widows as a token of the gratitude of a 
 patriotic and appreciative people. Senator DAVIS was a veteran 
 himself. He knew them and their conditions and their neces- 
 sities, and to the last his love and labors were ever with his old 
 comrades in whatever could be done for their assistance. 
 
 One of the acts which make his career conspicuous was his 
 telegram to some of his Duluth constituents during the disturb- 
 ances of 1894, calling their attention to the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of our Government and the necessity for the observance 
 of law by all true citizens. They then knew, and have ever 
 since known, that Senator Davis was their devoted friend. 
 He was always independent, sincere, and patriotic, and never 
 truckled to selfish interests or paid allegiance to private power. 
 
 His love of country and its institutions, his deep knowledge 
 of history and its philosophy, had convinced him that the lore- 
 fathers in the centuries gone had suffered oppression chiefly 
 because there had been no law, or observance of law, to which 
 they could confidently appeal upon equal terms with the rich and 
 the powerful; that the greatest safeguard to the toiler of to da) 
 is the existence of constitutions and laws made by the chosen 
 representatives of every man, guaranteeing rights which are 
 enforced by tribunals established by the people themselves; and 
 whoever overturns those laws, constitutions, and tribunals 
 threatens the fundamental rights and liberties of every man 
 who loves them, who prospers and depends upon them. 
 
 It required courage and patriotism to speak amid the tumult 
 
132 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 of the hour, but Senator Da vis always possessed these qualities 
 in abundance. 
 
 The people of Minnesota can never repay fully the debt which 
 they owe him for his services in the protection of their public- 
 school fund. The original legislation granting tp this great 
 fund two sections in every township was passed upon the admis- 
 sion of the State to the Union; but during the last fifteen years 
 or more the most constant attention has been required to prevent 
 adverse legislation and construction. In Congress, in the o >urts, 
 and in the great Departments Senator Davis has labored unre- 
 mittingly, and throughout the years of the great future the 
 youth of our State will enjoy the splendid provisions secured to 
 them by the wise founders of our Commonwealth and protected 
 by the devotion of our beloved Senator. 
 
 In this career of statesmanship Senator Davis kept pace with 
 his people and his section of the country. As their influence 
 and wealth and power extended, he, too, sought the broader 
 domain of statecraft, and left his impress, potent and practical, 
 upon the greatest national policies. 
 
 When President Harrison sought to acquire the Hawaiian 
 Islands, in 1S93, Senator Davis was one of his devoted cham- 
 pions. 
 
 And later, during the Administration of President McKinley, 
 when it became necessary for the broad purposes of public 
 defense and welfare to secure their possession, it was Senator 
 Davis, with his wide knowledge of precedents and history, 
 who chiefly devised the plan which resulted in the successful 
 consummation. He was offered by President McKinley a place 
 upon the Hawaiian commission, but was obliged to decline, 
 since he was needed more as a member of the peace commis- 
 sion to negotiate and finally settle the treaty which ended the 
 war with Spain. 
 
Address of Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota. 133 
 
 No one in public life has recognized more clearly the tre- 
 mendous effect of the Monroe doctrine and its application 
 upon the manifold relations of our country with the other 
 nations of the earth, and his powerful exposition of it at crit- 
 ical times has directed the attention of the world to the stead- 
 fast and commanding position of the United States and our 
 guardianship of the broadest American interests. 
 
 He early foresaw the necessity of protecting our rights in 
 the construction of the Nicaragua Canal, and his wisdom was 
 recognized by the overwhelming voice of our people when the 
 patriot who had conceived the amendments had departed to 
 his fathers. 
 
 His knowledge of the commercial relations between this and 
 foreign nations was unsurpassed. Years ago he discerned the 
 importance of extending our foreign trade to insure the con- 
 stant and profitable employment of our people, and then fore- 
 told that upon the Pacific Ocean and in the Orient would be 
 the battle ground for the industrial supremacy of the world. 
 
 A forcible illustration of the wide influence and high regard 
 of the opinions of Senator Davis upon international and legal 
 questions was presented during the present Congress. When 
 the bill for the encouragement of an American merchant 
 marine was pending before the appropriate committees of the 
 Senate and House, it seemed to the Senators and Members 
 from the Western States that the interests of their section of 
 the country and of the producing classes had not been suffi- 
 ciently guarded, and that of necessity some provisions must be 
 made to encourage the development of our foreign markets and 
 improve conditions for the producers. So a plan was devised 
 which required that every ship receiving assistance from the 
 Government should carry on its voyage outward bound a cargo 
 containing a due proportion of the products of our country. 
 
134 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 This proposition was strenuously opposed by the proponents 
 of the measure, and by their counsel, some of the ablest and 
 most influential lawyers in the country, upon the ground that 
 such a provision would violate the obligation of the various 
 treaties between the United States and the several commercial 
 nations. 
 
 Any benefits which might accrue through this measure to 
 the producing classes of the country seemed to depend upon 
 a proper solution of this problem. The question of legality 
 was submitted to Senator Davis for his opinion, and, after a 
 few days of examination and reflection, he forwarded a letter in 
 which he stated that the proposition for a due proportion of 
 export cargo was not a violation of any treat}' provision and 
 that such a plan would be valid and feasible. 
 
 The reception of that opinion changed the entire course of 
 legislation. The eminent counsel ceased their opposition, and 
 from that moment all parties have coincided in the validity 
 and wisdom of such a requirement. This only illustrates the 
 weight and influence which the opinion of Senator Davis car- 
 ried in the highest councils of Congress and of the nation. 
 
 But his chief lame will probably arise from his patriotic and 
 effective services during the long course of the dealings with 
 Cuba; with the legislation and the various diplomatic relations 
 during the war with Spain; with the settlement of that conflict 
 and of the momentous problems which have arisen from its 
 various phases, and with the mighty consequences of our con- 
 cert with the other nations in the Orient. 
 
