He was a life-long Whig and Republican, and did much heavy work for his party, but official recompense never came--a marked example of the proverbial ingratitude of political parties. Others entered into his labors and took his reward.
After months of severe suffering with malignant erysipelas, he paid the debt that all must pay, which balanced the books for this world, except that the balance sheet, if left unstruck by the hand and seal of the death-king, would show him a heavy creditor of his country. He died during the December term of the Stephenson County Circuit Court, A. D. 1864, his Honor, Benj. R. Sheldon, presiding.
The Hon. Thos. J. Turner, a contemporary of the deceased at the bar, arose in Court and said:
"It is difficult for me to find words to express what we all feel on this solemn occasion. Hon. Martin P. Sweet is dead. We shall not again hear from his lips the burning eloquence that in times past has thrilled the court and the bar, as he held up to view the enormities of crimes which he had been called upon to prosecute; or the melting pathos with which he captivated the sympathies of jury and people, while defending those he regarded innocent. Few men ever possessed that magnetic power which chains an audience in a greater degree than did our departed friend.
"It is not alone at the bar that he has left his impress as a leading mind. In the arena of politics, and in the sacred desk, he was alike conspicuous. Logical in argument, terrible in invective, and quick in repartee, he carried the judgments of the jury or an audience. Or failing here his quick sympathies and deep pathos led them along against the convictions of judgment. Such was Martin P. Sweet as an orator and advocate. A self-made man, he surmounted difficulties which would discourage and defeat others, and reached a position at the bar second to none, and established a reputation as an orator of which any man among us might well feel proud.
"But it is not as a public or professional man alone that we mourn him to-day. Mr. Sweet immigrated to Winnebago County, in this State, in the year 1838, where, with his own hands and the help of his wife, he erected a comfortable log-house, and there entered upon that chimerical course of life which, at some time or other, in the life of almost every lawyer has held out the promise of ease, self-culture and intellectual enjoyment--the life of a farmer. But he soon found that the fields would not yield a harvest without incessant toil, and that calves and pigs did not spring indigenous from the soil. And in 1840 he left his farm and removed to Freeport, where he remained, with the exception of two or three years he was in the ministry, until his death.