EMBRACING
Episodes and Incidents in the Lives of the Great Men of the State
ALSO
ERRATA
Page 65, 17th line, " House of Lords" instead of " House of Com mons."
Page 551, 26th line, "Humphries" instead of "Humphreys."
BY LUCIAN LAMAR KNIGHT, M. A.
9
ILLUSTRATED
Atlanta, "Georgia FRANKLIN-TURNER COMPANY
1907

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY I/UCIAN I,AMAR KNIGHT

DEDICATED
TO
THOSE MEN
OF
PEERLESS MOLD AND RADIANT GENIUS
Whose Lives of Patriotism Upon Georgia Soil
Have Made an Empire State Illustrious and
Whose Shades ot Memory Under Distant Skies Have Made an Exile Happy

\

INTRODUCTION.
From sources widely scattered and some of them ob scure, Mr. Knight has, in the work he has accomplished with so much success, covered a field that has hitherto lain almost untrodden. There have been various tenta tive efforts to enter and cover it, but no one has made as complete a survey as the author of these volumes. He has pursued his chosen work with patience, enthusiasm and skill, qualities that always command success. Those who have written of Georgia, and of the men who have made the State famous, socially and politically, have failed in the very thing which makes Mr. Knight's work so con spicuous; they have failed to strike the keynote of the conditions which have conspired to make Georgia the most democratic State in the Union, socially conditions which still m'ake the people of the State a little different from the people of other States; not only a little different in their attitude toward the world at large, but almost to tally different in the nature and extent of their versatility, their originality, and what may be termed their character istic individuality. There were large sections of other parts of the country where similar conditions prevailed, but, with respect to the individual, these conditions failed ^ to produce the same or similar results. To the casual ob< server, these results will frequently seem to be the same, ' but they are different not only in kind but in degree.
To separate one instance from hundreds of its compan ions, it will be difficult to find a parallel in the revolution-

vi

INTRODUCTION.

ary period of this country to the action of a large body of Georgians, in what was then known as upper Georgia, who, harassed and worried by the British and their Tory allies, moved their families and effects to Kentucky, and then returned to their wrecked and ruined homes to wage a war of extermination against their enemies. The move ment into Kentucky was under the leadership of Elijah Clarke, renowned in the revolutionary annals of Georgia. The men of the expedition, on their return as far as Ten nessee, came in contact with Sevier and his Tennesseans, who were on their way to intercept a British command. The Georgians joined hands with them, and the result was the battle of King's Mountain, where the liberty boys were victorious. This victory must be regarded as the turningpoint of the Revolution in the South.
Another State had its Moll Pitcher, and there were bold and brave women to be found in all the colonies, but where, save in Georgia, will you find a Nancy Hart, who was active in killing and capturing the enemies of liberty ? Most of the time she was defenseless and alone, but she stood her ground valiantly, and practically defied the British commander, who was a most cruel and unscrupu lous man. The many stories told of Nancy Hart seem to be doubted by sober historians; they can not understand how one woman could have defied such a commander as Colonel Brown, of the British army. Yet every story that is told of her prowess and patriotism has a basis in solid fact. She went through those troubled times unscathed, but tradition, which is often truer than written history, has a very plausible explanation. Tradition says that once upon a time, before the revolutionary spirit had be come inflamed in Georgia, General McGillivray, the Creek

INTRODUCTION.

vn

chief, was taken ill on his way from Charleston to the Coweta towns in Alabama. When he came to Nancy Hart's house he could go no farther. She caused him to be helped from his horse, and nursed him tenderly through a long and serious illness; and such was his sense of grat itude that when Colonel Brown began his attacks on the liberty men of upper Georgia, McGillivray gave the Brit ish commander to understand that Nancy Hart was to re main undisturbed; in fine, he made it known in plain terms that if this remarkable woman and her family came to harm, the treaty between the Creeks and the British would come to an end at once. It was for this reason that Nancy Hart found it possible to defy the British and To ries, who were murdering and burning her neighbors in discriminately. Only in this way can we account for the fact that Nancy Hart was able to remain at home and defy the enemies of liberty, but this particular fact gives small clue to the character and individuality that pushed her into the most dangerous adventures. It is said that she never knew of the measures taken to insure her safe ty until she heard the statement from the lips of a prisoner when the cause of liberty was nearly won and the hard struggle was almost over; but, in any event, it would have made little difference with respect to Nancy Hart's Whig proclivities, or her burning desire to see the land free from the twin incubus of Tories and redcoats. It may well be said that she was no ordinary woman, but the real explanation of her activity and patriotism if I may be permitted to venture an opinion was the fact that she lived in Georgia, and that her nature partook of the natures of her friends and neighbors.
Some of the most notable Georgians were immigrants

Tin

INTRODUCTION.

from other States from Virginia and North Carolinabut all of them, even the most insignificant, seemed to gather something peculiar from the climate, from associa tion, from sun and soil. They suffered, to vary Shakes peare's phrase, a land change. Those who carefully read Mr. Knight's book will know what I mean will discover that in some way and by some means, Georgians were and are different from the people of the rest of the States. There is a humor about them which, though decidedly American, is still typically Georgian. Their individuality, their originality, and their social organism embody a strong flavor .of those qualities which gave charm and strength to the character of Abraham Lincoln.
The Georgia spirit is so active and vigorous, so curious and inquisitive, that by presenting a few episodes in the lives of the leading men, Mr. Knight may be said to have written not only a political but a social history of the State; and it is this feature that will commend it to all thoughtful students of the social organizations of the several States. On the other hand, the matter of the book is always so close to those elements of human nature that have a perennial interest and charm that it will appeal strongly to the general reader.
CHANDLER HARRIS.

FOREWORD.
''More honored in the breach than in the observance" may be the ancient custom which impels an author to step before the curtain; but the writer has too much rev erence for antiquity to challenge the etiquette which has so long prevailed in the republic of letters. Moreover, an explanatory word may soften the beaks of those beautiful birds of prey, the critics.
It is only restating an old truth to say that Georgians are peculiar people. Something in the soil or in the at mosphere or in what the great dramatist might call "the mettle of the pasture" seems to distinguish them from all other kindred stocks. The precise nature of this dif ferentiating element the clever scientists will have to de termine; but so thoroughly has it permeated the whole life of the State from the very earliest times that it may be gravely doubted if there is any State in the Union whose history surpasses Georgia's in unique and dramatic epi sodes. It will also be difficult to cite the State in which genius has flowered into rarer types. Almost every page of the history of Georgia is stamped with the impress of some striking individuality. Nor is it unusual to find the same family enriching the public life of the State through successive generations, and sometimes producing simulta neously numerous representatives of the most divergent original caste of mind.
The purpose of the writer in undertaking the work, the

x

FOREWORD.

initial volume of which he now offers to the public, is toi emphasize the preeminence of Georgia in this respect grouping together some of the most savory incidents in the* lives of the great men of the State. Such an exhibit may serve the additional end of stimulating an increased in terest in the biographical literature of Georgia, especially on the part of the younger generations, who are to keep the light burning in the tower. At the cost of great labor' and patient research the author has also added an appen-; dix which he ventures to state, within the limits of be coming modesty, contains the most complete collection which has yet been made of the rare gems of Georgia elo quence.
But the writer wishes it to be distinctly understood that the work is not intended to swell the number of conven tional biographies. He has used the term Reminiscences to indicate the purely informal character of the work, and to give him the largest amount of latitude in utilizing the materials which he has gathered. It is not for the pur pose of committing the fraud of an artificial recollection. The man who could project his own memory over the dusty stretch of two civic centuries could just as easily write the memoirs of Methuselah; for he \vould be in essence an antediluvian, if not in instinct an Ananias. Nor do the sketches set forth the Tales of a Grandfather. The writer is not yet among the graybeards. He is still on the morning side of the mountains. And, except in the spirit which makes him eager to keep bright the memory of the great men of Georgia, he can not lay claim to the mantle of Old Morality; but he has ever coveted the shin ing chisel of that rare Scot, who yearly visited every

FOREWORD.

xi

burial-ground among the highlands for the purpose of deepening the epitaphs of the old Covenanters.
Though he has drawn largely upon the recollections which his own acquaintance with recent times in Georgia has supplied he has depended chiefly upon the recollec tions which other fountains have furnished; but he flat ters himself with the belief that from the musty files of old newspapers and from the dingy alcoves of old libra ries he has revived numerous incidents and episodes which have long been covered by the grist of that busy mill which, sooner or later, must sift the hoarded grain of all the garners. Nor is it any special credit which he arro gates to himself. His office, in the main, has been merely to retouch the faded work of the old masters, to adjust the skylights in the gallery dome and to rescue from the spi der's web some of the neglected treasures which the sunbeams may be glad to gild. It is strange that the task has not devolved long since upon an earlier and an abler volunteer. But the field is comparatively new and the writer, in putting foot upon ground so sacred, may prove his relationship to the foolhardy Greek who defied the lightning. Still the invitation has been too fascinating to resist.
Conscious of the short-comings of the work which has occupied an invalid's leisure, he ventures to hope that the succeeding volume will in some measure supply the omis sions of the present one by adding other names to the list of great Georgians who have enriched the fair fame of the commonwealth. But, even when the work is finished, it will still, no doubt, be lacking in many respects, and the writer craves in advance from an indulgent public the most liberal measure of allowance. Perhaps his only

xii

FOREWORD.

qualification for the task is his love for the old Mother State, but he can still invoke the indulgent sympathy of Georgians as he emulates the reverent tread and gentle accent of the old custodian of St. Paul's; whom the vis itors to London are always pleased to hear, not because he adds much of interest to what the guidebooks tell, but because he loves every nook and corner of the old cathe dral.
Most of the sketches have been written on the far-off Pacific slope, in sight of the hazy snow-hoods of the Sierra Madres. The writer's workshop is at Avalon, on the Island of Santa Catalina, just off the coast of South ern California. The situation is, in many respects, unsur passed. Surrounded by the ocean murmurs and over arched by the deep tropical sky, from which the azure is seldom absent between dawn and dusk, the retreat is lit erally an unlost Paradise walled with crystal. The beau tiful semi-circular harbor recedes into an island-valley, whose "bowery hollows crowned with summer sea" sug gest the resting-place of Arthur. The fronded palms, like an emerald priesthood, girt the prospect with an inter cessory belt of green; and the air is dense with the per fume of that golden censer: the ambrosial orange. But, lulled by the magic minstrelsy of "Home, sweet home," the writer, during all the months of his long sojourn in the distant West, has never ceased, for one brief moment, to scent the sweet heather of the Blue Ridge foothills, and, even among the perpetual blooms of an island Eldorado, has lived only in the mellow memories of an ideal Georgia.
LUCIAN LAMAR KNIGHT.
Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, Cal., April 26, 1907.

CONTENTS. PART I.

CHAPTER I.

Page.

EMPEROR NAPOLEON AND AMBASSADOR CRAWEORD. .............. i

CHAPTER II.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S GEORGIA ANCESTORS. .................... 12

CHAPTER III. GEORGIA'S MODERN PROMETHEUS ............................... 26

CHAPTER IV. OLD JUDGE DOOLY of LINCOLN ................................. 37

CHAPTER V. THE STEPHENSES ............................................ 48

CHAPTER VI. THE DRAMATIC DEBUT of ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. ........... 52

CHAPTER VII.

THE SAGE OF LIBERTY HALL. .................................. 64

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LAST DAYS OF ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS, ................. 80

CHAPTER IX. LINTON STEPHENS ........................................... 91

CHAPTER X. ROBERT TOOMBS : THE IMPASSIONED MIRABEAU .................. 100

xiv

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XL

Page.

THE DRAMATIC FLIGHT OF TOOMBS INTO EXILE. ................ 113

CHAPTER XII. TOOMBS AND STEPHENS ........................................ 123

CHAPTER XIII. RANDOM CHATS WITH TOOMBS ................................. 130

CHAPTER XIV. JUDGE UNDERWOOD : THE NOTED WIT. .......................... 140

CHAPTER XV. WILDE'S "SUMMER ROSE"..................................... 147

CHAPTER XVI.

j

THE LAMARS ................................................ 156]

CHAPTER XVII. MIRABEAU B. LAMAR, OF TEXAS ...............................
CHAPTER XVIII. L. Q. C. LAMAR, OF MISSISSIPPI. .............................. i
CHAPTER XIX. LAMAR'S FAMOUS REPLY TO HOAR. ............................ i
CHAPTER XX. LAMAR'S TILT WITH CONKLING. ............................... i<
CHAPTER XXL THE COBBS ..................................................
CHAPTER XXII. HOWELL COBB: SPEAKER OF THE NATIONAL HOUSE, GOVERNOR,,
CABINET OFFICES AND SOLDIER. ............................ 20;

CONTENTS.

xv

CHAPTER XXIII.

Page.

THOS. R. R. COBB: THE; PATRICK HENRY OF SECESSION IN GEOR GIA ...................................................... 221

CHAPTER XXIV.

THOS. R. R. COBB: THE MARTYR OF FREDERICKSBURG. .......... 230

CHAPTER XXV. "WHO is JOE BROWN ?"....................................... 239

CHAPTER XXVI.

ANOTHER CINCINNATUS ...................................... 254

CHAPTER XXVII. GEORGIA'S WAR GOVERNOR. .................................... 261

CHAPTER XXVIII. FROM THE FIERY FURNACE TO THE SENATORIAL TOGA. ........... 269

CHAPTER XXIX. BENJ. H. HILL: THE CHAMPION OF PRESIDENT DAVIS. .......... 283

CHAPTER XXX. MR. HILL DEFYING FEDERAL BAYONETS. ........................ 290

CHAPTER XXXI. RECONSTRUCTION : THE BUSH ARBOR SPEECHES. ................. 299

CHAPTER XXXII. BENJ. H. HILL : "ALMOST HOME" ............................. 310

CHAPTER XXXIII. JOHN B. GORDON : THE HERO OF APPOMATTOX. ................. 319

CHAPTER XXXIV. JOSEPH WHEELER: THE HERO OF Two FLAGS. .................. 342

xvi

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE LUMPKINS .............................................. 350

CHAPTER XXXVI. THE SUPREME COURT. ........................................ 367
CHAPTER XXXVII. Two NARROWLY AVERTED DUELS ............................... 380
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE COLQUITTS .............................................. 391
CHAPTER XXXIX. THE GUBERNATORIAL CONVENTION OF 1880 AND THE ADVENT OF
TOM WATSON ........................................... 405
CHAPTER XL. WHEN GRADY'S TIDE TURNED ................................ 417

CHAPTER XLI. GRADY AS AN UPBUILDER...................................... 427
CHAPTER XUI. GRADY AS AN ORATOR ........................................ 435
CHAPTER XUII. How GRADY PLAYED CROMWELL .............................. 444

CHAPTER XLJV. CHANCELLOR MELL : THE PARLIAMENTARIAN .................... 447
CHAPTER XL,V. THE PIERCES ................................................ 454
CHAPTER XLVI. BILL ARP. ................................................... 473

CONTENTS.

xvn

CHAPTER XLVII. Page.
UNCLE REMUS ............................................... 482
CHAPTER XLVIII. LOGAN E. BLECKLEY ......................................... 493
CHAPTER XLIX. THE JACKSONS ............................................... 504
CHAPTER L. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND THE JEWS. ..................... 510
CHAPTER LI MISCELLANEOUS ANECDOTES ................................... 521
CHAPTER LIL GEORGIA'S POEMS AND POETS .................................. 531

PART II APPENDIX.

ACCEPTING GEORGIA'S STATE CAPITOL BUILDING. John B Gordon. 573 ADIEU TO GADDISTOWN. Emory Speer......................... 679 ADIEU TO WESLEYAN. George F. Pierce....................... 583 ADVOCATING THE SUPPORT OE PRESIDENT JOHNSON. Alex. H. Ste
phens .......................... ......................... 639 AGAINST IMPERIALISM. A. O. Bacon.......................... 743 AGAINST SECESSION. Alex. H. Stephens...................... 584 AGAINST THE PEACE TERMS PROPOSED AT HAMPTON ROADS. Benj.
H. Hill ................................................. 508 ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS. Chas. C. Jones, Jr............ 667 ARK OF THE COVENANT LODGED WITH THE AMERICAN NATION.
Henry W. Grady ........................................ 692 AT THE GRAVE OF ALSTON. Howard Van Epps................. 739
BIBLE, THE. George F. Pierce,................... T ........... 580

xviir

CONTENTS.

Page. BRILLIANT THOUGHT-FLASHES AND ELOQUENT THUNDER-PEALS.. 750 BURNS. J. H. Lumpkin. ...................................... 716
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. George F. Pierce .................... 582 CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS' HOME, THE. Wm. H. Fleming......... 706
DEFIANCE of FEDERAL BAYONETS. Benj. H. Hill................ 626 DENOUNCING THE MILITARY MEASURES OF RECONSTRUCTION. Rob
ert Toombs .............................................. 608 DESPOTISM ENFORCED BY BAYONETS. Linton Stephens........... 613 DUTY OF THE HOUR. Alex. H. Stephens......................,. 637
EULOGY ON CHARLES SUMNER. L. Q. C. Lamar................ 641
FUTURE OF CUBA, THE. Wm. G. Brantley..................... 747
GEORGIA. Henry R. Jackson................................... 561 GEORGIA. Wm. H. Fleming................................... 576 GEORGIA BEREAVED OF ANOTHER SON. Martin J. Crawford...... 677 GEORGIANS MUST STAND TOGETHER. L. F. Garrard............. 737 "GOOD NIGHT, GREAT CHIEF." R. T. Daniel.................... 727 GEORGIA'S EDUCATIONAL NEEDS BEFORE THE WAR. Thos. R. R.
Cobb .................................................... 652 GREAT COMMONER, THE. Joseph E. Brown.................... 674 GRADY. John Temple Graves ................................ 681 GRADY. R. W. Patterson..................................... 687 GRANT, ULYSSES S. Emory Speer............................ 720
HEROISM OF THE FLOYD RIFLES. Thos. Hardeman, Jr........... 601 "HOLY WOMAN, THINE THE OFFICE." Howard Van Epps...... 702
"IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL SECESSION." Thos. R. R. Cobb. 589 IN FLORIDA BY THE SEA. J. H. Lumpkin....................... 748 INTELLECTUAL MOTIVE POWER. Alex. H. Stephens.............. 664 INSTRUCTING THE FEDERAL MILITARY. Howell Cobb............ 614
JOHNSTON AND LEE. Henry R. Goetchius.................... 708 LAND OF MEMORIES, THE. Alex. H. Stephens.................. 636 LEE AND DAVIS. Benj. H. Hill................................ 606 "LET THE OFFICE BE MINE TO KINDLE THE FLAMES." Benj. H.
Hill ....................... ............................. 623
MAN OF THE HOUR. J. C. C. Black........................... 630 MAN WITH His HAT IN His HAND. Clark Howell, Jr......... 723 MISSION OF THE LAWYER. Wm. R. Hammond................. 733

CONTENTS.

six

Page. MR. STEPHENS AT THE SESQUI-CENTENNIAL. Henry R. Jackson. 671 NEGRO SUFFRAGE. T. W. Hardwick............................ 730 NIL DESPERANDUM. Alex. H. Stephens........................ 662
"OH, FOR SOME BLISTERING WORDS !" Howell Cobb............ 618 OLD-TIME SLAVE, THE. P. F. Smith.......................... 567
RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR. Henry W. Grady 659
SOUTH, THE AND THE NEGRO RACE. Henry W. Grady.......... 571 SOUTH, THE OF THE FUTURE WILL NOT FORGET THE SOUTH OF THE
PAST. F. H. Richardson................................. 694 SOUTH'S MESSAGE TO THE PLUMED KNIGHT. Benj. H. Hill..... 646 SIDNEY LANIER. Walter B. Hill ............................. 712 SONG OF THE GEORGIAN. Clinton Dangerfield................... 555 SOLDIER VOTE, THE. Emory Speer............................ 596 "STAND BY YOUR STATE, YOUNG GEORGIANS." O. A. Lochrane... 557 STARS AND STRIPES. Benj. H. Hill............................ 643
"THANK GOD I, Too, AM A GEORGIAN." J. C. C. Black......... 563 TOOMBS. Chas. C. Jones, Jr................................... 666 "THOU ART A SCHOLAR, SPEAK TO IT, HORATIO." N. J. Hammond 656
WHAT THE SOUTH ASKS. Henry W. Grady.................... 691 WHAT THE SOUTH DEMANDS. Robert Toombs................. 594 WHAT WAS THE SOUTH AND WHO WERE HER PEOPLE? J. C. C.
Black ................... ............................... 649 WOMEN OF THE CONFEDERACY. Boykin Wright................. 699

xx

CONTENTS.

ARRANGED ACCORDING TO AUTHORS.
Page.
BACON, A. O. ................................................ 743 BLACK, J. C. C. ......................................563, 630, 649 BRANTLEY, WM. G. .......................................... 747 BROWN, JOSEPH E............................................. 674 COBB, HOWELL ........................................... -614, 618 COBB, THOS. R. R..........................................589, 652 CRAWFORD, MARTIN J. ........................................ 677 DANGERFIELD, CLINTON ....................................... 555 DANIEL, R. T. ............................................... 727 FLEMING, WM. H. ........................................576, 7' GARRARD, L. F. .............................................. 737' GOETCHIUS, H. R. ............................................ 7 GORDON, JOHN B. ............................................ 573 GRADY, HENRY W................................571, 659, 691, 692 GRAVES, JOHN TEMPLE ...................................... 681 HAMMOND, N. J. ............................................ 6563 HAMMOND, W. R. ........................................... 733'! HARDEMAN, THOS., JR ........................................ 601 HARDWICK, T. W. ........................................... 730 i HILL, BENJ. H......................... .598, 606, 623, 626, 643, 646 ] HILL, WALTER B. ............................................ 712 ] HOWELL, CLARK ............................................. 723 JACKSON, HENRY R. .................................... 561, 671 JONES, CHAS. C. JR. ....................................666, 667 LAMAR, L- Q. C. ............................................ 641 LOCHRANE, O. A. ............................................ 557 LUMPKIN, J. H ...........................................716, 748 ] PATTERSON, R. W. ............................................ 687
PIERCE, GEORGE F.....................................580, 582, 583
RICHARDSON, F. H. .......................................... 694 SMITH, P. F. ................................................ 567 SPEER, EMORY ......................................... 596, 679, 720 f
STEPHENS, ALEX. H......................584, 636, 637, 639, 662, 664 |
STEPHENS, LINTON ........................................... 613 I TOOMBS, ROBERT .........................................594, 608 1 VAN EPPS, HOWARD. .....................................702, 739 I WRIGHT, BOYKIN ............................................. 699 I

CONTENTS.

MI

ILLUSTRATIONS.
Opposite Page BROWN, JOSEPH E............................................. 268
BULLOCH HOMESTEAD AT ROSWELL. ...............Frontispiece.
CoBB, HOWELL ............................................... 202
COBB, THOS. R. R. ........................................... 220 COLQUITT, ALFRED HOLT ..................................... 390 GORDON, JOHN B. ............................................ 318 GRADY, HENRY W............................................. 416 HILL, BENJ. H............................................... 290 JACKSON, JAMES ............................................. 26 LAMAR, L. Q. C.............................................. 176 LAMAR, MIRABEAU B.......................................... 168 LUMPKIN, JOSEPH HENRY .................................... 350 PIERCE, GEORGE F. ............................................ 454 STEPHENS, ALEX. H........................................... 80 STEPHENS, LINTON ........................................... 90 TOOMBS, ROBERT ............................................. 100 WATSON, THOS. E. .......................................... 404

AUTHORITIES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
In the compilation of this volume the author has consulted the fol lowing authorities:
Historical Collections. White. Memoirs of Georgia. Stories of Georgia. Harris. History of Georgia. Evans. The Story of Georgia and the Georgia People. Smith. Major-General James Jackson. Charlton. Georgia Miscellanies. Chappell. Bench and Bar of Georgia. Miller. The Story of the Confederate States. Derry. Life of Robert Toombs. Stavail. Life of Alex. H. Stephens. Cleveland. Life of Alex. H. Stephens. Johnston and Browne. Life of Linton Stephens. Waddell. Life of Bishop Geo. F. Pierce. Smith. Life of Bishop James O. Andrew. Smith. Lee and His Lieutenants. Pollard. History of Georgia Baptists. Memoirs of Judge Richard H. Clark. Memorial of Howell Cobb. Boykin. Southern Authors. Rutherford. The University of Georgia. Hull. Life and Speeches of Benj. H. Hill. Hill. Life and Speeches of Henry W. Grady. Harris. History of Georgia. Avery. Life and Times of Joseph E. Brown. Fielder. Sermons and Addresses of Bishop Pierce. Haygood. Ministers and Laymen of the North Georgia Conference. Scott. Life, Times and Speeches of L. Q. C. Lamar. Mays. Life of Patrick H. Mell. Mell. History of Old Midway Church. Stacy. Reminiscences. Gordon. The Green Bag, Vol. IV, Nos. i and 2. (Magazine.) Driffcwood. Hammond. (Pamphlet.) Joseph Emerson Brown. Speer. (Pamphlet.) Grateful acknowledgments are also made to the following indi viduals for valuable assistance and cooperation: Judge Howard Van Epps, Colonel E. K. Lumpkin, Mr. A. L. Hull, Mrs. Alex. S. Erwin, Mrs. Walter B. Hill, Major Chas. W. Hubner, Judge E. C. Kontz, Mr. Frank L. Fleming, and Mr. E. R. Austin.

REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS
CHAPTER I.
Emperor Napoleon and Ambassador Crawford.
S HORTLY before the drooping banners of the Old Guard had commenced to trail upon the field of Waterloo there appeared at the court of France an arrival of unusual dignity of bearing whose whole aspect seemed to suggest that another emperor had come to Paris. It was evident from the most casual glance that the handsome stranger was no ordinary individual. He clearly bore the majestic stamp; but, coming unheralded and unescorted, he was probably some earl or duke with family connections on the throne. However, an examina tion of his official papers dispelled the imperial illusion by making it apparent that he boasted neither rank nor title. For he hailed from the lower edge of the Cherokee
;lt and was none other than the American ambassador: rVilliam H. Crawford, of Georgia.
The necessity of entrusting to delicate and skillful hands the problems of international diplomacy is at all times sufficiently grave to admonish the utmost wisdom of selection, but the peculiar nature of the crisis which

2

REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

existed at this time in European affairs was such as to lay an imperative emphasis upon an already binding ob ligation.
Disastrous defeat amid the snows of Russia had now chilled the Bonapartist hopes. Nor could the frost be dissipated even by the flames of, Moscow. For, while they lit the steel of the imperial army, they served to wither rather than to warm the laurels of Napoleon. But the Man of Destiny was still upon the throne of Charle magne, and some lucky move upon the chessboard of events might yet give him the conquered world of Alex ander. The decrees of Fate, if already sealed, were still unsounded; and, whatever might be the momentous issues; of to-morrow, the exile of St. Helena was as yet unrecog nized in the victor of Marengo.
Still, the uncertain possibilities combined to make the gay Parisian capital more than ever the focal center of; international developments; and, from every point of ob servation, within the vast arena, whose circuit was the] round of Christendom, the field-glasses were riveted upon the Corsican. Besides, the leading powers were all repre-j sented on the scene by veteran diplomats, some of whom] were scions of the blood royal.
At such an important crisis, the young republic of the] western hemisphere could not afford to be less vigilant] than the effete monarchies of the Old World. Moreover,! the United States government was experimenting with! the democratic idea and precedents were now to be estab-f lished which, if ill-advised or hastily considered, werfc apt to lay embargoes upon remote future generations andl might imperil the cause of liberty on both shores of thef Atlantic.

NAPOLEON AND CRAWFORD.

3

Among the leading statesmen of America who were available at this time for this important diplomatic trust, Mr. Crawford seems to have been the best equipped. Though still on the sunny side of forty, he was deep ly versed in international law, possessed broad states manship and ripe experience in public life, and was fur thermore characterized by an air of command which could not fail to make him conspicuous in any assemblage. In deed, he was reputed to be the handsomest man in the United States Senate.
Gigantic in stature, he stood considerably over six feet tall, but was well-proportioned and delicately featured. His ruddy color proclaimed that he had never known what illness meant. His broad shoulders. Atlas-like in strength, were surmounted by an immense leonine head such as Phidias might have carved for Jupiter; while, un derneath an expansive brow of tinted marble, darted the quick glances of an eagle which seemed to be looking from some mountain eyrie. Before the eyes of one who saw him for the first time there immediately shot up the figure of the pine, but his courtly bearing and his native ease of manner suggested, on more intimate acquaintance, the richer sheen of the magnolia or the softer velvet of the cedar.
An aristocrat in his personal appearance, Mr. Crawford was nevertheless of humble origin and was in debted for his success in life neither to rich family con nections nor to influential friends. He was the first of his name to achieve distinction in Georgia; and, though honors came easily after he had once leaped into public favor, he was first required to serve an obscure appren ticeship under the most exacting of taskmasters. The

4 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
brilliant diplomat who was to represent the United States government at the court of France began life as the typi cal plodder. Born of Scotch parentage in Virginia, he possessed the rudiments of an English education when at the age of fourteen he came to Georgia; and he may also have brought in his veins the blood of some Highland chieftain. But he continued to guide the plowshare until he was well past twenty-one; and, if fortune at this earlyperiod had marked him for future honors, there was cer tainly no halo about his head to distinguish him from the thousands of other country youth who were engaged in the same primitive occupation of coaxing the mule. To say the least, there was assuredly no hint of ballroom eti quette and no suggestion of Parisian court language in the simple qualifications required for this stubborn emergency; and, if the political seers had been asked to designate the man who would one day stand in the imperial audience chamber of the great Napoleon, they would never have named William H. Crawford.
But devious are the paths in which success often] travels; and, however straight may have been the fur-] rows which young Crawford was now plowing, he couk never have rounded himself into the accomplished diplo mat without describing many subsequent circles. He had already passed his legal majority; and, if he evei expected to get very far from the corn-crib, it was time for some radical change of program. What finally rousec the ambition of the young farmer does not appear, bill he saw at last the vision splendid. He caught the beckon-] ing invitation from beyond the fields. The Crawforc home was in Columbia countv; and, not far from the

NAPOLEON AND CRAWFORD.

5

upper edge of the plantation, Dr. Moses Waddell, who af terwards became president of Franklin College, taught an academy. To this Pierean spring young Crawford wended his way; and, putting himself under the tutelage of Dr. Waddell, he began at once to dip his bucket into the classic waters.
Nor was the genius of the future diplomat slow in de veloping. The very first month witnessed the most marvelous record. From being the most backward he almost instantly became the most advanced member of the class. He mastered the dead languages in the shortest space of time ever known and was soon trying his own apprentice hand on the ancient harpstrings. Before the average stu dent had learned to distinguish between an adjective and an adverb he was actually writing sonnets. This raw country youth who twelve months before was plowing upon the Savannah bottoms.
After two years of tutoring he began to prepare himself for the bar. He was very soon admitted to practice; but his brilliant talents, reinforced by his per sonal attractions, soon forced him to the front in public life. Time often plays the magician, but never had it wrought greater miracle in human flesh than it had in William H. Crawford; and it almost seemed as if, by some mysterious spell, the tallow-dip had become the in candescent light. After serving only one term in the State Legislature he leaped at one single bound into the United States Senate; and, during the illness of VicePresident DeWitt Clinton, he was chosen to preside over the upper branch of Congress, being the youngest mem ber who, up to this time, had ever wielded the senatorial gavel. He was not only one of the ablest debaters in the

6

REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

body, but one of the most active workers in the commit tee-room, and he was serving on the foreign relations committee when the gaze of President Madison rested upon him in connection with the diplomatic errand in question; and, having duly received his commission, he engaged passage on an outgoing vessel and started to France in 1813.

Accompanying Mr. Crawford to France as secretary of legation went Prof. Henry Jackson, an accomplished young educator who had recently been called to the fac ulty of Franklin College. Professor Jackson was the younger brother of the famous Governor James Jackson and the father of the late Gen. Henry R. Jackson. An intimate friendship had induced Mr. Crawford to invite Professor Jackson to accompany him; and the board of trustees had granted the young professor special leave of absence for the purpose of making this trip.
Mr. Crawford remained abroad some two years; and if not in France at the time of the battle of Waterloo he at least appears to have witnessed the return of Napoleon from Elba. The period was most eventful; but, even amid the waning fortunes of the empire, the court of France was surpassingly brilliant. Despite the republi can basis on which the government was supposed to rest an oriental monarch could not have surrounded himself with greater pomp than attended the appearance of Napoleon upon the throne. And the imperial magnificence was never greater than when William H. Crawford arrived upon the scene.
It was on this occasion that the American ambassador received from the emperor an involuntary tribute the like

NAPOLEON AND CRAWFORD.

7

of which he is said to have paid to no other mortal man. Mr. Crawford was always modest in alluding to this dra matic episode in his life; but Dr. Jackson has happily rescued the incident from oblivion. He says that, when the superb figure of the American ambassador was ar rayed for the first time in the gorgeous apparel of the French court, he riveted upon himself the astonished gaze of every one present, who simply marveled that an unpre tentious American should possess such an aristocratic carriage and appear to be so much at home among cour tiers and princes. He seems to have captivated every one as much by his conversational gifts as by his personal charms. But the culminating triumph of the American ambassador came with his formal presentation to the emperor. Struck by the distinguished appearance which Mr. Crawford presented, the astonished Napoleon betrayed the mesmeric spell which the diplomat cast upon him, not only by bowing deferentially beyond his usual stiff inclination of the imperial forehead, but by gravely repeating the formal salutation.
The force of this unique compliment can not be weak ened by any effort to make it appear that the emperor was only flattering the power which Mr. Crawford repre sented. For he had never before shown such marked def erence to any court visitor. The impression conveyed by the account is that, after bowr ing once, his eyes seemed to rest by some strange magnetic influence upon the Ameri can ambassador until he found himself unconsciously bowring the second time. And, indeed, he afterwards said that Mr. Crawford was the only man to whom he ever felt actually constrained to bow.
It may occasion some surprise that an incident so ro-

8

REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

mantic should have been so long overlooked. The story has been preserved by Stephen H. Miller, author of "The Bench and Bar of Georgia"; but; lacking the journalistic instinct, Major Miller took the advice of the almanac man and sandwiched the incident between crusty dates with the quite natural result. Unless the work is carefully read the incident is more than apt to escape notice; and valuable as the work is, it is now little known outside of the legal profession. An examination of the old files will serve to unearth many an incident of novel interest, but none more striking than this episode of the French Court in which William H. Crawford, by wresting tribute honors from the conqueror of Europe, forestalled the triumph of the Duke of Wellington!

Immediately upon the return of Mr. Crawford to the United States he accepted the portfolio of war in the Cabinet of President Madison and began to strengthen the coast defenses, following the recent naval conflict with England; but he wr as soon transferred from the War to the Treasury Department, succeeding Mr. Dallas. He discharged the duties of this position so ably that he was retained under President Monroe; but pending the cam paign wrhich ushered the new executive into the White House at Washington, it became evident that Mr. Craw ford himself was no mean favorite with the Democratic masses. Importuned to allow the use of his name in the presidential race, he declined to do so, but there were many in his party who preferred him to Mr. Monroe; and on counting the ballots it was found that out of 119 votes 54 were cast for Mr. Crawford.

NAPOLEON AND CRAWFORD.

9

Nor did his popularity begin to wane as the presidential campaign of 1824 approached. An effort had been made to fasten discredit upon his administration of the Treas ury Department, but Mr. Webster and Mr: Randolph, who officially investigated the charges, had effectually squelched them; and Mr. Crawford was now more popu lar than ever. He received the indorsement of his party over Mr. Calhoun, and entered the race under the most flattering prospects of success; but just before the elec tion, by the most untoward caprice of fate, Mr. Crawford was stricken with paralysis. He does not seem to have been completely disabled, and party interests may have been active in keeping the affair as quiet as possible; but the real nature of the attack was sufficiently surmised, even without the detective facilities of the modern tele graph office, to constitute an important factor in the op position. But though defeated, the contest was so close that, like the famous Jefferson-Burr fight of 1801, it had to be thrown into the national House of Representatives. The candidates were William H. Crawford, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams. Mr. Adams was final ly elected, largely, it is claimed, through the agency of Mr. Clay, who gave his support to the New Englander.
Governor Gilmer states that the attack of paralysis was superinduced by an improper use of lobelia taken to re lieve an attack of erysipelas. This appears to have been the trifling work of an inexperienced physician whom Mr. Crawford consulted when absent from home during the campaign. Except for this unfortunate blunder which checked one of the brightest political careers in American history, Mr. Crawr ford would in all likelihood have been the sixth president of the United States.

10 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Though he partially recovered, he was never again quite the same man. He not only found articulation difficult, but he suffered in loss of mental power.
When Mr. Crawford entered public life the code duello was in high favor with aggrieved parties who had person al disputes to settle, and no less than twice he found him self compelled by the stern ethics of the time to face an tagonists on the field of honor. In the first hostile en counter he killed his rival, Peter Van Alien, who was then solicitor-general of the Western circuit, and in the sec ond affair he met Governor John Clark, and wr as him self severelv- wounded. Both duels occurred earlv* in his political career.
The malady which retired Mr. Crawford from the arena of national politics did not entirely check his use fulness. He became judge of the Northern circuit of Georgia, holding this position from June the ist, 1827, to September the iSth, 1834, and is said to have rendered efficient service on the bench. Broken in health he did not for one moment "lag superfluous on the stage," but con tinued to prosecute his judicial labors until death at last overtook him in full harness while on his way to court. He is buried at the old homestead near Lexington. Much of his genius was inherited by his distinguished son, Na thaniel M. Crawford, one of the foremost divines and educators of this State.
Even amid the wreck of his brilliant powers he seems to] have retained an extraordinary memory for what he hadi once acquired, and frequently astonished the bar by his] wonderful feats of recollection. He never lost his love!1 for the old Greek and Latin authors; and though he had|

NAPOLEON AND CRAWFORD.

11

not studied the ancient languages under any one ex cept Dr. Waddell, he still read Homer and Virgil, Xenophon and Cicero fluently in the originals, and could no doubt have distanced most of the college professors. Moreover, he was an encyclopedia of general knowledge: an index rerum of his generation.
But it was always pathetic to look upon the palsied figure of the old giant as he ambled toward the bench or stammered out the words which had once leaped to his lips with such nimble ease. Feeble glints of the old fire still gleamed in his eyes, and dim traces of the old Apollo were still visible in his emaciated form, but it was diffi cult to realize that this infirm old jurist was the great William H. Crawford, of Georgia, for whom the presiden tial chair of the nation was not considered too high an honor, and to whom even the great Napoleon had twice bent the crown of France.

CHAPTER II.
President Roosevelt's Georgia Ancestors,
T HE biographers of President Roosevelt, with the best intentions, no doubt, have done the President an injustice. Genealogically speaking, they have made him stand on one limb. For, almost without excep tion, they have been content to trace his lineage along the paternal branch of ancestry. They have brought him into the world only half made up. And, with such an outfit, it is safe to say that he could never have mounted his charger at San Juan or won the race which has landed him on Pennsylvania Avenue! Lacking, too, the balancewheel of an intellectual dynamo in stable equilibrium, he could never have settled so adroitly the dispute between Japan and Russia or adjusted so satisfactorily to young collegians the great game of American football! So far as the biographers have gone, they have rendered an ex cellent service to his Dutch forebears; but, engaging though it is to wander through the portrait gallery of the sturdy Knickerbockers, the fact remains that the ancestral fabrics of the Chief Executive pardon the mixed meta phor were not all spun in the looms of Holland.
Such an exclusive derivation, besides making the Presi dent stand on one limb, is otherwise well calculated to
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ROOSEVELT'S GEORGIA ANCESTORS.

13

confer hops. But, to be perfectly serious, the ancestral exhibit, which the biographers have made, fail utterly to explain the brilliant American who, from the White House in Washington, has so largely dominated the af fairs of the globe. And, with all due respect to his Dutch ancestors, who challenge the profound regard of all men, there are some traits of his character which can no more be referred to the parental loins of the low country than to the windmills of Amsterdam. For the only geographical spot on the whole round globe which could have given certain bold outlines to the character of President Roosevelt is the one which lies to the south of the Potomac.
Though valuable as setting forth the ancestral qualities which have been derived from the Netherlands, the review is entirely too one-sided to render full tribute to the sym metrical proportions of President Roosevelt, and espe cially to the singular gifts which can hardly be reconciled with an origin proverbially taciturn. But, apart from dis turbing what may be called the biographical balance, it fails to reckon with the maternal contributions which are made to the character of offspring. And, even if an in ventory so deficient could flatter the President's instinct ive chivalry, it could hardly satisfy his sense of fitness.
It is an axiomatic truth that the mother not only im parts the formative touch, but also supplies, in large meas ure, the ancestral traits; and, applying this principle to the antecedents of President Roosevelt, it will be found that, while his Dutch progenitors were framing his re ligious doctrines in the austere Protestant school of Wil liam the Silent, his Georgia forefathers were fashioning his civic and military virtues in the stout revolutionary

14 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
molds of two rampant Scotch-Irish Whigs: Archibald Bulloch and Daniel Stewart.
The sage remark of Dr. Holmes, that the child's edu cation should begin at least two hundred years before his birth, is grounded in good psychology; and it seems to have been tacitly agreed among the ancestors of President Roosevelt, for several generations back, that the tame spirit of acquiescence was not to be included among his hereditary assets. For his ancestors at Savannah were fully as boisterous in reading the riot act to King George of England as were his ancestors of Utrecht in hurling Biblical texts at King Philip of Spain. On both sides of the house he appears to have come of good old resist ive timber; but he is indebted to his Georgia rather than to his Dutch forefathers for the bulk of his ancestral honors.
Some one has said that character is half heredity and half environment. Adopting the definition, it is by no means difficult to imagine what would have been the at titude of Mr. Roosevelt upon public issues could time and space have so modified the circumstances of his birth as to have cast the fortunes of his life upon the feudal days of the old South. He inherits too strikingly the character istics of his ancestors and respects too deeply the patriot ism of his kindred to resent the suggestion that he would have eagerly donned the Confederate uniform; and, stal wart though he is among the stalwarts, it requires no greater exercise of the imagination to picture him on the floor of the stormy secession convention in Georgia, dis puting the leadership with Toombs, than to picture him in the saddle on the battle-fields of Virginia, marshaling the gray legions with Lee.

ROOSEVELT'S GEORGIA ANCESTORS.

15

Archibald Bulloch was the great-great-grandfather of the President; and he prefigured the coming Theodore on more than one occasion in Savannah when his bold in dependence of thought and speech led him to step upon the teagown of the mother country, and to offer timely sugo-estions to the British Parliament. Without pressing the analogy into the glove-tight resemblances of minor de tails, the President's ancestor was one of the first patriots in the colony of Georgia. He did not wait for the news to come from Philadelphia before he espoused the cause of liberty; but, quite the reverse, it appears that fully two years in advance of the Declaration of Independence he was warning England of what might be expected in the Western Hemisphere if representation and reform were much longer delayed. The preliminary events which ushered in the American Revolution found Archibald Bul loch in the very forefront of the great cause; but he was debarred from attending the Continental Congress of 1776, whose members signed the immortal charter of freedom, because he happened at the time to be president of the Executive Council of Georgia. The royal govern ors having been relieved of "the cares of office," he was exercising the functions of the chief magistrate; and, oc cupying this position at the time of Georgia's formal sep aration from the crown, he was the first governor of the independent commonwealth.
Writing from Philadelphia, shortly before the big na tional bonfire wr as kindled, old John Adams addressed a letter to Archibald Bulloch which throws some light upon the part which the Georgia patriot had been playing in Colonial affairs. Mr. Adams told him that he was "great ly disappointed" to learn that he was not to occupy his

16 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
former seat in Congress, as he had "flattered himself with hopes" that he was soon to join his old colleagues, and to give them "the additional strength of his abilities." Moreover, he declared by way of prophetic intimation, that "a temper much more agreeable" to his wishes was likely to prevail. "But," he added, "I understand your countrymen have done themselves the justice to place you at the head of affairs at home, a station in which you may perhaps render more essential service to them and to America than you could here."
An examination of the files of the Georgia Gazette will show that a call to the inhabitants of Savannah, dated July 14, 1774, urging them to consider the propriety of resisting the oppressions of Great Britain, bears the signa ture of Archibald Bulloch. Exactly one year later he was appointed a delegate to represent Georgia in the Conti nental Congress at Philadelphia; but before his commis sion expired he was elected president of the Executive Council of Georgia and put in charge of State affairs. Notwithtsanding this important responsibility, he seems also to have been once more elected on February 2, 1776, to the Continental Congress; but he was prevented from repairing to Philadelphia on account of official duties in Georgia.
To show what Mr. Bulloch thought of Tories, he told Colonel Laurens, of South Carolina, to whom he wrote on February 15, 1776, that "there were few righteous souls among them." He declared that they were regular Esaus, and said that assistance was wanted from South Carolina "to overcome such men as would sell their birth-

ROOSEVELT'S GEORGIA ANCESTORS.

17

right for a mess of pottage." On being elected president of the Executive Council he avowed that "from the origin of the unhappy disputes" he "had heartily approved of the conduct of the Americans." And he hastened to add that his approbation was not the result of prejudice, but pro ceeded from the conviction that what the colonists had done was "agreeable to constitutional principles." "This is no time for moderation," exclaimed the old patriot. "An awful appeal has been made to heaven and thousands of lives are in jeopardy every hour. God forbid that so noble a contest should end in an infamous conclusion."
Dr. White in his "Collections," says that when the in telligence of what wras done in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, reached Savannah, Mr. Bulloch proclaimed the Dec laration of Independence to the excited populace, being the first man to read this precious document in Georgia; and still another authority states that the document was brought directly from Philadelphia by a special messenger on horseback. But it seldom happens that the forerunner is permitted to figure to any very large extent in what follows. This was conspicuously the case with Patrick Henry. But the only way in which Archibald Bulloch could be kept from battling in the foreground was by re moval from the scene of action; and, soon after hostilities commenced, the sturdy old patriot breathed his last. However, it was reserved for another Georgia ancestor to continue the work which he was now obliged to lay down and, with the proper martial accoutrements, to apply the finishing touches to the hero of San Juan.
What an out-and-out Democrat Archibald Bulloch was may be gathered from an incident which occurred just before the Revolutionary outbreak. Colonel Lachlan Me-

18 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Intosh, who commanded the Continental troops in Sa vannah, thought to compliment Mr. Bulloch upon the high office which he held as president of the Executive Council by ordering a sentinel to be posted at his door. But the republican instinct of the chief magistrate arose in rebellion and he requested the removal of the sentinel, stating that he was himself only the servant of the people, and that he wished to avoid on all occasions the appear ance of ostentation.
To establish the proper genealogical relationship be tween the present Chief Executive of the United States and the first Chief Executive of Georgia it may be said that the President's mother was Martha Bulloch. She was the daughter of Major James Stephen Bulloch, the grandson of Archibald Bulloch. During the early part of the last century Major Bulloch moved from the tide water levels to the upper foothills, locating at Roswell, Georgia, some twenty miles north of what is now Atlan ta ; but Atlanta, in those days, was not even so much as "a babe in the woods." The old Bulloch homestead in which the President's mother was born is still standing at Roswell an old-time Southern mansion, modeled upon the classical pattern, \vith immense Doric pillars support ing the spacious veranda in front, and not unlike the fa mous ante-bellum home of General Lee at Arlington. The President himself enjoyed the pleasure of standing under the ancestral roof on his visit to Georgia in the fall of 1905.
And the little town of Roswell will swell with pride at the memory of that visit down to the latest generation.

ROOSEVELT'S GEORGIA ANCESTORS.

19

From all the mountain-sides gathered the simple rustics, many of whom had never seen and never expected to see a President. And such a welcome as the little town that clay gave the nation's Chief Executive. More than all the garrish pomp of the great pageants which he had wit nessed so often, it must have touched the heart of Mr. Roosevelt to receive from his mother's people a welcome so cordial, welling up from the thousands of rugged hearts around him, pure and bold, like the crystal mountain springs of the great Blue Ridge. Nor least among the choice recollections which he carried back with him to Washington was the picture of the old black mammy who had held his fairer mother in her sable arms and crooned the tender lullabies which were destined to become his cradle-songs.

Two of the President's uncles were in the Confederate navy, James Dunwoody Bulloch, his half uncle, and Irvine S. Bulloch, his whole uncle, the former attaining the rank of captain in the service and the latter being an officer on the Alabama. Major Bulloch was twice married, his son, Captain James Dunwoody Bulloch, being the sole prod uct of the first union, and three children springing from the second, namely, Anna, Mittie and Irvine.
Mittie, or Martha, became the wife of Theodore Roose velt, Senior. She is supposed to have met her future hus band while visiting in Savannah. The marriage took place in the old Bulloch homestead at Roswell, Georgia, on December 22, 1853, and Dr. N. A. Pratt, an old Pres byterian clergyman, officiated at the altar. Major Bul loch, the President's grandfather, was superintendent of

20 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the Presbyterian Sunday-school at Roswell; and he was stricken with apoplexy one Sunday morning while the ex ercises were in progress.
Quite an odd tangle in the Bulloch family has mixed relationships and greatly annoyed the genealogists. It has already been observed that Major Bulloch was twice married. His first wife was Miss Esther Elliott, the daughter of United States Senator John Elliott by the latter's first marriage. His second wife was Mrs. Martha Stewart Elliott, the widow of Senator Elliott, by the lat ter's second marriage. In wedding the widow Elliott Major Bulloch wedded his stepmother-in-law; and Sen ator Elliott, who was already President Roosevelt's stepgreat-grandfather, now became his step-grandfather-inlaw.
But another distinguished Revolutionary ancestor of President Roosevelt in Georgia was General Daniel Stewart, for whom Stewart county was named. Martha Stewart Elliott, the President's grandmother, was the daugh ter of General Stewart. He \vas born in what was then the Parish of St. John in 1762, and was less than fifteen years of age when the war for independence commenced. He served under Sumter and Marion in the swamps of South Carolina; and being made a prisoner at Pocataligo, he was put on board a ship and subjected to the most rigorous treatment, but he succeeded after a time in ef fecting his escape. Notwithstanding his extreme youth, he proved his mettle to such an extent that he was in vested with the rank of colonel; and not long after the war closed, being called to resist the Indian depradations

ROOSEVELT'S GEORGIA ANCESTORS.

21

on the Georgia frontier, he prefigured the exploits of his strenuous descendant upon the Western plains.
It seems that the Indians in detached bodies had been making frequent inroads upon the white settlements, car rying off rich property and sometimes murdering entire households; and upon the shoulders of this young officer devolved the task of organizing the campaign against the savages. But he performed the work so effectually that no further trouble was experienced. Subsequently he was put in charge of the cavalry forces of the State with the rank of brigadier-general.
At the outbreak of the War of 1812 he was prepared to defend the soil of his native State at the head of the cavalry troops, but his services were not required. Al most if not quite as prominent in civil as in military af fairs, he was chosen an elector in 1809 and voted for President Madison. He was also an official member of old Midway church in Liberty county; and on the visit of President Washington to Georgia in 1791 he was ap pointed by this historic communion to prepare an address to the illustrious visitor.

Through General Stewart, his ancestor, President Roosevelt is enrolled among the descendants of old Mid way church, an historic religious organization in Liberty county, Georgia, from which more distinguished men have sprung than from any similar religious organization in America. The Puritan ancestors of the Midway flock originally came from Dorchester, England, and settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Later they drifted south ward and settled in Dorchester, South Carolina. And

22 RHMINISCHNCHS OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
finally, dropping the old settlement name, they crossed over the Savannah river and started the religious colony which was destined to play such an important part in the history of the commonwealth.
Organized upon Congregational lines, it was served in terchangeably by Congregational and Presbyterian preachers and among the early divines who ministered to the pastorial needs of the flock was ReA'. Abiel Holmes, the father of the famous New England poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes. The elder Holmes retained his connection with the church for something over six years; and an in teresting circumstance which marked the return of the Holmes family to the classic shades of Cambridge was the birth of the noted bard; and it was only by the barest freak of the calendar that Oliver Wendell Holmes missed being born on the soil of Georgia.
Besides preachers "ad infinitum," most of them Pres byterian, but some Baptist, some Methodist and some Episcopalian, old Midway church has sent forth scores of men who have become prominent in the various walks of life. Among the noted offspring of old Midway church may be included Drs. John and Joseph LeConte, the noted scientists, so long identified with the University of California; Chancellor P. H. Mell, of the University of Georgia; United States Senators John Elliott, Alfred Iverson and A. O. Bacon; Governors Gwinnett, Hall, Howley and Bronson; General Daniel Stewart, General John Screven, Colonel Lachlan Mclntosh, Hon. John A. Cuthbert, Hon. W. B. Fleming, Adjutant-General John Mclntosh Kell, United States Minister to China John E. Ward; Colonel Chas. Colcock Jones, Georgia's distin guished historian; Rev. Frank R. Goulding, author of

ROOSEVELT'S GEORGIA ANCESTORS.

23

''Young Marooners"; Dr. William Louis Jones, the wellknown scientist; Grant Wilkins, the well-known contract or and builder; Samuel D. Bradwell, the former State School Commisioner; Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, wife of the president of Princeton College; and scores of others, too numerous to mention. Dr. James Stacy, whose "His tory of Midway Church" appeared several years ago, enumerates eighty-one ministers of the gospel which have sprung from this noted communion: fifty Presbyterian, seventeen Baptist, thirteen Methodist and one Episcopa
lian.

Since the war the glories of old Midway church have departed, and little remains to recall the days when the de vout worshipers for miles around gathered in the famous meeting-house. The property fell into the hands of the negroes after the war; but the Midway society organized by the descendants of the former members meets annually on the sacred precincts for the purpose of reviving the hallowed memories. The reverses from which the whole of Liberty county suffered just after the war grew out of the former prosperity of this section of Georgia in the old ante-bellum days. Some of the wealthiest planters of the State lived in Liberty county. They cultivated ex tensive acres and utilized numerous slaves. And the con sequence was that after the war when the slaves were set free the blacks in Liberty county outnumbered the whites by heavy odds. At the commencement of the reconstruc tion period the whites began to leave the county in large numbers for other portions of the State. It was not long before this famous old county was almost completely de-

24 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
serted by the whites; and on the floor of the General As sembly negro representatives responded to the roll-call of lawmakers. But things are now changing. The waste places are beginning to bristle with new life. Signs of returning prosperity are again visible, and old Liberty county may once more become the garden-spot of Geor gia.
At present the chief interest connected with the famous meeting-house attaches to the old burial-ground in the immediate neighborhood. One of the principal objects of the Midway Society is to keep the sacred place in repair. Within the silent precincts of this little village of the dead repose the ashes of the old pioneer worshipers, sleeping under the pendant mosses of the ancient oaks. The worn-out shepherds and the tired flocks have long communed together in the moldering dust; but the echoes which they kindled in prayer and song and exhortation are still rising in rhythmic notes of harmony to blend with the music of the spheres.
Now and then an eccentric epitaph forces a smile to the lips of the vistor who tries to decipher the inscriptions on the old tombs. Rev. Cyrus Gildersleeve, who appears to have been the master-minstrel of the village choir, has in scribed this poetic tribute to his lamented spouse:
"She, who, in Jesus, sleeps beneath this tomb Had Rachel's face and Lean's fruitful womb, Abigail's wisdom, Lydia's faithful heart, And Martha's care, with Mary's better part."
Among the tenants of the little graveyard are Governor Bronson, General Screven, General Stewart, Commodore John Mclntosh, Senator John Elliott, Louis Le Conte,

ROOSEVELT'S GEORGIA ANCESTORS.

25

the father of the great scientists, John and Joseph Le Conte, and himself an eminent scientist, and Rev. Au gustus O. Bacon, the father of Senator Bacon. Some of the monumental structures of the little cemetery are quite imposing and reveal the refinement as well as the wealth which characterized the Midway community in the days long gone. But the most conspicuous object to be seen is an aged live oak which measures nineteen feet in cir cumference and produces an immense area of shade. It seems to keep watch over the heavy sleepers who lie be neath, and to whisper that whatever may be the fate of the historic old building which stands near by, "the past at least is secure."

CHAPTER III.
Georgia's Modern Prometheus.
C ALLING down the fire of heaven has often been the invocation of impassioned rhetoric. But not since the miraculous flames were kindled upon Mount Carmel has it been more completely the accom plishment of literal fact than when Governor James Jack son, in front of the old capitol building at Louisville, drew down the solar heat to consume the iniquitous records of the Yazoo fraud. The story of Prometheus is only Gre cian fable, but the story of Governor Jackson is actual reality: an illuminated fact which closed the blackest chapter in the history of Georgia with perhaps the bright est incident to be found in the entire annals of the com monwealth.
The portrait of the old Governor which now hangs upon the walls of the present Capitol building in Atlanta, has doubtless been honored with more salutes of oratory than have all the assembled heirlooms put together; and few have been the dramatic occasions when feeling has been strong or excitement high when the gesture of some intense speaker has not pointed in eloquent apostrophe toward the canvas which holds the stern features of this beloved Georgian.
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JAMES JACKSON.

GEORGIA'S MODERN PROMETHEUS.

27

Nor can it be said that the preeminence which Gov ernor Jackson has now enjoyed for more than one hundred years is undeserved. The service which he rendered Georgia, not only in connection with the Yazoo fraud, but h; other trying emergencies as well, was unique; and he is said to have fairly idolized his adopted State. With most men patriotism is merely a sentiment, but with Governor Jackson it was a passion; and for Georgia's sake he actu ally sacrificed his property, his temporal ease and com fort, his ambition and in the end his life. From the mo ment he first landed in Savannah from England he was conspicuous for his devotion; and among his last words lie is recorded to have said that if his breast should be opened after death., Georgia would be found lettered upon his heart. An expression of fidelity which recalls the dying accents of the old soldier of the Empire, who, when the surgeon was trying to extract the fatal bullet from his breast, smilingly said : "Probe deeper, doctor, and you will find the Emperor."
In order to bring the full force of his opposition to bear upon the effort to extinguish the Yazoo fraud Governor Jackson resigned his seat in the United States Senate and entered the State Legislature as the representative from Chatham. This act of self-abnegation involved an im mense sacrifice, especially since four years of his term still remained, but no less great was the personal peril to which he exposed himself by reason of his zealous championship of the State's honor. Strange as it may seem, some of the most influential men in Georgia were involved in the Yazoo speculation, and Governor Jackson invited the deadliest feudal enmities by his patriotic course in assail ing the fortified entrenchments of the conspirators, but he

28 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
was not the man to quail in the presence of danger, espe cially where principle was at stake. Moreover, the meshes of the scheme involved many persons in the high est official positions, including his senatorial colleague; and so widespread was the contaminating effect of the monstrous fraud that Governor Jackson seems to have been the only man who possessed the requisite qualifica tions for dealing with the tremendous crisis.
But, though he is best remembered for the part which he took in expunging the Yazoo fraud, Governor Jackson was unremittingly active at all times in Georgia's service ; and some idea of his great usefulness may be inferentially derived from his various commissions as Major-General, Congressman, Governor and United States Senator. Quite in keeping with his prompt resignation of the toga was his positive refusal at an earlier period of his life to accept an election to the office of Governor on the ground that he lacked the experience which was needed for the proper discharge of the duties. Read in the light of this remote day and time the biography of Governor Jackson, from beginning to end, sounds like some fairy tale of fic tion.
The Yazoo purchase to quote the commercial title by which the transaction is least offensively known dates back to the closing decade of the eighteenth century. It will be remembered that, under the terms of the original grant from the British cro\vn, the territory of Georgia ex tended to what was vaguely described as "the south seas." But later on, when the settler's cabin had broadened the science of geography, the Mississippi river was fixed as

GEORGIA'S MODERN PROMETHEUS.

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the western boundary-line of the colony. Part of the original grant was clouded by Spanish titles, but what were known as the Yazoo lands were perfectly clear of encumbrances. Exactly how the Yazoo lands were bounded is now uncertain; but, speaking somewhat roughly, they occupied the upper belt of territory included between the Mississippi and the Chattahoochee rivers, the name being derived from the small stream which mean dered through the western portion.
Four separate companies were organized for the pur pose of engineering the deal: the Georgia, the GeorgiaMississippi, the Upper Mississippi and the Tennessee. The veiled purpose of the scheme is said to have been the for mation of an empire along what was then regarded as the western frontier, and the purchase of contiguous property, extending the acquisitions northward, was sought through the agency of companies organized in other States. Even so illustrious a patriot as Patrick Henry was concerned in one of the companies organized in Virginia; but like many others he may have been ensnared by the innocent aspect which the enterprise presented to the world. But to show the magnitude of the scheme, in Georgia alone the territory which the various companies sought to ac quire embraced not less than thirty-five million acres, a tract almost half as large as the present area of the State. And the consideration named in the transfer which was actually made under the measure which was subsequently repealed was only five hundred thousand dol lars, or less than two cents an acre!
It can not be denied that the legislative conveyance of the western lands of Georgia was accomplished by means of gross corruption. The deeding to private corporations

30 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
of the jurisdictional rights of the State to such an im mense area of land at such an absurd figure can hardly be explained on the ground that Georgia, whose popula tion was then meager, possessed more territory than she ever expected to occupy. The sheer truth lies in the fact that the most outrageous frauds were perpetrated. Some of the lawmakers may have been clean-handed in support ing the measure, but most of them were influenced by pe cuniary inducements; and if they held no shares them selves, they were related in some manner to parties who did. And so the infamous swindle was railroaded through the State Legislature. It was artfully and craftily done. Perhaps there were few members who were really con scious of the deep-dyed guilt which they had actually in curred; but the whole affair well merits that word of modern coinage graft.
But the colossal scheme was not accomplished at one fell stroke. It required several years of the most insid ious and delicate strategic operations on the part of mis sionary agents. The idea seems to have originated in the fertile brain of an unscrupulous speculator who went by the name of Thomas Washington, but whose real name appears to have been Thomas Walsh. The name which he chose was well calculated to enlist support. And he had furthermore taken some part in the war for indepen dence. But he was too well known in Georgia for shrewd bargains and sharp dealings to foster his own offspring; and so he conducted his campaign in this State by means of an ally whose name was Sullivan. Sullivan claimed, no doubt with the proper credentials, to represent the

GEORGIA'S MODERN PROMETHEUS.

31

Virginia Yazoo Company, to which Patrick Henry be longed ; and he proved such an apt pupil of Ananias that he soon aroused the acquisitive greed of all who pos sessed speculative streaks. Merchants and bankers of the highest standing in the State were easily duped by the mathematical argument of handsome dividends.
The failure of the initial effort to put the deal through successfully in 1793 only multiplied the devices by which the schemers sought to accomplish ultimate triumph. General James Gunn, the colleague of Governor Jackson in the Senate, became an outspoken champion of the landgrabbers ; and Governor Jackson himself was approached with substantial overtures, but he scornfully repelled all advances. Like John Randolph, of Roanoke, he seems to have fought the Yazoo iniquity from the very inception. The bond of attachment between Randolph and Jack son was more than ordinarily strong. It amounted to the most intense mutual admiration; and when Governor Jackson died it was John Randolph who wrote the epi taph which was inscribed upon his monument.
Governor Matthews, who then filled the chair of State, was at first strongly opposed to the Yazoo purchase; but even the Chief Executive was eventually won by the per suasive arts of the speculators, two of his sons in some way having accquired an interest in the proposed deal. At last another effort to consummate the fraudulent transac tion was made before the State Legislature, and early in 1795, the measure having passed both houses, the famous Yazoo Act was brought to Governor Matthews for his official endorsement.
An interesting incident is narrated in connection with the signing of the Act. The story goes that the old Gov-

32 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
ernor still hesitated. He was an honest man and some how he felt instinctively that the transaction was not right. But when judges and ministers were advocates of the legislation which the representatives of the people had deliberately enacted, it could hardly be expected that an old man whose sons were financially concerned would remain inflexible. Consequently he ordered his secretary to prepare him a quill so that he could soon end the tor turing suspense. But his secretary whose name was Ur'quhart was determined to thwart the designs of the speculators if possible; and, having made the quill, he first dipped it in oil, hoping that wrhen the ink refused to flow the Governor might construe the behavior of the fluid as an omen. But the clever ruse failed to work. The signature was duly affixed and the measure acquired the validity of law.
But the speculators had dealt almost exclusively with the representatives of the people in high positions, rather than with the people themselves, and the action of the lawmaking power in ceding such an extensive area of land aroused the most indignant protest from the masses. Governor Jackson from his seat in the United States Senate did not hesitate to denounce the scheme in the most scathing terms, characterizing it as dark and villainous. General Gunn, his colleague, who favored the scheme, was present when the perpetrators of the fraud were thus roundly excoriated; but what he did or said does not appear.
Most of the historians state that Governor Jackson re signed his seat in the United States Senate upon the im-

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33

portunities of the people, who urged him to come home for the purpose of fighting the conveyance, but it appears that Governor Jackson in opposing the transaction had long since threatened to take this step in the event the measure was adopted, and it was largely, if not entirely, upon his own initiative that he now surrendered the toga and returned to Georgia. As Judge Dooly says, the peo ple sorely needed some one "to contrive for them." The position which Governor Jackson took was that the trans fer, having been secured by craft, was utterly null and void; and so thoroughly were the masses in sympathy with this view that the newly-elected State Legislature under the leadership of Governor Jackson, promptly re scinded the measure.
But feeling ran high. Those who had monetary inter est in the scheme could hardly be expected to submit with out protest, and Governor Jackson exposed himself to hazardous consequences. Not only were the most delib erate efforts made to traduce his good name, but the most blood-thirsty assaults were made upon his life. Besides, he became involved in numerous duels with aggrieved par ties. He was exceedingly impetuous. Unable to sup press his scorn of what was base and contemptible, he fre quently allowed his indignation to get the better of his judgment; and he was constantly harassed down to the close of his days by the unhappy issues of this courageous crusade undertaken in behalf of Georgia's honor.
Governor Gilmer narrates an occurrence which shows how bent the people were upon punishing the offenders. An indignation meeting was called in Oglethorpe county soon after the famous Yazoo Act was passed, and one of the citizens of the county on his way to the court-house
2r

34 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
stopped by to get a friend. He chanced to meet him at the gate, and seeing that he carried a rope, he inquired:
"What is that for?" "That is to hang Musgrove with," he replied; and he looked Spanish daggers as he delivered himself of this in formation. But Musgrove, who was one of the offending members of the former Legislature, escaped the noose. He man aged to catch some rumor of what was intended and suc ceeding in eluding Judge Lynch. The crowd which as sembled at the court-house was more than ready to dis patch him; and he was lucky to have found an asylum of safe retreat. However, the incident was only typical of the public temper which was now fully aroused.
As soon as the famous Yazoo Act was rescinded by the passage of the repealing bill which Governor Jackson him self framed, it was decided that a fire should be kindled in the public square for the purpose of consuming the iniqui tous records; and accordingly both houses adjourned to the area immediately in front of the Statehouse where, amid formal ceremonies, one of the most thrilling scenes ever enacted in the history of Georgia took place.
Various accounts of the incident have been handed down, and one asserts that when everything was ready for the igniting sparks there suddenly appeared in the midst of the crowd an old man with snowy hair and beard who declared that, feeble as he was, he had come to see an act of public justice performed; and drawing from his bosom a sun-glass he declared that the fire which con sumed the monstrous iniquity should come from heaven.

GEORGIA'S MODERN PROMETHEUS.

35

It is said that when the rays of the sun focused by this means had been made instrumental in purging the foul wrong, the old man vanished as suddenly as he had first appeared.
But, eliminating the elements of myth, the fact remains that the iniquitous records were fired by means of solar heat, and that the principal actor in the scene was Gov ernor James Jackson. It was quite natural that the Yazoo companies should refuse to accept the return of the money and litigation ensued. The Supreme Court of the United States held that, under the strict construction of the law, the transfer was valid; but the general government opened negotiations with the swindlers and settled the cases eventually by the payment of large sums. In 1802 Georgia ceded the western lands to the Federal govern ment, and out of them, together with what was acquired from Spain, Alabama and Mississippi were carved.
Soon after the dramatic episode in the public square at Louisville, Governor Jackson was called to the Chief Executive chair of Georgia: an appropriate testimonial of appreciation; and, after completing his term of office as Governor, he was returned to his old seat in the United States Senate, where he continued to represent Georgia until his untimely death, which occurred in Washington on March 19, 1806, at the age of forty-nine. He is buried in the Congressional Cemetery on the banks of the Potomac.
Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, states that the wounds which Governor Jackson received in personal combats caused by his relentless prosecution of the Yazoo con spirators undoubtedly hastened the end. Nor is there anything at variance with this hypothesis in the accounts

36 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
which Judge Charlton and Colonel Chappell have pre served. His devotion to Georgia caused his death. And thus allied in double similitude to the ancient Tishbite, he not only drew down the fire from heaven to consume the workings of iniquity, but he also rose to heaven, in the flaming chariot which his zeal had furnished, to blaze upon Georgia's burnished scroll like another splendid Mars.

CHAPTER IV.
Old Judge Dooly, of Lincoln.
O VER in what Judge Long-street calls "the dark corner of Lincoln" there lived during the earlier decades of the last century an eccentric old judge of the Western circuit by the name of John M. Dooly. This gnarled old limb of the law was verily an odd speci men. Perhaps there never sat on the bench in Georgia a man whose faults were more pronounced; and, strange to say, he made no effort to conceal them. He could play a better game of poker and drink a stouter glass of ale than almost any one of the hardened offencfers who quailed under his sentences; and he even made his accom plishments in this respect a matter of jest. But in spite of his failings, the Judge possessed many sturdy and robust characteristics. And whatever else he might have been, he was certainly not a hypocrite; for he was scrupulously honest. He was also unfailingly generous and kindhearted. And oftentimes in the courtroom the sympa thetic tear is said to have lurked behind the judicial frown. Deeply versed in the law, he was really an able judge, quick to perceive the point at issue and fearless in dealing out even-handed justice to all litigants. Indeed, the ex ceptions taken to his rulings were extremely rare.
However, the saving grace in Judge Dooly's mental
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38 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
make-up was his unrivaled wit. This invested him with an outward glamour which made even his faults in the eyes of the masses seem virtuous and heroic; and usually the courtroom was crowded with spectators who were less eager to hear the eloquent pleas of counsel than to catch the luminous sparks which fell from the Judge's anvil. Lawyers seldom twitted or provoked him, because they did not care to be worsted before the jury-box; but the ordinary proceedings gave him frequent occasions for droll comment. He never hesitated either for words or for ideas; and witty retorts were always on the tip of his tongue.
Judge Dooly was notably opposed to shedding blood; and, singular as it may seem, in view of his well-known antipathies in this respect, he came of fighting stock. His father, Col. John Dooly, for whom Dooly county in this State \vas named, was killed by the Tories in an unex pected assault upon his home at the outbreak of the Rev olution; and his uncle, Capt. Thomas Dooly, suffered death in like manner at the hands of the Indians several years previous. But the Judge himself possessed little of the martial instinct. He detected no music in the roar of musketry and snuffed no perfume in the smell of gun powder. He was pronouncedly a man of peace; and, if. tradition can be trusted, he even carried his preference for the olive-branch so far that when some one called him a liar he accepted the epithet as gracefully as if the offender had tendered him the instrument which Apollo gave to Orpheus.
He may not really have been lacking in personal cour age, but his wit was so much more conspicuous than his valor in all the transactions of which we have any ac-

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count, that we are forced to leave the issue of his prowess in this particular an open question. Nor does it greatly matter. The faculty which he possessed in such an emi nent degree of being able to create laughter suffices to keep him in green remembrance. Indeed, we think of Judge Dooly when we find it difficult, if not quite impossi ble, to recall many of his contemporaries who were dis tinguished for much greater achievements; and it all goes to show that for preserving purposes at least the salt of Attica is better than the spice of Sparta.
Despite the fascination which Judge Dooly's peculiar type of mind exercised upon the masses of the State at large, the spell was not strong enough to counterbalance the fact that he belonged to the unpopular party in Geor gia ; and though he coveted political honors, he was never so base or so unprincipled as to secure them by the barter of his convictions. With all his faults this much can be truthfully said to his credit. He was never successful in winning any higher office than the judgeship. Election day almost invariably found him short at the polls. But he scored his prizes and counted his scalps and had his barrels of fun while the campaign was in progress. He was a musketeer and a swordsman both in the use of the King's English; and "few and far between" were the politicians who had the temerity in joint debate with this dreaded Ajax to hazard the fire of his deadly batteries or to challenge the flash of his Damascus blade.
During the long stretch of the civic years many unique characters have figured upon the public stage in Georgia, but the man who in all points of resemblance can success fully match this grotesque and brilliant nondescript has yet failed to appear.

40 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Concerning Judge Dooly's peculiar humors and whim sicalities there are still enough legends afloat in Georgia to fill an ordinary octavo volume of anecdotes. Most of them are spurious, but enough are genuine and well au thenticated to establish the pre-eminence which he enjoyed among the great jurists of his time for pure and unadul terated wit. If Dickens could only have met this unique character he might have improved upon the drolleries of Pickwick.
We have already intimated that the belligerent side of Judge Dooly's nature was never fully developed; but this statement requires some slight modification. He was, in fact, a fighter and a controversialist of the worst sort; but he eschewed the use of carnal weapons. He believed in confining hostilities within the safe area of legal polemics, and usually preferred the courtroom or the hustings; but he had no scruples against an occasional sortie in the newspapers.
But sometimes he carried his methods of warfare so far that his adversary, exhausted by the unequal combat, or goaded to desperation by the incessant fusillade, was obliged to insist upon other weapons for settling the dis pute. In each case Judge Dooly managed to extricate himself from the embarrassing situation without serious loss of prestige.
Becoming involved in personal difficulties on one occa sion with Judge Tait, an eminent jurist of the same sec tion of the State, he was asked by the latter after several harmless rounds of verbal sparring to grant him satisfac tion according to the code duello, which was then com monly in vogue.

OLD JUDGE DOOLY, OF LINCOLN.

41

Now, Judge Dooly had no thought of facing Judge Tait on the field of honor. But he was forced under the dire alternative of being branded as a coward to find some plausible pretext for avoiding the encounter. In this emergency he thought of Judge Tait's wooden leg.
Consequently when the challenge came Judge Dooly at once replied with unruffled good-nature that in view of his adversary's misfortune, he did not believe they could fight on equal terms and he therefore respectfully asked that the correspondence be closed.
But the reply did not have the happy effect of pacifying Judge Tait. He was not in the humor for trifling. He was tired of paper bullets, and was anxious for red cor puscles out of Judge Dooly's tough arteries. Accordingly he addressed him another letter. This time he was not so choice in his use of language. He told Judge Dooly in plain English that his refusal to give him satisfaction was due to rank cowardice, and that so far from feeling any compunctions about shedding the blood of an unfortunate cripple, he would be willing enough to riddle him into doll rags if he could only make sure of his own hide.
Still maintaining his equanimity, Judge Dooly replied by saying that according to the mode of settlement which Judge Tait proposed the latter would have immensely the advantage over him because he would be setting up an old wooden leg against two live ones; but since he was bent on settling the matter in the way proposed he was ready to meet him at any place or on any day to be agreed upon and to exchange any number of shots with him, provided he was willing to equalize matters by allowing him to put one of his legs in a bee-gum.
This clever piece of strategy only irritated and angered

42 REMINISCENCES' OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Judge Tait, who plainly saw that Judge Dooly was not disposed to meet him under any circumstances. Moreover, he felt that he was getting decidedly the worst of matters; and in order to check the wave of merriment which was beginning to ripple over the State at this stage of the cor respondence, he threatened to denounce Judge Dooly in the newspapers for refusing to meet him on the field of honor. But Judge Dooly adroitly parried the force of this final thrust by telling Judge Tait that he had rather fill any number of newspapers than one coffin.
There was nothing more to be said. Judge Tait was, of course, chagrined at the turn which affairs had taken. He expected to humiliate Judge Dooly, even if he could not force him to fight; but Judge Dooly had cleverly re versed the situation, and without putting himself in jeop ardy had come off the victor. Gallant Jack Falstaff him self could not have managed the affair with keener strat egy or with cooler discretion.
During the trial of an important criminal case in Han cock county one of the lawyers concerned in the case was observed by Judge Dooly to be drinking with somewhat more frequency and relish than ordinary thirst prescribed from an unsuspicious looking pitcher which sat conven iently near-by, and which it may be said in confidence con tained apple brandy of the best local manufacture.
At length the Judge himself was seized with an abnor mal feeling of drouth and directed the sheriff to bring him some water. Whereupon the sheriff went to the pail which sat in the corner and filling a glass with the bever-

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age hastened to relieve the parched condition under which the court was suffering.
But Judge Dooly was anxious to test the qualities of an other distillery, and declining the proffered contents, indi cated the pitcher which had previously attracted his atten tion. Straightway the order of the court was executed. Seizing- the refilled cup, Judge Dooly drank down the mel low mixture under the eye of the courtroom, every one present wearing a look of amused interest. Finally when the last drop had crossed over his stained ivories Judge Dooly smacked his lips in eloquent approval of the brand and putting down the cup said:
"Mr. Sheriff, that's the best water I've tasted since I've been holding court in this village, and I want you to keep the bench supplied hereafter from the same pump."

