county-fathers of Tuolumne.

In the early days, the Virginians, New Yorkers, and Tennesseans, led in
politics. Trained to the stump at home, the Virginians and Tennesseans
were ready on all occasions to run a primary-meeting, a convention, or a
canvass. There was scarcely a mining-camp in the State in which there
was not a leading local politician from one or both of these States. The
New Yorker understood all the inside management of party organization,
and was up to all the smart tactics developed in the lively struggles of
parties in the times when Whiggery and Democracy fiercely fought for
rule in the Empire State. Broderick was a New Yorker, trained by Tammany
in its palmy days. He was a chief, who rose from the ranks, and ruled by
force of will. Thick-set, strong-limbed, full-chested, with immense
driving-power in his back-head, he was an athlete whose stalwart
physique was of more value to him than the gift of eloquence, or even
the power of money. The sharpest lawyers and the richest money-kings
alike went down before this uncultured and moneyless man, who dominated
the clans of San Francisco simply by right of his manhood. He was not
without a sort of eloquence of his own. He spoke right to the point, and
his words fell like the thud of a shillalah; or rang like the clash of
steel. He dealt with the rough elements of politics in an exciting and
turbulent period of California politics, and was more of a border chief
than an Ivanhoe in his modes of warfare. He reached the United States
Senate, and in his first speech in that august body he honored his
manhood by an allusion to his father, a stone mason, whose hands, said
Broderick, had helped to erect the very walls of the chamber in which he
spoke. When a man gets as high as the United States Senate, there is
less tax upon his magnanimity in acknowledging his humble origin than
while he is lower down the ladder. You seldom hear a man boast how low
he began until he is far up toward the summit of his ambition.