 The thirty years of the most severe and yet delightful study 
 for him had borne the fruit of the distinguished and useful 
 service for his country. For a generation he had pursued his 
 chosen themes of international law — its history, its philosophy, 
 its literature and development — as a recreation. Few possessed 
 
Address of Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota. 135 
 
 this rare- and ample equipment, and to but few are allotted the 
 splendid opportunities of assisting in the birth and direction of 
 policies and events which will have a large influence through- 
 out all time upon the history of our country and probablj of 
 the entire human race. His patriotic labors, his illustrious 
 career in these great transactions, need not be recounted here, 
 but they fill a generous space in our history at a most important 
 era. His countrymen all realize that his work was undertaken 
 and carried through in the ideal spirit of patriotic devotion and 
 in the broadest view of a lover of his fellow-man. 
 
 He was ever a strong and decided Republican, and never fal- 
 tered in his allegiance to the party of his faith. Vet, in his 
 thought and action upon momentous themes of national and 
 international importance, he endeavored to bear himself as a 
 patriot rather than a partisan; to examine them from the highest 
 plane for the greatest public welfare, and to lift their considera- 
 tion above the depths of petty and passionate discussion into 
 the loftier and serener atmosphere of true statesmanship. 
 
 It is a misfortune for his popular fame that these great 
 labors were principally displayed in the committee room, in the 
 executive sessions of the Senate, in consultation with the 
 leaders of the Administration, or in the deliberations of the 
 Peace Commission. Yet their power has been manifest, and 
 if the future shall unfold the richest blessings, as we devoutly 
 hope and trust, upon all who dwell beneath the folds of our flag, 
 none will have accomplished more for this beneficence than 
 the modest, learned, and patriotic Senator from Minnesota. 
 
 The people of his State had unbounded admiration for his 
 talents and capabilities, the utmost respect for his integrity and 
 devotion to public interests, and the greatest love for him as 
 a true and steadfast friend. No man had a more loyal and 
 enthusiastic following. Unselfish and untiring, for a quarter 
 
136 Life a?id Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 of a century they sustained him, because they knew what 
 manner of man he was. 
 
 No one better appreciated such devotion, and he ever sought 
 to express his gratitude whenever occasion offered. Some- 
 times criticisms have arisen because, in his recommendations 
 for appointments, Senator Davis would not recognize the more 
 recent political developments, but instead would stand by his 
 old and true friends. Such criticisms never affected him or 
 caused him to deviate from his determination. His friendship 
 was one of the prizes of a lifetime, one of those features which 
 help to make life complete and strengthen it for its arduous 
 duties. 
 
 It was always a delightful hour for his friends when the 
 strain and labors of the day were past. The relaxation with 
 cigar and companion would come, and together they would 
 wander with his keen, yet kindly, wit, with his ample store of 
 the world's wisdom and his quaint learning, through the broad 
 fields of poesy and history, philosophy and politics, and then 
 reach the loving retreat of old time-tried friends. Here he 
 always delighted to linger, and no longer could there be amaze- 
 ment that his friends were grappled to him with hooks of steel. 
 
 There are scenes of sorrow in our lives which impress so 
 greatly that' the finger of time only deepens and can never 
 erase them. Such to me was the last interview with my 
 friend. 
 
 It was late upon the Sabbath afternoon after the last election 
 when he signified his desire to see me, as I called to inquire 
 concerning his welfare. I was ushered into his apartment as 
 the rays of the setting sun were illuminating his stricken 
 features and suffering form. 
 
 With clasped hands he spoke of his gratitude for the elec- 
 tion results and for the success of the party and candidates to 
 
Address of Mr. Stevens, of Minnesota. 137 
 
 which he had contributed so much in his personal and official 
 labors. Then his mind dwelt with his friends, upon their love 
 and appreciation, their solicitude for him, and he wished for a 
 little more time to carry through what he felt was his life's 
 work and demonstrate that their trust and fidelity and love 
 had not been misplaced. But tired nature ordained otherwise. 
 At the height of his fame, in the zenith of his influence and 
 his power, in the plenitude of blessings which made life dear, 
 there departed this sagacious, just, and profound statesman 
 and jurist; the learned and eloquent orator; t-he wise, patriotic, 
 and public-spirited citizen; the kind and devoted sou and hus- 
 band; the generous, faithful, and lovable friend. 
 
138 Life and Character of Cushman A". Davis. 
 
 ADDRESS OF MR. WM. ALDEN SMITH, OF MICHIGAN. 
 
 Mr. vSpeaker: This day has been set apart in honor of the 
 memory of Cushman Kellogg Davis, statesman, orator, 
 publicist, and man of letters. 
 
 When he died the greatest mind, the most apt and ripest 
 intellect that has been applied to foreign affairs during my 
 career here, ceased to exist. 
 
 His grasp of important problems was herculean. He dealt 
 with large topics and moved among spheres with a grace and 
 ease unusual and unaffected. 
 
 With a manner so diffident and modest, a temperament so 
 calm and well poised, a personality so engaging and yet so 
 retired, his career here is an inspiration to the younger men 
 with whom he served and a delightful memory to those of 
 maturer years. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, how man)' of his associates knew he was a 
 veteran of the civil war? And yet the record of his army life 
 reveals a loyal soldier in one of the greatest crises of our 
 time. 
 
 He was as modest in statesmanship as he was in war, and 
 were we dependent upon his recital for knowledge of his work, 
 the world would miss much that is real and significant in his 
 life. 
 
 He was a master of international law, that subtle rule of 
 nations, and none of his colleagues ever questioned his conclu- 
 sions when formally expressed. 
 
 He was a diplomat in all that the word implies, bringing 
 to the solution of great questions of state a discernment and 
 tact rare and unequaled. 
 
Address of Mr. Wm. Alden Smith, of Michigan. 
 
