James A. McKenzie
He studied law and admitted to the bar in 1861, and commenced practice in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.During the Civil War he served as a private in the Confederate States Army.Journalist and Toledo mayor Brand Whitlock described McKenzie as a colorful figure renowned for his flowery style of speaking:He was tall and spare of frame, and his long moustache and goatee, and the great black slouch hat he wore made him in appearance the typical southerner of the popular imagination.**** He was fond of striking phrases; he it was who had referred to Blaine as a Florentine mosaic; and his reference to Mrs. Cleveland as “the uncrowned queen of America” had delighted the Democratic convention at St. Louis which renominated her husband for the presidency.And again at Chicago, on that memorable night of oratory in 1892 in seconding the nomination of Cleveland on behalf of Kentucky he stood on a chair and referred to his state as the commonwealth “in which, thank God, the damned lie is the first lick, where the women are so beautiful that the aurora borealis blushes with shame, where the whiskey is so good as to make intoxication a virtue, and the horses so fleet that lightning in comparison is but a puling paralytic.”[1] This article incorporates public domain material from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress