Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1895 — MAHONE IS NO MORE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MAHONE IS NO MORE.

FAMOUS SOLDIER AND STATESMAN DEAD AT WASHINGTON. Waaa Favorite in the Southern Army and Saved Petersburg When Apparently Defenseless After the Great Mine Explosion. Picturesque Figure Gone. General William Mahone died at his home in Washington Tuesday afternoon. He had been failing steadily since he was stricken with paralysis nearly a week ago, and it was known that death was only a question of time. The veteran, however, showed remarkable vitality and made a strong fight against the grim angel. The country will long remember Gen. William Mahone as one of the most picturesque characters in public life during the last thirty years. Exceptionally slight in stature and frame, he has been a marked man in great assemblages. His peculiar style of dress, and especially his hat, attracted attention to him. This broad-brimmed, soft felt headgear seemed out of proportion to the tiny form beneath it. But beneath this shade sparkled a pair of the keenest eyes ever possessed by man. Gen. Mahone marks an epoch in the history of the United States since the late war. He has been during the last

quarter of a century the central figure in Virginia politics, and at one time he waa in the center of one of the most violent political storms ever waged in Congress. Ho was in his 69th year. His favorite sobriquet was ’“Hero of the Crater,” won by his wonderful courage in the attack on Petersburg, when the Federal forces sprung a mine beneath the Confederate defense. He fought like a tiger, and later historians give to him almost alone the credit of keeping Petersburg from the Union hands by repairing before sunset the shattered Confederate lines. He had joined the Confederate army at once after the secession, participated in the capture of the Norfolk navy yard in 1861, and raised and commanded the Sixth Regiment of Virginia. He was commissioned a brigadier general in March, 1864, and six months later became a major general. At the close of the war he returned to his original work of engineering, and became president of the Norfolk and Tennessee Railroad. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1879. He was like a firebrand cast into a mass of dry tinder, and from the peculiar attitude that he at once assumed he caused one of the most bitter controversies and stubborn deadlocks ever known in the history of that body. Mahone at last acted with the Republicans and gave them the organization of the Senate. His course brought down upon his head the wrath of the Democrats, but the Republicans received him with open arms, and the Federal patronage in Virginia was turned over to him. Since that time he has been the Republican leader in Virginia. He served in the Senate until 1887, when he was defeated.

GEN. MAHONE.