far, but I appeal to every sensible man whether the propositions made by him do not embrace a principle broad enough to cover all such cases. And what is the principle? It is a fearful monster, which has for the last two or three years traversed the United States with the stride of a drunken, infuriated giant, trampling down constitutions and laws and setting governments at defiance. In the city of Baltimore, in its frantic mood, it demolished the edifices of the citizens. In Charleston a convent fell a prey to its wayward humor. It is no stranger within our State, and maddened by a southern sun, its footsteps here have been marked with blood. It is the principle of mobocracy, the incarnate fiend of anarchy. For the first time it has dared to present its horrid front in the halls of legislation. The gentleman from Adams has introduced it, and upon his head be the consequences if, as I fear will be the case, it is received with welcome. Let the gentleman remember the fate of many a necromancer, whose unholy incantations have been of power to raise the devil, but not to control him, and who, while choking in the grasp of the foul spirit, has cursed the day when he meddled with the black art of sorcery. A child may unchain the hungry tiger, but, if he does, will most likely fall the earliest prey to the savage beast.

"I told this body at an early period of this debate that a fearful chasm was at our feet, and, if we waited for a little time, it would be bridged, so that we could pass it in safety. I will leap it!' cries the gentleman from Adams, impetuously. I entreat him to pause, if not for his own sake at least for the sake of those who have committed their dear rights to his charge. Let him not tempt the fate of Curtius when the country can receive no benefit from the sacrifice. Richer treasures must be thrown into that yawning gulf before it closes.

"Sir, I do most solemnly believe that upon the rejection of this resolution depends the prosperity of this State for many years to come. I believe its adoption will infuse into the legislation of the State a poison which no medicine can cure. It will part the laws from the constitution and set them adrift like the broken spars and rigging of a dismasted vessel, which beat against and destroy the very keel they were intended to support."

Notwithstanding this unanswerable speech the ten new members,―Ball, of Tunica; Bugg, of Chickasaw; Cherry, of Pontotoc; Henderson, of Bolivar; Kyle, of Marshall; McKinnie, of Panola; Nelson, of Lafayette; Ussey, of Tishemingo; Walker, of De Soto; and Warren, of Tippah,-on the 5th of January, were admitted, on the very close vote of thirty-one ayes and twenty-nine noes. Thus the reader will perceive that if Dunlap, of Hinds, had adhered to his first opinion the vote would have been a tie, for he voted in the affirmative; and had his vote been in the negative it would have taken one from the majority

and added one to the minority, so that the vote would have stood thirty to thirty.

The battle was not yet ended. It was referred to the Committee on Elections, of which King was chairman. On the 11th of January, King made a report from the majority in favor of the claimants, and at the same time made a report from the minority against them, signed by himself, Hoopes, of Claiborne, and P. K. Montgomery, of Jefferson. It briefly recapitulated the points elaborated in Prentiss's speech.

On the 12th of January the question was brought up by Mr. Johnston moving to disagree to this minority report, and Bingaman's motion to lay it on the table. The following exciting scene then occurred. The clerk proceeded to call the roll, but when he called the name of Bugg, of Chickasaw, Mr. Prentiss rose to a point of order, and appealed to the chair for a decision as to Mr. Bugg's right to vote; Mr. Prentiss's objections being under the seventeenth rule of the House, which forbids a man to vote on a question in which he is personally interested. Mr. Bugg was the member returned from the county of Chickasaw. The chair decided that Bugg had a right to vote. Prentiss appealed from the decision. Yeas and nays were called on the appeal.

The clerk again reached the name of Bugg. Again Prentiss rose to a point of order that Bugg had no right to vote on the appeal. The chair again overruled the objection. Prentiss and Cox appealed from this last decision, and once more in the rollcall the name of Bugg was reached, and once more Prentiss objected.

Here Bingaman, on leave of his second, moved to withdraw his motion. When Bugg's name was called on this motion, Prentiss again objected; the chair again overruled him. Prentiss and Cox again appealed. Here the Speaker seems to have gotten stubborn, for he refused to put the appeal to vote till the main question was put.

The journal is dry, but I rather been considerable of a row just here.

presume there must have Bingaman moved to post

pone, which, amid some ineffectual efforts at first, was carried. The House adjourned to three o'clock.

Immediately upon reassembling, Prentiss and six others, by leave, spread a protest on the journal reciting the above facts, and protesting against them "as a direct, palpable, and outrageous violation of the rule of this House, an arbitrary assumption of power, destructive of the rights of the House, and totally unprecedented in legislative bodies, etc., and praying that the protest be spread upon the journal as a perpetual memorial of their hatred and opposition to arbitrary assumption of power."

Prentiss then called upon the House for its sense in relation to Mr. Bugg's right to vote, and again, on reaching his name, Prentiss rose to the same point of order, was overruled, and took an appeal. By this time, however, the House seemed wearied out, and the chair's decision was sustained by thirty-two ayes to twenty-seven noes.

