Macon County, Missouri - Chapter 14 (1 of 2 so headed), 1910

Chapter 14

The Geology of Macon County - Tobacco - Agriculture - The Dairy - Stock Raising - A Town Lot Auction at Hudson - 'The City of Maples" - Modern Municipal Improvements - Ladies Civie League - Macon Charity Society - Drainage Work in the Chariton Valley - Wealth of the County - Some Noted Characters - Pioneer Coal Operator - John Jones and His Cave House - Why Mr. Beach Wouldn't Wear a Hat - Patriot Who Wouldn't Cut His Hair Until a Democratic President Is Elected - John Henry Griffin - * Depot" Smith - Two Lively Rival Towns - The Postal Service.......... 245

Macon And Benton

"Citizens, Macon county was named for one of the most distinguished statesmen this country ever produced. You should be proud of that name!"

No need to tell the older residents of Macon county that Senator Thomas H. Benton's stentorian voice gave utterance to the words. The use of the term, **citizens," was peculiar to Benton. Those who knew him declared that he never said ''fellow citizens." Some say his reason was that he refused to acknowledge the intimacy. In spite of that, from all accounts, Senator Benton was very courteous to the large crowd he addressed in the grove at Old Bloomington that day, in the year 1856, when he was making his eampaign for governor, the last political fight of his life. Two years later the nation mourned at his bier.

That day, when Benton spoke to an audience largely hostile, belongs to the history of Macon county. He was the most forceful character the state of Missouri, the mother of many strong characters, ever produced. He had his fighting harness on. He knew his enemies were everywhere, sowing the seeds of diseord. And the sword of the old gladiator was unsheathed. Benton was greatest when there was pronounced opposition. His eyes flashed, his great voice thundered. Bloomington was an important center. The shadows of a great Civil war were darkening the horizon. People came to the meetings there from far and near. Benton keenly appreciated the importance of that gathering. He knew what he said would be repeated for 100 miles or more. The populace fired questions at him; had he done this or that; **answer direet, sir" And direct as a rifle shot came the answer. There was no equivocation; no evasion. The statements of the veteran statesman were not buried amid a cloud of qualifying observations. If he did a thing, he said so, and told why. If he didn't, he denied it like ihe roar of a cannon. There was no mistaking where he stood on any proposition. If the people didn't like his position, it was their misfortune; he would not change to suit them. Primarily and essentially, Benton must be right. That was his trait for which his friends loved him and his enemies hated him. His absolute self-satisfaction; his belief in Benton.

Nathaniel Macon must have been a great man to receive that compliment from the lips of Benton. Had he not been a big man Benton would have said so, regardless of what the people of Macon county thought about it. It was his way.

Scarcely less prominent than Benton was the great statesman after whom Maeon county was named, the man whom President Jefferson spoke of as "The Last of the Romans," Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina.

Twelve towns in the United States perpetuate the name of Macon. Macon, Georgia, is the largest and Macon, Missouri, comes next. Macon, North Carolina, is but a village, a fourth class office. The other states having a municipal monument to the eminent North Carolinian are: Arkansas, Illinois, Kentueky, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia.