 Senator Davis contributed to solve main- (if the must deli 
 cate and important questions growing out of the Spanish 
 American war, with an eye single to the country's honor, 
 and with matchless constancy. 
 
 With all clue respect for those associated with him in the 
 work of the Paris Peace Commission, his masterful mind often 
 led the participants in the final scene of that international 
 drama out of vexed and trying ordeals to easy and apt solution. 
 
 He was modest in his- habit, free from show or ostentation 
 as it is possible to be. His form, seemingly intended for the 
 sole purpose of supporting a large head and a large heart, 
 was useless for parade. In a gathering of men of affairs he 
 would be the last chosen for personified greatness. But let 
 him once speak, and all the attractions of the others would 
 fade suddenly away before his masterful and predominant 
 mind. 
 
 Senator Davis was unconventional in manner, easily ap- 
 proached, kind, tolerant, and helpful to young men, all of 
 whom loved him and listened with profit and delight to his 
 quiet review of the great events through which we are passing. 
 
 As a man of letters Mr. Davis had few if any peers among 
 the statesmen of his time. His literary instinct was must 
 rare, and the pure and delicate shading of his sentences is to 
 literature what the sweet and dainty perfume of the rose is 
 to the flower. 
 
 He had a master mind, and in any field in which it was 
 applied it was comprehensive and exhaustive. 
 
 Mild in manner, and in voice subdued. Simple in his desires. 
 Unaffected as a child, tender and affectionate, bringing imag- 
 ination and sentiment into the driest explorations, with a power 
 to clothe thought in most inviting phrase. With him, law 
 was poetry, and fact fiction, and each busy day a benediction, 
 
140 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 night following with solace and reflection among his books 
 and companions dear. 
 
 Nature was most kind when it gave Cushman K. Davis 
 to the world, and now that he has been taken away in the 
 very zenith of his fame, at a time of greatest usefulness, the 
 world is poorer, and the Government he defended on the field 
 and in the forum has lost one of its mightiest pillars. 
 
 His words of wisdom will long rule us from the golden 
 urn wherein his ashes are encased, and his public acts will 
 illuminate these council chambers of the nation for years to 
 come, while his splendid companionship and winning person- 
 ality will ever linger, a loving inspiration. 
 
Address of Mr. Morris, of Minnesota. 141 
 
 Address of Mr. Morris, of Minnesota. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: Respecl and veneration of the living for the 
 dead have been characteristic of enlightened and civilized men 
 from the remotest antiquity, even from a time long prior to 
 that when Abraham purchased for 400 shekels of silver, as a 
 burial place for Sarah, the cave of the field of Machpelah. 
 
 And this sentiment is creditable to the living. Its effect has 
 been elevating and ennobling to the whole human race. It 
 has given rise to those customs and observances which have 
 been practiced by men of all ages and nations, from the simple 
 ceremonial and plain gravestone which affection prepares for 
 the humble and lowly to the funeral oration, the gorgeous 
 pageant, and the splendid mausoleum which the honor and 
 reverence of a people demand for those who have been distin- 
 guished above their fellows. Without it we should not have 
 had some of the noblest and most priceless treasures of the past. 
 
 The lofty and mysterious pyramids, the tomb of Csecilia 
 Metella "with two thousand years of ivy grown," the massive 
 and impressive castle of St. Angelo, the wondrously beautiful 
 and delicately magnificent Taj Mahal, the Hotel des Invalides, 
 the Albert Memorial, and innumerable others of those miracles 
 of human genius and art given to us by the piety and reverence 
 of the grand old masters all tell the same story. And it finds 
 expression here in these parks and halls and corridors, where 
 the heroic forms of those who have wrought for the honor and 
 glory of our country in the days that are gone look down from 
 their pedestals and inspire us by the memory of their deeds to 
 patriotic devotion. 
 
 It k this sentiment which has established the custom under 
 
142 Life and Character of ' Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 which we meet to-day to give fitting expression to our sorrow 
 and commemorate in some slight degree the virtues of the great 
 public servant who has recently departed. 
 
 I am all too conscious that I shall not be able to add any- 
 thing to what has already been so beautifully and appropriately 
 said here and in the other Chamber as to the character and 
 public services of Senator Davis, and yet I feel that I should 
 not be true to myself or faithful to the people whom I repre- 
 sent if I did not say something, however inadequate it may be, 
 to express their and my own admiration and love for him and 
 for his memory. 
 
 The barest outline of his career in those paths which he 
 followed, the profession of the law and the public service, 
 would be sufficient to show that Senator Davis was not only a 
 prominent man, but a great man, bearing always in mind and 
 heart, and doing his part to exalt and preserve and keep 
 unstained, the integrity and glory of his country, whether as an 
 obscure though gallant and faithful subaltern in the military 
 service or as the great chairman of the Foreign Relations 
 Committee of the Senate. 
 
 Graduating from the University of Michigan at an unusually 
 early age and coming to the bar as soon as he had reached his 
 majority, he had scarcely begun to practice his chosen pro- 
 fession before he felt himself impelled, notwithstanding his 
 delicate constitution, to answer the country's call to arms. 
 Entering the service, he remained for two years, until the 
 complete breaking down of his health compelled his resignation. 
 Moving to St. Paul, he sprang at almost one bound to the 
 leadership of a bar distinguished for its learning and ability. 
 
 It was almost impossible that one of his commanding talents 
 should long remain in private life, and so we find him entering 
 the public service and filling the positions of a State legislator, 
 
Address of Mr. Morris, of Minnesota. 143 
 
 United States district attorney, governor of the State, regent 
 of the State University, United States Senator — three times 
 chosen— and commissioner to negotiate with Spain the treaty 
 of peace, of which he became the leading champion and defender 
 until its final ratification by the Senate, and which is destined 
 perhaps to mark the most daring and important step in the 
 onward march and progress of this great Republic. 
 
