In the PENNYRILE of Old Kentucky And Men, Things and Events
By Savoyard
E. W. Newman
Press of the Sudwarth Company Washington 1911
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Great as Carmack was in either House of Congress, eloquent as he was on the stump,
powerful as he was as an advocate
before "twelve men in a box," he was yet made for the editorial chair of a
widely read independent political newspaper.
Like Clement L. Vallandigham, Carmack was too positive and too intense a nature to gain a
great place at the bar, except
before the jury. Unlike the politician, the lawyer cannot choose his cause, and Carmack
was a man who could not argue a
brief in the rectitude of which he had little faith. He had the intellect to command the
logic, and the mind to
analyze a legal principle; but he did not have the temperament of a lawyer as did Ben
Hill, or Matt Carpenter, or Allen
G. Thurman, or John G. Carlisle.
Hence it was perfectly natural for Carmack to abandon the bar for the forum. He became an
editor, and no more gifted
pen ever reinforced that noble profession. Perhaps our country has produced two perfect
newspaper men-Charles A. Dana
and Joseph B. McCulloch-possible Henry J. Raymond might be added to the list. These were
as great as writers as they
were as gatherers of news. Carmack was not a news man; but as a commentator on events and
on men, as the advocate of
living principles, American journalism has rarely known his equal, and never his superior.
One of his favorite authors
was Edgar Allan Poe, and with the exception of Poe, the first man of letters of our
hemisphere, I do not believe Edward
Ward Carmack ever had a superior in America in the mastery of the expression of the
English tongue. He was a dull man
who would not forego a night's sleep to hear Ned Carmack recite "Annabel
Lee."
_________
But before Carmack laid hand on Poe he had drank copiously at that richest fount of our
speech, the English Bible.
Except Benjamin F. Butler, I recall no man in our public life who quoted so frequently and
so aptly from Sacred Writ as
he. He reveled in the Psalms, and in the pulpit he would have been another Simpson,
perhaps another Campbell. In the
editorial chair he was far more than a gifted writer. He was a student and a thinker.
But he was more, infinitely more
than that, than these, than all-he believed something, and like another Luther, he would
go to Worms though it were to
his death, and so he did, and so he was a martyr to duty and to country.
Though an editor were Hazlett, Macaulay and Hume combined, and had no belief except as the
wind listeth, he would be a
Samson without his locks-one Greeley, or one Carmack, worth ten thousand like him. To
convince others one must himself
be convinced, to move others, one must himself be moved. It was his character and his
beliefs that made Carmack the
force he was, that commanded the love of millions, and pity 'tis 'tis true, that
brought him to an untimely grave.
(will continue)
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