With
few individual exceptions, you have constantly had our votes here for all
the necessary supplies. And, more than this, you have had the services,
the blood, and the lives of our political brethren in every trial and on
every field. The beardless boy and the mature man, the humble and the
distinguished--you have had them. Through suffering and death, by disease
and in battle they have endured and fought and fell with you. Clay and
Webster each gave a son, never to be returned. From the State of my own
residence, besides other worthy but less known Whig names, we sent
Marshall, Morrison, Baker, and Hardin; they all fought, and one fell, and
in the fall of that one we lost our best Whig man. Nor were the Whigs few
in number, or laggard in the day of danger. In that fearful, bloody,
breathless struggle at Buena Vista, where each man's hard task was to
beat back five foes or die himself, of the five high officers who
perished, four were Whigs.
In speaking of this, I mean no odious comparison between the lion-hearted
Whigs and the Democrats who fought there. On other occasions, and among
the lower officers and privates on that occasion, I doubt not the
proportion was different.
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