 It is not my purpose to attempt to trace the causes of this 
 brilliant career — his honorable and sturdy ancestry, his early 
 environment and training, his studious and laborious habits, 
 and all those things which are the sources and the accom- 
 paniment of greatness — or to measure its impress upon the 
 country. I prefer rather to speak of Senator Davis as I 
 saw him and knew him in the full maturity of his splendid 
 powers. Living in a distant part of the State, I enjoyed 
 only a slight personal acquaintance with him until I came 
 t< 1 Washington as a Representative in Congress. When I 
 went to Minnesota he was about to enter for the first time 
 upon the stage of national politics, being about to be chosen 
 to that great office for which more than ten years before 
 he had striven and failed. 
 
 The legislature which first elected him to the Senate had 
 already been chosen. It was generally conceded that he 
 ought to be and would be elected, and in due course of 
 procedure he was elected. His name was, of course, on 
 even - lip, almost universally in terms of praise. He was 
 described as a great lawyer, a great orator, and as one who, 
 if given the opportunity, would become a great statesman. 
 But these were vague terms, conveying very indefinite mean- 
 ings, largely dependent upon the taste and view point of 
 the person using them. 
 
 Xot lone: after that he came to Duluth t;> conduct the 
 
144 Life and Character of Cuskman K. Davis. 
 
 trial of a very important case, and I then saw and heard him 
 for the first time. I do not now remember the style of the 
 case or the questions involved, but I am sure I shall never 
 forget the man whose appearance in it attracted the atten- 
 tion and admiration of all present. A great main- members 
 of the bar, especially those who, like myself, had recently 
 come to the State, attended in the court room to hear the 
 trial. I remember his very manner of entering the court 
 room and taking his place in the bar — quiet, modest, un- 
 assuming, and yet with a dignity denoting confidence and 
 rep>>>t; without vanity, noticing without exception his acquaint- 
 ances, and greeting his friends with a quiet cordiality which 
 at once explained the loyalty of their devotion to him, and 
 the warm and evidently sincere expressions of esteem which 
 they always used in speaking of him. 
 
 I shall not attempt to describe his conduct of the case. - After 
 it was over I walked down from the court-house with a lawyer 
 friend, himself a man of learning and wide and varied culture. 
 We talked of the trial and the man. We both agreed that in 
 his deportment to the court, his examination of the witnesses, 
 hi- statement of the law, and his manner of addressing the jury 
 he represented the highest type of the profession — one who 
 had explored and mastered the science and history of the law, 
 and who while showing a perfect familiarity with the cases 
 bearing upon the particular point involved, yet used those 
 cases only to illustrate, enforce, and illumine the underlying 
 philosophy and the fundamental principle. 
 
 We agreed that as an advocate he marshaled his facts and 
 presented his arguments with a frankness and directness, a 
 logic and power, and a wealth of illustration which were well- 
 nigh irresistible. Neither of us knew his habits of study. I 
 do not think either of us knew that he had written any book. 
 
Address of Mr, Morris, of ' Minnesi 145 
 
 Neither of us had ever heard him deliver a lecture or had ever 
 
 read one that he had delivered. And yet both of US noted the 
 rare felicity of his language and his simple, direct, and exqui 
 site style, without the slightest trace of pedantry or of an effort 
 to display his learning. 
 
 The next time I heard Senator Davis speak was to an audi- 
 ence filling the stage and wings and every box and seat in the 
 opera house at Duluth during the political campaign of 
 Here again was the same wealth and power of argument, tin 
 same evidence of laborious study and careful thought, the 
 same accurate knowledge of history and current events. While 
 his voice was not strong, it had a peculiar quality whicl 
 abled him to be heard in the remotest corner of the theater, 
 and there was in it a certain sweetness of modulation and tone 
 which seemed to charm and subdue his audience as there fell 
 from his lips those perfectly polished jewels of thought and 
 expression. 
 
 He resorted to none of the tricks of the public speaker. He 
 indulged in no flippant stories. He never seemed to lack for 
 historical precedent and illustration. They seemed to come 
 unbidden from the capacious chambers of his memory. He 
 challenged no adversary's sincerity. If he resorted to ridicule- 
 he did so with a lightness of fancy and delicacy of touch that 
 left no sting. He indulged in no bitterness. He was always 
 self-contained and dignified, and even in his most glittering 
 periods, while he spoke with the fervor of the orator, yet at the 
 same time he exhibited the composure of the master. 
 
 He seemed satisfied to state his own and his party's position 
 and the reasons therefor with all the strength he could com- 
 mand, and to leave it to the judgment of those whose voices 
 were to decide. And when he concluded his hearers seemed to 
 arouse themselves as it were from a beautiful dream, and go 
 S. Hoi'. 230 10 
 
146 Life and Character of Cuskman K. Davis. 
 
 away, if not entirely convinced, at least deeply stirred and 
 quietly thoughtful. I do not remember to have heard any 
 other speaker who gave me the same complete pleasure, and I 
 well remember, as we rose to go, how the friend who sat next 
 to me drew a long breath and said: "Simply splendid! Splen- 
 did! We ought to be proud of him." 
 
 I heard him again on the hallowed field of Gettysburg at the 
 unveiling of the monument to the valor and devotion of the 
 First Minnesota Volunteers. Surely none of us who stood there 
 on that bright July day, with that peaceful and, as he expressed 
 it, "delicious landscape," around us, can ever forget the scene 
 or the beautiful and touching words he spoke to the battle- 
 scarred veterans about him. Throughout all there was the 
 glow of an ever-present and undying patriotism, but with it 
 that spirit of generosity, forbearance, tolerance, and forgive- 
 ness which always mark the man of brave heart and noble 
 mind. I shall never forget one sentence. I must give it here: 
 
 The same earthquake force which opened that abyss closed it again, 
 and we stand now, here and everywhere, upon solid ground— holy ground 
 here — because it is a tomb where the hosts of valor and patriotism have 
 "set up their everlasting rest." It is also a field of resurrection whence 
 has arisen the genius of a restored Union. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, one unconsciously and irresistibly recalled the 
 words spoken in the same place by that greatest of all, and we 
 felt and knew that so long as such as he that spoke to us and 
 those then about us shall live ' ' government of the people, for 
 the people, by the people shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 I heard him again, Mr. Speaker, at a banquet upon the eve 
 of his departure for Paris to perform the final and crowning 
 service of his public life. In the time since he had come to the 
 head of the Committee on Foreign Relations events had crowded 
 upon each other with a rapidity and variety, producing an in- 
 ternational situation hitherto unknown, and thus opening to 
 
Address of Mr. Moiris, of Minnesota. 147 
 
 him the opportunity for which he had been unconsciously in 
 training throughout the whole of his studious life. 
 
