Never man handsomer in person or more winning in manners.
Sprung from a race of political aristocrats, he was born to early and shining success in public life.

Of moderate opinions, winning and prudent, wherever he appeared he carried his audience with him.

He had been elected on the ticket with Buchanan to the second office under the Government, when he was but five and thirty years of age.

There was nothing for him to gain from a division of the Union; the Presidency, perhaps, if the Union continued undivided.

But he could not resist the onrush of disunionism, went with the South, which he served first in the field and later as Confederate Secretary of War, and after a few years of self-imposed exile in Europe returned to Kentucky to die at four and fifty, a defeated and disappointed old man.
The adjoining state of Tennessee was represented in the Senate by one of the most problematic characters in American history.