Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 24.djvu/314

 306 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Seward, Sumner, Hale, Wade, Cameron, Harlan, Trumbull, Wilson, Fessenden, Anthony and Douglas. Among those from the South who had left the Senate previous to Clingman's disappearance, were Jefferson Davis, James M. Mason, Judah P. Benjamin, Robert Toombs, Slidell, and others hardly less notable. It is by all odds the most historical Senate in its membership that has ever assembled, or there is hardly one whose name is not written indelibly in history. Of all the notable Southerners, Clingman is the only one remaining above the sod, and Harlan is the only one of the Northern side.

Of the long list of great ones who were then in the House, such as Charles Francis Adams, Thaddeus Stevens, Conkling, Bingham, Burlingame, Cox, Henry Winter Davis, Sherman, Lovejoy, Vance, Lamar, Sickles, Grow, Dawes and so on, the only living ones are Sherman, Sickles, Grow and Dawes, and of the combined member- ship of the House and Senate of that period, Sherman and Grow are the only ones who are in the roster of the current Congress.

Clingman is alive, and that is all. His name will soon be added to the list of the dead, and then the Southern wing of that extra- ordinary Senate may be assembled complete in another world. Months ago Clingman disappeared from Washington, and even here there are a few who, if they were asked in regard to him, would not say that he is dead. The plain truth is that the old gentleman had exhausted his means. Not only that, but his mind has been gradu- ally weakening for years and he needed attention, which he could not have commanded except among those of his own State and who knew and loved him. First he was taken to Confederate Soldiers' Home, but this was too much for the pride of his State, the people of which ever held him in high esteem, and, broken in body and wind, without a dollar of his own in the world, he is now living at his old home at Asheville upon funds which are delicately placed at his disposal by friends who will not permit so exalted a citizen to live the late evening of his life in a charitable institution.

Almost as soon as the first bitterness of the war and of reconstruc- tion began to be less poignantly felt, Clingman reappeared in Wash- ington. During the sittings of Congress the place had fascination for him that he could not resist. He stopped at a prominent hotel as long as his purse would permit it, and then a boarding-house of the better sort was his home. For long years he was accustomed to being pointed at in public places as one of the chief figures of the days of the rebellion.

In 1878 he issued a volume of speeches and lectures, along with