People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1896 — STARS ABOUT TO SET. [ARTICLE]

STARS ABOUT TO SET.

BRILLIANT SENATORS WHOSE RETIREMENT IS AT HAND. Conspicuous Statesmen Who Will Hot Be Heard In the Fifty-fifth Congress—Blackburn, Voorhees, Hill, Gordon and Cameron Among the Number. Although the changes in the personnel of the United States senate will not be numerous at the beginning of the Fifty-fifth congrees, they will be conspicuous. Many years have passed since so many prominent figures were retired at the same time, as will be remanded to lasting private life after the next senatorial elections. Voorhees, a glittering spectacle in publio service for 35 years, fluent, superficial, stentorian, belligerent, often defeated in battles of his own invention, free silverite, greenbacker, sympathizer with the southern rebellion, social, companionable, not the least of Bohemians in his younger years, will pass from public view and contemplate whether his deeds are of sufficient importance to live after him. He will be much missed. He will be regretted. His health is such that he cannot hope for re-entrance to the arena of political strife. If ex-President Harrison be not persuaded to stand for the succession, Indiana will probably be represented by no Republican of note. Turpie, whose term will end in 1899, is a strong intellect, and it would be uncomplimentary to the dominant party if they place beside him a nobody. Joe Blaokburn will be lamented almost as greatly as Voorhees. Impulsive, fiery, oftentimes coarse, he is yet known as one of the best fellows in the world. He is a notable bon vivant and will be missed at Chamberlin’s as well as in the senate. The strength of Kentucky’s representation in the senate will wane with the departure of Blackburn. Lindsay, as the successor of Beck, has been a failure. The places of such men as Beck, Carlisle, Blackburn and even of Cerro Gordo Williams cannot easily be filled, not to go back to Henry Clay. Don Cameron, silent and mysterious as he has been, will be missed from his seat, which, by the 4th of March, 1897, he will have occupied continuously for 20 years, almost as greatly,as any senator that could be named. He was secretary of war for President Grant when h« was elected to the senate to sneoeed his lamented father.

Wishing to retire, wishing his son to succeed him, recognizing the robust growth of an anti-Cameron sentiment in the state, the elder man presented his resignation to the president of the senate one Saturday in 1877 after the legislature at Harrisburg had adjourned to meet on Monday. Most of the members were out of the city, and most of them in Philadelphia. Bob Mackey was where he was most needed, and it was all arranaged that Don should be elected on Monday, as soon as the legislature was called to order and before the antiOameron element of the state could learn of the resignation of the old senator. There were 20 Republicans in the house and senate who would have voted with the Democrats for any acceptable independent Republican, but the Democrats preferred a Cameron to a half way man, and Don was elected by a party vote, Cameron and Quay are directly credited with the defeat of the last federal elections bill. They agreed to accomplish its gentle though lingering death if the Democrats would permit the tariff measure of 1890 to come to a vote. The tariff bill was passed and the elections bill deferred to the next session, when it calmly glided into the sphere where there was no hope of resurrection. None of the retiring members of the senate will be regretted more than the venerable General Palmer of Illinois, who played a part in the late elections that will have a great place in the political history of Amerioa. Since his advent in the senate, in 1891, Palmer has borne a strong hand in all sorts of legislation, though accused at times of being a little tedious, garrulous and peevish. He has always been interesting, however. It goes without saying that the passing of Senator Hill will leave a void in the senate. Whether Hill was right or wrong, he was strong. Sophist, politician, selfish, isolated, looking upon party as a machine and not a principle, he is regarded as a dangerous antagonist by the most confident and experienced debaters. Platt is another of Hill’s type, but will, if he comes to the senate, exhibit no such forensic power. Brice of Ohio and New York will be missed, more as an entertainer at his residence in the old Corcoran mansion than in the senate. Mrs. Brice has been the Mrs. Whitney of this administration to some extent, though the Brice entertainments have seemed to be less brilliant, if fully as expensive, as those of the late wife of the ex-secretary of the navy. Foraker will mow a wider swath than Brice oratorioally, though he may not socially. Vilas of Wisconsin will hardly give plaoe to a weaker man. He has been blustery and irritable. Senators do not like to be lectured, and especially by one who poses as the mouthpiece of a president who is not popular wpth any except a few cuokoos of the American house of lords. That grand old Confederate, General Gordon of Georgia, retires from choice and will devote the remainder of his life to the work in which he has been largely engaged for years—that of cementing more closely the wearers of the blue and the gray, the reuniting of the sections in bonds of confidence and love. The foregoing are the prominent senators who will surely be retired from office next March. There are others who will probably be, such as Call of Florida, Squire of Washington and Dubois of Idaho, but they are still in the ring, though somewhat disfigured.—Washington Cor. Pittsburg Dispatch.