While holding court at Washington, Georgia, Judge Dooly's landlord had served him roast pig at each meal during court week. Three times daily the pig had made his appearance at the table with punctilious regard for ju dicial exactions. At last after five days of routine work the final repast was spread, and the pig was presented as usual to participate in the closing ceremonies. For some reason there was much of him still left. Before rising from his seat Judge Dooly called in the keeper of the ho tel and said:
"Mr. Landlord, I am through with the court except one judicial act which I will now perform. This pig is here by dismissed until the next term of the court, upon his own recognizance."

44 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
At another session of the same court Judge Dooly, after charging the newly-impaneled grand jury upon the vice of gaming, which he discussed with elaborate detail and grave earnestness, became involved himself in the evil meshes against which he had inveighed so heavily from the bench. Patronizing Buck Walker's faro-table one night, he had finally broken the bank; but whether by his continuous run of good luck or by his scientific manipula tion of the cards does not appear; and next day when confronted with his inconsistency, he hastened to reconcile matters by explaining that he had fully made up his mind to destroy this vicious practice in the county, but having failed to suppress it by juries he had decided at length to annihilate it in person.
This story is narrated of the manner in which Judge Dooly on one occasion adroitly disarmed his political ene mies and secured his reelection to the judgeship without serious opposition: Governor Troup was being roundly abused for his warlike message to the Legislature, which was then in session and was witnessing some stormy scenes. Judge Dooly was in Milledgeville at the time looking after his interests, and while standing in a crowd of hot-headed men, most of whom were the Governor's friends, some one characterized the message as an act of madness. Judge Dooly belonged to the opposite party from Governor Troup, but he immediately spoke out and said that if Governor Troup was really mad when he wrote the message he wished that the same dog that bit Governor Troup would bite him also. This clever coup completely won the Governor's friends, and when the election came up Judge Dooly had easy sailing.

OLD JUDGE DOOLY, OP LINCOLN.

45

On another occasion Judge Dooly fell out with Major Freeman Walker over some topic of dispute at a public dinner, and to make bad matters worse, he continued to fire away at him with such merciless assaults of wit that forbearance at last ceased to be a virtue, and Major Walker, rising up from his seat at the table, proceeded to ward him with an uplifted chair. In order to defend him self against this unexpected measure of redress Judge Dooly seized a carving-knife and squared himself for ac tion. Fearing an effusion of blood, several gentlemen in stantly seized hold of Judge Dooly, while one of the crowd laid hands on Major Walker. "Stop, gentlemen," cried Judge Dooly. "One of you will be enough to keep me from doing mischief; all the rest of you take hold of Major Walker." Laughter followed this declaration. Hostilities were immediately suspended and the combat ants shook hands and made up.

Shortly after the election of Mr. Adams to the Presi dency in 1825, Judge Dooly was stopping at McCombs hotel, one of the most popular taverns of North Georgia, when a young man rather foppishly dressed made himself conspicuous among the guests seated in the parlors of the establishment by complaining that the country was for ever disgraced in the defeat of such a man as Mr. Crawford at the hands of such a man as Mr. Adams, and assert ing that even General Jackson, with all his faults, was preferable to the successful candidate in the late cam paign. While this speech was being- delivered, Judge Dooly sat quietly in front of the fire with his head propped

46 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
on the back of his chair attentively listening. Finally when a lull came he spoke out: "Young man," said he, "does Mr. Adams know what your sentiments are ?"
"No, sir," replied the disaffected youth; "I wish he did."
"Then," replied Judge Dooly, "suppose I write on to Mr. Adams and tell him that you are dissatisfied with his election? Perhaps he will resign."
Stung by this taunt of ridicule which drew forth clam orous guffaws from the crowd of listeners, the embryo politician flushed scarlet, but he could find no words with which to frame an answer, and speechless and humiliated he hastened out into the street.
We can not fail to regret that one whose personality was in every respect so marked should have disappeared from the world without leaving behind him some photo graphic impression of his features. But no copy survives. In this respect Judge Dooly's visage was not unlike Olivia's charms. But the resemblance doubtless ends here. In the absence of the camera we are indebted to the pen of an observant contemporary at the bar for this descrip tive paragraph :
"When I first knew this extraordinary man he was in the prime of life and I shall never forget the impression which his person made upon me. He had a large head, with a bold, elevated forehead, heavy eyebrows, prominent nose, a small, compressed mouth, large, vivid, sparkling eyes and long eyelashes, which, frequently opening and shutting, gave his countenance an expression as if under

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the influence of an electric battery from which the be holder was almost sure at first to recoil. He was about the medium size and his head always seemed too heavy for his body, his mind too active and strong for his frame. It was his wit and sarcasm which gave him such power to please and to hurt. I never knewr his equal in either. Yet the very subject of his wit from the happy manner in which it was played upon him by the judge was generally the first to join in the loud and hearty laugh which it pro duced."
Such gifts as characterized this wonderfully endowed man might have fitted him to adorn any public station, however high or honorable, which the people could be stow. But he was forced by the limitations of circum stance to be content with the modest judicial ermine of the Western Circuit, which he did not long wear, and to-day he lives in the recollection of Georgians embalmed solely in the amber of his wit: a jester who sometimes judged and a judge who nearly always jested.

CHAPTER V.
The Stephenses.
A LEXANDER STEPHENS, an Englishman who espoused the cause of the Pretender's son, was the pioneer ancestor of the noted Stephens family of Georgia. Escaping to America in 1746, when the for tunes of the ill-starred claimant of the English crown suf fered collapse, the adventurous follower of Charles Ed ward found shelter among the Shawnee Indians in East ern Pennsylvania. He arrived upon the scene in good time to enjoy the wholesome outdoor exercise afforded by the French and Indian wars and to train himself in the school of these preliminary skirmishes for the sterner hardships and experiences of the great struggle for inde pendence. Though only a youth when he had first put the Atlantic ocean between himself and royal pursuit, he was quite a veteran when he clutched the musket to obey the revolutionary call which came from Lexington. But he measured the whole length of the bitter contest, gallantly achieving the rank of captain.
The occupations of Mars quite often obstruct the ac tivities of Cupid. Alexander Stephens was matrimonially backward. His hair had already registered the heavy snow-falls before his heart began to experience the gentler
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THE STEPHENSES.

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emotions which betoken the approach of spring. But the art of wooing was most successfully cultivated; and Cath erine Baskins, who lived at the confluence of the Susquehannah and Juanita rivers, agreed to become Mrs. Ste phens. He no doubt used to good advantage the figure of the mated streams to picture the congenial currents which he was anxious to unite and he probably sealed negotiations in the breezy angle where the waters met. But it often happens that the orange-blossoms contain the seed of discord, and it was well for Captain Stephens that he had first been hardened as a soldier before ever he posed as a lover. Parental opposition was most relent less; and, while the marriage took place, the important member of the family who by virtue of this compact be came the father-in-law of Captain Stephens was never reconciled to the nuptials. Andrew Baskins possessed wide acres and large revenues, and, as wealth was reck oned in Colonial days, he was reputed rich. He probably wished his daughter to marry the son of some wealthy baron like himself. And unhappily for Captain Stephens he did not meet this parental requirement. He had silver enough, but instead of being in his pockets, it was on his head. It suffices to say that reconciliation never took place. Disapproval became disinheritance. But the couple remained in Pennsylvania until 1795, and then coming southward the little family homestead was planted in the woods of Northern Georgia. The new settlers first located in Elbert county, but afterwards crossed over into Wilkes, locating in what later became Taliaferro.
Disowned though she was, Mrs. Stephens, with the filial reverence so characteristic of the daughters of men, christened her eldest born Andrew Baskins Stephens.

REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Captain Stephens lived many years after coming to Geor gia, and finally died in 1813 at the advanced age of eightyseven. Several children survived him; but Andrew Baskins Stephens is the only one who needs to be here consid ered. Educated in the university of the backwoods, other wise known as "the old-field school," Andrew could boast of compartively few accomplishments beyond the three R's, since patrimonial means were limited. But book learning was not considered so essential in those days; and besides he possessed what is far more important even in these days: sterling and sturdy character.
Andrew B. Stephens was married twice. His first wife, whom he married in 1807 was Mary Grier, daughter of Aaron Grier and sister of Robert Grier, famous as the originator of "Grier's Almanac," which once shared the honors with the family Bible in almost every Southern homestead. It is still held in wide repute, and is now owned and published by John B. Daniel. Three children were the fruit of this first marriage. Mary, Aaron Grier and Alexander. Alexander, who afterwards acldc,' Ham ilton to his name in honor of his preceptor, became the illustrious Alexander Hamilton Stephens, statesman, orator, author and sage, who was born February n, 1811. His mother, whose frail and delicate constitution he inherited, did not long survive his birth.
Mr. Stephens married again in 1814. His second wife was Matilda S., daughter of Col. John Lindsay. Colonel Lindsay was an officer in the Revolution. He lost his right hand during the struggle, and concealing his disfig ured member under an ornamental silver bandage he ac quired the sobriquet of "Old Silver Fist." He amassed large property at one time, but became the victim of mis-

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placed confidence and died possessed of small holdings. Five children were born of this second marriage, three of whom reached adult years, John Lindsay, an accomplished and able lawyer, Catherine B. and Linton. Linton was born on July i, 1823, and became the celebrated jurist and orator, who was scarcely less gifted than his more famous half-brother.

Losing his father and mother within seven days of each other and when he was hardly three years old, Linton went to live with his maternal grandmother; while Alex ander H. and Aaron G., who \vere the surviving children of the first marriage, were taken in care by Col. Aaron Grier. The patrimony which the children received on coming of age was something over four hundred dollars each. Much of the land which formerly belonged to the old homestead had been sacrificed, and one of the first duties which Alexander H. Stephens charged himself to perform when he began to earn money was the repairing of the old graveyard and the repurchasing of the property which his father had lost. Linton, after reaching some size, went to live with Alexander H. at Crawfordville until he was ready for college. He received the most af fectionate and tender care from his half-brother, who was now his legal guardian; and much of his success in life was due to the inspiration which he received at this early stage of his career.

CHAPTER VL
The Dramatic Debut of Alex. H. Stephens
D URING the high summer of 1836 the lower branch of the General Assembly of Georgia was engaged in discussing the measure to provide for the building of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. In the light of subsequent developments the measure was one of unparalleled importance to the State; but the opposi tion to the bill was most pronounced. The debate on the proposed legislation had dragged heavily along for days. Member after member had spoken. At last when the wearisome monotony had grown to be so painful that the lawmakers sat listlessly in the hall, scarcely hearing what was said for sheer drowsiness, some one arose underneath the gallery and in shrill- but musical accents which flew to the presiding officer's desk like silver-tipped arrows, sud denly addressed the chair:
"Mr. Speaker!" Instantly the whole house was alert. Glancing in the direction from wrhich the sound proceeded it was found that this melodious alto which was now heard in the house for the first time came from a member whose entire aspect was so boyish as to redouble the interest which his ac cents had aroused. The attention became almost breath-
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less. Every glance in the hall was riveted upon the atten uated figure and cadaverous face of this strange speaker who had hitherto been regarded with sympathetic eyes as an invalid who was too weak to swell the volume of discussion by any speech-making upon the floor. But this delicate lad was now actually charming the assemblage with the very enchantments of Orpheus.
He spoke in favor of the bill. New arguments were advanced; new principles were introduced; new advan tages were pointed out; and new phases of the measure were discussed. He spoke only half an hour but he in jected new life into the dull debate. What he said seemed to be dashed \vith the morning's dew; and when he sat down the walls of the old Capitol building at Milleclgeville fairly shook with the applause which came from every part of the hall.
Charles J. Jenkins was one of the first to reach him in the rush of congratulations. Said he.
"Sir, that speech will send you to Congress." This impulsive tribute from one who was himself marked for future honors was signally prophetic. The pale youth whom he thus addressed was none other than the man who was destined to represent Georgia in the halls of national legislation not only throughout the stormy period of the slavery agitation before the war,, but during many successive terms thereafter; who was also to be Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy; and who was finally to round out his long career of usefulness in the executive chair of the State: Alexander H. Stephens.

54 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
This maiden legislative effort of the young representa tive from Taliaferro was characterized by far-sighted statesmanship as well as by ringing eloquence.
In those days the iron horse was an innovation; and there were countless conservatives in Georgia who looked with distrust upon this swarthy interloper, declaring that "live stock" was good enough for them. However, the war upon the bill was mainly led by those who doubted the wisdom of permitting the State to undertake by legis lative enactment what properly belonged to individual enterprise.
But Mr. Stephens, who was less than twTenty-four years of age at this time, nevertheless possessed the shrewd busi ness insight to see that this proposed line meant the initial impulse to the future material and industrial development of upper Georgia, which had just been wrested from the Indian population; and he thought that, rather than delay matters, the State, which was then prosperous and finan cially able to prosecute an undertaking which promised to yield such handsome returns, should improve the op portunity which was thus offered.
The subsequent history of the Western and Atlantic Railroad has amply justified the position which Mr. Ste phens took at this time and the views which he then held. Not only have the profits arising from the rental of the road put back into the State treasury what it cost, many times over, but the prosperity which it began to bring at once to the whole of Cherokee Georgia, now the wealthiest portion of the State, immediately increased the values of property represented on the tax digest. First under the able initiative of Governor Herschel V. Johnson and af terwards under the skillful supervision of Governor Jo-

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seph E. Brown, who became the president of the leasing company, with Major Campbell Wallace as superinten dent, the road became one of the handsomest assets in the State, and to-day yields an annual rental of four hundred and twenty thousand dollars, which goes into the com mon-school fund and helps to educate the children of Georgia. Dr. Wm. H. Felton, of Bartow, was largely responsible for the advantageous terms upon which the existing lease was made.
Where the stake was driven to mark the southern ter minus of this line near the eastern banks of the Chattahoochee river two other lines subsequently met, forming connections with Macon and Augusta; and at this point of triple convergence there sprang up a settlement which was christened Terminus. Two years later this settle ment budded into Marthasville, and when eventually it blossomed into full maturity it became Atlanta, the pres ent capital city of the State and the wide-awake and puis sant young metropolis of the South.
Judge Iverson L. Harris, who was a member of the State Legislature of 1836 and heard Mr. Stephens make his great speech, says that he not only electrified the house but completely turned the scales and that undoubtedly he did more than any one else to bring about the success of the measure whose defeat seemed imminent.
But to show the sort of opposition which Mr. Stephens had to meet there was an imaginative youngster in the house who argued with facetious rhetoric that "the road would have to pass through a country filled with moun tains so steep that a spider would break his neck in trying to scale the cliffs."
This amusing incident was recalled after the lapse of

56 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
many years by old Professor Rutherford, long the pro fessor of mathematics at the State University, who naive ly remarked in telling the anecdote that, "if such short sighted counsels had prevailed in the General Assembly, Cherokee Georgia, instead of being the most populous and wealthy portion of the State, would still be a gym nasium for insects."
While the emergence of Mr. Stephens at this critical moment upon the scene of legislative activity seems some what providential, it was very much against his wishes that he was prevailed upon to offer himself in the pre ceding county election. He was just beginning to achieve his earliest victories at the bar in Middle Georgia and was more intent upon gathering the outstretched laurels of his chosen profession than upon chasing the evanescent rainbow of political illusions. But the patriot in Mr. Stephens even at this early stage of his career was far more distinctly marked than was the man of selfish greed; and, realizing that service was transcendently more hon orable than gain, he relinquished his cherished ambition for distinction at the bar and yielded to the solicitations of his countrymen.
Of course he did not entirely abandon the practice of the law, and frequently at intervals when released from public obligations he appeared in the courts for the pur pose of arguing some of the most important cases of the day; but his public duties were such that he could con veniently devote only the smallest fraction of his time to his professional interests; and in meeting his legislative obligations no man in Georgia was more scrupulously honest than Mr. Stephens.

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Though he was kept constantly poor by reason of his loyal adherence to this principle of honest dealing1, when he might, without criticism, have increased his legal in come, nothing could induce him to act otherwise. He felt that his time and his talents belonged to the people who had honored him in the counsels of the State and nation; and he remained steadfastly at his post of duty like the sentinel of Herculaneum.
But he carried the knowledge of the law into his legis lative work and was at all times recognized as the lawyer preeminent whose opinions, especially on great constitu tion questions, were deeply profound and almost inva riably correct.
Another convincing proof of Mr. Stephens's patrotism is found in his weak physical organism. Frail from his youth he enjoyed hardly an hour's exemption from bodily distress, and most men afflicted with such an inherently weak constitution would have preferred the ease of private life to the harness of official station, however lucrative or honorable; but Mr. Stephens permitted no such thought of self to lull him into indolent repose, and his sleepless nights as well as his pain-tortured days were alike de voted to his country's weal.
Burdened as he was by infirmities and cares, such as fall to the lot of few men, the delicate invalid never lost the sunny sweetness of his temper, but preserved un changeably through life the golden charm of childhood; and he marvelously managed in spite of all his handi caps to find enough leisure for writing that monumental work, "The War Between the States"; and this single literary achievement \vill blend his name immortally with the memories of that great struggle, entirely apart from

58 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the distinguished place he filled as the Vice-President of the "storm-cradled" Confederate nation.
Some of the members of the bar of Middle Georgia with whom Mr. Stephens came in contact at this time, most of them his seniors, but with whom he broke more than one polished lance in forensic tilts, were Eli H. Bax ter, Nathan C. Sayre, Garnett Andrews, Daniel Chandler, Robert Toombs, William C. Dawson, Francis H. Cone, and Joseph Henry Lumpkin.
The vandal years have marred the bright tinsel with which many of these names once glittered; but those who are now forgotten as well as those who are still remem bered, were legal giants who wielded the club of Hercules and bore the armor of Saul.
Inheriting no rich patrimonial acres because of finan cial losses which his father had sustained, Mr. Stephens was early left an orphan dependent largely upon his own exertions; but sympathetic friends supplied him with funds with which to secure an education, all of which he returned dollar for dollar.
The generosity of which he was the grateful recipient bore fruit in similar benefactions when he in turn was able to be generous; and no public man in Georgia ever defrayed out of his own meager pocket-book the college expenses of so many boys whom he took it upon himself to educate.
In the impulsive desire born of an early conver sion he first chose the ministry; but before he left Athens the law had become so attractive to his legal bent of mind

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that he entirely relinquished this idea, feeling that he was better fitted for the forum than for the pulpit. He never theless remained an humble and devout believer; and though he now attached himself to Blackstone he never thought of renouncing the allegiance which bound him in loving discipleship to another Master.
The momentous question of his life's work having now been definitely settled, he applied himself with diligence to his legal studies and was admitted to the bar in 1834, just two years before the date of his dramatic debut in the Georgia Legislature. On the committee of examina tion were William H. Crawford and Joseph Henry Lumpkin; and, profound jurists as they both were, with repu tations reaching far beyond the borders of Georgia, they expressed amazement at the qualifications of the young applicant, whose success at the bar they confidently pre dicted.
But success had to be achieved by hard work. It was no royal road upon wdiich the young barrister now set out. For he not only lacked the brilliant opportunities which family influence and prestige confer upon the youthful scion of the aristocracy, but he also lacked that most im portant of professional assets to the young lawyer: health. Sickly and delicate, it was under the severest physical handicap that Alexander H. Stephens began the real battle of life. But he had learned to make the best use of his feeble strength and he could easily accomplish the most prodigious undertakings by prudently husbanding his resources. Moreover, he possessed moral stamina.

60 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
An idea of his pluck may be gathered from an incident which occurred soon after his admission to the bar. The next court which he attended was held at Washington, Georgia, where he had spent his early school-days. It was before the time of rapid transit, and between Crawfordville and Washington there were no railway or stage lines in operation. This entailed rather severe hardships upon an invalid who had no traveling outfit, and who was too proud to borrow the use of one from his neighbors. It reduced him to the primitive means of locomotion; but, adjusting his shoestrings and girding his loins, he sallied forth into the cool night shadows, preferring to travel by the rays of the less torrid lamp.
It required some little courage to defy the solitudes of the forest after nightfall, but the young pedestrian knew nothing of the hospitality which is given to the entertain ment of fear. Besides he possessed some of the adventu rous spirit of his Jacobin ancestor, and he no doubt car ried the means of protection which he well knew how to use in the event of an unexpected encounter along the roadside. Provocative of admiration as was the specta cle of the lone traveler threading his silent way through the darkness, it was also pathetic. The gloom'which lay around him upon either side of the highway was not deeper than the gloom which rested upon his heart. He felt the glow of ambition but he was constantly haunted by the spectre of ill-health, dreading lest at any moment his prospects might all be rudely dashed to the ground. Nor could it be said that, even in the burgeoning flower of his ardent April he derived the least pleasure from the physical side of existence. If he was not ensnared by the allurements to which ruddy veins are exposed,

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neither was he reinforced in moments of depression by the exhilarating cordial which robust nature dis tils; and, without the resistive power which is born of vigorous sinews, he found it difficult to withstand the as saults of melancholy. He often declared that he began his career at the bar under the most painful misgivings; and, bright as the future of Alexander H. Stephens was to be, the gloomy night shadows through which he now trudged to Washington were far more in harmony with his mood than the garrish light of the day.
What extra clothing he needed for the journey he put into his saddle-bags which, being thrown over his shoul ders, he managed to carry without feeling too heavily the weight of the burden. But he found before he had gone very far that even with the repeated rests which he took at frequent intervals, the trip was most too great for his strength. Luckily his uncle lived not far from the half way point; and, after journeying some ten miles, he turned aside from the main road and sought the shelter of his uncle's roof until morning. Besides the restorative effect of what little sleep he could get during the remain der of the night he was also prevailed upon to accept the services of horseflesh in getting to town.
Taking an early start after breakfast he reached his destination in good time for the opening of court and be fore he started back to Crawfordville he had made the timbers of the old court-house ring with an eloquence which was destined to echo at every fireside throughout the Northern circuit.

62 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
From the very start he was signally successful. The extraordinary contrast between his slight figure, fragile almost to the point of vanishing, and his marvelous in tellectual gifts, was so striking that he was regarded as the young phenomenon; and it was the wonder of all who heard him plead a cause even in these youthful days that so frail a body could support so massive a brain.
This incident is told of a case in which he was retained before he had been at the bar two weeks:
"A wealthy gentleman of high position and great influ ence, upon the death of his son, had been appointed guard ian of the person and property of his granddaughter, then an infant, the mother having again married. In the course of time, the mother claimed possession of the child, which claim was resisted by the grandfather, who claimed it as legal guardian. The stepfather, wishing to please the mother, his wife, came to the young lawyer and en gaged him as counsel to set aside the guardianship; other lawyers having failed, and Mr. Stephens, upon being consulted, having given his opinion that the letters of guardianship as to the person of the child should be re voked and the mother given charge of her daughter.
"The trial was held before the five judges of the infe rior court sitting as a court of ordinary, without jurors; and the issue was joined upon the motion to set aside the letters of guardianship so far as related to the person of the child. Great interest was manifested in the attempt of the frail-looking young lawyer to foil Mr. Jeffries, then the veteran of the bar at that place, who, notwith standing his retirement from the practice, had been pre vailed upon to reappear in this most exciting case which had been tried in the county for a number of years. The

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result was that the guardianship was set aside and the child restored to the arms of the mother. The triumphant advocate immediately assumed the place which his talents commanded, and from now on there was hardly an im portant case tried in the Northern circuit in which he was not retained."
This was only the first of many similar triumphs which Mr. Stephens was destined to achieve at the bar and on the hustings. The star of Georgia's hope glittered upon these early laurels and as the frail young slip scored vic tory after victory over the broad shoulders and hoary locks of the veteran stalwarts there were those in the court-room who quietly thought of the stripling David who, having met and slain the burly Philistine at the brook, was now ready to mount the steps of the throne of Israel.

CHAPTER VII.
The Sage of Liberty Hall*
T O say that, in some respects at least, the most strik ing figure which the public life of this country has ever produced was Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, is to assert what is strictly within the bounds of sober judgment. The statement holds true not only of the latter years of the great statesman's career when, seat ed in his roller-chair, unable to stand upon his feet, he made the halls of Congress fairly ring with the echoes of his voice; but it also applies with equal force to the period of the great debates on slavery when national legislative scenes were by no means lacking in dramatic elements.
The frailest human skeleton, Mr. Stephens rarely ever seemed to be assured at any one time of more than two weeks of earthly existence; but he possessed an intellect of gigantic proportions, well organized and far-sighted. It was in fact one of the psychological wonders of the age how a brain so massive could find enough to feed upon in a frame apparently so destitute of food supplies; but equally baffling was the marvelous power of compression by means of which he managed to condense such robust accents in lung spaces which were hardly large enough for sick-room whispers. He was frequently confined to his
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bed by violent attacks of ill-health from which it was thought he could never recover; but he managed to be on hand whenever important issues were pending and no man in American public life has stamped the impress of his mind more indelibly upon national legislation.
Besides, he wrote books, had numerous personal mis haps and encounters, and issued several challenges which were not accepted. With the exception of four years spent in Richmond as Vice-President of the Confederate States, and some few years spent in retirement after the war, Mr. Stephens was in Congress almost continuously for nearly thirty years; and such was his feeble health, throughout all this long period, that he rarely ever spoke, especially during the latter years of his congressional service, without recalling, in the dramatic spectacle which he presented, the famous death-bed scene of the Earl of Chatham in the House of Commons.

Six years from the date of the prediction which Charles J. Jenkins had made concerning the pale young speaker who had electrified the Georgia Legislature in 1836, Mr. Stephens was elected on the Whig ticket to the twentyeighth Congress; and from 1843 to I ^S9> covering all the stormy period of the slavery agitation, he continued to represent Georgia in the lower branch of the Federal Legislature, retiring voluntarily from public service two years before the war. He frequently had opposition,-but he always won. The campaign of 1855 was perhaps the most notable of all. The old Whig party having disband ed, the American or Know-Nothing party had arisen. This organization possessed, it is said, an undisclosed ritual
3r

66 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
which the members refused to divulge, merely replying when asked: "I know nothing." Hence the descriptive name. Mr. Stephens had declined to enter the Know Nothing party, and he was not quite ready to join the Democratic party. So he decided to become an inde pendent candidate for reelection. Asked where he stood, he replied : "I'm totin' my own skillet." This ridiculous j phrase was an effective vote-maker. But while Mr. Ste phens stood upon no party platform it was soon evident that he represented principles. In times past he had made sausage of the Democrats, but now he made mincemeat of the Americans, showing that the party which was given to secret conclaves was in reality un-American and dangerous. He was reelected to Congress, with three thousand votes to spare. The effect of the campaign was most seriously felt upon the fortunes of the Know-Noth ing party not only in the State but in the nation.
Mr. Stephens was never an ultra-partisan. He had certain deep and positive convictions which largely de termined his party affiliations; but his highest allegiance instead of being given to party organization, which con stantly changed and shifted, was given to principles which remained steadfast. However, he found the society of the old Whigs most congenial. He warmly supported Henry Clay in all his campaigns, and when the Whigs of Georgia endorsed Daniel Webster in 1852, Mr. Stephens voted for him, though the great New-Englander had passed away before the election. He could not ally him self with the Democrats immediately after leaving the Whigs, but he supported Mr. Buchanan in 1856. He now entered the Democratic ranks, and being an ardent friend of the Union, he supported Stephen A. Douglass in 1860.

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He deeply deplored the party divisions and did what he could to fuse the discordant elements whose threefold conflict gave Mr. Lincoln the election, although he repre sented the minority sentiment of the nation.
Without reviewing in detail the career of Mr. Ste phens in Congress it will be enough to say that he was an ardent advocate of State rights. He had nothing to do with the school of Alexander Hamilton, whose name he bore by mere coincidence, and whose principles he re jected. He belonged to the school of Thomas Jefferson. But while he was opposed to centripetal tendencies of leg islation, he was an uncompromising champion of the Union as composed of associated sovereignties and gov erned by constitutional restraints. He endeavored to pre serve slavery within the Union and warmly supported the various compromise measures which sought to allay the existing agitation. Even when he saw that the equilib rium between free and slave States could not be main tained he still trusted to measures of redress short of extreme resorts; and not even the election of Mr. Lincoln was considered by him sufficient to justify secession. But, believing in State sovereignty, he had no alternative but to follow Georgia.
However, it was during the comparative lull which fol lowed the election of President Buchanan that Mr. Ste phens in 1859 withdrew" from public life, hoping that sec tional differences were quieted for some time to come. It is significant of the esteem to which Mr. Stephens was held that Senators and Representatives united in making him the formal tender of a dinner on the occasion of his retirement to private life; but he gracefully declined the honor on the ground that urgent business called him home immediately upon the close of the session.

68 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
But while Mr. Stephens is still in Washington, partici pating in the great debates of this eventful period of American history, it may be interesting to take a glance at the great statesman through the eyes of a correspond ent, who, reporting the proceedings of 1855, draws an excellent pen-picture of the Great Commoner: "Near the bar of the House, to the right of the main aisle, fac ing the Speaker," says the writer, "sits a man whose sin gular appearance always arrests the attention of the stranger. It is Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia. There is no mark of unusual intellectuality in his counte nance. But draw him out in debate or do anything to set at work the powerful intellectual battery within, and that poor, sickly, emaciated frame, which looks as if it must sink under the slightest physical exertion, becomes instinct with a vitality which galvanizes every nerve with new life, lights every feature with an intellectual expres sion, makes the languid eyes glow like coals of fire, and diffuses a glow of reviving animation over the pallid face. Another spirit seems to be awakened within him which completely transforms the whole man. You cease to mind those shrill and discordant tones; and those awkward gestures seem awkward no longer."
"No wonder nature has slighted the outward when she has lavished her richest gifts with unsparing profusion upon the inward man. He hurries through the exordium, announces the subject, lays down his proposition, and ad vances at once to the argument, which he follows out with logical exactness, weaving into the thread of it such facts as are proper for illustration and drawing out such con clusions as the most subtle ingenuity can not avert. Now he advances to the arguments of the other side, dissects

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them with delicate skill, exposes a fallacy here and a misstatement there; here a non sequiter and there a petitio principii; now some insidious reflection upon the South touches his sensitive feelings and forth there issues a flame of withering invective; now he is all on fire with interest in his subject and seems to catch the inspiration of eloquence as with more than mortal power he sum mons forth the feelings of the audience and sways them in alternate emotions."
"Death-like silence reigns over the vast hall, broken only by the reverberating tones of the speaker's voice. Senators have deserted the other wing of the capitoi and side by side with members are sitting as under a spell which they can not break. Mr. Speaker has thrown down his hammer, which generally knows no rest, and has for gotten to keep an eye on the clock. Pages have lost the power of perpetual motion. Reporters look like mediums with the spell upon them indicting revelations from the spirit-world. Around the overhanging galleries count less fixed eyes are riveted upon the speaker with ,in air of bewildered amazement, nor do they dare turn to each other for an interchange of sympathetic glances, fearing to miss some look or movement which they can not af ford to lose."

Not less interesting is the contrast which William Henry Milburn, the half-blind chaplain of Cingress, draws between Mr. Stephens and John Randolph, of Roanoke, both of whom were sorely tortured by bodily afflictions. "I fancy," says he, "there are several points of apparent resemblance between Mr. Stephens and John

70 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS. ' '
Randolph, of Roanoke; but there must be more of real difference. Both have been the victims of disease whose origin dates far back in life. Both have exercised almost unequal sway upon the floor of Congress, and both have been noted as masters in the art of offensive parliament ary warfare. Both have been admitted to be unimpeachably honest and fearless statesmen, shunning no danger and braving every peril in the maintenance of cherished convictions. But Mr. Randolph had scarcely a friend. Mr. Stephens has hardly an enemy. Bodily infirmity, if it did not master Mr. Randolph's will, soured his temper and gave to his perfect diction the poison of wormwood and to his spirit the gall of bitterness. Mr. Stephens has conquered suffering and made himself strong and noble by entering heartily into the sweet charities of life.
"The Virginian was proud of his lineage and his birth place; an intolerant aristocrat, with varied and finished culture; a mind disposed to prey upon itself and a con tempt for those who did not share his advantages. Nev ertheless, John Randolph presented a curious spectacle, posing as the advocate of extreme democratic principles, \vhile at the same time he was wholly unable to free him self from the tyrannous sentiment of exclusiveness and caste. Any provincialism of pronunciation or phrase on the part of a man whom he thought worthy to be consid ered an antagonist was chastised in the summary fashion of a pedagogue, and more than one distinguished mem ber of the national council has been taught English by the great Virginian; insomuch that in his day he deserved the appellation of the Schoolmaster of Congress.
"The Georgian, on the other hand, is as simple and genial as a child; and, considerate and kind to all, his
i

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friendliness begets for him friendship. He rarely speaks except upon an occasion which demands all his powers, and then only after mature deliberation, having first care fully sun-eyed the position of those opposed to him and estimated the strength of his own resources. He is like some great general leading disciplined and concentrated forces to the attack; and so admirable are his constructive and reflective powers that he rarely makes a mistake or suffers a defeat. He is born to lead men; and, whether he remains in the House which, being the great popular body, I presume he would prefer, or is removed to the Senate, I think the country will one day adjudge him the finest orator and ablest statesman in either."
Apropos of what Dr. Milburn says in the concluding words of this graphic contrast, Mr. Stephens was elected to the United States Senate in 1866, along with Herschel V. Johnson, but he was not seated because of complica tions growing out of reconstruction. Later on he became somewhat unpopular by reason of his tolerant attitude toward the military measures of Congress, and he was subsequently twice defeated for the senatorial toga, first by Joshua Hill in 1868 and next by General John B. Gordon in 1873. But in the latter year he was returned to his old seat in Congress, which he successively retained for several terms.

Leaving Washington in 1859 Mr. Stephens, after six teen arduous years of continuous legislative service in the halls of Congress, settled down to enjoy life some what more leisurely in the contemplative shades of Lib erty Hall. This picturesque old Southern home, on the

72 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
outskirts of the little town of- Crawfordville, has long been noted among the famous hearthstones of American statesmen. If ever an abode was well named it wras the home of Alexander H. Stephens. The proverbial latchstring hung literally on the outside. Locks and keys might do for Fort Warren, but not for Liberty Hall, Visitors were free to come and go whenever they liked. There were not only rooms for distinguished guests but accommodations for tramps. No one ever sought the roof of Liberty Hall to be turned away, whatever his de gree or station. The library was veritably an institution which belonged to the whole countryside. Whether Mr. Stephens was at home or in Washington or elsewhere Liberty Hall was always open, and guests were tniertained in the same friendly and lavish fashion. The de mon of indigestion prevented Mr. Stephens from enjoy ing anything beyond the simplest diet so far as his own personal wants were concerned; but for the benefit of those who for the time being might happen to be his guests his tables were fairly loaded with whatever the market afforded or the appetite craved.
Liberty Hall was not as imposing in architectural pro portions or embellishments as many other homes in Geor gia, but what it lacked in the graces of art it supplied with the aroma of hospitality and the charm of rural life. Surrounded by forest oaks, which steeped it in cool shad ows ; slightly elevated upon an attractive knoll, and gen tly approached by an inclined walk, which sloped upward some fifteen hundred feet from the open gate to -he little veranda, which ran out from the house like an armclutch of welcome, Liberty Hall was the typical embodi ment in timber of what it purported to be in name.

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Some idea of how Liberty Hall looked on the interior \vhen it shrined the soul of the Great Commoner may be gathered from the descriptive account of an early postbellum visitor: "On the right of the hall," says this in formant, "is the parlor. The windows are without cur tains, but have shades of green and frosted gold. Upon the mantel is a small bust of Senator Berrien, and also a fine cast by Saunders, intended as a model for a statue of General Oglethorpe. Hanging over these is a large engraving of the United States Senate, during the great speech of Daniel Webster in 1850. On both sides of the fireplace are fine oil family portraits by Healy in massive gilt frames; and among the other pictures upon the walls is one of Robert Toombs. On the center-table is the family Bible, which contains the family registers. Oppo site the parlor is the dining-room; next comes the pantry. Then a bedroom carefully reserved for an occasional vis itor. There is another bedroom alongside the parlor. Upstairs there are four large rooms for guests. In the back passage there is always a cedar pail of cold water. Then comes the porch, which connects the two rooms built in the rear with the main house, and extends along the eastern side into an open veranda with massive square pillars. The first of the rear rooms is the library. The collection of law and political books is large and ex cellent. Many valuable miscellaneous books belong on the shelves, but they are usually in the hands of borrow ers. The other room is the sanctum sanctorum. It con tains a little round-top writing table on which there are many papers and scraps; and the mind of the owner is the sole index to all these fragments, as well as to others in various hidden receptacles. Such books and articles of

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furniture as he needs are also among the furnishings of the room. One of the pictures on the walls is "Faith at the Cross.'' the gift of some lady friend to Mr. Stephens while imprisoned at Fort Warren. On the worsted hearth-rug in the winter, but on the grass in summer, lounges a huge brown mastiff named Troup. Not far off is a little black terrier with a chronic growl. He is called Frank. Then a restless yellow pup sometimes intrudes, but is generally sent away with the proper rebuke. He bears the appropriate name of Sir Binjo Binks."
Most of Mr. Stephens's literary work, including his great constitutional history of the war between the States, was accomplished at Liberty Hall, ofttimes amid bodily distress and pain and at midnight hours when sleep re fused to give him repose. The spacious veranda which ran along the eastern side of the rear extension was the scene of the famous conversations which so often took place between Mr. Stephens and the notables who flocked to see him when he sojourned at Liberty Hall. Perhaps no distinguished visitor came more frequently than Rob ert Toombs. Most of the negroes who were owned by Mr. Stephens at the close of the war remained on the place; and when they became too old and feeble to care for themselves he saw that they fared as comfortably as when they were able to work. The dogs about the place were Mr. Stephens's special favorites; and the interest which he took in his dumb animals recalls what his bodyguard said about him when he came to Atlanta in 1883 to be inaugurated: "Mars Aleck." said he, "is kinder ter dogs than mos' people is ter folks."
Judge Kontz says that on one occasion he was telling Mr. Stephens of the death of his pet clog.

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"Did you cry?" inquired the old statesman, with evi dent seriousness.
"No," returned Judge Kontz. "But I felt the loss keen ly-"
"Well," said Mr. Stephens, "the hardest cry I ever had was when one of my dogs died."
This may have been the faithful animal for whose tombstone an epitaph was written, supposed to have come from the pen of Linton Stephens, in which the dog was characterized as "a satire upon the human race, but an ornament to his own." It recalls the tombstone which Lord Byron caused to be erected at Newstead Abbey over his own famous dog, whose epitaph describes him as the poet's friend and closes with the pathetic line

"I never knew but one, and here he lies."

From this ideal home retreat Mr. Stephens was soon called back again into public life by the events which pre cipitated the war between the States. The school of poli tics to which he belonged did not for one moment permit him to contest the right of secession; but he looked upon secession more as an abstract right than as an expedient remedy for the evils which then existed. He wished to preserve the Union if this patriotic end could be secured without sacrificing principles and interests which were far dearer; and even after the election of Mr. Lincoln he failed to see how secession could be full}'- justified. He did not agree with Mr. Cobb that better terms could be made without the Union than within. He believed that secession meant war. He did not agree with those who

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preached peaceable secession. Moreover, he felt that ade quate means of redress could be found without resorting to such extreme measures. Consequently in the speech he made before the General Assembly of Georgia on May 14, 1860, he strongly argued against this course, pointing out the disastrous consequences which were bound to follow; and, viewed in the light of the subsequent years, this speech, which uterly failed to arrest the tide of sentiment, seems nevertheless to have been inspired by prophetic wisdom.
Though Mr. Stephens bitterly opposed the ordinance of secession on the floor of the State convention, advocat ing in lieu thereof the substitute of Governor Johnson, he nevertheless signed the ordinance when the majority had . spoken, and loyally planted himself under- the sovereign flag which Georgia had now unfurled.
In opposing secession Mr. Stephens had been confirmed in his views by assurances from Mr. Lincoln himself. Under date of December 22, 1860, the President elect had written him that, there was "no more danger to be feared from the incoming administration than there was in the days of Washington." But the South felt that the success of the Republican party, if it did not mean the extinction of slavery, meant the overthrow of the equilib rium which had been maintained between free and slave States, making ultimate extinction follow; and such be ing the case, it was time to put all discord and strife in the nation effectually at rest by invoking the constitu tional right of secession.
Elected to the Provisional Congress at Montgomery, much to his surprise, since he had so ardently opposed se cession, he was still further regaled with the unexpected 1

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by being made the Vice-President of the newly organized Confederate government. It was a tribute of the most pronounced character to his conservative statesmanship, ._a testimonial of golden coinage from his fellow citizens which he treasured among his proudest posses sions. He accepted this lofty station; but radical differ ences between Mr. Davis and himself upon administra tive policies virtually nullified his influence at Richmond. He offered no embarrassing opposition to what was done or proposed, but he refused to compromise convictions and rather than put himself in the attitude of endorsing tacitly what he could not conscientiously approve he man aged to find Liberty Hall more attractive than Richmond, whenever release from official obligations permitted him to journey southward.

During the summer of 1863, when the Confederate cause, following the victory of General Lee at Chancellorsville, was at floodtide, Mr. Stephens sought to open negotiations with the authorities at Washington, ostensi bly for the purpose of renewing the cartel for an exchange of prisoners, but really with the ulterior object in view of finding some basis of settlement on which to end the struggle without further hostilities. But he was not per mitted to start to Washington with this olive-branch until after Lee had crossed over into Pennsylvania. Gettys burg turned the scale of fortune before he reached New port News; and, being unable to proceed further north, he returned to Georgia. It is idle to speculate at this late day on what might have been gained if Mr. Stephens could have consummated his negotiations in the high sum-

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mer of 1863, when the pulse of Confederate life beat lustily and the flag of Lee's army was swept by the favoring gales; but something at least might have been saved from the wreckage before all except honor was eventually lost in the devouring flames of Appomattox.
Controversy is still raging about the famous Hamp ton Roads conference which took place in the spring of 1865; and, without seeking to throw any new light upon this incident of the last bloody chapter of the war, it ap pears that the commissioners had no authority to act and little was accomplished beyond an exchange of diplomatic courtesies and personal felicitations. The kindly feelings existing between Mr. Stephens and ]\Ir. Lincoln were at tested by an interview in which Mr. Lincoln consented to use his friendly offices in having Lieutenant John A. Ste phens, Mr. Stephens's nephew, then a prisoner on John son's Island, in Lake Erie, released or exchanged; and this promise he faithfully kept. An amusing incident of the conference was the joke which Mr. Lincoln perpe trated at the expense of Mr. Stephens. Amused at the spectacle of seeing the Confederate Vice-President peel off so many wraps on entering the room, he declared that Mr. Stephens was "the smallest nubbin he had ever seen to have so manv shucks."
Following the war Mr. Stephens was arrested on May u, 1865, and imprisoned for several months in Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. Never too robust, this prison experience came near proving fatal; but Mr. Stephens was accustomed to running neck-and-neck races with spectral phantoms. Soon after returning home he

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was elected to the United States Senate, but was never seated. He afterwards became unpopular for the time being on account of his acquiescent attitude toward the military measures which challenged such widespread and bitier opposition; and was twice defeated for the same office. But popular sentiment soon underwent radical cl anges and Alexander H. Stephens eventually received, in unstinted measure, the appreciative recognition which his wise statesmanship and true patriotism merited. Reelected to Congress in 1873, upon the initiative of Robert Toombs, who called the meeting which put him in nomina tion, he continued to represent Georgia in the halls of Cono-ress until the time came for him to close his illustrious
o
career of usefulness in the executive chair of the common wealth.
Buried in the beautiful green area which immediately fronts the picturesque old home which he owned and loved so long, and which admiring Georgians will always reverence under the name of Liberty Hall, an unpreten tious shaft of white marble marks the exact spot beneath which lies the dust of the departed sage. The principle which ever governed his life has been chiseled into the solid stone: "I am afraid of nothing on earth, or above the earth or under the earth, except to do wrong. The path of duty I shall ever endeavor to travel, fearing no evil and dreading no consequences." This noble senti ment deserves to rank on the historic page with the kin dred utterance of the great Aristides: "Oh, Athenians! What Themistocles proposes would be greatly to the ad vantage of Athens, but it would be unjust!''

CHAPTER VIII.
The Last Days of Alexander H. Stephens.
B EFORE the finger of Death closed the eyelids of the Great Commoner it was most appropriate that his long career of public usefulness should have first threaded the official doorway of the executive mansion. Since 1836 Mr. Stephens had been almost constantly in public life. The greater part of this time he had spent in the halls of national legislation. But he had never worn the senatorial toga. Once during the days of reconstruc tion he had been chosen for this lofty service, but on ac count of the issues of the period he had not been permitted to claim his seat. And later, when his counsels were some what unpopular, he had sought the office, but had been de feated. However, it was one of the felicities of politics that after having been for years the central figure of the great American House of Commons he should at length be permitted to end his days in the gubernatorial chair of the State. And, besides filling the measure of an ardent de sire on the part of the old statesman, it also had the hap py effect of attesting the record of an illustrious public service with the official imprint of the executive seal.
The significance of this tribute is emphasized by the fact that in the race for Governor Mr. Stephens had defeated
(80)

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so distinguished a Georgian as Gen. L. J. Gartrell. Gen eral Gartrell had been in Congress at the outbreak of the war, and returning home on the adoption of the ordinance of secession, he had gone at once to the front. In the first battle of Manassas he had caught the bleeding figure of the gallant Bartow as he fell mortally wounded upon the victorious field; and all through the war he had borne himself with chivalrous address. But on account of his eminence as an advocate he had not been permitted to give his entire time to the military service, but had been assigned important duties to perform in the legislative halls at Richmond. And following the war he had be come the greatest criminal lawyer in the State. But strong as were the claims of General Gartrell upon the people of Georgia, he had nevertheless been defeated at the polls by an overwhelming vote. Still in view of the fact that he had run as an independent Democratic candi date, and especially in view of the fact that Mr. Stephens had been the Vice-President of the Confederacy and was now an infirm old man whose roller-chair cast a charm upon the popular sympathies, it is universally conceded that no man in the State could have taken the field against the Great Commoner with better results.
Never will the campaign of 1882 be forgotten in Geor gia. Too feeble to engage in the strenuous exercises of the stump, Mr. Stephens nevertheless appeared before the people at such well-selected times and places as made it evident that he was still master of the noble science of strategics. What his voice lacked of the old power which had once aroused the silvery echoes, his emaciated figure, as he wheeled himself before the footlights, in part at least supplied; and again at the age of threescore years and ten

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the old statesman was fairly electrifying the entire State. None of the dramatic elements were lacking in the scenes of which his roller-chair was the center. There was something about the inanimate wood which seemed to stir the profoundest emotion. Perchance it suggested the patriarchal blessing. Or it may have told of the sleep less hours which the patient sufferer had so repeatedly experienced when, racked with pain, he had sentineled the midnight watches, keeping an eye upon the lattice of his window until across the brightening fields he could see the dawn approach. Or it may have whispered of the view less ministries which kept him in correspondence with another clime whose border surges he could almost hear. But whatever may have been the explanation of the al most superhuman magnetism which spoke from the em brace of that roller-chair, it filled the air with electric needles which pierced the enrapt listener to the very mar row of his bones. And such thunderous volleys of .ap plause as greeted the veteran statesman were never sur passed in the lustiest days of the old Whig party when, with an eloquence which the great Kentuckian himself could hardly have equaled, he had first unfurled the civic banner and preached the political faith of the illustrious Henrv Clay.
But even while the admirers of Mr. Stephens stood at the polls and voted him into the executive chair of the State, there came from the ballot-box an almost audible voice which seemed to say that the old man's tenure of office would be short, and that the commonwealth would soon be called to mourn the veteran statesman whom

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at the last moment she had made her Governor merely, as it seemed, that he might climb the mountain, like the ancient prophet, to fall asleep in the chastened solitudes of the uplifted silences.
Scarcely had three months registered the deepening snowfalls upon the already white locks of the aged Gov ernor before the spectral courier arrived at the door of the executive mansion. Toward the close of February Mr. Stephens, importuned by the people of Savannah, had gone to the Forest City to speak at the Sesqui-Centennial. Numerous reasons impelled him to make this visit, which proved to be his last. In the first place, the occasion itself was historic and appealed strongly to his State pride. Again, some of his warmest friends and supporters were among the cultured residents of Savannah, not the least of whom was the gallant Henry R. Jackson, whose elo quent voice had resounded over the entire State in the late campaign. Moreover, Mr. Stephens, who lived in the upper edge of the midland belt, wished the people of the lower areas to feel that he was the impartial Governor of all Georgia, upon whose map of official favors the wiregrass tracts and the sandy levels were fully as conspicu ous as the processional peaks of the Blue Ridge. He, therefore, went to Savannah. And, though feeling none too well on leaving home, he nevertheless entered heartily into the spirit of the great festival. On the brilliant plat form, gaily festooned with banners, he caught the inspi ration of his parting syllables; but, even as he waxed unwontedly eloquent, in rehearsing the story of Georgia's infant struggles, it was evident that the glow which suf fused his face was not the auroral light of the common wealth dawn. It was rather the lingering flush on the

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western horizon whose roseate signal unlooses the sunset guns.
Immediately upon returning home Mr. Stephens was taken violently ill. He was destined never to rise from the bed which he was now obliged to seek. However, it was not the visit to Savannah which caused or even hastened Mr. Stephens's death. The time fixed for his departure was at hand. The candle had slowly melted down to the socket and the hour hand had reached the fatal number on the dial-plate. But the spirit of the great statesman had so often hovered along the mysterious hedge-rows of life that in spite of the years which were now heavily multiplied upon his feeble shoulders it was not seriously thought that the time of the Great Commoner had come. Neither the people of Georgia who were so accustomed to reading bedside bulletins from Mr. Ste phens in the morning newspaper prints, nor the old statesman himself, who was so accustomed to waging sick-room battles with the minions of disease, seemed to realize that death was imminent. But nevertheless the Grim Destroyer was encamped upon the executive lawn.
Back into the cosy apartment at the extreme end of the hall on the left, which Mr. Stephens had selected as his bedroom on taking possession of his new official home in Atlanta, the pale invalid sufferer was again borne; nor was he destined to leave the embrasure of that room until his eyelids had closed in the deepening dusk of that myste rious sleep which had puzzled the weary Hamlet. One of the first official acts of Mr. Stephens three months before had been to order down the huge bedstead which had con jured up at once in his simple democratic mind the pow dered wig and pampered flesh of that spoiled child of

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royalty Louis the XIV. In place of the sprawling claws of this "flowery bed of ease" Mr. Stephens had substituted an unpretentious little single couch which looked as if it might have filled an humble corner in the cotter's highland home. It had always been the pet notion of the Great Commoner, more sentimental perhaps than scientific, that he could sleep better if he paralleled the course of the Mis sissippi river and slept with his head directed toward the arctic zone while his limbs meandered toward the equato rial belt. Amusing as it may seem, this whim controlled the legislation by which his domestic economy was gov erned ; and he had caused his little cot to be pointed north and south in keeping with the precise bearings of the com pass. In another corner of the room he had arranged for the reclining comforts of his colored bodyguard, whose tidy bedstead revealed no adverse discrimination, and whose familiar name, like his distinguished master's, was Aleck. It might be time well spent to pause upon the beau tiful relations which existed between the faithful body guard, whose ear was as keenly attuned as an Indian's to the softest accents of the night, and the invalid master, whose life had never known the sweet companionship which heaven had graciously vouchsafed to man, when age-long years ago the first lone hermit awoke from the most ravishing of dreams minus a rib but plus a help meet to find himself no more an Eden bachelor.
But this apartment, under the new administration, had been devoted to affairs much more substantial than the airy fabrics of sleep. It was the workshop of Mr. Ste phens. On account of the delicate health of the feeble old Governor the office at the State Capitol had been ex changed, except on occasions of urgent necessity, for the

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office at the executive mansion. Such was the arrange ment which he had made at the start; and, besides pur chasing a clock to arouse the inmates of the room be times, he had also procured, apparently from Noah's ark, a row of files which he had placed against the walls for important documents and letters. And, indeed, it almost looked as if Robinson Crusoe, in addition to housing his man Friday, had also made arrangements for accommo dating his pigeons.
During the two weeks in which Mr. Stephens lingered after taking his bed for the last time there were frequent intervals in the midst of severe bodily suffering which he gave to official business. It was characteristic of the great man that the pains which racked his body unless accom panied by the severest pangs of the guillotine or the worst tortures of the Inquisition were never allowed to disturb his official obligations; and as long as he could rationally sign the name which he meant for Alexander H. Stephens, but which no one without the key could ever decipher, un less he had first mastered the ancient symbols of the Egyp tian monuments, he continued to pen it to official doc uments. It was equally characteristic of the Great Commoner that the last service in which his feeble fingers were ever employed was an act of executive clemency. The altruism which ennobled the whole life of Mr. Ste phens asserted itself in the most trivial things. Some one had sent him a box of oranges from Florida; and though he had passed the point where he any longer had relish for the fruit, he ordered the oranges to be par celled out between the inmates of the house so that each could receive two.

THE LAST DAYS OF STEPHENS.
The cause of Mr. Stephens's death was an old malady superinduced by riding up from the depot in a cab from which a pane of glass had been displaced, exposing him to the cold draft of an inclement February morning. The physical distress which followed bore so plainly the fea tures of former attacks that Mr. Stephens was not at first alarmed; but when the customary remedies failed to give the usual relief he began to feel some uneasiness. How ever, it was not the trepidation which is felt by one who dreads the future which he finds himself obliged to face. Mr. Stephens had long ago put his house in order. He labored under none of the fears which are born of the darkness. Dr. Steiner was hastily summoned from Washington; but being detained at the death-bed of Gen. Dudley M. DuBose, he could not respond at once. How ever, he hurried to Atlanta as soon as he could get release.
Mr. Stephens rallied somewhat after Dr. Steiner ar rived. An invincible hope kept him busy down to the last moment, planning what he expected to do when he was well. It was the cheerful optimism characteristic of the invalid who has fought and won so many grim battles; but it was pathetic to the point of tears to watch the brave spirit as it still continued to struggle even after the pale flag had commenced to flutter above the wasted citadel. Often had the newspapers of the State told of the death of Mr, Stephens only to recall the premature announcement, but the sables of mourning were now to be donned upon authoritative tidings. Often had the grave yawned to receive the victim who was ever at the gates, but the tomb had been robbed for the last time, and the jealous portals were now to claim the coveted tenant

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Among those who gathered about the sick-bedside to witness the last scene in the life which was now slowly ebbing were the two ladies of the household, Mrs. Ste phens and Mrs. Grier, both near relative?; Dr. Steiner, the old family physician, who had so often attended the patient; Col. C. W. Seidell, his private secretary; Col. John A. Stephens, his nephew; Hon. John T. Henderson, Dr. H. V. M. Miller, Dr. Raines, Judge Hall, A. L. Kontz, E. C. Kontz, T. B. Bradley and R. K. Paul. Be sides there were two servants. It was not until Saturday, March the third, that the condition of Mr. Stephens had become alarming. But he had now commenced to sink rapidly, and shortly before midnight Dr. Steiner had spoken the message:
"The Governor is dying." Though it had to come it was none the less bitter to those who had so long waited upon the helpless sufferer; and not the least forlorn of the silent group was the faith ful black bodyguard, poor Aleck, whose best friend was now telling him good-by. Dr. Miller, who had been de voted to Mr. Stephens for years, kept his hands almost constantly upon the feeble wrist in which so faint were the pulsations that the existence of life could hardly be detected; and neither Dr. Miller nor Dr. Steiner could tell the precise moment when the spark was extinguished. But the invalid had ceased to suffer. The great Democrat had died as simply as he had lived. One of the warmest admirers of Mr. Stephens in the sorrowful coterie about the sick bedside was Anton Kontz, and being then the superintendent of the Pullman Company, it was Mr. Kontz who had furnished the hand some Pullman coach which had brought Mr. Stephens

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from Crawfordville to Atlanta. Several invited guests had gone to escort the Governor-elect to the Capitol; and in the speech-making which preceded the departure from Crawfordville one of the orators had told him that he was to travel like a prince; but Mr. Stephens, without waiting for him to stop, had interrupted the speaker with the re mark :
"There are no princes in Georgia. At least I am not one of them. I am only the servant of the people."
It is said by those who stood at the bedside that the last articulate utterance which ever fell from the lips of the Great Commoner was: "Get ready, we are almost home." Perhaps in the delirium of his dying moments the old Governor, weary of the cares of State in the busy capital, was hurrying back over the iron rails to Crawfordville, and, looming above the tree-tops on the distant hillside, he had caught the familiar turrets of old Liberty Hall. Per haps it was the black face of his old bodyguard which framed itself in his dying thoughts as he spoke those simple wrords, "Get ready, we are almost home." But, even if this was all, those commonplace words addressed to an old negro whom he loved were not unworthy of the golden approaches to the palace of the King.
With such an executive command still warm on the lips of the old Governor, it could not be said that death had really darkened the abode of power which had so lately opened amid the flare of tapers and the sparkle of gems to welcome the incoming occupant. An almost breathless hush pervaded the halls of the executive man sion. The tapers were out and the jewels flashed against sorrowful faces; but, in spite of the doleful symbols of an altered scene, it was far more appropriate to say that the old Governor had been once more inaugurated!

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All was at last over. The doctor was now dismissed. The crutch was laid aside for good. The roller-chair was no longer needed. At last after seventy years there had fluttered down through the Sabbath hush of the sick-bed room an old, old prescription which had made the invalid well. His wish had come true at last. Those lips had been dashed at the fountain which the Spaniard sought in vain. Those limbs had waxed strong and youthful. Those heart-beats had commenced anew to keep perpet ual step to music that never ceases. It is unseemly in the mute mourner who bends over the attenuated figure 'to keep back the tears; for the absent loved ones are always missed. But over the beautiful clay let the laurel instead of the cypress rest; for in the goblet of death, fresh from the vintages of yonder hills, Alexander H. Stephens has found the elixir of life.

UXTOX STEPHENS.

CHAPTER IX.
Linton Stephens.
T HE prodigal of the parable is not the only man in history who has been possessed of an elder broth er. Others of greater stability and less renown, who have never thought of taking their goods to far coun tries or wasting their substance in riotous living have suf fered from the same complaint of primogeniture. To this distinguished junior class belongs Judge Linton Stephens. It can not be denied that Judge Stephens was, intellectually and morally, an exceptional man; and it may be gravely doubted if his illustrious half-brother was equipped with superior mental furnishings. Indeed, there are many who contend that Judge Stephens possessed much the larger brain. But he lacked the showy genius. Moreover, while his health was equally as frail and his life tenure much briefer, he lacked what may be termed the spectacular as pect of invalidism. He possessed the physical infirmities without the dramatic concomitants.
But advantages as well as disadvantages sometimes accrue from relatively late advents; and if Linton Ste phens ever reflected upon the latter he certainly never forgot the former. Losing both parents before he was three years of age, he was first placed in the care of his

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mother's people in Warren county, but later he went to live with his half-brother at Crawfordville; and he frank ly declared that his intellectual awakening really dated from this change of abode. The life which he had led up to this time had been one of pathetic loneliness. He had lived in comparative isolation, growing up under the severe looks of pious but stern old people, and enjoying none of the companionships or recreations of healthy childhood. "The foundation of all my ideas of friend ship," he wrote years afterward, "was laid in the school of solitude; and it came to me more as a want than as a possession." However, things changed when Linton went to live with his half-brother; and never was or phanage shielded with wiser or tenderer care than Linton received from his brother Aleck, who became not only his guardian, but his intellectual preceptor and compan ion.
Before moving to Crawfordville, Linton had already acquired the educational rudiments and under the mold ing touch of the elder Stephens the plastic mind of the younger gradually assumed definite character and prom ise. Supplementing the work of the village schoolmaster Mr. Stephens not only drilled his ward in the prescribed text-books, but cultivated his literary tastes and pic nicked with him in the poetic Arcadias. He never seemed to weary of the task which his guardianship imposed, and he was fully and nobly recompensed, not only by the evi dent appreciation, but by the unusual aptitude of his pu pil ; and it was not long before Linton was well prepared for college.

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Entering the Freshman class at Athens in 1840, Linton became associated with such congenial spirits as J. L. M. Curry and Lafayette Lamar. He had already contracted the studious habit and fully appreciated the privileges which he was now to enjoy; but the affectionate tutelage of the elder brother was never for one moment relaxed. Scarcely a day passed without bringing the young matric ulant a letter from his faithful guardian, full of whole some advice and warm encouragement; but the responses were no less frequent or affectionate. The most trivial details of student life were discussed; and the .corre spondence which now began continued steadily until graduation with only the fewest interruptions. Nothing could possibly exceed the mutual attachment of the two brothers, who seemed to share 'each other's most secret thoughts. Under the stimulating impetus of such an incentive to exertion it is not surprising that Linton, be sides excelling in the gladiatorial combats of the Phi Kappa Society, should also graduate with the highest honor of the institution, being challenged in this distinc tion by no immediate competitor.
Dr. Curry, speaking of him years afterwards, declared that he had never known him to fail in recitation. But he was not studious to the extent of holding himself aloof from his fellow students. He was thoroughly social and was not above an occasional escapade of mischief if it promised no harmful results and offered no serious viola tion of the rules.
Judge William Lundy narrates an incident which shows his genial college-boy nature, and also his readiness to help his classmates out of embarrassing situations when he needed to employ no such devices on his own behalf:

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"I well remember," said he, "the practical joke which he helped to play on Prof. James Jackson. 'The Major/ as he was called, was fond of anecdote and fun; and dis putes with the boys, even on politics, were not without at tractions. The history of the Yazoo fraud, and especially the part which his distinguished father took in pro curing the repeal of the disgraceful act, was a topic on which the Major never knew when he had said enough or heard enough.
"One evening after the bell had sounded the recitationhour, .it was ascertained between the old college and the brick laboratory, where the Major's recitation-room was, that only three or four of the class had studied the lesson. To avoid the mortification of answering unprepared it was agreed to take advantage of the Major's weakness and talk against time. An irrepressible youngster from Columbia county, who had remarkably fine conversational powers, was to begin. Others were then to join in with the view to leading the Major in the direction of politics.
"Somehow the Major was restive and was not inclined to be communicative at first. Perhaps he was not entirely unsuspicious. But when Linton Stephens, with as much gravity as he could command, asked to be informed as to some facts connected with the early history of Georgia and especially with the repeal of the Yazoo Act, the old professor's countenance lighted up with smiles and he responded at length. Question after question was put, which he answered, totally oblivious of the passage of time, until the college-bell summoned all from the recita tion-rooms to the chapel for vesper prayer. It was with no small pleasure that the perpetrators of the innocent joke heard the Major say: 'Young gentlemen, take the same lesson for to-morrow.'."

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Linton Stephens became religiously impressed before leaving Athens, and joined the Presbyterian church. This was the communion to which his brother belonged, but the latter from principle had refrained from giving his counsel upon religious topics any denominational bias. Nevertheless he had sprinkled his letters with Bible quo tations and entreated his ward with paternal solicitude not to neglect his devotions. Under the advice and direc tion of his brother, Linton went from Athens to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he spent two years at the Uni versity Law School. This was in turn supplemented by an attendance upon the lectures of Judge Story at Cam bridge, Massachusetts, but Judge Story died shortly after wards, and Linton then joined his brother in Washington, where he spent a season attending the United States Su preme Court and the debates of Congress.

Locating at Crawfordville, the young student was admitted to practice in 1846, and was soon recognized as one of the foremost lawyers at the Georgia bar. He was indebted largely to his educational advantages but more largely still to his vigorous native talents. An ardent Whig, like his brother, he was prevailed upon to give some of his time to politics; and in 1849 he was elected to the State Legislature from Taliaferro county, being reelected in 1850 and 1851. In debate he developed rare powers; and his intellectual blade, like the sword of Fitz James, proved an effective weapon for offensive and defensive warfare both; and no member of the body reaped more largely of the legislative laurels. He cared more for argument than for rhetoric; but he was lacking

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in none of the resources of persuasive eloquence. In the courts he was equally convincing, whether addressing the jury-box or the bench. He thoroughly mastered the great underlying principles of the law as well as the intricate technicalities of the practice, and he was thor oughly prepared to deal with any emergency or to lock argumentative horns with any opponent.
It is needless to say that Alexander H. Stephens from his seat of national prominence in Washington watched with keen satisfaction the ascendant star of his brother Linton. Long before this Mr. Stephens, with a touch of humor, had written him from the national capital: "Keep up your studies. The impression is out, by some means, that you are a very smart fellow and a great deal smarter than Ellic; and you must not disappoint that impression. Some Virginian asked Howell Cobb the other day about you. He said you had a great deal bet ter mind than I had. So you see something great is ex pected of you; and to come up to expectation you must eat but little idle bread."
In 1852 Judge Stephens married the daughter of Judge James Thomas, of Sparta, and moving to Sparta he made this famous little town his future home. He was chosen soon afterward to represent Hancock county in the Legis lature. In 1855 and also in 1857 he was prevailed upon to offer for Congress; but the district being opposed to his political views, he was defeated. Nevertheless his commanding personality reduced the majority to such an extent as to give his failures the essential value of vic tories. In 1859 Judge Stephens was appointed by Gov ernor Brown to the Supreme bench. He was barely thir ty-six years of age at this time; but he became one of

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the ablest judges, as he had previously been reckoned one of the most efficient lawyers, in the State. However, illhealth made his tenure of service brief and he resigned office after having served the State only thirteen months.
Judge Stephens strenuously opposed secession. On the floor of the State convention he was one of the most active participants in the great debate; but he accepted the final result with patriotic submission. Organizing a company, he joined the Fifteenth Regiment of Georgia Volunteers and was elected lieutenant-colonel. Going to the front, he served in the army of Northern Virginia until 1862, when he was obliged to withdraw temporarily from military service on account of ill-health. He was subsequently sent again to the State Legislature, but when Georgia soil was invaded he once more took the field.
In 1867, having lost his first wife, Judge Stephens married Miss Mary W. Salter, of Boston, Massachusetts. She had been one of the members of Dr. Salter's family to visit the Confederate Vice-President while imprisoned at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. Judge Stephens having been given permission to visit his brother in prison, chanced to meet the young lady in question while in Bos ton, and the friendship thus casually formed soon ripened into matrimonial locks.

During the days of reconstruction Judge Stephens, who had no predilections for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Constitutional Amendments, became entangled with the military authorities and made some bold contributions to the dramatic oratory of this disturbed era of Georgia
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politics. He hardly knew what fear meant, and, under the most perilous circumstances, he courageously followed the command of his convictions. No finer argument was ever heard in Georgia than the one which he made in Macon in 1870 against the Reconstruction measures be fore the United States Commissioner, when he spoke in his own defense against the charge of technical viola tions. The courage of the man on this memorable occa sion was truly sublime. It partook of the character of moral grandeur. Unintimidated by the high-handed ab solutism which characterized the reign of terror intro duced by military rule in Georgia, he had the temerity to denounce the usurpers in language which required no Daniel to interpret. He violated none of the chivalrous ethics of the old school. He was courtesy itself, refined and polished. But in the silken rhetoric of Cicero he hurled the fiery thunderbolts of the immortal Greek.
Less than one week before his death Judge Ste phens, while engaged with important legal business in Atlanta, consented to deliver an address on the political situation. He spoke with great po\ver; but he was even then on the verge of physical collapse. The weight of his heavy law practice was pressing upon him, and he needed rest. Time and again under similar strains he had pulled through seasons of exhausted strength, but vitality was now gone. Taking his bed almost imme diately upon his return home, he died on February 14, 1872, less than fifty years of age; but he had left an illustrious record, and to quote the language of his de voted friend, Samuel Barnett, "another name worthy of Westminster Abbey was added to the honored dead of Georgia."

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It is needless to say that the untimely death of Linton Stephens was most keenly felt by his distinguished brother, whose solitary life became more desolate than ever, now that the one who for half a century had been the object of his pride and affection, his dearest friend, his most intimate companion, was taken. Since the old onardianship days when Linton had left home for the first time to attend the State University and Alexander had followed him with anxious solicitude, writing and encouraging Linton to write almost daily letters, the two brothers had filled the separation of all the subsequent years with the most voluminous correspondence. They had never practiced law together, but they had always conferred with each other in regard to important issues, and they had mutually agreed never to become opposing counsel in any case before the courts. The grief of the elder for the younger Stephens was like the grief of the plaintive singer of "In Memoriam" for the lost compan ion who was "more than brother"; and, had the muse be stowed upon him the divine afflatus, his sorrow, like the Laureate's, would have inspired his noblest song.

CHAPTER X.
Toombs, the Impassioned Mirabeau.
T HE mesmerism of genius has never held Georgia more completely enthralled than when fleshed in the personality and christened under the name of Robert Toombs. In the separate aspects of his character Mr. Toombs was not without successful rivals. In politicalstatecraft he was not the equal of Howell Cobb. In con structive statesmanship Mr. Stephens surpassed him. In cohesive oratory he was not the peer of Mr. Hill. In saga cious foresight and mental equipoise he must readily yield the palm to Joseph E. Brown. But in the assemblage of all his gifts he was an undisputed sovereign who in his prime strode the hustings, s\vayed the councils and ruled the empire of politics in Georgia with the jure diznno of the royal Stuart.
However, unless exception is made of the State Con stitutional Convention of 1877, Mr. Toombs lent his great powers to the building up of no substantial fabric which to-day survives. It is true that he sought to conserve State rights and Southern institutions; but these per ished in the great catastrophe. Some of his detractors have declared that the genius of Mr. Toombs was the genius of dismemberment. They have characterized him
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as the tornado bursting upon the hamlet; the fire-fiend reddening across the prairie. Such criticisms are most unjust. For Mr. Toombs was not only one of the brightest intellects, but one of the staunchest patriots the South has ever produced. But no one can or will deny that he was the storm-center of the great slavery debates on the floors of Congress.
It was Mr. McDuffie, the wonderful South Carolina cyclone, who first dubbed Mr. Toombs with the name of the great orator of the French Revolution. Mr. Toombs \vas still a youngster in politics when he dared to confront Mr. McDufrie on the hustings, but he must have fairly lifted the dust of the Palmetto State, and if Mr. McDufrie was not worsted he was certainly not overly victorious. For Mr. Stovall credits him with this remark: Said he: "I have heard John Randolph, of Roanoke, and met Bur gess, of Rhode Island, but this wild Georgian is another Mirabeau."
This comparison was not far-fetched. Under the spell of that electric eloquence which Mr. Toombs rarely failed to cast, the rapt and eager listener sat transfixed. He seemed to be witnessing some splendid storm at sea; or better still, some Alpine cataract hurling its organ thun der against the battlements of basic rock and shaking its diamond plumage in the sun.
Prodigal of his abundant resources, Mr. Toombs was utterly indifferent to his harvests, husbanding none of his achievements, preserving none of his speeches; and while the records of men less gifted are preserved in tablets more enduring, the trophies of his colossal leader ship are fading with the generations which applauded them, vanishing like splendid vapors and leaving no in-

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delible impress upon the landmarks of history except the memorials of his destructive passage.
But if Mr. Toombs was the hero of turbulence he was not deliberately the iconoclast or the vandal. He was broadly and deeply patriotic. He believed in preserving the government if possible; but he was reared in the school of Calhoun; and, planting himself defiantly upon the guarantees of the Constitution, he stood like the Iron Duke four-square. Nothing could drive him from his entrenchments; and if national peace and security could be maintained only by the sacrifice of cherished convic tions he was willing "for discord to reign forever."
This was the senatorial Toombs who raised the battleaxe of uncompromising resistance against the helmets of the anti-slavery crusade; and who, while anxious to pre serve the union of the States, nevertheless thundered the stentorian challenge which rocked it into revolution.
Toombs, the future statesman, was projected in prophe cy upon the canvas of national events by Toombs the undergraduate student at the University of Georgia. The apostle of defiance first raised the standard of revolt upon the college green. With little love of text-books and little aptitude for study, young Toombs was idly cut ting an easy path to honors when an open infraction of the rules, occurring just before the time for graduation, sud denly arrested his triumphal entry into Rome and cited him with notice from the faculty to confront the Areo pagus of Athens. Mr. Stovall has preserved the incident
Anticipating such a summons as the result of having been discovered at the card-table, the young student ap-

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plied to his guardian, Senator Thos. W. Cobb, who hap pened to be in Athens at the time, for permission to re quest of Dr. Waddell a letter of discharge. The permis sion was readily given on the statement which the youth made; and Dr. Waddell, who had not received the proctor's report, promptly granted the dismissal.
But almost immediately thereafter the proctor's report was submitted, detailing the offense which the refractory student had committed. The surprised doctor rubbed his spectacles. He had been taken unawares. But he re solved to capture the young secessionist if possible, and subject him to rigid discipline on the ground that he had obtained his right to withdraw under false pretenses when he was not in good standing.
Meeting the subject of his mental reflections on the street later in the day, Dr. Waddell nailed him with an interview.
"'Robert Toombs," said he, sternly emphasizing both names, "you took advantage of me this morning. I did not know that you had been caught at the card-table."
He was about to summon him to appear before the faculty when the young secessionist, divining his inten tion, suddenly folded his arms across his breast like Regulus addressing the Carthaginians and said with dramatic hauteur:
''Sir. you are no longer addressing a student of this col lege, but a citizen of the United States, free-born and in dependent."
Toombs in the American Senate could not have pictured the attitude of independence with sterner countenance or bolder speech than Toombs the erstwhile student at that moment on the streets of Athens.

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But the sequel shows that he resumed his place in the institution. He probably went before the faculty and submitted to correction. At any rate, the records of the college show that he was finally dismissed on the eve of graduation for an altogether different reason.
There are many traditions about General Toombs at the State University which can not be verified. One of them is that being refused a diploma, he improvised a rostrum of dry-goods boxes under the big tree in front of the chapel door and held opposition commencement exercises of his own, causing the seats in the chapel to be vacated and the crowds to patronize another entertainment. But Mr. A. L. Hull, who is familiar with the records, says that this interesting episode was born of Henry Grady's imagination. Nevertheless, the tree in front of the chapel took the name of the Toombs oak, which it continued to bear until it was riven by the lightnings.
Rising by the customary gradations on the political ladder, Mr. Toombs began his career in Congress as a Whig in 1845, heralded by brilliant achievements at the bar and in the Legislature of Georgia. He had been successful from the bound, plucking with kingly ease the laurels which he wore with kingly grace; and now at the age of thirty-five he had become one of Georgia's repre sentatives in the national councils. On entering Con gress Mr. Toombs was the beau-ideal of manly beauty, and he looked every inch the scion of purple lin eage whose veins were coursed with the blood of feudal barons. Across the sea in old England his ancestors had been the followers of kings; but in this country his fore-

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fathers had been the champions of liberty. They had been equally as royal in the new world as in the old; but they had shifted the crown from the purple to the people, and had followed sovereignty under another name.
Mr. Toombs had not been long in Congress before the imprisoned winds of Eolus broke forth with ominous threatenings upon the representative hall. But it was not until 1850 that the awakened Toombs began to plume himself for the fiery tournaments of the upper chamber. Mirabeau was now only in the making; but the scene of riotous confusion which enveloped the assemblage showed clearly what the coming tribune wras to resemble. Even in the cold print of the Congressional Records the account stirs the pulse of the reader. The slavery agitation had begun, and the plaster of compromise was to be the means of temporary relief. Amid bitter sectional clashings Con gress had assembled; but no choice had been made for speaker. Several clays had finally elapsed when a resolu tion was offered which sought to prejudice the political interests which Mr. Toombs represented.
Leaping to his feet he declared that the house could not pass the resolution in question until an organization had been effected. Efforts were made to cry him down; but he could not be silenced. Under the law of 1789 he affirmed that no rules could be adopted until members had taken the oath of office and proceedings had been duly inaugurated; and this position he continued to hold in spite of cries for order.
"Gentlemen may amuse themselves by crying for or der," said he, "but this course of procedure is mere brute force trying to put me down by the power of lungs."
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the din of the tempest the voice of the Georgian, who was now fully aroused, rang out like peals of thunder from the awakened heights of the Jungfrau.
"If you seek by violating the common law of Parlia ment, the law of the land and the Constitution of the United States to put me down/' shouted he, "you will find the attempt futile. I am indebted to the ignorance of my character on the part of those who are thus dis gracing themselves if they suppose any such efforts as these will succeed in driving me from the position I have taken. I stand upon the constitution of my country, upon the liberty of speech which you have treacherously violated and upon the rights of my constituents; and your fiendish yells may well be raised to drown an argu ment which you tremble to hear."
This impetuous outburst of eloquence is only one of the fiery whipcords with which Mr. Toombs lashed the assemblage into silence while he proceeded to argue his cause. Triumphs of individual magnetism over such turbulent majorities have been rare in the history of leg islative assemblies. Mr. Stephens has put himself on rec ord as saying that he had never known of another such instance.
But to show what tenderness of feeling lay concealed under all this bitter and burning invective. Mr. Toombs amid these violent contests of passion wrote home to Mrs. Toombs: "I begin to be more anxious to see you," says he, "than to save the republic. The old Roman Antony threw away an empire rather than aban don Cleopatra, and the world called him an idiot, but I begin to think he was the wiser man and the world was well lost for love."

