ration.
He was also for many years Judge of the highest court of his
State. He was a man of indefatigable industry. An accomplished
lady employed to make investigations in the public archives
of the Department of State, reported that she did not see
how he could ever have gone to bed.

He had a most affectionate and tender heart. He was very
fond of his family and friends. Although reserved and silent
in ordinary company, he was very agreeable in conversation,
and had a delightful wit. Some of the very greatest men of
his time have left on record their estimate of his greatness.

Thomas Jefferson said of him: "There is old Roger Sherman,
who never said a foolish thing in his life."

Theodore Sedgwick said: "He was a man of the selectest wisdom.
His influence was such that no measure, or part of a measure
which he advocated, ever failed to pass."

Fisher Ames said that if he were absent through a debate
and came in before the vote was taken he always voted with
Roger Sherman, as he always voted right.

Patrick Henry said that the first men in the Continental
Congress were Washington, Richard Henry Lee, and Roger Sherman,
and, later in life, that Roger Sherman and George Mason were
the greatest statesmen he ever knew. This statement, published
in the life of Mason, was carefully verified for me by my
friend, the late William Wirt Henry, grandson and biographer
of Patrick Henry, as appears by a letter from him in my possession.*

[Footnote]
*I attach a passage from Mr. William Wirt Henry's letter, dated
December 28, 1892.

"I am glad to be able to say that you may rely on the correctness
of the passage at page 221 of Howe's Historical Collections of Va.
giving Patrick Henry's estimate of Roger Sherman. It was furnished
the author by my father and though a youth I well remember Mr. Howe's
visit to Red Hill, my father's residence. My father, John Henry,
was about three years of age when his father died, but his mother
long survived Patrick Henry, as did several of his older children.
From his mother, brothers and sisters my father learned many
personal reminiscences of his father and his exceptionally
retentive memory enabled him to relate them accurately. I have
often heard him relate the reminiscences given on that page by
Mr. Howe."
[End of Footnote]

John Adams, in a letter to his wife, speaks of Sherman as
"That old Puritan, as honest as an angel, and as firm in
the cause of Independence as Mt.