The hour of his death was the hour of his greatest fame.

In his political career he had experienced the extremes of popular odium and of popular approval.

His name had at different periods been attended with as great obloquy as ever beset a public man.

It was his happy fate to have changed this before his death, and to have secured the enthusiastic approbation of every lover of the Union.

His career had been stormy, his partisanship aggressive, his course often violent, his political methods sometimes ruthless.