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Notwithstanding the turbulent and fiery zeal with which Mr. Toombs had espoused the cause of South ern rights in Congress, he nevertheless supported the compromise measure of 1850, along with Mr. Cobb and Mr. Stephens. He was warmly attached to the Union, with all his sectional ardor; but, apart from this fact, the compromise measure in the interest of peace had made important concessions to the South, which Mr. Toombs was perfectly willing and ready to accept.
Nevertheless, on returning home at the close of the session, he found the whole State in the feverish throes of an anti-Union convulsion. The secession epidemic had fairly broken loose. Governor Towrns, authorized by the State Legislature, had called a convention, the declared object of which was to adopt extreme revolutionary measures. It can not be denied that General Toombs had unwittingly helped to precipitate this condition of affairs. He \vas preeminently the man of action, lion-like and bold. He possessed the faculty of arousing the blood more than any other man in Georgia. Moreover, the anti-slavery sentiment at the North was increasing hour ly, and the menace to slave-property was rapidly becom ing more and more serious. The part of safety as well as the part of peace seemed to lie in the direction of seces sion. Nothing else seemed to promise relief from the vexatious question which was now agitating the national life. Mr. Toombs had not preached this doctrine in direct terms, but he had done so in clear inferences. The speeches which he had delivered in Congress had not been intended primarily at least to produce disruptive effects; but he was so deeply and strongly moved by his passionate zeal for Southern interests that his warmest

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panegyrics upon the Union were pronounced in secessional accents. The people were disposed to follow Mr. Toombs; and catching his violent tones, without perhaps stopping to analyze his precise expressions, they were now ready to anticipate the events of 1861.
But, having supported the compromise measure, Mr. Toombs could not afford to be put in the compro mising attitude which the crisis in Georgia threatened. He was confronted on all sides with choice extracts from his speeches, showing that he had furnished the sulphur matches which had started the big blaze; but with the hardihood of the veteran fireman he threw himself into the center of the flames and soon extinguished the con flagration. He spoke all over Georgia during the cam paign which preceded the convention, and some time be fore the convention met it was evident that the aspect of things had changed. The result of the convention was the adoption of what is known as the Georgia platform, which asserted sovereign statehood but avowed no feel ings of hostility toward the Union, and accepted in good faith the measures of compromise.
On the platform which this convention adopted Howell Cobb became the candidate of the Union party for Governor, and, vindicating his congressional course in an extraordinary campaign of eloquence, he swept the State, defeating by an overwhelming majority, his ex treme State rights opponent, Charles J. McDonald. Mr. Toombs was also reelected to Congress by an increased vote; and several months later the popular enthusiasm commissioned him to represent Georgia in the senatorial seat which Mr. Berrien, "the American Cicero," had just resigned. He was now to exercise an even greater in fluence than ever upon the Soulh's political destinies.

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Entering the United States Senate in 1852, the dra matic phases of his career now fully began to appear in response to the challenge of this stormy period. The truce effected by the compromise of 1850 proved only temporary and provisional: and the slavery agitation now broke forth with intensified menace. He tried to resist the oncoming tide which threatened to strand the ship upon the shoals of disunion; but failing in this at tempt, he left no doubt upon the mind of the Senate as to where he stood. He pointed out the inevitable conse quences of aggression; but the widening area of the crusade against slavery and the bitterness of the assault allowed him no further excuse for hesitation. But he refused to turn his face toward secession until he had first gone with splendid preparation and magnificent courage into the very heart of New England and made his masterful defense of slavery before the assembled abolitionists of Boston.
It need not be imagined from this cursory outline of the dramatic elements in the public life of Mr. Toombs that he touched only the sectional issues. He pos sessed an intimate acquaintance with all the varied phases of national legislation, and was an active partici pant in all the great discussions. There were few topics which he failed to illuminate, and no member of the body whose towering genius commanded closer attention. The personnel of the Senate at this time included such leaders as Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois; William H. Seward, of New York; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio; James A. Bay ard, of Delaware; Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts; John Bell, of Tennessee; and Lewis Cass, of Michigan; all of whose names still ring with familiar accents through

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the noisy decades which have since followed. Mr. Toombs was prepared to debate with his colleagues on all the great controverted principles of the government.
But he was peculiarly the champion of those interests which involved the constitutional rights of the South and he became the recognized leader on the floor of the Sen ate of all the slavery hosts. Without directly advocating secession from his lofty seat, there is no doubt whatever that the fiery eloquence with which this impassioned Mirabeau resisted the aggressive acts of the North and hurled the indignant protests of the South did more than anything else to prepare the slave States for the final step which the election of Mr. Lincoln eventually precip itated. From this time forward Mr. Toombs became an uncompromising advocate of secession. He further more addressed a communication to the people of Geor gia strongly urging this immediate course.
On January 7, 1861, Mr. Toombs formally bade his senatorial associates farewell, declaring that Georgia needed his services at home. With intrepid speech he de clared that the South had made no new demands, but had merely insisted upon her constitutional rights, which were as old as the compact of union. "Restore these rights/' said he, "and you restore fraternity and unity and peace to all. If you refuse to do so then we say: Xet us depart in peace.' And if this appeal is denied you present us war. We will accept it, and, inscribing upon our banners the glorious words, Liberty and Equality, we fvill trust to the blood of the brave and the God of batles."

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Returning at once to Georgia, Mr. Toombs began to prepare for the great convention which was to meet at Milledgeville the week following. He embodied in his own magnetic personality the cause of secession, and never was determined purpose more distinctly manifest than in the zeal with which General Toombs had returned home to swing Georgia into the column of seceded States, headed by gallant South Carolina. This he accomplished principally with the aid of Cobb and Bartow and Nisbet.
Mr. Toombs was the choice of many loyal and warm supporters for the executive honors of the young Con federacy which he had been so instrumental in calling into life. But not a few of his admirers were inclined to think that his impetuous and fiery spirit was ill-adapt ed to the grave responsibilities of the supreme command of affairs. He really possessed calmer and safer judg ment than his dramatic temper indicated; but cheerfully acquiescing in the election of Mr. Davis, who defeated him by only one vote, he accepted the post of premier in the Cabinet. This position he honorably and ably rilled until irreconcilable differences between himself and Mr. Davis induced him to believe that he could serve his country more acceptably in the field.
But it often happens that men of unchallenged courage are much better equipped for assuming the role of the statesman than for playing the part of the soldier. Too imperious to brook the restraints of military discipline or yield deference on disputed points to men who were vastly his intellectual inferiors, General Toombs did not enhance his already established reputation by his martial exploits; but as brigadier-general, especially in defense of Georgia soil, he made an efficient officer, courageous

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if not always tactful, and able to prove by his gallant bear ing amid the carnage of battle that his arm as well as his eloquence was ever ready to reinforce his patriotism.
General Toombs survived the war by more than twen ty years, achieving fresh professional distinctions and aug menting materially his private fortunes, which now par took more largely of his time. He also rendered the State an important service in the great constitutional conven tion of 1877, but he never assumed the oath of alle giance to the general government, and ceasing to move upon the national stage, his name and his genius became forever associated with the destructive maelstrom of the sixties. Taken in all the amplitude of his splendid gifts, General Toombs was an intellectual Samson; but like another Samson, of Holy Writ and olden time, who, bore upon his back the gates of Gaza, slaughtered Philis tines like insects and wrestled victoriously with lions, he threw his arms at last around the pillars of his prisonhouse only to find his deathbed and his sepulchre amid the splendid ashes of the edifice.

CHAPTER XL
The Dramatic Flight of General Toombs into Exile.
F OLLOWING the surrender at Appomattox the last breath of the Confederacy was drawn in the old Heard house at Washington, Georgia, where the farewell meeting of the Confederate Cabinet was held somewhat hastily on May 5, 1865.
The Confederate chief executive, with the members of his official household, had first retreated from Richmond to Greensboro, North Carolina, where the bristling bayo nets of General Johnston's army still bore aloft the Con federate colors; but the safety which this asylum fur nished was soon destroyed by the victorious fire of Gen eral Sherman, who, having "blazed" his destructive march to the sea, now pointed his flaming columns toward the north.
Hastening over the border line into upper South Caro lina, and crossing the Savannah headwaters into Eastern Georgia, Mr. Davis succeeded in eluding the torch-bearer and bent his fugitive footsteps toward the historic town which had been for generations the ancestral home of General Toombs.
General Toombs held no civic position at this time, having already quit the Cabinet; but it was nevertheless
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an appropriate and perhaps not altogether an accidental circumstance that the man whose genius had been so ef fective in kindling the revolutionary fires should now be asked to furnish the couch on which the cause was to expire.
Care-worn and travel-stained, the principal actors in this pathetic scene were not long in dissolving the gov ernment whose checkered career was now about to close. The arresting officers were in hot pursuit and the air of the neighborhood was thick with danger. General Toombs did everything in his power to insure the protec tion as well as the comfort of his guests, and when the meeting was over he offered to furnish whatever funds or supplies were needed to speed them upon the perilous homeward journeys which they were now obliged to take.
Forgetful of former disagreements, he seemed to be specially concerned about Mr. Davis, and even offered at the peril of his own life to see him safely escorted to the Chattahoochee river. But this was characteristic of the gallant Toombs. The fiery Rupert was ever the magnan imous and generous prince, and the flinty spark of impa tient temper was by no means the only match which could kindle the furnace in the heart of Hotspur. But Mr. Davis thankfully declined the proffered service, and graciously assured him that his wants were fully met. It may also be observed in this connection as an item of wayside interest that Mr. Davis had received from Gen eral Lee the voluntary tender of Old Traveler; but he had no occasion for making use of the famous war-horse which had so often borne the figure of the South's great hero in the charge of battle.
Events were now moving on apace. The authorities

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at Washington were anxious to capture the principal leaders involved in the uprising which had now been quelled; and the so-called arch-conspirators who were specially wanted at this time were Jefferson Davis, Alex ander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs.
Mr. Davis was overtaken in Irwin county, Georgia, on the tenth of May, and carried to Fortress Monroe on the coast of Virginia, where he was put into irons.
Two days later Mr. Stephens was seized at his home in Crawfordville and taken to Fort Warren, in Boston Harbor.
But General Toombs This abruptly broken sentence suggests that the plans of the government were not entirely executed. Prison fetters and dungeon damps were not to be the portion of' General Toombs. The man who bore the imperial stamp was not to wear the servile badge; and the story of how the unconquered Georgian eluded the most vigilant search of the Federal officers and was soon bounding upon the high seas between Europe and America, is one of the dramatic episodes of the Civil War.

We are indebted to Mr. Pleasant A. Stovall, the bril liant biographer of General Toombs, for the most com plete account we have anywhere seen in print of this thrilling incident; and we follow the main outlines of Mr. Stovall's narrative. On the same day that witnessed the arrest of Mr. Stephens there appeared at Washing ton, Georgia, under command of General Wilde, a squad of soldiers, most of them negroes, whose objective pur pose was the arrest of General Toombs; and one of this motley number carried on the point of his bayonet an old

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photograph of the General, which had been procured for purposes of identification. It happened that General Toombs was at this time in his private office at his home residence; and catching wind of what was in the air, he hurriedly moved toward the rear of his plantation as the column of blue-coats filed into his front yard. He had little time for conference with Mrs. Toombs; but this clear-headed and courageous woman was not to be out witted.
Stepping up to the front door the commanding officer rang the bell, and Mrs. Toombs herself responded.
"Where is General Toombs?" he inquired, not with out deference, but with more iron than velvet.
"General Toombs is not here," she replied calmly, speaking the literal truth.
Other questions were put, but Mrs. Toombs could not be intimidated by brass buttons into giving information which might imperil her husband; and she purposely pro longed the parley in order to gain time and to increase as much as possible the distance between General Toombs and danger. The man in regimentals was be coming impatient. Finally he said :
"Madam, unless General Toombs is produced I shall burn this house."
If Mrs. Toombs was now alarmed she evinced no signs of her trepidation in her face; and she merely re plied in the same fearless tone:
"Then you will have to burn it, sir." Search was instituted, furniture moved and papers burned, but no further damage was done. Evidently the officer saw that threats were powerless, and with baf fled resolution he withdrew, leaving the mansion unmo lested.

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Among the sympathetic onlookers who had witnessed these proceedings with indignant but suppressed uneasi ness was a youth still short of twenty-one, who had been in the artillery service under General Longstreet, and who was now to play an important part in aiding General Toombs to accomplish his flight. This adventurous young Confederate was Charles E. Irvin. First satisfy ing himself that the incendiary threat of the Federal offi cer was not to be executed, he began to devise ways and means for assisting the fugitive.
Some intuitive guide seemed to direct him. Making for the point on the horizon in which General Toombs had disappeared, he went to the house of Mr. T. G. Wingfield, where he gained sufficient information for imme diate purposes and left word for General Toombs to let him know where to meet him with proper outfit and equipment for traveling. It was not the purpose of Gen eral Toombs to quit Washington without putting himself again in touch with his family. He knew that he could find secure harbor in- the outskirts of the town with al most any of his friends and neighbors, all of whom would be only too anxious to give him safe shelter until he could further plan his movements. But Lieutenant Irvin's fore thought and dispatch served him in good time. About two o'clock in the night the young officer received word from General Toombs directing him to meet him with his horse the next morning at seven o'clock at a point eigh teen miles distant on the Broad river. This Lieutenant Ir vin did. But he was also resolved to accompany General Toombs on his perilous expedition, let come what might. The horse which he brought for General Toombs was Gray Alice, the General's favorite, which he had ridden while serving the Confederacy in the saddle.

118 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Mounted upon his spirited charger, with Lieuten ant Irvin for his traveling companion, General Toombs now crossed over into Elbert county and pressed toward the Savannah river. He felt somewhat strange and un natural in his new role, and the thought of flying before the enemy whose batteries he had often faced without flinching was not at all agreeable; but the thought of be ing ignominiously shot or basely paraded was too much disgrace for his proud nature to tolerate, and under the pressure of his spurs Gray Alice bounded away over the country roads, bearing her rider into the welcome soli tudes of the forest.
Nor was General Toombs any too precipitate in urging on his steed with the furious dash of impatient Lochinvar. The country was full of desperate raiders; and the news that Mr. Davis and Mr. Stephens had been arrested only increased the vigilance and whetted the appetite of the hungry bands of blue-coats who wanted to capture General Toombs. He narrowly escaped the clutches of the enemy at Hermit's Island. It seems that a negro had given information to an officer commanding a de tachment in the neighborhood by telling him he had met Jeff Davis or somebody else who "looked just as big," and accordingly the supposed whereabouts of the General were surrounded; but the cordon of bayonets was drawn too late.
General Toombs now moved cautiously up the Savan nah river, more deeply impressed than ever with the need of vigilance. Persuaded by friendly counsels he took the initial degrees of Masonry while journeying through Elbert county, and the mystic symbols of the order to which he became most devotedly attached were

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the means of extricating him from more than one perilous situation. Besides he also secured the parole papers of Major Luther Martin, under whose name he now began to travel. And the name was not by any means an inap propriate one for this hero of resistance to assume. For in spite of its military prefix and its inverted nomencla ture, it suggestively recalled the secessionist of Wittenburg and the rebel-thunders of the Reformation.

When the cavalcade at length reached the umbrageous folds of the dense mountain recesses of Habersham coun ty, General Toombs began to feel more at ease; and his eagle glances swept from peak to peak with something of the conscious pride of William Tell as he threaded the mountain trails of his native Switzerland. But at this point Lieutenant Irvin was sent back to Washington with letters to Mrs. Toombs and requisitions for additional funds and supplies; while General Toombs following the frisky ribbon of the Tugalo wended his solitary way toward Tallulah Falls.
Stopping en route at the house of Colonel Prather, he remained here until rejoined by Lieutenant Irvin with news and provisions from home; but before pressing further on he dispatched Lieutenant Irvin to Savannah to ascertain if he could effect his escape from the country through that port. On reaching Savannah the gallant young officer fell into the hands of the enemy; and, but for his clever wits, he might have suffered extreme penalties by reason of the important papers which he car ried. But he managed to shift these without detection into friendly hands, and he was subsequently released

120 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
with only the mild punishment of reprimand. Making his way back to General Toombs, he brought the intelligence that Savannah was too strongly barricaded to admit of escape through that quarter.
General Toombs managed to pass the time pleasantly among his friends in Habersham. county, where hunting and fishing supplied his restless energies with temporary occupation; but as soon as Lieutenant Irvin joined him he started back toward Washington, having now resolved to seek egress through one of the towns on the Gulf. Reaching Elbert county on his southward journey, he first thought of stopping with his friend Major Martin, whose name he bore; but Lieutenant Irvin dissuaded him from this course with good reason as the sequel shows; for the house under whose roof he expected to lodge was that very night searched by the enemy. Gen eral Toombs did not dare to enter Washington, which was now the center of exploring operations; but he com municated with Mrs. Toombs through Lieutenant Irvin, telling her that his intentions were to reach Europe if possible, and that he expected her to join him as soon as arrangements could be made for her to do so.
Being without disguise except for his assumed name, which he used when caution required, General Toombs was constantly threatened with exposure on account of his distinguished, patrician air; but no ordinary dis guise would suffice to conceal the identity of one so prodi gally molded as General Toombs; and he was obliged to take his chances.- But he used every other safeguard; and he covered his movements so well that Lieutenant Irvin found some difficulty in overtaking him. He suc ceeded at length, however, in finding the fugitive at Spar-

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ta, where Judge Linton Stephens became his protector; and it was not until Lieutenant Irvin had exhausted all the syllogisms of logic that he could prevail upon the judge to conduct him to where General Toombs was con cealed.

Thrillingly interesting as the unvarnished account is, some of the details will have to be omitted. We, there fore hasten on. General Toombs had been moving about over the State in the role of the hunted lion, and meeting with hairbreadth escapes, for nearly six months, when he finally reached the Chattahoochee river and moved toward Mobile. At his plantation in Alabama he left Gray Alice and continued the journey by rail, taking care, however, to look as little like himself as possible, without resorting to borrowed paraphernalia. Between certain stations he traveled with General Wheeler, but if recognition was mutual there was no exchange of saluta tion; and without interruption he succeeded in getting to Mobile.
At Mobile General Toombs was the guest of the cele brated Evans family of Georgia origin, one of the mem' bers of which was the noted authoress, Augusta J. Evans, with whom General Toombs enjoyed many bright con versational chats. In order to afford the fugitive Con federate leader the utmost protection the servants about the place were dismissed and the members of the house hold undertook to do all the work themselves; but they did not stop to consider inconvenience when it came to giving protection to one who was so dear to the Southern cause.

122 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
From Mobile General Toombs proceeded to New Or leans, where he secured passage on the Alabama, one of the steam vessels of the Morgan line, plying between New Orleans and Havana. The vessel lifted anchor on No vember 4, 1865. General Toombs made no effort to conceal his identity after going on deck; and before the vessel had cleared the harbor it was known all over the ship that one of the passengers on board was the great Robert Toombs, the Confederate leader for whom the Federal officers were so anxiously searching.
But General Toombs now felt secure. On the deck of the Alabama, whose name recalled the naval exploits of the great Confederate battleship, he was now steaming down the Mississippi river and heading toward the wide ocean. Lieutenant Irvin had remained with him loyally through all his wanderings, and had taken leave of him only at the dock; but General Toombs carried the sunny face of his traveling companion in grateful recollection across the waters. The fugitive remained abroad for nearly two years; but the greater part of his exile was brightened by the companionship of Mrs. Toombs, who joined him in Paris the following summer.
While abroad General Toombs was quite naturally an object of interest wherever he appeared. Official recogni tion could not be shown him because of his political status; but he enjoyed social and intellectual privileges without restriction. Returning to America in 1867, he was not molested; but, refusing to take the oath of allegiance, he remained an outlaw under the flag of his country, and died at last unreconstructed and unrepentant, "the unpardoned rebel."

CHAPTER XIL
Toombs and Stephens.
A MID the acrimonious rivalries of partisan politics, like the fragrant wild flower of India in the deep est tangle-woods of the jungle, exquisite friend ships are sometimes born. Between two great Georgians whose distinguishing attributes were in polar contrast and whose political opinions and affiliations often clashed on vital public issues, there existed through all the fluctuating fortunes of more than fifty years the warmest and tenderest personal relations. These two men were Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs. Damon and Pythias were not more loyal to each other; nor David and Jona than more devoted. They were sometimes called the Cas tor and Pollux of Georgia politics.
The most observable difference between the two men lay in the outward contrasts of physical attributes. Toombs was muscular, full-statured, deep-chested and im perious. He was a tower of strength. His veins were swiftly pulsed by vigorous and warm blood of the richest quality of red. His sinews were wrought of steel. His muscles \vere spun of oak. His head was leonine. His dark brow, over which clustering waves of hair fell with cloud-like effects, seemed to be the abode of lightning and
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124 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the home of thunder. Stephens was fragile, sickly, wan and emaciated. He wore the typical look of an invalid. His eyes were bright, but they beamed like lanterns in the windows of the charnel-house. His cheeks were sunken, and his features, contracted by suffering, were overlaid with an enamel of sepulchral whiteness. He ap peared to be constantly hovering upon the borders of an other world and to be taking his last view of earth. His farewell looks were ever and anon whispering good-by. Nevertheless his voice possessed an unusual compass and an extraordinary power of penetration; but whereabouts in his slender anatomy the physical force lay hidden which expelled these musical harmonies is one of the in scrutable mysteries of finite existence.
Both men in the earlier glows of political campaigning in Georgia labored under peculiar difficulties begotten of physical handicaps. The difficulty with Toombs was in lifting his audience to the high-water levels of enthusi asm, which his picturesque personality inspired. He ad dressed men many of whom were in the same state of mind as the Englishman who wondered if any man on earth could be really as great as Daniel Webster looked when he appeared for the first time on the streets of Lon don. The difficulty with Stephens wras in overcoming the depreciated estimate of his powers created by his slight figure and in kindling among his auditors by his rare genius something of the ecstasy of feeling which caused the rustics of the village to rave over the accomplishments of the schoolmaster in Goldsmith's rare poem
"And still they gazed and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew."

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It was the boast of Mr. Toombs that he had never tasted the wares of the apothecary's shop until he was thirty-four years of age. It was the misfortune of Mr. Stephens that he had to be literally dieted on drugs and that mustard plasters almost took the place of bread and butter. Mr. Toombs gathered the commonwealth with bated breath and painful apprehension about his sickbedside only once. But Mr. Stephens was at least three separate times the center of such melancholy scenes; thrice the newspapers of the State were striped with black columns, teeming with editorial post-mortems and eloquent obituaries; thrice the salty lachrymals were filled; thrice the flag above the Capitol drooped and sighed .at half-mast.

But the outward and obvious differences between these two great Georgians were only the external flowerings of the contrasts whose taproots ramified the hidden subsoil beneath. Mr. Toombs was by nature impetuous and im pulsive. His fiery temper subsided somewhat when the air was tranquil; but it slept like knighthood stretched beside its lance and pillowed on its shield, ready with panther leap for instant action on the slightest signal of alarm. Mr. Stephens was calculating and deliberate. He made abundant drafts upon caution. He was not without spirit; but like the disciplined charger he had been trained to the bit. Mr. Toombs argued writh volcanic eruptions; Mr. Stephens in higher mathematics. Both were eloquent; but the eloquence of Mr. Stephens was the eloquence of fine-spun fabric, while the eloquence of Mr. Toombs was the eloquence of molten lava hurled

126 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
from the heated cauldrons of Vesuvius. Both men were tenacious of conviction, but Mr. Stephens had more pa tience to exhaust. He was more tolerant than Mr. Toombs; and while he was not disposed to temporize in any sense which implied surrender or compromise of principle, he was more disposed to treat with his adver saries in the hope of finding some common basis of agreement. Mr. Stephens even when perfectly sure of his ground was prone to measure consequences; while Mr. Toombs was disposed to let consequences trail behind in the rear coach while he grimly pressed the lever upon the engine. Both men were industrious workers, but Mr. Toombs with temperamental impatience worked spas modically, while Mr. Stephens with steady stroke worked continuously; the one like the woodsman hewing down the forest, the other like the oarsman plying up the stream. Ruddy Toombs, with the vigor of mountain granite in his frame, produced no literature; while delicate Ste phens, with insistent and steady toil, wrote volume after volume. Both were princely givers and royal entertain ers; but Toombs by wise investment accumulated two fortunes and died rich; while Stephens lived narrowly within his margins and died poor. On political issues Toombs was at one time a Democrat and Stephens a Whig. Equally loyal to the South, Stephens opposed while Toombs advocated secession; and when the war was over Toombs resisted while Stephens tolerated recon struction. The elements of contrast extended even to the rtames which they separately bore. Toombs was chris tened Robert A., but he dropped his middle name soon after beginning the practice of law. Stephens at first had no middle name, being christened simply Alexander for

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his paternal grandfather, but he subsequently adopted the middle name of Hamilton, in honor of an old precep tor whom he greatly admired. Such differences as these appear to leave little room for friendship; but differences sometimes face each other in the friendly guise of sup plements rather than in the hostile frown of contradic tions. This is what made possible the friendship between Toombs and Stephens. Besides they were both ardent patriots and true statesmen.

Frequently when Mr. Stephens was ill and unable to attend to his business in the courts, it was Mr. Toombs who looked after his cases; and he managed them as skillfully and as carefully as he did his own. Rash as Mr. Toombs often was in conversation, he was ultra-conser vative when it came to protecting the interests of his cli ents or to guarding the obligations of his fiduciary trusts.
Judge Linton Stephens, himself one of the noblest of Georgians, who belonged literally as well as locally to the breed of Sparta, declared that he would sooner trust Mr. Toombs than almost any one he knew to decide ques tions in which he was himself vitally interested.
Better able to travel than his invalid Achates, it was the custom of Mr. Toombs, whenever circumstances fa vored, to visit Mr. Stephens at Liberty Hall for conver sational interviews.
At the provisional convention of the Confederate States in Montgomery in 1861 it was Mr. Toombs who advo cated and urged the election of Mr. Stephens to the vice-presidency, although Mr. Stephens had carried his Union sentiments even to the point of opposing secession.

128 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Another instance when the impulse of friendship mounted above the waves of angry contention was when, just after the election of President Lincoln in 1860, Mr. Stephens addressed the State Legislature in Milledgeville, counseling temperance and calmness and opposing national disruption. Mr. Toombs was an uncompromis ing secessionist, but at the close of this great speech he arose and said:
"Fellow Citizens: We have just listened to a speech from one of the brightest intellects and one of the purest patriots alive. I move that this meeting now adjourn with three cheers for Alexander H. Stephens."
On another occasion Mr. Toombs speaking of Mr. Ste phens, declared that he had "more brain and soul with least flesh" of any man he ever knew.
But the last tribute which Mr. Toombs ever paid his beloved and cherished friend was when bowed with age and grief he bent mournfully and sadly like the shade of an old forest giant over the mortal ashes of the Great Commoner as he lay calmly and peacefully in the repre sentative chamber at the old' Capitol, free at last from aches and pains; and the trembling figure of the old man as he sobbed his simple eulogy in the plaintive accents of the dying swan, photographed itself upon the hearts of all who witnessed the indelible scene.
In the subdued hush of that tribute hour there was more than one heart whose involuntary response audi bly echoed the note of bereavement which came from the speaker's desk; and there was more than one eye whose flood-gates were opened as it marked the weeping figure of the bended Mirabeau.

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Two more lonesome years followed, and then two o-lorious Georgians met again!
Mr. Stephens felt for Mr. Toombs the same rapt and enthusiastic admiration which Mr. Toombs felt for him, and his eloquent estimate of the great Touchstone's ge nius has long been famous. Said he: "His was the greatest mind I ever came in contact with; and its opera tions, even in its errors, reminded me of some mighty waste of waters."

CHAPTER XIII.
Random Chats With General Toombs.
R OBERT TOOMBS was almost if not quite as fas cinating in ordinary conversation as in legislative or forensic oratory; and some of the pungent aphorisms which he threw off apparently at random in the table-talk of social intercourse or in the light abandon of convivial fellowship in hotel corridors will be handed down from mouth to mouth long after many of his elo quent periods have been forgotten.
General Toombs was in the habit of speaking his mind freely on all occasions, whether sitting on the front ve randa of his home in Washington or addressing an au dience of hostile critics in Boston on the subject of Afri can slavery; but there was something peculiarly attrac tive about his unpremeditated outbursts which made it im possible for him to appear in any public place without drawing about him an eager crowd of listeners. At such times he seemed to be unusually rich in epigrams, and to speak with an affluence of diction which challenged his best efforts in the crowded arena. He critised men and measures unsparingly, and scattered wit and wisdom like some oriental prince dispensing pearls. During the latter years of his life, when he ceased to be an active
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{actor in politics, he was encouraged to make even larger use of this conversational outlet for venting his views and opinions; but he never ceased to be captivating.
If asked to define diplomacy, General Toombs could probably have done so in categorical terms; but he had no further acquaintance with the word. Still the charm which he exercised in conversation was due to the bril liancy of mind with which this indifference to conse quences was associated. Capacious intellects like heavy bodies often move slowly, but lightning itself limped in comparison with General Toombs's mental operations; nor did he need the stimulus of some great occasion to bring his intellectual batteries into vigorous action. Some of his offhand chats have been known to possess all the qualities of his senatorial orations. Besides, he was equally at home in almost every department of human thought; and he spoke upon any subject which might happen to come up with an opulence of knowledge which not only illuminated but fairly exhausted discussion.
The air of recklessness and the element of hyperbole which often characterized the conversation of General Toombs were calculated to create the impression that he was an exceedingly rash man; but this peculiarity of tem perament was nevertheless linked with an abundance of latent caution which only needed responsibility to bring it into action. He was prudence personified in giving legal or business advice, and he was vigilance incarnate in safeguarding the interests of his clients, employing all the subtleties of law as well as all the arts of eloquence on behalf of those whom he represented.
But General Toombs will be remembered as the prince of talkers as 1'ong as his memory survives; and those

132 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
who have known him in all the different phases of his character will never be able to lose from the retina of vision the figure of an old gray-haired man with an unlit cigar in his mouth, seated in the hotel lobby and sur rounded by the rapt multitude. This was the conversa tional Toombs.
One day, while standing in front of the Kimball House in Atlanta, General Toombs was asked by some one in the crowd what he thought of the North. Said he: "My opinion of the Yankees is apostolic, 'Alexander the Cop persmith did me much evil. The Lord reward him ac cording to his works.' "
Standing near by was an officer in the Federal army, who overheard the remark.
"But, general," said he, "you must admit that we whipped you, nevertheless."
"No, sir," replied General Toombs, "we just wore our selves out whipping you."
General Toombs was present in the audience when Mr. Stephens delivered his famous speech before the Legisla ture in Milledgeville in 1860, strongly opposing secession and taking issue with General Toombs. However, at the close of the speech General Toombs, with characteristic mangnanimity, proposed three cheers for Mr. Stephens, whom he characterized as one of the purest patriots of Georgia.
Herschel V. Johnson, who had once been challenged by Mr. Stephens, but who was now his fast friend and warm ally in opposing secession, went up to General

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Toombs when the speaking was over and congratulated him on being so magnanimous to Mr. Stephens when he himself was such an ardent secessionist.
"You certainly behaved well to-night, Mr. Toombs," said he, rounding his congratulations with this good-na tured pat.
"Yes," replied General Toombs, "I always behave my self at funerals."

Governor Brown and General Toombs were never very good friends after the war. They had been the closest of comrades from 1857 t 1867, but the parting of the ways came when Governor Brown advocated acceptance of the measures of reconstruction. General Toombs could never forgive him for what he called "going over to the enemy." and he criticised him relentlessly on all occasions. Even when he came back into the Democratic party General Toombs was still unable to command enough grace to blot out "the unpardonable sin."
Some one in the presence of General Toombs had ven tured to speak of Governor Brown in the most enthusi astic terms, declaring that he was not only one of the ablest but one of the most devout men in Georgia.
"You may say what you please." said he, "but Governor Brown is an upright man and in the day of judgment I venture to say he will march at the head of a column too numerous to count of men he has been instrumental in saving."
"Yes." broke in General Toombs, "and when the Lord Almighty sees him coming he'll say, 'Column left.' "

134 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Alexander H. Stephens writing from Washington, D. C., to Linton Stephens in 1847 tells the following an ecdote :
''You must hear what Toombs said in reply to Burt the other day; but first I must premise, by way of explana tion, that Burt is anxious to get up an excitement on the* slave question. He wanted Toombs to speak on the sub ject, the Wilnot proviso being then pending, and among other things, he told Toombs that he wanted to see him fairly 'peel old Ritchie.' Toombs was listening to all this instruction, as if perfectly acquiescent, until Burt told him he must 'peel old Ritchie.' Here Toombs interject ed : 'No, by George,' said he, 'you can skin your own skunk. I'll be hanged if I'll hunt any such game.' "
General Toombs and Bishop Pierce were lifelong friends. Both men of gigantic intellect and surpassing eloquence, there was much in common between them; and it was Bishop Pierce who brought General Toombs when bent with age into the fold of the Methodist church.
Before the war when General Toombs was prominent in the councils of the Whig party, he chanced to meet Bishop Pierce one day and said to him:
"Well, George, you are fighting the devil and I'm fighting the Democrats. We are both doing the Lord's work."
General Toombs was liberal in giving help to all re ligious causes, Catholic as well as Protestant; and being importuned on one occasion to assist some worthy cause, he generously did so with the statement that he always tried to honor God Almighty's drafts.

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Down to the close of his life General Toombs remained "an unpardoned rebel," refusing to take the oath of alle giance to the United States government in spite of the earnest protestations of many warm friends who wanted to see him occupy his old seat in the United States Sen ate.
Almost with his last gasp when lying upon his death bed he said: "I know I am fast passing away, but I do not care to blot out one single act of my life."
Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana, once asked him why he did not petition Congress for a pardon?
"Pardon for what?" replied General Toombs. "When I pardon you may be I will then ask you to pardon me."
Though one of the most law-abiding men under the United States flag, General Toombs rather prided himself on being branded as an outlaw.

Chief Justice James Jackson before whom General Toombs often appeared in the Supreme Court describes the manner in which the great lawyer's mind acted and clinches the picture with an incident. Says he:
"Yielding minor hillocks, General Toombs seized and held the height which covered the field. Sometimes a thought condensed into a sentence drove his adversary completely out of court. Brevity is power wherever thought is strong. From Gaul Caesar wrote, 'Veni, vidi, vici.' Rome was electrified. The message became im mortal. Toombs said to this court: 'May it please your honor, seizin, marriage, death, dower,' and sat down. The case was won, the widow's heart leaped with joy and the lawyer's argument lives forever."

136 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Scrupulously honest in all of his dealings with men, General Toombs could never tolerate imposture or deceit. In order to win his cases he never resorted to trickery. There were no dirty shillings in his pocket.
Once when consulted by a client who stated his case to him, General Toombs said:
"Yes, you can recover in this case, but you ought not to do so. This is a case in which law and justice are on opposite sides."
On being told that he intended to push it anyhow, Gen eral Toombs promptly said:
"Then you can hire some one else to help you in your blamed rascality."
At another time, a lawyer approached him in the court room and asked him what he should charge a client in a case which had just been tried. "If it was my case," said General Toombs, "I should charge him one thousand dol lars, but you ought to have five thousand. You did some things I could never have done."
General Toombs left the State University before grad uation under circumstances which were not altogether harmonious and peaceful. It is the tradition among the college boys at Athens that the trustees many years later, when he had become distinguished throughout the nation, offered him his diploma, but that he indignantly repelled it with the retort that "since he couldn't get the diploma when it would have honored him he didn't care to have it when he would honor the diploma." But there is no evi dence in the records of the faculty that such an interview ever took place.

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Equally as apochryphal may be most of the legends \vhich have sifted down through the sophomoric genera tions, but an incident which is certainly spicy enough to have been true deserves to be mentioned in this connec tion as illustrating the juvenile repartee of the great Geor gian. He was engaged one night in an escapade of mis chief with some fellow students when a member of the faculty suddenly appeared upon the scene, much to the embarrassment of the youthful marauders, who straight way turned and fled. All succeeded in escaping except young Toombs; and, seeing that he was caught, he made up his mind to brazen it out. But his ready wit and his knowledge of Scripture came promptly to his rescue; and facing the professor, with feigned innocence, he said:
"The wicked flee when no man pursueth but the right eous stand bold as a lion."
General Toombs never lost his affection for his alma mater. He was subsequently elected to the board of trustees; and wherever he happened to be when com mencement came he managed to adjust his business so as to get to Athens.
Mr. Stovall tells of the famous address which General Toombs delivered at the university in 1872. Great inter est attached to the appearance of General Toombs at this time. He had not long since returned from Europe, and had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the govern ment, preferring the distinction which he derived from being "an unpardoned rebel." Says Mr. Stovall:
"The crowd in attendance was large and the veteran orator received an ovation. He departed from his usual custom and attemped to read his speech. But his eye sight had begun to fail him. The pages of the manu-

138 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
script became separated, and General Toombs for the first time in his life is said to have been embarrassed. He had not read more than one-quarter of his speech when this complication was discovered and he was unable to find the missing sheets. Governor Jenkins, who was sitting on the stage, whispered to him: 'Toombs, throw away your manuscript and go it on general principles.' The general took off his glasses, stuffed the mixed essay in his pocket and advanced to the front of the stage. He was received with a storm of applause from the crowd, who had relished his discomfiture and were delighted with the thought of an old-time talk from Toombs. For half an hour he made one of his eloquent and electric speeches, and when he sat down the audience screamed for more. No one except Toombs could have emerged so brilliantly from this awkward dilemma."
Though broken down in health, General Toombs at-, tended the university commencement in the summer of 1885, but it proved to be his last. The end came on De cember 15, and the great Georgian rested in peace.
General Toombs used to say when provoked by inferior minds whose shallow wit annoyed him, that he wanted to conduct himself properly in this world so that when he reached heaven he could associate with Socrates and Shakspeare.
When he lay dying at his home in Washington some one at his bedside whom he charged to keep him posted upon the happenings of the day, told him that the Georgia Legislature was still sitting. Then the limits of the ses sion were not fixed by law, as they are now, and fre-

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quently the session was protracted until late in the sum mer. General Toombs heard the announcement with pained surprise, and turning to his informant said in his feverish delirium, made doubly pathetic by his evident so licitude for the interests of the State:
"Send for Cromwell! Send for Cromwell!" During this same illness he amusingly characterized the Prohibitionists as "men of small pints." He wan dered repeatedly with Mr. Stephens in the retrospective illusions of his last moments, and just before passing away he solemnly declared, with the light of eternity fall ing upon his white forehead, that there was nothing in his past life which he cared to efface. It was just the utter ance which the listening ear of the great American public expected to catch from the bloodless lips of the dying Mirabeau: not the self-righteous boast of the complacent Pharisee, but the conscientious and calm avowal of the brave old patriot who, after his stormy life is over, at last surveys the tumult of the angry years from the mys terious border ranges of the unseen world, and who, feel ing that his motives have been pure, whatever his mis takes, can invite the eternal sunbeams to probe his heart as he reaffirms his fidelity to principle amid the brighten ing dews of the celestial dawn.

CHAPTER XIV.
Judge Underwood, the Noted Wit.
W ITHOUT undue favoritism, it may be said that no family in Georgia has enjoyed great er reputation for Attic salt than the Under woods. Judge William H. Underwood, who occupied the bench of the Western circuit from 1825 to 1828, and Judge John W. H. Underwood, jurist, Congressman and lawyer, were both noted wits, superior even in some respects to Judge John M. Dooly. It rarely happens that wit is found in what may be called the pure state. But the Underwoods possessed the genuine metal without any depreciating admixtures. The wit of both was per fectly sane and wholesome. It was not embittered by bilious indigestion nor puffed with self-praise. Still less was it in any sense the product of an erratic genius which craved or required artificial stimulants.
Tempting as it is to consider the Underwoods together, the present sketch must be restricted to the elder. Judge Garnett Andrews, who often touched elbows with Judge William H. Underwood in going the professional rounds during the earlier decades of the last century, has left prncng his literary effects an interesting appreciation of rne witty jurist. Without quoting Judge Andrews liter-
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JUDGE UNDERWOOD, THE NOTED WIT. 141
ally, he says that Judge Underwood, when he first came before the public, was inclined to stutter, and appeared to rather awkward advantage; but he adds that before Judge Underwood died he was not only one of the profoundest lawyers, but one of the most eloquent advocates in the State. He also makes the interesting observation that Judge Underwood's wit developed like his profes sional skill, by an evolutionary sort of process, and that he was much keener and brighter in his old age than when he first began to practice.
Coming through various avenues of tradition, testi mony is all of one voice to the effect that no purer or bet ter man ever adorned the Georgia bench than Judge Wil liam H. Underwood; and if his genial retorts ever oc casioned any irritating unpleasantness they were certain ly prompted by no ill-seasoned malice; and the pain has passed away with the hour while the laughter has rippled on down the years.
Judge Underwood was at one time arguing with great earnestness a point of law which was vital to his case,, and had just commenced to read a citation from Blackstone when the judge interrupted him by saying that his mind was fully made up to decide the question adversely and he did not wish to hear from him any further. "May it please the court," said Judge Underwood, "you will surely allow me to finish. I am not citing authority to convince the court, but only to show what an ignoramus. Blackstone must have been."
An opponent once accused the Judge of being a Fed eralist of the old John Adams brand. It nettled him somewhat and he replied testily:

142 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
"If I am a Federalist/' said he, "then the two national parties are Federalists and fools, and I have never hearft you accused of being a Federalist."
Judge Underwood was provoked with the people of Elbert county on account of some political issue on which! they were not able to agree.
"There's an honest ignorance about the people of El bert," said he, "which is really amusing."
It chanced that one of his old neighbors from Elbert heard of the remark, and, meeting him on the street soon afterwards, told him he ought to take it back.
"Well," returned the Judge, "I will take part of it back, and since the county voted for Buchanan I will take back the word 'honest.' "
He was too staunch a Whig to vote the Democratic ticket even in 1856.
After stopping all night with Chester Campbell at Mad ison, he drew out his pocketbook next morning to pay the bill.
"Do you think I really owe you three dollars for board ing me and my horse Cherokee for just one night?" he asked.
"Yes, Judge," said the landlord, "it is the usual rate." "Well, Mr. Campbell," replied the judge, "if the poet who wrote 'Man wants but little here below, nor wants that little long' had stopped overnight with you he would have written, 'Man has but little here below, nor has that little long.' " But Judge Underwood promptly paid the bill. He had one of the finest horses in the country and he was more particular about his horse when he stopped at the differ-

JUDGE UNDERWOOD, THE NOTED WIT. 143
ent caravansaries in going the rounds of the circuit than he was about himself.
Judge Andrews says that as long as he knew him he never forsook horseback and saddlebags for buggies or railroads.
Living near the Alabama line, Judge Underwood fre quently practiced in the Alabama courts. One day an upstart youngster who had just been admitted to the bar taunted him with being ignorant of the law of Alabama. "What you call the law," observed the youthful attorney, "may do for Georgia, but such statutes are not of force in Alabama." Now, Judge Underwood had long op posed the arbitrary methods of dealing with the Indians in Georgia, and this experience gave him an arrow. "You are mistaken," said he, "Georgia takes the liberty of extending her laws over all the adjacent savage tribes, and what concerns the young man personally still more she either hangs or jails, with very little evidence or ceremony, all the young savages who show her the least disrespect."
On one occasion Judge Underwood wTas employed in a lawsuit at Rome, Georgia, and Colonel Jones, an able lawyer with a weakness for politics, was the counsel for the other side. Colonel Jones had recently changed his party affiliations, much to the surprise of his friends throughout the State; and this gave the point to the joke which followed.
In the course of the trial Judge Underwood was exam ining an old lady on the witness stand, when, irritated by the close questioning, the old lady became quite turbulent. She wildly gesticulated in every direction, and the judge,

144 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS. !

j

who was standing near, seemed to be in danger of su^

taining a blow upon his intellectual frontier.

i

"Take care of your wig. judge," exclaimed Colonel

Jones. "Take care of your wig!"

At first the judge was disconcerted, thinking that per

haps his wig was really out of place, but instantly he re

gained his composure and turning his batteries upon Col

onel Jones, he replied with telling effect:

"Well, Colonel Jones, this is a free country, and I

think a man has just as good a right to change his hair

as to change his politics."

Judge Underwood was an unsubduable Whig of the

Henry Clay type, but his son, John W. H. Underwood,

believed in occasional variations. One day a friend

.asked him :

"Judge, what are John's politics."

"Really," said the judge, "I can't tell you; I haven't

seen the boy since breakfast."

But while John was frequently changing his politics, it must be remembered that the period was one of great up heavals in party organizations, and in the course of time John became politically even more distinguished than his
father. Early in his career he applied to the old gentleman for
a letter of recommendation to Governor George W'. Crawford, knowing that the chief executive was an inti mate friend of his father's. The letter was promptly ;given; and, putting it in his pocket. John set out for Milledgeville. But before he arrived at the Capitol he thought it prudent to scan the document, and this is what the eccentric judge had written:

JUDGE U:\DERU~OOD. THE NOTED H 7IT. 145
"My DEAR FRIEND : This will be handed to you by my s-n John. He has the greatest thirst for an office, with the least capacity to fill one, of any boy you ever saw.
"Yours truly, "WM. H. UNDERWOOD.'"
Seated on the front veranda of the old Atlanta Hotel, one of the famous ante-bellum resorts, Judge Underwood was quietly conversing when an elegantly dressed gentle man, whom he chanced to recognize as one of the most cultured men in the State, passed by.
Some cynical wag in the crowd seeing the handsome garb which the gentleman wore observed with borrowed wit that if he could buy him for what he was worth and sell him for what he thought he was worth, he would never be out of cash.
Judge Underwood instantly spoke up. "Well," said he. "that beats all. I have frequently seen a gentleman offering to sell a jackass, but this is the first time I ever heard of a jackass offering to sell a gentle man." During one of the great Know-Nothing campaigns, back in the fifties, a drummer recommending the tavern at which he had stopped told Judge Underwood it was an up-to-date Know-Nothing house. "Well," said Judge Underwood, "if the landlord knows less than Jim Toney, \vho runs the other hotel, I'll be afraid to risk myself with him."
Judge Underwood was once holding court during the fall of the year in what was known as the Cherokee dis trict of North Georgia. Chestnuts and chinkapins were just beginning to ripen in the woods, and lawyers, jurors, witnesses, constables and spectators were all eating them

146 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
in the courtroom, entirely forgetful of the proprieties of the place.
Anxious to preserve something like decorum in the temple of justice over which he presided, and tired of the ceaseless cracking of shells which punctuated the proceed ings, the judge finally observed:
"Gentlemen, I am glad to see that you have such good appetites. You are certainly in no danger of starvation so long as chestnuts and chinkapins hold out. However, I have one request to make of those who compose the juries. I am unable, in the present condition of things, to distinguish one body from another. I must, therefore, beg the grand jurors to confine themselves to chestnuts and the petit jurors to chinkapins."
Several years before his death, while holding court at Marietta, Judge Underwood, in conversation with an old friend, facetiously remarked:
"General when my time comes, I am coming to Mari etta to die."
"Ah!" replied the general. "I'm glad you are so much pleased with Marietta."
"It isn't that," came the quick rejoinder. "It isn't that. It's because I can leave it with less regret than any other town in Georgia."
This was only in jest. He really liked the little Georgia town at the foot of the Kennesaw. It was then, as now, the home of some of the most cultured people of the State: an intellectual center. But the old jurist had his wish gratified. He died in Marietta. Arriving one day on the noon train, he was taken violently ill soon after leaving the station, and in half an hour the soul of the genial old judge, like an extinguished sunbeam, had left the world it had so long helped to brighten.

CHAPTER XV.
Wilde's "Summer Rose."
T HE author of "Childe Harold" is credited with having expressed the deliberate opinion that no finer American poem had met his eye than Wilde's "Summer Rose." This soulful gem, which came from the pen of Richard Henry Wilde, of Georgia, was originally entitled "The Lament of the Captive," and it first appeared in 1816, one of the Northern newspapers being the medium through which it was presented to the world of literature.
Almost instantly the poem caught the fancy of the reading public, not only in this country, but also in Eng land ; and Mr. Wilde became the toast of two continents.
Fame is sometimes most capricious. Overlooking the serious work which absorbs the constant energies and embodies the central life purpose of the busy worker, it often seizes upon some random composition which an idle hour has called forth for diversion or amusement; and this becomes the pinion on which he mounts aloft into the blue empyrean. It was the privilege of Mr. Wilde to represent Georgia in the halls of Congress, and to figure in the trial of many important cases in the court room; but all the midnight hours combined in which he
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148 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
labored over his briefs were not as effective in his court ship of Dame Fortune as was the short holiday moment in which he thumbed his unheralded harp. The secret of this apparently unfair discrimination lies in the fact that the momentary flash of relieved tension often emits more of the real fire of genius than the long-continued and monotonous roll of professional routine.
The poem which breathes an air of musical melancholy from the opening to the closing line is inserted at this point:
"My life is like the summer rose, That opens to the morning sky,
But ere the shades of evening close Is scattered on the ground to die.
But on the rose's humble bed The sweetest dews of night are shed, As if she wept such waste to see; But none shall weep a tear for me.
"My life is like the autumn leaf, That trembles in the moon's pale ray.
Its hold is frail, its date is brief Restless and soon to pass away.
Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade, The parent tree shall mourn its shade, The winds bewail the leafless tree; But none shall breathe a sigh for me.
"My life is like the print which feet Have left on Tampa's desert strand;
Soon as the rising tide shall beat This track will vanish from the sand,
But still, as grieving to efface All vestige of the human race, On that lone shore loud mourns the sea, But none shall e'er lament for me."

WILDE'S "SUMMER ROSE:"

149

Mr. Wilde made no pretensions to poetry, despite the achievement which had suddenly lifted him into fame; and even when he found himself lionized and laureled by enthusiastic admirers in all parts of English-speaking Christendom, he refused to anticipate the business of Mr. YVegg by again ''dropping into verse." He divided his time almost entirely between law and politics. But he kept up his interest in things poetic, and at odd intervals he composed a work entitled "The Love and Madness of Torquato Tasso." Many years later Senator Benjamin H. Hill received the inspiration for his graduating speech at the State University from this same classic fountain.
The rare brilliancy of the poem which Mr. Wilde had ogiven to the literary* world and the failure of the author to follow it up with other poetic productions naturally evoked the fire of critics, who took advantage of the lapse of time to assert that Mr. Wilde was not in reality the author of the lines with which his name was asso ciated. Bitter controversies sprang up in which the claims of various alleged authors were exploited; but in the end the laurel was bound securely upon the brow of the acknowledged author, Richard Henry Wilde, of Geor gia.
The first of the tuneful rivals whose claims were brought forward was Patrick O'Kelly, an Irish bard, who had achieved some note in piping the charms of Killarney. But it could not be proven that O'Kelly had written the verses, although it was claimed that he had published them years before, and that the only alteration which Mr. Wilde had made in appropriating them bodily was to insert "Tampa" in place of "Lehinch." O'Kelly's uncon-

150 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
troverted poetry was an even more effective witness in disputing his claims to the authorship of the poem than was Mr. Wilde's suspected silence.
With the failure of this claim, however, the honor was still Ireland's; for Mr. Wilde himself had come to Amer ica in early boyhood from the emerald shores, having been born in Dublin, which, as Tom Moore's birthplace, had become the cradle of the Irish melodies. And, like the genial bard who has immortalized the Harp of Tara, he was destined to lend additional perfume to the Rose of Summer.
But the claim which honored Mr. Wilde's genius still more was the one which arose with spectral menace from the hoary dust of more than twenty centuries and amid the classic ruins of ancient Attica. Unbaffled by the overthrow of the first attempt to snatch the coveted laurel from the brow of the brilliant Georgian, the ene mies of the poet nowr sailed up the Mediterranean in an ancient trireme and made straight for the sarcophagus of an old Greek poet for whom the Muses had been in mourning since the days of Draco. This poet was Alcseus, whose harp was tuned six hundred years before Christ.
The charge which Alcseus was expected to establish was that Mr. Wilde's much-lauded poem was only an apt translation of one of his own original productions, bar ring of course such minor variations as were needed to bring it down to the nineteenth century and across to the western hemisphere.
Upon Alcseus now devolved the task of disputing the laurel; but the honest old mummv no sooner discovered

WILDE'S "SUMMER ROSE."

151

the nature of the fraud which he was invited to perpe trate than he straightway repudiated the piratical raid and hastened back into his graveyard retreat impatiently bolting the door of the sepulchre.
The fact that so astute an organ of public opinion as the North American Magazine was easily deceived by this crafty device of scholarship in the earlier stages of the strategy shows that even the hundred eyes of Argus are not equal to all the demands of vigilance. The initial assault of this new campaign of detraction started from behind the batteries of this well-known periodical in an article published during the year 1834. The contentions of the adverse claimant, who, refusing to leave his charnel-house on the ^Egean, was represented by attor ney, were fully outlined, together with an elaborate brief of the evidence. Superficial indications looked dark and ominous for Mr. Wilde,
But the North American Magazine in publishing this article had acted on the impulse of journalistic enterprise and without the cool prevision which prudently takes note of consequences. Investigation of the works of Alcseus extant disclosed the fact that among his productions there was no such poem as the one from which Mr. Wilde was alleged to have pilfered and paraphrased his "Sum mer Rose."
In the charge under consideration as in the Charge of the Light Brigade, it was now quite evident that "some one had blundered." The charge of the six hundred B. C. had failed to work. It was an ignominious Balaklava for the North American.

152 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
But the underlying humor of the ludicrous blunder did not appear until the truthful basis of the whole story about Alcasus was eventually brought to light. Briefly condensed the facts are these:
During the year 1824. Anthony Barclay, an accom plished Greek scholar in Savannah, undertook by way of jest to translate the poem into Greek -for the purpose of deceiving an old clergyman who claimed to be an au thority on ancient literature, and who had given it as his opinion that Mr. Wilde had borrowed his material from the classics.
This bogus literary production was then inclosed in a mysterious letter, signed with a fictitious name, and there in was the claim made that the poem had been taken from an old copy of Alcseus.
On reading the poem the clergyman saw at once that it tallied with the lines of Wilde's "Summer Rose." except in some few trivial details: and since the author was al ready laboring under the charge of having stolen it from Patrick O'Kelly, the clergyman hastily jumped' to the conclusion that both of them had stolen it from the poet of ancient Attica.
Though the perpetrator of this innocent fraud never dreamed of the consequences to which it might lead, it was not long before the North American fell into the trap and another literary sensation was foisted upon the coun try. Side by side the famous production of Mr. Wilde was published with what purported to be the original from which it was taken.
But oil was at last poured on the troubled waters, and the question of authorship was soundly etherized with an anesthetic which kept it from ever playing again the part

WILDE'S "SUMMER ROSE."

153

of Banquo's Ghost. This was just about the time that Dr. Crawford W. Long was experimenting with etherwaves at Jefferson; but the quietus in this particular case came from Mr. Barclay himself, who wrote an apolo getic letter to Mr. Wilde, explaining the whole innocent affair out of which the critics had made so much vicious capital.
In 1871 Mr. Barclay, who was then quite an old man, published under the auspices of the Georgia Historical Society an exhaustive review of the whole episode; and no one can accuse him of an unwillingness to render poetic justice. There are not many volumes of the work in existence; but the writer is fortunate enough to have one of these volumes, given him by Judge Richard H. Clark. It is an incident of rather singular interest that he received it on the evening before Judge Clark died; and the particular but kind-hearted old jurist went so far as to inscribe with his feeble hand upon the title-page not only the date of this generous transfer, but also the spe cific indications of the clock.

But the story of the poem will not be complete without an interview with Mr. Wilde himself concerning the au thorship of the poem and the attitude which he assumed toward his critics when controversial tempests were ruf fling the petals of his poetic rosebud.
''The lines in question," says Mr. Wilde, writing to an intimate friend, "were originally intended as part of a longer poem. My brother, the late James Wilde, was an officer of the United States army, and held a sub altern rank in the expedition of Colonel John Wil-

154 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Hams against the Seminole Indians of Florida, which destroyed their towns and stopped their atrocities. When James returned he amused my mother, then alive, my sister and myself with descriptions of the orange-groves and transparent lakes, the beauty of the St. Johns river and of the woods and swamps of Florida. I used to laugh and tell him I'd immortalize his exploits in an epic.
"Some stanzas were accordingly written for the amuse ment of the family, and read in the home circle. But, alas! poor James was killed in a duel. His violent and melancholy death put an end to my poem; the third stan za of the first fragment being all that was written after wards. The verses, particularly 'The Lament of the Captive/ which formed an incidental feature of the un finished poem, were read also by some intimate acquaint ances, among the rest, the present Secretary of State (Mr. Forsyth), and a gentleman then a student of medi cine, now an eminent physician of Philadelphia. The latter, after much importunity, procured from me for a lady in that city a copy of 'My Life is Like the Summer Rose,' with an instruction against publicity which the lady herself did not violate, but a musical composer, to whom she gave the words for the purpose of having them set, did; and they appeared over my name, with lengthy addition, much to my dismay.
"Still I never avowed them; and though continually republished in the newspapers with my name. I main tained that newspapers were no authority and refused to answer further."

WILDE'S "SUMMER ROSE."

155

This letter was written when the critics had com menced to dispute the authorship of the poem, which had come from his pen year's before. On examining the frag ments with which "The Lament of the Captive" readily incorporates in the unfinished manuscript of Mr. Wilde, the poetic lineaments are found to be sufficiently distinct to leave no doubt as to the unity of the composition.
Mr. Wilde died of yellow fever in New Orleans several years prior to the outbreak of the war, having taken up his residence in the Crescent City after leaving Georgia some time in the forties. During his residence in this State, to which he came immediately on landing in New York from Ireland, his home was in Augusta. He was an eminent advocate, full of the fire of Irish eloquence, but his claims to enduring distinction rest entirely upon his "Summer Rose." Georgia has never built him a monu ment. Perhaps she has thought it unnecessary; for wher ever the wild rose blooms, from garden hedge or wood land solitude, it floods the air with his fragrant epitaph. The summers may come and go on the landscape, but the wild rose lingers in the heart. And, with all due respect to the shades of Alcaeus, there is no leaf among all his laurels which can bloom beside this sweet wild flower of the Georgia wilderness.

CHAPTER XVI.
The Lamars.
T HE Lamar family of Georgia is of French Hugue not origin, and, according to traditions which have been preserved in some of the lines of de scent, the family escutcheon was first planted in the colony of Maryland by three brothers, John, Peter and Thomas, who fled to this country from France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. But the Maryland records show that Lamars were living in the colony long before the date of this exodus, and the probabilities are that the original immigrants, if driven out of France by religious intolerance, fled to escape the oppressions which began" under Cardinal Richelieu.
As early as 1649 Lord Baltimore, an English Catholic, whose colony in the new world had been planted upon the principles of religious liberty, issued a circular to the victims of persecution on both sides of the Rhine, inviting them to join the colony of Maryland and insuring them all the rights and privileges which belonged to English subjects. Thomas and Peter Lamar first appear on the records in 1663. They must have spent some time in Virginia before crossing over into Maryland. For the certificate of nationality which thev received from Lord

THE LAMARS.

157

Baltimore recited that "Whereas Thomas and Peter 'Lamore/ late of Virginia and subjects of the crown of France," had asked leave "to inhabit this province as free denizens, therefore be it known that such leave was duly granted."
From what district in France they came does not ap pear from the document in question; but some ten years later John Lamar took out naturalization papers in wrhich the official entries stated that he came from Anjou. This was probably the old ancestral home of the Lamar family.
Peter and Thomas located in what was then Calvert county, on the banks of the Patuxent river; while John, who seems to have practiced medicine in connection with his farming operations, settled at Port Tobacco, in Charles county, some miles distant.
Orthography was not an exact science in those days, and the name was variously spelled or misspelled even by the bearers themselves. It will be observed that in the cer tificate of nationality issued to Peter and Thomas, it \vas spelled "Lamore." At least ten variations have been dis covered among the old files, showing the very great di vergence of taste or opinion among the family members as to how the name should be lettered.
Most of the Lamars who have figured in the public life of the country are descendants of Thomas, whose will, dated October 4. 1/12, shows that he left an extensive property, which was inherited by his two sons, Thomas and John. Thomas, the younger, also appears to have left an estate of considerable size, which was divided be tween six sons and two sons-in-law; and soon after his death three of his sons, Robert, Thomas and John, sell ing what lands they possessed to an old uncle on the ma-

158 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
ternal side of the house, Rev. John Urquhart, moved southward and settled on Beech Island, in the Savannah river, from which parental abode have sprung the Geor gia Lamars.
Two generations later there appeared upon the scene another John Lamar, grandson of the pioneer of the same name, who settled on Beech Island. He appears to have lived first in Warren county and then in Putnam; but, locating upon this second move about eight miles dis tant from the present town of Eatonton, he established in 1810 what is to-day known as the old Lamar homestead on the banks of the Little river. Marrying his cousin, Rebecca Lamar, the union thus formed was blessed with an issue of nine children, two of whom became notably distinguished, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, father of Jus tice Lamar, and Mirabeau Bonaparte, second president of the Texas republic. One of the daughters, Loretta Lamar, married Colonel Absalom H. Chappell, of Colum bus, one of the most distinguished members of the Geor gia bar, a representative in Congress and author of the famous "Miscellanies."
Several years ago the old Lamar homestead in Putnam county became the property of Mr. Mark Johnson, who has kept it in good repair. It is an old-fashioned twostory frame structure, built in the most substantial style of the period, and indicative of the thrift which charac terized the owner. John Lamar is buried in the garden plot; and the inscription upon his tomb, written by Mira beau, states that he died on August 3, 1833, at the age of sixty-four years. He is characterized as "a man of un blemished honor, whose conduct through life was uni-

THE LAMARS.

159

formerly regulated by the strictest principles of probity, and whose family held him in the profoundest veneration and respect."
L. Q- C. Lamar, Senior, or Judge Lamar, as he was called, was born in Warren county, Georgia, but grew to manhood in Putnam. He began life as a clerk, but he had little taste for merchandizing; and after remain ing behind the counter some few months he entered the law-office of Joel Crawford at Milledgeville and began to prepare himself for the bar. He afterward took a course of special instruction at Litchfield, Connecticut. On ac count of an extremely sensitive nature he was rather backward at first in making his rare talents known at the bar. But such gifts as Judge Lamar possessed could not remain hid: and before he was twenty-three he was chosen by the State Legislature on account of his un usual -legal attainments to compile the Georgia Reports from 1810 to 1820. Later he also revised Clayton's ''Georgia Justice.'' He seems to have been recognized as one of the best-equipped lawyers in the State; and, be sides an intellect surpassingly brilliant, he had also an enormous capacity for work. In 1830 he was elevated to the bench of the Ocmulgee circuit.
But the ermine might have graced the modest shoulders of Judge Lamar at least two years earlier had it not been for the most chivalrous and delicate sense of honor which restrained him from entering the field against Senator Thomas W. Cobb. Few men in the State had been more distinguished than Senator Cobb. He had served three terms in the national House, and one in the United States Senate. But for some reason he had become unpopular. Entering the race for the judgeship of the Ocmulgee cir-

160 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
cuit he had been defeated on joint ballot, but, much to the surprise of every one, the successful candidate, soon after the election, resigned the office. Senator Cobb again en tered the race. At the same time the friends of Judge Lamar importuned him to offer for the place, and the prospect of his election, in the event he took the field, was little short of certain. But Senator Cobb was his friend. Moreover, he esteemed him for his high character and for his past public record; and he not only refused to take the field against him, but he even went to work in his behalf.
Largely due to the support of Judge Lamar, the old Senator was elevated to the bench, but he died before his term of office expired, and Judge Lamar being again urged to make the race, consented. Even though his scrupulous regard for the claims of friendship had delayed his promo tion to the bench at least two years, he was nevertheless the youngest member of the judiciary in the State. But young as he was, being only thirty-four at the time of his election, he soon came to be knowln on account of his extraordinary attainments as "the great Judge Lamar." He was just entering upon what promised to be one of the most brilliant careers which the State had ever known when ill-health overtook him, and under an insane im pulse, produced by temporary aberration, he put an end to his sufferings with his own hand. Neither his ideal home-life nor his unexampled career on the bench could have furnished the remotest occasion for self-destruction, and the only possible explanation is supplied by the effect of disease upon an organism peculiarly sensitive. Apart from his pronounced legal attainments, he also possessed unusual literary culture, but, unlike his brother, he appears

THE LAMARS.

161

to have written no sonnets "to cheer an evening's idle time.'"
Mirabeau B. Lamar, his brother, and L. O. C. Lamar, his son, the former associated with Texas and the latter with Mississippi, were perhaps the most distino-uished members of the Lamar family. They were both men of peculiar genius; and, on account of the parts which they separately played in the history of the times, they are reserved for more extended treatment in suc ceeding chapters.

Curiosity has often sought an explanation of the un abridged given names which some of the members of the Lamar family have borne, especially in this particular branch. The story, as told by Chancellor Mayes, of the University of Mississippi, son-in-law of Justice L. Q. C. Lamar, is quite amusing. It is narrated by Dr. Mayes that in the family of John Lamar at Eatonton there lived an eccentric old bachelor uncle by the name of Zachariah Lamar, and that among the freaks of this old gentleman was an inordinate worship of great celebrities. He possessed an intimate acquaintance with all the nota ble characters of ancient history; but the bulk of his incense was by no means devoted to the illustrious shades of Greece and Rome. He also had his modern favorites, and divided his veneration almost equally between French and American men of eminence. He carried his reveren tial zeal so far that even at family prayers he is said to have thanked the Almighty for the shining examples of virtue presented by the men of former times; and it was not at all unusual for the devout old gentleman to quote

162 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
from the classic authors as freely as from the inspired oracles, when addressing the throne of grace.
Since the edicts of fate denied him the privilege of bestowing the names of his favorite heroes upon the chil dren of his own loins, he was measurably compensated for the lack of offspring b}- being accorded the privi lege of naming the young Lamars who came to brighten his brother's domestic hearthstone; and fearing that the increase might not be sufficient to exhaust the supply of heroic names, he began at once to confer double honor upon each new accession to the family circle.
Four members of the household under the terms of this compact were christened: Lucius Quintus Cmcinnatus, Mirabeau Bonaparte. Jefferson Jackson and Thomas Ran dolph. Years later, when the grandchildren began to ar rive. Uncle Zachariah, having been graciously spared through another generation, appeared to be still jealous of his former prerogative; but in the meantime he had shifted the realm of his meditations from war and poli tics to physics and chemistry, with the result that the first grandchild was christened Lavoisier Legrande.
This is substantially the account given by Dr. Mayes; but, while the story is almost too good to be spoiled, it is not the Georgia version. From the information which the Georgia Lamars have on the subject the Uncle Zachariah of the Mississippi legend was not an old bachelor uncle at all, but none other than Colonel Zachariah Lamar, of Milledgeville. father of Mrs. General Howell Cobb. Colonel Lamar was one of the most cultured men and one of the most influential citizens of Middle Geor gia. He amassed a fortune partly by farming and part ly by merchandizing, but he took an active part in the

THE, LAMARS.

163

politics of his day, and was an ardent admirer of great men. It has been stated that John Lamar, of Eatonton, married his own cousin, Rebecca. Rebecca was the sister of Zachariah Lamar, of Milledgeville; and whether or not Zachariah Lamar ever lived in his younger days with this couple at Eatonton, it is generally believed that he suggested the names which were adopted in the family counsels. Nevertheless, it is somewhat singular that he should have prescribed such lengthy appellations for his nephews and for his own children have contented himself with names which had been honored in the Lamar family since the time of the French exodus. His daughter, who married General Howell Cobb, was Mary Ann Lamar, and his son, who attained some distinction in literature, was John Basil Lamar.

John Basil Lamar was famous as the author of "Home spun Yarns/' an interesting series of stories drawn from ante-bellum life in Georgia. They appeared in the lead ing magazines and periodicals of the day and attracted wide attention. Miss Rutherford states that they must have caught directly or indirectly the notice of Charles Dickens on his American visit, for in his story of "Colo nel Ouagg's Conversion" he embodies the same legend which Colonel Lamar had already told in his story of "The Blacksmith of the Mountain Pass." Too profitably occupied with other important interests to make literature his profession, Colonel Lamar made only holiday excur sions into the realms of authorship, but he wrote with so much grace and culture that no one can read what has come from his pen without regretting that he could not

164 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
find more time to devote to employments which were so congenial to his tastes.
Colonel Lamar was educated at the famous school of Dr. Beman, near Mount Zion, and at the State Universi ty. He settled in Macon, Georgia, but never married. It is possible that the Mississippi legend of an old bachelor uncle may be due to the work of some scribe who has con fused father and son and attributed to Zachariah Lamar the single-blessedness which belonged to John Basil Lamar. Devoting himself to the care of the large estate which he inherited from his father, Colonel Lamar greatly augmented his private fortune by wise management. He also supervised his sister's and General Cobb's plantations, and took special charge of the orphan children of his younger brother, Andrew J. Lamar. He seems to have been highly esteemed and greatly beloved by the whole family connection. He supplemented his educational ad vantages by foreign travel and extensive reading, and he evinced his rare culture in the surroundings of his homelife as well as in the character of his literary work.
Notwithstanding his manifold responsibilities, he took an active interest in public affairs, and some time before the war was elected to Congress. But General Cobb was also returned. It was before the State was divided into districts; and they were both elected from the State at large. However, Colonel Lamar declined to serve, giv ing as his reason that his brother-in-law was better fitted for political life than himself; and instead of going to Washington he remained at home in charge of the large private interests from which they could not both be spared at the same time.
Colonel Lamar was elected to the secession convention

THh LAMARS.

165

and supported the famous ordinance. As soon as the war broke out he evinced his zeal in the cause of the South by presenting the Macon Volunteers with hand some uniforms, and he also readjusted his farming oper ations so as to produce such crops as were most needed to furnish supplies for the army. But he was not satis fied with rendering his country this small meed of serv ice; and, having already won his military spurs in the Seminole War, he now went to the front as volunteer aide on the staff of General Howell Cobb. But his career on the field of battle, though brilliant, was brief, and at Crampton's Gap, in Maryland, he fell mortally wounded.

Besides the Lamars already mentioned there are nu merous others who, in positions scarcely less conspicu ous, have illustrated the peculiar genius of the family. Grandson to the John Lamar who came to Georgia in 1755 was Basil Lamar, cousin to the John Lamar of Putnam. Two sons of Basil Lamar became prominent: Peter and John. Colonel Peter Lamar, who lived in Lincoln county, Georgia, was one of the wealthiest plant ers in the State. He married Sarah Cobb Benning, daughter of John Benning and Sarah Cobb. He served in the General Assembly and was prominent in local and State affairs. Captain Lafayette Lamar, his son, was an unusually gifted man. Educated at the State Univer sity, he was scheduled for congressional honors at the outbreak of the war; but going to the front at the head of the company which he organized, he was one of the first victims of the struggle, yielding up his life at Warrenton, Virginia, in 1861. John Lamar also became prom-

166 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
inent; but he was overshadowed by his more distin guished son, Joseph B. Lamar, who went to California early in life, and after representing Mendocino county in the State Legislature was elevated to the bench. Pru dence, one of the daughters of Basil Lamar, married a Winn, and became the grandmother of two distinguished Georgians : Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, minister to Spain and trustee of the Peabody-Slater funds, and Richard F. Lyon, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.
Among the Lamars who have achieved distinction in the various branches of the family, other than the ones already mentioned, are Gazaway B. and Henry G. Lamar, both of whom have illustrated Georgia in Congress; Al bert R. Lamar, the brilliant journalist, who was at one time editor of the Macon Telegraph; Lucius M. Lamar, Speaker pro tern, of the House, State Senator and marshal of the Southern district of Georgia; Joseph R. Lamar, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court; William B. Lamar, former superior court judge, and now Congressman from Florida; Colonel Charles A. L. Lamar, who lost his life near the close of the war at Colum bus ; Colonel Jefferson Lamar, who was killed at Crampton's Gap; Rev. James S. Lamar, of Augusta; Rev. An drew J. Lamar, of Nashville, and numerous others.
To mention one of the noted women of the family, it was Rebecca Lamar, sister of Gazaway Lamar, who was known as "the heroine of the Pulaski." Somewhere be tween Savannah and New York the ill-fated steamer was wrecked at sea. Gazaway Lamar, his son Charles and his sister Rebecca, were the only members of the family who escaped the tragic disaster. Three children of Gaz away Lamar and also his wife were included among the

THE LAMARS.

167

lost. It was one of the most terrible fatalities of the kind ever known; but, amid all the horror of the wild scene, the heroism of Rebecca Lamar was such as to make her deservedly famous among the women of Georo-ia. She never once lost her presence of mind, her calm fortitude or her wonderful resourcefulness; and those who survived the wreck were all of one accord in the un stinted tribute which they paid her. She afterwards became Mrs. McLeod.
Mention has already been made of the fact that the wife of General Ho well Cobb was Mary Ann Lamar, daughter of Colonel Zachariah Lamar, of Milledgeville, and from this union sprang several children who have risen to prominence in the public life of Georgia: Judge Howell Cobb, judge of the city court of Athens; Major Lamar Cobb, who for years was secretary of the board of trustees of the State University; Captain John A. Cobb, ordinary of Sumter county, and Andrew J. Cobb, Asso ciate Justice of the Supreme Court. Loretta Lamar, daughter of John Lamar, of Eatonton, and sister of L. Q. C. Lamar and Mirabeau B. Lamar, married Colonel Ab salom H. Chappell, of Columbus, and from this union sprang the late J. Harris Chappell, former president of the Georgia State Normal and Industrial College; L. H. Chappell, the present mayor of Columbus, and Thomas J. Chappell, ex-Representative and State Senator who was recently the choice of many enthusiastic supporters all over Georgia for one of the appellate judgeships.
Including the members of the family who have not inherited the Lamar name but who have inherited the Lamar blood and the Lamar genius, it is doubtful if there is any other family in American which can boast so many

168 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
brilliant and distinguished representatives; and besides illustrating Georgia, they have also illustrated such other States as South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, California and Florida. The above summary while alto gether too meager to render full justice to the claims of this noted household will at least convey some idea of the deserved preeminence which belongs to the Lamars of Georgia.

MIRABEAU BONAPARTE LAMAR.

CHAPTER XVIL
Mirabeatt B* Lamar, of Texas,
M IRABEAU BONAPARTE LAMAR possessed a genius which may be appropriately described as many-sided. He was a soldier whose sword gleamed in the very forefront of the war for Texan inde pendence. He was a statesman whose abilities made him the second president of the republic. He was an orator inferior to none in Texas. Beginning life as a merchant and a planter, he became a journalist; and from journal ism he turned to law. He furthermore gained distinction as a diplomat; and before he died he was widely known as a poet, his tuneful wares having been published in New York in 1859 under the title of "Verse Memorials."
Mr. Lamar was well advanced in the thirties before he left Georgia for Texas. He was not born at the old Lamar homestead in Putnam county, but near the site of the old State Capitol at Louisville, in Jefferson county, on August 1 6, 1798. It seems that John Lamar before mov ing into Putnam lived first in Jefferson and afterward in Warren counties; but as soon as the corner of the cen tury was well turned he shifted his place of residence to the banks of the Little river, some eight miles from what was then the little village of Eatonton. And here it was
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170 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

I

that Mirabeau spent his boyhood days. He seems to have been something of an artist during this adolescent period;., for among the mural decorations of the old homestead a picture, which is said to have left an abiding impres-; sion upon Justice Lamar, is credited to the artistic brush ' of his uncle Mirabeau. The sketch, which was entitled a I "Nightmare," portrayed a beautiful woman reposing upon a couch and a spectral horse's head protruding through a window immediately above her. The concep tion was striking and the work must have been cleverly executed to have proven so effective.
Neither Mirabeau nor his brother, the elder L. Q. C. Lamar, enjoyed the benefits of collegiate instruction. They seem to have possessed all the advantages which the 1 immediate neighborhood could supply; but for some rea-j| son they were not sent to college. It could hardly have | been for lack of means, since John Lamar was reputed to I be fairly well off. If the tradition cited by Dr. Mayes .' could be relied upon, the failure of John Lamar to send his | sons to the recognized educational founts would be suffi-f ciently explained by the presence of the old bachelor uncle in the household. For the privilege of living under thej same roof with an antiquarian scholar so classic in his ac complishments would have been almost equivalent to liv-K| ing in the shadow of the ancient Acropolis. Such an active^ dispensary of Attic culture would have made the expense''! of college tutors "wasteful and ridiculous excess," worse;j than gilding refined gold or carrying coals to Newcastle." It has already been stated that the uncle who loaded the young Lamars with the reverential tribute of his hero- " worship was Colonel Zachariah Lamar. He was not an old bachelor by any means, but he was an accomplished

MIRABEAU B. LAMAR, OF TEXAS.

171

scholar, and if he had anything to do with training the intellect of his nephew it was well done; and though Mirabeau was not enrolled among the graduates of the University, it could hardly be said that even with his earliest breath he had failed to inhale the aroma of the groves of Athens.