 He had shown his wide and accurate knowledge of the diplo- 
 matic history of our country and his complete and thorough 
 master}' of international law, and for a condition for which there 
 was no precedent had created a precedent the soundness and 
 wisdom and justice of which were universally recognized. He 
 spoke with the same masterful force aud strength and in the 
 same brilliant style, somewhat tempered and subdued, I thought, 
 by a keen and overshadowing sense of the responsibility which 
 rested upon him. 
 
 His words evinced a full realization of the fact that the 
 rapid and unparalleled successes we had gained and the absolute 
 prostration of our adversary had brought with them great duties 
 and obligations. He saw only too well that those duties and 
 obligations might lead inevitably to a course aud policy un- 
 known and untried to us before, and which would give rise to 
 wide and bitter differences amongst ourselves. There was that, 
 however, about the bringing of the institutions of this young 
 Republic of ours into active, potential, aud quickening contact 
 with the oldest empire of earth which seemed to appeal to his 
 imagination and stimulate his daring mind. 
 
 He was too wise not to know the difficulties and perils that 
 lay along the pathway, too farseeing not to know that prob- 
 lems would arise requiring for their solution years of anxious 
 thought and patient endeavor. Yet, nothing daunted by these 
 perils and problems, he spoke with an intense Americanism, 
 with a sublime faith in the conscience and capacity of the 
 nation, and with a love of liberty which would establish here 
 aud everywhere not its temporary and fleeting shadow, but 
 its permanent and enduring substance. Aud there was not 
 a man who heard him who did not believe that in the high 
 
148 Life and Character of Cushman A'. Dams. 
 
 duty to which he had been called whatever he might do 
 would be for the honor and glory of our country and the 
 welfare of others, and that the nation would sustain him. 
 
 This, Mr. Speaker, was the man as I saw and heard him 
 in his public life. As a lawyer, learned and profound. As a 
 statesman, faithful to his ideals, studious in his habit, patient 
 and conservative in council, self-reliant and bold in the hour 
 of action. As an orator, logical, persuasive, eloquent, brilliant. 
 One could not hear him often without knowing that he had 
 walked through all the fields of classical literature, ancient 
 and modern, that he had spent many hours in intimate com- 
 panionship with Shakespeare, and that whether Christian or 
 atheist, skeptic or believer, he had read with delight over and 
 over again the Book of Job, the Psalms of David, the Sermon 
 on the Mount, and the Gospel according' to St. John. 
 
 As the crystal waters of the State he loved, as its name 
 implies, catch and reflect every hue and tint of the skies above 
 them, so his delicate and refined nature seemed to catch all 
 that was beautiful in his wide horizon of history, literature, 
 and poetry and reflect it back in the glowing imagery of his 
 language. 
 
 Mr. Speaker. I shall always consider it one of the greatest 
 privileges that I have ever enjoyed that when I came to Wash- 
 ington I was admitted to a close personal acquaintance and 
 friendship with him. Here I came to know his charming and 
 delightful personal qualities and to understand how he pos- 
 sessed the love and admiration of the whole State and the 
 absolute devotion of his intimate friends, and why he was so 
 universally esteemed in the great legislative body to which he 
 belonged. No man was ever more loyal to his friends than 
 he. Those that he had "and their adoption tried, he grappled 
 them to his soul with hooks of steel." He was always frank 
 
Address of Mr. Morris, of Minnesota. 140 
 
 and open, gentle, kind, just, generous. He was always toler- 
 ant of the opinions of others, while no man was more tenacious 
 of his own after they had been deliberately formed. 
 
 I never heard him speak evil of any man. It was always 
 commendation or silence. He was one of the most modest men 
 I ever knew. Indeed, he hardly seemed to appreciate the high 
 place he held in the regard of the country. He told me ouce 
 that he never made a speech that his knees did not tremble at 
 the beginning, ami those who have entertained him on his 
 campaigning tours of the State have told me that he was so 
 nervous at the meal just before the meeting that he could eat 
 scarcely anything. He was always genial and agreeable, but 
 never quite so much so as in his own library, before an open 
 fire, with a good cigar. He told me once that in all his long 
 years at the bar he had never had a law book in that library, 
 and had never suffered business to be discussed there. That 
 was a sacred precinct reserved for his friends. 
 
 I remember his saying to me, giving an affectionate glance 
 at his books, "These are my friends — some of them the friends 
 of my youth — and I have never found them wanting." Let 
 it not be understood that he was one who made a display of his 
 learning or of his reading. I never knew one who had less of 
 that. He seemed to take an especial interest in young men. 
 His law partners were young men. To those just entering 
 upon their duties here he was particularly cordial and helpful, 
 and was always reach" to advise, encourage, and assist. Of this 
 I have had personal experience, aud I had come to have for 
 him a real affection. Is it any wonder that such a man should 
 have the love of those who knew him best? 
 
 As I stood at the grave in which he rests I could not help 
 thinking how strange, how past finding out to our finite minds, 
 are the inexorable decrees of Providence. There were yet 
 
150 Life and Character of Cuskman K. Davis. 
 
 higher things which the people of his State had proudly hoped 
 for him. And he himself with brave and worthy ambition had 
 hoped that he might be spared to aid in the solution of those 
 perplexing questions growing out of the great transactions in 
 which he had borne so conspicuous a part. It was indeed sad 
 and pathetic that he should be taken just at this time. 
 