The Muse of History cannot but smile that a great constitutional battle should be fought over such a name, but it was owing to the fact that the name of his county came first on the alphabetical list of claimants.

It is said that when General Beauregard, after the battle of Bull Run, went to see the place, one of his aides remarked to him that the name was "rather a crude one to be handed down to history as the initial battle of a great war." The general quietly replied, "Not more so than Cowpens." So with the fight over the Chickasaw Bugg: it loses none of its interest because of its name.

At last, on the 16th of January, the struggle was brought to a final close. Mr. Fulton moved that the minority report be laid upon the table. Prentiss this time went for the whole. batch. He rose for the fifth time to the point of order, and objected to the ten members named in said report voting on the question. Here motions to postpone and to adjourn intervened, but failed, and, for the sixth time, Prentiss made the same point. The chair overruled it, and on appeal the vote stood thirty-three to thirty-three. Thus the chair was not sustained. Here Mr. Phillips called for a division of the question,—that is, that the right of each claimant should be separately voted upon. Prentiss objected, was overruled, appealed, and the chair was sustained. The vote was then taken seriatim on each claimant's

case separately, each one, however, not voting when his name was up, yet receiving the votes of the other nine. The report of the committee against them was therefore voted down by a majority of about thirty-seven to twenty-eight. Thus the great contest was over; the ten new members were not only seated, but their rights adjudicated and declared valid.

On the 18th of January, Prentiss, with twenty-one members of the lower house, drew up and signed a protest against the act, and a similar protest was drafted in the Senate by the Hon. George Winchester.

Never, perhaps, was there a more flagrant violation of the constitution, and never, perhaps, were men more thoroughly deceived as to its ulterior effects. The members glided into their places, legislation went on as usual, and, after the storm was past, the "ship of state" floated along with even keel, apparently not feeling a ripple upon the surface.

I presume that during this session Prentiss took very little interest in any other question, for this was the question of the hour. At this time he was much occupied in the court. When through with his business there, he would drop into the House, and, if the question was on hand, would spring to his feet, and, without apparent preparation, throw off a dazzling argument.

One of the claimants, observing his frequent absence, suspected that he went out in order to prepare his speeches, and that they were not extempore. One day he taunted him with this, and said, "Prentiss, you remind me of the little Tennessee mills in dry time; you've got to wait for a head of water every time you grind."

"Ah, colonel," replied Prentiss, with a smile, "I've always got head-water enough to grind the little grist from the Chickasaw counties, at any rate."

He was not only tried by jeers, but it was also attempted to seduce him by ambition. Every one recognized him as the coming man. He was the very head and front of the opposition. His friends implored him not to ruin his political prospects by antagonizing against himself this great and growing section of the State. The readers of his speech have seen how he answered these entreaties. He indignantly spurned such

appeals; they were even beneath his contempt. Such motives did not weigh a feather with him in the discharge of a high constitutional duty. In a matter where integrity was at stake he never counted the cost to himself personally, but would be true to his duty at every hazard and at every sacrifice. The lofty sentiments he uttered while a member of the Legislature were his pole-star throughout his public career. Even in his jests he did not spare the claimants, and when at last they were a'lowed to vote each other into the House, he, with withering sarcasm, characterized the proceeding thus: "Ay, in this matter you Chickasaw men are hoisting yourselves into our House by the waistband of your own breeches.”

To give some idea of how he appeared at this time, we shall quote from his friends and also his political opponents. Among the eminent visitors then at Jackson was the Hon. John Rowan, of Kentucky. He, as a distinguished guest, was invited to a seat within the bar of the House. He was completely enraptured with Prentiss. I give his ideas, if not his exact language, which was to this effect: "I have mingled with the magnates of the land,-Clay, Crittenden, Calhoun, Webster, Hayne, McDuffie, Wise, Everett, Jones of Tennessee, but I have never heard such an able speaker or so gifted an orator as Prentiss." This may be over-colored by the partiality of friendship, but can be substantiated by a more glowing eulogium at the hands of Sam. Dale (Colonel J. F. H. Claiborne). After describing the leaders. on his side of the House, Dale thus speaks of Prentiss :

"The opposition was then led by Prentiss, whom I then saw for the first time in his public life. He was the Tecumseh of the Legislature, and very much like that great orator in the control of his voice, the play of his countenance, and a peculiar way he had of hurling out his words,—a sort of hissing thunder. In speaking he was always energetic, often violent, and at such times the frown of Redgauntlet was stamped upon his brow, and his expression not only sardonic but satanic. He could be pathetic and persuasive, and then his voice became musical as a flute; his eye grew humid, his face sad, and he seemed to cast himself like a child into one's arms. When he was in a good humor his manner became playful, his eyes sparkling, his cheek dimpled, and there was no resisting him. The prevailing tone of his voice was a spirit-stirring clarion note, only harsh and guttural when dealing in denunciation. He had read