Before he was well grown Mirabeau entered upon the serious business of life by engaging in mercantile pur suits at Columbus, Georgia, and he also appears to have conducted farming operations in the same neighborhood. But the pupil of uncle Zachariah had not been predestined either to measure homespun or to plow furrows; and, without stopping to inquire how it happened, it suffices to say that in 1828 he started the Columbus Independent and began to advocate State rights. He took an active part in politics and was not long in evincing the genius which was destined to bear fruit in the very highest mili tary and civic distinctions.
The impulse which prompted Mr. Lamar to seek his fortune in what was then the far West was the impulse of his impetuous Huguenot spirit. To say that he sym pathized with the desire for independence which charac terized the gallant Texans who were trying to throw off the yoke of Mexico, is to say of him no more than might be said of any other true American. It was the old story of 1776 told with local variations and in Spanish accents. Something must be added. Mr. Lamar pos sessed an inordinate love for the word "Independence." He had sounded an independent note in the paper which he was editing, and which bore an independent name. Moreover, as an advocate of State rights he was pro-

172 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
foundly imbued with the philosophy of home rule. The' hostile movements along the frontier only served to em phasize .an invitation which was already attractive; and being more than half persuaded to cast his lot with the revolutionists before the war began, he needed only to catch the clang of steel to be fully resolved upon the journey westward.
Thus enticed, it was not purely as the soldier of for tune that Mr. Lamar set out for Texas. Neither the in stinct of valor nor the love of adventure were lacking; but underlying both were deep-seated principles and strong convictions. Moreover, he possessed within him self the elements of mastery: the keys which were des tined to unlock an empire. He could wield the pen as readily as the sword, and was prepared to lead whether in the forum or in the field. It was not the voice of a siren which sang to him out of the sunset sky; but the voice of a prophet which spoke the decrees of destiny.
Moving to Texas in 1835, Mr. Lamar identified him self at once with the revolutionary cause, becoming first an eloquent spokesman and afterward an intrepid com mander of troop. He seems to have leaped into the Texan assemblies with all the dramatic dash of the great French tribune for whom he was named; and his chival rous address completely captivated the Texan patriots, who hailed him as a leader providentially raised up for the crisis which was now pending. At San Jacinto he gallantly led a charge which completely broke the Mexi can line and decided the issue of the battle. And having proven that he could fight like Bonaparte as well as plead like Mirabeau in the cause of independence, his promotion in the ranks was rapid; and he soon wore the stars of the major-general.

MIRABBAU B. LAMAR, OF TEXAS.

173

It speaks in eloquent terms of the patriotic prestige which the gallant Georgian earned in the struggle for Texan independence that General Sam Houston was the only man in all the republic who took precedence over him when the new government was organized in 1836, with General Sam Houston as president and General Mirabeau B. Lamar as vice-president; and it was neither an unexpected nor an unmerited tribute which the volun tary suffrages of the people conferred upon him when, at the close of General Houston's term of office, he became president of the republic of Texas. But it was difficult to recognize the distinguished soldier and patriot who now presided at the helm of affairs as the modest editor who less than three short years before had occupied an obscure sanctum on the banks of the Chattahoochee river in dis tant Georgia.

During the administration of President Lamar the in dependence of Texas was recognized by the powers of Europe; but it was plainly foreseen from the beginning that the Lone Star would eventually glitter upon the azure field of the American flag. And General Lamar was too intense an American to entertain with indiffer ence the thought of seeing Texas represented among the constellations. Statehood within the charmed circle of the American Union was more attractive than empire even to many who were born on the soil so recently wrest ed from Mexico; and so Texas was eventually enrolled among the stellar assets of Uncle Sam. At the outbreak of hostilities between this country and Mexico General Lamar joined General Taylor at Matamoras. He also

174 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
fought at Monterey. But later he took command of anj independent company of Texans and rendered effective service in checking the incursions of the Comanche In dians.
At the close of the Mexican war General Lamar devoted himself largely to professional pursuits. He is said to have been morbidly saddened by domestic bereave ments and sorrows, but his verses, while full of the; plaintive note, breathe also the spirit of brave submission.! Perhaps the best known if not the most musical of all poetic wares of General Lamar is the little poem entitled! '"The Daughter of Mendoza." It is not included in* "Verse Memorials," having been found after the vol-| ume went to press; but it is nevertheless included1) among the choice gems of American literature which;! have recently been culled by one of the best critics, poem is as follows:
"Oh, lend to me, sweet nightingale, Your Music by the fountains,
And lend to me your cadences, Oh, river of the mountains!
That I may sing my gay brunette A diamond spark in coral set, Fit for a prince's coronet
The daughter of Mendoza.
How brilliant is the morning star! The evening star, how tender!
The light of both is in her eye, Their softness and their splendor.
But for the lash that shades their light, They were too dazzling for the sight; And when she shuts them all is night
The daughter of Mendoza.

MIRABEAU B. LAMAR, OF TEXAS.

175

"Oh, ever bright and beauteous one, Bewildering and beguiling;
The lute is in thy silvery tones, The rainbow in thy smiling;
And thine is, too, o'er hill and dell, The bounding of the young gazelle, The arrow's flight and ocean's swell
Sweet daughter of Mendoza!
"What though perchance we meet no more, What though too soon we sever;
Thy form will float like emerald light Before my vision ever;
For who can see and then forget The glories of my gay brunette? Thou wert too bright a star to set
Sweet daughter of Mendoza."

This poem alone is sufficient to establish the author's reputation; but his published volume contains numerous gems, many of which are fully the equal of this popular favorite. In 1857 General Lamar was appointed United States Minister to Argentina, but he declined the honor; and in 1858 he was sent to Nicarauga and Costa Rica. But he was now broken in health, and, being compelled to relinquish the service for which he was so brilliantly equipped, he died at his home in Richmond, Texas, on December 19, 1859. In many respects he was the most gifted of all the numerous men of genius who have illus trated the Lamar name; and, while he gave his mature years to the service of the Lone Star commonwealth, it will ever be the maternal boast of the great empire State of the South that he was cradled upon her lap and nur tured in her love.

CHAPTER XVIII.
L. Q. C Lamar, of Mississippi.
T HOUGH L. Q. C. Lamar was indentified with the! State of Mississippi during almost the whole off his public life, he was a Georgian by birth and|j education, lived in Georgia until well beyond his legal! majority and served one term in the Legislature. He w also twice married in this State, his first wife being th<! daughter of Judge A. B. Longstreet, the noted author of "Georgia Scenes," and his second wife the widow of Gen|f eral William S. Holt, who was for many years presidentfl of the Southwestern Railroad. Finally at the close of hisf long and arduous career of public service he wended his| way back to Georgia, led, no doubt, by the instinctive;| longing which the worn-out exile often feels for the! haunts of early youth; and while stopping at Vineyille,| near Macon, the end came. He was buried in Rose Hill. Cemetery, on the banks of the Ocmulgee river, where he | remained until his body was exhumed and taken back to Mississippi.
These facts explain and justify the deep feeling of af fection in which this great m,an is to-day held in Georgia. The old mother State never forgets her offspring. Once hers they are hers always. But few of her sons have
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LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS LA.MAR.

L. Q. C. LAMAR, OF MISSISSIPPI.

177

ever held such claims upon her remembrance as L. Q. C. Lamar.
Mr. Lamar fully expected to remain in Georgia. But circumstances often upset calculations. Judge Longstreet, who had been at the head of Emory College while Mr. Lamar was attending this institution, was called, in 1849, to the presidency of the University of Mississippi; and soon after entering upon his new field of work he wrote back to Mr. Lamar, who was now his son-in-law, urging him to come to Oxford, Mississippi, where fine prospects awaited him, and offering to supplement his law practice by giving him plenty of work as tutor.
This settled the matter. Going out to Mississippi Mr. Lamar grew up with the State. He advanced from one post of honor to another, until he soon became the fore most man in Mississippi politics; first Congressman, then Senator, then Secretary of the Interior in the Cabinet of President Cleveland, and finally Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. At frequent inter vals throughout this long period he was also actively identified with the State University, going from the aca demic to the law departments, and serving it eventually on the board of trustees.

Entering the halls of national legislation in the early fifties, Mr. Lamar became at once conspicuous in the political and social life of Washington. Striking in his outward personality no less than in his rare genius, he was an object of universal interest, and attracted attention wherever seen.
Usually he wore his hair long; and falling in rich

178 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

clusters, it covered both sides of his face. Though his?

head was large, it rested solidly upon his broad shoul*|

ders, and was not seemingly out of proportion with thel

rest of his body. He was always neat in his appearance^

but never ostentatiously dressed.

^

Ordinarily his manner was reserved and self-contained^

and he impressed one as being wrapped in deep medita*ft

tion. Nothing of the strenuous life which he led was|f

even faintly suggested when his features were in repose,*

but when his interest was once aroused the dreamer was'1|

straightway lost in the man of action.

A

Chivalrous from instinct as well as from culture, he|f

embodied the typical graces of the old cavalier stock, and^

was characterized even in the heat of acrimonious debate^!

by an exhibition of refined courtesy, which made his pol- Jf

ished lances all the more effective. In calmer moments J-

there was little to suggest the fiery Huguenot temper J|

which lay concealed underneath the velvet sheen of his-*

habitual quietude; but it flashed forth whenever the

lion was aroused. Nothing ever revealed the ruffian;

because he was not there.

During the war period Mr. Lamar was missed in

Washington. He served the Confederate government

both at Montgomery and at Richmond, and also repre

sented the Southern republic at the European courts.

When the war was over he returned to Washington with

fresh prestige where he attracted greater attention than

ever.

Some interesting anecdotes of Mr. Lamar's life at the national Capitol have been gathered by the newspaper con tingent, with whom he was always on friendly terms.

L. Q. C. LAMAR, OF MISSISSIPPI.

179

Perhaps no man in Washington ever kept the correspond ents busier turning out pen-pictures, snap-shots and thumb-sketches than this picturesque and popular states man from the South. Yet he cared absolutely nothing for notoriety.
On being called into President Cleveland's Cabinet Mr. Lamar found it necessary to secure permanent quarters in Washington. Until then he had been stopping at the hotels during the sessions of Congress.
Supposing his salary of eight thousand dollars to be ample for all purposes, he called upon Mrs. Dahlgreen, widow of the late Admiral Dahlgreen, who had just com pleted an elegant house which she was ready to let. This house just suited Mr. Lamar.
Ushered into the presence of the owner of the mansion, he told her he was anxious to lease the place at once, and hoped he had come early enough to forestall any one else. The lady was exceedingly cordial, expressing her gratifi cation at the opportunity of leasing the place to one so distinguished as Mr. Lamar, and naming the rental which she expected it to bring.
The secretary thought perhaps his ears were at fault when the figures were mentioned.
"How much did you say the rental was ?" he inquired. "Seven thousand five hundred dollars a year," she re peated. The Secretary was thunderstruck. He had not calcu lated on meeting such an obstacle. He sat perfectly still for several moments with his eyes bent upon the carpet, apparently absorbed in profound thought. At such times the pallor of his countenance always deepened.

380 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
"Are you ill, Mr. Lamar?" interrogated the lady, with evident anxiety.
"No madam," returned the secretary, lifting his dream^ eyes from the floor. "I was only wondering what should do with the rest of my salary."

Mr. Lamar was once the victim of quite an amusing

case of mistaken identity.

Boarding one of the street-cars in Washington he tookl

his seat beside an intemperate fellow who was about tof

be ejected because he had no money to pay his fare.:

Quick in his sympathies he was touched with what hel|

considered the pathos of the situation, and reaching dowri|

in his pocket he pulled out a nickel which he gave thef

conductor.

The drunken man gazed stupidly at his benefactor'

for something like five minutes and then as if suddenly f

recognizing an old acquaintance, he said:



"How d'ye do, General Butler? I thought I know'd <i

yer. Wuzn't we both at New Orleans?"

With these words he put forth his hand, which Mr.

Lamar took. But the whole car was now laughing at the

joke. Turning to some one who sat near him, Mr. La-

mar said:

"You don't think he takes me for Ben Butler, do you?"

But he was not left in the dark long. Again the fel

low spoke out, after scanning his features somewhat more

minutely:

"Got yer eye fixed sense we was at New Orleans, hain't

yer?"

Mr. Lamar suddenly happened to remember that he

L. Q. C. LAMAR, OF MISSISSIPPI.

181

had ridden as far as he wished, and clutching his papers he politely bade his old comrade adieu and left the car at the next corner.

Strange as it may seem, in one whose legal learning \vas so profound, Mr. L-amar was passionately fond of light literature; and he usually whiled away his leisure moments by indulging his tastes in this direction.
En route to the Senate chamber or to the Department of Interior, he seldom saluted any one he met, but sat in the street-car or carriage, as the case might be, deeply absorbed in the book which he was reading.
Most of those to whom his figure in this attitude of absorption was perfectly familiar thought quite naturally that he was seeking light on some vexed governmental question.
But one day when going to the White House to attend an important Cabinet meeting an embarrassing incident occurred. He had just stepped down from his carriage in front of the gate of the White House, bearing under his arm his large portfolio, an official-looking leather recep tacle, when a group of correspondents who were standing at the entrance approached and saluted him.
Mr. Lamar cordially returned the greeting, but in do ing so he dropped his portfolio to the ground and some half-dozen Seaside novels tumbled out. With utter sur prise but prompt politeness the correspondents hastened to assist the secretary, who, somewhat abashed, now stooped to gather up the scattered volumes.
Though he could have wished that the newspaper men had been in Halifax at this particular moment, he gra ciously thanked them for coming to his rescue, and stuf-

182 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

fing the books back into his portfolio he walked witj|

dignified step into the White House.

|

Perhaps there are very few people who know that thi|;

dreamy man of genius, whose appearance suggested tM

bookworm and the scholar, was in reality an expert!

swordsman. Yet such is the fact.

1

Soon after Mr. Lamar's death this incident was nar-ii

rated by a gentleman whose name is not given, but whose!

identity is recognized. Said he:

I

"I am a swordsman of no miean ability myself, and!

when I was employed at the Capitol several years ago|

I had a pair of foils which I brought across the oceatii

with me. They afforded no end of fun. Conkling andf|

Ingalls both tried them.

:"

"One day I was in the room of the committee on public

lands when Mr. Lamar came in. He had just recovered

from a spell of sickness and was rather weak. He eyed

me for a moment and then, coming forward, said:

" 'I used to use the foil myself, but I have almost for-v:|

gotten how by this time.'

"Putting one of the blades into his hands I saw that he

handled it as if he knew something about it, and I en

deavored to engage him in a round.

" 'No/ he replied. 'I'm too weak now. Wait until

later.'

"About a month later he came in again and by this

time he had fully recovered his strength. He said that he

was now ready to try, and I got the foils down and ad

justed the buttons, chuckling over the prospect. But I

soon changed my mind.

L. Q. C. LAMAR, OF MISSISSIPPI.

183

"He proved to be master of the situation. I resorted to all the tricks I knew, but every thrust was neatly par ried. At last I found myself on the defensive. He hit rne ten times a second and I might as well have had a straw to defend myself with. I was blue for a week after wards."

Mr. Lamar made friends with men in all ranks and walks of life. He was intimately acquainted with some of the best actors on the stage. He also had friends among skeptics and scoffers; but he was himself deeply religious.
While in Washington on one occasion Robert G. Ingersoll, the noted infidel, called upon Mr. Lamar at the Inte rior Department, and in the course of the conversation made many bright remarks, which Mr. Lamar is said to have enjoyed very much.
But finally some flippant remark was made in ridicule of orthodox religion.
Impatiently Mr. Lamar jumped to his feet, and, throw ing his long hair back from his forehead, said:
"Ingersoll, I hope to see the day when you will come to Washington and preach the gospel. With your magnifi cent abilities and splendid oratory you could work a re vival such as the world has seldom seen. I hope to see the day when this will come to pass; and you could not engage in any grander or nobler work."

CHAPTER XIX.
Lamar's Famous Reply to Hoar.
O NE of the most dramatic scenes enacted in either branch of Congress since the war was the one' which took place on the floor of the United States Senate in the spring of 1879, when L. Q. C. Lamar, of Mississippi, and George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts, locked argumentative horns over an issue growing out of the political status of ex-President Jefferson Davis.
This was the occasion on which Senator L-amar used his celebrated figure of Prometheus to describe the help less attitude of the former Confederate leader.
While the debate was precipitated by the animosities of the war, it may now be recalled for reminiscent pur poses without reopening any of the old wounds. The differences which then existed are now happily all healed and the participants themselves have long since clasped hands in an armistice of friendship which both sections of the country have ratified and endorsed. Nothing should be done or said at this late day to stir the embers.
But entirely apart from the bitterness of controversy which called it forth, the scimitar-flash of the Saladinfire which characterized the brave retort of the Mississippian deserves to be treasured among the brilliants whose luster is too rare and too rich to be lost.
(184)

LAMAR'S FAMOUS REPLY TO HOAR.

186-

In the opinion of all who witnessed the encounter Sen ator Lamar carried off the honors. Even the friends of Senator Hoar were frank enough to admit the drubbing which he received from the Mississippian was severe in the extreme; and they were secretly glad that it was Senator Hoar and not themselves who had twisted the lion's tail.
Wholly unpremeditated, the effect of Lamar's speech on this occasion was all the more electrical. On entering the Senate chamber he had no idea of what was coming, and not until an unexpected turn in the proceedings later in the day brought out an assault upon Mr. Davis from the lips of the Massachusetts Senator was he called to his feet; but never was an impromptu rebuke administered with greater effect.

The discussion grew out of a measure which was then pending in Congress to extend the Act granting pensions to the soldiers of the War of 1812, so as to make the Act apply to the veterans of the war with Mexico; and in view of the fact that Mr. Davis had been an officer of some note in the last-named unpleasantness, a proviso was offered to the bill excluding Mr. Davis from the benefits of this proposed legislation.
Several speeches were made in the course of the debate by Senators on both sides of the chamber, but Lamar was not drawn into the discussion until Hoar, referring to some remarks which Senator Garland, of Arkansas, had just made, began to assail the character of Mr. Davis in very harsh terms. Though he and Mr. Davis were not in perfect accord upon certain matters which had recently

186 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

come up between them, he felt it incumbent upon him not;

only as a Mississippian, but equally as a Southerner, to|

repel the unjust aspersions which had been heaped uponl

Mr. Davis. The language to which he took exceptions inf

Senator Hoar's speech was as follows :

f

"The Senator from Arkansas has alluded to the courage!

which this gentleman displayed in battle. I do not deny!

it. Two of the bravest officers of our Revolutionary War ;

were Aaron Burr and Benedict Arnold."

\

This was more than Lamar could stand. His Hugue- f

not blood was fully aroused. With nervous impatience I

he occupied his seat until Senator Hoar had finished, and If

then rising from his place he addressed the chair in meas- f

ured accents which sharply contrasted with his suppressed f

emotion. Said he:

|

"It is with reluctance, Mr. President, that I arise to ?

speak upon this subject. I must confess my surprise and '-:i:

regret that the Senator from Massachusetts should have ;r

}j&

wantonly flung this insult."

*f

Before he could proceed further Senator Edmonds, of |

Vermont, who was in the chair, rapped him to order, say- ';

ing that it was against the rules of the Senate for one

member to impute wantonness of conduct to another.

"I stand corrected," said Lamar. "I suppose it is per- ;

fectly in order for certain Senators to insult other Sena

tors, but they can not be characterized by those who re

ceive the blow.

"The observations of the Senator from Mississippi, in

the opinion of the chair," replied Senator Edmonds, "are

not in order."

LAMAR'S FAMOUS REPLY TO HOAR.

187

"The observations of the senator from Mississippi, in his own opinion/' retorted Senator Lamar, "are not only in order, but perfectly and absolutely true."
Realizing that he was face to face with an extraordi nary situation, the presiding officer thought it best to refer the point of order to the Senate, and therefore merely said:
"The Senator from Mississippi will take his seat until the question of order is decided."

Lamar sat down. But he was not to be silenced. When the vote was taken on the point of order the chair was overruled and Lamar was again accorded the floor. Re suming, he said:
"Since my associates have found my language to be in order, I desire to say that if any part of it is in the least offensive to any member of this Senate the language is withdrawn. I do not wish to offend the sensibilities of any of my associates upon the floor. What I meant by the remark was this: Jefferson Davis stands in precisely the position in which I stand in which every Southern man, who believed in the right of secession, stands."
This called forth another interruption. Senator Hoar now spoke up. He wanted to make an explanation. Lamar yielded. Said he:
"Will the Senator from Mississippi permit me to assure him and other Senators on this floor who stand like him that in making the motion which I made I did not con ceive that any of them stood in the same position in which I supposed Mr. Davis to stand. Otherwise I should not have moved to except the gentleman from Mississippi from the pension roll."

188 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

While Senator Hoar was speaking it was evident

the manner of the Mississippian who listened in difficul|

silence that he was still keeping his heaviest thunderboltf

in reserve. Before Senator Hoar had time to sit down hf

continued:

|

"The only difference between myself and Jefferson Da|

vis is that his exalted character, his pre-eminent talent

his well-established reputation as a statesman, as a patrio

and as a soldier enabled him to take the lead in the cauj

to which I consecrated myself and to which every fibetf

of my heart responded. There is no distinction betweenf

insult to him who led and insult to them who followed." |

He paused momentarily after uttering this solemn deojf

laration and the hush which rested upon the Senate cham

ber during this interval was almost breathless. He wasf

preparing for the climax.

This now came. Introducing it with the statement that Mr. Davis was asking no favors at the hands of the gov-| ernment but was living quietly and peaceably at his home in Mississippi where he was counseling the youth of the\ South to obey the laws of the land, he continued:
"The Senator from Massachusetts has sought to affix ' upon this aged man, broken in fortune and suffering from i bereavement, an epithet of odium, an imputation of moral j turpitude. Sir, it required no courage to do that; it re- ^ quired no magnanimity; it required no courtesy. But it :' did require hatred, and it did require bitter, malignant . sectional feeling, coupled with the sense of personal im punity. The gentleman, I believe, takes rank among Christian statesman. He might have learned better from

LAMAR'S FAMOUS REPLY TO HOAR.

189

the pages of mythology. When Prometheus was bound to the rock it was not the eagle who buried his beak in the tortured vitals of the victim, but the vulture!"
Having delivered himself of this bold invective', which fell with dramatic effect upon the ears of the Senate, Lamar quietly resumed his seat. Several moments elapsed before the spell was lifted, and during this interval Lamar sat pale and meditative while the eyes of the whole body were riveted upon him. At last the proceedings of the Senate were resumed and one by one the Senators ambled over to where Lamar sat and congratulated him upon what they declared to be the severest rebuke ever admin istered in the upper branch of Congress. Opponents as well as colleagues shared in the ovation which he received on this occasion; and while Senator Hoar is said to have disclaimed any feeling of bitterness or resentment toward Lamar on account of this episode, he was careful not to nettle him again. Even in Massachusetts the passage was discussed with complimentary allusions to the ad mired Southerner who had the courage to rebuke Hoar as well as the magnanimity to praise Sumner.

CHAPTER XX.
Lamar's Tilt With Conkling.
A NOTHER famous tilt in which Lamar figure during his senatorial career took place on June! 18, 1879, with Roscoe Conkling, of New York! Roscoe Conkling was one of the most brilliant men in tht Republican party. Quick at repartee and ready in debatej] he seldom met his match on the floor of the Senate, and h< spoke with great force and effect on nearly every impor-f tant question of the day. But, like most men of such fltt-4 ent and showy gifts, he was somewhat vain of his accom~| plishments and rather disposed to be domineering and dic-j tatorial. The fact that he represented the great Empire^ State of the Union gave him an immense advantage, and'| also put him among the presidential possibilities. He lostno opportunity to plead his cause in this respect, and the-'I silken tassels of all his starched orations nodded coquet- f tishly toward the White House.
But he failed to reach his goal, and L,amar had proba- | bly as much to do with puncturing his aspirations as any | one else. The issue arose in this wise:
Early in the day, when the time for acting upon some fj important measure had arrived, Mr. Lamar asked that the special order be deferred for twenty minutes until ac-
(190)

LAMAR'S TILT WITH CONKLING.

191

tion could be taken upon the Mississippi river bill, which \vas then pending. Conkling was disposed to object, but finally for diplomatic reasons decided to withdraw his dissent, saying that he relied upon the courtesy of the Democrats not to project the session beyond the usual limits fixed for adjournment. Several Democratic Sena tors nodded acquiescence; and, universal consent being granted, the Mississippi river bill was taken up. Then followed the special order, and when the time to adjourn came it was found that the majority of the Senators vot ing were in favor of taking final action upon the measure before adjournment. Consequently it was necessary to prolong the session into the night. Mr. Lamar was not at all to blame for this complication, but Conkling was determined to make him pay the penalty and straightway proceeded to empty the vials of his wrath upon his devoted head. Without mincing matters he charge'd him with having acted in bad faith.

Now, Lamar was not the man to sit quietly under such an imputation. He was getting on in years; but there was red-hot fire in the old volcano though frost was on the crater. He was not in the habit of receiving blows without returning them, and he was too fixed and settled in his ways of life to adopt any other principle of action. He could mate gentleness with gentleness, but he could also repel scorn with scorn.
Rising from his seat with the tiger-like spring of im petuous rejoinder, he faced the accuser. Said he:
"With reference to the charge of bad faith which the Senator from New York has intimated toward those of

192 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
us who have been engaged in opposing these motions toj adjourn, I have only to say that if I am not superior tc such attacks from such sources I have lived in vain. It| is not my habit to indulge in personalities; but I desire^ to say here to the Senator that in intimating anythingl inconsistent, as he has done, with perfect good faith, I pro-i nounce his statement as a falsehood, which I repel with all the unmitigated contempt which I feel for the author."!
Great excitement followed this peal of intellectual thun-1 der. Finally Conkling arose. Said he:
"I understand the Senator from Mississippi to state itr unparliamentary language that the statement of mine tc which he referred was a falsehood, if I caught his word aright. Since this is not the place to measure with any man the capacity to violate decency or to commit any of< the improprieties of life, I have only to say that if the Senator the member from Mississippi imputed or in tended to impute to me a- falsehood, nothing except the fact that this is the Senate would prevent my denounc ing him as a blackguard and a coward."
Applause from the Republican side of the chamber greeted this rejoinder, but quiet was instantly restored when it was seen that Lamar had arisen to reply. Ad dressing the chair, in deliberate accents which rang through the chamber, he said:
"Mr. President, I have only to say that the Senator from New York understood me correctly. I did mean to say precisely what he understood me to say, and what I did say. I beg the pardon of the Senate for the unparlia mentary language. It was very harsh; it was very se-

LAMAR'S TILT WITH CONKLING.

193

vere; it was such as no good man would deserve and no brave man would wear."
For once in his life Conkling was utterly unable to find his tongue and he sat in his seat speechless and abashed. Blaine witnessed the tilt, and being an envious rival of Conkling for political honors he enjoyed the discomfiture of the New York Senator. Leaving the hall arm in arm with one of his confidential friends, Blaine said with a chuckle, "Wasn't it rich ?"
The newspapers made great capital out of this encoun ter and the whole country was treated to graphic accounts of the affair, served up in the best style of printer's ink. Some looked for an adjourned meeting on the field of honor; but the challenge was never issued. Conkling doubtless reasoned that a mutilated Senator stood just about as slim! a chance of getting the electoral vote as a dead brigadier, and on the eve of such promising pros pects he thought it prudent to take good care of his anatomy.

7r

CHAPTER XXL
The Cobbs.
S INCE the old colonial days the Cobb family Georgia has been conspicuously and brilliant identified with the public life of the nation; statesmen, soldiers, orators and authors have sprung, almost every generation, from the nursery lap of this di| tinguished household of the Empire State.
It is the traditional belief of the Georgia Cobbs that pioneer immigrant who brought the family escutcheon the Western world during the early days of American cc onization came from Wales. But the antecedents of family, so far as actually investigated, raise some dout upon this point. Most of the documentary evidence' file traces the primitive country-seats of the family ba to Bedford, Kent and Norfolk counties in England, an<j creates the quite natural supposition that the traditic may have arisen from matrimonial connections which Cobbs may have made with other families in Americ notably the Lewises, whose Welch derivation is dire and immediate, and, therefore, not open to question.
However, an independent body of tradition has beeiff handed down from time immemorial which insistently serts that the family is of Welch extraction, and that un-
(194)

THE COBBS.

195

der "the buckle of the British boot" Cobbs have fought and feasted, married and multiplied since the days of Llewellyn. This prevalent notion is confirmed by the fact that some of the given names which have long been family favorites with the Cobbs in America, and which antedate the nuptial compact between the Cobbs and the Lewises, are still found among the Welch mountains, borne by living representatives of the ancient house and lettered upon crumbling headstones in the country church yards.
The primitive colonial records of Virginia show that Cobbs were passengers on board the earliest boats whose prows were turned toward the new West after the initial settlement at Jamestown; and this disclosure happily tallies with the adventurous spirit which has long been recognized as one of the patrimonial assets of the Geor gia Cobbs. In those days of wide acres and large reve nues the family name was pluralized into Cobbs, but with the sloping inclinations of the funnel the final sibilant was eventually dropped as an unnecessary extravagance, which was well meted to baronial domains but was wholly unwarranted by town lots. Joseph Cobbs began to fell the timber and to kindle the fires of his wilderness settle ment on the banks of the James as early as 1611, and when the settlement was cleared he called it Cobbham, an abodal name which was probably brought over from the old country, and has since been found wherever the Cobbs have dwelt. Ambrose and Nicholas Cobbs who Were probably kinsmen, came over in 1635, and Ambrose located on the slopes of the Appomattox, near Petersburg. During the next century when the upper Blue Ridge bor der, which the Golden Horseshoe Knights under Spotts-

196 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
word have made so famous in Ticknor's poem, was af last swept by the skirts of civilization, most of the Co left the tide-water region and scattered over the rich Vi: ginia uplands, from which were afterwards carved Goo land, Cumberland and Buckingham counties.
Glancing over the Virginia land-granits during early colonial days, it will be found that the Cobbs shar< liberally in the frequent partitions which were made the virgin soil; and they were probably stalwart anc sturdy forces in the frontier belt which pressed the tide o: civilization westward.
But some time prior to the outbreak of the Revolution! and probably near the close of the French and India wars, there drifted southward two brothers, Thomas an< John Cobbs, who brought the family escutcheon int Georgia, Thomas coming in advance of John. Othe| bearers of the name may have subsequently settled in thi| State, but most of the Georgia Cobbs who have reached distinction have sprung from these pioneer brothers.
Thomas Cobbs, who settled in what was then Colum-f bia county, several miles north of Augusta, appears front! the records to have been the most ancient patriarch who has ever lived on Georgia soil, reaching the phenomenal age of one hundred and eleven years, which almost puts him in the graduating class with Methusaleh among thel antediluvians. To show that this statement has not beat I taken from mythology, it can be proven from biographical 1 mathematics that this respected old gentleman was born * in Virginia in 1724 and died in Georgia in 1835.
Born eight years before George Washington, he was.

THE COBBS.

. 197

enrolled among the grandfathers of Georgia when the Revolutionary War broke out, but he drew his sword and advanced to meet the British; and, surviving not less than ten presidential inaugurations in the national life which followed, he was still able to discuss politics when the agitation of slavery had commenced to threaten the Union.
Dr. George G. Smith, one of the leading genealogists and antiquarians of Georgia, is authority for an interest ing incident which is said to have actually occurred dur ing the last home-stretches of this long pilgrimage. The old man, it seems, had fallen desperately in love when nearing the hundred-year mark. He could still ride horseback; and, having his best mare saddled, he rode several miles across the country and drew up at the house of Chester Bostwick, in Augusta. The servant came out to help him alight. But the old man brushed him aside with an impatient air. "Tut, tut," said he, "I don't want you to help me. I've come a-courtin'."
It is not surprising that the irreverent swains of the country-side, even while holding him in the most affec tionate regard, should have dubbed him as "Grandaddy Cobb." This is likewise the name by which he is best known to the numerous descendants of his loins, who are to-day found all over Georgia. But the title which he honorably achieved with the outfit of the soldier was Colonel Thomas Cobbs. Besides being one of the largest taxpayers and wealthiest planters of Eastern Georgia, he was also one of the most influential men of the day, active in colonial, revolutionary and commonwealth affairs.
This reverend old patriarch was the grandfather of one of the most distinguished of Georgia's ante-bellum states-

198 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
men, Thomas Willis Cobb, who represented Georgia the Senate of the United States and also presided over om of the circuit courts. He is the only member of the Co family in Georgia who has ever worn the senatorial to; though several have occupied seats in the lower bran of Congress and filled other high positions. Cobb county! in this State, was named for Thomas Willis Cobb. Sen ator Cobb was guardian to Robert Toombs, and was] probably more influential than any one else in directin, the inclinations of the future Mirabeau toward the lawi: He died at Greensboro, Georgia, which had been his home; since the beginning of his professional career. Joseph! Beckham Cobb, his son, was scarcely less distinguish and except for his untimely death he might have attained! to the highest political honors. Moving to Mississippi in' early manhood, he was rapidly advancing to the front| when his brilliant career was prematurely cut short. Hef was the author of several volumes, among them "Missis-"!] sippi Scenes," "Leisure Hours" and "The Creole."
Old Granddaddy Cobbs had an only daughter, Sarah, who married John Benning, of Columbia county, Geor-| gia; and from this union sprang several children. Pleas-1 ant M. Benning became the father of General Henry L,. Benning, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Geor gia and brigadier-general in the Confederate army, win ning the soubriquet of "Old Rock" by his gallantry on the field of battle. General Benning was the father of Mrs. Samuel Spencer, widow of the late president of the Southern Railway system. Of the daughters of John Benning and Sarah Cobb, Susanna married a Moore, from which union came Judge Benning B. Moore, an eminent jurist and lawyer of this State; while Elizabeth married

THE COBBS.

199

a Thompson, from which union after three generations sprang Henry W. Grady, the South's great orator-jour nalist. It is also through this branch that the Cobbs first meet the Lamars at the marriage altar, Sarah Cobb Benning, still another daughter, becoming the wife of Colonel Peter Lamar, one of the largest planters of Lincoln coun ty, Georgia, and father of Captain LaFayette Lamar, who surrendered his life in 1861 at Warrenton, Virginia.
Surviving all his children and most of his grandchildien, Granddaddy Cobbs was nevertheless surrounded by numerous generations still more remote and was proba bly at his death the patriarch of the largest tribe in Geor gia. Even great-great-grandchildren played hide-andseek around his boots; while gray-bearded octogenarians were little more than youngsters in the shadow of this ancient pyramid. Under the terms of his will, which was made in 1831, most of his property went to Sarah Lamar, who seems to have been his closest lineal heir at the time of his death; while the remainder was divided between great-grandchildren. Colonel Cobbs called his home place Cobbham, which is the name it still retains. On the sep aration of McDufne county from Columbia Cobbham became one of the landmarks of McDuffie; and the fa mous old Cobb homestead is not far .from the present country-seat of the noted Tom Watson.

Colonel John Cobbs, who appears to have been the younger brother of Granddaddy Cobbs, settled tempora rily at least in Middle Georgia, in what was then Wash ington county, and he may also have resided at an earlier time near Augusta in Richmond county, where one bear-

200 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
ing his name held office, but he subsequently married! Mildred, daugriter of Howell Lewis, of Granville, Norths Carolina, and this circumstance may explain his connec-1 tion with the Tarheel State after his first appearance in a Georgia. One of the interesting differences between the | Cobb brothers is that John has told us who his wife was, but has left few records of his whereabouts; whilei Thomas has left abundant records of his whereabouts but tells us nothing concerning his wife. He probably out lived her so long that he forgot who she was.
John does not seem to have been as fortunate as*: Thomas in his financial investments, and lost rather heavi ly through speculative ventures. But he must have pos- ! sessed unusual strength of mind and attractiveness of 1 person. This is evident not only from the brilliant matri- | monial alliance which he made, but also from the char-' acter of his immediate offspring. He became the father' of two distinguished sons, Henry Lewis Cobb and John Addison Cobb, who appear to have been born in North Carolina. Colonel John Cobb, losing his first wife, mar ried again and finally died in Columbia county at his I brother's home. He seems to have died comparatively | young.
Howell Lewis Cobb was an exceptionally strong man, "I and represented Georgia with distinguished credit in the j halls of Congress. Just when he came to Georgia is not. | known; but John Addison Cobb came early and settled in Jefferson county on what may have been his patrimo nial acres, since Jefferson lies between Washington and Richmond counties, where his father appears to have lived. John Addison Cobb possessed,great force of char acter. He took deep interest in public affairs, but cared

THE CO BBS.

201

thine for political honors. He was at one time one of "h largest planters of Middle Georgia, and wielded great
fluence on behalf of others; but he never used this flfluence to promote his own ends. John Addison Cobb '"arried Sarah Rootes, daughter of Thomas R. Rootes, "f Fredericksburg, Virginia, and from this union came two of the most illustrious sons of Georgia, Howell Cobb
and Thomas R. R. Cobb.

Howell Cobb became Speaker of the national House
of Representatives, Governor of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury in President Buchanan's Cabinet, president of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, and major-general in the Confederate army. He married Mary Ann Lamar, daughter of Colonel Zachariah Lamar, of Milledgeville; and Judge Howell Cobb, Captain John A. Cobb, Major Lamar Cobb, Associate Justice An drew J. Cobb, Mrs. Envin and Mrs. Rucker were the off
spring of this union. Thomas R. R. Cobb was not less distinguished than
his gifted brother. Before he was thirty-five he had writ ten "Cobb on Slavery," one of the masterpieces of legal literature, and stood admittedly at the head of the Geor gia bar. On the election of President Lincoln in 1860 he entered politics for the first time, and became an uncom promising advocate of secession, arousing the whole State with his eloquence. Alexander H. Stephens character ized him as another Peter the Hermit. He organized Cobb's Legion at the outbreak of the war, and com manded it as colonel until made brigadier-general. He was killed by a shell at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1862,

202 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

almost in sight of his mother's birthplace. General Cobbv]

married Marian, daughter of Chief Justice Joseph Henry M

Lumpkin, and Mrs. Henry Jackson, Mrs. A. L. Hull and j

Mrs. Hoke Smith are the surviving children of this

union.

Besides Howell and Thomas R. R. Cobb the otherf

children of John Addison Cobb were Major John BJ|

Cobb, Laura, wife of Professor Williams Rutherford;!

Mildred, wife of Colonel Luther J. Glenn; Mary, who|

first married an Erwin and afterwards Dr. J. M. John-!

son; and Martha, wife of Major John C. Whitner. Mrs..!

M. A. Lipscomb and Miss Mildred Rutherford, the bril-f

liant Georgia educators and principals of the Lucy Cobt

Institute, are granddaughters of Joseph Addison CobBi

and nieces of General Howell and Thomas R. R. Cobbif

This hasty sketch is necessarily too brief to embrace]

all the achievements or to mention all the names which!

might be cited to illustrate the genius of this remarkable!

family, but the outlines furnished in the foregoing sum-|

mary are sufficient to make it evident that among the

very foremost of American households rightfully and I

properly belong the Cobbs, of Georgia.

>|

[NOTE : During a sojourn in England in 1906 I found that in the county of Kent the Cobb name was still memorialized in one of the most picturesque of the old Tu dor structures, known as Cobbham Hall. It has now belonged for several genera tions past to the Earls of Darnley, and was derived through the Stuarts, the pious King James having deeded it to the first of the Scottish line. The surrounding park '< contains seven square miles of beautiful English woods. Not far away is Gad's Hill, the famous country-seat of Charles Dickens; and the neighborhood is also savory with the recollections of Jack Falstaff, who performed some of his most celebrated exploits in the immediate environs. L. L- K.]

HOWELL COBB.

CHAPTER XXII
Howell Cobb, Speaker of the National House, Governor and Cabinet Officer.
A T an age when the average young American statesman is making his maiden speech on the hustings or taking his seat for the first time in the State Legislature, Howell Cobb, of Georgia, was at the helm of national affairs; and, though not the occu pant of the executive chair, nor, at this early date, even among the holders of Cabinet portfolios, he was neverthe less counseling the authorities at Washington and shap ing the policies of presidential administrations.
It is not divulging an executive secret to say that Pres ident James K. Polk leaned heavily upon the stalwart shoulders of the brilliant young Democratic Congressman from Georgia. Entering the arena of national legislation in 1842, when barely twenty-seven, Mr. Cobb had com pleted only one term of service when Mr. Polk was inau gurated, but he was nevertheless the most influential Southern Democrat in the lower house. Mr. Stephens, it is true, was making his powerful intellect felt upon national legislation, but Mr. Stephens was a Whig. Mr. Toombs who, in like mariner, was scheduled to play an important part on the ante-bellum stage, had not yet en-
(203)

204 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
tered Congress, being three years behind Mr. Cobb and Mr. Stephens; but Mr. Toombs was also a Whig. Both Mr. Toombs and Mr. Stephens afterwards became stout Democrats on the dissolution of the Whig party during the fifties, but Mr. Cobb was always an out-and-out Dem ocrat of the old Andrew Jackson school.
Without the least desire to protrude his personality into the political foreground, Mr. Cobb from the start had displayed such a mastery of governmental principles and such a familiarity with public issues that he was recog nized at once as a leader who needed no apprenticeship to give him premier rank. Nor does it diminish in any de gree the significance of this commanding influence to say that Mr. Cobb was indebted for his grasp of the great fundamental ideas of political science less to his studious habits of research than to what may be called his strictly legal type of mind. He was cast in the mold of the great constitutional lawyer; and whether on the floor of Con gress or in the courtroom he clearly evinced by his own independent methods of argument that he had reached his viewpoint mainly by the bridlepath of his own indi vidual processes of thought rather than by the beaten highway of citations which other intellects had furnished.
Too much the man of action to pose as the bookworm or the antiquarian, Mr. Cobb, moreover, lacked the op portunities, even had he possessed the inclination, to loiter among the alcoves of established precedents. Exactly one year from the time of his admission to the bar he was made solicitor-general of the Western circuit; and soon after resigning this burdensome office three years later, he was elected to Congress. The position which he took almost immediately in the national councils, despite his

HOWELL COBB.

205

comparative youth, is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that his appearance in this body was prefaced by no preliminary experience whatever in the Legislature of Georgia.
But young as Mr. Cobb was on entering Congress, it was the fault of his own modesty that he was not elected to this high office two years before. He had borne him self with such eloquent address in the preceding presiden tial campaign that his Democratic admirers in the district urged him to become the standard-bearer of the party in 1840, but he had seen fit to decline. Nevertheless, even now, it was still in the nature of the most exalted compli ment that his fellow citizens at the very outset of his po litical career should choose the halls of national legislation as the initial forum which was most commensurate with his abilities.

There were two controlling reasons why Mr. Polk did not include Mr. Cobb among his Cabinet advisers. In the first place, there were veteran leaders whose party serv ices gave them prior claims to recognition. In the sec ond place, there was no one better fitted than Mr. Cobb for effective party leadership in the popular branch of Congress. Besides, while representing the administration in the legislative ranks, he could, in an unofficial way, have free access to the presidential ear. And the fact is that Mr. Polk repeatedly called Mr. Cobb into consulta tion. He recognized in this youthful statesman an ally of consummate political sagacity, whose advice in counsel was fully as valuable as his championship in debate.
But the influence which Mr. Cobb exercised upon na-

206 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
tional affairs at this early date is not to be explained sole!' upon the ground that he possessed an intuitive gr; of the great fundamental problems of statesmanship^ Scores of public men have possessed this gift without ex ercising one tithe of the influence which belonged to How< ell Cobb. Besides, numerous college professors hav thoroughly diagnosed the whole system of governmeni from the purely academic standpoint. The explanatio: lay in the combination of various elements. He was orator by natural and acquired right. He was also a con troversialist whose resources of argument were almost in exhaustible. An uncompromising advocate of Southe: rights he was also an ardent champion of the Union. I was furthermore an anomalous fact that while he came| from the ruling aristocracy, he understood and represent-! ed the masses at the South. But he also possessed to an] unusual degree the genius for administration. Most of the ante-bellum leaders in Congress from the South pos-J sessed the executive faculty, having been trained to the management of vast landed estates under the feudal sys-i tem of slave labor. However, Mr. Cobb possessed signal| advantages in this respect. He not only inherited thi governing instinct, but he cultivated this endowment on the most liberal scale. Like his father before him, he; conducted immense farming operations and his plantation: was something of an empire within itself, possessing its! domestic problems and its foreign policies. The emanci-1 pation edict of Mr. Lincoln released from his ownership, but not from his service, over one thousand slaves.
Successively reelected to Congress, it is quite needless to observe that Mr. Cobb's wise party leadership caused his name to be frequently mentioned in connection with

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the highest office in the nation's gift. He possessed the presidential requirements. Though ardently devoted to Southern rights, no one could call him an extremist. He was broadly national. He was popular with all classes. He loved the Union; and he entertained the idea of seces sion only as the constitutional remedy of last resort. But the presidential honors had already commenced to drift Northward. Two more Democratic Presidents were elected after Mr. Polk, but they both came from the colder latitudes north of the Potomac. Franklin Pierce hailed from New Hampshire and James Buchanan registered from Pennsylvania. The slavery agitation was beginning to spring the sectional issue, and in order to rally the full national strength of the party it was necessary to secure standard-bearers from the Northern States. If the Susquehanna instead of the Oconee had rippled near the home of Howell Cobb, or if the date in the family Bible could have been changed from 1815 to 1805, the doors of the White House would undoubtedly have yielded to the pressure of the distinguished Georgian. But even as it was, he narrowly skirted the presidential hedges.
The prohibitory decree of environment furnished the humor for an incident which occurred in Washington in 1856. En route to the national Democratic convention which met in Cincinnati, the Georgia delegation stopped over at the national capital, Congress being then in ses sion. Mr. Toombs, who had recently joined the Demo cratic party, complimented the delegation with a dinner. Several invited guests were present, among them Messrs. Cass, Douglass, Cobb and Breckinridge, some of whom were avowed aspirants for the nomination. Toward the close of the evening, when the wit of the brilliant assem-

208 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
blage had been stimulated by the beverage which usually prevails on such convivial occasions, Colonel James Gard ner, of Augusta, chairman of the Georgia delegation, filled his glass, and, addressing the guests of honor who were present, offered the toast: "Gentlemen, may you all live to be President of the United States." Mr. Douglass, nudging Mr. Cobb, with a chuckle, said: "Well, Cobb, here's long life to you."
But while Mr. Cobb was not destined to affix his sig nature to presidential messages, there were other honors in store for the man whose services the country could ill afford to lose. Notwithstanding the success of the Whigparty in the campaign of 1848, which resulted in the elec tion of Taylor and Fillmore, the ballot-box returns of the year following reduced the Whig majority in Congress to only one bare vote, and the sectional division between the Northern and Southern wings of the party was so abso lutely irreconcilable that the strength of the party could not be united upon any one issue. The Democrats were| not entirely at peace among themselves, and the scramble! which ensued over the gavel constituted one of the most! memorable conflicts in the history of Congress. But thef protracted struggle ended at last in the election of the| Democratic candidate, who proved to be Howell Cobb, of Georgia.
If any one imagines that the speakership of the national House of Representatives at this particular crisis in American affairs was anything of a sinecure he needs to brush up on American history. Not only was the bitter ness of the struggle which preceded the election sufficient

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in itself to make the responsibility of the presiding officer extremely delicate and difficult, but the issues already sharpened to the point of irritation were greatly inflamed by the violent warfare over the compromise measures of 1850. But Mr. Cobb was equal to the trying emergency. He was not only an excellent parliamentarian, but tactful, firm, courteous and impartial; and besides holding the discordant factions within proper bounds, he managed to satisfy all parties by rigidly adhering to the established rules.
Judge Samuel Hall, of Macon, visited Washington while Mr. Cobb was Speaker of the national house; and Mr. Clay being still at his post of duty in the United States Senate, though now an old man near the end of his long career, Judge Hall called upon the great orator for the purpose of paying his respects. On learning that Judge Hall was from Georgia, he wanted to know if he had witnessed the graceful manner in which Howell Cobb presided over the House of Representatives. He de clared that his equal had not been seen in Washington since the time of Judge Cheeves, of South Carolina. Mr. Clay himself had once wielded the gavel which Mr. Cobb now held; and, being of the opposite party from Mr. Cobb, his opinion possessed unbiased value, apart from the fact that it came from the great Henry Clay, of Ken tucky.
Though inclined to be corpulent, Mr. Cobb was well favored in the matter of good looks, and his appearance behind the speaker's desk was commandingly impressive. Later in life he allowed his beard to grow quite freely, but at this time his face was perfectly smooth. His fea tures bespoke genial good humor as well as vigorous in-

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tellect. In fact, there was no man in American public life who was socially more attractive than Howell Cobb, and the same warm-hearted, open-handed and generous characteristics which endeared him to the people at home multiplied his friends by the score at the national capital, and enabled him to associate on the most agreeable terms even with those who, on party questions, were his most pronounced opponents. Mr. Cobb was even more pop ular than Mr. Toombs or Mr. Stephens. Mr. Toombs was magnetic, but he lacked Jeffersonian simplicity. Mr. Stephens was enough like Jefferson, but ill health removed him from popular fellowship. Mr. Cobb was not only the embodiment of personal magnetism, but he was also the beau-ideal of Democrats. He was essentially the people's man.
Growing out of the disturbed condition of affairs which called into play for the last time the peace-making serv ices of the great pacificator, the secession fever broke out in Georgia in 1850. There were many extreme Demo crats in Georgia who looked with little favor upon the proposed measures of compromise. They believed that separation from the Union offered the only security for Southern rights. Moreover, they insisted that national peace and harmony could be insured in no other way, and they were prepared to act at once. It was not easy for Mr. Cobb to stem the tide of opposition which his own party offered, but he saw no immediate danger to South ern institutions. Strong believer in State sovereignty though he was, he was not ready to endorse such an ex treme step as secession. He was prepared to renounce his

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allegiance to the Union whenever constitutional liberty should become imperiled, but he felt that this time had not yet come; and Mr. Cobb's broad statesmanship and courageous convictions are well attested by the fact that he supported the compromise measures of 1850.
Mr. Toombs and Mr. Stephens did likewise. But the Whigs, now few in number, were disposed to accept the measures of compromise since Henry Clay was behind them, though some demurred. Nevertheless the most intense excitement prevailed in Georgia. Disgruntled Democrats and Whigs were bent upon secession. In the midst of this condition of affairs Governor Towns called a State convention, and there is no telling what the out come might have been had not the congressional contin gent plunged into the campaign and trampled down the fire. Instead of taking any radical action the convention, after listening to sober counsels, put forth what is known as the Georgia platform of 1850, which reaffirmed the doctrine of State sovereignty but disclaimed any hostility toward the Union, and accepted the compromise meas ures.
But the criticism of Mr. Cobb on the part of disaffected Democrats continued, and feeling that his patriotic course in supporting the compromise measures demanded vindi cation, he surrendered his seat in Congress in 1851 and entered the gubernatorial race. Planting himself squarely upon the Georgia platform he made the fight for Governor against Charles J. McDonald, the candidate of the ex treme Southern rights party, and in the election which ensued he defeated his opponent by the largest majority which had ever been polled in the State up to that time.

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Without offering for reelection, Mr. Cobb retired tem porarily from politics at the close of his official term anc resumed the practice of law at his home in Athens. But he was too fond of public life to enjoy the prosaic monotH ony of professional routine, though no one appreciatec more than Mr. Cobb the elbow-touch of his fellow towns men or the fireside charms of his picturesque old Southei mansion embowered among the classic shades. He felt for his neighbors an affection which was equaled only b) the warmth of attachment which it inspired in return; and he loved his home as only one can whose patriotisi is fed at the purest fountains. But his desire to fill the largest measure of usefulness impelled him toward the political arena.
While Governor Cobb is lingering under the roof-treel of the old homestead in Athens advantage may be taken! of this momentary lull in the life of the great statesman! to supply some of the links which have been omitted ii hastily sketching his eventful career. Born at Cherryl Hill, in Jefferson county, Georgia, September 7, 1815,;! he graduated with honors at the age of nineteen! from the State University, and very soon thereafter mar- 1' ried Mary Ann, the daughter of Colonel Zachariah La-'; mar, of Milledgeville, and sister of Colonel John B. La-'; mar, author of "Homespun Yarns," "Polly Peablossom's ; Wedding," and other delightful Southern stories. The domestic life of Mr. Cobb was little short of ideal. Fortu nate in the choice which he made of his matrimonial part ner, he was equally favored in the children who came to bless this happy union; but of Mr. Cobb himself it may be said in no affectation of praise that his true nobility of character while recognized by all his countrymen was no-

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where seen to better advantage than in the tranquil glow of his home fireside. And .the hospitality which he dis pensed at his sumptuous boards was such as was seldom equaled, even in the opulent days of the old South.
But the campaign of 1856 brought Mr. Cobb again upon the national stage. Taking up the vital issues which were now joined between the Republican and the Democratic platforms, Mr. Cobb toured the Northern States in behalf of Mr. Buchanan and endeavored to stay the advancing tide of anti-slavery aggression whose disastrous conse quences he foresaw. And such was the patriotic appeal of broad conservatism which rang through all his silvery accents that his campaigning expedition proved an effec tive vote-maker for the Democratic nominee.
Success followed and Mr. Buchanan, on assuming of fice, tendered Mr. Cobb the portfolio of State; but Mr. Cobb declined the honor in favor of General Cass and accepted the secretaryship of the Treasury. Neverthe less, General Cass being on old man, Mr. Cobb became virtually the premier of the administration; and, besides ably discharging the responsible duties of his own im mediate department, he also assisted in directing the af fairs of State. But the aggressive attitude of the Repub lican party was becoming more and more pronounced, and Mr. Cobb could no longer repel the unwelcome fact that the success of the Republican party in the national election was fraught with hazardous consequences to the South.
However, he remained at his post of duty in Washing ton, determined to permit nothing short of the most im perative necessity to alienate him from the union to which he was bound by the most loyal ties of attachment. Mr. Cobb had always been an ardent Union man; but his con-

214 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
servative policy as Secretary of the Treasury had reaf firmed his breadth of statesmanship and served to identify him even more closely with national affairs.
It is an undisguised fact that while Mr. Cobb was th<j choice for President of many anxious Democrats through! out the country in 1860 his strong Union sentiment vented him from receiving the undivided support of th<! Georgia democracy. This attitude of the party towar him at home was most unjust. Though an ardent Unii man, there was no one who held the principles of Stai sovereignty in higher allegiance or insisted with strongi emphasis upon the recognition of Southern rights th; Mr. Cobb. But he felt that the present was no time fo; divisions and he flatly refused to allow his name to presented to the Charleston convention.
To show that above the devoted Unionist was en< throned the patriotic and loyal Georgian, Mr. Cobb dii not wait for the action of the secession convention to su: mon him with imperious command from Washingtoi but immediately upon the election of President Linco! in 1860 he withdrew from President Buchanan's Cabini and, taking the bold initiative, issued his famous addresi to the people of Georgia in which he unequivocally advcH cated secession.
This course of action was not in the least inconsisteni with the stand which he had taken upon the compromi; measures of 1850. Things had changed since then.3 Southern rights within the Union were now imperiled.' The anti-slavery crusade was bent not merely upon the immediate arrest, but upon the ultimate extinction of|]

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slavery, regardless of constitutional safeguards and Su preme Court decisions. Mr. Cobb in his straightforward and courageous letter laid bare the hostile designs of the Republican party. He declared that the time for secession had now come. "The hour of Georgia's dishonor within the Union," said he, "should be the hour of her indepen dence without the Union." Mr. Cobb's younger brother, Thomas R. R. Cobb, who had never entered politics until now, had just commenced to preach secession in Georgia with unparalleled eloquence. General Toombs had not yet resigned his seat in Washington, but he had been the storm-center of more than one dramatic scene in the United States Senate.
Mr. Cobb withdrew from Mr. Buchanan's cabinet promptly upon the election of Mr. Lincoln because he wished radical action to be taken by the State before Mr. Buchanan's term of office expired. He knew that no ef fort toward coercion would be made by the Democratic authorities in Washington, consequently he lost no time in returning to Georgia.

Though not one of the delegates upon the floor of the secession convention in 1861, Mr. Cobb had nevertheless been an important factor in the campaign, and he was accorded the privileges of the floor along with Governor Brown.
Elected to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States which met at Montgomery, Howell Cobb, of Geor gia, was chosen first temporary and then permanent presi dent; but he was not too heavily burdened with the re sponsibilities of this high office to take an active part in

216 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
framing the organic structure of the new government Speaking of the Constitution which finally emerged fror the creative hands of this august body, Dr. J. L,. M. CurryJ himself one of the foremost actors upon the Confederat stage, says that as late as the spring of 1862 the Ne York Herald published this instrument in full, commenc ed its moderation and wisdom and urged its adoption the basis of compromise between the sections.
Mr. Cobb and Mr. Toombs were both warmly urgecj for the executive honors of the Confederate government; but Mr. Davis was eventually chosen upon the ground tha| his military and civil experience united to form the cor bination of qualities which was most needed at this tur bulent crisis; and neither Mr. Toombs nor Mr. Cobb had enjoyed the discipline of the field.
In the summer of 1861, coercion having commencec Mr. Cobb, as colonel of the Sixteenth Georgia Regiment went to the front, where he was first assigned to dut tinder the command of General J. B. Magruder in whj is known as the Peninsular campaign in tide-water Vii ginia. But he could not give his entire time to the fi until eventually released from his official obligations permanent president of the Provisional Congress. This came some few months later and almost immediate! thereafter he received the rank of brigadier-general ii recognition of his gallant conduct. He was at Seve Pines, Mechanicsville, Malvern Hill, Second ManassasJ Harper's Ferry, Crampton's Gap, and Sharpsburg, anc witnessed in Virginia and Maryland some of the hardes fighting of the war. The only serious reverse which he encountered during this period was at Crampton's GapiJ Acting upon the information of the cavalry-general who!

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told him that only a brigade confronted him at Crampton's Gap, he ordered a charge which resulted disas trously, but he was in no wise to blame for the unfortu nate issues. Among the victims of this engagement were Colonel John B. Lamar, his wife's only brother, and Col onel Jefferson Lamar, his cousin. It seems that the enemy's strength was considerably greater than the force of attack and had it not been for General Cobb's superb presence of mind in meeting the critical situation the loss might have been much heavier. General Cobb well earned his promotion to the major-generalship, which soon fol lowed. He declined the invitation of the Secretary of War to take charge of the Quartermaster-General's De partment, preferring the command of the military district of Florida, but as soon as the storm-center began to travel northward he assumed command of the military district of Georgia, and General Joseph E. Johnston speaks in the highest terms of the assistance which he received from General Cobb in resisting the invader. Some of the last fighting of the war was done by the forces under General Cobb in defending Georgia soil, and it was not until Lee and Johnston had both capitaluted that he finally surren dered at Macon to General J. H. Wilson. Soon after be ing himself released from custody General Cobb, with characteristic unselfishness, sought to secure the release of Mr. Davis; and, besides addressing Mr. Seward, he approached numerous other leaders, urging them to use what influence they possessed with the authorities at Washington to bring about this result, which was so ar dently desired at the South. He argued that the only offense which lifted Mr. Davis in any wise above those who followed him was in having the requisite abilities to lead in the cause to which all were devoted.

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Settling in Macon, Georgia, after the war, Geners Cobb engaged in the practice of law with his cousin, for mer Congressman and afterwards Chief Justice Jame Jackson. He took no part in politics after this except t<j resist the iniquities of reconstruction. He built up immense practice, but he did not live long to enjoy hijj acknowledged preeminence at the bar. He died suddenh in New York City on October 9, 1868, in the vei prime of his strength and usefulness; and one of Geor-j gia's noblest intellects was no more.
Bishop John W. Beckwith, of the Episcopal Diocese oi Georgia, was present with General Cobb when the en< came. Though General Cobb had always been extremely! reverential in his attitude toward religion and exceeding! liberal in his frequent benefactions, he had not until lately accepted the miraculous element of the Christian faith; and, even after overcoming his difficulties with respect to| the Lord's divinity, he still held peculiar tenets somewhat at variance with the denominational creeds. Neverthe less, he inclined toward the Baptists, Mrs. Cobb being of 1 this persuasion. Such was his state of mind when he | started for the North. He was an avowed believer but not an enrolled communicant.
"On the morning of the ninth of October, 1868, being J in the city of New York," narrates Bishop Beckwith, "I | visited the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where I accidentally met an old friend and schoolmate, Colonel Joseph John Wil liams, of Florida. In the course of conversation he in formed me that General Howell Cobb, upon whose staff he had served during the war, was in the hotel and sug-

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gested that I call upon him, saying that the General had heard me preach a sermon in Macon, Georgia, of which he had spoken in terms of strong disapproval. Colonel Williams declared his belief that the General had misun derstood me and desired me to offer him an explanation. Glad of an opportunity, I consented and we went in search of him, little dreaming what we were to hear and see."
Without repeating the theological discussion which took place, it suffices to say that Bishop Beckwith speedily set himself right with General Cobb, whom he found only too pleased to discuss religious problems, and he had just affirmed his unwavering belief in the great cardinal doc trines of Christianity when the fatal stroke came. "I told him," continued the Bishop, "that I was ready to re ceive him into the church and to give him the sacrament, as he believed all that was necessary to membership. He made no reply, but expressed the desire to introduce me to his wife that he might correct her misapprehension. As we moved to the stairway we met Mrs. Cobb and her daughter coming down. The introduction was given, the correction was made and then the summons came. With the confession of his Master before men still warm upon his lips he stood in that Master's presence."
Some idea of the scrupulous sense of honor which characterized General Cobb is told by Professor William M. Browne in the following incident, which suggests the heroic struggle of honest old Sir Walter. Says Professor Browne: "While he was quite young he endorsed notes to a large sum for his father, Colonel John A. Cobb, who was then engaged in land speculations to a heavy extent. Overtaken by the great commercial panic of 1837, Colonel

220 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Cobb failed for a large amount, and after all his property had been sold to satisfy his creditors there still remained a considerable sum unpaid. Although Howell Cobb could legally and equitably have evaded the payment of these claims, which, if enforced, would involve the loss of the handsome estate bequeathed to him by his uncle, Captain Cobb, and would embarrass him very seriously for many years, he resolutely refused to avail himself of any means to escape liability and paid all the claims to the uttermost farthing, principal and interest."
Comparatively few are the great men of history who have been free from envious rivalries. The laurels of Miltiades are said to have kept Themistocles from sleep ing and the praises of Caesar are known to have annoyed Pompey; but Howell Cobb envied no man his honors. And after he had wrought with all his splendid powers for his State and for his country, accomplishing what none before him had ever surpassed, he still had the mag nanimity to hope that the gleanings of the grapes of Ephraim might prove richer than all the vintage of Abiezar.

THOMAS R. R. COBB.

CHAPTER XXIII.
Thos. R. R. Cobb; The Patrick Henry of Secession in Georgia.
O N the crest of the wave which swept Georgia with tempestuous fury into secession there rode into recognized leadership an intrepid champion of Southern independence who had hitherto been quietly in tent upon his professional engagements, caring more for law than for politics, but who now plunged with almost startling suddenness into the public councils to become the Patrick Henry of the approaching revolution in Georgia. This unexpected arrival upon the scene was Thomas R. R. Cobb.
There was something in the personality of the new champion which seemed to challenge instant and undi vided attention. Nor was this mark of respect the rever ential tribute which men pay to gray hairs. The spokes man was youthful in appearance and hardly looked his age, which was less than thirty-six. He seemed to be fresh from his text-books. His brow was intellectual and his eyes lustrous, while his features, which bespoke the classic chisel in the subtler curves of grace as well as in the bolder outlines of strength, unmistakably denoted scholarship and research. But permeating all these char-
(221)

222 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
acteristics the glow of an overmastering purpose was dis tinctly visible. Blood earnestness was stamped upon every lineament of his beardless face; and in every syllable which rolled in accents of thunder from his impassioned lips profound conviction was lodged. He spoke like an inspired prophet. His whole body seemed to be aglow with enthusiasm. His burning words ran with lightning-speed and thunder-roll, like avalanches loosed from Alpine heights and changed by sudden al chemy from ice to fire. His message was couched in terms which the simplest could hardly fail to understand; and over the mountain-tops and through the valleys and along the water-courses rang the prophetic shout:
"Immediate and unconditional secession!"
Before urging the South to adopt this bold ultimatum, Mr. Cobb sought by the most conservative appeal to allay the fever of anti-slavery agitation at the North, and to check the tide of hostile aggression which was fast goad ing the South to madness. Numerous letters were pub lished in friendly Northern papers urging the adoption of milder sentiments and less disruptive measures on the part of the abolitionists at the North, and showing the J dangerous issues which such an attitude of defiance to | constitutional rights and liberties was almost inevitably! calculated to involve. These letters were signed by "An 1 Honest Slaveholder," and were addressed to an imag- | inary correspondent under the name of "An Honest Abo- < litionist." They attracted wide attention throughout the country and were even reproduced abroad with eulogistic comment; but they failed to accomplish the conciliatory objects which the author contemplated.
Mr. Cobb deeply regretted the failure of this sincere

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attempt to reach the popular ear of the North, because his purposes were broadly patriotic. He sought the good of the whole wide domain over which the flag of the republic floated. He loved the Union which his Southern fore fathers had been largely instrumental in establishing; which they had defended on sea and soil; which they had illustrated with brain and blood. But he also loved the institutions of the Southland; and when the election of Mr. Lincoln lifted the anti-slavery party into power and menaced the security of slaveholders in the possession of slave-property he saw no other line of action except to sacrifice his private and professional interests upon the altar of patriotic devotion and to advocate secession as the only recourse for the maintenance of Southern rights and the only assured avenue to peace. Without waiting for accepted leaders to give the signal he boldly acted upon his own initiative, like one divinely called to an emergency which permitted neither wavering nor weak ness; and never was crusader or evangel characterized by greater zeal than inspired this eloquent propagandist of secession. Sluggish veterans and ardent youths alike caught the fervor of his impassioned oratory; and from responsive hearts all over Georgia there came the lusty echo:
"Immediate and unconditional secession."

Perhaps the fact that Mr. Cobb had been conspicuously identified with no political organization in the State up to this time had much to do with the commanding influ ence which he undoubtedly exerted during this important crisis. General Toombs himself with all his towering

224 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
prestige and colossal genius as an advocate of Southern rights was not more really effective in kindling the revo lutionary flames than was this officially unheralded Geor gian who had never once lifted the banner of the partisan ,f nor sought the booty of the spoilsman. Coming directly,|| from his law practice, which he unhesitatingly relinquished to serve the State in the performance of self-irn-; posed duties which offered him neither ease nor emolu-J ment, he was universally credited with the very purest. promptings of patriotism.
Another factor in producing this effect was the pre-; eminence in his profession which Mr. Cobb enjoyed. Despite his comparative youth he had already mounted ,W the throne and plucked the diadem of the Georgia bar; f and the insignia of kingship rested upon his brow by uni- f; versal consent. With Richard H. Clark and David Invin ? he had codified the laws of Georgia; and both of his as sociates in this monumental undertaking have cheerfully accorded him the palm. Moreover, it is said that at the close of each day's work when his colleagues were liter ally worn out his mind was as fresh as in the morning | hours. He had made more reports of Supreme Court decisions than any lawyer who had followed or preceded him up to this time. He had also been engaged in the| trial of some of the most important cases in the courts,,; both State and Federal; and notwithstanding the exac-| tions of his immense law practice, he found sufficient leis-1 ure for the authorship of that pronounced masterpiece of I legal literature entitled "Cobb on Slavery." This work, which appeared in 1858, deals exhaustively with the whole subject of human servitude, narrating the experiences of the various nations which have held slaves and citing the'

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facts of universal history as far back as the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt.
Coincident with these various professional engage ments Mr. Cobb had also been long known as an avowed champion of popular education in Georgia, advocating the use of the revenues arising from the State road for en larging the system of free schools; and he was probably the first man in Georgia to suggest the policy which has since been adopted with such beneficent practical results. On this subject he had appealed to grand juries and gone before legislatures and written articles for the press until he had fully aroused the State to the importance of this great educational need; and nothing except the outbreak of the war prevented the immediate adoption of his views. Beyond these efforts in the interests of the masses he fur thermore endeared himself to the cause of higher educa tion by his services to the University of the State and by his liberality in founding that splendid seminary for the education of women, the Lucy Cobb Institute, which was named in honor of his daughter Lucy, who died in early childhood.
But the most distinguishing attribute in the character of Mr. Cobb, and the most potential element in the ac knowledged sway which he exercised over men is found in the peculiar type of piety which he consistently exem plified. We can not always gauge religious rectitude by official church membership; but Mr. Cobb, besides being an elder in the Presbyterian church, was conspicuously devout. He made his life, under all circumstances and in all places, the interpreter of his creed. Like Judge Colquitt, he could preach a sermon as readily as he could plead a case; and one of the greatest revival waves which
8r

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ever spread over Athens was kindled by the eloquent ap peal with which he ended an earnest talk at prayer meeting. In the religious cast of his character he als< strikingly resembled Judge Lumpkin, whose eldest daugh ter, Marian, became his helpmeet and companion. It i narrated that on one occasion he sent word to the presid ing judge of his circuit that he was unable to attend cour early in the week because of protracted services which ha just commenced in his church. During the stormy day of the slavery agitation and amid the angry smoke of thi battle-field he was almost constantly upon his knees; ani the royal highway between earth and heaven was literal!' worn by the footprints of his prayers. He not only de fended slavery upon the political ground that it was base'i upon constitutional rights and protected by constitutiona enactments, but he further justified slavery upon the mora ground that the mild type of servitude which existed at thi South was the best discipline and the wisest liberty for ai inferior race. Moreover he rested the argument upon im plied Biblical sanction. And his deep religious faith so iij tensified the power of his eloquence as to give him some thing of the air of sanctity which characterized the grea Hermit whose simple oratory fired the heart of all Europ for the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre and brought th lance of knighthood to the shrine of Christendonj No wonder Mr. Cobb stirred the State. Failure was ai ready written upon the cross of the Confederacy even ai it was written upon the cross of the Crusade; but eloquence of his impassioned soul, like the eloquence o| his renowned prototype, was winged to faith.

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With the organization of the Republican party at the North in 1856 and the fusion together under one banner of various hostile elements which had long been blatantly antagonistic but were now harmoniously blended in the single issue of slavery, Mr. Cobb detected at once the signs of impending danger; and though Buchanan de feated Freemont in the election which ensued there was abundant cause for apprehension in the strength which the Republican party developed at the polls.
This was the condition of affairs which summoned Mr. Cobb from the comparative retirement of professional pursuits. Events moved on apace. The clouds continued to darken with premonitory threatenings. The tele graphic dispatches teemed with proofs of the fact that the Republican party at the North was preparing for the battle-royal of the next campaign. Mr. Cobb was not slow to read the challenge. In the declaration of Re publican orators on the platforms and in the legislative halls he plainly saw the menace to Southern institutions which lay entrenched behind the battlements of Republi can opposition.
But instead of storming the breastworks he sought to disarm the camp by writing conciliatory and dispassionate letters for the Northern press in which he urged the slavery agitators to beware of hasty measures which were fraught with dangerous consequences and to temper with prudence the counsels of rashness which were wholly un mindful of constitutional restraints. He was all the more anxious to accomplish this purpose because the divided Democracy had offered the Republican party what seemed to be an open road to success. Failing to arrest the drift whose inevitable goal he now plainly foresaw he calmly

228 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
awaited the verdict of the ballot-box. But he was full\ prepared for the worst and resolutely bent on the cours which he was ready to adopt in the event his fears wei confirmed.
The great issue was decided on November 6, 1860, an<| on the day following came the news of Mr. Lincoln' election. Mr. Cobb straightway declared himself in favc of immediate and unconditional secession. This attittu occasioned no surprise. His expressions during the cz vass clearly foreshowed his conclusions. But no one prepared for the dramatic thunderstorm of eloquenc with which he shook the State from border to border whe addressing the Legislature on November 12, 1860, in sponse to an invitation from both houses of the Genet Assembly, he delivered such an impassioned argument the State-house at Milledgeville as Georgians have haps never heard. General Toombs spoke on the nigh following, but his clarion notes sounded no clearer battl? cry and his entranced listeners felt no keener thrill, spoke with all his pristine power, but his laurels had bee anticipated. In the opinion of those present on the mer orable occasion when Mr. Cobb spoke the subject wa literally exhausted, the argument seemed to be ovel whelmingly conclusive and there appeared to be no otf course to adopt. Breathless excitement waited upon hf burning periods and tumultuous rounds of applause fc lowed his magnificent peroration. He literally swept vast assemblage. In the closing accents of his gre speech he sounded an appeal with which the timbers the old State-house must still be ringing. Said he:
"Speak no uncertain words, but let your united voic go forth to be resounded from every mountain-top

THOS. R. R. COBB.

229

echoed from every gaping valley; let it be written in the rainbow which spans our falls and read in the crest of every wave upon our ocean shores until it shall put a tongue in every bleeding wound of Georgia's mangled honor which shall cry to heaven for Liberty or Death."
On the floor of the secession convention, to which he was subsequently elected, he scored another wonderful tri umph and received another marked ovation. During the interval between these great speeches he had fairly elec trified the State; and now under the spell of his eloquent voice, supported by General Toombs, Judge Nisbet and other great Georgians, popular sentiment was about to crystallize into the ordinance which was to sweep Geor gia from the Union. This final action was taken on Janu ary 19, 1861.
Chosen first to the State Legislature, and afterwards to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, Mr. Cobb soon found himself at the throbbing life-center of the young empire which was now struggling into rec ognition, and he unselfishly applied himself with all the powers of his great mind and with all the enthusiasm of his great soul to the task of fixing securely in the firma ment the Star of Liberty which he had helped to kindle among the constellations.

CHAPTER XXIV,
Thos. R. R. Cobb: The Martyr of Fredericksburj
T RADITION asserts that the greatest of Greciz orators, while most effective in arousing Ath to defy Philip, was one of the first of the belli| erents to desert the field of battle. Mirabeau was me amazingly eloquent in the council-chamber of the Freru Commune, but amid the clash of steel and the roar musketry, he lent no luster to the cause which he espouse And even the revolutionary firebrand of the Virgin^ House of Burgesses was only the curtain-lifter of great drama in which other actors were to play the here parts.
Great orators seldom make great soldiers. This is n| because courage is lacking but because different gifts required. Different tastes and temperaments underly two professions. But few of the leaders who were actil in urging secession were unwilling to serve the State the field when secession meant war; and some of tht not only won generalships but carved records for si and daring which brilliantly reinforced with the explc of the field the lofty and splendid laurels of the foi General Thos. R. R. Cobb belonged to this number.
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THOS. R. R. COBB.

231

vvas wearing the stars of the brigadier-general when a shell at Fredericksburg suddenly checked his advancement by terminating his military career; but had he been spared there is every reason to believe that his prowess, which had already kindled high hopes, might eventually have lifted him, as like qualities were to lift Gordon, into martial companionship with the great Lee. He was lit erally the incarnation of enthusiasm. Dangers and diffi culties never daunted him. He refused to see anything except success. In the heroic lexicon of his devotion there was no such word as fail. No Conquered Banner rose be fore him in the broken slumbers of the bivouac no gory Gettysburg no doleful Appomattox. He dreamed alone of victory. And, amid the lightnings of the wildest hour he could see the flag of Dixie floating in the silken sun shine beyond the storm of battle.
It must be said that General Cobb had advocated se cession not merely because it seemed to offer the only sure safeguard for constitutional rights, but because it promised the only definite assurance of peace. He hoped to avoid war. But, when the real scope of the struggle became apparent, he found himself unable to endure longer the restraints of civil life; and, quitting the halls of legislation, he sought the bloody arena.
The civil post of duty is fully as important as the mili tary, and equally as honorable, even in time of war. Pa triots are needed in counsel as well as in arms. But Gen eral Cobb preferred the more hazardous employment of the field. Fashioned in the mold of an ancient chivalry, the adventurous spirit of the knight-errant was, perhaps, not wholly absent from the impulse which made him clutch the sword. But he believed implicitly in the

232 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
cause for which the South contended. To him it was right and holy and just; and, willing to put his allegiance to the supreme test, he exemplified what, in the teeth of' failure, has glorified the old grayjacket upon every field: the self-immolating spirit of the martyr.
Resigning his seat in the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States General Cobb lost no time in organiz ing an efficient body of men who were only too eager to enlist in his command; and at the head of Cobb's famous Legion, with the rank of colonel, he started toward the seat of war.
Cobb's Legion, which was destined to pluck victory from many an ensanguined field and to glorify with splen- i did exploits the whole Army of Northern Virginia, was I something of an epitomized army within itself. Num bering twelve separate companies of picked men gathered from all over Middle Georgia, it embraced all three branches of the military service, infantry, artillery and; cavalry; and some of the best materials of soldiershi; which the State ever furnished were found in the ra of this gallant band.
General P. M. B. Young was adjutant; and thought quite a distance intervened between the adjutancy the major-generalship, he covered the intermediate spa by leaps and bounds, and reached this exalted rank befo: he was twenty-five. General Gordon himself, the be sabre of the Confederacy, never advanced with swift strides. Dr. S. G. White was surgeon; R. H. Garnet lieutenant-colonel, and E. F. Bagley major. Rev. Ruf

THOS. R. R. COBB.