 I remember some years ago, when Gambetta died, to have 
 seen a picture representing the great French commoner as a 
 sculptor, in working garb, with mallet and chisel falling from 
 his nerveless grasp, lying dead at the feet of an uncompleted 
 statue of the Republic of France. If I were called upon to 
 depict the last sad scene in the drama of this man's life, I 
 would represent him moving in answer to the summons of the 
 grim specter, grandly and fearlessly, to "the silent halls of 
 Death," yet casting one last, lingering, anxious, yet confident 
 look at the starry flag of his country, shining, as he expressed 
 it, "amidst the constellations of the Antipodes." 
 
 Mr. Speaker, the State of Minnesota will miss him. That 
 great body of which he was so conspicuous an ornament will 
 miss him. The country will miss him. And in the years to 
 come the men who shall represent that Commonwealth can 
 set for themselves no higher mark than that already made by 
 Cushman Kellogg Davis. 
 
Address of Mr. Gamble, of South Dakota. 151 
 
 Address of Mr. Gamble, of South Dakota. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: I feel I could not do .less than at least add 
 my presence on this occasion as a partial expression of my grief 
 at the great loss to the nation in the deatli of the distinguished 
 citizen of Minnesota. The notification to me was so recent, 
 and my time has been so completely occupied since my return 
 to the city, I have had no opportunity whatever to put in form 
 the words I would be glad to express. Under the circum- 
 stances, Mr. Speaker, what I have to say will be brief. My 
 admiration for Senator Davis was most high, and the people of 
 my State had great appreciation of his splendid abilities and 
 eminent statesmanship. 
 
 Aside from my personal regard for the deceased, especial 
 reasons impel me to join with my colleagues in this memorial 
 service. I recall a similar occasion some years since in the 
 Senate. My brother, John R., was elected to the Fifty-second 
 Congress. He died in the autumn of 1891, before taking his 
 seat in this body. Among the eulogies pronounced on that 
 occasion in his memory in the Senate none was more beautiful 
 than that of Senator Davis. He spoke generous words con- 
 cerning a noble and loving brother then. Can I now do less 
 than drop a tear by the new-made grave of this noble and lumi- 
 nous spirit, and speak a kind word in his memory? 
 
 In addition to this, I can truthfully say the people of South 
 Dakota greatly admired and loved Cushiuax K. Davis. They 
 felt under special obligations to him. Years ago the people of 
 the then Territory long struggled for recognition and to be 
 admitted as a State into the Federal Union. We felt we were 
 denied rights justly due us and guaranteed under the Federal 
 Constitution. Every effort was made by our people with the 
 
IS- Life and Character of Cushman A*. Davis. 
 
 greatest earnestness and persistency, but Congress resisted 
 every appeal and stood with deaf ear to our entreaties. We 
 felt we complied with all the conditions to entitle us to state- 
 hood. Upon partisan grounds for long years we were denied 
 either consideration or recognition. 
 
 At that time Senator Davis rendered us conspicuous service. 
 He appreciated the aspirations of our people, and with his 
 strong sense of justice came to our assistance. From the 
 vantage ground of his position in the Senate he was most 
 potential in promoting the cause of admission. He made one 
 of the strongest arguments in our behalf when the matter was 
 pending before that bod) . 
 
 We appreciateil and loved him then. We admired him 
 throughout his public life for his scholarship, his ability, his 
 high purposes, and his patriotism. Great, noble, splendid 
 soul, though of Minnesota, he belonged to the Northwest, and 
 inspired it with his leadership, and he unstintingly had its 
 admiration. Although the Northwest might claim him; his 
 great talents or his fame could not be circumscribed. He 
 belonged to the whole country, and his noble and generous 
 manhood made him an ideal citizen of the Republic. 
 
 His life is a splendid study. Many beautiful and ennobling 
 lessons have been drawn from it in our hearing here to-day. 
 It is, and will be, an inspiration to the American youth. It 
 gives substantial evidence of what may be accomplished in the 
 highest sense under the rule of a republic. His aims were high, 
 his purposes far-reaching, and with patience and industry he was 
 willing to labor and to study, knowing in time the rich treasures 
 he was gathering would serve him well in the years to come. 
 
 He did not mean that his life should be narrow. His studies 
 were broad and his experiences comprehensive. His earlier 
 and later training well fitted him for the extensive range and 
 
Address of Mr. Gamble, of South Dakota. [53 
 
 application of his high qualities and abilities. From the nature 
 of his training he was fully equipped for every duty he was 
 called upon to perforin. His life was a natural and orderly 
 development through all its stages: A resolute and tireless 
 youth; a patient and splendid student; a patriotic and noble 
 young man, who offered his life as a sacrifice, if need be, to the 
 integrity of his country; a wise and helpful citizen; a keen, 
 well-equipped, and learned lawyer; a scholar, rich in the 
 knowledge and experience of the world; a great executive 
 of his adopted State; a legislator of conspicuous ability; a 
 diplomat whose fame was not circumscribed by the limits <>t 
 the Republic: 
 
 His services to his country were great. The people had 
 unusual faith in his judgment. He was a patriot always, and 
 had unbounded confidence in the destiny of the Republic. At 
 no time in his public career did his wise counsel and splendid 
 statesmanship seem so essential to his country as at the time 
 of his decease. 
 
 He was easily a leader among the great men of the nation in 
 helping to solve the momentous questions that came as a 
 result of the recent war. The country looked to him as to 
 none other in the Senate as being the real leader in their 
 solution. By his researches, his learning, and high order of 
 talents he was best equipped for that purpose. His states- 
 manship had been most potential in shaping our policy so far 
 toward our new possessions. Had his life been spared he 
 would have been in position to have rendered most conspicuous 
 service in solving our definite and permanent relations with 
 these new and distant peoples. 
 
