Aaron Burr as his
political model, but leading an irreproachable private life, he
rose by his ability to plan and execute with consummate skill the
most difficult political intrigues. He was rather under the medium
height, with a high forehead, a quick eye, and pleasing features.
He made attitude and deportment a study, and when, on his leaving
the Senate, his household furniture was sold at auction it was
noticed that the carpet before a large looking-glass in his study
was worn and threadbare. It was there that he had rehearsed his
speeches.

The "Father of the Senate" was Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina,
who had served in the ranks during the Revolution, and then in the
Senate of North Carolina. He was elected to the Second Congress,
taking his seat in October, 1791, and after having been re-elected
eleven times, generally without opposition, he was transferred to
the Senate in 1815, and re-elected until he declined in 1828, making
thirty-seven years of continuous Congressional service. At the
very commencement of his Congressional career he energetically
opposed the financial schemes of Alexander Hamilton, then Secretary
of the Treasury, and throughout his political career he was a
"strict, severe, and stringent" Democrat. Personally Mr. Macon
was a genial companion. He had none of that moroseness at the
fireside which often accompanies political distinction, and it was
said that at his home he was the kindest and most beloved of slave-
masters.

Colonel Thomas Hart Benton, who had earned the military title in
the army during the war with Great Britain, was a large, heavily
framed man, with black curly hair and whiskers, prominent features,
and a stentorian voice. He wore the high, black-silk neck-stock
and the double-breasted frock-coat of his youthful times during
his thirty years' career in the Senate, varying with the seasons
the materials of which his pantaloons were made, but never the
fashion in which they were cut. When in debate, outraging every
customary propriety of language, he would rush forward with blunt
fury upon every obstacle, like the huge, wild buffaloes then ranging
the prairies of his adopted State, whose paths, he used to subsequently
assert, would show the way through the passes of the Rocky Mountains.
He was not a popular speaker, and when he took the floor occupants
of the galleries invariably began to leave, while many Senators
devoted themselves to their correspondence. I