233

K. Porter was chaplain. Among the captains were: T. P. Stovall, of the Richmond Hussars; B. C. Yancey, of the Fulton Dragoons; W. G. Delony, of the Georgia Troop ers, and W. G. Lawton, of the Dougherty Hussars, in the cavalry division; John B. Lamar, of the Lamar Infantry; F. S. Powell, of the Tom Cobb Invincibles; L. J. Glenn, of the Stephens Rifles; C. A. McDaniel, of the Bowden Volunteers; T. Camak, of the Mell Volunteers, and C. B. Knight, of the Panola Guards, in the infantry division, and M. Stanley, of the Troup Artillery, in the artillery division.
General Cobb remained at the head of the Legion until the fall of 1862, when he was promoted to the rank of brigadier. The appointment was made upon the recom mendation of General Lee himself, and the commission was received while the Legion was encamped at Culpepper Court House awaiting the movements of the foe.
During all the vicissitudes of fortune which attended the ebb and flow of Confederate victories General Cobb retained the unwavering confidence and the unfaltering affection of his men. He maintained strict discipline; but he never made superiority of rank an obstacle be tween himself and those whom he commanded. Even the humblest soldier of the Legion had claims upon his time and access to his tent. He bore himself in the charge with an intrepidity which seldom lost an engagement; and his own indifference to danger under the most pelting showers of leaden hail always nerved his followers.
It is one of the anomalies of war that in spite of the imminence of death to which the soldier is constantly ex posed he gives little thought to the problem of the old patriarch concerning the mysterious aftermath; and, even

234 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

when he has previously knelt at his devotions with COD.I

sistent regularity in the bosom of his own household,

often finds the altar an unhandy piece of lumber which

ill-adapted to the frequent shiftings of the bivouac. B

General Cobb never forgot the prayer-closet. He oft

prayed with and for his men. Religious services we

always held weekly in his camp; and exhortation

was by no means a privilege exclusively enjoyed

his chaplain. He often took the part himself. B

his life was his best sermon because his upright e:

ample was itself an embodied plea to holiness; and har

ened worldlings whose ears were too dull for gospel soun<

to penetrate were often led into the Better Way by v*

nessing the spectacle of the great Confederate general

in the spirit of the little child, he knelt beneath the st

of the battle-field and offered up his nightly prayers whic|J

seemed not only to beat upon the jasper gates, but to lifl

the very window bars of the palace walls.

f

Is it altogether an ideal of the imagination that befor

the tide of Confederate hopes began to drift sullenly t(

ward Appomattox it was part of the decree which scale

the fate of the Confederacy, that Stonewall Jackson an

Thos. R. R. Cobb should be first removed? In the rank

of the Southern army there were many pious and devoi

men; but none in whom saintliness of character was a

lied to higher soldiership, or partook less of the textuj

of an outward garment and more of the glow of an imtf

radiance.

Barely four weeks elapsed after his promotion 1 the rank of brigadier-general and his pathetic farewl

THOS. R. R. COBB.

235

to the Legion, which he had so gallantly commanded dur ing the first two years of the war, before he received his fatal wound on the banks of the Rappahannock near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
He fell almost in sight of his mother's birthplace, on December 13, 1862, and he died leading an heroic charge in which his brave brigade suffered heavy loss but made no retreat. Dr. Rufus K. Porter, in whose arms General Cobb expired, gives an absorbing account of the engage ment, from which the following brief extract is taken. Says Dr. Porter:
"The banks of the river rise very abruptly from the water, and then comes a level plain about two and onehalf miles wide, overlooked by a range of hills steep enough for batteries to be placed in tiers one over the other. Near these latter hills was a stone fence, about the center of which stood a small house. General Cobb's Brigade was posted behind this fence. The enemy ad vanced upon this position in a column five thousand strong. General Cobb ordered his men to reserve fire until the enemy came within fifty or seventy-five yards; which order was obeyed to the letter. His voice was heard, steady and clear, along the entire line, giving the order to fire, when every gun was discharged with the regularity of dress parade. The column of the enemy reeled under this terrific fire, and retired precipitately. Another and another fresh column advanced, with the same result, until three columns of five thousand each were repulsed by this single brigade. The enemy then commenced shelling the position. General Cobb was walk ing up and clown the line, cheering his men, when he met General Cook, of North Carolina, whose brigade was just

236 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
coming into the action. It is thought they had stopped near the house for consultation. A few moments after they had stopped, a shell passed through the house and exploded, a piece striking General Cobb in the thigh and another piece striking General Cook in the head. On be ing struck, General Cobb quietly asked for a tourniquet A silk handkerchief was made to serve the purpose as far as possible, but to little avail. He was carried to the hos pital about one and a half miles distant, where all the aid was rendered that medical skill could devise; but in vain. He died before the day was over, and the noble hero was at rest."
Judge George Hillyer, of Atlanta, then Captain Hillyer, writing to his father, Judge Junius Hillyer, also gives an interesting account of the battle in which he estimates the enemy's strength at fully thirty thousand, while the Con-, federates numbered less than ten thousand actually firing and fighting.
"In front of where Cobb's Brigade fought," says he> "the slaughter was awful. The dead lay ten times as thick as I ever saw them anywhere else, and the ground was in many places miry and reeking with gore. I put the enemy's loss at twelve thousand; ours at two thou sand. Crampton's Gap is avenged. But the heroic leader of those brave men fell. Poor Mrs. Cobb! How my heart bleeds for her."
The loss of such an intrepid leader as General Cobb,. who seemed to be marked for the very highest future distinction in the army, naturally called forth the profoundest expressions of regret from commanding officers

THOS. R. R. COBB.

237

and men alike; but none deplored the tragic event more bitterly than General Lee himself.
Besides the particular mention which he made of Gen eral Cobb's death in his report of the battle, he also took the pains to write an autograph letter to General Howell Cobb, the deceased soldier's brother; and the letter, which speaks for itself, is herewith produced:

"CAMP NEAR FREDERICKSBURG,
"i8th December, 1862.
"General Howell Cobb.
"GENERAL: I beg leave to express my deep sympathy in your great sorrow. Your noble and gallant brother has met a soldier's death and God grant that this army and our country may never be called upon again to mourn so great a sacrifice.
"Of his merits, his lofty intellect, his accomplishments, his professional fame, and, above all, his Christian char acter, I need not speak to you who knew him so inti mately and well. But as a patriot and soldier his death has left a deep gap in the army which his military aptitude and skill render it hard to fill. In the battle of Fredericksburg he won an immortal name for himself and his brigade. Hour after hour he held his position in front of our batteries, while division after division of the enemy was hurled against him. He announced the determina tion of-himself and his men never to leave their post until the enemy was beaten, and with unshaken courage and fortitude he kept his promise.
"May God give consolation to his afflicted family and may the name and fame of the Christian statesman and

238 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
soldier be cherished as a bright example and holy remem brance. With great esteem,
Your obedient servant,
R. E. LEE."
Such words as these from the prince imperial of the gray batallions were like apples of gold; but they were justified by the chivalry which they applauded. For the hero whose life's blood had ebbed on the tide of victory was another brave Sir Galahad "whose strength was like the strength of ten because his heart was pure," and whose victor-brow unshadowed by coming Appomattox still bore the morning glories of the Southern cause.
General Cobb's remains were brought home and laid to rest in the family burial-plot on the banks of the Oconee river; and never was sorrow displayed in truer symbols than by the tearful multitudes of friends and neighbors \vho gathered about his new-made grave to pay him the last tribute of respect and to bespeak the shadow whose penumbra encircled the borders of the whole State. Rarely had achievements so vast been crowded into years so brief. Too early had General Cobb died for Georgia, but not too early to engrave his name upon the arches of her Constitution, and not too early to enroll his spirit || among the radiant hosts whose citizenship is in the re stored metropolis of the chosen seed: the city of God and of Gold.

CHAPTER XXV.
" Who is Toe Brown ? "
HO is Joe Brown ?" This is the question, with the modify
ing phrase omitted, which General Toombs is said to have asked when the news reached him out in the State of Texas that Joe Brown, of Canton, had received the Democratic nomination for Governor of Georgia in 1857.
It is probable that the question, if really asked, was only an outburst of surprise occasioned by the unexpected in politics. General Toombs had doubtless carefully studied the situation before he left Georgia; and, having forecast the result as he thought with some degree of precision, he was wrholly unprepared for this "thunder bolt from the blue." He may have been disappointed as well as surprised; but the ignorance which the question implied was certainly more rhetorical than real.
The fame of the future chief executive was at this time by no means coextensive with the area of the State. Per haps it was not much wider than the Blue Ridge circuit. But the two men had met before. They had met first at Milledgeville in 1850 when Governor Brown was a Dem ocratic State Senator and General Toombs a Whig Con-
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240 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
gressman. The latter had then become a power in na tional affairs and was idolized by his party in the State; while the former had just entered the political arena. They had met again at Marietta some few years later, when General Toombs and Judge Cowart crossed swords in joint debate.
There was nothing about the personality of the young State Senator at this time to challenge special attention. He was younger than General Toombs by at least ten years. He was rather awkward in appearance; his figure slight though compact; and his face pale. He was what in ordinary parlance is described as "raw-boned." Ex cept for the impress of character which was stamped upon his clear-cut features and which expressed itself with pe culiar force in his rigid mouth whose lines denoted un shaken firmness and grim determination, there was little else to suggest the inherent power which lay concealed be hind that slender frame. General Toombs may have lightly dismissed the mountaineer from his thoughts; but the mountaineer vividly remembered General Toombs. Speaking, in after years, of the .profound impression; which the kingly Georgian made upon him at this tin Governor Brown declared that General Toombs was thel handsomest man he ever saw. Moreover, he was com-;; pletely captivated by his fiery eloquence and paid un-,; stinted tribute to his divine genius.
Forgotten though he may have been for the time being,i the mountaineer was accustomed to the silent solitudes;! and being unnoticed by the world occasioned him no con-d cern. He had often scaled the rugged heights of the Blue! Ridge mountains; and now at the age of thirty-seven hei stood upon an eminence which few men had ever suo|

"WHO IS JOE BROWN?"

241

ceeded in attaining. He had mounted by slow degrees and under serious difficulties; and such was the quiet demeanor of the man, who calmly and patiently met all obstacles and permitted nothing to disturb his unruffled spirit, that he climbed almost unobserved. But neverthe less he climbed; and now as the chosen standard-bearer of the great Democratic party for the high office of Gov ernor his name was heralded far and near. It even reached Texas.
General Toombs was no doubt disturbed by the infor mation which came from Milledgeville announcing the action of the State convention. On the issues of the day he had recently left the Whig ranks and joined the Demo cratic hosts; and he realized that his seat in the United States Senate depended upon the success of the party whose banner had been put into the hands of this com paratively unknown candidate.
There is no spur like uneasiness. General Toombs managed to wind up his affairs in Texas with wonderful dispatch; and, inquiring when the next train left for the East, he was soon bounding away over the iron rails to Georgia.

Whatever may be the truth of the story which credits the distinguished Senator with having asked the question which heads this chapter, it is undeniably true that the question was being asked all over the State:
"Who is Joe Brown?" The popular ignorance concerning the nominee for Governor was specially marked in the wire-grass region, where comparatively few seemed ever to have heard the

242 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

name which was destined so soon to acquire historic fa

miliarity in all parts of the Union. Even in North Geor

gia the knowledge of the candidate was by no means in

timate,

i

Taking the question as a point of departure, this may]

be as good a place as any for discussing the antecedents of j

this remarkable man who was thus suddenly plucked outl

of the maze of obscurity and thrust into the limelight of|

one of the most dramatic campaigns ever known in the!

history of the State.

Seventeen years before this event was recorded in the!

calendar of Georgia politics a lad driving a pair of steersj

was seen to emerge from one of the mountain passes off

the Blue Ridge between Union and Lumpkin counties.

He came of sturdy old revolutionary stock, but his

worn suit of country jeans and his bony nag, both of

w^hich had seen better days, told only too plainly that he

had not been reared in the clover of fortune and that

hard knocks were about the only things he had thus far

received from the world upon whose picturesque moun

tain stage he had just appeared.

To quote Judge Emory Speer: "There was not in his

day, in the remotest cove of the mountains or in the hum-1

blest cabin of the wire-grass, save for the pure blood

and strong brain of the unpretentious but historic stock

from which he came, a boy whose chances for distinction!

in life were less auspicious."

Yet this plain country-bred youth whose constant com

panion until now had been a plowshare, and whose only

home since childhood had been a log-cabin, was the only

boy in all the history .of the State who was destined to bej

four times Governor. He was also to be once a State Sen-1

'WHO IS JOE BROWN?"

243

ator, once a judge of the superior court, once a chief jus tice of the Supreme Court, and twice a representative in the Senate of the United States. Moreover, he was to accumulate what in his day was considered an immense fortune. He was to develop railroads and coal-mines. And, remembering how he had struggled up the steeps, he was to assist other poor boys like himself to rise by giving to the State University the munificent sum of fifty thousand dollars.
Not since the penniless Gascon set out for Paris to be come the great marshal of France had more of the ele ments of romance waited upon an expedition than now gathered about the slim figure of the farmer boy of Gaddistown as he slowly wended his way through the dust of the mountain road. And this is the youth whose unprece dented career is to answer the question :
''Who is Joe Brown?''

His parents were Mackay Brown and Sally Rice, who, being well-mated, lived happily together without the need of artificial comforts to make them contented. They had no princely acres to bequeath him; but, what is far better, they gave him a character which was strong enough to defy the sternest assaults and a lineage whose ruddy links bound him to an ancestry of heroic mold in the north of Ireland. His grandfather, Joseph Brown, achieved revolutionary distinction by his gallant behavior at King's Mountain.
The eldest of eleven children, he occupied an important position in the modest household; but he dreamed of larger harvests than those which sprang from the flinty

214 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

$'

soil of Gaddistown. He was not satisfied to cultivate "a 1

scrap of hillside land with a pair of bull calves." He

wanted to plow deeper furrows in richer fields; and long |

before his feet began to tread the highway his fancy had 1

sallied forth like an errant-knight to explore the fabled f

wonderland beyond the mountains.

:|

He was now intent upon an education. The sips of ;|

knowledge which he had been allowed to taste at broken .H

intervals in the little primary school of the backwoods I

only made him wish to drink more deeply at the Pierian :f

spring. He had outgrown the rural pedagogues; and was I

now anxious for an academic course of training. Desire >

had crystallized into resolve.

?;

Sealing his determination with his mother's kiss and ':&

forsaking his old life with his father's blessing, he mount- |

ed his nag and, waving his cap in the air as he reached

the turn in the road, he bade the little home farewell.

Calhoun Academy, in Anderson district, South Caro- | lina, was his objective point. Arrived at this place, he traded his steers to Major Aaron Broyles for five months' board and obtained his tuition on credit. Having no fur ther means for prosecuting his education at the end of the If year, he returned to Gaddistown where he taught school until he accumulated sufficient funds for resuming his studies. Again his meager capital gave out; but he no longer lacked for friends who stood ready to give him substantial help. He had made his mark in the class room. Within two years he had prepared himself to enter college; but he felt that he could not conscientiously ask his benefactors to assist him further.

"WHO IS JOE BROWN?"

245

Some idea of the rapid manner in which the youth mastered the elementary principles may be gleaned from the following incident narrated by Judge Speer. Said jie: "I once met his teacher, then a very aged man. He was a witness in a case of illicit distillation. To my sur prise he informed me that Joe Brown and Mackay, his father, went to school to him at the same time. He said: 'Joe was the peartest boy I ever saw, and could work a sum according to the rule quicker'n lightning could trim a hemlock.' But his estimate of Mackay's mathematical powers was not quite so eulogistic."
Returning to Georgia in 1884, the young mountaineer ' - ' " "* opened an academy at Canton. At first he had only six students, but this number was soon increased to sixty, and when the end of the year came he had cleared enough to repay every dollar he had borrowed for his schooling in South Carolina. But his largest asset was the friend ship of Dr. John W. Lewis, in whose family he resided, tutoring the children for his board. At odd intervals he applied himself to the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1845. An examination of the records show that he missed only one question. Soon afterward he matriculated in the law school of Yale College, borrowing the necessary funds from Dr. Lewis, who was only too glad to place them at his disposal.
From the very start fortune seemed to lavish her smiles upon the youthful barrister; but her favor was won and retained only by close application and hard work. He soon earned an income large enough to justify matrimo nial ventures, and in 1847 ne insured the felicity of his whole future career by wedding Elizabeth Gresham, a daughter of Rev. Joseph Gresham, of Pickens district,

246 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
South Carolina, a Baptist minister of great usefulness and wide repute. This was one of the matches which are said to be made in heaven, for the fair damsel in ques tion no sooner caught sight of the young lover for the first time than she realized instinctively that the meeting was prophetic of what followed. In some mysteriousway she seemed to feel that she was fated to marry this man, whose name at the time she did not even know.
Soon after settling at Canton Mr. Brown made an in vestment which proved to be the precursor of many simi lar strokes of good fortune; but the profits which it netted him sprang in the main from judicious foresight. He bought a piece of land in the neighborhood for which he paid four hundred and fifty dollars. Copper was found, on the land in large quantities; and subsequently the sale of one-half of the property brought him twenty-five thou sand dollars.
The success which the young lawyer by steady workH achieved almost invariably in prosecuting hjs cases before the courts soon made his admirers think that he was needed in the political counsels of the State; and in 1849" he was chosen by an emphatic vote to represent his district! in the State Senate. The young mountaineer was slowly^ climbing.

At this important crisis in the history of the Stated

Governor George W. Towns occupied the executive chaiiy

and the legislative associates of Mr. Brown included some'"

of the foremost men of Georgia,

^

In the Senate were Andrew J. Miller, David J. Bailey, \

William W. Clayton, Richard H. Clark, Thomas Purse,!

"WHO IS JOE BROWN?"

247

Peter E. Love, Edward D. Chisholm and James M. Spurlock. The assistant secretary of the body was Alfred H. Colquitt, who was destined to be associated so intimately with him in the great political drama of 1880.
In the House were Linton Stephens, Lucius J. Gartrell, Edmund H. Worrell, Parmedus Reynolds, William T. Wofford, John A. Jones, A. T. Mclntyre, Charles J. Jenkins, Robert P. Trippe, James M. Ramsey, Thomas C. Howard, John W. Anderson, George P. Harrison, A. D. Shackelford, A. H. Kenan and Winslow J. Lawton. The two political parties were almost evenly balanced, and the issue of battle between them was sharp and decisive.
But the new-comer soon proved himself the equal of any of these representative Georgians in grappling with the great political problems of the hour. Though an ar dent friend of the Union, he was an uncompromising champion of the doctrine of State rights; and he made his influence strongly felt upon this question at this ses sion of the Legislature.
There was nothing brilliant or pyrotechnic in the part which he took in the proceedings. He was not an orator in the accepted sense of the term; but followed Socrates rather than Cicero. What he said was well put and evinced reasoning powers of the highest order, but it was not calculated to fill either the galleries or the newspa pers. Consequently the reputation which he acquired was by no means Statewide.
But observant eyes were not slow to mark the young Senator as one who was likely to play an important part on the stage of future events. The atmosphere of quiet reserve which hung about him told that he possessed the elements of mastery which were needed for the coming storm.

248 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Governor Colquitt noted that when he took charge of the Democratic side of any discussion the Democratic members wore an air of security which they felt under no other leader; and Andrew J. Miller, who differed with him on nearly every public question, made this prophetic remark, which reads almost like an inspiration:
"Joe Brown \vill yet stamp the impress of his genius upon the future history of the State'."
Returning to his home in Canton the popular Senator did not stand for reelection, but resumed the practice of law, which he prosecuted with greater success than ever, until he was called to the bench of the Blue Ridge circuit in 1855, defeating an able competitior, Judge David I. Irwin, for this coveted honor.
It was while on the bench of the Blue Ridge circuit, utterly unconscious of the influences which were at work in Milledgeville, and intent only upon gathering judicial laurels, that the Democratic convention placed in his hands the banner of the party and called him to lead the fight which was then approaching for the gubernatorial prize.
If General Toombs was disturbed by the action of the State Democratic convention in nominating a man who possessed little or no experience as a campaigner, and who was hardly known except to the rural population which moved in the shadows of the Blue Ridge mountains, he was actually dismayed when the American or KnowNothing party met in formal conclave and nominated Benjamin H. Hill.
He now scented defeat sure enough; but in justice to

"WHO IS JOB BROWN?"

249

General Toombs, whose patriotism was always greater than his personal ambition, it must be said that he thought less of his senatorial seat than of his party pros pects, and he would gladly have relinquished his toga in the highest legislative arena of the nation if the sacrifice could only have made his party victorious at the polls.
Benjamin H. Hill was the foremost orator of the State, and few men have ever possessed such po\ver to sway the masses as characterized the eloquence of this distinguished Georgian.
General Toombs was not the only man in the Demo cratic ranks who felt alarmed for the success of the ticket; nor was the first joint meeting between the candidates reassuring. The initial debate of the campaign was held at Athens, and when the passage at arms was concluded General Howell Cobb wrote General Toombs that he thought the Democratic candidate was badly worsted. This was only what General Toombs expected; but at this juncture he invited the Democratic candidate to visit him in Washington for the purpose of talking over the situation. Judge Brown accepted the invitation; and General Toombs surrendered some of his fears when he met the candidate face to face and noted his strong char acteristics. Nevertheless it was agreed that General Toombs should chaperone him in making the rounds of the State.
But Judge Brown had ever been an apt pupil in the hard school of experience. He never made the same mis take twice. He always profited by what he saw and heard; The result was that he improved with each successive ap pearance before the people., He understood the masses as his brilliant rival did not and could not; and they rec-

250 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
ognized him as one of themselves: a man whose sym pathies and interests were all with them, and whose supe rior intellect alone lifted him above them. The illustra tions which he used were drawn for the most part from country life; and his homely way of putting things went straight to the popular heart. He spoke with telling ef fect and the people remembered what he said. If it did not enthuse it lingered, and many of his quaint aphorisms bore fruit in after-thought, while his adversary's blazing thunderbolts, if not forgotten, proved either too fiery to be touched or too ponderous to be lifted.
The Democratic candidate usually caught the crowd by saying that Mr. Hill was an excellent declaimer, but lacked judgment, putting the accent of the word judgment on the second syllable. Such an observation as this, ' spiced with the country dialect, was well calculated to puncture the rhetoric of an imaginative speaker; and it counted heavily in the making of votes. But the shrewd ;, representative of the yeomanry found occasion for other ;, thrusts which he made with like skill into the marrow t of Mr. Hill's arguments. This chip from the debate at I Newnan has been preserved by Colonel I. W. Avery. ft Says this chronicler: "Hill remarked that Buchanan was f; too much like a snail to suit him; that he believed in a | fast government, and was afraid Brown would make a slow Governor. Brown retorted very happily and tell- f ingly upon his bright rival, saying it was true he was not | a fast man. Mr. Hill was a fast man; he was a fast can- J didate, and if elected he would doubtless make a fast
<?
Governor. As for himself, he was a slow man, and if | elected he would make a slow Governor. He liked Mr. ) Buchanan for his slowness and prudence in deciding upon :

"WHO IS JOE BROWN?"

251

great questions affecting the people. Every chief execu tive, holding in his grasp such mighty issues, affecting the destiny of this great nation, should be cautious and slow to act."
Dating from this contest Governor Brown acquired the soubriquet of "Old Judgment/' which not only gained free currency during the campaign, but survived in clear recollection if not in common use, down to the close of the great statesman's career.

Those who were fortunate enough to hear the joint de bates between these two famous competitors for the gubernatorial honors were struck at once with the polar contrasts which existed between them at almost every observable point. Indeed, no two men whose character istics were more totally different, save in courageous fidel ity to fixed principle, could possibly be conceived. Neither could be induced by any consideration of personal gain to deviate one iota from what he thought to be right; and both were ardent patriots. But here the resemblance ended. Mr. Hill was an orator. Mr. Brown was a talker. Bold denunciation, bitter invective, relentless irony and passionate appeal were the weapons of the former. Home ly speech, keen observation, apt retort and sagacious com ment were the tools of the latter. The former was the embodiment of fiery zeal. The latter was the incarnation of philosophic repose. The former was a cataract, bound ing over the rocks of opposition with resistless plunge and magnificent power and majestic music. The latter was a boulder, swelling aloft in the pride of conscious strength, unshaken by the winds, unmoved by the light-

252 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

f

nings and unruffled by the gales. The former was thdIf

Athenian eloquent, whose fkry fulminations shook th||

forum. The latter was the Athenian wise, whose sobei

teachings solemnized the market-place. But Greece

needed both her orator and her philosopher; and Georgij

in the trying ordeal which was now before her could|

spare neither her Brown nor her Hill.

|

An incident of the campaign which proved to have an!

important bearing upon the result was the presentation to;

the Democratic candidate of an old-fashioned quilt which,

some 01 his admiring lady friends in North Georgia had

made for him to sleep under in the executive mansion. The Know-Nothings made all manner of fun of this gar

ment, which they held up to popular ridicule; but while it

was excellent sport to indulge in such merriment at the

expense of Judge Brown it was poor politics, and it only

served to make votes for the Democratic candidate by'

identifying him more completely with the masses whose

favor he was seeking.

Before the campaign was two weeks old Judge Brown

had acquired the art of successful public speaking to such

an extent that General Toombs no longer considered it

necessary to continue his guardianship over the Demo

cratic candidate; and returned to his home in Washing

ton much better pleased with the outlook, if not confident

of the result.

When the campaign was concluded and the result was

announced, it was found that the mountaineer had run ten thousand votes ahead; and in view of the heated char

acter of the campaign, the victory for the Democratic

ticket was most pronounced. There was no one left in

the State who could now plead ignorance concerning the

"WHO IS JOE BROWN?"

253

personality of this remarkable man who had been en trusted with the Democratic banner. If any one had de sired information General Toombs could have given him all he needed; but the developments of the campaign, and especially the emphatic declaration of the ballot-box, had saved him this trouble by answering the worn-out ques tion which was now buried with military honors on the battle-field:
"Who is Joe Brown?"

CHAPTER XXVI.
Another Cincinnatus.
W HEN Joseph E. Brown received the Democrat* ic nomination for Governor of Georgia in 1857, he was engaged like the illustrious farmer of Roman history in exemplifying the noble art of practical agriculture; but instead of driving his yoke of oxen he was binding his wheat-sheaves on his plantation near Canton, and nothing was further from his rural; thoughts at this particular moment than the idea of being;;; the standard-bearer of his party in the approaching cam-i paign.
There were many surprised people in Georgia that dayf when the news began to travel the public roads, political weather prophets had all been at fault; and the shrewdest calculations of the experts had been completeljr| upset. None of the newspapers of the State had exploited the claims of the unexpected winner; or even mentionec his name in the most casual paragraph. Altogether it one of those strange freaks of political astronomy whic show that implicit confidence can not always be put in the| signs of the zodiac.
But while the announcement was received with wideeyed wonder all over the State, no one was more com-fj pletely dumbfounded than Joseph E. Brown himself.
If the ground in front of his farmhouse at Canton had| (254)

ANOTHER CINCINNATUS.

255

suddenly opened with the yawn of an earthquake and in vited him instanter to explore the interior of the earth he could not have been more utterly amazed at the summons.
There were various men of ability throughout the State whose names had been mentioned in connection with the high office, some of them veterans in the service of the commonwealth, and men richly deserving of the coveted distinction. Why should he be singled out in preference to these able Georgians when he was not an aspirant for the place and when he lacked the experience in political affairs which others possessed in such distinguished measure ?
Less than two years had elapsed since the suffrages of his fellow citizens had elevated him to the bench of the Blue Ridge circuit. He was now intent upon his judicial duties, barring, of course, such intervals of leisure as per mitted him to enjoy the oversight of his plantation on the outskirts of the town. Having declined to stand for reelection when his term of office as State Senator expired in 1851, he had virtually put himself out of the path which led by the most direct route to the executive mansion; and having subsequently assumed the superior court ermine in one of the most secluded districts of the State, he may have reasoned with sound political acumen that he was in no danger of being struck by the gubernatorial lightning. What, then, was the secret of this extraordi nary departure from the settled program ?
Could he have looked ahead with prophetic eyes and seen the momentous events which were rapidly assuming ominous shape in the hidden womb of the future, he might have read the explanation in the fiat of an immutable de cree which proceeded from some higher power than even the enthroned majesty of the people of Georgia.

256 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
He was called from the simple life of the fields to cot front an eventful epoch in the history of the State; an<; by all his past training as well as by all his inherited gift he was divinely qualified and equipped to master the storr which was fast gathering; whose destructive fury v\ soon to burst upon the State with terrific violence like unsealed volcano; and whose maelstrom mutterings eve now could be distinctly heard on the distant horizon.
Brilliant and patriotic and brave as were the countle sons of Georgia who possessed nerves of steel and hear of oak, and who could have clutched the helm of State ij this grave crisis with firm hands, Joseph E. Brown wa the man whose placid temperament and sober genius wet best meted to the thunders of this crucial hour.
Hence it was that in the convention he carried off thj~ nomination over the gray heads of all the avowed candi| dates; and hence it was, too, that in the campaign whic followed one of the most historic which the State ha ever witnessed he won the election over Georgia's peerj less orator, the illustrious Benjamin H. Hill. No highe^ or more conclusive evidence of the divine agency er ployed on behalf of Joseph E. Brown could possibly furnished than the spectacle of this exciting contest ii which even the Olympian eloquence of Mr. Hill was pow| erless to overcome him; and concerning the marvelot oratory of this matchless Georgian it may be gravel} doubted if any voice in the councils of this country ever framed such syllables since death silenced the ton of Daniel Webster.
But Georgia had other honors in store for this favorit son. She reserved that commanding figure and that si perhuman speech for the topmost laurels of the loftiest!

ANOTHER CINCINNATUS.

257

forums. Just now she needed another type of man in the executive chair.
Looking backward from the promontory which fifty subsequent years have built for the dispassionate survey of that period, it is now as clear as the sunbeams that the reason for the unexpected nomination which was made by the State Democratic convention at Milledgeville in 1857 \vas that Joseph E. Brown, if not the logical, was the providential candidate.

Approaching Canton in the fall of 1880 with a party of visitors, Governor Brown, who had then become United States Senator, pointed out the famous wheat-field and told the story of how he received the nomination.
"That," said he, "is the field I was tying wheat in when I was first nominated for Governor of Georgia," indicat ing an unattractive patch of ground which lay along the edge of Town Creek.
"I was then the judge of the Blue Ridge circuit," he continued, "and coming home one day, I went into the field after dinner to see how my hands were getting on. I had four men who were cutting wheat with common cradles and the binders were very much behind. So I pulled off my coat and pitched in. It was then about half-past two o'clock in the afternoon, and the day was the fifteenth of June, 1857. The weather was very warm and the beads of perspiration were coming out; but I ordered my binders to keep up with me and thus the work went briskly on.
"About sundown I went home and was just getting ready for supper when Colonel Samuel Weil, now an at torney in Atlanta, but then living in Canton, rode up

258 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
rapidly to the house. He seemed to be very much excited! and, rushing in, said: 'Judge, guess who is nominated fc Governor at Milledgeville ?' I had no idea that I was th| man; but I thought from what I had heard that John Ward was the most likely one after the deadlock hz taken place. So I guessed him. 'No/ said he; 'it i| Joseph E. Brown, of Cherokee.'
"Colonel Weil was in Marietta when the telegram car announcing my nomination. I subsequently ascertaine that the choice was made about three o'clock that day| and at the time I was tying wheat in this field. I am toll in Canton that two or three men have been negotiatii recently for the purchase of this field. They want plant it in wheat year after next."
Among the leading aspirants for the Democratic nom| nation in 1857 were John H. Lumpkin, of Floyd; Hei G. Lamar, of Bibb; William H. Stiles, of Chatham! Hiram Warner, of Meriwether, and James Gardner, Richmond.
Lumpkin and Lamar had both been superior couj judges and members of Congress, and were strong car didates before the convention. Hiram Warner had occ pied the supreme bench with Joseph Henry Lumpkin anl Eugenius A. Nisbet when the court was first organize^ and was one of the purest and best men in the State; bt was characterized by too much austere judicial reserve enthuse the masses in a contest for Governor. Williz H. Stiles and James Gardner were both political speake who were equally as ready with the pen as with tongue, and who had enjoyed ripe legislative experienc
We have already intimated that no one could foresed

ANOTHER CINCINNATUS.

259

the result of the convention. We are still prepared to re affirm this statement. But there was one man who had his eye upon Joseph E. Brown, and who was determined to spring his name if an opportunity favored. That man was Colonel L. N. Trammell, then as afterwards an astute political Warwick in the Democratic ranks. He was sup ported in this resolve by William Phillips and Sumner Smith. But the wheat-binder had other friends in the convention who remembered the quiet leadership of the State Senator in 1849 and 1851, and who had not forgot ten the obscure whereabouts of the Cherokee judge in
1857The candidate of North Georgia in this fight was John
H. Lumpkin, and so long as he stood any chance of secur ing the nomination it was neither good policy nor loyal politics to exploit the interests of any other champion. Nothing could be done except to wait.
On the first ballot the vote stood: Lumpkin, one hun dred and twelve; Girdner, one hundred; Lamar, ninetyseven ; Warner, fifty-three; and Stiles, thirty-five. Eight times the roll of counties was called without materially changing these figures. Lamar then dropped out; but the deadlock continued. Finally Lamar was introduced again and Warner, Stiles and Gardner dropped out to make room for other favorites. But the deadlock still remained unbroken; and the monotonous call of the roll continued. The clerks at the desk were getting hoarse and the freshest looking delegate in the hall resembled "the last rose of summer."
At last William Hope Hull, of Clarke, took the floor and moved that a committee be appointed, consisting of three members from each district, to be named by the delegates representing the districts respectively, whose

260 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

duty it should be to report a method by which the conven

tion could harmoniously effect the nomination of sorne

candidate.

The auspicious moment for which Colonel Trammell

was looking was now drawing audibly near with each

successive tick of the timepiece. At last it came. When

the delegates from the sixth district met to. select commit-

teemen Colonel Trammell promptly met the opportunity

by suggesting three delegates whom he knew to be friends

of Joseph E. Brown, and the suggestion was adopted.

As soon as the various other districts had taken similar

action the committee of the whole body was then ap^

pointed and went immediately into solemn session for the

purpose of naming the man on whom the choice of the

convention was to rest. The merits of all the candidates

brought forward were carefully weighed and discussed;

and after these interchanges of opinion were concluded

vote was taken. It was found that the committee had;

agreed upon a candidate. The choice was made unanil;

mous; and the committee returned to the hall prepare|J

to report.

t

Profound silence fell upon the assembled delegates a|f

the committee filed into the doorway and the chairmail

arose to pronounce the name which was destined to seveil

the Gordian knot. The old clock on the wall beat out thff

moments like a ponderous hammer pounding upon m

heated anvil. But the cheers were soon unloosed and th||

awful suspense was ended when the action of the commit!

tee was announced and the convention, amid the wilde4|

enthusiasm, proceeded to nominate the man, who, all unt

conscious of what was going on at Milledgeville, wz

quietly binding his wheat-sheaves in the field at Canton!

another Cincinnatus.

CHAPTER XXVII.
Georgia's War Governor.
J OSEPH E. BROWN was not an athlete, in the physisical sense of the term, being rather frail for one who had spent his early years in the vigorous air of the mountains; but he had no sooner clutched the executive reins than he began to make it evident even to the most skeptical that while the Blue Ridge granite might not have hardened his muscles and sinews, it gloriously threaded his intellectual and moral backbone with the whole Appa lachian range of rocks. This was the regnant character istic which, planted squarely upon State sovereignty, en abled him to go beyond all precedent and to secure from .the voluntary suffrages of his fellow citizens what no other chief magistrate of Georgia has ever received, be fore or since: four consecutive terms of office.
Covering the whole area of the war between the States and fronting the hostile guns of an enemy who brought the tide of invasion to the very doors of the Capitol, Gov ernor Brown's administration was couched upon turbulent times; but it lacked none of the elements of strength which were needed to grasp the iron emergencies of rev olution.
Indicative of the force of will which was destined to command with imperious sway an era of bloody violence,

262 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

was the bold stand which he took in his first inaugural against the State banks for entailing unnecessary hard

ships upon the humble people of the State by suspend

ing specie payment when there was no occasion for doing

so. He threatened to institute proceedings for forfeiture

of charters and, much to the surprise of the State bank

ers, who regarded this menacing declaration simply as

political oratory, he straightway proceeded to make his

words effective. The State Legislature voted in the in

terest of the banking institutions to suspend forfeiture

proceedings for one year, but Governor Brown in the face

of an overwhelming majority courageously vetoed the

enactment and soon proved that the Democratic masses

of the State supported him in this resolute protest.

Without making any active canvass of the State, and

with such an able opponent as Hon. Warren Akin to con-

test the executive prize, Governor Brown, in the election

which ensued, more than doubled his former majority

over Mr. Hill, and defeated his accomplished rival by

more than twenty thousand votes.

;

The clouds of approaching war were now beginning to

darken upon the national horizon. But the sense of offi-V

cial responsibility was not the only factor which deter

mined the attitude of Mr. Brown upon the paramount,

issue of the hour. He possessed deep-rooted and positive,

convictions; nor were these born of pecuniary interests;

in the feudal system of labor which existed at the South*;

He had cultivated no patrimonial acres with inherited!

slaves, and, exemplifying upon his little patch of ground!

the doctrine of self-help, he had begun life with no pre-|

conceived preference for an institution in which he had!

no vested privileges. But he had imbibed with his earliest!

GEORGIA'S WAR GOVERNOR.

263

breath the philosophy of Mr. Calhoun; and, while he was no blatant or rampant disunionist, he believed that seces sion was the ultimate and proper remedy for constitu tional aggressions. In other words, he believed that the State was sovereign and that under sufficient provocation the State was justified in withdrawing from the compact of union with other States. This condition of affairs he felt to be precipitated by Mr. Lincoln's election.

More than two weeks before the ordinance of secession was adopted by the State convention Governor Brown performed an act of aggression against the Federal gov ernment which instantly made him famous throughout the Union. This was the seizure of Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah river, on January 2, 1861.
Though Georgia was still in the Union, Governor Brown intended to give the verdure no opportunity to sprout under his sandals. He had been too busily occu pied with executive affairs to take any part in the contro versy now going on within the State over secession; but he was prepared to take vigorous steps toward putting Georgia in an attitude of defense. The wisdom of this course was justified by the experience of South Carolina in suffering the loss of Fort Moultrie, which was burned by the Federal troops soon after the ordinance of seces sion was adopted on December 20, 1860. It might smack of rebellion to defy the United States authorities in ad vance of secession, but Governor Brown was not disposed to leave the front gate open when dangers were lurking in the immediate neighborhood and accordingly he issued executive orders to Colonel A. R. Lawton, who

264 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

was commanding the First Regiment, Georgia Volun-

teers, to seize Fort Pulaski. This was the first overt act

of war committed upon the Southern side. It was "boldly

previous," but in view of what was most likely to happen

in Georgia as well as of what was actually taking place

next door, it was dictated by wise strategics. Moreover,

it showed that an Argus-eyed champion of State rights

occupied the executive chair, who intended to keep his

optics on duty even when he went to bed. He also pref

aced the action of the State convention at Milledgeville by

having two regiments organized and equipped for escort

ing Georgia out of the Union.

Shortly after the adoption of the ordinance of secession

Governor Brown also seized the United States arsenal at

Augusta. Colonel Henry R. Jackson, aide de camp on

Governor Brown's staff, was the agent through whom

this commission was executed; but Governor Brown ac

companied him to Augusta and was present when the

United States flag was hauled down. But instead of en

countering any resistance which called for bullets and

bandages the story goes that refreshments were served.

These dramatic events were the direct precursors of

another State election; and though Governor Brown was

more than willing to retire, his enthusiastic followers in

sisted on making him stand again while Eugenius A. Nis-

bet was put forward as the choice of those Democrats who

opposed the third term idea or preferred some one else.

to Governor Brown, who was too bold and aggressive to

be without enemies. But loyal secessionist and pure pa-,

triot as Judge Nisbet was, he lost the fight and GovernoT|

Brown was once more inaugurated.

I

GEORGIA'S WAR GOVERNOR.

265

During the spring of 1862 the famous conscription Act was passed by the Confederate Congress, which was des tined to bring Governor Brown and President Davis into sharp collision. Whatever may have been the expediency which inspired this law, it was deemed unnecessary so far at least as Georgia was concerned; for no sooner had the ordinance of secession been adopted than regiments were promptly organized all over the State and between fifty and one hundred thousand Georgians had already enlisted.
Quite an extended correspondence took place between President Davis and Governor Brown upon this subject. One of the practical objections to the measure was that it exempted slaveowners who worked twenty negroes or more; giving soil for the criticism which was not infre quently heard that the conflict which was then in progress was "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight." More over, it was drafting those who were already furnishing the great bulk of the volunteers and leaving unmolested .those who had the heaviest financial interests involved. It is an interesting fact that at least eighty-five per cent, of the volunteers in the Southern army had little or no pecuniary interest in negro slavery, and that most of those who did own slave property were officers. Again was Governor Brown opposing stubborn Scotch resistance to what he considered an unfair discrimination against the common people. But the chief objection to the bill was on the legal ground that it virtually antagonized the princi ple for which Confederate soldiers were fighting: the principle of State sovereignty, and was therefore uncon stitutional.
But while taking this position, Governor Brown did nothing to embarrass Confederate success, and furnished

266 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
more State troops than the government demanded. Hill, who had become the recognized champion of Mr|Davis in the Confederate Senate, strongly sided with Mrl Davis in this controversy and even came to Georgia * the purpose of combatting any harmful effects. But Mr, Stephens and General Toombs sided with Governo: Brown. The ruling of the courts was that while the A was constitutional, it could not affect State officers.
Besides furnishing troops to the Confederate govern ment, Governor Brown left no stone unturned whi promised the most effective and thorough organization! of the home defenses; and what are known as "Joe Brown's Pikos" 6ore pointed if somewhat crude testimony; to the zeal with which he sought to protect the State by', every means possible. He also saw that disabled soldieiitj and dependent households lacked none of the ministra-| tions of practical benevolence which Georgia was able to extend. The /lecessities of relief required the distribu^ tion of immense sums of money, but it was prompt!' forthcoming.
Another election now approached and circumstano made it necessary for Governor Brown to offer himsel again. Joshua Hill and T. M. Furlow, two able Geor gians, were his competitors; but swapping horses in thi middle of a stream so broad and bloody as the war h now become was not deemed best, and Governor Bro was now elected Governor of Georgia for the fourth tim
Without lingering upon details, failure soon began t threaten the Confederate cause. This was not because o any lack of fighting power in the Confederate soldier, but;

GEORGIA'S WAR GOVERNOR.

267

simply because there were not enough individuals of this particular sort to resist the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. The official records show that from first to last there were approximately only six hundred thousand men mustered in the Confederate ranks, while the Northern army embraced two million eight hundred thousand men. This is the mathematics of Appomattox.
Dr. Chas. H. Parkhurst, the famous New York divine, has put himself on record as saying that the South was virtually dead when the war commenced. Without stop ping to inquire how much of credit is due the victorious side for defeating an enemy whose life wras already ex tinguished., it suffices to say that the learned doctor has never inspected the Federal pension rolls. The docu mentary evidence on file in Washington shows that there are more Union veterans to-day drawing pensions from the treasury of Uncle Sam, as the result of the Civil War, than there were men enlisted in all the combined musterrolls of the Southern armies. If the South was lifeless when the conflict started she was represented on the battle field by the most stubborn and robust apparition which has terrified the souls of men since the ghost of Banquo dis turbed the peace of Scotland.
Not many months elapsed before Chickamauga and Kennesaw were added to the costly rubies for which so many brave lives were being sacrificed and so much rich treasure spent. Georgia was now the field of battle. Gen eral Sherman was playing fearful and furious havoc in his destructive march to the sea. Georgians were fight ing in Georgia and for Georgia; and reeking with the blood of her own offspring Georgia was seized with the madness of desperation. Governor Brown incarnated the

268 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
spirit of the commonwealth in resisting the sweep of the invader. The removal of Johnston and the appomtmen of Hood on the eve of the battle of Atlanta was an un fortunate blunder, but irrespective of leaders Governoi Brown aided heroically in the defense of Georgia soi with the fire of State troops. Nothing could surpass the spirit with which the home guard disputed with the fo< the territory of Georgia. Composed largely of old men and young boys who were not embraced within the agef limits of the conscript Acts, they had nevertheless been* well drilled and equipped in anticipation of such an emer gency, and they literally fought like lions at bay. But alt to no purpose. Atlanta soon fell under the crushing fire of an enemy whose strength nearly trebled the force of resistance; and other strongholds followed. However,,; there was no surrender yet; and it was not until Lee andf Johnston had both resigned the sword that Governor^ Brown, at the head of the home guard, did likewise. 1
On the twenty-second of May, 1865, immediately after| the Legislature had assembled, the executive mansion at| Milledgeville was surrounded by an arresting body of| Federal troops; and Governor Brown, notwithstanding^ his parole, was put under arrest and taken to Washing-f ton, where he remained in the old Capitol prison until re leased by President Johnson.
Returning to Georgia he found the State under military law, and being unable to exercise the authority vested in him by the people of Georgia as chief executive, he re signed the office which he had filled for nearly eight years, and which he had nobly illustrated for all time to come as Georgia's War Governor.

JOSEPH EMERSON BROWN.

CHAPTER XXVIIL
From the Fiery Furnace to the Senatorial Toga.
N OTHING perhaps is more obvious, even to the most careless and casual observer of political events, than the ever-recurring fact that the ex periences of public men, like the features of Mother Earth, are flecked with lights and shadows and diversified with hills and valleys. The price of the breezes which play upon the uplands is not alone the tedious and toilsome climb, but often the heavy moments of spirit loneliness and soul depression which brood in the obloquy of bitter herbs upon the bottoms. Nor is this exacting tariff so often the fault of the individual as it is of the mass, which somehow fails to understand, amid the excitements of political unrest, that attitudes may change with circum stances while principles remain unaltered.
At the close of the Civil War there was no man in Georgia more popular than Joseph E. Brown. He had not only occupied the executive chair for the unprece dented period of eight years, but he had been, during all this time, and especially throughout the turbulent era of conflict, what may be termed in no mere technical or official sense the commanding figure of the commonwealth. He had been admittedly Georgia's favorite son; for, even
(269)

270 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
more nearly than Toombs or Stephens or Hill or Gor don he had been identified with Georgia's immediate for tunes. Nor was he less idolized when the historic walls of the old capitol building at Milledgeville were ex changed for the dungeon walls of the old capitol prison in Washington City. But Joseph E. Brown was fated to experience within the next few months the most pro nounced reversal of public favor and to suffer unremit tingly for the next fifteen years the most trying ordeal of political ostracism which has probably ever been known in Georgia.
This sudden revolution of the wheel of fortune was caused by the readiness with which he accepted and the zeal with which he urged Georgia to accept the congres sional measures of reconstruction. The logic which un derlay this course, to quote the language of Judge Speer, was grounded upon "the international law which fixes the power of the conqueror and restricts the rights of the conquered"; but Governor Brown put it subjunctively in this form: "If we could not successfully resist the North when we had half a million bayonets in the field, how can we resist now when we have none?" Powerful as was the force of this argument it was strongly cornbatted by the racial fact that the Southern people were the inheritors of proud blood which had never bowed sub missively to yokes and chains. Governor Brown realized this fact and moreover deplored what he recognized to be the injustice of the reconstruction wrongs; but this in ventory of the obstacles only emphasized the unpalatable truth that the vanquished South was completely at the mercy of the victorious North; and he argued that re sistance instead of mitigating would most likely only in-

FIERY FURNACE TO SENATORIAL TOGA. 271
crease the hardships of defeat. Won also by the magna nimity of Grant to Lee he felt that something was due the victor of Appomattox and he reasoned that the favor of such an influential chief secured by prompt acquies cence would in all probability do more than all else toward accomplishing the desired ends. But he knew that the South was in no mood to listen to such counsels then, however sure she might be to adopt them ultimately; and he knew also that the course which he felt compelled to take would most likely result in bitter alienations and mis understandings. It is perhaps the highest test of patriot ism to be willing to relinquish popularity for principle. Governor Brown had none of the hypocrisy which affects indifference to applause. He appreciated the favor of the public as only one can appreciate it who has won such favor not by the sudden conquests of the moment but by the gradual accretions of the years; but he preferred to steer by the tranquil light of the polar star in the faroff distance rather than by the illusive clouds which drift ed above the ship. It required courage of the martyrschool to make the choice which duty dictated under these painful circumstances, but he calmly fashioned his resolve; and, instead of taking the open road which wound through the heathery fields to Cana, he took the rugged and up ward path which sloped through the olive glooms.
But the parting of the ways was delayed until 1867. There was no serious resistance offered or contemplated to the plan of reconstruction proposed by President John son, who recognized the seceding State as already within the Union. The South readily accepted the con-

272 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
sequences of defeat so far as these involved the loss o] slave property and the abolition of slave labor. But when Congress took issue with President Johnson and not onl) insisted that the seceding States were without the Unior but must remain without until the blister of negro suf* frage was applied, it was thought time to enter protest It was just at this juncture that Benjamin H. Hill took up the cudgel of opposition and struck those magnificenl blows upon the forehead of the reconstruction monster in which Governor Brown was destined to share; but before! being drawn into any positive declaration upon the changed status of affairs Governor Brown had first gone to Washington and satisfied himself of the utter useless* ness of resisting what could not be avoided, and returns ing home he had written his famous letter. Mr. Hill ex-; pected relief to come through Democratic majorities at the ballot-box. But Governor Brown doubted the likeli hood of Democratic success for some time to come, and felt that the surer promise of relief lay in acceptance of the situation, however humiliating it might prove to in dividual and State pride. Reaching this conclusion he was at no loss how to act. He now saw what he took txfc be the obligation of duty as clearly as he had ever seat; the right of secession. He therefore not only accepted;: the military measures of reconstruction enacted by Con-, gress but he unequivocally urged this course upon the South.
It need not be said that the sentence of obloquy under which Mr. Brown was destined so long to suffer was now pronounced. Criticism was not only most bitter but wellnigh universal and language was put under the most ex haustive tribute to supply choice epithets and harsh de-

FIERY FURNACE, TO SENATORIAL TOGA. 273
nunciations. One has only to read the Bush Arbor speeches to see how Governor Brown was rhetorically tarred and feathered, along with the military satraps and the miscellaneous company of camp-followers, better known as carpet-baggers, who descended upon Georgia to devour the spoils. But ostracism actually endured was as powerless to swerve him as ostracism only threatened. With an inflexibility of character which he took from the molds of an ancestry made famous by the seige of Lon donderry, he calmly stood his ground, exemplifying the tenacious strength of purpose which caused the Wizard of Waverly to liken the Scottish yeomanry to the High land sycamores. "You may break them," says he, "but you can never bend them." It was surely an altered sky which now frowned over Joseph E. Brown. The howl ing winds of legendary Britain never beat more savagely against the breast of the discrowned old king than did the scornful arrows of invective against the calm front of the rejected councillor who had once been Georgia's War Governor.
Besides the logical necessity which constrained him in affiliating with the reconstructionists to support General Grant for the presidency in 1868, Governor Brown fur ther intensified the opposition which was now felt to wards him by accepting from the hands of Governor Bul lock the office of chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia and by prosecuting the Columbus prisoners charged with the murder of G. W. Ashburn under kuklux masks. But Governor Brown justified the former on the ground that it enabled him to render Georgia im portant service on the Supreme bench during an unsettled period in the history of the State when justice was what

274 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Georgia needed; and he explained the latter upon the; ground that it was in the interest of the prisoners that he] had undertaken the prosecution, having accepted a re-j tainer solely on condition that the cases should be trans-j ferred from the military tribunal to the State courts, byl means of which change of jurisdiction the prisoners weref saved.
But so deeply rooted was the feeling of hostility toward Governor Brown that nothing could dilute the harshness! with which he was still condemned. Despite the fact that! the position which he had taken in regard to reconstruct tion was substantially approved by the subsequent ac4| ceptance of the military measures on the part of thos who had resisted them, he continued to be almost if not| quite as unpopular as ever. He ceased to affiliate withl the Republicans in 1868 and once more allied himself wit the Democrats in 1872, having fully accomplished whai| he wished; but the memory of past associations still re-| mained. Nor did he reap any very great harvest of pub-| lie favor when he became the legal representative of Mr.*! Tilden in Florida four years later and fought with un-;f compromising skill and adroitness to establish the rights of | the presidential nominee. Another claim to consideration which was overlooked during this time of resentment was the service which he had performed in developing the State's property as president of the company leasing the Western and Atlantic Railway. Finding the line almost totally wrecked by the ravages of war, since the fiery trail of General Sherman between Chattanooga and At lanta had constantly crossed and r.ecrossed the road-bed, making red splinters wherever it ran, Governor Brown

FIERY FURNACE TO SENATORIAL TOGA. 275
nevertheless took charge of the remnant and bringing order out of chaos by means of his splendid organizing faculties, he improved the property to such an extent that when the lease was renewed years later the property was not only worth millions more but brought an increased rental of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars per annum, the old lease calling for three hundred thousand dollars and the new lease for four hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Such being the unreconstructed sentiment of opposition to Governor Brown it looked as if he might have lost heart and given up all hope of regaining the favor which he had sacrificed. But the sublime faith of the man never wavered, though his beard had grown white and his shoul ders had commenced to droop. He was like the undis mayed old Baptist divine of Manchester, England, Dr. Alexander Maclaren, who, meeting the pessimistic argu ment that Christianity was advancing too slowly, ex claimed, with ringing optimism: "But think how glo rious must be the noontide hour of the centuries when the twilight dawn has lasted for nineteen hundred years." Still stubbornly misunderstood it is easy to imagine, with out the aid of light from other sources, what pronounced surprise and indignant protest ran through Georgia when it was announced some time in May, 1880, that the United States senatorship made vacant by the resignation of General John B. Gordon had been tendered, until the Leg islature could elect, to none other than the proscribed ad vocate of reconstruction: Joseph E. Brown.
But while the announcement provoked the bitterest op position and started the most unkind rumors, it never-

276 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
theless marked another epoch in the career of Governor Brown. The waters had commenced to assuage; and, while the raven was still unsighted, the dove, with an olive-branch of promise, was fluttering at the windows of the ark. The calmer and cooler air which time had brought was more conducive to sober reflection. The olcj days of reconstruction were now in the remote back ground and other issues were coming to the front in Geor gia politics which counseled the funeral obsequies of old feuds and the marriage rites between ancient enemies, With the true perspective now clearly established it was easy to discern what was once obscure. The patriotism of those who resisted the iniquities of reconstruction ap-j peared in no wise diminished, but the calm aspect of those| who in weak numbers but from pure motives gravely ac cepted the situation was now seen to better advantage and instead of possessing the features of disloyalty it bori an expression which tallied more closely with the linea ments of wisdom. Such retrospective surveys, even on tifo part of those who were least inclined to forgive, resulted'! in the slow conviction that if Governor Brown was not entirely right he was not altogether wrong.
What helped to turn the scale during the sultry months! of the campaign which was now inaugurated was the abil-f ity with which the newly chosen Senator grasped and proved the opportunities which the brief fragment of aiitf unexpired term afforded. And some idea of the deep im-t pression which he made upon the country may be gath-If ered from the somewhat facetious but none the less gen-^ uine compliment of Mr. Blaine, who congratulated him; upon his maiden effort with the remark that he had never heard so able a speech from so young a Senator. With

FIERY FURNACE TO SENATORIAL TOGA. 277
the progress of the campaign it soon became apparent that Senator Brown was growing in popular esteem all over Georgia; and some who were not quite ready to make up with him were nevertheless candid enough to admit that it might not be the worst of ideas to retain the services of a man whose favor at the North, based upon his financial influence as well as his prompt acceptance of the situation, was likely to be of material benefit.
To an extent at least, the result of the senatorial fight was foreshadowed by the overwhelming reelection of Governor Colquitt. He had been most bitterly and uncom promisingly assailed for making what was undoubtedly at the time an unpopular appointment; but he was never theless sustained by an unprecedented majority at the polls. This was significant of the change of sentiment which was steadily taking place in the minds of the people toward Senator Brown; but the choice between candi dates rested with the General Assembly, which convened in the late fall, and the gallant and distinguished General Alexander R. L,awton was not an unworthy competitor.
On the night immediately preceding the election for United States Senator there was witnessed in Atlanta an impressive scene which no one present can ever forget. Engaging the use of DeGive's Opera House, Joseph E. Brown, serene and placid, now faced the most thrilling hour of his whole career. It was the hour of delayed ap proval; the hour of realized ambition. The Legislature of Georgia was in attendance. The public at large was also represented in vast numbers. General Lawton him self was in the gallery to hear the reply which was now

278 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
about to be made to his able speech of the previous evi ing. Without rhetorical effort but with unsurpassed d: matic effect the strong man of the people reviewed long public record, leaving out no single act or ev< which had been the subject of controversy; and such ovation as he received has rarely been equaled.
Beginning with the announcement that he had fully i tended to make no public address pending the campaigj until compelled to do so by the tactics of his adversary i challenging his record, he proceeded to cite facts and institute comparisons. Behind the straightforward simple speech which still bore the lingering accents of mountains there was an honest ring of sincerity and mo: earnestness which broke the ice of many an uncompn mising prejudice that night. He declared that in voti for Grant and reconstruction in 1868 he had not over to the enemy more completely than the whole De: cratic party had done in voting for Greeley and rec struction in 1872. He said that he had always sto< courageously and uncompromisingly upon Democrats principles, and that instead of leaving the Democrat!* party in 1868 it was the Democratic party which left hi: but it nevertheless in 1872 came back to where he stood. |
Besides justifying his course by the logic of events ani by the argument that he deemed it within the power oi General Grant to be of more service to the South just thi than any other man in the Union, he introduced at thii point an additional reason concerning which the publi<f had received no intimation until this moment, but whicht| elicited storm after storm of cheers. Producing a lettef| which he informed the audience he could now read, since!
T'
the seal of silence had been removed, he thereupon prof

FIERY FURNACE TO SENATORIAL TOGA. 279
ceeded to read an earnest but brief commendation of the attitude which he had taken toward the measures of re construction.
"This letter," said the speaker, "is dated Lexington, Virginia, April 3, 1867, less than one month after the date of the letter written by me advising acquiescence in the reconstruction measures. It was dictated by the brain and penned by the hand of that immortal hero, Robert E. Lee."
Pandemonium now fairly broke loose. With the men tion of the name so unspeakably sacred to all Southern hearts even those who had hitherto taken no part in the applause which greeted the masterly defense of Senator Brown now broke forth into wild cheering. It was sev eral moments before the speaker could proceed, but he finally resumed the thread of his argument. One of Sen ator Brown's most bitter opponents during this campaign was General Toombs. He had already shown most tellingly how General Toombs had supported him in the controversy with President Davis; and having enlisted the sympathies of the audience on the side which he took during the days of reconstruction he now closed his mag nificent speech by turning the batteries most unsparingly upon General Toombs. Said he:
"The course taken by General Toombs since the war is very well illustrated by the story of the old gentleman in one of the counties between here and the Savannah river. He and his old lady started in the buggy to visit some friends and on the way had to cross the river. In going down into the flat one of the straps broke and the buggy

280 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
ran upon the heels of the horse, and he kicked himselj loose and ran back home. The good old lady, who b< lieved in the policy of reconstructing, gathered up th< fragments of the harness and started for home. The ol< man refused to go, but sat down on the river bank an< commenced cursing. The old lady, however, carried pieces home, got an awl and an 'end' as they call it, an< began repairing the harness. And finding the horse al home she told the servant to take him and go down to thfl river and meet the old man and bring him home. After& an absence of an hour or so the servant returned, and she asked, 'Where is the old man?' And he said, 'He is still sittin' down on the river bank, cussin'.'
"So in this case we have had a war brought on more by the agency of General Toombs than of any other man' in the South. It turned out differently from what he and others of us expected. We have been unfortunate. We have broken the harness, the horse has kicked out, and1 the question has arisen what is to be done? The mass of our people have concluded it was better to gather up the fragments, reconstruct the harness and the vehicle, and, prepare to move forward again, and do all we can to re store our lost prosperity. We have appealed to General Toombs who led us into the destruction to aid us in the; reconstruction, but the old man refused to do anything t6| aid in restoring prosperity, and sat down on the rivet bank and commenced cursing. We were obliged to movei forward, but, like the good old lady, we sent the horse; back for him, and he still refuses to come; and the report is that he is still sitting on the river bank a-cussin'. And as the country must move forward, we are obliged to leave him there and let him cuss."

FIERY FURNACE TO SENATORIAL TOGA. 281
In the election which took place on the day following, Senator Brown received 146 votes and General Lawton 64. Vindication had come at last. The senatorial toga by the sovereign voice of the great State of Georgia had now been conferred upon the man of snow-white beard and hair who had so lately emerged from the fiery fur nace. Six years later he was again elected with only one vote against him. Never was public sentiment more over whelmingly reversed or triumph more complete.
Voluntarily retiring from public life in 1892, after hav ing represented Georgia for more than twelve years in the United States Senate, he retained until his death the unwavering support and confidence of his fellow citizens who had learned to honor him anew. Nor was he ever more tenderly reverenced in the old days than now. He had been tried in the fire and found to be pure gold. Be sides accumulating an immense fortune in attestation of his business sagacity and judgment he had also reared monuments to his generosity and public spirit by his judi cious benefactions, having given over fifty thousand dol lars to the Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, Kentucky, and another fifty thousand dollars to the Uni versity of Georgia, for the encouragement of poor boys who were the special wards of his affection. Thus from an humble beginning, by dint of perseverance and indus try, the friendless lad who had first appeared on the slopes of the Blue Ridge years before, with the slenderest pros pects of success in life, had not only reached the dizzy summits, but having twice met and conquered adverse fortune he had made himself, in some respects at least, the most striking figure of his times.
Joseph E. Brown was again upon the heights. Once

282 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

f

more the old commonwealth lay at the feet of the farmer! boy of Gaddistown. He had climbed above the cloud| belt and stood beneath the starry stretches. The vapordj had slowly given place to the ramparts of the granit^ rocks and the reward of patient years had flowered at las| in the splendors of the firmament. He had retired of hi|jj own free will from the highest arena of the nation, with-f drawing like the aged gladiator who droops beneath hi|( locks but bends more heavily beneath his laurels. He| could now rest. Wan and worn the tired old man lay! down. The withered hands sought each other in the clasp^ of coming sleep. The pallid lips grew tight. The eye*' lids closed. The wrinkles faded one by one. At last he slept; and all was now serene and beautiful. The sun had set in the west wearing the purple robes of the King. The farmer boy of Gaddistown had gathered the last crop of golden wheat from the once scant but now rich acre of ground. The mountaineer had fallen asleep on the mountains.

CHAPTER XXIX.
Benj. H. Hill: the Champion of Mr. Davis in the Confederate Senate.
G EORGIA'S foremost orator was Benjamin H. Hill. He was Demosthenes and Cicero combined. But, unsurpassed as was the measure in which he possessed the divine gift of eloquence, he was powerless to stay the advancing tide of public sentiment which swept Georgia from the Union in 1861. Against the mistaken policy of secession, whose disastrous consequences he foresaw with almost inspired wisdom, Mr. Hill opposed the stubborn assault of an uncompromising resist ance. He argued like a syllogism, fought like a trooper, entreated like a suppliant and thundered like a stormcloud. He played alternately the lover in wooing and the prophet in warning. But having fired his brilliant arrows and bent his intellectual bow in vain, he followed the for tunes of Georgia into the maelstrom of revolution and be came on the floor of the Confederate Senate the breast plate and the bugle of the chief executive. Mr. Davis called him "Hill the faithful." He not only championed his chief, but during all the years of the war he towered at the very forefront of the Confederate cause, and point ed out the path of safety for the new-born nation like the pillar-pilot of the Exodus.
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284 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Though Mr. Hill had been an ardent Union man anti-secessionist, he was nevertheless chosen as a delega to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate Stat which met in Montgomery in 1861 to lay the foundatio: of the new government; and he was influentially respo: sible in large measure for the almost photographic liki ness in essential features between the constitution of thi Confederate States and the constitution of the Uni States. But the former even more completely than latter embodied the spirit of .the original compact an continued to be in vital essence the time-honored and un impaired document of the Federal forefathers.
Feeling that there was probably no further work fo; him to do in the civil branch of the Confederate servio Mr. Hill returned home and prepared to enroll himsel: among the earliest volunteers who were soon to be need at the front. He was just on the eve of enlisting wb much to his surprise he received a telegram from Mil ledgeville stating that the Legislature, which was then i: session, had elected him Confederate States Senator 01 the first ballot over such veteran competitors and staun secessionists as Robert Toombs, Henry R. Jackson an Alfred Iverson. These unsuccessful rivals for the sena torial toga were all distinguished Georgians whom to d< feat was no idle honor. General Toombs had been th impassioned Mirabeau of secession and had missed the? executive chair of the Confederacy by only one vote. But! it was evidently the wise policy of the State lawmakers at] this critical season to commission cool, conservatism? rather than hot polemics, and since Mr. Hill had tem pered the counsels of the secession convention with cau--| tion, it was thought that he possessed the equipment"

BENJ. H. HILL.

285

which was most needed at this particular time at the leg islative helm. Such was also most likely the underlying reason for the choice of Alexander H. Stephens by the provisional Congress for the second post in the gift of the young republic.

Still within the area of the youthful thirties when this unexpected honor was thrust upon him, Mr. Hill became almost immediately an acknowledged leader on the floor of the Confederate Senate, taking an important part in the debates and shaping much of the legislation as chair man of the Senate judiciary committee. He also became the recognized champion and intimate personal friend of Mr. Davis, not only representing but frequently advising him upon matters of administrative policy. Some idea of the close relationship which existed between the two men may be gathered from the fact that years later when Mr. Hill was memorialized in stone, Mr. Davis, who was then an infirm old man closely verging upon fourscore years traveled all the way from Mississippi to Georgia to be present at the unveiling of the monument. This was the last journey which the illustrious old chieftain ever took from home until he journeyed in funeral silence to sleep upon the slopes of Richmond.
Early in the political march of Confederate affairs the conscription law was passed, which brought Mr. Davis into heated controversy with Georgia's chief executive, Joseph E. Brown. Though it embarrassed Mr. Hill somewhat to see this administrative measure encounter such firm resistance from his own State, he nevertheless gave it his own most efficient support. It was simply the

286 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

decree of an irresistible fate which pitted Mr. Hill anj

Governor Brown against each other. They had first me

as foemen in contesting the prize of the State governor

ship in 1857. They had not agreed by any means upo)

the issues of secession. They were now on opposite side

of the controversy aroused over the conscription Act; am

they were destined to unfurl opposing banners during thi

venomous campaigns of reconstruction.

Returning to Georgia, Mr. Hill not only defended thi

conscription law with great eloquence before the Stab

Legislature, taking the ground that the measure was con

stitutional, expedient and wise, but he also made speeche

in various parts of the State, showing the dangers whicl^

lay concealed in the vapors of internal strife and rallying;"'

the people to the support of the Confederate governmental

It may be said in this connection that one of thi

grounds on which Governor Brown opposed the measurl

besides asserting it to be unconstitutional was that it wa|

unnecessary, so far at least as Georgia was concerned

but he also took the ground that it discriminated unjustly

between slaveowners who were exempted and non-slave^

owners who were drafted. However, in spite of wi

might have been the defects of the measure, it was nofcf

resisted to the point of doing the cause any serious harm ;t

and though Governor Brown continued to oppose thef

measure from principle, there was no disaffection or lackjf

of enthusiasm for Confederate interests.

,'

An event which took place during the senatorial career r; of Mr. Hill and which has been greatly magnified and ?| distorted in going the rounds of gossip, was the unfortu- -\

BHNJ. H. HILL.

287

nate personal difficulty which occurred between himself and William L. Yancey on the floor of the Confederate Senate. The colloquy grew out of the ardent champion ship with which Mr. Hill as usual was defending the ad ministration. An exciting debate on some very important question had been in progress for several days, and Mr. Yancey, who was one of the boldest men as well as one of the greatest orators which this section of country has ever produced, was fearlessly criticising some executive action which he thought to be fraught with serious issues.
Animadverting upon certain statements which Mr. Hill had made, he declared in the heat of towering argument that he had spoken what he knew to be false. This was a declaration which carried a challenge, and reaching for a missile with which to answer the charge, he found an inkbottle. This he hurled at Mr. Yancey with the force of a catapult, but with the aim of a rifleman, striking the sur prised Senator on the cheekbone. He had shown himself an adept in the use of inkbottles, whether employed in the gentle art of letters or in the deep-chested and muscular science of pugilism; but he had also nettled the Titan wrath of one of the superb invincibles.
Things looked serious. Mr. Yancey was not the man to brook an affront. But the possibility of further diffi culties was prevented by the interference of Senators who now rushed between the combatants; and the doors being closed the affair was amicably settled by mediating friends and mutual explanations. With some difficulty Mr. Yancey suppressed his resentment, feeling that the hot haste in which Mr. Hill had acted was perfectly nat ural under the circumstances, and that the whole affair grew out of differences too trivial to estrange pa-

288 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
triots. He and Mr. Hill subsequently became fast friends The story that Mr. Yancey, who lived several years aft* this encounter, eventually died from the effect of the bio) is only artistic fiction, intended to give "the finishing"] touches to an affair which is sufficiently dramatic withou^ such embellishment. The wound produced an effusion o| blood, but it was never regarded as serious, and Mr. Yan-1 cey resumed his argument soon after the difficulty oc-j curred. He subsequently died from kidney trouble; botl his brother, Colonel B. C. Yancey, of Rome, and his sonj Colonel Goodloe Yancey, of Athens, continuing to be Mr] Hill's steadfast friends and supporters.
During the last days of the war, when the fortum of the Confederate cause were hastening toward the ca| tastrophe of Appomattox, Mr. Hill threw all the power of his eloquence into the effort to keep alive the waning star. He saw that the hopes of the country were no\ flagging with the tattered remnants of the thin Confedf erate ranks, and he sought to quicken the pulse-beat the shriveled and wasted arteries. Coming to Georgia, h(i delivered at LaGrange on March n, 1865, one of th| noblest appeals of his life; and those who heard th speech declared that never were feelings more profound!} stirred. Disabled old soldiers were ready to enlist agaii Women felt like marching forward. It nobly attested th< fidelity as well as the eloquence of Mr. Hill. He had been among the last to accept secession. He was no\ among the last to accept defeat; nor did he intend to| surrender now until he had first exhausted every resourcewhich devotion could suggest. Within less than one

BENJ. H. HILL.

289

Appomattox had been lost, and Dixie's dream tistead of leaving her at dawn fulfilled had left her at tnidnight in despair. But it was not the fault of Benja min H. Hill.
Returning with heavy heart to his home in LaGrange, \{r. Hill remained-for some time unmolested under his [uiet roof, and he had the pleasure while here of confering with many of his Confederate colleagues who became iis guests. There was no present business to engage him n the courts, and he was just beginning to overhaul his jlantation when the arresting officers suddenly turned ip; and fearing unpleasant scenes with Mr. Hill's indigiant fellow townsmen, they insisted in rushing him off at ight without giving him any opportunity for ceremoni ous farewells. Not the least resentful of all the loyal fol lowers of Mr. Hill were the faithful negroes who had been his slaves and who were still to be his servants.
Stopping with Mr. Hill at this time was Stephen R. Mallory, the efficient secretary of the Confederate navy; and Mr. Mallory shared the fate of his host. Taken to Fort LaFayette in New York harbor, the two men were put into separate cells where they remained under close watch until eventually paroled. Mr. Hill then came back to Georgia where he quietly resumed the practice of his profession, which he uninterruptedly continued until called from retirement by the sovereign voice of his coun trymen to lead the crusade of resistance against the in iquities of reconstruction.
10 r

CHAPTER XXX.
Hill's Defiance of Federal Bayonets.
T O face the guns of an enemy in time of war wb the music of battle is afloat requires no greati heroism than thousands of brave men are pri pared at almost any time to manifest; but to face a array of hostile guns in time of peace, when the minstre of war is silent and, except for the inner promptings | duty, there are no martial emotions to quicken the pu beat and to tighten the sinews, is an act of courage whf no man can possibly exhibit unless he is cast in the S tan mold of Georgia's prince-eloquent of protest, Ben min H. Hill.
The typical hero of the popular imagination is decked with sash and sabre and moves with butt front to the cadences of fife and drum, but the real is independent of such mere accessories; and from 0 to Napoleon the searchlight will be turned in vain u; the battle-fields of history to find an act of courage suj rior to the spectacle of bold resistance which Mr. Hill <i hibited in Davis Hall when he defied the bayonets of Federal soldiery during the days of reconstruction.
It was in the bluntest of Highland speech that hero! old John Knox rebuked the crown of Scotland and in teeth-born terror of words only that Demosthenes wi'
(290)
j

BENJAMIN HARVEY HILL.

HILL'S DEFIANCE OF FEDERAL BAYONETS. 291
thunderous Greek assailed the throne of Macedon, but never with courage and oratory interlocked were nobler accents hurled in braver challenge at the feet of power since the eloquence of Israel flared in chains before the majesty of Rome.
The novel condition of affairs in Georgia which now summoned Mr. Hill with commanding orders to the front grew out of the clash between the executive and the legis lative departments of the Federal government over the jurisdictional rights involved in the reorganization of the seceded States. President Johnson took the position that the States, being integral parts of the Federal system, could not secede, and that while individual citizens of the State might suffer forfeiture of citizenship for resisting authority, the States themselves were still within the Union, the ordinance of secession in each case having been null and void. Congress held that the States were virtually counted as seceders when recognized as belliger ents, and that now being "conquered provinces," they were under the control of the legislative branch of the government. The wrangle which ensued over this bone of contention was most unfortunate, since the work of reconstruction under the plan of President Johnson was already producing the desired results.
It will readily be seen that the dilemma in which Geor gia was placed by this unhappy condition of affairs was most embarrassing. Regarded by President Johnson as having fully met the requirements precedent to readmission, or rather to being recognized as readmitted, Georgia was nevertheless regarded by Congress as territorial prop erty, subject to hostile supervision until the negro suf-

292 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
frage egg of partisan politics had been fully incubate Consequently when the Senators and Representative whom she had chosen to represent her were refused sea in the legislative halls and the military measures of Cor gress were passed in 1867 putting her under bayonet sui veillance, she naturally felt that the time had come whe patience was no longer virtuous and statehood neede vindication.
Governor Brown was temperately counseling submis sion in spite of aggravated wrongs, but wounded prid refused to listen to such counsels and demanded champ, onship. None of the old leaders appeared upon the sid of protest, either because timidly irresolute or tamely quiescent. In the midst of this period of suspense Ml Hill, who was then living at LaGrange, was called to Al lanta to advise an earnest body of citizens who, believi^ that the military measures of Congress were inspired h ulterior designs of sectional politics, had met to devig some definite method of expressing disapproval.
The result of the conference was that Mr. Hill exf pressed his intention to investigate thoroughly both tlsjjl animus and the effect of the military measures of Con|f gress, and to state his conclusions when his researched were completed. Within the next few days he announced! that he was prepared to make an address at such time atul place as his fellow citizens might designate. According!)! the place selected was Davis Hall, and the time fixed was July 16, 1867. Hitherto the work of reconstruction had encountered no serious obstacles, but Congress had goaded submission into protest, and now an eloquent voice was at last found to denounce the unrighteous usurpation. Nor was the opening scene of the drama

HILL'S DEFIANCE, OF FEDERAL BAYONETS. 293
scheduled to occur too soon. The haughty plumes of the military despots were daily becoming more and more insolent; and the situation even now was most acute.
Just before Mr. Hill arose to speak on the eventful evening which witnessed the hurling of his first thunder bolt, there filed into the hall for the obvious purpose of exercising military censorship over the distinguished orator, a column of blue-coats. It was not an ordinary detachment of troop, but was composed of the Federal generals from the local headquarters. They were dressed in full uniform and accompanied by staff officers. Behind them bristled an array of bayonets in the hands of sub alterns. They did not think of pausing in the rear, but marched boldly and directly to the front, where they noisily sat down with the menacing rattle of weapons which plainly told the speaker to beware. They made an imposing spectacle and one which was well calculated to quell an orator less heroically patterned than Mr. Hill. But so far from being intimidated by this military column, even though it represented the authority of the United States government and possessed the power to dispatch him in quick order, he regarded the intruders with no more concern than if they had been so many dressed-up mosquitoes or other like insects equipped with appliances for drawing blood.
The pallor which overspread his face as he calmly sur veyed the scene before him came partly from the dim light which furnished an imperfect as well as an intermit tent illumination and partly from the sense of responsi bility which the occasion brought. Neither his nerves nor his accents betrayed the least quake of fear; and when the

294 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
wild outburst of applause which greeted him as he eventually subsided, he began to speak in the most de erate manner. But he gradually waxed warmer warmer as the blaze within climbed higher and hig] until finally the imprisoned flames broke loose into most withering fire. If the presence of the Federal diery had any effect upon the speech of Mr. Hill it the effect of oil upon live coals not the effect of oil U] troubled waters. His burning words of denunciai could not have been charged more heavily with red-1 lava if they had come from the crater of Mount nor could they have pealed more loudly in the ears of astonished guardians of law and order, who sat upon front seats, if they had been expelled in gutturals of der from the trump of doom.
Beginning with the proposition that human gove: ments tended naturally toward decay, he emphasized importance of protecting free institutions with constii tional safeguards. He declared that the wrongs aii( outrages which were now being perpetrated upon t| South were in violation of the constitution and that ular protest all over the country needed to be aroti because only in adherence to the constitution could li be preserved. He declared at the outset that he was mi ing no personal war upon individuals, but was discussi vast and vital principles which involved the destinies <| freedom.
"God knows," said he, "that with my own hands;! would gladly place a crown of imperishable honor U] the brow of my bitterest foe if I could thereby resctt my country from the perils that environ her. But if 1 had an enemy I wished to make forever infamous I cotik

HILL'S DEFIANCE OF FEDERAL BAYONETS. 295
ask no more of him than that he should support the hell ish schemes of those who are now seeking to subvert the constitution."
Pausing to compliment the prime instigator of the congressional legislation, he declared that he was "a candidate for infamy who was building a monument of shame which was destined to overtop the pyramids of gypt." Besides being unconstitutional, he declared that the military measures violated the amnesty oath which the brave Southern soldier had been required to take after the surrender. He characterized such force bills as "the wheels of Juggernaut."
Seeing that back of the military contingent there were carpet-baggers present who doubtless reasoned that they were safe from harm since the brass buttons were on hand, Mr. Hill turned toward them with fierce scorn and fiery invective.
"You profess to be loyal," said he. "I look you in the eye and denounce you. You are morally and legally per jured traitors. You perjure yourselves and you perjure these ignorant negroes into abetting your treason. You may boast of it now, when passion is rife, but the time will come when the very thought will wither your soul and make you hide from the face of mankind."
Mr. Hill next reviewed the mischievous workings of the bills, the craft and fraud and trickery which lay behind them, in the shrewd political designs of the Republican party at the North, and the far-reaching effect which they were likely to have upon other States. Then summariz ing the evils, he again paid his respects to the proposed legislation by characterizing it as "an ill-shapen monster which, like the sentinel at Hell-gate, could live only in pandemonium."

