Mr. SPEAKER: Duty and desire alike prompt me to offer
to the memory of the distinguished dead a just and tender
tribute. I was not within the inner circle of his friends,
for he was a generation just preceding my own, but I knew him
personally and well for more than one-half the years of my life;
and during all these years, however much at times we might chance
to differ in our personal choice of measures, as of men, we were
never on other than friendly terms; and his closest friends are
now, it give me great pleasure to add, equally near and dear
to me.
It was on Monday, the 9th day of July, last summer, that
HENRY CULLEN ADAMS crossed the bar and saw, face
to face, his Pilot and his God.
He was on his journey home. The first session of the present
Congress, in which he had played a somewhat stirring,
strenuous, and conspicuous part, had just passed into recorded
history. Against the urgent and the anxious counsel and advice
of his colleagues and of his friends he had stayed to see the
word "finis" written at the end of the last chapter.
In thus playing his prescribed part in this drama of modern American
history making, played as it is in the fierce limelight of national
publicity, he had overestimated his frail and then enfeebled
health beyond the point its marvelous elasticity had permitted
in the past. Thus the dreaded messenger overtook him, speeding
homeward behind the modern fiery foe of distance and of time,
serving the inevitable summons even before he could reach again
home, wife, children, and find rest. For a week or more, in a
quite room at the Auditorium Hotel, in Chicago, life grappled
with death, hope fought despair; but at last his dauntless will
gave way, and his immortal spirit winged its long voyage across
the silent river and passed through the inward-swinging gates
of eternity beyond the boundaries of time.
To his many friends in his home State, and more particularly
to the community in which fifty and six years of activity were
spent, his departure came as a rude and sudden shock. Congressman
ADAMS had for years been a man of extremely frail physique, but
he was so active, energetic, and self-reliant that no one who
knew him was quite prepared for the sad news when the tidings
of his mortal end flashed over the wires. The Obituaries, those
humble handmaidens of History, dipped their gentle pens in the
ink of brotherly love and wrote for the last time of his honorable
parentage, his humble birth, his high educational attainments,
his splendid achievements in the affairs of men, praised his
many virtues, forgot his frailties - for who hath none? - and
now we - you, his colleagues, and I, his successor - in this
Congress would say the last word and do the last honor to the
departed dead in the same spirit of kindly fellowship, for when
face to face with the unsolved mystery of mysteries who can have
thought of aught but his brother's virtues?
There were mourning and gloom manifest in his home city,
not merely in the trappings and outward tokens, the crape
and drapery on doors, the floating flags on capitol, court-house,
and city hall, but in the tearful eye, the spoken voice, and
the sad hearts of all whom "CULLY" (as he was familiarly
called) had encircled within the limits of his life.
Thus it is written that HENRY CULLEN ADAMS was born in Verona,
Oneida County, N.Y., November 28, 1850.
His father was Benjamin Franklin Adams, a very cultured gentleman
and a graduate of Hamilton College, New York, in which institution
of learning he was for some time professor of Greek and Latin.
But the East was not to be the field of action in which the
ambitions of HENRY CULLEN ADAMS should find
development. In the early fifties, all but a babe in his
mother's arms, his parents bore him with them westward. Thus
it was that at the last session of Congress his voice rang out
in clarion tones for what he believed to be the best interests
of the West.
Wisconsin had only shortly before been admitted into the
proud sisterhood of sovereign States, and to her virgin soil
he
wisely pitched his tent. At first the Adams family lived
at Beaver Dam, later moved to Liberty Prairie, and finally settled
near Madison, the old farm being now a part of the capital city.
The elder Adams had a great love for agriculture. In this
respect the influence of the father was strikingly reflected
in his
honored son. From his days upon the farm at Liberty Prairie
agriculture and its kindred pursuits became the constant theme
of his oratory and the field of his success. It was not, however,
as a farmer, but as a champion and spokesman of farm industries,
that HENRY CULLEN ADAMS climbed the ladder of fame.
