erved with distinction in Mexico, returning
home he indulged for a short period in an _erratic_ career which
astonished even the Kentuckians, and suddenly quitted it to beat all
rivals at the bar, and become a leading politician. Friends and
opponents agreed in pronouncing him one of the most effective speakers
in the State. His youth was too much occupied in more agreeable
pursuits, to admit of his employing profitably the educational
advantages which were offered him, but his mind, although unused to the
discipline of study, mastered all that it grappled with. He read less
and comprehended more law than any member of the profession in Kentucky.
His vigorous native intellect and acute sense, were perhaps more
formidable, for this reason. Want of science made his method of attack
more original and irresistible. In the contests of the bar and the
hustings, he was a sort of heavy armed partisan, his irregular, rapid
onslaught crushed opposition. The learning and eloquence of his ablest
antagonists availed little against his manly logic, and often sounded
like the merest folly after having been subjected to his telling
ridicule. All of his ideas seemed clearly defined; his mind was never in
a mist. His insight into character was extraordinary, and he had the
most remarkable faculty of accurate observation and life-like
reproduction, especially of ludicrous traits and scenes. His command of
humorous, graphic, forcible expression was unequaled. He had very many
noble traits of character. He was candid and truthful to bluntness. His
scorn of dissimulation and affectation of any sort, gave his manner and
speech a bluffness, and apparent want of sympathy with the feelings of
other men, which caused him often to be misunderstood. I believe that
he would rather that the whole world should have thought him a
scoundrel, than have seemed for one moment, in his own eyes, a
hypocrite. His will was dauntless, his resolution inflexible, his
courage high. He had little opportunity, during his military life, to
show the stuff that was in him, and to prove that he possessed other
qualities befitting an officer beside courage and the strictest
attention to the instruction, the comfort, and the discipline of his
men. Notwithstanding that he was a very strict disciplinarian--and
Kentucky troops have little love of discipline--he was very popular with
his men. They retaliated by nick-naming him "Bench-leg," or "Old
flint-lock," and admired him