296 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

Drawing toward the close of his speech he declari

that tyrants had never been known to violate with imp

ty the constitutional rights of freemen; and beginni:

with Charles the First of England he exhausted the ca

logue of high-handed potentates who had strutted

ignominious downfalls. Then came the sensational o

burst with which he apostrophized the political charla

who had fathered the iniquitous legislation.

"Go on confiscating, arrest without warrant or proba

cause. Destroy habeas corpus. Deny trial by jury. A1

rogate State governments. Defile the race to which you?

belong and flippantly say the constitution is dead. On, q^

with your work of ruin, ye hell-born rioters in sacred

things; but remember that for all these iniquities titt

people will bring you into judgment."

:|

Such was the tenor of Mr. Hill's great speech, deli^

ered in Davis Hall. He spoke with profound mom

earnestness as well as with wonderful intellectual ami

physical power, and the effect upon the vast audience wg|.

something dramatic. The building fairly rocked in thjjf

storm of applause like an ocean liner plowing throug^

heavy waves. And, strange to say, the military guard|

were so fascinated by the magical effrontery with whiq|

Mr. Hill had defied them that they did not budge excep|.

to calm the instruments of war which hung beside thensf

and which, when the timbers shook with the enthusiasi|

of the audience, caught the tremors and commenced to

rattle.

__

:

This was not the only speech of the same caustic varie ty which Mr. Hill delivered during the campaign of re sistance which was now fairly launched and which had the desired effect of arousing the whole State from bor-

HILL'S DEFIANCE OF FEDERAL BAYONETS. 297
der to border. Besides addressing the public from vari ous platforms over the State he published during this critical period his unsurpassed "Notes on the Situation," which nobly reinforced his magnificent oral appeals. These consisted of twenty-two letters which appeared from week to week in the newspapers, discussing with wonderful logic, eloquence and statesmanship all the com plicated phases of reconstruction in Georgia.
Mr. Grady, whose editorial promontory enabled him to survey the field at large as well as to count the local pulsebeat, says that Mr. Hill's "Notes on the Situation" were discussed on the streets of London and on the boulevards of Paris; and he also adds by way of individual comment that in his own judgment they stand alone as the profoundest and most eloquent essays ever penned by an American.
Whatever may be said of the futility of the fight which Mr. Hill led in this gallant crusade against reconstruction it can not be denied that it organized the Democracy of Georgia for the great presidential campaign of 1868, and was an instrumental factor in achieving the congression al victories of 1870, which revived the flickering lamp of Democratic hope with the first gray prophecy of dawn.
However, the military measures of Congress having been successfully enforced, Mr. Hill published a letter on December 8, 1870, in which he summarized the changed aspects of the situation and advised the hosts which he had so gallantly led to submit without further contention. He took the position that the abhorred amendments had now become, both in fact and in law, fixed parts of the na tional constitution, and it was useless to continue the struggle. It went bitterly against the grain for the Demo-

298 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
cratic masses of Georgia to accept an unrestricted neg suffrage, but the power of the national government y brought remorselessly to bear upon this demand, grow ed though it was upon political expedients and fraug with dangerous consequences. But nothing short of si mission promised the removal of the incubus which resl upon the whole State like an Egyptian plague, the m tary despotism.
Despite the patriotic wisdom which had dictated t course, Mr. Hill was now bitterly assailed in the cat of his friends; but conscious of the rectitude and since ty of his motives, he turned toward the shafts of critici the same unruffled front which he had turned toward Federal bayonets in Davis Hall. It was painful to dure the pangs of ostracism; but the answer which he turned showed that moral courage still supported hi and that in his life principle was more than ever regnai Said he: "I would rather be the humblest of those i would save you and perish amid your curses than be chiefest architect of your ruin and be the recipient of y(; deluded huzzahs."
Defeated in the race which he made some two y afterwards for the most coveted prize of his political bition, it looked as if his public career was now to be tally eclipsed. But the loss of public favor which n so heavily upon him was not like the base ingrati which drove King Lear out into the storm. It was like the ebbing tide which eventually returns, the crown-jewels of the sea. Another year found in the national House of Representatives, triumphanl over all adversaries, while still another found him glori ously at home in the highest arena of the world, the ican Senate.

CHAPTER XXXI
Reconstruction--The Bush Arbor Speeches.
T HE storm of relentless opposition which the mili tary measures of reconstruction aroused all over Georgia just after the war was characterized at no one single moment of time by greater electrical intensi ty than centered around the famous Bush Arbor meeting in Atlanta on July 23, 1868.
Whatever adjectives are needed to describe fhe occasion are fully implied in the statement that Robert Toombs, Howell Cobb, Benjamin H. Hill and Raphael J. Moses were the speakers, while the targets at which were aimed most of the flaming arrows of this never-to-be-forgotten hour in Georgia were the military satraps who brooded like bats in uniforms among the ruins of constitutional law and order.
The oratorical elements were all ready for combination and the result was such an occasion as Georgia can never forget. Impassioned eloquence expressed itself in terrible denunciations and withering invectives. It seemed al most as if divine wrath itself was awakened by the un righteous military usurpation which had hurled to the ground the broken tablets of the law of Georgia, and that around the foreheads of the men who voiced the
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300 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
protest of an outraged commonwealth were wreathed very Jehovah lightnings of Mount Sinai.
Nor was such an unparalleled scene in the annals c Georgia without an adequate explanation. It is bare possible that mute and meek submission in the earli< stages of the nightmare might have mitigated in son measure the horrors of reconstruction; but the prou spirited race of people who had plucked from Englar the victorious rose of Yorktown could hardly be expect* to endure in silence the defeat-embittered thorn of App< mattox. Yet even the pang of Confederate failure ar disappointment could have been lightly endured had if been less bitterly reinforced with the gall and wormwood of reconstruction. It was enough to dethrone the emptus pled patience of the man of Uz to contemplate the havoit which the invaders made of vested rights and privilege^ which had long been held inviolate. But what was th actual status of affairs ? The sovereignty of Georgia law prostrate. The carpet-bagger and the former slave, up| held by the bayonets of the military power, were in fulf control of the political machinery; while the great mas| of the Anglo-Saxon population were bowed beneath th$. yoke of an Egyptian bondage. To have been heroically! silent under these torturing circumstances might have" honored the philosophy of Socrates, but it could hardly have ratified the principles of Jefferson embodied in free-i dom's great charter: the Declaration of Independence.
Such was the political reign of terror in the midst of which the Bush Arbor speeches were delivered on one of the warmest days of mid-summer in the presence of an audience of twenty thousand enthusiastic Georgians. Unr mindful of the hot weather, which was zero-temperature

RECONSTRUCTION.

301

compared with the furnace-breath which blistered the backs of the reconstructionists, the multitudes sat spell bound under the canopy of boughs for more than five hours, listening to such oratory as men have seldom heard in ancient or modern times.
Dr. James F. Alexander, one of the most patriotic citi zens and one of the most successful physicians of Geor gia, was chairman of the committee of arrangements; and the famous bush arbor, which was erected be cause there was no auditorium in Atlanta large enough to accommodate the expected crowds, was located near the site of the old passenger depot, where it was conven ient to those coming in on the trains as well as to those living in town. The first presidential campaign since the war closed was just now opening. Seymour and Blair were the Democratic candidates; and it was largely in the interest of these standard-bearers of the party that the meeting was held.
It was anticipated that such an expression of protest on the part of the suffering people of Georgia might mate rially aid the cause of Democracy, not only by rallying the hosts at home but by enlisting the sympathies of all lovers of popular government and fair play throughout the Union.

The presence of General Toombs upon the platform was hailed with peculiar interest. This veteran hero of resistance who had fired the opening guns and received the earliest scars of secession had just returned home after more than two years of foreign exile and had doggedly and persistently refused to bend the knee of allegiance to

302 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the United States government. He stood before the pub lic divested of the rights of citizenship, but he bore an armor which recalled the laurels of many an illustrious tournament and which, exhibiting the hall-mark of the disinherited, told that the champion was the old Confed erate Knight of Ivanhoe.
Stepping to the front amid the wildest demonstrations of applause, General Toombs soon convinced the audience that while he had been traveling in foreign lands when the flag of resistance to reconstruction was first raised, he was now ready to join the ranks with characteristic ardor. His voice rang with the same well-known accents. His eyes flashed with the same familiar fires. He was the same old Robert Toombs.
"That," said the speaker, "is a bright page in Roman history which narrates that when thousands of her most gallant and distinguished youths were slain and the victo rious enemy was marching upon her capital with nothing to retard his progress but a stern old warrior and patriot whose chief resource lay in his unconquerable will, the Roman Senate met and first ordered propitiatory sacri fices to the gods, and then voted the thanks of Rome to the defeated leader of her armies for not despairing of the republic. From that hour the star of Hannibal culmi nated from the equator. The people imbibed the spirit of the conscript fathers; courage and hope drove out fear and despair; and Rome was saved."
With this note of encouragement the speaker next pro ceeded to assail the military despotism of reconstruction in Georgia, which he declared to be violative of all the codes of justice: the Magna Charta, the Constitution of the United States, the laws of nations and the rights of

RECONSTRUCTION.

303

man. He characterized the political machinery of recon struction as "a pyramid of iniquity" and the dominant party in Georgia as a floating mass of putrescence which rose while it rotted and rotted while it rose. He branded the whole order of things under the military administra tion as incompetent, corrupt, fraudulent and treacherous.
General Toombs advocated the claims of the Demo cratic candidates and closed by urging the Democrats of the State to bestir themselves in the campaign which had now opened. "Take no counsel of fear," said he. "Fear is the meanest of masters. Spurn the temptations of of fice and gold from the polluted hands of your oppressors. He who holds only his own sepulchre as the price of these chains owns a heritage of shame. All honor to the Na tional Democracy which has risen to strike these fetters from your limbs. They have opened wide the portals of admission. Forgetting all past differences of opinion they invite all to unite in the present great struggle for the liberties of the people. Come, unite with them. Your country says come honor says come duty says come liberty says come. Your country is in danger. Let every freeman hasten to the rescue."

This dramatic appeal fired the vast audience to the very highest pitch of enthusiasm. The oratorical standard was now planted among the clouds. Could the other distin guished speakers upon the platform mount to such dizzyaltitudes? Another tumultuous outburst of applausegreeted Howell Cobb who now calmly arose to begin irk measured accents an appeal of eloquence which was liter ally to close in equinoctial thunder. It was not known at

304 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the time that this was to be the last speech of the greg Georgian, who was fated to join the shadowy caravai before the returns of the ballot-box were counted. the ears into which his burning words were poured coul< hardly have listened more attentively beside the dyinj couch of the illustrious statesman, who now spoke in thi valedictory message to his countrymen like Elijah warn ing Israel amid the very flames of the ascending charioti
Characterizing the military satraps in language which! even General Toombs himself had not equaled, Mr. Cobbf rounded one of his bitterest denunciations with this apos-* trophe:
"Oh, heaven, for some blistering words that I might write infamy upon the foreheads of these men."
Turning toward the military contingent who lined the outskirts of the assemblage, Mr. Cobb said that among^ these uniformed representatives of the Federal govern-v? ment were many chivalrous and true men who were sim- * ply obeying superior orders, but that since the time was ; now close at hand for them to return home he wished to give them some parting words of instruction.
"Oh, men of the North," said he, "spread these truths broadcast as you travel home, and when you receive that cordial welcome which your fireside waits to give you, re member the mothers and wives and daughters of Georgia. Tell your people that amid all this desolation the woman hood of this State has never once bowed to the yoke. Tell them that our brave men have stood submissive only at the point of the bayonet. Tell them that kindness and generosity would have won back the allegiance of their hearts, but that all the bayonets in the American Union can not drive manhood from their breasts. Tell them

RECONSTRUCTION.

305

Georgia has a home for every true man of the North, but she has neither a real welcome nor a false hospitality for those who come to wrong and to oppress; and when you have told them all this, tell them that in all Georgia there is but one voice, one heart, one soul, one spirit."
But Mr. Cobb was still more bitter in characterizing those Georgians who for pelf or power truckled to the usurpers. "They have dishonored themselves," said he, "and seek to dishonor you. Anathematize them. Drive them from the social and political pale. Leave them to wallow in their own mire and filth. Nobody will envy them; and, if they are never taken out of the gully until I reach forth my hand to take them up, they will die in their natural element."
Closing, like General Toombs, with an impassioned ex hortation, Mr. Cobb said:
"Mothers, to your altars and carry your daughters with you! Ask the prayers of heaven upon your friends, upon your fathers, your husbands, your sons. Young men, in whose veins the red blood of youth runs so quickly, let the pulsations of your heart all beat for Georgia. Old men, come. Come one and all and let us snatch the old banner from the dust, give it again to the breeze, and, if need be, to the god of battles, and strike one more honest blow for constitutional liberty."
Such were the last ringing words which the people of Georgia ever caught from the lips of Howell Cobb. But the speech survived the speaker; and outlasting the emo tional excitement of the hour in Georgia it joined the echo-band of sifted memories whose militant and martial tramp patrols the ages.

306 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
But not even the grave-anointed eloquence of Cobb could surpass, if indeed it equaled, the tidal-wave \ enthusiasm on which Benjamin H. Hill lifted the va assemblage with his incomparable philippic; and it mu have cheered the heart of the departing prophet who w? now about to smite the Jordan with his mantle to fe< that while Elijah must ascend to heaven, Elisha still mained in Israel. Heralded by his wonderful Davis Ha speech, and especially by his unsurpassed "Notes on th Situation," Mr. Hill was incomparably the hero of r< construction. He was the first man in Georgia to defy th<| edicts of the military power ; and seemingly indifferent to his own danger, he had fearlessly assailed the existing despotism with his stern anathemas even while thft, bloodthirsty bayonets of the Federal troops were pointed! savagely at his unprotected breast. Nowhere at the froni| had Georgia been served with higher or truer courage. |
It was not in the best of health that Mr. Hill confronte<| the vast assemblage which now greeted him with tumul-t tuous storms of applause. He had been at Indian Springs^ for several days on account of serious indisposition, and against the advice of physicians and relatives he had come to take part in the exercises of this great field-day in; Georgia. He could not leave entirely to others the battle which he had so fearlessly commenced. Where or when5 or how he prepared the speech does not appear from the records ; but the speech itself was immortal.
Beginning with his customary deliberation which proved as usual to be only the calm which preceded the storm, he first outlined the events of the past few months, enumerating the wrongs and reciting the iniquities which had been perpetrated upon the people of Georgia; and

RECONSTRUCTION.

307

then with blazing rhetoric he began to apply the scorpion lashes. Turning toward the military satraps who had tiampled upon the honor of Georgia, he exclaimed in words which fairly scorched the air:
"Ye miserable spawns of political accidency, hatched by the putrid growth of revolutionary corruption into an ephemeral existence renegades from every law of God and violators of every law of man we serve you with notice this day that victory is coming."
Speaking of the basic principle of right and justice which the military government had disregarded, he said that it had come from the political Horeb of Anglo-Saxon history and was the first commandment of liberty's deca logue on which all the other commandments hung: "Thou shalt not take the life or liberty or property of a citizen, except according to the laws of the land and by the judg ment of his peers." He declared that no man had ever violated this cardinal doctrine who was not a tyrant or a traitor or both. Continuing he said:
"Wicked men have power now; they have bayonets to protect them and they feel that they can insult with im punity forever. So did Judas feel safe when he helped to eat the Lord's Supper with the Lord. Catiline held power in Rome. Arnold once held a commission in the American Army. And you you vile creatures, whose in famy no epithet can describe and no precedent parallel you will find yourselves more odious than Catiline and Arnold combined."
With bold hand he then pictured the terrific overthrow of the existing dynasty and finally he concluded his mag nificent excoriation with this request:
"And right here, my countrymen, I want you to under-

308 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

stand that I am a candidate but for one office on earthy

When the glorious day shall come and the free wornett

and the free men and the laughing children and the protu|

youth of Georgia shall gather to fire the miserable, hid$|

ous record of infamy, let the office be mine to kindle thf

flames."

;

At the close of the speech the excitement was simply ir^;

tense, and amid the tumult General Toombs arose wit||<

characteristic impulse and proposed "three cheers for Bei|

Hill." Throwing his own hat madly into the air it fell

at the feet of an embryonic young orator who sat spell

bound among the echoes which he was destined himself

some day to rival. This was Henry W. Grady. It is

sorely to be regretted that the speech of Colonel Moses'

has not been preserved. He was an eloquent son of Geoiv

gia whose laurels on this occasion suffered no eclipse fronfe

invidious comparison.

*-:>.
This was an eventful day in Georgia's annals: one oft those rare forget-me-nots of the calendar which, like the?' peerless bloom of the century-plant, unfolds but once hi;: the age-long cycle of the civic years. It was verily atk feast-day in Georgia: a feast of Belshazzar for the tary despots whose sway was doomed; but for the mocracy of Georgia, whose emancipation was approach-, ing: a feast of Tabernacles.
Among those who supported the odious measures of reconstruction were some good and true Georgians, who honestly believed that resistance to the tyranny of carpet bag rule was unwise and who with no hope or desire for ? reward preferred to suffer ostracism rather than renounce what they believed to be the dictates of true patriotism.

RECONSTRUCTION.

309

Likewise there were chivalrous Northern men in the ranks of the Federal officers in Georgia who discharged the duties under which they acted by superior orders with out sympathizing with the wrongs which were wantonly perpetrated in the name of law upon virtuous and upright citizens.
But nothing can be said in extenuation of the baser characters of reconstruction the hordes of carpet-bag gers who descended upon the State like birds of prey and the corrupt native whites who squandered the gold of self-respect for the coin of base betrayal, poisoning the minds of once loyal and sturdy blacks and sowing the seeds of angry dissensions for future harvests of regret.
This monstrous Caliban of reconstruction even dared at times to wear the holy vestments of religion; but with out straining through the glass of prophecy it may be said that the only way in which such an offensive mass of cor ruption can ever encumber the approaches to the New Je rusalem will be to sit among the lepers who groan out side the gates. He may have supped with Dives in the halls of power but he can have no seat of honor in the halls of history; for his place will be upon the steps. Even the lapping tongues of the faithful dogs will deny him the menial offices of brute compassion; and he will linger upon the cheerless stones for eternity to punish: an unmitigated moral mendicant, redeemed by none of the soul and cursed with all of the sores of Lazarus.

CHAPTER XXXIL
"Almost Home" and "Home at Last."
S UFFERINGS, like sunset clouds, often beautify the couch of Death. They husband the liquid gold which the spendthrift noontide hour has lavished or the untoward midday storm obscured; and purifying it in painful crucibles, they braid it into beautiful em broideries. They become, in the language of the Norman chivalry, the Queens of Love and Beauty; and while they watch, with somber brows the grapplings of the lance, they approach, with winsome wreaths, to garland the vic tor of the tournament. Death drops the mask of dark ness; and, donning the rose of dawn, it brightens from midnight into morning. What the poet calls the Street of Shadows becomes the Street of Sunbeams: an ethereal Via Appia whose pavements burn with richer rubies and whose arches bloom with brighter banners than ever wel comed the victorious Cassars into Rome.
Such was the nature of the scene which marked the life's exit of Benjamin Harvey Hill.
Less than six years had elapsed, since receiving his coveted commission to represent Georgia in the Senate of the United States, he had entered for the first time the great hall of argument in which Calhoun and Clay and Webster had gloriously grappled in the giant wrestlings
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"ALMOST HOME" AND "HOME AT LAST." 311
of State rights. Among the intellectual gladiators whom he had met upon the floor were men like Conkling and Blaine and Carpenter and Lamar and Thurman and Voorhees; but he was intellectually the peer of them all. Later on there had come to sit beside him an ancient foe with whom he had differed and fought at almost every turn of his career, but with whom he had finally clasped hands in friendly truce: Joseph E. Brown. At last there had come an end to all discords and strifes at home.
From the start he had been a power in the Senate, chal lenging the admiration while rebuking the animosities and evoking the fears of partisan leaders on the opposite side of the chamber who dared to asperse the section from which he hailed. Mahone and Kellogg had cowered under his terrible denunciation; Conkling himself had winced under his withering fire; and even the Knight of the Splendid Plume had felt uncomfortable more than once in the battery blaze of the redoubtable Hill. Almost every important issue had been touched and illuminated by his genius; and he had just commenced to prepare an elabo rate argument upon the race question at the South when his noble tongue was seized and silenced by the malady which retired him-all too soon from the stage of public life and hushed forever the sweetest bugle which had sounded in the halls of Congress since the days of the Immortal Trio.
Back in the old capitol building in Atlanta in 1877 when the General Assembly had met in joint session to elect a Senator, the presiding officer in announcing the result of the ballot had declared Mr. Hill elected for the ensuing term of six years, and Speaker Bacon had added: "Why not say elected for the remainder of his life." What pro-

312 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
phetic words! They had been uttered in the ardent enthu siasm of the moment; but they had now been literally ful filled. Not in the fulsome sense, but in the rigid terms of the compliment, Mr. Hill had worn the toga for the bal ance of his days. But Speaker Bacon, who was himself destined to represent Georgia in the Senate, had as little thought of how his prophecy would be fulfilled as he had of how his own brow would some day wear that wreath of honor.
It was probably at least four years before his death that Mr. Hill, while in Washington, noticed an abrasion on the left side of his tongue, scarcely larger than a pin's head. Since the irritation was only slight he gave it little thought, supposing that a tooth had caused it by produc ing a bruise which the nicotine from smoking had slightly inflamed. He was not the man to worry over trifles; and though the obstreperous little pimple refused to be quiet he patiently allowed it to nibble upon his nerves for months. But finding eventually that the little disturber had become an obstinate sore, he began to apply mild cor rectives. It was useless, however. Astringents proved unavailing. He was about to consult Dr. Gross, of Phila delphia, the noted surgeon and specialist, when he was diverted from his purpose by an insistent friend who urged him to consult an eminent physician of New York, Dr. Bayard. Dr. Bayard pronounced the trouble benign ulcer, and immediately began appropriate treatment. But this was most unfortunate. The diagnosis being incor rect the remedy applied failed to reach the seat of the dis ease; and the disorder, which, in the beginning, could

"ALMOST HOME," AND "HOME AT LAST." 313
have been easily eradicated, was given an opportunity to root itself more firmly in the system.
An exciting political campaign had now opened in Georgia in which Mr. Hill was expected to bear some part, but he was obliged to excuse himself on the ground that an ulcerous eruption upon his tongue made it necess ary for him to abandon his expected speech-making. This was the first intimation which the public had received of the malady which was destined to end the life of this glo rious Georgian; and the fact that his eloquent tongue, which had so often roused the echoes of the State, was the seat of the trouble not only furnished capital for thoughtless criticism but material for mystified and puz zled comment. The tongue of all other tongues in Geor gia, which spoke the senatorial language of the silent Webster and even revived the coronal accents of the old Demosthenes, might well have excited the bewilderment of Georgians when it told of the only infirmity it ever bore. Idly as the public may have entertained it at the time, little believing that any serious harm could ever reach the throne of sceptered eloquence from such an un regarded source, it nevertheless remains that the fatal canker underlay the blossoms of his brightest victories in the Senate and put an expiring note in the music of his lustiest syllables.
It was not until July 19, 1881, that Mr. Hill became truthfully aware of the real malignant character of his disease. He had patiently endured the treatment which, as it now clearly appeared, had been grounded upon an incorrect hypothesis; and seeking Dr. Gross, whom he found at Cape May, he was told that the trouble was can cer and that the use of the knife, if effective at all, must

314 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
be employed at once. Without alarming his family by telling them what his intentions were, he prepared for the operation, feeling that his strong constitution, which was never more vigorously the abode of robust health, would safely tide him over the dangerous ordeal. The operation was performed at the Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, and resulted in some immediate benefits. Being joined by members of his family, who hastened to him on re ceiving the news of the operation, he soon commenced to regain strength. But the roots of the malady had spread to the base of the tongue; and subsequent operations only proved the futility of baffling with an evil which could not be successfully resisted. If the aid of surgery had been invoked months before it might have been different, butf it was now too late.
Though Mr. Hill gradually wasted away under the! devastating ravages of the malady, his buoyant spirits re- ;| fused to droop and his fortitude cheerfully endured oper- \ ation after operation until exhausted nature could go no-' further. Full of plans and purposes for serving Georgia { in the great arena into which she had called him, he was ; anxious to live. So long had his muscles of oak withstood fatigue and weariness and so vigorous and virile had been' ; his bodily and mental health, even after disease had commenced to make fatal inroads, that he could not yield himself readily to death. It cost an internal struggle; but heroism won. He calmly bowed his head and waited his summons. Often had he protested against oppression and wrong; but no murmur crossed his lips now. Strick en and speechless though he was, Mr. Hill was never more sublimely eloquent in all his splendid arguments; for, bent beneath the cross of anguish the prince of orators was silently pronouncing "the oration on the crown."

"ALMOST HOME" AND "HOME AT LAST." 315
Several weeks before the end came Mr. Hill was taken to Eureka Springs in the hope that the magical waters of this famous resort might prolong his tenure of life and accomplish what neither the skill of the surgeon's knife nor the tonic of the salt-sea air could possibly do; but he was not able on account of the inflamed condition of his throat to drink sufficiently of the invigorating crystal to derive the least benefit, and he languidly turned in his thoughts toward his old home in Georgia.
"Take me back," said he, "back to Georgia. God's will be done. My work is finished; my time is close at hand. But I want to die on Georgia soil. Take me back home."
And so the loved ones bore the sufferer home to Geor gia. Never will those who witnessed the home-coming of the great orator forget the scene presented at the depot when the wan face of the pallid sufferer smiled wearily upon the vast assemblage of anxious fellow townsmen who were there to bid him welcome back. He knew it was perhaps the last look which he would ever have into the upturned faces of the multitude whose plaudits had so often cheered his accents; and most of those who with tearful eyes greeted him in silence heard something whis per through the solemn hushes that they would never look again upon his breathing form.
During the days of suspense which followed he saw as many of his old friends and followers as his feeble strength would allow. He usually broke into tears when they approached him; but it seemed to do him good to see them and he usually gave them some tender thought upon paper, which it need not be said was sacredly prized and kept. He never lost his interest in things areund

316 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
him. It was evident that Georgia was ever present in hisi thoughts: Georgia, his old mother State, whose namd was lettered upon his heart and whose memories n mingled with his dreams of heaven.
Whatever may be the explanation which psychology; gives of the fact, it is curious to observe how prone the mind is, with approaching dissolution, to wander back ward to the old frontiers of life. The looks which day puts on at dawn come back again at dusk. The earliest recollections tread airily upon the latest moments of ex istence and the April colors of the morning return to kin dle the November foliage of the sunset. Nor was this un written law of nature inoperative in the last hours of Mr. Hill. Back of the stormy years in which his eventful midday life had been pitched he lived again in the sunny area of air-castles where he had first nurtured and nursed his budding ambitions.
But the happy mood which tranquilized the emotions of the patient sufferer was not dependent upon the glean ings of this remote period. The mysterious alchemy of sunset brought gold out of clouds and strained sweetest honey from bitterest combs. Nor was this true alone of his physical sufferings. It was equally true of his turbu lent midday strifes and discords. Beyond the satisfaction which comes from the serene consciousness of duty faith fully performed he had also the added balm of enmities at rest. One of the sweetest of all the pathetic scenes which beautified the last moments of Mr. Hill's life was one which no artist's brush can paint. Two men who had faced each other in the fiercest storms of politics now faced each other in the waveless calm of silence. They had met before in kindness. They had shaken hands over

"ALMOST HOME" AND "HOME AT LAST." 317
the buried issues of the past. But there was something jn this present meeting which told of clearer understand ings. There they sat. The one pale and wan, but with shrunken lineaments of beauty which told of fibres in which life had once been lusty; the other active and alert but with silvery locks of age which told of wintry days whose icy clasp was coming. Both were thinking of the past. But if the memory of the angry years crept back it was only in the echoes which time had mellowed into music. Tears only were spoken, but never spoke the crys tals of speech more eloquently than now spoke the crys tals of silence. Those tears welled up from the deepest fountains. They uttered no articulated sounds, but they silently breathed an unworded language which Joseph K. Brown and Benjamin H. Hill both understood.
In like manner came also Alexander H. Stephens. But the crowning glory of the death-bed scene of the great Georgian was born of the martyr-heroism with which his Christian spirit bore the ordeal of an almost unparal leled affliction. No rebellious murmur of protest told of the crucifixion agonies which the very nature of his mal ady revealed; and he calmly endured his sufferings, feel ing that an all-wise providence knew best what discipline of love to give him and that the shining shores were not far distant on which the waves of anguish were to break. This was evident from the last expression which he ever framed: "Almost home."
Slowly he withered day by day until at last the August morning dawned to take him. The weary eyelids drooped and closed. The wrists grew pulseless. The

318 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
heart which had been the temple of so much glorious life could ripple the wasted arteries and feed the smolderinofires no more. The lips parted and met again. The soul had slipped through the gates of purple and now rejoiced within the gates of pearl. "Almost home" had become "Home at last."
Such were the final moments of Georgia's peerless orator.
Nor was it unmeet that when the end should come the finger of disease should be laid upon the instrument which had so often borne him to the ether blues of eloquence, just as the archer's arrow strikes the pinion on which the eagle soars aloft; that the voice which had so often charmed the multitudes with all the ravishing notes of' music should now at last be silent when there were no more harmonies to sound; that the tongue which had branded such blistering philippics upon the foreheads of his country's foes should be at last consumed by the coal of fire which it caught from the glowing embers of the golden altar.

JOHN BROWN GORDON.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
John B. Gordon: The Hero of Appomattox.
S OON after the news of Georgia's action in with drawing from the Union on January 19, 1861, had reached the remote angle of the mountains where Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama meet, there appeared upon the streets of Atlanta a company of raw recruits who had just emerged from this picturesque region, full of the new-born ardor of enlistment. However, the animating spirit of this rough mountaineer band was not the charac teristic which was most patent to the eye. The ludicrous fact which struck the observer at the first glance was that no two members of the company were dressed in the same kind of regimentals. Moreover, they arose to very ir regular heights; and, while it may have been partly the fault of the music, they seemed to have no idea of keep ing step. They had never been in camp for even so much as one day; but this fact was sufficiently well advertised to dispense with statement.
It is not trifling with the truth to say that if the areas of three continents, instead of the tips of three States, had been laid under tribute to produce an assortment of ex tremes the result could hardly have been more grotesque or nondescript. The variegated garment which an an cient Hebrew patriarch is said to have made for his favor-
(319)

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ite offspring, without the much-needed help no doubt of the lady of the household, was vividly suggested by the fantastic anarchy of colors which occupied the field of vision. But if the unseasoned troops which now appeared on the streets of Atlanta were like the mountains from which they had so recently emerged in being somewhat efflorescent and irregular, they deserve the full benefit of the metaphor; for, they were soon to show that, like the mountains, they were fashioned out of sturdy material and were built to breast the lightnings. The rough edges would disappear eventually on the grind-stone of the training-camp, but the staying qualities would remain un affected even by the sulphur of battle. Indeed the moun taineers had already quietly resolved among themselves that if the mountains which they had just left ever saw them again in life they would at least bring back an auto graph of Mars traced upon parchment which no critic dare question and which only death could erase.
To prevent the inference from being drawn too hastily that the company possessed nothing in common to sug gest the idea of uniformity, it may be said that each moun taineer was the owner of an odd-looking coon-skin cap, provided with an appendage which ran down from be hind like an oriental pigtail. But this uniform feature only tended to heighten the flavor of oddity produced by the amusing variations. Altogether it was decidedly the most mixed aggregation which the little metropolis of the foothills had ever witnessed.
Unheralded by any announcement in the newspaper prints, it was only natural that curiosity should ask lead ing questions.
"What company is this ?" inquired one of the bystand-

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ers, addressing the modest captain, who seemed to be as proud of the awkward mountaineers as the famous Ro man general who wrote the Commentaries must have been of the Tenth Legion. But, strange to say, the question had not been anticipated. So eager were the mountain boys to get to the front that they had not stopped to think of such an unimportant detail. But the resourceful of ficer was always ready and, after the briefest pause, he answered:
"The Mountain Rifles." Suggestive of stout timber and crack markmanship as this name was, it was not sufficiently descriptive to suit the taste of one burly member of the company at least; and he promptly demurred, with as little regard for mili tary discipline as for chaste speech. "Mountain hell," said he. "We are no Mountain Ri fles. We are the Raccoon Roughs." Overruled by the profane powers the young captain accepted the correction. Though dressed in the ward robe of the lower world it was nevertheless inspirational; and all through the devious paths and varied experiences of the war it followed the rapidly thinning ranks of the mountain boys until the last bare remnant of the company stood in the surrender at Appomattox. But \vlio is this sturdy young captain who seems barely to have turned the corner of thirty? Look at him care fully, for he invites the most scrutinizing gaze. Those firmly-set features make it unnecessary to consult the oracles. That eye is full of the fire of battle. That beard which is not much older than the corn-silk on the uplands can not conceal the lines of rigid purpose which lie locked beneath. If the precise future can not be read to the ex-
11 r

322 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
tent of foreshadowing the lieutenant-general who is ulti mately to command one-half of Lee's immortal legions, there is at least but one man in all the Confederate ranks who can precisely match those features; and his name is John B. Gordon.
This brief introduction still leaves something to be said. Captain Gordon was not among the number of trained and disciplined regulars \vho had recently given up offi cial commissions and handsome prospects in the United States army. He had doubtless never been inside the barracks at West Point, but he was destined before the record of the Civil War was complete to evince an apti tude for the science of arms which "the topmost laurel in all the groves of the Academy" might well covet. He was a born soldier. He possessed the military instinct; and he needed only the opportunities of the field to de velop the genius which already existed in germ. Born in Upson county, Georgia, in 1832, of Scotch-American parentage, he had graduated from the University of Geor gia, and in 1854 had married Miss Fanny Haralson, third daughter of Congressman and General Hugh A. Haral son, of LaGrange; and the outbreak of the war had found him among the Appalachian mountains engaged in the development of coal-mines.
Intelligence travels somewhat slowly over the moun tain roads, remote from telegraph and railway stations; and Captain Gordon was fearful that the war might be over before he could get to the front. It was at first the intention of the Raccoon Roughs to enlist as mounted men, being accustomed to the saddle, but word had come

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from Milledgeville that the cavalry ranks were already filled; and bitterly chagrined and disappointed, they had decided to go as infantry troops rather than miss the ex citement. Accordingly they had now come to Atlanta; but before they could proceed further they were met with the announcement that there was no place even for in fantry troops just at present. It really began to look as if the mountain boys who were destined to play such an important part in the hostile maneuvers of the near future \vere to be sent home; and indeed they shortly afterward started back toward the mountains. But the train was hardly in motion before the whir of the cars unloosed the pent-up spirit of rebellion. Leaping out helter-skelter they managed to get in front of the engine and to stop the train; and while such defiance of orders was utterly subversive of all discipline it revealed an invincible spirit which refused to accept defeat. Moreover, it pleased the young captain only too well to see the men who had chosen him to command them so eagerly determined; and back they marched to Atlanta, where they entered camp on the outskirts.
Opening up communication with the Governors of other States Captain Gordon at last received word from the Governor of Alabama that the Raccoon Roughs could be incorporated in one of the regiments which was then about to leave for the front from that State. It is need less to say that the coon-skin caps arose in the air and the mountain boys were soon rolling toward Montgomery. There was no longer any disposition to stop the train; but the train nevertheless stopped at frequent intervals. Robert M. T. Hunter was on board, en route to take part in organizing the Confederate government; and all along

324 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the way the crowds at the railway stations were anxious to hear him speak.
But the captain of the Raccoon Roughs was an orator himself; and the gift, which he was shortly to employ with such telling effect in arousing his troops on the battle-field as well as later en to use with such command ing influence on the hustings and in the Senate, was now called into requisition. "As the only captain on board," says General Gordon, who tells the incident himself, "it fell to my lot to respond to frequent calls; and in the midst of all this enthusiasm I was induced to make some promises which I found it afterwards rather inconven ient to fulfill. A flag was presented bearing an embar rassing motto, which consisted of only two words, 'No Retreat.' I was compelled to accept it. There was, in deed, no retreat for me then; and in my speech accepting the flag I assured the fair donors that those coon-capped boys would make that motto ring with their rifles on every battle-field; and I related the story of the little drummer boy of Switzerland who when captured and ordered to beat upon his drum a retreat, replied: 'Switzerland knows no such music.' " General Gordon says that his men joined in the applause which greeted the rash promise which he found himself obliged to make, but that after wards they learned better. Reaching Montgomery, the Raccoon Roughs were assigned to the Sixth Alabama Regiment, and the young captain was elected major. After stopping briefly at Corinth, Mississippi, the regi ment proceeded to Virginia.
General Gordon tells an anecdote showing that both sides at the beginning of the war failed to estimate prop erly the fighting qualities which they expected to con-

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front. He says it was commonly believed at the South that the war would be of short duration. "One of the hot-headed fellows," said he, "even declared that the Yankees could be whipped with popguns. When, after the war, this same gentleman was addressing an audience he was asked by an old maimed soldier: "Say, Judge, ain't you the same man that told us before the war that u'e could whip the Yankees with popguns ?'
"Yes," replied he, "but, confound 'em, they wouldn't fight that way!"
This suggests an incident from the experience in Eng land of Henry Ward Beecher. He was advocating the cause of the United States government during the latter part of the war, and he found it necessary to bring to bear the full inventory of his eloquent resources to stem the tide of opposition which he encountered. Some inquisi tive Englishman in the audience wanted to know why it was that the Northern people hadn't whipped out the Southern people in thirty days as they had threatened to do when the war started.
"I'll tell you, my friend," replied Mr. Beecher, with blasting wit. "The reason why we didn't whip the South ern people in thirty days as we promised to do is because the Southern people are Americans and not British."

The annals of the Civil War on either side will be searched in vain for the record of brilliant military achievement which in all points quite equals the dashing and daring career of the young soldier who, entering the struggle as captain of the Raccoon Roughs, eventually became lieutenant-general and commanded half of the

326 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. Such an unparalleled career is presuppositive of a genius which merits no less rich an adjective than Napoleonic; yet such was the unvarnished record of the home-bred hero, whose only camp of military instruction, up to 1861, had been the coal-mines of the rugged Appalachians.
Reaching Virginia, Captain Gordon was assigned to Ewell's brigade at Manassas; and since this brigade took no important part in that engagement the young soldier was denied the privilege of earning his spurs in the first great battle of the war. But he seems to have improved the opportunities of the camp; for before he had any chance of showing his fighting qualities he had been pro moted to the rank of colonel. Seven Pines was the first serious battle in which the Sixth Alabama participated-; and some idea of how the young officer figured in the de velopments of the day is disclosed by the fact that among the dead and wounded.those who fell in Gordon's com mand were found nearest to the enemy's lines. Between Seven Pines and Appomattox the young officer advanced like a rocket; and among the engagements in which he participated were Malvern Hill, Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Winchester, Cedar Creek and Petersburg.
To show the grim courage which supported the military genius of General Gordon it is only necessary to cite the field of Sharpsburg; for it was on this field that he was first christened "the Chevalier Bayard of the Confederate Army," and won the stars of the brigadier. With four bullets in his body, two of which were received earlier in the day, he refused to leave the field, but continued while his wounds were flowing to cheer his men until the fifth

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ball struck him full in the face and passed out, barely missing the jugular vein. Quoting from the account \vhich he himself gives of the battle in his "Reminiscences of the Civil War," General Gordon says : "I fell forward and lay unconscious with my face in my cap; and I might have been smothered by the blood running into my cap from this last wound but for the act of some Yan kee, who, as if to save my life, had at an earlier hour of the battle, shot a hole through the cap which let the blood
out. "Borne on a litter to the rear, I recalled nothing more
until revived by stimulants at a late hour of the night; and I found myself lying on a pile of straw at an old barn. My faithful surgeon, Dr. Weatherby, who was my devoted friend, was at my side with his fingers on my pulse. As I revived, his face was so expressive of dis tress that I asked him: "What do you think of my case, Weatherby?' He tried to say that he was hopeful. I knew better and said: 'You are not honest with me. You think I am going to die, but I am going to get well.' Long afterwards, when the danger was past, he admitted that this assurance was his first and only basis of hope."

General Gordon's confidence of his recovery may have been grounded upon the conviction that his work was still unfinished, but it was ably reinforced by the fact that Mrs. Gordon was in the neighborhood. Like an angel of mercy commissioned to keep special watch over the gallant officer whom she had followed to the altar while yet in the bloom of girlhood, Mrs. Gordon had accompa nied her husband, to the front. She was near at hand

328 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
throughout all the trying years of the war; and, though her life was often imperiled, she little regarded the dan gers which brought her closer to her hero. In the gentlest mold of womanhood she cloaked the bravest soul of bat tle; and the crimson life-current which fed the patriot ism of this fair young guardian of the camp must have rippled backward to the Spartan blood which once guarded the passage at Thermopylae. The companion ship of one \vith whom General Gordon was so happily mated supplies the key in large measure not only to his achievements on the field, but to his successful career in public life. Moreover it explains the felicity which lengthened a joyful honeymoon into a golden anniversary and accounts for the eagerness with which a heroine, now lonesome, is again anxious to join a hero at the front.
Months elapsed before General Gordon was able to re sume his seat in the saddle. He had been at death's door; but, thanks to Mrs. Gordon, he had passed the crisis. Many had been the sleepless hours which she had spent at his side in the hospital, fearful to close her eyes lest something might happen to retard his convalescence. General Gordon has often declared that he would never have survived the wounds he received at Sharpsburg had it not been for her. "The doctors told Mrs. Gordon," says he, "to paint my left arm above the wound three or four times a day with iodine to check the erysipelas which had set in. She obeyed the doctors by painting it, I think, three or four hundred times a day. Under God's provi dence I owe my life to her incessant watchfulness night and day, and to her tender nursing through weary weeks and anxious months." But the life made dearer to her than ever by what she had now spent in reclaiming it she was more than ready to rededicate to the Southland.

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General Gordon narrates some amusing incidents con nected with the presence of Mrs. Gordon in camp. Gen eral Early was an old bachelor who was well past the me ridian of life; and, while he was extremely courteous and deferential in his bearing toward the fair sex, he could little understand why any woman should wish to be near her husband at the front. Hearing of the presence of Mrs. Gordon so constantly, he is said to have exclaimed: "I wish the Yankees would capture Mrs. Gordon and keep her till the war is over." At Winchester he dis covered a conveyance unlike any of the wagon-trains which were going into camp. He immediately inquired of the quartermaster in excited tones: "What's that?" "That is Mrs. Gordon's carriage," replied the officer. "Well, I'll be durned," said he. "If my men would keep up as she does I'd never issue another order against straggling."
General Gordon says that Mrs. Gordon was fully aware of General Early's sentiments, and that during a dinner given in camp to General Ewell, she happened to sit near General Early, and she rallied him good-naturedly about what he had said, but he appeared to be embarrassed for a moment only, and then gallantly replied : "Mrs. Gordon, General Gordon certainly fights better when you are close by him than when you are away, and so hereafter when I issue orders that officers' wives must go to the rear you may know that you are excepted."
Riding among his disorganized troops through Win chester, General Gordon was horrified to find Mrs. Gor don on the streets where shells from Sheridan's batteries were falling, but she seemed to be unconscious of any danger. "I thought she had gone to the rear," says Gen-

330 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
eral Gordon, "but she was stopping at the house of her friend, Mrs. Hugh Lee, and as the first Confederates be gan to pass to the rear she stood upon the veranda appeal ing to them to return to the front. She asked each squad to what command they belonged; and when finally to her question the answer came: 'We are Gordon's men,' she lost her control and rushed into the street urging them to go back. She was thus engaged when I found her." It might be interesting to linger upon the thrilling war rec ord of this brave woman, but suffice it to say that she con tinued to be an inspiring factor at the front all through the long four years of battle, nor thought of relinquishing this self-imposed duty of devotion until the fate of the illstarred Confederacy was at last sealed in the terms of surrender at Appomattox.
It is the common belief at the South that Stonewall Jackson came to his death by an accidental shot from the ranks of his own men, fired in the uncertain darkness at Chancellorsville, but General Gordon says that after con versing with Union officers who were at the time near the spot where Jackson fell he began to entertain some doubt concerning the correctness of this traditional supposition, and he thinks it quite possible from the manner in which the opposing forces were distributed, that the fatal bullet might have come from either side.
Exhibitions of superhuman courage were almost com monplace occurrences in the ranks of the Southern army, but the underlying basis was not always the same. Some men possessed what may be termed mere brute courage, feeling- the same contempt for physical danger which

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characterizes the Bengal tiger or the African lion. Others, while keenly and even painfully sensitive of the perils which they invited, nevertheless faced unflinchingly the severest ordeal of battle. This was moral courage. But there was still another type which may be designated as religious courage. It was closely allied to moral courage, but sometimes bordered upon fatalism. However, it grew out of the orthodox Calvinistic doctrine that man is im mortal until his work is done. With Stonewall Jackson, Daniel H. Hill, Thomas R. R. Cobb and John B. Gordon, all of whom were devout Presbyterians, the belief in pre destination was an abiding conviction; but religious cour age alone can not explain the calmness under fire which characterized this heroic group. Religious courage is often strong where moral and physical courage are both weak, and perhaps it is nearer the truth to say that Jack son and Hill and Cobb and Gordon possessed all three types in combination. It may be of interest in this connec tion to note that Generals Jackson and Hill, besides being of the same household of faith, married into the same household of Virginia, the second Mrs. Jackson and the only Mrs. Hill being sisters.
General Gordon narrates an incident of General Hill at the battle of Malvern Hill which is characteristic: "McClellan's batteries," says he, "were plowing up the ground in every direction. The Confederate artillerists were falling so rapidly that I was compelled to detail untrained infantry to take the vacant places. And yet there sat that intrepid officer, General D. H. Hill, in the midst of it all, coolly writing his orders at the root of an old tree. He did not place the tree between himself and the destructive batteries, but sat facing them. I urged him to get on the

332 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS. - \
other side of the tree and avoid such needless and recklessf exposure. He replied : 'Don't worry about me. I am not! going to be killed until my time comes. Look after the| men.' He had scarcely uttered these words when a shell! exploded in the immediate neighborhood, severely shock- "i ing me for the moment and rolling him over in the newly; plowed ground, part of it having torn through the breast of his coat. This seemed to convert him to more rational / ways of thinking; for shaking off the dirt he quietly took his seat on the other side of the tree."
But General Gordon showed equally as little thought of danger in the hour of battle as General Hill. Indeed, un- , til he was fairly riddled at Sharpsburg it was the super stitious belief of his men that his life was charmed, or, as the old negroes used to say, "kunjured," so often had he exposed himself unharmed to the leaden hail. Besides the five separate wounds which he received at Sharpsburg bullets galore had whizzed through his clothing, some of them plucking off his brass buttons and others making away with his epidermis. Moreover, several horses had fallen underneath him. Altogether it was quite natural that he should share in some measure the popular notion concerning his invulnerability until he learned better at Sharpsburg; but even after this lesson had been driven into his anatomy by the five cartridgebox instructors he continued to face the weird music with the same intrepid front. It is easy enough to understand the heroic address of the old Grecian Achilles. He was vulnerable only in his heel; and, besides the instinct of valor which prompted him to offer an insured frontispiece to the foe, he had the best of reasons for not exposing his back. But General Gordon in the presence of greater dan-

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gers than ever lurked about Troy displayed fully as much courage as the old Greek, though he lacked not only his insurance policy from the gods, but also his armor and his shield. An examination of the various wounds sus tained in the battle of Sharpsburg by the captain of the Raccoon Roughs will show that so far from resembling the old Greek in being vulnerable only in his heels, it was his heels only which escaped unharmed.
It was lucky for General Gordon that when the bullets were ripping open his flesh there was not a paper of pins concealed on his person. But this was actually the wellnigh tragic if somewhat amusing experience which befell General Clement A. Evans. There was no braver soldier in the Confederate army than General Evans. He fought all through the war; and at Appomattox, without know ing what had taken place between Grant and Lee, he was found not only fighting, but fighting victoriously in his own part of the field after the surrender had taken place. But General Evans in one of the Virginia campaigns hap pened to have a paper of pins stored away in his uniform; and whether pins are good conductors of lightning or not they happened to be in the way when along came a bullet from the enemy's lines and into the torn flesh of the gal lant officer went bullet, pins and all. The bullet found an outlet, but the pins lay quietly concealed until after the wound healed, and then the pins began to travel. Every now and then an eruption wrould appear and out would come a point; and it was not in fact until years after the war that General Evans quit sprouting pins.

Time will not permit even the barest outline summary of all the thrilling events in the military career of General

334 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
>*"
Gordon. It is necessary to omit, therefore, any account oil the brilliant engagement which caused Colonel Robeil| Falligant, of Savannah, to dedicate to him the stirringf war-poem entitled, "The Man of the Twelfth of May.' Gettysburg and Petersburg will also have to be omitted!! The tide of Confederate fortunes has now reached th0' gloomy night which immediately preceded the surrender^ at Appomattox; and the last sad council of war is beings held about the low campfire whose smoldering embers'' seem to contain the coals of prophecy. It is easy to rec- ognize the broken-hearted old commander-in-chief as he'! stands in the flitful shadows of that campfire. But evenit with hope gone and defeat staring him in the face he is* still the same grand old Roman, as truly heroic as when I flushed \vith victory he watched the retreating columns of the dismayed adversary from the heights of Bull Run. .
Besides the commander-in-chief there were present at the last council of war General Fitzhugh Lee, General Pendleton, General Longstreet and General Gordon. Only five in all and two of them Georgians. Though the pros pects of success was even thinner than the faintest beam of light which threads the dungeon, it was decided that at daylight next morning an attempt should be made to cut through Grant's lines, which were now tightly drawn ' around the beleagered Army of Northern Virginia. Gor don was to advance supported by cavalry and artillery wings and Longstreet was to follow. But to show what little thought of success General Lee entertained with his exhausted handful of men, General Gordon soon after riding away dispatched an officer to General Lee to know if he had any specific directions as to where he should halt for the night. "Yes," said he, "tell General Gordon

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T should be glad to have him halt just beyond the Tennes
see line." It seems that the Federals during the night which now
vvore painfully on toward the disastrous dawn had con structed a line of breastworks directly in front of the Confederate position. As soon as it was daylight the fortifications were discovered and the advance com menced. Fitzhugh Lee swept around the Union flank while Gordon moved straight ahead. It was reserved foi the captain of the Raccoon Roughs to lead the last heroic charge of the war; and, wornout though his men were, they fought like troopers. Not only were the fortifications taken, but twro artillery pieces were captured, and from all that portion of the field the Federals were driven. It was the fateful morning of the ninth of April; but rippling over the Federal breastworks arose the Confederate col
ors. Might not the tattered legions of the South yet con
quer ? The fortifications which lifted the victorious stars and bars for the last time raised also the spirits which were erstwhile drooping. And lustily went forth the challenge. But the decrees of the fates had already been sealed. That little handful of men even when reinforced by Longstreet, who was close at hand, could make little impression upon an army more than four times as large which now hemmed it on all sides. Neither Gordon nor Longstreet could reverse the currents of destiny; but Gordon had already gilded the storm-cloud of surrender. And, thanks to his intrepid charge, even the hideous nightmare of Appomattox was braided with the memen toes of Manassas.
Having captured the Federal breastworks, General

336 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Gordon was moving grimly toward the enemy's line when he was intercepted by word from General Lee, who! realizing more clearly by daylight the hopelessness of the! situation, had begun negotiations with General Grant! But General Gordon was fighting desperately when he re-J ceived orders to stop. His division had been worn to a| frazzle; but he was still pressing forward, and was trying^ at the same time to prevent the enemy from getting be-!| tween himself and General Longstreet. This was the:? status of affairs when the curtain fell upon the greatest drama of modern times. An amusing episode of the sur render was the dearth of any material from which to manufacture a flag of truce. No one seemed to have a pocket-handerchief; and such a thing as a white shirt was not to be found in the whole Southern army. But at last some kind of a rag was found; and the signal which ended hostilities was duly given.
Never were the eloquent words of an orator charged with deeper pathos or truer meaning than when General Gordon addressed his men on the field of Appomattox after the surrender. Choked with tears he counseled them to accept the result with heroic fortitude, and, returning home, to give themselves heartily to the work of rehabili tation. The advice which he urged upon his soldiers be came the rule of his own life; and during the years which followed General Gordon labored as valiantly in the ranks of peace as he had ever fought in the ranks of battle; and besides helping to rebuild the South, he also strove to unite the sections.
Less than eight years after the war he took his seat in

GORDON: THE HERO OF APPOMATTOX.

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the United States Senate, where he remained until his voluntary retirement in 1880, and where he became an acknowledged leader, participating in nearly all of the great debates. He was recognized in large measure as the senatorial representative of the whole South. In the Louisana trouble he was chosen by the Democrats in Congress to draft an address to the people of Louisiana urging patience and self-restraint; and he performed this delicate commission with wonderful tact and patriotism. Later on he aided Lamar in saving Mississippi from po litical misrule; and being authorized by Governor Hamp ton to look after South Carolina's interests in the United States Senate pending the adjudication of the issues which excluded her from that body, he increased the o-ratitude which he had already earned from South Caro lina, in having canvassed the State with Governor Hamp ton to wrest it from military despotism, and soon after the adjournment of Congress he secured the removal of troops, receiving from the Palmetto State the historic dispatch, "South Carolina thanks you," and the additional compliment of having his life-size partrait placed upon the walls of the Capitol.
Elected Governor of Georgia in 1886, the New York Sun characterized his inaugural address as worthy of Thomas Jefferson; and reelected in 1888, he rounded out his tenure of four years, having made one of the best chief executives Georgia ever had. In 1890 he entered the race for the United States Senate. He was unopposed until he antagonized the sub-treasury plan of the Farmers' Alliance; but in spite of the most pronounced opposition which now developed, he won the fight and began another term of distinguished service in the upper branch of Con gress.

338 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
On the organization of the Confederate veterans in:, 1890 it was General Gordon who was called with one?; united voice of popular acclaim to head the grizzly ranks| of the boys in gray, and from his first elevation to this! supreme post until his death in 1905 he was never allowed to relinquish the command. He was literally the idol of the old veterans. To elicit the wildest pandemonium it was only necessary for the superb figure of General Gor don to be seen upon the platform at one of the annual reunions, but so thrilling was the clear ring of his impe rious voice that he had only to part his lips to compel the most instant silence. Nor was it necessary for him to utter an articulate sound before producing this result; for such was the stamp of authority which even his ges tures bore that he could challenge attention simply by lifting his hand.
From the lofty promontory of influence which he occu pied as the hero of Appomattox and the official head of the United Confederate Veterans, General Gordon be came one of the most potential factors in restoring na tional brotherhood. His great lecture on "The Last Days of the Confederacy" which he delivered in all parts of the country was chiefly devoted to this patriotic purpose; and his public addresses were all marked by an appeal to the broadest American sentiment. General Gordon was an orator in the most critical sense of the term. Tall and erect like one of his mountain pines, he was the embodi ment of personal magnetism; and voice and mien united' to produce an almost unparalleled effect. But he could never be greater than he was back in the sixties when his stalwart shoulders, amid the convulsions of battle, sup ported the weary arm of the immortal Lee.

GORDON: THE HHRO OF APPOMATTOX.

339

Robert E. Lee was the prince imperial of the sons of men. Since Arthur passed into Avilion no purer knight has ever graduated from the school of Mars to champion \vomanhood, to shield the lowly, to protect the weak and to defend the right. The sword which dangled at the belt of this Virginia knight was none other than Excalibur, the jeweled weapon of the lake. He was the great white chief of the gray battalions; and, though defeated in an overpowering struggle, with unequal numbers, his unrivaled soldiership has lifted him beyond comparison with the tallest of the conquering Greeks and placed him where he stands unchallenged on the topmost turret of Olympus, the peer of the boldest of the gods.
The Idylls of the King, even when wedded to the muse of Tennyson, grow commonplace and dull compared with the legends of the South, even when caricatured by the barest bungler of the craft. For the boastful Old Round Table of the Arthurian knights heard no such thrill ing exploits of adventure as babbled idly about the red campfires of the Rappahannock. The humblest private soldier in the Confederate ranks was ani mated by a heart as pure and by a cause as holy as ever impelled the templar to the sacred mount to battle for the Holy Sepulchre. And the battered musket which he bore in hunger and in rags through countless victo ries to Appomattox vassalizes the proudest of the Nor man lances even when decked with the laurels of the tournament. That old musket deserves to hang upon the walls of chivalry with Saladin's scimiter and Richard's battle-axe. That coat of gray which breasted the storm at Manassas is glorious enough to mingle with the regalia of kings on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. And that mod-

340 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
est hero himself might worthily have followed Scipio and Csesar had not fate promoted him to the still more illus trious ranks which were led by "the noblest Roman of them all."
And what must be the reverence with which the loos ened sandals approach the council boards where Gordon, Fitzhugh Lee and Longstreet commune in martial fellow ship with "the knightliest of the knightly race," and recite in modest accents those unvarnished stories from which Homer might have spun the stanzas of another Iliad!
Call up the historians of all the battle-fields and let the crimson chronicles of history speak. Warsaw and Ther mopylae are silent. The defeated fields on which the vanquished have sown in failure but harvested in fame are stricken dumb. Nor can the captains of all the victo rious cohorts since Joshua kept back the sun in Israel sur pass the generalship with which the overpowered com manders of the South bore up the flag in Dixie. They may have gone down in defeat, but they ever kept tryst with honor.
Pile up the marble Valhallas until they pierce the milky way and higher still among the untrodden ethers will rise the recumbent figure of the slumbering Lee at Lexington. Worthy to share his immortal sleep on the heights of fame, as Napoleon's marshals sleep with him in the heart of France, are the great lieutenants upon whom he leaned; and worthy to guard the door of that exalted sepulchre until the resurrection morning breaks is the private soldier of the sixties.
Next to Lee, as Lancelot was next to Arthur, ranks the victorious knight of Appomattox. The distinction might have gone to Jackson, but Jackson passed from earth afr

GORDON: THE HERO OF APPOMATTOX.

341

Chancellorsville. Charging the breastworks of the enemy with an almost superhuman dash, it was the captain of the Raccoon Roughs who put an exultant shout in the dying oroans of the young Confederacy; aye, an exultant shout which, overleaping the lurid battlements of sultry flame, resounded through the laurel-groves of an evergreen Vir ginia. A Virginia whose virgin forests bore no battleflags and sheathed no shining swords. A Virginia whose skies were immaculate of smoke; whose fields were inno cent of blood. A Virginia underneath whose fadeless trees Stonewall Jackson waited with Thomas R. R. Cobb for the war-worn legions of the South to come.
The shield of Lancelot in the tower of Elaine told by its indentations and its stains of the splendid tournaments through which the favorite knight had passed; but the heroic uniform of Gordon breathed of battles compared with which the storied combats of the early Britons were but the puerile pastimes of the nursery brigades.
And purer than Lancelot whose passion for Guinevere made him disloyal to his stainless leader, Gordon never soiled the spirit which made him kneel to womanhood; but, keeping inviolate the vows of chivalry which he registered beside the altar, he was ever loyal to his queen. Nor did he require the golden accolade to invest him with the honors of the ancient order. He was born, not made, a knight. And the brush of an ardent fancy might well picture him as sleeping in the island valley with the deathless Arthur, did not the voice of an in spired faith whisper that in the holier Eden he wandered and worshiped with the nobler Lee.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
Joseph Wheeler, the Hero of Two Flags.
T HE fundamental love of the American Union which characterized the soldiers of the Southern armies, who, even under the banners of the new Confederacy fought to maintain the constitutional liber-; ties of the old republic, is strikingly exemplified in the ca-v reer of General Joseph Wheeler, and his biography when fully written and properly labeled, "Under Two Flags," will contain more of the elements of real romance than all the exciting pages of Ouida's great novel. It is univer sally conceded that General Wheeler did as much to make the foe uncomfortable during the four years of the war as any commanding officer in the Confederate ranks; but when the Spanish-American war broke out in 1898 he found it quite an easy matter to don the uniform which he had once been anxious to mutilate. And not satisfied with the double distinction which he had now derived from two flags, he proceeded to extend the area of his operations over two hemispheres.
But the spirit which General Wheeler evinced in so readily donning the blue after he had once so gallantly worn the gray was only typical. It was the spirit of the whole militant Southland; the spirit which produced Richmond Hobson and Worth Bagley and Victor Blue
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WHEELER: THE HERO OF TWO FLAGS. 343
and Tom Brumby and Emory Winship. Those who were inclined to lift the eyebrow in unaffected astonishment to find the South enlisting when the call was made for vol unteers must have forgotten what the South was doing when the Carthaginian was at the gates on former occa sions ; but, witnessing anew the love of Old Glory which animated the Dixie Volunteer, they were perhaps better prepared to appreciate the sacrifice which the South was willing to make in 1861 when she gathered up her sacred heirlooms, including the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States and left the Union which she had largely helped to fashion. Nothing but principle could have made her quit the Union which Washington and Henry and Jefferson and Madison, and Marshall, and Monroe, and Jackson, and Taney and Scott had done so much to es tablish; but since Appomattox had settled the issues which Fort Sumter had raised the South was back again in the old allegiance, ready once more to lift the flag which she had been the first to unfurl.
Xor was it an incident without impressive significance that when General Wheeler attended one of the great Confederate reunions after the Spanish-American war he should have appeared in the uniform of the United States soldier; and if the act itself told of the sturdy American ism which characterized General Wheeler, the applause which greeted the old cavalry hero proved that he was none the less welcome for wearing the uniform which was once worn by the enemy, but which was now the uni form of all.
Even the most superficial glance at the record made by General Wheeler during the war between the States will

344 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
suffice to show that his military genius was of the very highest order. He was a cadet at seventeen, a first lieu tenant at twenty-three, a colonel at twenty-four, a briga dier-general at twenty-five, a major-general at twenty-six and a lieutenant-general at twenty-eight. He commanded in more than two hundred engagements, some of which, considering the unequal number engaged, were the most successful to be found in the whole history of cavalry ex ploits. He is said to have disabled in the Carolinas alone over five thousand of the enemy with only the barest min imum of loss to his own men. Besides sustaining several wounds he had sixteen horses shot down underneath him, and experienced numerous hairbreadth escapes. He had not been in the service six months before his name had become electrical in both Northern and Southern armies, and his capture at any time before the surrender would have filled all Yankeeland with hallelujahs. Throughout the entire struggle "Joe Wheeler's Cavalry" was the very besom of destruction.
Perhaps the distinguishing characteristics of General Wheeler in the saddle were the celerity of his movements and the suddenness of his surprises. He seems to have mastered the whole science of strategics; but these two traits, in summarizing the results of his brilliant cam paigns, appear to stand out with the most commanding pi eminence. It was the habit of General Wheeler to lose as little time as possible in getting over ground, especially when moving toward the enemy, and also to be constantly turning up in unexpected places. He kept the Federal officers guessing as to his whereabouts all during the war,

WHEELER: THE HERO OF TWO FLAGS. 345
and also as to his forces; but somehow he always man aged to make it appear that he had ample reinforcements in the background which seldom happened to be the case. The fact is that General Wheeler fought comparatively few engagements in which he was not outnumbered, but this slight disadvantage could hardly be said to have af fected the results.
An indirect compliment to General Wheeler was paid by General Buell, who it will be remembered was relieved of his command in Kentucky for letting General Bragg get over the border-line. He fully explained the situation in his official report by saying that cavalry forces covered the Confederate rear "which were handled with greater skill than had ever been known under similar circum stances." He mentioned no names; but the cavalry offi cer who was operating at this particular time in the Con federate rear and making the climate of Kentucky warm for the Federal troops under General Buell was none other than Colonel Joseph Wheeler. He had not yet be come even a brigadier.
But General Wheeler was also distinguished for the wide area of territory over which he ranged. There were perhaps several respects in which he resembled the great Macedonian; but one point of resemblance lay in his marked distaste for cramped quarters. He wanted large elbow-room. It will be found on consulting the records that his cavalry operations during the war covered not less than eight States: Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi; and his swing around the globe from San Juan to Manilla during the Spanish-American war is quite in keeping with the meek spirit with which he sought to inherit the earth during the war between the States.

346 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Until such generals as Wheeler and Forrest made the contrary truth appear, it was commonly supposed that the cavalry branch of the service was more ornamental than useful. But they completely revolutionized and recon structed this old impression. General Marion in the swamps of the Carolinas never struck more terror into the bones of the British than took possession of the Fed erals wherever General Wheeler happened to bob up; and he was the man of all others when the war was over to write "Cavalry Tactics."
Though General \Vheeler spent most of his life in Ala-1 bama and represented the State of his adoption continu- j ously in Congress after the war, it was in Augusta, Geor- [ gia, that he first saw the light of day, on September 10, 1836; and twenty-eight years afterwards when General Sherman was moving toward Augusta with the devastat ing sweep of Attilla, it was General Wheeler who enter tained him along the roadside until Augusta could pre pare more suitably for his reception.
Entering WTest Point in 1854, General Wheeler was one of the first cadets to graduate under the five-year rule. He went directly to New Mexico, where he served his apprenticeship in scouting the Indians. But he had not been long in the West when the Southern States began to secede from the Union; and relinquishing his commis sion in the United States army he began to retrace his steps across the plains.
The first engagement of the war in which General Wheeler participated was the battle of Shiloh, but he gal lantly led the Nineteenth Alabama Regiment on this hot-

WHEELER: THE HERO OF TWO FLAGS. 347
lv-contested field. Three months later he was placed in command of the cavalry of the Army of Mississippi. At this time the cavalry had dwindled to the merest squad, largely through lack of employment, but the ink was hardly dry on his commission before he had penetrated into the enemy's lines and commenced to play wild havoc, destroying bridges and intercepting avenues of communi cation. There was never another idle moment for the cavalry after Joe Wheeler took charge.
Such was the part which this dashing cavalry officer played in aiding General Bragg to quit Kentucky that he was almost immediately thereafter promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. Generals Polk, Hardee and Buckner united with General Bragg in recommending this pro motion. At no time along the retreat from Danville to London did General Wheeler have more than one thou sand men, but so effectively was the retreat covered by the cavalry that in no instance was an infantry soldier called upon to fire his musket.
If General Wheeler had not already abundantly merited his advance in rank he proceeded to do so at once. Two months had hardly elapsed before he could count twenty distinct fights, besides twice as many skirmishes; and what he had done to fret the enemy defies even enumera tion. Descending into the Sequatchie Valley in search of prey with some one thousand three hundred men, he caught sight of an immense train of wagons which stretched for miles and miles over the verdant levels. Though heavily guarded, the columns were distributed along the whole length of the train; and by means of quick work he managed to overcome each column before the next could come up, and to capture the whole cara-

348 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
van. It was one of the richest prizes of the whole war, embracing between two thousand and three thousand wagons and containing all kinds of supplies, commissary, quartermaster, ordnance and medical.
Without undertaking to epitomize the exploits of General Wheeler during all the four years of the war, it is sufficient to add in conclusion that he participated in the defense of Georgia soil when General Sherman began harrowing the State with his burning plowshares. From Ringgold to Decatur General Wheeler ably supported! General Johnston in his masterful campaign which prof claimed him another Roman Fabius; but before the fall I of Atlanta he crossed over into Tennessee. However, he ' was back again before the march upon Augusta began; and was instrumental in protecting the city of his birth from the disastrous late which overtook Atlanta. Per haps the discomfiture which he inflicted upon General Sherman in South Carolina exceeded anything else which he had previously administered; but he was unable with his reduced forces to keep the torch from being eventually applied to Columbia.
During the spring of 1865 President Davis formally appointed General Wheeler lieutenant-general of cavalry; but he had been virtually exercising the functions of this command for more than two years. He had proven him self one of the most efficient and thorough officers in the Confederate army. He had been known to go for days without sleep or rest, so profoundly was he impressed with the duty of guarding exposed positions. And take him all in all, he was not only one of the ablest cavalry

WHEELER: THE HERO OF TWO FLAGS. 349
commanders in the great struggle between the States, but one of the ablest in the world-wide group.
But General Wheeler was soon to show that his capaci ties for serving his country were by no means restricted to military operations. In the halls of Congress during the years which followed the war, he proved himself an able statesman, vigilant and patriotic. Ready in debate, there were few questions which he failed to discuss; and without being anything of the politician he was always popular with the masses. But General Wheeler was, above all else, a soldier; and though sixty years had crept over his shoulders when the Spanish-American war broke out, no youth in all the country was more eager to enlist than General Wheeler; and he soon made it evident by his exploits in opposite parts of the globe that Joe Wheel er of the sixties was again in the saddle. Without re gretting that he had ever worn the Confederate gray he was glad to don once more the Federal blue. It was the color which he had first loved back in the old days at West Point; and wearing the Federal blue in the ranks of the regular army the old Confederate hero died in New York, while visiting his sister, on January 25, 1906, and went to join his old comrades of the gray.

CHAPTER XXXV.
The Lumpkins.
T HE great judicial family of Georgia is the austere but appropriate distinction which belongs to the! Lumpkins and the tribunal of justice with which this noted Georgia household is most indissolubly associtl ated is the Supreme Court of the State. Not less th three members of the family have worn the ermine of thi$f lofty seat. The great Chief Justice Joseph Henry LumjK kin was called to the bench when the court was first or4 ganized in 184.6, and almost without interruption until his, death in 1867 Judge Lumpkin was the central figure of the! judiciary system of Georgia. In 1890 his grandnephew; Samuel Lumpkin, became an associate justice and held the office by successive legislative elections until his death, some twelve years later; while similar honors have now clothed his distinguished grandson, the present incumbent, who inherits not only the name but also much of the ge nius of his illustrious forebear.
But the Supreme Court of the State has not monopo lized the achievements of the Lumpkin family. The fa mous Wilson Lumpkin who was the nestor of the whole clan was twice Governor, several time Congressman and once United States Senator. John Henry Lumpkin, who was judge of the Cherokee circuit, also attained
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JOSEPH HENRY LUMPKIN.

THE LUMPKINS.

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congressional honors, and was the most popular candidate for Governor before the'Democratic convention of 1857, which, becoming deadlocked, eventually nominated the compromise candidate, Joseph E. Brown. John Henry Lumpkin was a nephew of the Chief Justice, and also of the Governor. Colonel E. K. Lumpkin, of Athens, is one of the ablest lawyers in the State. He won an immense reputation during the first decade of his,practice by forc ing the Southern Mutual Insurance Company to distrib ute an accumulated surplus of one million dollars. Across the Savannah river W. W. Lumpkin, of South Carolina, is illustrating the family name in the Palmetto State, and the political seers have already assigned him in prophecy the senatorial toga. The late Porter King, of Atlanta, who served the city as mayor and who took high rank at the Georgia bar, was a grandson of Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin.
Soon after the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown, in 1783, the household goods of the Lumpfein family were transferred from Pittsylvania county, in Virginia, to Wilkes county, in Georgia,.the immigrants locating in that part of the county which was subsequently made into Oglethorpe. The party of settlers included George Lumpkin, who must have been well past middle life, and his son, John Lumpkin, the father of Wilson and Joseph Henry Lumpkin. But the early records justify the assumption that there must have been several other Lumpkins among the number. For example, Joseph Lumpkin, for whom the Chief Justice was probably named, as well for his maternal uncle, Colonel Joseph Hopson, appears on the frontier soon after the Revolution in the role of pedagogue; and this country schoolmaster musf have been George Lumpkin's brother.

352 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Since the pioneer Toombs came to Georgia about the same time and settled in the same portion of the State, the! idea presents itself that possibly some member of the Lumpkin family was also among the distinguished sol diers of the Virginia line whose services to the revolu tionary cause in Georgia were recompensed with hand some land-grants. This conjecture is supported by the early commonwealth records which show that along with Robert Toombs in the list of war veterans who received large bounty-warrants from Georgia at the close of the , Revolution was William Lumpkin. It is well known that I Major Toombs received three thousand acres of rich Georgia uplands, and this military scion of the house of Lumpkin may have been equally as fortunate.
The family which had now come to Georgia was of English extraction, and the Lumpkins for generations back had been identified with the colony which Captain John Smith had planted upon the river James and named in honor of the virgin queen. An examination of the primitive files will no doubt disclose the fact that the Lumpkins in Virginia were stout cavalier planters whose fidelity to the king ever stopped sort of oppression, but it was reserved for Georgia to elevate the escutcheon and to render an already honored name still more illustrious. And so to Georgia the Lumpkins moved after the struggle for independence.
Wilson Lumpkin was an infant in arms when his father crossed the State lines, having been born at the old Lumpkin homestead in Virginia on January 14, 1783. It was an unsettled wilderness in which the stroke of the

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pioneer's axe now began to ring; and the Creeks and the Cherokees were near enough at hand to suggest the wis dom of keeping the rifle in easy reach. But in spite of the perils which usually infest the Indian frontier, the future Governor of the State managed to retain his scalp unmo lested; and judging from the duties which he was subse quently commissioned by the Federal government to per form in connection with the red men, it is not unlikely that his acquaintance with the tribes was born of adven turous enterprises which often led him to penetrate into the forbidden arcanum.
The educational advantages of the frontier are none too liberal at best, and just after the Revolution even the oldfield school was wanting in the wilds of upper Georgia. But Joseph Lumpkin was not content to inhabit a region which was destitute of the rays of knowledge, and with out waiting for some foreigner to light the torch he be came himself a dispenser of the rudiments; and among his pupils was Wilson Lumpkin. Later on the young stu dent enjoyed the benefit of special instruction under some one who taught him surveying, and he became in time an accomplished master of the rod and chain, like his dis tinguished fellow countryman of Mount Vernon.
But except for such elementary instruction as he re ceived in the immediate neighborhood the tutors of the future Governor were mainly the solitudes of the forest; but the effects of an outdoor course of instruction in the bush-arbor university of the backwoods have often proved most salutary not only in laying broad and deep the foun dations of robust health, but also in rooting firmly the principles of stalwart and sturdy character. Nor is it sel dom the case that the inspirations which overtake the
12 r

354 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
youthful toiler upon the verdant hillsides are only the prophetic messengers whose office it is to anoint the ob scure guardians of the sheepfold for the royal honors of the kingdom.
The nearest grammar school, which was twenty miles distant, might as well have been in one of the horns of the moon for the modicum of light which it dispensed to Wil son Lumpkin; and having exhausted by the time he was sixteen all the resources of knowledge which the immedi ate settlement afforded, he entered his father's office at Lexington. The elder Lumpkin, besides tilling his acres, had become clerk of the superior court of the new coun ty of Oglethorpe, and the documents which he kept on file were the elementary text-books which prepared the young disciple of Blackstone for admission to the bar. The atmosphere of the court-house, the forensic tilts be tween the great lawyers and the political news which the circuit-riders brought from all parts of the district, fur nished the intellectual pabulum on which his genius rapid ly strengthened and developed.
But, without loitering too long in the biographical nooks, it suffices to say that the career of distinguished usefulness which Wilson Lumpkin now commenced was surpassed by few of his contemporaries. He celebrated his majority by taking his seat in the State Legislature, and from 1805 to 1815 he was repeatedly returned to the legislative council halls. It was during his first term of service that the seat of government was transferred from Louisville to Milledgeville. In 1815 he was elected to Congress, but when his commission expired he returned home and resumed his professional activities.
However, he had too well proven his abilities for serv-

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ing the public to escape further political honors and oblio-ations. In 1823 he was chosen by President Monroe to define the boundary line between Georgia and Florida; while in 1835 he was appointed by President Jackson commissioner under the last treaty made with the Cherokees; both of which compliments from the executive chair of the nation attested the proficiency with which he had plied his incidental pursuit of civil engineering.

