James Beauchamp “Champ” Clark (March 7, 1850 – March 2, 1921), served as Speaker of the House from 1911 until 1919, at the end of a career in the House that had begun in 1893. A Democrat from Kentucky, he published a memoir shortly after losing his final reelection bid.
It is true that John Quincy Adams was an abler man than old John, and that Gen. Benjamin Harrison easily outclassed Gen. William Henry Harrison. But no man who regards truth, and who takes cognizance of the doctrine of cause and effect, will for one moment believe that the younger Adams and the younger Harrison would ever have been President had not their illustrious ancestors held that exalted station. “Grandfather’s hat” was a great thing for paragraphers and cartoonists, and furnished the world with lots of fun in 1888, but it stirred the heart of many an old Whig who could remember the log- cabin campaign and the rhyming battle of Tippecanoe And Tyler, too. Perhaps — who knows? — it was the straw that turned the scale against the New-Yorker and in favor of the Hoosier.
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