Richard Hickman Menefee, who with Henry Clay and Thomas F. Marshall form the great triumvirate of early Kentucky orators, was born at Owingsville, Kentucky, December 4, 1809. He was educated at Transylvania University, and graduated from the law school of that institution in 1832. He practiced his profession at Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, for several years, when, in 1836, he was elected to the Kentucky legislature. In the legislature he won a wide reputation as an orator, and rapidly became known as the most gifted man of his age in Kentucky. In the summer of 1837 Menefee made the race for Congress and, after an exciting campaign, it was found that he had defeated his opponent, Judge Richard French. In the lower House of Congress Menefee and Sargeant S. Prentiss of Mississippi were the two young men that compelled the country's attention and admiration as orators. In 1838 William J. Graves, a Kentucky member of the House, killed Jonathan Cilley, representative from a Maine district, and the friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a duel near Washington City. Menefee was one of Graves's seconds. This affair of honor was so bitterly condemned on all sides that Congress was compelled to enact the anti-duelling law. In July, 1838, the people of Boston tendered Daniel Webster a great home-coming banquet, in Faneuil Hall, and Menefee responded very eloquently to a toast to Kentucky. One more session of Congress and he returned to Kentucky, entering upon the practice of law at Lexington, where cases pressed fast upon him. He met Henry Clay in the great Rogers will case of 1840, and Clay got the jury's verdict. Cassius M. Clay placed Menefee in nomination for the United States Senate in the Kentucky legislature of 1841, but his ill-health made his election a hazardous action. A short time before his death he drew up the mature reflections of his life, in the form of a diary, and this, only recently published, has added to his fame. Menefee died at Lexington, Kentucky, February 20, 1841. Thomas P. Marshall pronounced an eulogy upon him which has taken its rightful place among the masterpieces of American oratory; and in 1869 a Kentucky county was carved out of several other counties and named in his honor. While he was not a constructive statesman, Menefee's fame as an orator seems to grow greater with the passing of the years.

Bibliography. Speeches and Writings of Thomas F. Marshall, by W. L. Barre (Cincinnati, 1858); Richard Hickman Menefee, by John Wilson Townsend (New York, 1907).

KENTUCKY: A TOAST

[From Richard Hickman Menefee, by John Wilson Townsend (New York, 1907)]

Mr. Chairman:

I cannot remain silent under the sentiment which has just been announced and so enthusiastically received. That sentiment relates not to myself but to Kentucky—dearer to me than self. Of Kentucky I have nothing to say. There she is. In her history, from the period when first penetrated by the white man as the dark and bloody ground, down to the present, she speaks. The character to which that history entitles her is before the world. She is proud of it. She is proud of the past; she is proud of the present. And her pride is patriotic and just. As one of her sons, I ask to express in her name, the acknowledgments due to the complimentary notice you have taken of her, a notice not the less complimentary from its association with the name of Massachusetts.

There is much in the character and history of Massachusetts which should bind her in the strongest bonds to Kentucky. Your sentiment places them together: just where they ought to be. Kentucky is willing to occupy the place you have assigned her. Without respect now to subordinate differences in past events, both States stand knit together by the highest and strongest motives by which States can be impelled. I mean the motive and purpose common to each of maintaining and upholding, in every extremity and to the very last, the Union of these States and the Constitution. Massachusetts has proclaimed over and over again her resolution not to survive them. Nor will Kentucky survive them. She has embarked her whole destiny—all she has and all she hopes for—in the Union and the Constitution. Let come what may of public calamity, of faction, of sectional seduction or intimidation, or evil in any form the most dreadful to man, Kentucky, like Massachusetts, regards the overthrow of the Union as more frightful than all. Kentucky acknowledges no justification for a disruption of the Union that is not a justification for revolution itself. In that Union, and under that Constitution, Kentucky means to stand or fall. Kentucky stands by the Union in her living efforts; she means to hold fast to it in her expiring groans. With Massachusetts she means to perish, if perish she must, with hands clenched, in death, upon the Union.

If the occasion allowed it, I should like to say something of old Massachusetts. I should like to rekindle my own patriotism at her altars. Here—on this very spot—in this very hall—the sacred flame of revolutionary liberty first ascended. Here it has ever ascended. It has never been smothered—never dimmed. Perpetual—clear—holy! Behold its inspirations here in your midst! Where are the doctrines of the Union and the Constitution so incessantly inculcated as here? Where are those doctrines so enthusiastically adopted as here? The principles of the Union and the Constitution—for us another name for the principles of liberty which cannot survive their overthrow—will, in after ages, trace with delight their lineage through you. The blood of freedom is here pure. To be allied to it is to be ennobled. Massachusetts! Which of her multitude of virtues shall I commend? How can I discriminate? I will not attempt it. I take her as she is and all together—I give—Old Massachusetts! God bless her!