 He had 110 misgivings for the future. He believed we had 
 been led by a higher instinct and that the richness of the 
 Orient was to be ours, not only for our civilization and our 
 
i.S4 Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 munificent influences in government, but for the wealth of our 
 commerce, the glory of our people, and to assert, where we 
 rightfully should, our highest and plainest duty to the world 
 and to ourselves. 
 
 Cushman K. Davis will always be a conspicuous figure in 
 a great epoch in our country's history. He led us, as I believe 
 no other statesman led us, into the great pathway of our future 
 destiny. And in his exalted position, in the very zenith of 
 his power and of his usefulness and service to his country he 
 loved so well, his light went out. 
 
 Death takes us unawares, 
 
 Ami stays our hurrying feet. 
 The great design unfinished lies, 
 
 Our lives are incomplete. 
 
 His life was well rounded, replete with unusual service, 
 complete, however much we had hoped for his future. In the 
 midst of his activity, his wealth of learning and his power, 
 how much more pathetic and noble his death. Resolute, 
 strong, wonderfully equipped, he was at the very forefront in 
 statesmanship in his own laud, and held high place in the 
 estimation of P^urope. He died in the service of his country 
 and in the midst of his activities. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, how grateful we should be for such a life, 
 such a noble inspiration to the youth of this great Republic, 
 inspiring to them, helpful to us. He was a leader who had 
 sublime faith in the nation's destiny. He pointed to the 
 pathway which leads to the nobler and higher civilization in 
 the world's work of the future, in which he believed this 
 Republic was to take a conspicuous part. 
 
 We speak of him as a student, a scholar, a soldier, a patriot, 
 a statesman, and a diplomat. Well may we honor the life, the 
 character, and the memory of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
Address of Mr. Eddy, of Minnesota. 155 
 
 Address of Mr. Eddy, of Minnesota. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: A mighty man among the lawmakers of 
 the nation has fallen. Words can not add to the luster of his 
 fame; his achievements are a part of history, and mere speech 
 can not add thereto or detract therefrom. 
 
 I shall not attempt to offer comfort to the bereaved hearts or 
 bind up the broken spirits of those near and dear to him by the 
 ties of kinship. God and time alone can perform this sacred 
 office. 
 
 I shall only briefly portray the impressions that the brilliant 
 Senator from Minnesota left upon my mind during a close per- 
 sonal and political acquaintance of more than twenty years. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, in the last half of the nineteenth century the 
 United States has crowded greater and more momentous events 
 into the history of humanity than all the other nations of the 
 world in all the ages of the past. During this period our 
 Republic has produced three noted men different from all 
 other men and marvelously different from each other — Lincoln, 
 Reed, and Davis. Lincoln, the greatest executive of this or 
 any other country; Reed, the master parliamentarian of the 
 ages, and Davis, unrivaled in the diversity of his information, 
 unapproachable in his knowledge of international law, and 
 unequaled in the realm of diplomacy. 
 
 Lincoln fell by the hand of an assassin immediately following 
 his great work of liberation. Reed after impressing his per- 
 sonality and individuality upon the parliamentary bodies of the 
 world, supplanting hoary precedent with modern common 
 sense, piercing Fiction's armor of time, coated with the scales 
 of centuries of prejudice, with the lance of progress, voluntarily 
 
156 Life and Character of Cushman A". Davis. 
 
 retired from an office "that has no equal and but one superior" 
 to the quiet pursuit of his chosen profession. 
 
 Davis, who, after a long series of expanding successes, 
 became the master mind in American diplomacy, dominating, 
 almost unconsciously, it is true, but none the less dominating, 
 the mighty minds that composed the peace commission and 
 virtually created the treaty of Paris, which in the years that lie 
 before will come to be regarded as one of the world's greatest 
 triumphs in diplomacy, met death with that same calm, indomi- 
 table courage with which he had overcome every obstacle that 
 confronted him in life. 
 
 It seemed to the people of the nation that these great gladia- 
 tors were called from the public arena at the very time that 
 their services were most needed: but may it not be that a 
 higher than human wisdom directed it thus, that lesser achieve- 
 ments coining after might not dim the brilliancy of the greater? 
 
 I never regarded Senator Davis as a great leader of men in 
 the popular acceptation of the term, but rather as a director of 
 leaders— one who with marvelous preciseness mapped out the 
 paths in which other and more dashing men led public thought 
 and action. He was not the captain of the ship of state, but 
 rather the pilot who stood at the wheel, to whom the captain 
 looked for guidance and upon whose knowledge of the great 
 ocean of current events he absolutely depended to keep the ves- 
 sel in the true course of progress, that it might not be stranded 
 on the shoals of misgovernment or wrecked on the rocks of 
 disaster, and to whom he never looked in vain, for a complete 
 chart of the past had he at his finger euds, and so keen was his 
 knowledge of the motives that impel men and nations to action, 
 and so accurate his conclusions as to what events would follow 
 certain causes, that he read the future with almost prophetic 
 power. 
 
Address of Mr. Eddy, of Minnesota. 157 
 
 I well remember that six months before war was declared with 
 Spain I was with him one evening in his library. Ik- was sit- 
 ting in an easy-chair in that characteristic attitude that those 
 
 wh<> knew him can so well remember, and gazing dreamily into 
 the wreaths of smoke that arose from his favorite cigar. He 
 cast a horoscope of the future and foretold great events that 
 would soon occur, conditions that would arise, problems 
 would confront the nation, and results that would be accom 
 plished with a correctness that I do not believe was ever equaled 
 since the days when God spread the future like an open hook 
 before his chosen prophets and bade them read occurrences yet 
 to come. 
 