He early realized that knowledge constitutes power. While
doing his share of the work on his father's farm he longed for
the magic wand - an education. It may be that the young man,
looking into the dim vistas of the future with the prophetic
eye of home and ambition, saw gleaming on some far-away hilltop
the dome of the National Capitol, which by pursuing steadily
the pathway of loyalty to Ceres he was to reach before his journey's
end. After the public schools he attended for one year the little
academy that lies nestled away from the main highways of men
in the beautiful town of Albion. This little institution of learning,
by the way, was destined to produce men in Wisconsin who have
come to be leaders in law, letters, and politics. The names of
Justice Charles K. Bardeen and Senator Knute Nelson occur to
me as illustrating the high type of his scholarship, and many
of these noted men were classmates of our departed friend. He
was also for three years a student at the University of Wisconsin,
but ill health, his constantly recurring affliction, prevented
graduation, as it did his subsequent essay on a legal career.
He undertook to read law in a law office, but was forced to desist,
and thereupon engaged in the dairy and fruit business as an avocation,
in which he continued up to the last fifteen years, which, aside
from his official duties, he largely devoted to real estate.
Mr. ADAMS's activity in the great field he had made his life
study was too extended and varied for me to review within
the limits of my time. It is enough to point out that by
virtue of his superior education, clear and forceful rhetoric,
and profound interest in agriculture his rise rapid and continuous
in the esteem and confidence of the farmers of his State. He
was institute conductor, and one of the most popular. He became
secretary of the State Horticulture Society; then president of
the State Dairymen's Association, a field in which his greatest
honors were won. He was for a long time an influential member
on the State board of agriculture. Linked with that of his devoted
personal friend, former Governor William Dempster Hoard, the
name of HENRY CULLEN ADAMS will long be found high in the annals
of agriculture and dairying not only in Wisconsin, but in all
the West.
His political history is equally varied and extensive. It
follows naturally that a man so gifted as Mr. ADAMS should be
a leader in the great American pastime - politics. From the
time he entered the legislative assembly, in the early eighties,
up to his death, with the exception of a very few years, he was
serving the public and his party in some high official position.
He was assemblyman, superintendent of public property, dairy
and food commissioner, and Congressman. It was in the two latter
positions that he did the greatest good for his fellowmen. His
successor as dairy and food commissioner has given Mr. ADAMS
very high praise for laying the foundations through wise legislation
of the dairy and department, perhaps the most essential department
in the State government for the protection of the people from
the injurious consequences of the sale of fraudulent adulterations
of food.
Mr. ADAMS was a Republican. He was high in the councils of
the party. For years he was a member of the State
central committee. In State and Congressional conventions
his voice was generally heard, and frequently as presiding officer.
He was, too, at one time a delegate at large to the Republican
national convention. But though a party man, he was never intensely
partisan. He could differ with men and not harbor feeling. He
was too full of the milk of human kindness to permit the base
feeling of envy, malice, or hatred to corrode his heart. He loved
his friends and clung to them, but he wanted no enemies and had
extremely few.
Mr. ADAMS was rich in his family life. He was married in
1878 to Anna B. Norton, of Madison, a good wife and
gracious lady, who still survives him. They have four children
- two sons and two daughters, splendid types of manhood and womanhood.
HENRY CULLEN ADAMS was of an independent mind. In this Hall
he more that once demonstrated his moral
courage and his independence. Nay, more; he displayed the
highest quality of soul - that of self-sacrifice. It was the
verdict of his colleagues and of his friends when he passed away
that in the service of his country he made the sacrifice, greater
than which no man can take, for the land he loves and the welfare
of its people. He gave all he had - his strength, his life.
The great bard of the Romans sang of old "Dulce et decorum
est pro patria mori," a strain of patriotic sentiment that
has
reechoed in the hearts of men down to us through all the
corridors of time. And may we not say that if war has its heroism,
no less has peace, for who in public life does not know that
it takes as much of moral courage and of self-sacrifice to stand
up for conscience and for right on the battlefields of peace
as upon the wild, delirious fields of war?