Nathaniel Macon was born in Warren county, North Carolina, in 1757, and died on his plantation there June 29, 1837, the same year Macon county, Missouri, was organized within its present lines. His ancestors were from Virginia, people of a high respeetability and more than ordinary wealth. He was edueated at Princeton, New Jersey, and was there at the opening of the war of the revolution. In 1777 he left college, and served for a short time as a private in a company of volunteers. Returning at the expiration of this service to North Carolina, he entered upon the study of law, but soon enlisted again as a volunteer, and, though divers offices were urged on him, served as a common soldier under the command of his brother, John Macon. He continued in the army till the provisional treaty of peace in 1782, and was present at the fall of Charleston; the rout at Camden, and during the pursuit of Green aeross Carolina by Lord Cornwallis. For his military serviees he steadily refused any pay; nor, after that provision had been made by the government, would he accept a pension. While yet in the army, in 1780, he was elected, in his 24th year, a member of the senate of North Carolina, in which post he continued to serve through 1785. Young as he was, he was employed on the most important committees of that body. The great questions then agitated arose from the financial difficulties of the state, and the depreciated value of the currency. It was characteristic of the man that he advocated the scheme of pledging the eredit of state to redeem her paper issues at their depreciated rates, maintaining the injustice of allowing a set of speculators to gain what the soldiers, to whom the paper had been paid, must lose. But he held that the promise of the state must, at any rate, be redeemed. During this period he was married to Miss Hannah Plummer, and soon afterwards settled on a plantation which he owned on the bank of the Roanoke, in Warren county, and made this spot his home for the remainder of his life. Here his main occupation and enjoyment were in the cultivation of his farm, in which he displayed singular skill and met with great success. Both in private and publie he showed much of the Stoic in temper, disregarding style and. pleasure, studying striet economy, and holding fast his opinions, and carrying them into practice, to whatever odium or unkind remark they might expose him. When the constitution of the United States was first submitted to the vote of the people of North Carolina, he firmly opposed it as eonferring too much power on the new government, as making it in effect independent of the states, and so of the people, and tendering to eorruption. He retained this dislike to the end of his life, and in the times of ''nullification'' he boasted of the accuracy of his forebodings. He was elected a member of the United States house of representatives in 1791, and continued in that office by successive eleetions till 1815, and was the speaker of the house from 1801 to 1806, when he would not be a eandidate for re-eleetion. From the lower house he was transferred, in 1816, to the senate, where he served till 1828, being elected the president pro tem in 1825-7. Twice during Mr. Jefferson's administration he declined the postmastergeneralship. At the general election in 1824 the state of Virginia east for him her twenty-four electoral votes for the vice-presidency of the United States. In 1828 he resigned his seat in the senate and all the other publie offices which he held, as trustee of the University of North Carolina, justice of the peace, ete. At that time he had been a member of congress for thirty-seven successive years, a longer term of continuous service than has fallen to the lot of any other legislator in our eountry. It was then his purpose to withdraw finally from every form of publie funetion. Yet, in 1835, he presided over the convention that was called to revise the constitution of North Carolina, and rendered his last political service to the country as a member of the electoral college of that state in 1856.

Mr. Macon was always a firm and consistent Democrat. He had an unlimited confidence in the capacity of the people for self-government. A favorite saying of his was that **If left alone, they will always do what is right." He was, therefore, what in later times has been called a striet construetionist. He was disposed to hold the federal government and all state authorities within the narrowest limits of the powers granted to them; and used to insist on a complete responsibility to the people by a frequent return of all trusts to them. He voted for the embargo, and for the declaration of war against Great Britain, but withstood many of the schemes of the administration for carrying it on. He held that the war should be defensive only, and so refused to enlarge the naval force beyond what was needed to guard the coasts, voted against the systems of fortifications, against privateering, ete. He also voted against all sehemes of internal improvement to be undertaken by eongress, spoke in 1795 against a grant to the Count De Grasse, and in 1824 against a grant of lands to General LaFayette for revolutionary services. In the convention of North Carolina he spoke against giving free negroes the right to vote; against a land qualification of voters; against the state engaging in any works of internal improvement; against all religious tests as a condition of holding office; in favor of annual, instead of biennial, sessions of the general assembly; and in favor of voting vivd voce at all elections. As a speaker, while he was in no sense an orator few were really more effective. His longest speech occupied hardly more than half an hour. Few men in congress were listened to with more respectful attention. Two sentences were enough to express his thanks for an election to the chair of the house of representatives, and seven words to announce to his constituents that war had been declared against Great Britain. It is hardly to be wondered at that a character so self-reliant, and with so many salient points, should have retained the publie confidence so long that Mr. Jefferson called him **the last of the Romans"; and that Mr. Randolph pronounced him **the wisest man he ever knew." He died after only a few hours' illness, but found time to give directions to a neighbor to make for him a plain coffin, to be paid for before his interment, seleeted for his burial a barren ridge, where the plough could never eome, and ordered the spot marked only by a pile of stones from the field.

'Amid the shallowness and demagoguery of today, the simple greatness of this man stands, a striking specter. Rugged of nature; firm of convietion, though not infallible; true demoerat in life, thought and loyalty; he is a type of the southerner produced by the momentous events of two merging centuries.'"