 Although ordinary in appearance and weak of voice, he was 
 rator of first rank and power. He never resorted to the 
 artifices common to most public speakers to gain approval. He 
 seldom indulged in witticism, anecdote, sarcasm, or appealed to 
 public prejudice to attract and hold his audiences, but he com- 
 manded the attention of the multitude by the beauty of his 
 tion and the irresistible force of his logic, and when he had 
 finished a subject there was little left to add by those who con- 
 curred in his views, and nothing at all to say for those who 
 opposed his propositions. 
 
 He was original in conception, accurate in conclusion, and 
 daring in execution. He eschewed beaten pathways of thought 
 and proceeded in a way peculiarly his own, reasoning from the 
 beginning to the end, and from the end backward to the : 
 ning, or from the middle both ways, as best suited his con- 
 venience, for he was a veritable Napoleon in the domain of 
 thought, and " Davising" a question has come to mean in our 
 State solving it differently from other people, and always arriv- 
 ing at a correct solution. 
 
 He jumped at conclusions, but his was never the leap of 
 
i sS Life and Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 ignorant enthusiasm into the darkness, trusting to luck for a 
 safe lauding place, but the spring of the trained athlete who, 
 knowing his own powers., has measured the distance with an 
 eye of unerring accuracy, knows exactly how and where he is 
 goiug to alight, and by which he cleared the chasms of difficulty 
 and sped onward toward his goal, while others were compelled 
 to laboriously bridge the same chasms with the timbers of 
 experience and plod after him up the heights. 
 
 He was a tireless searcher after knowledge, and he loved to 
 delve into the musty volumes of antiquity and garner the best 
 thought and highest wisdom of the ancients in the tongues in 
 which they were spoken, which he placed in the storehouse of 
 his memory for future use. A master was he of current litera- 
 ture, in the law authority, in the arts and sciences an encyclo- 
 pedia, and his ever restless mind, like the active wife in spring- 
 time house cleaning, dug into cobwebby nooks, dust-covered 
 crannies, and dark comers, carelessly passed by others, in his 
 never-ending search for information. 
 
 He sought the secret of the insect, the flower, the leaf, and 
 the blade of grass with the same avidity and delight that 
 he solved great legal problems or mastered mighty national 
 or international questions. His waking hours were hours of 
 endless investigation, and I sometimes used to think that 
 when he slept the physical man only reposed and the mental 
 kept up its ceaseless search for cause and reason, and every 
 fact that he had ever culled from any source and ever)- con- 
 clusion he had ever reasoned out at an}- period of his life was 
 always in easy reach of one of the thousand arms of his mind, 
 and he came nearer knowing everything than any man I ever 
 met. 
 
 But it was not as a gallant soldier, a learned counselor, a 
 wise and sagacious statesman, or a skillful diplomat that those 
 
Address of Mr. Eddy, of Minnesota. 159 
 
 who knew him best love best to think of him, but as a friend, 
 for as a soldier, a lawyer, a statesman, and a diplomat he 
 belonged to the nation: but he possessed that rare geniality of 
 nature, kindliness of spirit, and magnetism of manner that 
 caused each one admitted within the charmed circle of his per- 
 sonal friendship to feel that he existed only for his benefit and 
 lived for him alone; and when the hearse bore him through 
 the long lines of his fellow-citizens to beautiful Calvary Ceme- 
 tery, where abide the dead, not only did the rich and powerful 
 bow their heads in sorrow, but tears filled the eyes of those 
 who sawed wood and washed clothes for their daily bread, and 
 who had known him and loved him from his youth up. Truly 
 can it be said, "The poor wept at his death." And the tear of 
 poverty is the truest tribute to man's worth. The sorrow of 
 the humble is always genuine; the grief of the mighty is often 
 simulated. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I would not for a moment have you think I 
 considered him a perfect man, for he was not. He had his 
 faults and failings, his weaknesses and his prejudices, that are 
 as multitudinous in the statesman as in the man who labors on 
 the street. Distinction and great ability do not create immu- 
 nity from shortcomings. Statesmanship and Frailty are often 
 brothers. 
 
 He loved little children, and they understood and loved him 
 in return. They were drawn to him by that subtle fascination 
 that only the gentle gentleman can exercise and the genuinely 
 kindly hearted man can maintain. Man may be imposed upon 
 by false friendship, but the little ones possess a God-given 
 intuition that enables them to pierce the mask of hypocris3 r and 
 read the soul, and it is always safe to trust a man in any posi- 
 tion that children love; and if the spirits of the departed know 
 the things of earth, as I believe they do, the bunches of 
 
160 Life mid Character of Cushman K. Davis. 
 
 common posies contributed by his little friends afforded him 
 the sweetest pleasure of all the floral tributes that were offered 
 in his remembrance. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I shall not attempt to recount the achieve- 
 ments, list the accomplishments, or extol the virtues of this 
 many-sided man. His record as a soldier is written with the 
 pen of action on the hearts of those who touched elbows with 
 him in those " times that tried men's souls," and with loving 
 tenderness they will transmit it to their descendants; and the 
 spoken record of affection ever has and ever will influence the 
 world more than the written pages of history. 
 
 His sword of service, which he never wore for ornament 
 and gladly laid aside when service ended, that rested upon his 
 casket as it reposed in state in Minnesota's capitol, told to the 
 people with the eloquence of silence what the dead soldier in 
 his youth was willing to do, dare, and sacrifice for the country 
 he loved ; and of his wider — I will not say greater — services 
 in the paths of civil life let the records in the archives of the 
 State and nation proclaim. And when the sons and daughters 
 of the North Star State, which claims him as its most distin- 
 guished citizen, shall erect for him a stately monument, more 
 as an evidence of their love than as a tribute to his greatness, 
 let there be inscribed on its base the simple word "Davis," 
 and the world will know the rest. 
 
 And then fat 5 o'clock and 35 minutes p. m.) the House, as 
 a further mark of respect and in accordance with its previous 
 r, adjourned. 
 
 u