Between the dates above mentioned Wilson Lumpkin had twice resumed his seat in Congress, and had twice been honored with the chief executive chair of the State. He had again taken his seat in Congress in 1827 and had been reelected in 1829. Much against his inclinations he had been drafted into the race for Governor in 1831, on the Clarke ticket; and having been successful, he had made another winning fight in 1833. Soon after resign ing the executive reins Governor Lumpkin was elected in 1837 to succeed John P. King in the United States Senate; but he did not care to succeed himself when his term of office expired.
Unlike most of the public men of the -day, he seems to have assumed political responsibilities less from the dic tates of ambition than from the convictions of duty; but he accepted no official trust at the hands of the people of Georgia without giving it the utmost fidelity of which he was capable.
Mention has already been made of the fact that Gov ernor Lumpkin was an accomplished surveyor. Some time during the twenties he was commissioned to survey a route for a canal connecting the Tennessee and the

356 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Chattahoochee rivers. After completing this survey he re ported adversely upon the proposed waterway, but strong ly advocated a railroad along the identical route now covered by the Western, and Atlantic Railway. This was in the skeptical days when the iron horse was superstitiously invested with all the concealed terrors of the Tro jan prototype, and it shows the .far-sightedness of Gov ernor Lumpkin. On account of his subsequent interest in the building of the line between Atlanta and Chatta nooga the future metropolis of the State, which was. first called Terminus, was afterwards christened Marthasville, in honor of his daughter, Martha Lumpkin.
On retiring from public life in 1841, Governor Lumpkin took up his abode near Athens, where his brother, Chief Justice Lumpkin, already lived; and, resigning himself largely to agricultural pursuits, he remained in dignified retirement upon his farm until the end came in 1870, when he was not far from his ninetieth mile-post He had been as far above the average of his countrymen in the allotment of years as upon the score of honors; for his cradle had been literally rocked among the reverbera tions of Yorktown, while his grave had not been dug on the slopes of Georgia until his bleared eyes had witnessed the last of reconstruction and he could at length depart like Simeon, having witnessed the consolation of Israel.
Governor Lumpkin, like his younger brother, was an exceedingly handsome man, especially in his old age, when his long white locks fell pendant from his massive head in snowy ringlets. He must have possessed an iron con stitution reenforced by the most rigid observance of the Levitical code to have compassed the patriarchal age, if not indeed the equivalent burdens, of the renowned Mr,

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Gladstone. He was an ardent believer in State rights and, feeling that the election of Mr. Lincoln imperiled the constitutional liberties of the South within the Union, the last formal message which the old man ever sent from his hermitage on the banks of the Oconee sounded an un equivocal note for secession.

Joseph Henry Lumpkin clarum et venerabile nomen was an undisputed judicial potentate in Georgia. He literally made the supreme bench his imperial throne. But this distinction implies none of the arrogance of the despot. Without arbitrary or autocratic leanings his original force of genius and his long tenure of service united to give him preeminent rank among the occupants of the bench.
From time to time distinguished jurists, like Eugenius A. Nisbet and Hiram Warner, were associated with him in presiding over the scales of justice; but, while the per sonnel of the court was constantly changing, Judge Lumpkin retained his high seat uninterruptedly from 1846 to 1867, covering what in the life of an individual embraces the whole period of adolescence. He may therefore be said to have reared the Supreme Court of Georgia from cradledom to manhood, resigning the solemn responsi bility only when the infant had become an adult who no longer required parental guardianship.
But the figure of the imposing sovereign is somewhat more suggestive. It embodies the molding process as well as the governing principle. Moreover, it sketches Judge Lumpkin as he actually appeared upon the bench. Broad-shouldered, full-statured, ample-browed, he was in

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every respect magnificently formed and featured. In deed, it is said that in his prime there was no handsomer; man in Georgia than Joseph Henry Lumpkin. He wore; his hair long; and his wavy locks enhanced his impressive demeanor without suggesting even remotely the artificial wig of the Lord Chancellor. He was more like the royal Charles if resemblance may be restricted to mere exter nals; for he pictured the very definition of majesty.
Substituting plain ^nglish for metaphorical language Judge Lumpkin largely fashioned the Supreme tribunal of Georgia. He received valuable assistance from his as sociates, who joined him from time to time, but he was himself the master architect in unbroken commission, who laid the beams and fastened the joints and lifted the col umns, giving it outline and symmetry and strength. The part which Judge Lumpkin took in rearing the judicial edifice was fundamental; and, while other judges of the Supreme Court may be quoted more widely in the litera ture of the profession, it nevertheless remains that of all the jurists who have presided over the deliberations of this august court Judge Lumpkin is the only one whose undisputed preeminence has caused him to be christened by universal consent: "The great chief justice."
What John Marshall was to the judiciary of the Union Joseph Henry Lumpkin was to the judiciary of the State: the presiding oracle of the Constitution. He expounded the organic law of the commonwealth and fixed the stand ards of interpretation. Judge Bleckley estimates roughly that he rendered some two thousand decisions, touching almost every vexed problem of the law. The first de cision of the first volume of Georgia Reports and the last decision of the thirty-first volume are from the pen of

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Judge Lumpkin. Such an unbroken file of opinions can hardly be duplicated in the judicial archives of any State in the Union; and when the far-reaching effect of the is sues adjudicated is taken into account, the emotional out bursts, the imaginative touches, the rhetorical efflores cences, it may be solemnly asserted that no richer caravan ever bore the spices of the Orient.

But the essential charm which characterized Judge Lumpkin upon the bench is not to be found upon the printed pages. There are individualisms and peculiarities which refuse to wed the devices of rhetoric and which altogether reject the .friendly offices of printer's ink. Among the varied accomplishments of Judge Lumpkin which were not transferable were first of all his unsur passed powers of oratory. He possessed the complete outfit of the orator. His presence was both imperious and magnetic. His musical voice could sound almost any note in the harmonic scale. His knowledge of the human heart was almost Shakespearean. Before he was elevated to the bench he is said to have surpassed even Judge Colquitt in causing jurors under the excitement of the mo ment to give audible responses to his dramatic appeals. He seldom made use of trivial jokes or trite illustrations. He captivated his hearers by what may be termed the mesmerism of pure eloquence.
Under the code of procedure which the Supreme Court of Georgia to-day observes no provision is made for the exercise of this gift; but during the days of Judge Lumpkin the court was peripatetic, and wherever the judges held proceedings the judicial chambers were thronged

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with spectators eager to hear the decisions which were orally rendered. The scene of the crowded court-room was well calculated to awaken the orator within the judge, especially if some vital principle of justice needed to be impressed upon the masses.
Unfortunately, the decisions of Judge Lumpkin record ed in the Supreme Court Reports convey no adequate im pression even of his rich literary gifts; for written in tranquil after-moments when the glow of enthusiasm was gone he lacked the inspiration which commanded his best efforts. It was never the policy of Judge Lumpkin to write out his decisions in advance of delivery, but to fix thoroughly in his mind the principle which he wished to elucidate and then to wait for the contact of occasion to supply words. And he never waited in vain. It seldom happened that the subject was too intricate or technical to admit of eloquent treatment, but whenever the circum stances were peculiarly favorable the genius of the orator in ermine fairly soared. The spectators frequently sat spell-bound. It was not unusual for applause to punctuate the opinion. But sometimes the effect was too profound for such an expression and it seemed as if the spokesman on the bench was actually an inspired prophet unfolding the divine law.
Nor was this disposition on the part of Judge Lumpkin to be oratorical on the bench allied either, on the one hand, to the vanity which loves to display an accomplish ment or, on the other hand, to the demagoguery which delights in plaudits. If there ever lived a man whose blameless life was spent upon the mountain-tops and whose character was as free from the cavils of suspicion as it was rich in the embellishments of piety it was Joseph

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Henry Lumpkin. He was simply an orator of the old Athenian brood; and even when he woke the deepest thrill he was only sounding the infant prattle of his mother-tongue.

Born near Lexington, in Oglethorpe county, Georgia, on December 23, 1799, Joseph Henry Lumpkin after re ceiving his elementary instruction in the common schools near by, matriculated first at Athens and then at Princeton; and graduating with honor from what was then known as the College of New Jersey, he began to prepare at once for the bar under Judge Trios. W. Cobb at Lex ington. Even from the start the bent of his mind was distinctly legal, but it was hardly less literary. He was passionately fond of the classics. This characteristic not only lettered itself in his chaste and elegant diction, but later on in life when broken in health he sought rest and diversion on the European continent he found his greatest satisfaction not in reveling among the monuments of Roman law, but in paying homage at the tomb of Virgil.
Some curiosity may be entertained to know why Joseph Henry Lumpkin received such marked educational ad vantages while his brother Wilson Lumpkin fared much more frugally in the halls of learning. The explanation is not supplied by positive information, but may be de rived from conjecture. The days which followed the re moval of the Lumpkin family from Virginia to Georgia were, strictly speaking, pioneer days. Acres may have been plentiful, but shekels were no doubt scarce. More over there was no higher educational institution in Geor gia. Franklin College was not then in existence. Be-

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sides, Wilson may have been needed at home. But six teen years can measure immense strides, not only in the life of a colony which has just commenced to taste the sweets of freedom, but also in the life of a household whose regnant virtues are industry and thrift. Joseph Henry Lumpkin was born sixteen years later than Wil son. During this time the wilderness around Lexington had no doubt become subdued. Franklin College had sprung up some eighteen miles distant. Money was more plentiful, and when Joseph Henry Lumpkin had shown his aptitude for text-books at Athens the family resources were abundantly sufficient for sending him to Princeton.
Admitted to the bar in 1820, he was soon afterwards twice chosen to represent Oglethorpe county in the State Legislature; but in spite of his pronounced oratorical equipment his inclinations impelled him more decidedly toward law than toward politics. It speaks in unequivocal terms of his prestige at the bar that he was chosen in 1833 one of the three commissioners appointed to frame the Penal Code of Georgia. Even at this early period he had no superior before the courts as an advocate; and he continued to advance in his profession, multiplying his revenues and his honors alike until ill health overtook him in 1844 and necessitated temporary retirement, which he occupied in part with foreign travel.
Returning home in 1845, completely restored to health, he was about to resume the practice when the Legislature of Georgia, having provided for the organization of the Supreme Court by formal enactment, elected him to sit upon this august bench with Hiram Warner and Eugenius A. Nisbet. Accepting the tendered judicial office he be gan the illustrious career of service which ended only with

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his death some twenty-one years later. He rendered his first decision at Cassville, Georgia, in March, 1846, and his last decision at Milledgeville, Georgia, in December, 1866. The chief justiceship was not created in the orig inal Act; and the three judges elected were all of equal rank and designated simply as judges. Judge Nisbet and Judge Warner soon retired; but Judge Warner eventu ally returned. In the course of time the distinction of rank was created; but Judge Lumpkin had become the chief justice by right of preeminence long before he was officially declared to be the chief justice by right of elec tion.

Having accepted this great judicial responsibility as his life's work, Judge Lumpkin allowed nothing to swerve him from his official obligations. Twice he was sorely tempted. In 1846 he was elected to the chair of oratory and rhetoric in the University of Georgia, and in 1860 he was elected to the chancellorship. He was devoted to the State University. He had taken up his residence in Athens. He was wedded to the republic of letters. But he refused to relinquish the scales of justice. In 1855 the President of the United States tendered him a seat on the Federal bench; but it cost him less to decline this high offer than to refuse his alma mater.
Nevertheless, when the University of Georgia opened the Lumpkin Law School he became one of the lecturers and helped to lay the foundations of what has since be come one of the most flourishing departments of the insti tution. In this connection it is also of interest to state that the Phi Kappa Society was organized by Judge

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Lumpkin in 1820 to challenge the Demosthenean in stimu lating the spirit of rivalry and the passion for debate among the students. Too heavily taxed by his judicial responsibilities to enjoy the measure of years which his constitution had promised under normal conditions, Judge Lumpkin gave way at last under the burden of overwork arid died at his home in Athens on June 4, 1867; but he could now afford to rest since he had successfully launched the Supreme Court of Georgia upon the judi cial seas.
Judge Lumpkin was an ardent friend of temperance, and while he permitted others to wrestle for political vic tories upon the hustings he unfurled the banner of this humane reform. He was also deeply devout; and was a Presbyterian while his brother was a Baptist. Joseph Henry Lumpkin and Wilson Lumpkin were both great friends of the State University and both members of the board of trustees for many years; but they are no less mated in the affections of the whole people of Georgia.
Judge Iverson L. Harris, in the thirtieth volume of the Georgia Reports, has preserved an outline sketch of Judge Lumpkin. "The contour of the face," says he, "was highly intellectual; the forehead high, broad and fully exposed. He had dark-gray eyes, restless and constantly varying in expression, and quivering lips. His voice was clear and melodious a rich baritone obedient to his will and modulated with consummate art. This control was no doubt owing very much to the distinctiveness of his artic ulation. He used little gesture but it was graceful and expressive. Add to all this his large encyclopedic knowl-

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edge and some estimate can be made of the resources from which his oratory was supplied. His tropes were the corruscations of the glowing axle in rapid motion. His illustrations were drawn from the bright and goldeto thoughts of Shakespeare and Milton, from the sacred poetry of Job and David, from the prophetic inspirations of Ezekiel and Isaiah, and from the wisdom of Solomon. It required a person of his precise mental constitution, unaffected piety and cultivated taste to employ this high poetic thought without irreverence; but this was done with such marvelous skill that even hypercriticism could not venture to condemn."
The estimate of Judge Lumpkin on the judicial side has been pronounced by Judge Bleckley, who says that "he discovered, organized and developed those germs of the law which have inherent vitality and which require no artificial aid to enable them to live. He devoted him self to the labor of stripping off whatever might conceal the core of justice. He was by nature a reformer. No man had more veneration; but he refused to squander it on antiquated trifles. In the spoken word he surpassed any other Georgian living or dead I have ever known; and he so blended gentleness with justice that, since he bas joined the immortals, he may be idealized as our ju dicial bishop enthroned in Georgia skies."
Judge O. A. Lochrane at the State University in 1879 wove into his address before the literary societies an elo quent tribute to Judge Lumpkin with which this sketch may be fittingly closed. Said the brilliant ex-chief jus tice: "Judge Lumpkin was in all his affections as fra grant as young flowers. Words of sunny kindness were always ripe for utterance upon his lips. His sympathies.

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were as warm as the loves of the angels. His addresses were thick to the very top with roses, but the solidity of the mountain was found underneath. In his powers of oratory he had few equals; for he lifted himself to a throne of light and grandeur from which he scattered words sweeter than the Arabian myrrh. My memory to day fills with the light his first words flashed upon my pathway of life; and if there was but one flower upon the earth I would gather it to lay upon his grave."

CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Supreme Court*
B EFORE the Supreme Court of Georgia was organ ized in 1845 the superior court judges were the ultimate authorities in matters of law and exer cised the appellate functions of correction and review. Naturally there were frequent variations between judges each of whom was judicially supreme in the circuit over which he presided; and justice was unavoidably the vic tim of painful uncertainties. Even when the scales were disturbed by none of the infirmities to which frail human nature is so constantly exposed, the differences in mental constitution between men charged with responsible duties only served to emphasize the danger of conferring co ordinate powers upon individuals without due regard to the unifying principle. It frequently happened under the old judiciary system that disputed questions of law were given one interpretation, for instance, in the Eastern cir cuit and another interpretation in the Western circuit; and such divergencies were calculated to expose property rights in Georgia to perilous hazards.
But two important factors served to diminish some what the number of judicial variations. In the first place some of the most distinguished lawyers in the State held from time to time the superior court judgeships, among
(367)

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the number being William H. Crawford, who became judge of the Northern circuit after he had been minister to France, Congressman and Senator, and had come with in the merest fraction of being elected President of the United States. Others who subsequently donned the sen atorial toga were Walter T. Colquitt, Augustin S. Clayton, John Macpherson Berrien, Thos. W. Cobb, Wm. C. Dawson, Alfred Iverson, and Robert M. Chaflton. Au gustus B. Longstreet, the author of "Georgia Scenes," and L. Q. C. Lamar, the father of the late associate jus tice of the Federal Supreme Court, were likewise included among the able jurists who served the State at this time. In the second place it was the excellent custom of the judges to hold semi-annual conventions for the purpose of discussing vexed questions in the light of the combined wisdom of the whole bench; and while the action of the body was more advisory than binding it was nevertheless productive of good results.
Some of the most delightful chapters in the history of the Georgia bench and bar relate to this early period when the law was administered by the superior court judges. There were few railroads in those primitive days and law yers and judges rode the circuit together, stopped at the same hotels and frequently slept under the same blankets. It was not easy to lug heavy law-books around the coun try with the facilities for traveling which then existed. Besides there were fewer law-books published; and law yers spent more time in arguing principles than in mak ing citations. Nor have the superiors of those lawyers been found in this age of multiplied book-shelves.
Sometimes the circuit-riders fared rather badly at the taverns which they were forced to patronize, especially in

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the smaller hamlets and villages remote from the beaten highways of travel. "Most innkeepers," says Judge Garnett Andrews, "learned to have water, clean sheets and scalded bedsteads at the beginning of court week. And some of them learned to have clean towels in the room every morning. But I heard of a case in the Cherokee circuit where the landlady still in the process of learn ing declared that these lawyers must certainly be mighty dirty fellows for not wanting to use the same water and towels after each other, when she bathed her four children in the same water and dried them on the same towel, and God knows they were dirty enough."

Notwithstanding the romantic incidents which seasoned the era of the superior court judges in Georgia the judi ciary system which then prevailed was wofully defective. However able the judges themselves might be or however frequently the conventions might be held it remained that the system required surgical heroics. The trouble was constitutional. Moreover the decisions rendered by the superior court judges, who exercised final as well as orig inal jurisdiction, were nowhere preserved except in the Eastern circuit; and even in this exceptional instance it was reserved for the Charlton family to furnish the Hezekiahs. From 1805 to 1811 the reports were made by Thos. U. P. Charlton, Governor James Jackson's biog rapher, and from 1811 to 1837 by R. M. Charlton.
It might well be supposed that an elementary system of justice which provided for no adequate records and which wholly lacked the virtue of uniformity would be only too readily abandoned for something better, but the

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legislative journals show that it was only after the most stubborn fight that the measure providing for the present Supreme Court of Georgia was enacted into law.
Urging upon the State Legislature the necessity of or ganic changes, Governor John Forsyth, as far back as 1828, portrayed in the most striking executive caricature the inherent defects of the system. "Under the present arrangement of eight superior court judges," says he, "each confined to the circuit for which he was elected, supreme in his authority, not bound by the decisions of his predecessors or contemporaries and not always by his own, there can be neither uniformity nor certainty in the laws. The confusion produced by contemporary contra dictory decisions every day increases; property is held and recovered in one part of the State and lost in another under the same circumstances; rights are asserted and maintained in one circuit and denied in another in analo gous cases." Nevertheless nearly two decades elapsed be fore the recommendation of Governor Forsyth received adoption; and in the meantime this illustrious worthy had closed his career in the United States Senate and had begun his long sleep in the congressional cemetery on the slopes of the Potomac near Washington City.
But, in spite of the conservative opposition which this sorely-needed measure of reform elicited, Hon. Walter B. Hill is authority for the statement that Georgia'has pioneered all the other States of the Union in two most important legal reforms. The first was in the abolition of special pleading under the Act of 1799 and the second was in the publication of the Code of 1861, which, though unauthorized under the Act of 1798 and delayed more than half a century, was nevertheless the first volume of

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the kind, properly so-called, to appear in the American courts.

With the organization of the Supreme Court Eugenius A. Nisbet, Hiram Warner and Joseph Henry Lumpkin were called to the bench; and Georgia has never been served in the sphere of things judicial by three abler or purer public servants. The individuality of each was so distinctly marked that in the assemblage of characteris tics there was not one of the three who could be put above the rest, while at the same time there were separate and peculiar aspects in which each was superior to all.
Judge Lumpkin was the orator of the bench. In the magical modulations of his voice, the magnetic charm of his person and the vivid powers of his imagination, Judge Lumpkin has never been surpassed in Georgia. At the present time there is little scope for the exercise of such gifts upon the bench, but during the migratory days of the court when it moved from circuit to circuit and people crowded the court-room to hear the decisions orally ren dered there was abundant opportunity for judicial elo quence. Judge Lumpkin was on the bench longer than any of his associates and was for this reason the chief factor in developing the Supreme Court of Georgia.
Next to Judge Lumpkin in tenure of service upon the bench was Judge Warner. He resigned in 1853, after having served continuously for eight years; but on the death of Judge Lumpkin in 1867 he returned to the bench as chief justice. Two years later he was reduced to as sociate ranks by Governor Bulloch under the reconstruc tion regime; but in 1872 he again became chief justice,

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retaining his commission until his voluntary retirement in 1880. He was characterized in his decisions less by rhet orical and imaginative graces than by original force and vigor of intellect. He was tenacious of his convictions and absolutely fearless in his rulings. His knowledge of the law was not confined to precedents, but was securely grounded upon fundamental principles. He was perhaps too reserved in manner to enthuse the masses; but he pos sessed the unbounded respect of all classes of people in Georgia, who esteemed him as the very embodiment of Roman justice itself.
Judge Nisbet remained on the supreme bench only eight years, retiring soon after Judge Warner in 1853, and never resuming the ermine. But during this compar atively brief period he rendered important decisions which made his name familiar throughout the world-wide liter ature of the profession. Unless exception is made of Judge Bleckley, who resigned the chief justiceship late in the nineties, Judge Nisbet is the most frequently quoted of all the oracjes of the Supreme Court of Georgia; and with Judge Bleckley he has been accorded admission into that professional Valhalla, entitled "Great Decisions by Great Judges."
But Judge Nisbet has been quoted at times by eminent judicial authorities in other States without receiving due credit for services rendered. To be specific, it will be found that Judge Fowler, in the forty-first volume of New Hampshire Reports, has reproduced almost verba tim an important decision of Judge Nisbet found in the eleventh volume of Georgia Reports, giving him only foot-note credit as an authority cited. There is a differ ence as old as the Ten Commandments between citing au-

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thority and paraphrasing language, and Judge Fowler has winked at the Decalogue to the extent of falling into the latter grievous error. The deadly parallel columns would probably never have been drawn had not the case become celebrated and the credit for having adjudicated the prin ciple been inadvertently assigned to Judge Fowler.
Judge Nisbet's strength lay not only in his thorough legal scholarship but in his discriminating powers of analysis and especially in his crystal transparency of state ment. Without wasting time in elaboration he was spon taneously familiar with all the classics and fluently ex pressed himself in terms of the most liberal culture.

Judge Lumpkin cared nothing for political honors, and allowed no offers, however tempting, to shake his resolute determination to remain upon the bench. It is rather sin gular that gifts which in the legislative halls or on the hustings would have lifted him at once into the leadership or which before the jury would have earned him one of the largest professional incomes in the State, should nev ertheless have been devoted to the laborious routine of the bench. But it filled the measure of Judge Lumpkin's ambition to wear the judicial ermine of the Supreme Court, and since it gave him an opportunity to mold the judiciary system of the State he could not have linked his name with a service better calculated to endear his mem ory to the people of Georgia.
But Judge Nisbet and Judge Warner were both fond of political life and both occupied seats in the halls of Con gress before the war. They were also both active upon the stage of political events in Georgia immediately prior

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to the outbreak of the struggle, but they approached the great issue of secession from diametrically opposite stand points. Judge Nisbet not only advocated secession, but was himself the author of the ordinance which swept Georgia from the Union in 1861. Judge Warner not only opposed secession, but even after the fight was over and the committee had been appointed to draft the formal syllables of dissolution, he still refused to join the ma jority ranks. He believed in the constitutional right of the State to secede, but he doubted the expediency of the proposed step, believing that the problems could all be adjusted within the Union and that the act of separation meant war. He was opposed to disruption. At the Charleston convention he had refused to join the South ern revolt led by Wm. L. Yancey, believing that the only hope of success lay in the consolidation of forces under the banners of the national Democracy. Judge Nisbet felt that since the fundamental law of the land had been re pudiated by the anti-slavery aggressors the cause of con stitutional liberty was imperiled and the time had come for the State to resume her sovereign rights.
Twenty years before, Judge Nisbet and Judge Warner had differed even more widely, the former having been a' Whig and the latter a Democrat. At the present time they were both Democrats, separating only upon the great issue of secession. As soon as Georgia had spoken Judge Warner, with patriotic submission, accepted the result and gave to Georgia his undivided allegiance; but he performed this act of patriotic surrender without in the least modifying his conviction that the course which the State had taken was unwise. Without stopping to meas ure consequences Judge Nisbet felt that grievances had

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become so multiplied that Georgia was left no choice in honor and in self-respect except to withdraw from the compact.
Both men could boast of ancestries whose principles had been put to the most rigid test. Judge Warner had come from Puritan New England where his forefathers, between the Indians on the one hand and the icicles on the other, had mastered the difficult lessons of life in the bitterest school of hardships. Judge Nisbet had always lived in Georgia but he had sprung from sturdy old Scotch Presbyterian Covenanters, one of whom, Captain John Nisbet, had been executed on the streets of Edinburgh be cause he refused to surrender the supreme tribunal of his conscience even to the royal edict of his king.
Both brought to bear in serving Georgia, under cir cumstances of peculiar stress, the same rugged principles which had come down to them from ancestral molds; and tried though they were in the very fires and found to be pure gold, they both missed the gubernatorial chair which they had honorably coveted and which they would have richly adorned. What seem to be the ingratitudes of politics are sometimes difficult to explain; but neither Judge Nisbet nor Judge Warner were politicians in the fiddle-dancing sense of the term. They were rugged old jurists, ,who understood better how to construe laws and hold principles than to make votes, and, besides, in fear lessly wielding the ax with honest strokes from the shoul der, they gave far more heed to the mark than to the chips.

One of the most striking of what may be called the judicial characteristics of Judge Lumpkin was his pro-

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nounced aversion to the mere technicalities of court pro cedure. Wherever vital principles were involved he re fused to play the iconoclast; but no amount of antiquity could make him venerate forms and ceremonies which possessed no essential value; and toward the task of sim plifying the routine of the court he bent all the reforming zeal of Martin Luther. "Where lies the justice of the case?" was the question uppermost in the mind of Judge Lumpkin, and he almost savagely tore aside the husks to lay bare the hidden grain of truth.
The question as to whether a writ of error could be amended by attacking the seal of the court caused him to dilate upon the shortcomings of seals in general, but he bore with special emphasis against the seal of the court, which he said was virtually a nullity and if reasons were desired it not only lacked "the three columns which sup ported an arch," but also left out "the swordsman with the cocked-hat." "For myself," declared he, "I am free to confess that I despise all forms having no sense or sub stance in them. And I can hardly suppress a smile I will not say 'grimace irresistible' when I see so much im portance attached to such trifles. I would cast away at once and forever all law not founded in some reason, nat ural, moral or political. I scorn to be a serf adscript to a thing obsolete or thoroughly deserving to be so."
It is an interesting item of information concerning Judge Warner that years ago at Greeneville, Georgia, he was the preceptor in law of the late distinguished jurist and Senator from Illinois, Lyman Trumball. But it was only by the merest chance that Judge Warner himself ever lived to enter upon his career at the bar. Leaving the old ancestral home in New England when he was only

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nineteen, Judge Warner encountered the perils of ship wreck on his way South. It is not known exactly how he managed to escape the devouring jaws of the great deep; but sick, penniless, and exhausted, he found himself in the care of the Sisters of Mercy at Charleston, South Car olina, who soon nursed him back to health. Resuming his journey the Puritan lad came to Georgia and, without influential friends or special literary advantages, he set-, tied down for the practice of law in this State and straight way began the career of distinguished usefulness which rising height upon height eventually robed him in the un sullied ermine of the supreme summits.
But Judge Warner much later in life had another nar row escape and the circumstances, which well illustrate the sturdy timber of which the old jurist was fashioned, are narrated by Mr. Hill. Says he:
"In 1865 a party of bummers attached to the victorious Federal army, having been informed that Judge Warner had a large quantity of gold, hanged him, as a means of coercing from him a statement as to where it could be found. Thrice was this gentle experiment repeated; and after the third ordeal he was left for dead. Although he was then about sixty years of age, he survived the severe physical shock, and lived in robust health under the most exacting judicial labors until 1880."
Judge Warner must have possessed highland ancestors as well as Judge Nisbet. Besides the sycamore qualities which made him refuse to bend he regarded a lie in the Biblical light of an abomination. It was Carlyle who said that the truest of all' gospels is that a lie can not long prosper; but Judge Warner detested a falsehood less be cause it was denied eventual success than because it was

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inherently and fundamentally wrong. He possessed many characteristics in common with the Sage of Chelsea, but in this particular respect he was more like the sturdy heroine of the Heart of Midlothian. On the witnessstand in Edinburgh Jeanie Deans was unwilling to utter a falsehood even to save her sister Effie from the iron clutches of the Talbooth; but traveling upon her bare feet alone she could cross every stream and climb every mountain between Edinburgh and London to implore a pardon from the crown.
During the days of reconstruction in Georgia when the disruptive forces which played such fearful havoc throughout the State at large were measurably felt even in the calmer attitudes of the supreme bench, Judge War ner had the temerity to file dissenting opinions in lan guage which could hardly be said to lack either the ring or the glitter of hostile steel and when protesting against the decision rendered by the chief justice and the other associate upon the measures for securing relief from debt he even went so far as to say that he did not purpose "to embalm himself in infamy" by concurring in the judg ment of his colleagues on the bench.
Judge Nisbet was always the scholar. An anecdote which he was fond of telling upon himself runs as fol lows : He had just concluded a decision with the maxim: "Id certum est quod re,ddi certum potest." The decision was adverse to the side represented by a strong-minded but utterly illiterate practitioner who sometimes tarried at the wine-cup with the usual consequences to his eyes. He said in protest: "Juclge, I think it was bad enough to lose my case. I never expected to be called a red-eyed possum."

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It is quite an amusing paradox that Judge Nisbet with all his splendid literary accomplishments never learned to spell; and to the extent of amending his orthography he gave the Supreme Court reporter plenary powers for revising his judicial decisions. He wrote the ordinance of secession, but except by the luckiest accident he was unable to spell correctly the word which separated Geor gia from the Union, and an intimate friend of the great jurist says that he has seen one of Judge Nisbet's letters in which the word secession was spelled in three different ways, and he rather leaves the impression that all three were wrong.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
Two Narrowly Averted Duels*
T HE field of honor during the pre-revolutionary and early commonwealth days of Georgia was the favorite appellate court with public men in this State for the final adjudication of angry issues and the venerable authority which was cited before this high tribunal was the code duello, whose hoary margins were annotated in red with precedents which extended beyond the time of the Norman Conquest and reached to the armory of Tubal Cain.
But the practice of crossing swords and leveling pistols over the deadline with seconds standing near by and medical experts dancing attendance has long since de clined in popularity, with the enactment of statutory measures seeking to suppress this kind of litigation. Two narrowly-averted duels which involved the lives of four of the most distinguished men which this State has ever produced has probably helped to crystallize the sentiment which to-day sternly forbids such dangerous combats. The first grew out of the challenge which Alexander H. Stephens sent to Benjamin H. Hill several years before the war, while the second rose out of the message which Joseph E. Brown received from Robert Toombs soon after the days of reconstruction in Georgia.
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Alexander H. Stephens was far from being an athlete in muscular build; but in spite of the physical weakness that kept him from weighing much more than ninety-six pounds which was his weight on entering Congress, with perhaps some few grains left over in the scales he was nevertheless unflinchingly courageous; and every ounce of flesh which gripped his spare bones to keep from falling evinced as true a pluck as Caesar ever displayed in Gaul.
This was clearly proven as far back as the fall of 1848, when Mr. Stephens had his celebrated encounter with Judge Francis H. Cone. Judge Cone had severely criti cized Mr. Stephens for something which he had said or done in Congress, it matters not exactly what, and among other choice epithets which he used in speaking of Mr. Ste phens one was "traitor." As soon as Mr. Stephens heard of the compliments which he was receiving from Judge Cone an exchange of correspondence followed without producing satisfactory results; but it chanced that the two men confronted each other rather unexpectedly at Dr. Thompson's hotel in Atlanta soon afterwards.
Difficulties almost immediately ensued. Mr. Stephens probably infuriated Judge Cone by returning his vitupera tive adjectives and thereupon Judge Cone, delving under neath his broadcloth, drew out a knife with which he made a leap toward Mr. Stephens. Now, Mr. Stephens was doubly at a disadvantage, not only because in avoirdupois he was a pigmy beside Judge Cone, but also because he was unarmed, except for an umbrella which shot out from his left elbow. With this somewhat unheroic weapon Mr. Stephens sought to parry the aim of Judge Cone, whose uplifted hand was about to descend upon him like

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the blood-thirsty steel of the guillotine. But he was soon overpowered and fell bleeding upon the floor.
"Retract!" cried the incensed jurist, who now bent over the body of his prostrate foe with his arm raised for another deadly stroke.
"Never!" replied Mr. Stephens, the blood trickling from his wounds, but the proud spirit still unconquered and the fearless eye full of calm defiance. Again the knife descended, severing an intercostal artery, but Mr. Stephens still refused to retract. He continued to grapple with his stout antagonist, growing momentarily weaker and weaker with the loss of blood until rescue came from some of the hotel guests, who now came upon the scene of encounter and separated the belligerents.
Mr. Stephens received prompt and skillful medical at tention, but he lay for weeks and weeks hovering between life and death. At last he arose from his sick bed and resumed amid the wildest enthusiasm the campaign for reelection to Congress which he had just commenced when the difficulty occurred. But he never fully regained the use of his right hand which was frightfully lacerated in the struggle, and his penmanship as well as his person bore the marks of the encounter as long as he lived. Shortly after this he ordered two dagon plows from the hardware store and received two dozen plows the next week; while he ordered from the grocer fifty pounds of ice one hot day in July, and received fifty pounds of rice.
In justice to Judge Cone who was one of the ablest lawyers at the Georgia bar, it may be said that he was completely upset by his violent anger and did not perhaps stop to think of the physical disparity between himself and Mr. Stephens. They had once been good friends in spite

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of professional tilts and rivalries; and later on in life the cordial relations of earlier years were resumed.

But this is only an incidental story. The circumstances which called forth the challenge which Mr. Stephens sent to Mr. Hill grew out of the joint debate which occurred between these two Georgians at Lexington during the presidential campaign of 1856. Mr. Stephens and Mr. Toombs had both left the old Whig party in the disruptive smoke of the new political issues, and had now come into the Democratic ranks; while Mr. Hill stood squarely upon the American platform.
With merciless oratory Mr. Hill pilloried Mr. Stephens at Lexington with being disloyal to the Whig party. Mr. Stephens in the course of his speech had spoken of the American candidate for President in rather uncomplimen tary terms, characterizing him as Judas, and Hill retorted by saying in bitter stricture of Mr. Stephens for using this harsh language concerning the American candidate, that while Judas did betray his Master for thirty pieces of silver he did not abuse his Master after he betrayed Him. Mr. Stephens felt the stinging effect of the retort, but he dismissed it at the time as only an eloquent rejoin der which he had called forth and which he need not fur ther regard. At Washington Mr. Hill scored Mr. Toombs in very much the same fashion. It was some thing unusual for the multitudes who had long witnessed the exciting polemics of the hustings to behold the specta cle of an unterrified youngster like Mr. Hill touching the breastplates of old veterans like Mr. Toombs and Mr. Stephens; and stories of Jack the Giant-Killer began to

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move up and down the State, perhaps exaggerating the facts to embellish the legends.
What Mr. Toombs thought does not appear, but Mr. Stephens was by no means pleased with the garbled ac counts which reached him within the next few days, and putting some vitriol into his inkbottle he wrote to Mr. Hill for information. Said he in substance: "I have been informed that in your speeches at Thomson and Augusta you declared that you had charged upon Mr. Toombs and myself that we had betrayed the Whig party and had acted toward it worse than Judas Iscariot, for though he betrayed his Master he did not abuse Him afterward; that you had thundered this in our ears and that we had cow ered under your charges. Please let me know if this be true, at least so far as I am concerned."
Without itemizing Mr. Hill's reply literally, he wrote in substance that he had repeated at Thomson and Augus ta exactly what had taken place at Lexington and Wash ington, no more and no less; that he met argument with argument, sarcasm with sarcasm and ridicule with ridi cule; that he disclaimed any personal ill'will and made shots only at those who built batteries.
Mr. Stephens was not satisfied with the terms in which this reply was couched, and several additional love-letters were exchanged in which Judas was the only one of the disciples whose name was mentioned; and finally Mr. Stephens, incensed and exasperated by what he consid ered an admission of the rumors with an effort to escape the consequences, issued the challenge to mortal combat.
Mr. Hill clearly foresaw what the result of the corre spondence was to be; but reflecting upon the matter de liberately he saw no reason why he should be drawn into

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hostile encounter with Mr. Stephens on the field of honor. He was an ambitious man on the vestibule of public life, and he coveted the opportunity of serving his country. He did not wish Mr. Stephens to take his life nor did he wish to take Mr. Stephens's. He was conscious of no feeling of malice or ill will; and he opposed duelling. But how could he avoid the imputation of dishonor if he declined the challenge ? It often requires more real cour age to decline than to embrace an encounter of this sort; and Mr. Hill displayed the higher type of courage in the answer which he returned. The language was so fearless that no one could doubt the courage which inspired it, and it unequivocally declined the challenge. But the sum mary of reasons closed with this paragraph: "While I have never at any time had an insult offered to me nor an aggression attempted, I shall yet know how to meet and repel any that may be offered by any gentleman who may presume upon this refusal."
Being unable to obtain satisfaction through this avenue of redress, Mr. Stephens published a card in which he set forth the result of the correspondence, and lambasted Mr. Hill with picturesque epithets; but Mr. Hill, who was also an adept in the noble art of writing epistles, came back with his own review of the controversy and wound up by saying that his last reason for declining the encounter was that he had a family and a conscience, while Mr. Stephens had neither.

The difficulty between General Toombs and Governor Brown dates back to the summer of 1872, when General Toombs intimated in language which amounted almost to
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open declaration that Governor Brown had been guilty of lobbying certain claims through the State Legislature. It should here be stated before proceeding further that Gov ernor Brown and General Toombs had been staunch friends since 1857, and that General Toombs had sus tained Governor Brown in the famous issue which the lat ter had made with the Confederate chief executive over the Conscript Act; but the two men had parted company under the bayonet regime of reconstruction, Governor Brown advocating submission and General Toombs preaching resistance.
Notwithstanding the bitterness with which Governor Bfown had been assailed on all sides for the stand which he had taken on the measures of reconstruction, he had quietly endured the ostracism until General Toombs stepped forward with this offensive implication; and then suddenly turning upon him with outraged scorn he de clared that if General Toombs meant to accuse him of lobbying he was an unscrupulous liar.
This led to an interview in which Governor Brown 'was waited upon by a friend of General Toombs, who told him that blood was visible on the moon, and asked him if he | was prepared for personal hostilities. Governor Brown replied by saying that he would reserve his answer until the challenge came.
But in the meantime, with all the grimness of his Scotch determination of purpose, he began to put his house in order and to arrange his private affairs so as to be prepared for whatever might happen. He was not pre paring for popgun tactics; and being an active member of the Baptist church, whose fair name he did not wish to involve in any criticism which might be pronounced upon

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himself individually for duelling, he withdrew temporarily from the ranks of this communion, feeling as he did so no doubt that he still belonged to the church militant and hoped to belong in the end to the church triumphant.
However, the challenge which Governor Brown had been led to expect never materialized. Controversial warfare was carried on in the public prints; but no invi tation to go blood-hunting was ever issued or received. Governor Brown eventually put his letter back into the Baptist church, and his calm white beard which had never been in the least ruffled by the late unpleasantness began to move once more along the solemn aisles as he pressed tranquilly and slowly forward to bow his head in rever ence at the shrine of his devotions.

Years ago Henry W. Grady drew an interesting con trast between General Toombs and Governor Brown, and this sketch can not be better rounded than by citing two or three paragraphs from this fascinating article:
"Joe Brown and Bob Toombs! Both illustrious and great both powerful and strong and yet at every point, and from every view, the perfect opposites of each other. Through two centuries have two strains of blood, twoconflicting lines of thought, two separate theories of so cial, religious and political life, been working out the two types of men, which have in our day flowered into the per fection of contrast vivid, thorough, pervasive. For seven generations the ancestors of Joe Brown have been aggressive rebels; for a longer time the Toombses have been dauntless and intolerant followers of the king and kingliness. At the seige of Londonderry the most re-

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markable fasting match beyond Tanner Margaret and James Brown, grandparents of the James Brown who came to America and was grandparent of Joe Brown, were within the walls starving and fighting for William and Mary; and I have no doubt there were hard-riding Toombses outside the walls charging in the name of the peevish and unhappy James. Certain it is that forty years before, the direct ancestors of General Toombs on the Toombs estate were hiding good King Charles in the oak at Boscobel, where, I have no doubt, the father and uncles of the Londonderry Brown, with cropped hair and severe mien, were proguing about the place with their pikes, searching every bush, in the name of Cromwell and the psalm-singers. From these initial points sprang the two strains of blood the one affluent, impetuous, prodigal; the other slow, resolute, forceful. From these ancestors came the two men the one superb, ruddy, fashioned with incomparable grace and fulness; the other pale, thoughtful, angular, stripped down to bone and sinew. From these opposing theories came the two types the one patrician, imperious, swift in action and brook ing no stay; the other democratic, sagacious, jealous of rights and submitting to no imposition. The one for the king; the other for the people. It does not matter that the elder Toombs was a rebel in Virginia against the fat George, for that revolt was kingly of itself, and the Vir ginian cavaliers went into it with lovelocks flying and care cast to the winds, feeling little of the patient spirit of James Brown, who, by his Carolina fireside, fashioned his remonstrance slowly, and at last put his life upon the issue.
"It is hard to say which has been the more successful

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of the two men. Neither has ever been beaten before the people. General Toombs has won his victories with the more ease. He has gone to power as a king goes to his throne, and no one has gainsaid him. Governor Brown has had to fight his way through. It has been a struggle all the time, and he has had to summon every resource to carry his point. Each has made unsurpassed records in his departments. As Senator, Toombs was not only in vincible, he was glorious. As Governor, Brown was not only invincible, he was wise. General Toombs's cam paigns have been unstudied and careless, and were won by his presence, his eloquence, his greatness. His can vas was always an ovation, his only caucusing was done on the hustings. With Governor Brown it was different. He planned his campaigns and then went faithfully through them. His victories were none the less sure be cause his canvass was more laborious. His nomination as Governor, while unexpected, was not accidental. It was the inevitable outcome of his young life, disciplined so marvelously, so full of thought, sagacity and judgment. If he had not been nominated Governor then, his time would have come at last, just as sure as cause produces result."
Discussing the threatened hostile meeting between Gen eral Toombs and Governor Brown in 1872, Mr. Grady indulges in some picturesque speculations. Says he:
"In the first place General Toombs made no preparation for the duel. He went along in his careless and kingly way, trusting presumably to luck on quick shot. Gov ernor Brown, on the contrary, made the most careful and deliberate preparation. Had the duel come off General Toombs would have fired with his usual magnificence

390 REMINISCHNCBS OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
and his usual disregard of rule. I do not mean to imply that he would not have hit Governor Brown; on the con trary, he might have perforated him in a dozen places at once. But one thing is sure Governor -Brown would have clasped his long white fingers around the pistol butt, adjusted it to his gray eye, and set his bullet within the eighth of an inch of the place he had selected. I should not be surprised if he drew a diagram of General Toombs, and marked off with square and compass the exact spot he wanted to hit."

ALFRED HOLT COLQUITT.

CHAPTER XXXVIIL
The Colquitts.
GENIUS is not always sparingly apportioned either to isolated individuals or to single generations. In the State of Delaware the senatorial toga until now has been literally an heirloom in the Bayard house hold; while the Salisburys, scarcely less favored, have seldom missed the roll-calls of the upper congressional arena. The Adams family of Massachusetts and the Harrison family of Indiana and Ohio originally from Vir ginia have each given the White House two presidential occupants, notwithstanding the omnipresent fact that American families are quite numerous and presidential honors somewhat scarce. The Beechers, of Connecticut and New York; the Lees, of the Old Dominion; and the Breckinridges and the Clays, of Kentucky, are also names which history has often reproduced. In Georgia the Lamars and the Jacksons and the Cobbs have been prominent in public life since the time of the Revolution; while the Lumpkins and the Crawfords have also been prolific in distinguished representatives. But the only instance on record where father and son have illustrated Georgia in the highest arena of the nation is furnished by the two Colquitts, Walter T. Colquitt, the elder, and Alfred H. Colquitt, the younger.
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Without an exception Walter T. Colquitt was perhaps the most versatile genius which this State has ever known. To quote Judge Richard H. Clark, he was Sheridan and Garrick and Spurgeon all united in one. He doubtless never thought of going upon the stage, but no man in American public life ever mastered more completely the dramatic art. He was potentially, if not technically, an actor. He often plead for his clients upon his knees, and so powerfully was he able to sway the emotions of men under the influence of his passionate appeals that jurors were frequently known to give audible responses. He could argue the law in the case with equal skill' before the court. On the hustings he had no superior at a time when Toombs and Stephens were beginning to electrify the State. In the upper branch of Congress he was the peer of any of the great party leaders. And in the pulpit of the Methodist church he preached like Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed Greek.
Judging solely from the traditions which have been handed down, Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin was probably the only other Georgian who possessed such musical powers of voice as Judge Colquitt. It seems that both men were marvelously gifted in this respect, being able to sound almost any note in the scale of harmony and to move at will from the softest murmurs of CEolian mel ody to the loudest peals of organ thunder. By an inter esting coincidence they were students together at Princeton College; and they were both profoundly religious. Dr. W. J. Scott says that while attending the courts of Georgia Judge Colquitt has often been known to make the most wonderful jury appeals in the court-room during the day and to preach the most wonderful gospel sermons

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at night. This alternating habit he continued even after he went to Washington; and, if he had chosen to do so, he could also have gone upon the stage and disputed stellar honors with any of the tragic heroes of the foot lights.
Such was the whirlwind intensity with which Judge Colquitt spoke when strongly moved that he needed an iron constitution to supply the physical power which his eloquent efforts demanded; but such an outfit he pos sessed. He was not of immense stature, measuring only five feet and ten inches in height and weighing less than one hundred and seventy-five pounds, but he possessed stout muscular fibers which were capable of great endur ance. He is said to have been one of the champion ath letes at Princeton. His hair bespoke the electrical energy which charged his whole system, and rose with an um brella effect like the Great Nullifier's as if to protect him from the peltings of his own cloudbursts. Originally raven black, his locks became iron gray as he verged upon middle life. His complexion was ruddy with health. His features, whether in animation or in repose, expressed de cision of character, great will power and firmness; and his capacity for using his features to advantage while speaking was such as to make his face the visual compan ion-piece of his voice, expressing with appropriate lights and shadows all the various phases of emotion. But compactly built as Judge Colquitt was he failed to reach the patriarchal age. Though blamelessly temperate in all his appetites, he was nevertheless so prodigal of his strength in speaking and so indifferent to his health gen erally that he collapsed in the meridian of his usefulness and died at the age of fifty-six.

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Judge Colquitt was born in Halifax county, Virginia, on December 27, 1799, but he came with his parents to Georgia in early childhood and received his elementary schooling in the famous academy taught by the Bemans at Mount Zion, where the original homestead was located. He was prevented by his father's illness from completing his studies at Princeton, and returning home before grad uation, he began to prepare himself at odd intervals for the legal profession. He afterwards read law under sys tematic instruction and with practical application in the office of Colonel Samuel Rockwell in Milledgeville, and was admitted to the bar in 1820. But he first located in Sparta, where he not only found waiting clients, but where he was straightway made brigadier-general of State troops by legislative election; and he was barely twenty-one years of age at this time. It is the military distinction which every young lawyer achieves on crossing the Rubicon of entrance examinations to become a colonel, but not one disciple of Blackstone out of a thousand ever gets to be a brigadier-general. Walter T. Colquitt was therefore a record-breaker from the start.
Though defeated for Congress on the Troup ticket in 1826, he was nevertheless victorious to the extent of re ducing the normal opposition majority of over two thou sand votes to a bare fractional overplus of only thirty-two votes, the distinguished future Governor of the State, Hon. Wilson Lumpkin, an elder brother of his old Princeton classmate, being his competitor. But before the year was out he was made judge of the newly created Chattahoochee circuit, serving the State in this capacity from 1826 to 1832, and acquiring the title which he con tinued to bear through life. Judge Colquitt made an

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efficient judge, able, fearless and honest. But he was temperamentally too restless to enjoy his judicial fetters. He sat upon the bench like a chained eagle.
In politics the elder Colquitt was an uncompromising champion of State rights; and on the Whig ticket he was elected to Congress in 1838, after having served for two terms in the State Senate. He was living at this time in Columbus. On the nomination of William Henry Harrison for the presidency Judge Colquitt resigned and sup ported Martin Van Buren; but his courageous course in putting principle above party was warmly approved and he shortly afterwards resumed his seat in Congress, which he retained until his elevation to the United States Senate in 1843 to succeed Alfred Cuthbert.
It is needless to say that Judge Colquitt enhanced his already established reputation by his senatorial achieve ments. He supported the Polk administration and ap proved the Mexican War; but opposed the Wilmot pro viso. He resigned his seat in 1848 and was succeeded by Herschel V. Johnson. This completed the political career of Walter T. Colquitt, who was an advocate, whether be fore the jury, on the hustings, in the legislative halls or from the sacred desk was never surpassed in all the South, if indeed he was ever equaled. It is not known exactly when he entered the ministry, but it was probably during his term of office as judge of the Chattahoochee circuit. He never joined the itinerant ranks, preferring to preach in connection with his other work as opportunities arose; but he preached with marvelous power of persuasion.
Judge Colquitt's mother was Miss Holt. She belonged to.the numerous household of this name from which such representative members have sprung as Judge William W.

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Holt, of Augusta; Judge Thaddeus G. Holt and Gen eral William S. Holt, of Macon; Hon. Hines Holt, of Columbus, and Mrs. Judge N. L. Hutchins, of Lawrenceville, mother of the late Judge Hutchins. Judge Colquitt was thrice married. His first wife was Nancy H., daughter of Joseph Lane, of Newton, who bore him six children, including Alfred H. Colquitt, majorrgeneral, United States Senator and Governor, and Peyton H. Colquitt, who, whilst colonel of the Forty-sixth Georgia1, was killed at the battle of Chickamauga in 1863. His second wife, who died soon after her marriage, was Alphia B. Fauntleroy, an aunt of Dr. J. S. Todd, of At lanta. His third wife was Harriet W., daughter of Luke Ross, of Macon, and sister of John B. Ross, Macon's foremost merchant in ante-bellum days.
First a Whig and then a Democrat, Judge Colquitt was at all time supremely loyal to State rights. He died be-' fore the war-clouds commenced to gather; but had he lived during the stirring days of the sixties he would un doubtedly have employed his cyclonic eloquence in advo cating secession. It is easy to picture him in the conven tion of 1861, as Daniel Webster pictured John Adams in the Continental Congress of 1776, and saying something like this: "In the beginning the South aimed not at inde pendence. But times have changed. The Constitution has been violated. The States have been wronged. And, sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote."
Intellectually the peer of the elder was the younger Colquitt; but he labored during the earlier part of his career

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under the somewhat embarrassing handicap of being the son of an illustrious sire. Human nature is prone to sus pect, at least until the contrary is proven, that men who have noted fathers are indebted less to their own efforts than to their family influence for whatever success they may happen to attain; but the younger Colquitt was not long in convincing the skeptical public that whatever pat rimonial advantages he might have derived from the Col quitt name were only initial and tentative; and that he possessed within himself the capability of requiting with good interest whatever help he might have received from his ancestors.
The most striking similarity between the two Colquitts lay in the adroitness with which they were both able to manage political campaigns and in the peculiar bent of mind which induced them both, without relinquishing the claims of public life, to serve the altars of religion. If Al fred H. Colquitt lacked the dynamic intensity of eloquence which characterized his father, he nevertheless combined in an equal degree the elements of mastery. Whether on the hustings or in the pulpit, he possessed the power of speech which enabled him to sway the multitudes and he also possessed the consummate skill which enabled him to organize victory out of what seemed to be imminent de feat. This latter characteristic was strikingly attested not only in the battle of Olustee, but in the race which he made for reelection as Gove'rnor.
In personal appearance Alfred H. Colquitt portrayed much of the strength which he embodied in character. His features were distinctly and strongly marked; and his nose and eyes especially indicated the abode of power. His hair was inclined to resemble his father's, but instead

398 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
of spreading out over his head and drifting around his ear-tops like an overhanging willow, it ran back from his forehead with undulating effects and fell in rich clusters behind. He was not more stoutly built than his father, but he stood perhaps two inches taller; and, being more conservative of his vital forces, he lived fourteen years longer, reaching the scriptural limit of threescore years and ten.
Perhaps the only respect in which the elder surpassed the younger Colquitt was in what may be termed the dra matic power of speech. Alfred H. Colquitt was an orator, but he never excited the envy of cyclones as his father did, and he lacked the same wizard spell of musical utterance. But he possessed deep convictions and fertile resources; and summing up the achievements of his career he not only reproduced his father's senatorial and pulpit honors, but he became an illustrious soldier in the Southern army and an honored chief executive of Georgia.
Alfred Holt Colquitt was born in Walton county, Geor gia, on April 20, 1824, his father having moved to Wal ton county from Sparta shortly after commencing the practice of law. With an intellectual aptitude which made his youth, at least to thoughtful observers, an index of something unusual, the younger Colquitt graduated from Princeton in 1844 among the leaders of his class. He immediately began the study of law in Columbus, and was admitted to the bar in 1845, tut tne instincts of the soldier at this turbulent season proved stronger than the incentives of the barrister; and the Mexican War, which the elder Colquitt had advocated in the Senate, having

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already commenced, the younger Colquitt hastily donned uniform and saber and began military operations as staff major along the Rio Grande.
Returning home with victorious prestige, he success fully resumed the practice of law, and in 1848 married his first wife, Miss Dorothy Tarver, daughter of General Tarver, of Twiggs county, who, by an interesting coin cidence was the stepbrother of Walter T. Colquitt, the latter's widowed mother having remarried. Soon after making this happy alliance the younger Colquitt, without abandoning his professional activities, took up the collat eral occupation of farming in aker county, in Southwest Georgia. The typical Southerner of ante-bellum days was not, strictly speaking, at home unless surrounded by extensive acres and served by numerous slaves; and the plantation home of Alfred H. Colquitt in the Georgia wire-grass was an ideal picture of what the South was in the old feudal times.
Entering politics in 1849 as Assistant Secretary of the State Senate, he met for the first time an interesting per sonality to whom he was peculiarly attracted from the start, and with whom he was.destined to be closely asso ciated in the coming years, Joseph E. Brown. Some idea ., of the keen powers of discernment which the sharp-witted young scribe possessed is implied in the fact that the first prophecy ever made concerning the Cherokee Senator was made by Alfred H. Colquitt.
1 Less than twenty-five years of age at this time, young Colquitt immediately began to develop into one of the best political campaigners in Georgia eloquent of speech and resourceful in expedients. In 1855 he found him self in the race for Congress, and he planned the cam-

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paign so adroitly that in spite of the opposition strength in the district, he overwhelmingly defeated the incum bent, James Johnson, who was afterwards Provisional Governor during reconstruction. But he was ably assist ed in his campaign maneuverings by an eloquent young lieutenant, who continued to be his fast friend and sup porter throughout life, the gallant Colonel Tom C. How ard, one of Georgia's truest and best public officials.
Walter T. Colquitt's departure from earthly scenes was coincident almost with his son's election to Congress, but he had the comforting satisfaction of knowing that while his own life was prematurely closing another life was just beginning which promised to keep alive the hilltop fires which he had kindled.
After completing his congressional service, Alfred H. Colquitt entered the State Legislature for the purpose of serving Georgia at an important crisis in home affairs. In the deplorable Democratic division of 1860 he was on the Breckinridge and Lane electoral ticket, and in the State convention of 1861 he strongly advocated secession. Entering the Confederate army as captain of infantry, he advanced step by step untH his military promotions cul minated in the stars of the major-generalship. In the memorable Florida campaign he won enduring honors as , "the hero of Olustee."
The story of how General Colquitt plucked victory from the very jaws of defeat, during the Florida cam paign, may be told in few syllables. The supplies of am munition having almost completely given out, orders were issued to cease firing for the present; and, the enemy

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being directly in front, surrender seemed to be inevi table. But, while powder and shot were about exhausted, the resources of the commanding general were not; and the idea of capitulating had never entered the rear of his head. He hastily dispatched orders for ammunition to the nearest base of supplies, and while waiting for the wagons to arrive, he parceled out what still remained to those in front, giving them instructions to make as much noise as possible. This clever ruse succeeded. No imme diate advance was made by the enemy and sufficient time elapsed during the lull in the engagement to allow the wagons to arrive with fresh supplies. Hostilities were re sumed only to result in disaster to the Federal troops; and the tide of invasion into Florida was successfully re pulsed. This decisive engagement, fought in the pine thickets, is known as the battle of Ocean Pond or Olustee.
Among the officers of the Northern army who partici pated in this engagement was General Joseph R. Hawley, with whom General Colquitt afterwards served in the United States Senate. The two men became fast friends. Through General Colquitt's influence General Hawley, who was then Governor of Connecticut, came to Georgia during the Cotton Exposition of 1881, and addressed the people at the fair-grounds; and General Colquitt being then Governor of this State, entertained him at the execu tive mansion. It was singular how the lives of the two men had run in parallel lines: commanding officers of opposing armies during the Florida campaign, now Gov ernors of great commonwealths, and soon to occupy seats across the aisle from each other in the highest arena of the nation.
Quite naturally the conversation during this visit

402 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
turned upon the Florida campaign, and General Hawley took occasion to ask why the Confederate forces had ceased firing during the battle, since this action had cre ated the presumption that some change of front was contemplated. Smiling, Governor Colquitt then let the cat out of the bag and General Hawley was enabled to solve for the first time the riddle which had twisted his eyebrows so long. He almost felt like renewing hostili ties, but he good-naturedly observed that if he had known as much in 1864 as ne knew then the god of battles might have rendered an altogether different decision.
Early in the seventies General Colquitt was made presi dent of the State Agricultural Society, and this position of prominence greatly increased the prestige with which he had emerged from the war; and in 1876, having re ceived the Democratic nomination for Governor, he was duly elected for the term of four years. Toward the close of the term General John B. Gordon resigned his seat in the United States Senate, and Governor Colquitt imme diately appointed Joseph E. Brown as his successor. Governor Brown had affiliated with the Republicans dur ing the days of reconstruction, but he had taken this course from patriotic motives, and had subsequently re turned to the Democratic fold. Besides, the Democratic party in 1872 had virtually endorsed the stand which he had taken in 1868. Nevertheless the appointment pro voked the wildest storm of protest, and Governor Col quitt was most scathingly denounced. He had fully ex pected an outcry; but, having acted conscientiously, he had nothing to regret. There were various side issues in-

THE COLQUITTS.

403

volved in the campaign of opposition which was now waged upon Governor Colquitt, but this was the main grievance. However, the battle was fought and Governor Colquitt was not only endorsed by an overwhelming reelection, but his appointment of Governor Brown was subsequently ratified by the State Legislature.
Associating Governor Brown and Governor Colquitt together in this connection recalls an incident of the nom inating convention of 1857, when Governor Brown was first named for Governor of Georgia. It is not generally known that it was by an unexpected motion of Linton Stephens that Governor Colquitt failed to step into the gubernatorial shoes which were then fitted to the farmer boy of Gaddistown. The convention had been unable to decide between the rival candidates before the body, and in order to break the deadlock which had lasted for sev eral days, a committee was named to suggest a dark horse. Colonel I. W. Avery is authority for the incident. He says that after the ballots had been cast in the committee room Judge L,inton Stephens moved that Joseph E. Brown be declared the compromise man. The motion was in the nature of a substitute, and, being put, it was carried; but when the ballots were subsequently counted for curiosity it was found that the majority vote had been cast for Alfred H. Colquitt.
When Governor Colquitt was reelected in 1880, it was for the term of two years, the tenure of office having been shortened by the Legislature; but at the end of his ad ministration he was chosen for the full term of six years to succeed the lamented Benjamin H. Hill in the United States Senate, Hon. Pope Barrow, then of Clarke and afterwards from Chatham, being chosen for the unex-

404 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
pired term. In the august assemblage which the gifts of his illustrious father had adorned years before Alfred H. Colquitt became an influential leader, whose views upon public questions were held in the highest respect on both sides of the chamber. Reelected for another term in 1888* he continued to wear the senatorial toga until his death in 1894.
Despite his political responsibilities and obligations Senator Colquitt often found time to occupy the pulpit. He spoke with great power from the sacred desk, and re vived many of his father's golden accents. He was an eloquent advocate of temperance, and an ardent cham pion of Sunday-schools. Frequently on account of his strong convictions and his towering prestige he was called upon to preside over great religious assemblies; and he was even more widely known in the international realm of ethics than in the somewhat restricted sphere of politics.
Father and son, the Colquitts have both illustrated and honored Georgia beyond the measure separately allowed to most men; and without distinguishing invidiously between them Georgia will ever hold them both in her affection as Rome once held the Catos and England still holds the Pitts.

THOMAS E, WATSON AMONG HIS

CHAPTER XXXIX.
The Gubernatorial Convention of J880 and the Advent of Tom Watson.
B ESIDES ending in the schismatic rupture which gave the State two recommended Democratic can didates for Governor, the famous gubernatorial convention of 1880 incidentally evolved a bit of oratory which constituted the maiden address on the political stage of an eloquent young Georgian whom the fates had de creed was to become eventually one of the foremost trib unes of his time, Thomas E. Watson.
The future young statesman from McDuffie had al ready provoked the accents of prophecy by his electrical eloquence on less conspicuous platforms. Before leav ing Mercer University in the early seventies there were many wise seers who were able in large measure to fore cast his life's work from the rich table of contents fur nished by his undergraduate achievements. On the local stump and in the courtroom he had already commenced to gather his budding laurels, and now, with still another month to spend before reaching the age of twenty-four, he was about to become one of the central figures of the stormiest conventional scenes which the annals of Georgia had ever furnished, excepting alone the great debate over secession in 1860.
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406 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
It required an iron hand to wield the gavel success fully over such an excited assemblage and to hold within parliamentary check the discordant forces which were all too eagerly bent upon results to be overly careful about proprieties. But Colonel L. N. Trammell supplied the Cromwellian metal in the mold of Chesterfield; and, not withstanding Scilla and Charybdis, which threatened him on either side, he managed without provoking partisan demurrers to expedite the business of the convention with marvelous dispatch. This wayside compliment is due the able parliamentarian who held the gavel at this exciting moment in the history of the State.
There were five candidates before the convention for gubernatorial honors, Alfred H. Colquitt, Rufus E. Lester, Thomas Hardeman, Lucius J. Gartrell and Hiram Warner.'
Governor Colquitt was seeking reelection at the hands of the party which had honored him with the highest ex ecutive office in the State four years before; but unfor tunately an administration of unusual strength had been exposed to some censure on account of recent occurrences. The State's endorsement upon the bonds of the North eastern Railroad provoked the first violent criticism. This was followed by the sensational impeachment proceedings against certain State-house officials, those against the Comptroller-General resulting in conviction and out lawry and those against the State Treasurer ending in ac quittal.
Governor Colquitt was individually in no wise impli cated in the criminal charges which involved the State-'

GUBERNATORIAL CONVENTION OF 1880. 407
house officers, but his administration was nevertheless as sailed; and being under hostile fire from this quarter as well as on account of the Northeastern Railroad matter, from which it may be said in passing he had been fully exonerated, Governor Colquitt now sought the vindicat ing verdict of another election at the hands of the people.
But the catalogue of grievances was still incomplete, although four opposing candidates had already taken the field and opposition to Governor Colquitt was most deter mined. The crowning complaint against the chief execu tive came in the early summer months which preceded the assembling of the convention, when General John B. Gordon resigned his seat in the United States Senate and Governor Colquitt some few days thereafter named as his successor Joseph E. Brown.
Charges of corruption were now openly made without apologizing for rumors. Bargain and sale were terms frequently used during the campaign which followed. The watchword of the opposition was "Down with the ring!" But thousands who took no stock whatever in the cry of trade felt bitterly toward Governor Brown on account of his attitude during reconstruction, though time had large ly vindicated his views; and many who had previously come out for Colquitt now joined the opposing ranks.
To have made such an appointment on the eve of an election in which he was already seeking vindication re quired some other motive than the time-serving impulse of political policy; and, since the sifting processes of time have failed to reveal anything ulterior or hidden, it must .be credited as an act of courage by which it was evi dent that Governor Colquitt meant to be governed by his convictions even at the peril of his success.

408 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
All the opposing candidates were able and distinguished Georgians, who richly merited the support which they re ceived on the floor of the convention. Colonel Lester had been president of the State Senate and was afterwards to represent Georgia in Congress until his tragic death in 1906. General Gartrell was one of the foremost advo cates at the Georgia bar; and, besides winning honors on the field of battle, had served both in Federal and Con federate congresses. Colonel Hardeman had also served in the halls of national legislation and was one of the most beloved public men in Georgia. Judge Warner had from time to time been associated with the Supreme bench of the State since the earliest organization of the court, and had lately assumed the unsullied ermine of the Chief Justice. He was an exemplary man as well as an able judicial officer.
But the fight was pentagonal only with respect to the number of candidates; and the field of battle instead of representing five hostile camps, each of which was inde pendently and jealously battling for victory, resolved itself broadly into the Colquitt forces on the one side and the anti-Colquitt forces on the other.
Some of the ablest men in the State were among the delegates to this convention. Patrick Walsh, of Augusta, was in command of the Colquitt forces. He was ably supported by such lieutenants as General P. M. B. Young, Judge John D. Stewart and Captain, afterwards Judge, William T. Newman. Colonel Clifford Anderson, of Macon, represented the interests of Colonel Hardeman. Thomas E. Watson and Thomas M. Norwood supported Colonel Lester. Walter R. Brown championed General Gartrell. Among the various other prominent delegates

GUBERNATORIAL CONVENTION OP 1880. 409
were F. G. DuBignon, H. H. Carlton, D. A. Vason, W. M. Lowry, L. F. Livingston, W. A. Hawkins, W. J. Northen, C. J. Wellborn, F. H. Colley, S. G. McLendon, D. B. Harrell and T. M. Peeples.
On the evening before the convention assembled the various factions held caucuses, and the Colquitt forces, in order to prevent the possibility of a schism as well as to secure the moral advantage arising from such a course, adopted the two-thirds rule. Though largely in the lead, the Colquitt forces could hardly count upon success with out accessions from the opposing camps; but it was thought that as the balloting proceeded enough votes to elect could be gained from those who were willing to ac quiesce in the will of the majority sentiment of the State rather than produce division in the Democratic ranks.
The State convention met on the ninth of June, and having been duly organized, nominations were made and balloting commenced. On the first ballot the vote stood, eliminating the fractions, Colquitt, two hundred and nine; Lester, fifty-eight; Hardeman, fifty-five; Gartrell, sev enteen, and Warner, eleven. Nine separate times was the roll of counties called on the first day of the convention; but no material variations were made in the figures. This condition of things prevailed from Wednesday until Fri day. The expected deadlock had grimly materialized with little prospect of any immediate break. Enthusiastic orators on both sides had intimated that they expected to hold out, if necessary, until they had become subjects for funeral obsequies.
But the two-thirds rule was not the only rivet of iron

410 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
which barred the proceedings. Judge D. A. Vason, in order to check the unexpected entrance of dark horses, had introduced the resolution, which received adoption, that no man should be voted for who had not first been nominated, and that no man should be nominated who had not first been consulted. Mr. Watson, who even at this early day espoused the. fundamental Democratic princi ples of the freest field and the fairest play, stoutly op posed the resolution which he characterized as "gag law," and Judge Harrell, of Webster, also took the same ground; but this adroit move having been made by the Colquitt faction in the interest of the majority candidate, the resolution prevailed.
However, patience had not only dwindled since the time of Job, but had perceptibly diminished since the assem bling of the State convention. The delegates were at heavy expense in treating themselves to the luxury of political lockjaw. Moreover the great majority of the delegates were poor men whose pocketbooks and back bones were by no means equally yoked in supplying pro visions for the seige. The spirit of discontent began to pace the sentinel rounds of the various camps.
On Friday Dr. H. H. Carlton, of Athens, bespoke the feeling of restlessness by shrewdly proposing that a com mittee of two from each of the five parties at interest be appointed to name a compromise candidate. But the Col quitt forces were too well trained in the noble science of strategics to overlook the preponderating advantage which such a basis of sentiment offered the anti-Colquitt forces, by giving the minority candidates four-fifths and

GUBERNATORIAL CONVENTION OP 1880. 411
the majority candidate only one-fifth of the representa tion. This happy solution of the problem would have finished Governor Colquitt before supper. But Mr. Walsh arose with unruffled front and calm address and told Dr. Carlton that the Colquitt men had come to the State convention for the purpose of declaring the will of the people of Georgia as voiced already in the majority senti ment expressed at the polls, and that the anti-Colquitt men were violating the traditions of the party in refusing to acquiesce in the popular verdict. He criticised the mi nority faction for making it impossible to nominate Gov ernor Colquitt under the two-thirds rule, and for adopting tactics which were calculated to produce Democratic dis cords and divisions. But he declared by way of parting salutation that the majority forces intended to nominate Alfred H. Colquitt for Governor if it took until Christ mas.
The gage of battle which the gallant Irishman from Richmond threw down at the feet of the opposition was promptly seized by the eloquent young statesman from McDuffie, whose war feathers were now bristling in all directions and whose tomahawk was fairly thirsting for blood. But before launching his arrows he offered a reso lution which was calculated to meet the objections to Dr. Carlton's proposed plan by moving that twelve delegates be appointed, six Colquitt and six anti-Colquitt, to sug gest a compromise candidate. However, the majority forces insisted that justice lay not so much in equal as in proportionate representation, and that equal numbers on the committee offered no attractions to the party which

412 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
counted predominating numbers upon the floor. More over, they insisted that they were in Atlanta for the pur pose of nominating Colquitt.
Mr. Watson's motion was lost, but his speech was heard amid the wildest reign of excitement. Boyish in face and figure he recalled the dramatic appearance of Mr. Stephens in the Georgia Legislature in 1836. It was only for the briefest period that he occupied the floor, but lie thrilled the vast assemblage; and before his speech was concluded every one realized that another tribune had arisen. He spoke with rare good humor as well as with intense fire, and he voiced his protest with an utterance whose clear ring throughout the hall seemed almost to revive the accents of the Swedish nightingale.
"Sir," exclaimed he, "I am tired of hearing the cry of generosity when I see no generosity. I am tired of the cry of harmony when I see no harmony. I have not come here to be fattened on chaff or filled with taffy. [Laugh ter.] You might as well attempt to gain flesh on corncob soup in January." [Great laughter and applause.]
"Mr. Chairman, I have said, and I say now, that I am here with no bitterness of partisan rancor. I have fought this much-named gentleman, A. H. Colquitt. I have, fought him honestly. I have advocated Rufus Lester. I have advocated him honestly. But high and serene above them both, above my opposition to Colquitt, above my support of Lester, rises my devotion to Georgia, like the tranquil star which burns and gleams beyond the reach of the drifting clouds. [Cheers.]
"Sir, the gentleman's position means that we must take Colquitt or the party will be disrupted. Sir, if it must come, let it come. We love the party, honor it, are de-

GUBERNATORIAL CONVENTION OF 1880. 413
voted to it, but we will not yield when the gentleman's speech has made it a loss of self-respect to surrender.
"If they will split this convention we will be here to the end. [Applause.] If they will sink the ship we will re main in her shadow to the last. [Applause.] We would deprecate it. We would deplore it. But, if she can be saved only on terms so unmanly as these, then
"Nail to the mast her holy flag; Set every threadbare sail
And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale."
[Great applause.]
This little speech was an exclamation point in the pro ceedings of the State convention. Moreover, it was an embryonic outburst of the Watsonian genius and it clearly revealed what the brainy young tribune was to become in the future years when on an even broader scale he was to pose as the undaunted leader of militant minorities. There was about the speech not only an eloquent ring which predicted Watson the Democratic Congressman, but also an independent note which foreshadowed Watson the Populist candidate, first for Vice-President, and af terwards for President of the United States. But under neath the rhetorical robings of this impromptu effort there was cradled the germ of another flower. Tom Watson possessed the peculiar sort of genius which probes into the heart of truth. He studied the philosophy of the Democratic idea. He was willing to lead the hosts whenever called upon to do so, but he preferred instead of reaching for the plums to dig quietly at the roots of the old tree. He began to follow the streams to the fountain

414 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
source among the historic hills, to study the evolutions of popular sovereignty, to trace the gradual uprise of the masses from the dust of servility and degradation under the despotic heel; and this investigating instinct con tained the germ of those magnificent works which have enriched the Napoleonic and the Jeffersonian literatures. Thrice great was the eloquent young tribune destined to become; great in law, great in politics and great in litera ture.
But the balloting continued without bringing the con vention any nearer the coveted goal. Once or twice an effort was made by some restless delegate to spring some other name, but the issue between Colquitt and anti-Colquitt was cast in terms of unyielding iron, and the sup porters of the Governor were unwilling to listen to the suggestion of any other name. Besides partaking of the nature of defeat, the very thought of which was galling to the pride of the dominant majority, it was disloyal to the Governor whose assailed position made it impossible for him to retire in honor under fire from the enemy's guns.
At last when the truth became irresistibly evident that neither side was willing to yield the fight, and that any nomination under the two-thirds rule was virtually im possible on the existing line of battle, Mr. Walsh finally moved that, after three more ballots had been cast, the candidate receiving the largest vote be declared the can didate recommended by the majority ranks of the con vention to the people of Georgia. The motion was car ried and the roll-call of counties was resumed; but before

GUBERNATORIAL CONVENTION OF 1880. 415
the last ballot was finished Colonel Clifford Anderson, of Bibb, after conferring with the gallant chief whose cause he represented, offered upon the altar of reconcilia tion and peace, two and two-thirds votes for Colquitt, while Judge Willis, of Talbot, shifted three additional op position votes in the same generous spirit to Colquitt, but the final result when tabulated showed that fourteen votes were still lacking. Nevertheless under the terms of the motion offered by Mr. Walsh, Governor Colquitt was the candidate recommended by the majority faction to the suffrages of the State.
Efforts were made during the proceedings to stampede the convention into choosing some other candidate, and among the favorite sons of Georgia whose names were sprung were Thomas G. Lawson and Alexander H. Ste phens; but the convention was not to be thrown into panic even by the accents of the most illustrious patro. nymics. The minority being unwilling to acquiesce in the judgment which the majority had rendered, met in ad journed session and, after mature deliberation, recom mended to the people of Georgia as the candidate of the minority faction of the convention the Hon. Thomas M. Norwood, of Chatham. Judge Norwood had ably rep resented Georgia in the United States Senate and was an ideal embodiment of what is known as the scholar in politics, cultured, dignified and reserved. But he labored ^under the disadvantage of hailing from a community which was already represented in the senatorial contest by General Alexander R. Lawton, and consequently politi cal complications resulted.
Two bitter factions now divided the Democracy of Georgia into hostile camps. Some of the newspapers of

416 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the State which had opposed Governor Colquitt before the convention now supported him; but he had from the start most of the editorial batteries, including the Savan nah News, which remained within the Colquitt lines even after Judge Norwood entered the race. But feudal as was the bitterness between the warring elements, the schism was healed in the fall election which resulted in
i the overwhelming success of Governor Colquitt; while
the Legislature added the final touch of endorsement by choosing Joseph E. Brown to succeed himself in the United States Senate.

HENRY WOODFIN GRADY

CHAPTER XL.

When Grady's Tide Turned.

T HE decisive moments of life are frequently asso ciated with the most trivial and commonplace events. Coming unmarked by aught to distin

guish them, it is not until the choice which they necessitate

has been irrevocably made that the far-reaching conse

quences which they involve become apparent. Whatever

may have put it into the head of Henry W. Grady in the

spring of 1876 to try his fortunes in New York instead

of accepting an offer of editorial work in Wilmington,

North Carolina, it is certain that the change of mind

which the young editor experienced almost at the last

moment colored the current and changed the channel of

his whole subsequent career in journalism. Nor did the

purchase of that ticket in the Atlanta depot mean less to

the American people than it meant to the obscure knight

of the pen who now hastily boarded the northbound train.

Success in life is oftimes only the culminating apex of

repeated disappointments and failures; and brilliant as

the career of Mr. Grady was to be in newspaperdom it

was literally grounded upon financial disasters. One re

verse followed another until he found himself reduced

from comparative wealth to relative want. But fortune

must first test her favorites; and whenever great mis-

14r

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418 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
sions are involved, the discipline of adversity is all the more essential. The hardships through which Mr. Grady struggled into one of the most exalted seats of the mighty were only the sharp incisions of the chisel: the rough seas which help to make the skillful mariner; the adverse winds which serve to rivet the forest oak.
Reared in the clover of prosperous circumstances Mr. Grady in early life had known few ungratified wants. His father was wealthy, his mother indulgent and sym pathetic, and his boyhood's home an ideal old Southern mansion, built on the most substantial pattern and fur nished in the most luxuriant style of the ante-bellum days. From both sides of the house he had inherited strong mental and moral traits. Through his mother he was connected with some of the best families of Georgia, among them the Cobbs, the Bennings, the Gartrells and the Moores; and through his father who came from the Tar Heel State, he was related to the sturdy stock of North Carolina. But his own mettle needed to be tried.
Losing his father at Petersburg, Virginia, during the Civil War, Mr. Grady keenly felt the shock of the prema ture and tragic bereavement, but he was not compelled to modify his plans. Captain Grady had left an estate whose revenues were ample. Moreover, if the future journalist had lost one upon whose wise counsels he might have leaned, he had gained in his father's heroic death an inspiration which he would otherwise have lacked; and he had fortunately still left one upon whose lap he had pillowed his earliest cares and from whose lips he had re ceived his first lessons. Nor did he ever fail in any of his great efforts before the public to lay the tribute of his mature eloquence upon the same maternal altar at which he had bent his infant knee.

