Amos Kendall

Published by Langtree and O'Sullivan. Washington City

POLITICAL PORTRAITS WITH PEN AND PENCIL.

(No. IV.)

AMOS KENDALL.

OUR artist has been exceedingly happy in his part of our present political portrait. The etching on the opposite page will exhibit to those who do not know the Post Master General, a representation as faithful as it is spirited, of his contour and appearance. Mr. Kendall's present position is one of the proudest ever won by the mere force of personal character and talent, working out a uniform political principle, and deriving not the smallest aid from adventitious circumstances of any description. And we feel that we can do the country no more essential service, than to place before its youth the salutary example and stimulus of Mr. Kendall's striking history. As a lesson at once impressive and instructive, and as the most effectual means of opening the eyes of Mr. Kendall's political enemies, to the great wrong and injustice which their blind hostility has been led to perpetrate, in defaming with perpetual insult and untruth the person and character of a man whose whole history and life present a living refutation of aspersion.

Mr. Kendall was born August, 16th 1789, in Dunstable, Massachusetts, of the plain and hardy yeomanry of that secluded district, being the sixth of twelve children, three of whom were daughters. Dunstable is a township of farmers, giving about a hundred and twenty votes; and the character of its population may be estimated from the fact that they have never had a lawyer residing among them. Doctors, too, have often made the experiment of its healthy air and simple habits, but were soon starved out, and left it in despair of ever getting a patient. Until recently they have had no merchant, and scarcely ever a pauper, but, true to the instincts of New England, they have generally managed to support their preacher. The place is remarkable for longevity. Mr. Kendall's father is now living at the age of eighty-five, his mother having died about six years ago at the age of seventy-six, on the spot where his grandfather and grandmother had settled down' at their marriage, and where, after climbing life's hill together, they lay down peacefully at the foot of its gentle descent, in the full ripeness of honorable old age-having numbered, the former eighty-four, and the latter eighty-five, years. Many of the old residents of the vicinity have lived to a like age, and several have exceeded ninety. To the hereditary strength of constitution, naturally to be derived from such a stock, is doubtless