WHEN GRADY'S TIDE TURNED.

419

Mr. Grady began his collegiate education at the Uni versity of Georgia, and after leaving the institution of his home town of Athens he completed his studies at the Uni versity of Virginia. He does not seem to have made heavy drafts upon the midnight oil, at least in bending over dull text-books, but he fairly appropriated the whole rich field of English literature from Chaucer and Spencer to Thackeray and Dickens. Too imaginative and restless for studious acquisitions he was willing for other mem bers of the class to have the honors. But he reserved for himself the distinction of being class orator; and he gave his brilliant fancy free play when he stood up at com mencement to forecast his future laurels. Generous with his pocket-money he was more intent upon banqueting his fellow students than on feasting at the banquet which his alma mater provided; and oyster suppers at young Grady's expense were by no means as rare as days in June.
An interesting series of letters which he had written for The Constitution while on one of the annual excursions of the Georgia Press Association, in which he happened to be included by some chance, proved to be the entering wedge of his newspaper career; and soon after leaving college he made his editorial debut in Rome. He at first identified himself with an old-established paper of the town, the Rome Courier, but being denied the privilege of exposing the ring which he found to be in control of local affairs he resigned his editorial desk; and, possess ing means as well as opinions of his own, he purchased the two rival papers, which he combined into one, the
Rome Commercial.
Though he made the columns of the new paper scintil-

420 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
late, his ambitious enterprise proved rather more exhaust ing than replenishing to his purse, and he finally decided to abandon the field. He then came to Atlanta, where he embarked what remained of his fortune in The Herald. But little attention seems to have been given the business end of the venture, and ably as the paper was edited sus pension soon became inevitable. The young journalist was now forced to begin life anew without a dollar in the bank, but he was not disposed to magnify his misfortunes by 'brooding under the juniper tree.
It was while he was planning how he could best re trieve the disaster which had overtaken him that the offer came from Wilmington, and he was just on the eve of clinching the offer when the voice of destiny, speaking through an imspirational mood, arrested his decision; and instead of going to Wilmington he started to New York.
Though it was somewhat in the adventurous spirit of the knight-errant that he had set out for Gotham, success was much nearer at hand than he had anticipated, and when he reached the metropolis he found it actually star ing him in the face. This is the account which Mr. Grady j himself gives of the trip whose effect upon his whole future career proved so decisive:
"After forcing down my unrelished breakfast on the morning of my arrival in New York I went out on the sidewalk in front of the Astor House and gave a boot black twenty-five cents, one-fifth of which was to pay for shining my shoes and the balance was a fee for the privi lege of talking to him. I felt that I would die if I did not talk to somebody.

WHEN GRADY'S TIDE TURNED.

421

"Having stimulated myself at that doubtful fountain of sympathy, I went across to The Herald office, and the managing editor was good enough to admit me to his sanctum. It happened that just at that time several of the Southern States were holding constitutional conventions.
"The Herald manager asked me if I knew anything about politics. I replied that I knew very little about any thing else. 'Well, then/ said he, 'sit at this desk and write me an article on State conventions in the South.' With these words he tossed me a pad and left me alone in the room. When my taskmaster returned, I had finished the article and was leaning back in my chair with my feet on the desk. 'Why, Mr. Grady, what is the matter?' asked the managing editor. 'Nothing,' I replied, 'except that I am through.' 'Very well,' he said, 'leave your copy on the desk, and if it amounts to anything, I will let you hear from me. Where are you stopping?' I replied, 'At the Astor House.'
"Early next morning, before getting out of bed I rang for a bellboy and ordered The Herald. I actually had not strength enough to get up and dress myself until I could see whether or not my article had been used. I opened The Herald with trembling hand, and when I saw that 'State Conventions in the South' was on the editorial page I fell back on the bed, buried my face in the pillow and cried like a child. When I went back to The Herald of fice that day, the managing editor received me cordially and said: 'You can go back to Georgia, Mr. Grady, and consider yourself in the employ of The Herald'"

Exulting over his commission as Southern correspond ent of the New York Herald, Mr. Grady lost no time in

422 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

returning to Atlanta to take up his work. On his arrival

he found that another stroke of good luck awaited him.

On the staff of The Constitution an editorial vacancy had

occurred while Mr. Grady was in New York; and Cap

tain Evan P. Howell, who was then managing editor of

the paper, being led to believe that Mr. Grady was just

the man to fill this vacancy, offered him the place.

Since there was no clash between his duties as editor

and his duties as correspondent, but rather perfect adjust

ment and mutual helpfulness, he accepted the proffered;

editorial desk and entered upon his brilliant career of use

fulness in the service of this great Southern newspaper. ]

If this marked an eventful day in the life of the young !

journalist, whose long lane had now surely commenced to.

turn, it also marked an equally important day in the life

of The Constitution; for the fortunes of the young daily,

were materially enhanced from the moment when Captain

Howell secured the talismanic genius of Henry W. Grady,

who was henceforth to be identified with The Constitution

so completely that the two could never be disassociated in

the public eye.

:

In 1880 Mr. Grady purchased an interest in the paper; l

and having been charged with the details of management ;*

under the plan of reorganization by which Captain How-1

ell became editor-in-chief and Mr. Grady managing editor, |

he gave up his commission as correspondent for the New|

York paper and devoted his entire time to the interests of |

The Constitution.

' '*

With masterful generalship Mr. Grady assumed the

new responsibilities and lost no time in convincing the

community that he was as skillful in directing the com

plicated machinery of an immense newspaper plant as he

was in dashing off brilliant editorial paragraphs.

WHEN GRADY'S TIDE, TURNED.

423

Under his able manipulation the subscription lists rap idly swelled and the revenues steadily increased. He mul tiplied the number of correspondents until nearly every militia district in the State was satisfactorily covered by ample news-gathering facilities; and then he sought by conference with railway officials to secure such an ar rangement of schedules as would enable him to put the paper in remote parts of the State before the sun was well up, thereby successfully meeting local competition and giving long-distance readers fresh news with which to heighten the flavor of late breakfast.
Mr. Grady also featurized the achievement of securing prompt election returns; and by means of fresh relays of horses in those counties of the State in which there were no railway or telegraphic facilities he was enabled to tabu late the results with amazing accuracy of detail before the darkness which closed upon the polls gave way to the light of succeeding dawn.
But the greatest wonder of his Napoleonic art lay in his ability to calculate the moment of political occurrences long before they happened. Oftimes he precipitated by his own hidden operations those events which he appeared to forecast with such astounding exactitude; but, even when he took no preliminary part in bringing them about, ; his detective faculties for things political were so acute that he found no difficulty in anticipating them sufficiently well in advance to have alert reporters on the field ready to handle the scoop.
These are some of the qualities which gave Mr. Grady the place preeminent among Southern journalists for able executive management as well as for brilliant , editorial prose and made him so potential an influence in

424 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
political affairs both State and national. He could have had almost any office in the gift of the people; but was content to remain a Warwick; a Warwick, however, who fused the virtues without the faults of the king-maker. The tide in his affairs which on the ebb had borne him so far out to sea had now at last on the return landed him high and dry upon the hills.
Mr. Grady's mission was distinctly twofold. In the first place he sought to develop the material resources of his own immediate section of the country, to restore the waste-places and to retrieve along commercial and indus trial lines of attack the reverses which had overtaken Confederate arms. In the second place he sought to heal the wounds engendered by the great civil conflict and to establish kindlier relationships between the North and the ,| South. The duties of managing editor of the South's great newspaper had scarcely devolved upon him before this double purpose began to assume definite shape in the jj mind of the young journalist.
It was surely an unhappy spectacle upon which he! looked when, on completing his college education, he be^ held the stricken South, bleeding and prostrate. Not only had the accumulations of years been swept away in the ] overthrow of the system of slave labor, but heavy waiM debts had been entailed. Most of the battles of the watfj had been fought on Southern soil and desolation watf everywhere grimly in evidence. Besides, the flower oil Southern chivalry had been plucked by the mailed hand! of Mars, and much of the strength which was needed fo^ coping with the bitter ordeal had been subtracted from the once lusty arteries of the now enfeebled Southland.

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In the retrospective light which to-day falls upon the realized ideals of the great orator-journalist the providen tial agencies which were employed in shaping the career of Henry W. Grady, and which were overlooked at the time in the confusion of passing events, have at last be come fully apparent. It was no mere blind or idle chance which led him to adopt journalism as his life's profession. It was rather a decree of the same mysterious power which builds for the planet an imperial highway among the stars. His wonderful vocabulary, his brilliant imagination, his invincible optimism, his infinite and fertile resources of mind all tended to impel him toward the journalistic pen. And in no other sphere of activity could he have rendered more effective service to the cause of Southern rehabili tation. It is furthermore an incident not wholly unrelated to the great errand of fraternity which carried him years later to New England that while an undergraduate stui dent at the University of Georgia he was instrumental in organizing the local chapter of the Chi Phi brotherhood; \ and his alma mater has always loved to think that, in laying upon'his lips the music of her mystic syllables, she : has helped to sweeten the atmosphere of the whole repub; lie with the perfume of her shrine.
[ Nor is it strange that, after entering journalism, he [ should ere long have found himself in the metropolis I, where the industrial forces were already focalized and | centered and where the fraternal spirit was beginning to | adjust relations between once hostile foes. For, it was | soon to be evident that if the conflagration which General | Shefman had kindled upon the hills of Georgia's capital | city furnished the funeral pyres on which the old South \ was to perish it also supplied the Phoenix-wings on which

426 RHMINISCHNCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the New South was to rise, and it was simply the com pelling force of destiny which brought the young oratorjournalist to Atlanta: "that splendid sequel which the New South was writing to the Appomattox of the old."
But even more effective than these immediate circum stances in the discipline which strengthened and equipped the evangel of the New South for his great mission were two simple and obscure factors which the busy world may have overlooked, but which the candid philosopher must recognize and respect: his father's sword, which pointed silently to Petersburg, and his mother's faith, which looked unfalteringly to heaven.

CHAPTER XLL
Grady as an Upbuilder*
S AMUEL ROGERS, who wrote "The Pleasures of Memory," was a banker as well as a poet. He was equally at home whether attending the busi ness sessions of the Board of Trade or the literary ban quets of the Authors' Guild; and for his prestige among the shrewd financiers of Threadneedle street no less than for his favor with the Muses, he was the toast of all Lon don. But practical business ideas and brilliant imagina tive powers so rarely travel the same road or wear the same livery that Mr. Grady found it rather difficult, in the earlier stages of his career, to convince even his most partial friends that these widely divergent characteristics were actually harmonized and harnessed in his own splen did outfit.
Indeed, while cordially admiring his fertile resources of genius as all who are not color blind are prone to ad mire the treasures of some rare botanical garden, it was quite the custom of the public to discount the market value of his suggestions by turning aside from his editorials and sketches with the adverse comment of Joseph's brethren :
"He's only a dreamer." Years elapsed before it was even faintly suspected that his projected air-castles called for any sterner architec-
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tural timber than gossamer and thistledown. It was thought that his work in the community was simply to entertain the readers of the morning newspaper with spicy materials for scrap-books. Strange to say, an affluence of diction usually incurs suspicion. Men who are free with adjectives are commonly supposed to be pressed for ideas, at least of the practical sort; and Mr. Grady, whose vocabulary was as deep as the Anglo-Saxon wells of pure English and as rich as the autumnal leaves of Vallambrosa, naturally suffered from this damaging and wellnigh fatal gift.
Grady's facts and Grady's figures became proverbial equivalents for Grady's fictions, and he was politely but positively rated as another young Geoffrey Crayon, whose visionary fabrics were too suggestive of Sleepy Hollow to be treated with any serious consideration. He was, indeed, looked upon as another Colonel Mulberry Sellers.
But those who hastily sneered at Grady's ambitious enterprises as schemes which were better adapted to night caps than to landscapes appeared to forget that the tints of sunrise often rest upon adamantine summits. At any rate they were soon to learn that they were premature in underrating the substantial character of Mr. Grady's genius. In speaking of the rustic congregations which heard the village preacher Goldsmith says that "some who came to scoff remained to pray"; and certain it is that many who ridiculed and riddled Grady's proposi tions were afterwards to be among his most ardent coworkers. The time came when he was no longer dubbed as the gentleman from Utopia, but was actually hailed as the embodied genius of Southern development. He

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was now an inspired marvel of common sense. The mists had all lifted; and his real character as an upbuilder now stood out, bold and sheer, like the cliffs of Dover above the calm levels of the English channel.

Coming upon the scene during the era of prostration which followed the close of the war, Mr. Grady began at once to sound bugle notes of encouragement. He was not a Jeremiah to mourn over the waste-places of Jerusalem, but a Nehemiah to rebuild the walls. And he brought plummet and trowel as well as bravo and song.
Soon after he reached Atlanta, which was still smol dering and smoking in the ashes which General Sherman had left, he became active with Julius L. Brown, Henry Hillyer, Louis Gholstin, Hoke Smith, and other progres sive citizens, in building up the interests of the Young
Men's Library Association. Turning from this enterprise he enlisted his zeal in the
cause of the Cotton States Exposition of 1881. This was the first of the great industrial expositions which have served to make Atlanta so prominent among Southern cities since the war.
With shrewd foresight Grady saw the advantages which such an exhibit of Southern pluck and energy was likely to create for Atlanta at this time; and with charac teristic push he put his shoulders to the wheel.
In justice to older heads who engineered and directed the exposition it can not be claimed that Grady was the dominating personality in this pioneer undertaking. He was too young and too inexperienced to take the lead in things as yet. But he was indispensable.
Under the pressure of this stimulating experience he

430 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
developed rapidly as an industrial factor. Moreover, he accumulated information and caught ideas which were useful to him later.
In 1887, when he had climbed to the top of the jour nalistic ladder, he sounded the call for another great ex position to be held within six months. The audacity of this bold proposition was most apparent; but Grady had shown such wonderful capacity for overcoming obstacles that the community instead of demurring promptly ac quiesced. Business men who could not see for the life of them how the exposition could possibly he held on time and measure up to proper requirements, nevertheless sub scribed liberal amounts.
What made the feat which Mr. Grady proposed to ac complish seem all the more difficult was the site which was chosen for the proposed enterprise. This was an old hill side of the Piedmont escarpment on the city's northeast ern outskirts. Before the first building could be erected on the grounds perpendicular walls had to be horizontalized. Grady could not have chosen an arena better suited for the working of miracles.
Operations at once commenced. At the masthead of the paper each morning was printed the number of days which still intervened before the exposition was to be thrown open to the public. Somehow Grady's enthusiasm seemed to be infectious. He was setting the pace for great .things. Atlanta commenced to swell with metro politan pride. She felt herself rising. Success was in the air; and success was already begetting longer strides and larger dreams.
Not only was the exposition held on time but it fully met public expectations; and what is still more astound-

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ing in view of the history of similar ventures it was finan cially able to pay out. Over twenty thousand dollars was cleared as the net profits.
This was the first of the series of Piedmont Exposi tions which were annually held in Atlanta for; several years thereafter; and among other national celebrities whom it brought southward was Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic President of the United States since the war.
From this time forward Grady was unremittingly ac tive in directing the attention of Northern capital to the claims of Southern investment. The building of cotton factories, the development of marble quarries and the en couragement of immigration became his hobbies.

But he was interested in other things as well. The Piedmont Exposition was hardly launched before he or ganized the Piedmont Chautauqua. In common with many other progressive men over the country he was cap tivated by the Chautauqua idea which was then in the early experimental stage of development.
Nothing prior to this time had been done towards or ganizing an enterprise of this kind in Georgia; and Mr.. Grady set himself to work with great interest to blaze the way for this modern educative innovation.
Salt Springs was selected as the site for the proposed Chautauqua. Money was raised, buildingst erected and grounds laid off. Some of the best lecturers in the coun try were secured; and intellectually the Chautauqua was all that could be desired.
But the idea was still new and the distance from the center of population was most too great for the multi-

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tudes to rally in large numbers to the feast which was spread. Mr. Grady died soon afterwards and no effort was made to revive the Chautauqua at Salt Springs.
Still the idea had taken root and the Chautauquas which have since sprung up with such flourishing" results in other parts of the State have derived existence largely from the parental inspiration of this initial enterprise.
Another favorite institution in Georgia which honors the heart as well as the head of this great man is the Con federate Soldiers' Home near Decatur.
Though not old enough to serve in the ranks, being only a youth when the war closed, Grady was character ized throughout life by an unflagging devotion to Lee's old veterans. He had lost his gallant father at Peters burg and his pious and patriotic mother had instilled into his mind with the first lessons of childhood the duty of helping those who by reason of misfortune were not able to help themselves. He was an avowed champion of the new order of things; but he loved the old civilization, the old plantation songs and lullabies, the old battle-flags, the old cause and, not the least of all, that nursery of the purest and best type of the Southern gentleman: "the old school."
Picking up one of the New York papers from the pile of exchanges on his desk one morning Mr. Grady saw that a citizen from Texas was making a canvass in the metropolis for funds with which to build a home for the old soldiers of his State. The effort appeared to be more energetic than fruitful; and while the comments of the press were not unfriendly there was an undercurrent of

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feeling and an atmosphere of reserve in the expressions used which nettled Mr. Grady's spirit. It riled him to think of the crippled soldiers of the South begging for alms upon the curbstones of distant Babylons.
"I'll show them what can be done in Georgia," said he, throwing down the paper and calling in the stenographer.
He thereupon dictated the double-leaded editorial which came out next morning under the caption: * "Major Walker, come home!"
This editorial fired the State from the mountains all the way to the seaboard. Other Georgia newspapers took up the refrain; and the money for building the Confed erate Veterans' Home in Georgia was soon subscribed. Before the corner-stone was laid Grady died and after his death it was several years before the finishing touches were applied. On account of local prejudice the Legis lature was at first reluctant to adopt the institution, but this unpatriotic bias was at last overcome and Georgia opened to her old soldiers the institution which Grady had founded.

But Grady did not confine his activities in behalf of Southern development to Georgia alone. He touched with his pen the Alabama coal-fields and the Florida or ange-groves. There was literally no item in the catalogue of Southern resources on which he failed to enlarge.
He wrote for the magazines as well as for the columns of his own paper and he sought in every way possible, at home and abroad, to further the interests of the whole South, regardless of State lines.
But not by any means the least service which he ren dered this section of the country was his brilliant work in

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building up such an important and independent newspa per plant as The Constitution came to be under his pro gressive and prosperous management.
So thoroughly and so intimately did he live himself into the life of the South that even to-day there are thousands of improvements and reforms which silently suggest him; and no better inscription could be placed over his tomb in Westview Cemetery, where he sleeps almost in the very heart of the New South, than the epi taph which is chiseled over the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul's Cathedral in London: "If you seek his monument look around you."
Thus Joseph the Dreamer had became Joseph the Prince. He had climbed the palace steps into the nation's heart. And the scepter of his unabused authority was in very truth the wand of the Pharaohs! But he accom plished even more than all this; for when the South lay buried in the ashes of defeat he rolled away the grave stone, broke the seal, dismayed the guard and stood at the door of the sepulcher of the Old Regime: the Evangel of the Resurrection of the New.

CHAPTER XLIL

Grady as an Orator.
H ENRY W. GRADY was an orator to the manner born. He belonged to the imaginative school represented by Sargeant S. Prentiss. But even the orator must await the call of occasion; and rare as were the gifts of Mr. Grady, he enjoyed no unusual repu tation for eloquence until all at once he captivated his au dience at the banquet of the New England Society of New York in 1886, and became as the result of an after-dinner speech the foremost living orator of all the section of country which had produced the greatest orators of the nation.
The surprise which his wonderful speech occasioned was equally as great at the South as at the North. For even within the borders of his own State he was little known as an orator except as he exemplified with his pen what Chancellor Walter B. Hill has aptly phrased, "the oratory of the editorial." Those who admired him most and who knew him best were little prepared for the elec trical outburst of eloquence which shook the continent.
It is quite true that the oratorical genius of the young journalist began to forecast something unusual as far back as 1868. Colonel Albert H. Cox says that the com mencement address which Mr. Grady then barely eight-
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een delivered at the time of his graduation from the State University was an unsurpassed effort. Moreover he had also delivered one or two lectures in Atlanta in furtherance of local interests which had been received with very great enthusiasm. And it could not be said that the signboafds along the highway were altogether lacking.
But in most of the public addresses which Mr. Grady delivered prior to his great achievement in New York his brilliant imagination and his playful sense of humor al most habitually inclined him toward the fanciful; and, instead of trying to resuscitate Demosthenes, he contented himself with less pretentious efforts. In the art of wordpainting he had no superior. He could draw the most exquisite pictures. And equally the master of those two effective weapons of speech, pathos and humor, he could sway his hearers at will between laughter and tears. His lecture on "Patchwork Palace," in which he portrayed the vicissitudes of an old man who, out of cast-off mate rials, built him an humble home, was an ideal portraiture, as rich in wholesome sentiment as in side-splitting humor.
Perhaps no one could keep an impatient audience better entertained than Mr. Grady. And he needed no special preparation for the ordinary demand of public speaking. He possessed an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes. He kept himself thoroughly posted on general topics. He spoke with the greatest ease; and, though he had not been trained with special reference to forensic tilts, he could face an adversary and meet an interruption with as much readiness as the most accomplished debater.
Undoubtedly the orator lay concealed under this prodi gal wealth of resources. But as much as the people loved

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to hear Mr. Grady they were not prepared to call him an orator according to the standard set by Toombs and Hill and Stephens. He had not yet burst the barriers. Some great occasion was needed to unlock the door of his prison and to bring him forth before the astonished gaze of his own people: an eagle with eyes fixed sunward and with pinions poised for flight.

Such an occasion was furnished when he received an invitation to respond to the toast of "The New South" at the banquet of the New England Society of New York in the fall of 1886. At the call of duty the orator awoke. Realizing that an opportunity confronted him which was neither of slight magnitude nor of frequent occurrence he decided after talking the matter over with some of his friends to accept the invitation; and accordingly he so notified the committee.
Mr. Grady was asked to respond to this sentiment less because of his prestige as an orator than on account of his prominence in Southern affairs as the editor of one of the representative newspapers of this section; and he had also broadened his reputation as an active participant in the work of Southern rehabilitation by several maga zine articles which he had lately written.
Being pressed at the time with heavy editorial duties Mr. Grady could devote himself to the task of preparing his speech only at leisure intervals. But he realized that the opportunity was one which he could ill afford to slight; and being anxious to deal an effective blow to the lingering animosities of war and to voice what he knew to be the real spirit of the New South, he determined in

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response to the toast to make the speech of his life. He did not write out the response in full because he wished it to be flexibly adapted to any unforeseen emergency which might arise. He, therefore, composed climacteric paragraphs only and these he mentally arranged in the order which he expected to adopt when he faced the audi ence.
Incredible as it may seem, in view of the brilliantly sweeping effect which the speech produced, it was in the main an impromptu effort. This statement is borne out by the allusions which he made to what took place after he entered the banqueting-hall, especially in the eloquent reply to Dr. Talmage and in the amusing reference to General Sherman. He might have anticipated some of these, as he no doubt did, with clever forethought; but no amount of previsionary shrewdness short of positive in spiration could have enabled him to prepare in advance entirely the speech which he delivered.
On confronting his audience in the banqueting-hall Mr. Grady found that he would not only have to modify the speech which he had outlined, but that he would virtually have to prepare another response. This fact bore upon him with some degree of trepidation. Circumstances had arisen and opportunities had offered which admitted of nothing formal. If he took occasion by the hand and did his utmost for his section he would have to gather up his wits and take another fresh start. This required selfconfidence, which is never too strong with orators who are making maiden speeches, and it also involved great hazard; but risking consequences he proceeded. Some of his carefully prepared sentences he used; but most of his thoughts were poured into fresh molds.

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"When I found myself on my feet/' said' he, "I felt every nerve in my body tingling; but they were strung as tight as fiddle-strings. Somehow I thought I had the message which that assemblage needed to hear and without any effort it came rushing forth."
The result is familiar to all. It belongs to the history of American eloquence. The ice of prejudice was broken. The bitterest partisan was moved to applause. The plain truth had been told, but in such a frank spirit of candor and with such a fervent plea for brotherhood that it disarmed all criticism and won all hearts. Mr. Grady awoke next morning to find himself famous. The whole country rang with the echoes of that speech. An unher alded private citizen who had never held an office in the gift of the American people had become the South's fore most orator: her champion knight of the silver tongue.

The prestige as an orator which Mr. Grady had gained with the rocket leap of the meteor he consistently main tained with the luminous and steady glow of the planet. Invitations pressed upon him too frequently for him to accept all, but he accepted such as he felt he could con scientiously undertake in justice to his editorial obliga tions and with profit to his auditors. He at once adopted the rule to speak nowhere for mere oratory's sake. The realization of his mission was dawning upon him. He felt that there were too many vital problems to be solved and too many momentous issues to be faced for him to be wasting time in sheer oratorical pyrotechnics. Most of his speeches from this time forward were devoted to great public questions.

440 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
At Dallas, Texas, he spoke on "The South and Her Problems." At Augusta he spoke on "The South, Her Resources and Dangers." Before the literary societies of the University of Virginia he discussed "Centralization." At Elberton he talked heart to heart with the farmers on progressive agriculture. And finally before the Mer chants Association in Boston he handled "The Race Question." This repertoire shows that he was bent upon doing what he could to wipe out the results of the war, not only by uprooting the venom of bitterness, but by multiplying the agencies of growth in all directions, and that in seeking to accomplish this purpose he was more in tent upon forging ideas than upon formulating sentences.
Ordinarily before making one of his great speeches Mr. Grady would absent himself from the office for two or three consecutive days, and burying himself in the inner most sanctuary of his domestic abode he would give posi tive instructions for no one to interrupt him under any circumstances; and such was the process of incubation by means of which his masterful orations were fledged.
But his chief preparation consisted in saturating his mind with what he wished to say. He disdained rhetori cal fetters. Besides, he knew that he was almost certain to deliver something different from what he had previous ly drafted.
This proved to be the case when he went out to Dallas, Texas, where he delivered his first great speech after his signal success in New York. He had left advance copies of the speech behind him and the previously compounded eloquence was now in type. During the afternoon pre liminary dispatches came stating that Mr. Grady had captured his great Texas audience; and orders were

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given to put the speech into the forms. But later on an other telegram came saying: "Suppress speech. Entirely changed. Notify other papers."
Thus Mr. Grady at the last moment had repeated what he had done before at the banquet. Imbibing the sugges tion of his surroundings, he had discarded the text of his prepared speech, and produced something as new and as fresh as the dews which had that morning sprinkled the cotton-fields.
But this liberty of making erratic excursions from the eloquent highways which he had mapped out in his sanc tum became quite the usual thing with the orator; and the printed speeches which he left behind him possessed little value except as points of departure. Hon. S. G. McLendon, who accompanied Mr. Grady to Charlottesville, says that the speech which Mr. Grady allowed him to read in advance of delivery was undoubtedly fine, but that the speech which he actually delivered when he came out before the student body was incomparably bet ter.

It is in the nature of just criticism to say that Mr. Grady's power as an orator was not in the elocutionary gift. His voice, though clear and resonant, was not the rich orotund of the Websterian school. His presence was impressive, but not imperious. His utterance was at times too rapid for the best effects, too suggestive of the impetuous mountain torrent. But this analysis of the Orator's power only increases the emphasis which must be laid upon his intellectual equipment. It is doubtful if any public speaker in this country has ever possessed so

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vivid an imagination, so fluent a speech, so lavish a dic tion and so delightful a humor as Henry W. Grady. No magician ever wrought subtler enchantments with his wand than Grady with his words. No artist ever mingled colors with such an eye for lights and shadows. It was the distinction of Sir Walter Scott to be called "the Wiz ard of the North," and Grady, for resources of expression no less wonderful, may be called "the Wizard of the South."
But Mr. Grady had little use for what is usually the orator's master weapon, denunciation. He caught no prayer for vengeance from his father's sword. He im bibed no angry curdle at his mother's breast. He could grow amazingly eloquent in arousing the passions of men, for he was master of the art of appeal. But in all his speeches it will be hard to find one single note of bitter ness. He neither scourged Catiline nor denounced Philip. This was not because he lacked courage or countenanced fraud. He had other methods of unmasking his country's enemies. It was. rather because he was essentially the peacemaker. From the very cradle he had been in train ing for the great mission which was to carry him to Ply mouth Rock. And inclined by nature to the dulcet strains of the beatitudes rather than to the forked lightnings of the law, he found his prototype not in the stern prophet who halted the chariot of Ahab, but in the beloved disciple who caught the celestial rapture of the New Jerusalem.
If Mr. Grady had bestowed some thought upon the va rious problems which were vexing the public mind prior to his famous speech in New York, he now redoubled the zeal with which he sought to master the vexed ques tions ; and such was his success that in none of the great

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public addresses which he delivered during the three years which followed did he fail to show the results of his la borious investigations. He brought all the resources of his mind to bear upon his studies; and choice as was the rhetoric in which he clothed his brillant imagery, it was by no means the greatest charm of his wonderful efforts.
Superficial critics who mistake transparent depths for shallow surfaces and muddy pools for profound seas have hastily imagined that Mr. Grady was too rhetorical to be deep. Such an absurd criticism hardly needs to be noticed. It can not possibly be based upon an intimate study of Mr. Grady's speeches, and it probably grows out of the puerile notion that wisdom must always be dull. For any one who has carefully weighed the arguments ' and followed the thoughts of the great orator knows that his brilliant rhetoric was only the enamel which overlay the marble quarries, the phosphorescence upon the ocean waves. The man who would confuse Mr. Grady's elo quence with sophomoric bombast or schoolboy declama tion would murder Cicero. Let him beware how he dips his pen in the vitriol lest he write his own decree of ban ishment. To compare Mr. Grady's eloquence with such Japanese juggling is like comparing summer fireflies with starry infinites, or Georgia junebugs with Grecian Junos.

CHAPTER XLIII.
How Grady Played Cromwell*
H ENRY W. GRADY did the most audacious thing on record in the legislative history of this State, when he marched upon the Capitol at the head of a regiment of rampant Democrats in the fall of 1884 and adjourned the Legislature of Georgia for the purpose of celebrating the election of President Cleveland.
On account of the uncertainty of the vote in New York State the result of the election, it will be remembered, was held in abeyance for days and days. The momentous issue depended on the outcome of the official count, and the barest majority was sufficient to swing the gigantic pendulum. The whole country was on tiptoe with ex citement.
At last the gloriously good news came over the wires that New York State had gone safely Democratic, making Grover Cleveland the undisputed choice of the Electoral College.
The opportunity of celebrating the first real and rec ognized Democratic victory since the war was not lost in any part of the South; and bonfires and torchlight brig ades were everyhere served up in honor of the great political event. But Atlanta was perhaps the reddest spot on the whole national map.
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Mr. Grady was the first man in town to get the news. He was managing editor of the Constitution, and was seated at his desk on the fourth floor of the building grind ing out editorials when the message came. Up he bounced from his chair like one possessed, and began to stir about the office in hot haste. He lost no time in spreading the alarm.
Eirst he ordered out the Constitution's cannon and gave the signal to fire. Next he called up Chief Joyner of the fire department and caused the fire-bells to be rung with furious clamor; and the fire-bells soon started the steam whistles on numberless locomotives and stationary en gines.

But another bright idea seized him. Rushing out on the street, he soon gathered together an assortment of Democratic volunteers numbering in all about two hun dred strong; and putting himself at the head of this fearless column, he marched, banner in hand, toward the State Capitol, where the Legislature of Georgia was in session.
On reaching the door of the House of Representatives he brushed with cyclonic violence past the sargeant-atarms, who was too astonished to offer any show of re sistance, and planting himself in the center of the main aisle before the speaker's desk, he exclaimed in trumpetlike tones: . "Mr. Speaker, a message from the American people."
Speaker pro tern. Lucius M. Lamar, one of the most rigid parliamentarians, but also one of the most enthusi astic Democrats, was in the chair at the time. He real ized at once what the invasion meant, and losing sight of

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his official obligation in his excess of Democratic joy, he replied:
"Let the message be received." Thereupon Mr. Grady marched boldly up to the speak er's desk and, taking the gavel from the hands of the as tonished presiding officer, rapped sternly for silence in the hall. When order was partially restored he said: "In the name of Governor Cleveland, President-elect of the United States, I declare this body adjourned." This announcement was the signal for such an outburst of enthusiasm as had never before shaken the walls of the State Capitol. In the wild delirium of the moment mem bers leaped on top of their seats and sent their hats and their voices rolling toward the ceiling. Legislative for malities were completely forgotten and the day's session ended amid clamorous confusion. Such ecstatic moments are rare in the history of com monwealths; and Georgia will certainly never lose this riotous ruby from her cluster of rich recollections.
Four years later Mr. Grady was ready for another Democratic celebration, and the Constitution's gallant lit tle cannon which had done such heroic service in voicing the glad news in 1884 was brought out dressed and loaded for another series of volleys.
But the news this time was of an altogether different character and the expected ceremonies were called off. Mr. Harrison went in and Mr. Cleveland went out.
With humorous good-nature aglow on the keen-edge of his disappointment, Mr. Grady pulled out his pencil and scribbled on a sheet of paper this brave sentiment of selfrepression, which he pasted over the cannon's mouth: "A charge to keep I have."

CHAPTER XLIV.
Chancellor Mell, the Parliamentarian.
C HANCELLOR PATRICK H. MELL was per haps the foremost parliamentarian of his day and generation in the South. His thorough knowl edge of the science by which deliberative bodies are gov erned, his cool self-possession, his firm grasp of the gavel, his unhesitating accents in stating motions and in making decisions, his uniform courtesy and his absolute fairness all combined to make him an undisputed master of assem blies; while his tall and stately figure was the pictorial counterpart of his distinguished mental accomplishments. The manual which he first published in 1868 and which he afterwards expanded and revised is still the authority recognized by many conventional and legislative bodies throughout this section.
It was in the denominational councils of the Baptist church that Dr. Mell developed the rare gift which in combination with other qualities long gave him such pre eminent sway among his ecclesiastical brethren. Exhib iting the elements of leadership and control almost from the very start, he was moderator of the Georgia Baptist Association for over thirty years, president of the Geor gia Baptist convention for twenty-six years and president of the Southern Baptist convention for seventeen years.
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Conspicuously associated as Dr. Mail's name is with the cause of higher education in Georgia by reason of his most efficient and progressive administration as chancel lor of the State University, and equally distinguished though he was in the pulpit for logical statement and effective plea, and in the literature of the church for pro found theological contributions, it is nevertheless in the role of the presiding officer that Dr. Mell has perhaps ex erted the widest influence. Besides molding the con ventional assemblies of his own immediate denomination into well-organized and disciplined church bodies, he has performed for other communions as well the primal mira cle of bringing order out of chaos. Moreover, what he has done for the religious world in this respect he has likewise done for the secular.
Without betraying, and indeed without possessing even in the most minute degree what is offensively called the domineering spirit, no man ever dominated an assemblage more completely than Dr. Mell; and no higher proof of this statement could be asked than the returns of the bal lot-box which show that after once assuming the gavel he was not permitted to relinquish it until his years had swept from the forties to the seventies and his hair once dark had exchanged the raven's feather for the winter's fleece.
Shortly after the war the Southern Baptist convention met in Baltimore and the following incident, which took place during the session, shows that without losing his parliamentary equipoise or his benevolent good humor there were certain words in Webster's dictionary which

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Dr. Mell could not think of permitting on the floor in connection with the late unpleasantness.
The response of the Southern Baptist convention to the fraternal message of the Northern Baptist convention was being discussed, and the venerable Dr. Welsh, of New York, who occupied the floor, was voicing the friendly sentiments of his brethren north of the Patapsco. To show that he had no feelings of censure in his heart he said:
"Why, Brother President, if I had been in the South such are the impulses of my heart that I should no doubt have been one of the leaders of the rebellion."
At the utterance of the last word the gavel came down with an ominous rap upon the desk, and the speaker found himself suddenly under arrest.
"That word is out of order on the floor of this conven tion," interposed Dr. Mell, in his firmest but most courte ous tones. . "Well, Brother President," meekly interrogated Dr. Welsh, somewhat abashed, "what word shall I use?"
"The chair does not presume to dictate, sir," replied the presiding officer, "but he insists upon his ruling that the word 'rebellion' in such a convention is out of order. He shall so hold unless you appeal from the decision of the chair. Do you appeal, sir?"
"No, Brother President," returned the speaker with apologetic brevity and prompt acceptance.
What further descriptive nouns the venerable doctor employed is not disclosed by the newspaper clipping, but he does not appear to have been interrupted by the fall of the gavel any more during -the proceedings. Dr. Mell had served as a colonel at the head of a regiment
15 r

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during- the war, and lie had used carnal as well as spiritual weapons in dealing with the adversary; and while he felt kindly toward the brother who had spoken with such generous promptings he wanted him to know that he had fought for principle.
Another amusing incident in the experience of Dr. Mell while occupying the chair is told by his son, Prof. P. H. Mell, who has written an excellent biographical account of his father. During a session of the Georgia Baptist convention a member who represented some benevolent enterprise was trying to raise money from the brethren. In the course of his remarks he was very bitter in de nouncing ministers who wasted money in sinful appetites, particularly in the matter of using tobacco. His speech was having the opposite effect from what he desired, and Dr. Mell, anxious to aid the cause under consideration, watched for an opportunity to put the convention in good humor. The speaker continued in an injured tone to sum marize the amounts spent by preachers in "sinfully bad habits," and turning toward the presiding officer, he said:
"A pipeful of tobacco costs five cents, doesn't it, Broth er Moderator?"
"Yes," replied the doctor, "but it's worth it." The convention was uproarious for a while, but the laughter resulted in the restoration of good feeling and put an end to the speaker's offensive line of remarks. It was really of great service to him, however, because the body subscribed liberally to the cause he was advocating. The presiding officer said afterwards that he would have e^iven more than the tobacco was worth if he could have

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been smoking while the member was speaking. The re mark of Dr. Mell suggests the witticism of Dr. W. W. L,andrum, who justified the enjoyment of an occasional cigar on the strictly orthodox ground that he was only burning an idol.

But leaving the conventional halls, Professor Mell nar rates an anecdote which humorously illustrates the logical bent of the great parlimentarian's mind. The doctor was present once at a justice court; and, while waiting for the appearance of the justice, he withdrew to the shade of a tree, not far from which a group of men were drinking fiom a jug of whisky. They asked him to drink with them, but he politely declined.
Just at this moment another man stepped up, and being given the same invitation, he eagerly grasped the prof fered jug, saying as he did so:
"Certainly I will, and I've got Scripture for it, too. Don't the Bible say 'be temperate in all things,' and whisky being something, how can I be temperate in all things without drinking some?"
As he delivered himself of this weighty syllogism he glanced a challenge at Dr. Mell and gave a wink to the boys. Dr. Mell, good-naturedly, accepted the gage of battle.
"Gentlemen, I have two objections to that doctrine," said Dr. Mell. "In the first place there is no such passage in the Bible. And suppose the apostle had said, 'Be ye temperate in all things/ are you going to construe it in the way just given? If you do you will have to bite a piece out of the jug as well as drink some of the whisky,

452 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
for jug-biting is just as much something as whisky-drink ing. And then see what a chapter of accidents you will have. You will be compelled, under the logic you have just heard, to go through life biting a piece out of every hedge you come to, drinking out of every mud-puddle you see, nibbling at every tree you pass; and finally, my dear sir, you will have to bite a piece out of every dog's tail you meet on the road."
For many years, in connection with his educational work, Dr. Mell preached at Antioch, and in going and coming he used to travel with a preacher of the Methodist camp, who held forth in the same neighborhood. Now, this traveling companion was a widower and Dr. Mell was an inveterate jester. Driving through the country one Saturday afternoon Dr. Mell suggested that his Methodist brother preach from the text, "This widow troubleth me." On meeting again the next week in Athens, the Methodist divine was asked if he had preached from the text which Dr. Mell had furnished.
"Oh, no," said he, "I took the text, 'How long halt ye between two opinions.' "
"Ah," replied Dr. Mell, smiling, "I did not know there were two of them."
Sometimes Dr. Mell preached to the negroes. He was greatly beloved by the colored contingent to whom his sympathetic and friendly offices were most pleasing. On one occasion, so the story goes, the great chancellor dropped into one of the colored churches near Athens merely to worship, and the old negro preacher who had caught sight of the slender figure of Dr. Mell as he en-

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tered the door, soon afterwards lifted his stentorian voice in the most fervent prayer, which was largely dedicated to the spiritual comfort of the distinguished worshiper. Said he:
"God bless Mars Pat. Give him de eyes uv de eagle so he kin see sin a-fur off Give him de claws uv de eagle so he kin tare sin to pieces. Keep him, oh Lawd, in de holler of dy fist. Strenken his weak arm uv flesh wid de widder's mite, and an'int him wid de ile uv Patmos."

CHAPTER XLV.
The Pierces.
S UCH an ovation as greeted the eloquent young Methodist divine who in 1844 addressed the American Bible Society in New York was an achievement the like of which falls to the lot of compara tively few orators. But it was nothing strange or new to the experience of the brilliant young theologian; and, dramatic as the effect was, there sat in the audience at least one man who could testify that the youthful speaker was merely repeating in the great metropolis of the na tion an effect which he had seldom failed to produce on any public occasion since he first began to ride the moun tain circuits in upper Georgia.
Two distinguished speakers of international reputa tion Senator Frelinghuysen and Lord Ketchum had recently addressed the same immense gathering, but they had failed to reach in any single climax the high level of enthusiasm from which the youthful speaker had com menced only to mount higher and higher. Breathless at tention, unbroken except by outbursts of approval, had waited upon his sentences throughout. The whole vast assemblage had bent forward with ears athirst fearful lest some accent might be lost. An archangel could hardly have intensified the profound interest.
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All thought of the timepiece upon the wall was for gotten; and though the orator had consumed nearly two hours, it seemed that he had just commenced. The sole disappointment which the speech occasioned was in hav ing an end. Dr. G. G. Smith narrates an incident which took place at the conclusion of this address. As soon as the tumultuous din of applause had subsided one of the enrapt listeners turned toward an elderly gentleman who had been sitting quietly but none the less intently through the speech, and said:
"Did you ever hear the like of that speech?" "Yes," replied the old gentleman, with unruffled calm ness, "I hear George often." Parental pride spoke in that answer. To one who had never heard George the speech was one which defied com parison ; but, after all, George was in the habit of making speeches almost if not quite as good whenever he faced an audience; and he had given his hearers in New York no greater treat than he had been accustomed to giving his Sunday congregations at home. An introduction which becomes necessary at this point discloses in the person of the old gentleman none other than the venerated Dr. Lovick Pierce, while the eloquent speaker who had fairly lifted the assemblage was his illustrious son, the future bishop of the church. To gether they will always be associated in the affections of the great religious household which they served; the one revered as the aged Nestor, and the other honored as the unrivaled Demosthenes of all Methodism.

Since the age limit of the human family was reduced at the time of the deluge few men have attained the century

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mark; but Lovick Pierce narrowly missed the goal at ninety-four years. He lived to be the oldest patriach of the Methodist pulpit. Moreover, he stood in the itiner ant ranks for nearly three quarters of a century, an elo quent expounder of the divine oracles; and, long after entering upon his tenth decade, he continued with much of his former unction "to allure to brighter worlds." He must have been fashioned out of very Gibraltar granite to have survived to such an extreme old age. For he not only encountered the hardships incident to the pioneer circuit days of early Methodism, but he was accustomed to making the most prodigious drafts upon his force sup plies. Bishop Pierce says that he has often known his father to preach three sermons in one day, each of which was three hours' long, and that in closing the services at night he could lift the doxology in tones as vigorous and resonant as he ever brought to the breakfast table. But in addition to all this heavy pressure of hard work, Dr. Pierce was furthermore given to ecstatic outbursts of re ligious rapture; and one of his distinguished contem poraries, Dr. Ignatius Few, declares that his long, mellow shout possessed a quality "which belonged to no other mortal sound."
The literature of Methodism sustained an irreparable loss when the manuscript prepared by Dr. Pierce, in which he undertook to review his life and times was de stroyed in the general wreckage entailed by the late Civil War. Though he lived to see the church of his choice firmly rooted in all parts of the globe, it was only an in fant cradled upon the Atlantic seaboard when Dr. Pierce began to preach, and he found himself obliged to defend his faith against the most persistent assaults. It was

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nothing unusual for the members of this new religious sect to be picturesquely branded as heretics, sorcerers and false prophets.
But Dr. Pierce was by no means as violent in returning the fire of the adversary as was his brother, Reddick. Reddick spent most of his ministerial days in South Caro lina, and consequently is not as widely known or well re membered in Georgia as his brother Lovick; but he was scarcely the latter's inferior. Reddick was two years older than Lovick, and was the first of the two to suc cumb to the great revival wave which passed over the country in 1802, caused chiefly by the stimulating effect of the new Methodist doctrines. Reddick was by nature much more pugnacious than Lovick. He was stockily built, rather florid in complexion and somewhat nervous both in speech and in gesture. He had no doubt met all the athletes of the neighboring region in his boyhood days on the village green; and emerging from this rural arena he was now fully prepared to assert the prowess of the church militant.
And how he did so appears from an incident which took place shortly after his conversion. The Hardshells held monthly meetings near the old Pierce homestead; and one Sunday morning Lovick and Reddick repaired with other members of the family to the place of worship. As expected, the Methodists were fairly lambasted, but at the close of the sermon the old minister, following what .had been his custom, asked if any one present wished to speak. Thereupon Reddick arose, much to the surprise of every one. Despite what he had just heard, he said that he was sure he had been divinely called; and he proceeded to lay down the law and the gospel. He kept his eyes

458 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
closed while he was speaking; and his eloquence soon cast the most pronounced mesmeric spell upon the benches. "Screams and shouts and prayers from the awe-struck crowd" are said to have "mingled in wild confusion," and some even leaped from the windows and fled. Fresh con verts were made that clay in the very camp of the Hardshells. At the close of the service the old man, who had never once dared to interpose, now calmly arose and said, wiping his eyes: "Well, brethren, we have seen strange things to-day, and I can but own the presence of the Lord."
Dr. Lovick Pierce possessed little relish for theological controversies. Even in the high ecclesiastical courts he seldom wrangled for victory, but merely stated his con victions and opinions, allowing others to marshal the field and to organize the forces. This was not because he lacked either fluency of speech or logical order of thought upon his feet. It was largely if not entirely tem peramental. In the pulpit he was master of all the arts of persuasion. He never used his notes and never repeated his sermons. He could argue and entreat with equal ease, and he could paint the terrors of the last judgment with the brush of Michaelangelo. Yet this wonderful preach er who could hold his congregations spellbound for hours enjoyed the advantage of no theological seminary or other institution of learning, except the field school. He heard comparatively few sermons in his youthful days, Captain Pierce, his father, being a man of unusual parts, but not overly pious. He mastered the science of homiletics for himself, became his own tutor in Latin and Greek and

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Hebrew and attained an eminence in his sacred calling second to none in his entire communion.
Strange to say Dr. Pierce was never formally licensed to preach. This was disclosed in an interview which .took place shortly before his death. Bishop Pierce himself is the authority for the information. To the question which was asked in regard to licensure Dr. Pierce replied, smil ingly : "You will be surprised when I tell you I never had any license to preach, except the appearance of my name on the conference minutes. I never had any other au thority but my reception and my appointment till I was ordained a deacon." However, it will be remembered that this was in the primitive clays; and to show how widely scattered were the little Methodist flocks over the wide wilderness stretches, Dr. Pierce was first assigned to the Pedee circuit, and it was not until he had scoured the country for days that he finally put up one night at an out-of-the-way farm-place which he reached just as dark ness set in and found much to his delight that the house hold belonged to his charge.
L/ovick Pierce may not have been formally commis sioned to preach by the Methodist conference, but he was undoubtedly called through the instrumentality of grace. Any man who could plough hard all day in the field and then after hastily dispatching his supper, run five miles to attend prayer-meeting was not only "set apart" in the most orthodox sense of the phrase, but was fit to live in the apostolic age of the church and to share the missionary journeys of St. Paul. . Suspenders were not usually worn when Dr. Pierce first entered the pulpit, and some of the brethren were inclined to attribute them to satanic origin; but

460 RUMINISCttNCnS OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Dr. Pierce thought that on account of his animation in preaching he might find them helpful supports. Nev ertheless he says that he had "to keep them out of sight when Brother Myers came around," because Brother Myers could never have forgiven him for being so world ly-minded and vain. . But it seems that in those clays the simple pioneers were much more particular in regard to matters of dress than was consistent with the religious rebound from the elab orate ritualism of the mother church: and even the scis sors which cut the homespun wearing-apparel of the early circuit-riders were governed by edicts fully as binding as the formulas of the ecumenical councils. And so Dr. Pierce while he had "some good clothes made of cotton mixed with rabbit fur in place of wool," thought it best to begin his labors by replenishing his wardrobe with supplies "cut Methodist fashion." It is of some curious interest in this connection to observe that when Dr. Pierce began to preach in 1804 there was no cotton raised for the market in the entire South. Small patches of the staple were cultivated for domestic use; and the cotton having first been seeded with the fingers, the lint was then carded, spun, woven and dyed all upon the premises. Dr. Pierce lived long enough to realize the full magnitude of the miracle wrought by that great magician: the cotton-gin.
Lovick Pierce was born in Halifax county, North Car olina, in 1785. He came of good English stock, the tra dition being that two brothers brought the family escutch eon from England, one of whom, the grandfather of Lovick Pierce, drifted southward. Before the lad could

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well remember, his parents moved to South Carolina and located on Turkey Creek, some twenty miles from Au gusta, Georgia. He appears to have been converted some two years after his brother Reddick, and to have entered upon his sacred calling very soon thereafter. From the Pedee circuit in South Carolina he came to the Appalachee circuit in Georgia; and while going the rounds of the country churches he met his future wife, Ann Foster, sister of Congressman Thomas F. Foster, and daughter of Colonel George Foster, who had lately come from Prince Edward county, in Virginia, and settled in Greene county, in Georgia. He seems to have acquired some property through this alliance, and was able some few years later, when he thought his lungs were failing him, to give up preaching temporarily and to study medicine, going to Philadelphia for that purpose. But he soon found his lungs to be in sound enough condition to warrant his return to preaching; and some few hints in regard to taking care of his voice having been adopted, he was never again disturbed by pulmonary intimations. On February 3, 1811, his distinguished son, George Foster Pierce, was born. At the outbreak of the war with Eng land in 1812, he enlisted as chaplain, but to what extent he endured the hardships of army life does not appear.
It is much to be regretted that the material for writing the complete biography of Lovick Pierce is so meager. The account which the aged patriarch himself compiled was destroyed and no one was living at the time of his death who could revive the associations of his youth. Even his noted son, who had hoped to become his father's biographer, lamented his own lack of ample knowledge; and lingering only five years after his father's death, he

462 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
was unable between his episcopal obligations and his physical infirmities to accomplish the task which he had undertaken.
Bishop Pierce, while paying unstinted tribute to his father's saintliness of life and character, says that he never professed to have attained "perfection," and never boasted of his religious experience; but he acids that he was governed by the most imperious convictions of duty in the most trivial affairs of every-day life, and was free alike from both "spasms" and "chasms." He describes him as a man who in his prime was unusually handsome, always neat, rather above the medium height, "well braced with muscle but spare of flesh," black hair, hazel eyes and weight about one hundred and forty-five pounds. Besides filling many important pulpits, he also repre sented the American Bible Society for many years in the field. He died at the home of his son in Sparta, Georgia, in 1879, while the latter was in Arkansas on one of his official trips. Death came to the old patriarch like sleep to an infant. Outliving his early contemporaries, he strikingly resembled "the last leaf" which, filled to the mellow edges with the gold of autumn, needs no storm to rend it from the parent bough, but silently and softly drops at last upon the unruffled bosom of the tranquil forest. As an expository preacher he was unsurpassed, and he often ended his great Pauline arguments with ap peals of melting pathos, but the last message of his ser mons could never equal the last message of his life, sent from his sick bedside to the conference: "Tell the brethren I am lying just outside the gates of heaven."

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Mention has already been made of the fact that Dr. IvOvick Pierce was something of an innovator in matters of dress. This is well illustrated by the flashing suit of clothes which George wore when he graduated from the State University in 1829. The old man was exceedingly proud of his brilliant son, whose scholarship had brought him class honors, and he wished him to appear as well upon the platform as any of his classmates. So he ordered the tailor to make George a suit of blue broadcloth with bright brass buttons and velvet collar; and when the youthful orator appeared before the audience to discuss the value of the sciences he looked as if he had just dropped down from the zodiac. But he made the chapel fairly ring, and every one who heard the speech felt that it came from an orator who was destined some day to electrify the State. And there were other promising youngsters upon the platform whose speeches also awoke the prophets. Among the number were Nathaniel M. Crawford, afterwards president of Mercer University; Thos. F. Scott, who became Bishop of Oregon; John N. Waddell, chancellor of the Southwestern Presbyterian University, and Shaler G. Hillyer, an eminent Baptist di vine.
The talents of the young Demosthenes seemed to direct him to the bar, but some two years prior to graduation he had been deeply stirred upon the subject of religion. An unprecedented revival wave had reached Athens; and some idea of the effect which it left behind may be gath ered from the statement that most of the members of the class who attained distinction became ministers. How ever, less to gratify his own inclinations than to please his relatives, who urged that he could not afford to sacri-

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fice his brilliant prospects by entering the itinerant ranks, he began the study of law in his uncle's office. And the usual result followed. With no heart for Blackstone and with strong convictions of duty impelling him toward the rural camps of struggling Methodism, he was unable to rest until he found himself intent upon what was to be his life's work. Though his parents had left him free to shape his course they were gratified by this exchange of professions.
Under his father's special tutelage he was soon pre pared for work. But on applying to the conference for licensure two objections were urged against the young candidate by some of the apostolic brethren. The first was that his hair was brushed straight up instead of fiat down, and the second was that his suit of clothes was entirely too loud for one who had renounced the vanities of the world. Dr. Smith narrates an interview which took place between the young candidate and an old brother by the name of John Collinsworth, who sympathized with the "higher critics."
"George," said he, "no man can be licensed to preach in such an outfit as yours."
"But, uncle," he answered, "I have no other Sunday coat except this one, and T ought not to throw it away and ask my father to get me another one."
"Yes you ought," insisted the old man. "This coat must come off."
"Well," replied the youth, "if the conference is going to license my coat and not me I will change it; but I don't expect to change it until I am obliged to get another one."

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Giving up this ground of attack the old man shifted his base and began firing away at him again.
"George," said he, "why do you wear your hair as you do?"
"Uncle," he replied, "God made my hair grow up and I can't make it grow down."
Despite the objections urged against the youth he was duly licensed and was not long in making his power felt throughout the district. Even the old brother was soon brought around. Before the year was out he had re ceived into the church over one hundred and fifty mem bers. At one of his camp-meeting appointments in Greene county it rained so incessantly that it was thought the young preacher would not arrive on time, but he finally rode up completely drenched. He had been exposed to the heavy downpour nearly all day; but hastily changing his clothes and dispatching his supper he was soon ready to preach. He encountered at the evening repast old Brother Collinsworth, who said :
"Why, is that you, George?" "Yes, sir," replied he. "Well, how did you get here?" inquired the old man. "Partly by land but chiefly by water," replied the youth. "Did you swim any creeks?" was the next question. "Yes," said he, "I swam three." "Well, George," replied the old man, now fully ready to sign the terms of surrender, "you will make a Method ist preacher after all." George had probably not forgotten his experience at Flat Rock. Another rain-storm had beset him; but he reached the little country chapel at length after riding some ten miles through the pelting shower to find only

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two persons present: a man and a boy. Being wet to the skin and anxious to get back, he said to them after wait ing some few minutes: "We might as well leave now, as there will be no congregation to-night." But the elder of the twain demurred by saying that he had come through five miles of rain to hear preaching; and the youth, feeling himself rebuked, opened the service and ad dressed the congregation before him for one full hour.
From the very start the future bishop of the church cre ated the profoundest impression upon the religious pub lic, and he was everywhere greeted with the most eager throngs. Early in his career while stationed at Savannah he met the young lady who, in 1834, became his wife, Miss Ann Waldron, and who continued to be his helpmeet until the happy companionship was dissolved by death more than fifty years later. Going from Savannah to Charleston he aroused the most intense enthusiasm in the old aristocratic town by his unsurpassed eloquence; but he was soon recalled to Georgia, where the most impor tant assignments to duty were destined to culminate at last in the Episcopal honors.
George F. Pierce was one of Georgia's greatest orators. To an intellect which nature and education had combined to render more than ordinarily brilliant was added an unusually attractive person. Dr. Shaler G. Hillyer, his classmate at Athens, says that even in his undergraduate days his physique was faultless. Like General Toombs, whom he resembled also in his mental furnishings, he was an ideal specimen of physical manhood. Tall and imperious but neither austere nor haughty, he bore the

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stamp of command. His voice was resonant, his manner magnetic, his eyes lustrous. Every movement of his body conformed to the lines of grace. He could adapt himself readily to any audience, and he spoke always with enthu siastic animation. An adept in the use of all the weapons of speech his impromptu efforts were often as rounded as his prepared addresses; but he was more given to the use of the pen than was his father in his pulpit preparations. He was master of both written and spoken styles, equipped with abundant information upon nearly every conceiv able subject; and even so competent and careful a critic as Justice Lamar was not slow to rank him as the fore most of all the great Georgians of his time.
Soon after the young preacher was called back to his native State he was commissioned by the governing au thorities of Methodism in Georgia to pioneer one of the greatest educational movements of the century. The Methodist church was no longer an agrarian institution. Though it had sprinkled the wilderness with altar incense it now stood before the walls of Jericho and cities were henceforth to lift its towers and to enshrine its tabernacles. But the far-sightedness of the Wesleyan propagandists was never shown to better advantage than in the move ment toward the higher education of women; and while this beneficent reform served to anchor the cause of Meth odism more securely at the hearthstone, it also strength ened the moorings of all the iron-clad members of Immanuel's fleet. It heralded the richer harvests of Chris tianity at large. But universal as the higher education of women has now become there was no institution in either hemisphere of the whole round globe which was then giving collegiate diplomas to women; and some idea of

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the prejudice which needed to be surmounted even in Georgia where the chivalry of the sterner to the gentler sex has never been doubted and where the first experi ment in reform was to be made, appears from an entry in an old diary in which the scribe expresses his amaze ment "to find Brother Crutchfield averse to his daughter's learning figures."
The outgrowth of this educational reform was the or ganization of what is to-day known as Wesleyan Female College; an institution which claims the unique distinc tion of being the oldest female college in the world. The work of organizing the institution devolved upon George F. Pierce. Nor was it an easy task to assume without established precedents to direct. But the young path finder blazed steadily forward and the institution was duly launched. Though he remained at the executive head of the college only two years, preferring the pulpit to the classroom, he is nevertheless entitled to the far-reaching measure of credit which belongs to the initial impulse.
The begging of money even for Wesleyan Female Col lege was an art which the young college president ac quired entirely by grace. He possessed no relish for the task; but he felt the burden of responsibility resting heavily upon him. And he roused the conscience of Meth odism to such an extent that the responsive fingers promptly loosened the tight purse-strings. Nor was it by cajolery that the young orator accomplished this re sult. It was by pounding with sledge-hammer blows upon the pulpit. "You say you do not let your left hand know what your right hand gives," he declared in one of his outbursts, "and no wonder. For the right gives so little that the left would blush to its elbow to know of its mean ness."

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But even while intent upon his educational work Bishop Pierce continued to preach from Sabbath to Sabbath. He was nowhere more completely at home than in the pulpit ; and he never preached either to empty benches or to list less crowds. The church was always packed; the wor shiper was always transported. Not even the old doctor who had long stood in the front ranks of Methodism could surpass the bold rocket flights of the young orator; or unfold the precious truths of Scripture with deeper or keener insight into the hidden mysteries; or gather about the mourner's bench such anxious multitudes. He could picture the terrors of the law in the very lightnings of Horeb, but he could also sound the invitations of the gos pel in all the varying chords of the beatitudes. It was nothing unusual for the converted sinner under the in fluence of his preaching to cry out in penitent confession or for the entranced believer to burst forth into rapturous hallelujahs.

The delegations to the annual conference meetings of the church frequently included both the Pierces; and father and son were present at the famous gathering in New York in 1844 which virtually deposed the distin guished Bishop James O. Andrew for holding slaves. It was a time of great excitement; and it not only prefigured the stormy scenes which were shortly to be enacted in Congress over the same paramount issue, but it also fore shadowed the eventual rupture between the sections. For the suspension of Bishop Andrews from exercising the Episcopal functions marked the parting of the ways and resulted in the eventual formation of two separate juris-

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dictions within the bounds of what had formerly been the common territory of Methodism.
It seems that the New England delegates who had im bibed the philosophy of Garrison and Phillips had learned that Bishop Andrew was "an offender" ; and while they could not demand that an unofficial church member be punished for owning slave property, they could insist upon arraigning an official overseer. Consequently when his name was called they challenged his character. It is needless to say that the Southern contingent were greatly incensed. If more of them did not own slaves it was less because of moral scruples than because of financial re strictions. They were richer in heavenly than in worldly stores; and even Bishop Andrew was not an exception, having acquired his few slaves partly by inheritance and partly by dower. He had never entered the slave mar ket; and he candidly explained the situation. Neverthe less the New England delegates refused to be placated, and the fight continued.
An ardent champion of the constitutional rights and individual liberties of the South, Bishop Pierce took the floor; and after showing that the arraignment of Bishop Andrew could be grounded upon no just Biblical or ec clesiastical basis, he took in conclusion the position that if New England was wedded to her theories she had bet ter withdraw rather than disturb the harmonious spirit of the general conference. He was measurably reinforced in this way of thinking by the fact that New England was already inclining toward Congregationalism and was at variance with the fundamental doctrines of Method ism with respect to polity; and he predicted that it would not be long before episcopacy in New England would be

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given up. Numerous speeches were made on both sides by representative members and considerable ardor was manifested; but Bishop Andrew was sacrificed in order to appease New England. And the South thereupon filed notice of her own intention to withdraw.
It was an eloquent speech which Bishop Pierce had made, but to show that while his advice was radical his feelings were wholly unmixed with bitterness an incident may be cited as illustrative of his perfect good humor. One of the New York delegates who was about the same age as Bishop Pierce, but decidedly bald on top, answered him with great vehemence, declaring that the speech of his young brother was an eloquent piece of declamation, and giving it an interpretation which was far different from what the youthful speaker had intended. Craving the in dulgence of the body Bishop Pierce endeavored to set him right, and then said in conclusion : "And now, sir, though my speech has shocked your nerves so badly, I trust my explanation will not ruffle a hair on the top of your head."

Bishop Pierce was in attendance upon the annual con ference when he delivered his great address before the American Bible Society in New York, mention of which has already been made; and his effort on this occasion was largely an impromptu affair. He had previously deliv ered an address at Emory College upon the same general theme; but he had been so completely preoccupied by the exciting deliberations of the conference that he had little time for putting his thoughts together. Nevertheless it is doubtful if the equal of that speech was ever heard on any like occasion. A paragraph only can be cited. "The

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Bible," said he, "is the guide of the erring and the re claimer of the wandering. It heals the sick, consoles the dying and purifies the living. Let the master give it to the pupil, the professor to his class, the father to his son, the mother to her daughter. Place it in every home in the land. Then shall the love of God cover the earth and the light of salvation overlay the land as the sunbeams of morning lie upon the mountains."
Though barely thirty-three the fame of the young ora tor was now emblazoned upon the national sky. From 1849 to 1854 he occupied the executive chair of Emory College, having filled the leading pastorates in the State before resuming educational work; and he was success fully engaged in directing the affairs of Emory College when he was called to serve the church in the exalted ca pacity of bishop.
Thirty years of usefulness were spent upon this lofty eminence; and after celebrating the fiftieth aniversary of his marriage he died at his home in Sparta, Georgia, in the fall of 1884, passing from his golden wedding to his golden recompense; and Georgia was called upon to mourn the death of an orator divine whose eloquence had probably not been surpassed since Constantinople heard the golden accents of Chrysostom.

CHAPTER XLVL
Bill Arp: Georgia's Rustic Philosopher and Humorist.
D URING the reconstruction days, when the spirit of heaviness was upon the whole South, it was Major Chas. H. Smith who, emerging from the mountain recesses of upper Cherokee, Georgia, under the pen-name of Bill Arp, began to provoke the first goodnatured laughter which had rippled the State since the surrender of General Lee. The appearance of this genial prophet of optimism at this particular moment was like a burst of sunshine out of lowering storm-clouds. The plow was standing idle in the field. The military satraps were patroling the streets. The whole State was para lyzed with inertia. But in the midst of this condition of affairs Bill Arp began to philosophize; and what he had to say was spiced with such playful humor and at the same time seasoned with such rustic philosophy and good sense that he was hailed at once as an evangel of mirth who had been sent to lighten an ordeal which \vas other wise almost literally beyond endurance. He stirred none of the old embers and irritated none of the old wounds; but with his droll pleasantries and sage aphorisms he did more to put heart and soul into Georgia than almost any other man in the State.
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But Georgia was not the sole beneficiary of this new dispensation. The Courier-Journal, which was the lead ing Southern newspaper at the time, says that Bill Arp's letters sounded the first chirp which was heard anywhere in the South after the war. He won the affections of the whole reading public so completely that when the recon struction period was over and he essayed to lay aside his pen, thinking his mission had been completed, there came such an emphatic protest from all the Southland that he was obliged to renew his contributions to the press, and he continued to write weekly until his death, which oc curred nearly forty years later. How Major Smith began to write under the pen-name of Bill Arp is best told by Major Smith himself.
"Some time in the spring of 1861," says the mountain philosopher, "when our Southern boys were hunting for a fight and felt like they could whip all creation, Mr. L/incoln issued a proclamation ordering us all to disperse within thirty days, and to quit cavorting around.
"I remember writing an answer to it as though I was a good Union man and a law-abiding citizen and was wil ling to disperse if I could, but it was almost impossible, for the boys were mighty hot, and the way we made up our military companies was to send a man down the lines with a bucket of water and if a fellow sizzed like a hot iron in a slack trough we took him, and if he didn't sizz we didn't take him; but nevertheless, notwithstanding and so forth, if we could possibly disperse within thirty days we would do so, but I thought he had better give us more time, for I had been out in an old field by myself and tried to disperse and couldn't.

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"I thought the letter was right smart and decently sar castic, and so I read it to some of my friends and they seemed to think it was right smart, too. About that time I looked around and saw the original Bill Arp standing with his mouth wide open, eagerly listening. As he came forward he said to me :
"'Squire, are you going to print that?' " 'I reckon I will, Bill/ said I. " 'What name are you going to put to it ?' said he. " 'I don't know yet/ said I; 'I haven't thought about a name.' "Then he brightened up and said: 'Well, Squire, I wish you would use mine. Them's my sentiments'; and I promised him that I would. "So I did not rob Bill Arp of his good name, but took it on request."

Major Smith, in one of his letters, has drawn an ex cellent little thumb-sketch of the original Bill Arp, show ing that while an unlettered man, who could neither read nor write, he was nevertheless possessed of an unusual share of mother wit and was always most welcome when ever he came about. Some few paragraphic glimpses at this old likeness may be of interest. Says Major Smith:
"He kept a ferry for a wealthy gentleman who lived a few miles above town on the Etowah river, and he culti vated a small portion of his land; but the ferry was not of much consequence, and when Bill could slip off to town and hear the lawyers talk he would turn over the boat and the poles to his wife or his children and go. I have known him to take a back seat in the court-house for a day at a

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time and with a face all greedy for entertainment, listen to the proceedings of the court and return home perfectly happy to tell his admiring family what had transpired.
"He felt the greatest reverence for Colonel Johnston, his landlord, and always said that he would about as leave belong to him as to be free; 'for,' said he, 'Mrs. John ston throws away enough clothes and second-hand vittles to support my children, and they are always nigh enough to pick 'em up.'
"Bill Arp lived in Chulio district; we had eleven dis tricts in the county, and they all had such names as Popskull and Blue-gizzard and Wolf-skin and Shake-rag and Wild-cat and Possum-trot, but Bill Arp reigned in*Chulio. Bill was the best man in the district. He could out-run, out-jump, out-swim, out-wrestle, out-ride, out-shoot any body; and was so far ahead that everybody else had to give up, and his neighbors were all his friends.
"But there was another district whose best man was Ben McGinnis; and it began to be whispered around that Ben wasn't satisfied with his limited territory and wanted to tackle Bill Arp. Ben weighed about one hundred and sixty-five pounds, while Bill weighed only one hundred and thirty. Bill was satisfied with his honors, but Ben was not; and soon it was noised around that Ben and Bill had to meet.
"I've seen Bill Arp in battle and he was a hero. I've seen him when shot and shell ranged around him and he was calm and cool; but I have never seen him so intensely excited as he was when Ben McGinnis approached and said: 'I golly, I dare anybody to hit me.'
"As Ben bristled up Bill let fly with his hard bony fist right in his left eye and followed it up with another so

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quick that the two blows seemed as one. I don't know how it was and never will know; but in less than a second Bill had him down and was on him and his fists and his elbows and his knees seemed all at work. Ben hollered 'enough' in due time and Bill helped him up and brushed the dirt off his clothes and said:
" 'Now, Ben,, is it all over betwixt us ? Is you and me all right?'
" 'Yes/ said Ben, 'it's all right 'twixt you and me, Bill.' "Bill thereupon invited all hands up to the shelf and they took a drink and he and Ben were friends. "This is enough of the original Bill Arp. He made a good soldier in war. He was the wit and the wag of the camp, making many a home-sick youth laugh away his melancholy. He was a good citizen in peace. When told that his son was killed he looked no surprise, but simply said: " 'Major, did he die all right ?' "When assured that he did Bill wiped away a tear and said: " 'I only wanted to tell his mother.' "

Quite a dainty morsel of State history is humorously served by Major Smith in the story which he tells of how the Georgia Colonels originated. "We used to have gen eral musters all over the State," says he, "twice a year. The militia were ordered out to be reviewed by the commander-in-chief, which was the Governor. The Consti tution required him to review 'em, and as he couldn't travel all around in person, he had to do it by proxy, and so he had his proxy in every county, and he was called

478 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the Governor's aid-de-camp with the rank of colonel. This gave the Governor over a hundred aid-de-camps, and they all took it as a compliment and wore cockade hats with red plumes, and epaulets, and long brass swords, and big brass spurs, and pistols in their holsters, and rode up and down the line at a gallop, reviewing the meelish. The meelish were in a double crooked straight line in a great big field, and were, armed with shotguns and rifles, and muskets, and sticks, and corn-stalks, and thrash-poles, and umbrellas, and they were standing up and setting down, or on the squat, or playing mumble-peg, and they hollered for water half their time, and whisky the other; and when the colonel and his personal staff got through reviewing he halted about the middle of the line and said: 'Shoulder arms right face march,' and then the kettle drums rattled and the fife squeaked, and some guns went off half-cocked, and the meelish shouted awhile and were disbanded by the captains of their several companies.
"These colonels held rank and title as long as the Gov ernor held his office, and they were expected to holler hur rah for the Governor on all proper occasions, and they did it. If the Governor ran again and was defeated, the next Governor appointed a new set from among the faith ful, and the old set had to retire from the field, but they held on to the title. For a great many years the old Whigs and Democrats had it up and down, in and out, and so new colonels were made by the score until the State was chock full again.
"They had a general muster and a grand review once up at Lafayette. Bob Barry lived up there and was the mischief-maker of the town. Bob never wore shoes or hat and hardly anything else in those days, and he had

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petted and tamed a great big long razor-backed hog, and could ride him with a rope bridle, and so as the colonel and his staff came galloping down the line with his cockades and plumes and glittering swords, Bob suddenly came out from behind a house mounted on his razor-back hog, and a paper cap with a turkey feather in it on hrs head, and a pair of old tongs swinging from his suspenders, and some spurs on his bare-footed heels, and he fell in just behind the cavalcade, and got the hog on a run, and scared their horses, and the whole concern ran away and the hog afjt, 'em, and such a yell and such an uproar was never hepd in those parts or anywhere else. The hog never stopped running until he got home, when Bob dismounted and took to the woods for fear of consequences. Bob is run ning a Sunday-school now, and I'm glad of it, for it will take a good deal of missionary work in him to make up for some things the Lafayette people tell about.
"But these militia musters got to be such farces that the Legislature abolished 'em about thirty-five years ago, though they couldn't abolish the colonels. When the war broke loose most of 'em went into the army and got re duced. Many a peace colonel got to be a war major or a captain, or even a high private, and in that way their ranks were thinned. Our governors, however, still make a few new ones as often as they are elected, and so the peace colonel is still destined to live and illustrate the good old State."

Several years ago Major Smith attended the gradu ating exercises of the Atlanta Medical College to see his son receive his diploma. Congressman N. J. Hammond,

480 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the president of the board of trustees, delivered the sheep skins to the young doctors in Latin; and this circum stance reminded Major Smith of an anecdote on old Judge Blandford, who had just resigned from the Supreme bench. Here is the story :
"On one occasion a doctor sued a man for his medical bill of fifteen dollars and the man employed Mark Blandford, who had just hung out his shingle, to fight the case; for he said the doctor was no account and he discharged him. The doctor swore to his account and Mark called for his license or his diploma, and made the point that no doctor had a right to practice without one, and he read the law to the squire. And so the old judge told the doc tor to show his sheepskin. He said he had one at home, and asked for leave to get it. It was just six miles to town and he rode in a hurry and returned in a sweat of perspiration. With an air of triumph he handed it over to Mark and said: 'Now what have you got to say?' Mark unrolled it and saw that it was in Latin. The doc tor's name was John William Head, but the Latin made it Johannes Gulielmus, films, Caput. That was enough for Mark. He made the point that it was not a diploma but an old land-grant that was issued in old colony times to a man by the name of Caput. The doctor raved furi ously, but Mark stuck to it that there was no mention in the document of John William Head that it was issued to Johannes Gulielmus, filius, Caput an altogether dif ferent person, and he asked the doctor please to read the thing to the court. Of course the doctor couldn't do it and he lost his case. The old squire said that he didn't know whether it was a land-grant or a diploma or a patent for some machine; and if the doctor couldn't read it he wasn't fitten to practice medicine."

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Born in Gwinnett county, Georgia, in 1826, where some twenty years later he married the sister of the late Judge N. Iy. Hutchins, Major Smith died in Bartow county in this State in 1903 at the ripe old age of seventy-seven years. Elder in the Presbyterian church, soldier, law yer, farmer, author, philosopher and humorist, he had lived to celebrate the golden anniversary of his nuptials, and had never laid aside his pen until compelled to do so by the Death Angel which had literally overtaken him in his harvest fields, still binding his mellow sheaves of grain. Sunshine died perceptibly from out the sky when the announcement went forth that genial Bill Arp was no more, and the great reading public for whom he had so often wrought the miracle of turning tears into smiles now paid him the sorrowful but affectionate tribute of turning smiles into tears.

16 i

CHAPTER XLVIL
"Uncle Remus/'
W ITH the feudal system of the old South the ante-bellum negro received his death-blow; and, if the pale glint of an unextinguished life-spark still feebly animates his now tottering frame, he merely lingers upon the scene of his former activities like the moss-clad remnant of some ancient ruin. He is no longer the trumpet-lunged and iron-sinewed laborer of the early sixties who breasted the billowy waves of grain under the noonday heat of the mid-summer sun. His eyes which are now dim and dewy like the early dawn in which, fresh from his child-like slumbers, he used to rise, are only waiting as then for the miracle-touch of the Morning Light. His hair, which once rivaled his skin, has now gathered the cotton for the last long journey. He must carry the staple to the valley-downs beyond the hills because his heart still beats between the furrows; and he will be all the happier in his heavenly robes if he can still bear the fleece of his native fields. He looks with kingly contempt upon the unfortunate scions of his race who have never known the good old days before the war. He is out of touch with the dusky generations which are rising up around him; and he turns with homesick eyes from the slavery of the new freedom to the freedom of
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the old slavery away back on the sun-bathed and plentyfilled plantations of Dixie. Ichabod is written upon his house, and brambles and briars breed pestilence around his cabin. But he little minds the'Present since amid all the changes of fortune he can still hold the Past. To days may be dark and to-morrows may be still darker. But yesterdays are all serene; and, wrapping himself in warm recollections, he hastens from cheerless Nows and hurries to golden Long Agoes. He never knew what it was to be hungry then. "Marster's darkey" enjoyed master's bounty. New clothes were provided before old ones drooped or dropped. If sick the doctor always came; but now the step upon the door-sill means the tax man or the undertaker. He does not wait for spring to come be fore he decorates his master's grave; but underneath De cember's sky he keeps it fresh and green with memory's April bloom. Living the old days over he once more clutches at the fiddle. He wakes the old-time dance. He revives the ancient tunes. And yonder perched upon the shuck-pile he dispenses music like Apollo mounted on Olympus. He repeats again the old stories which rapt and eager childhood could never hear too often. He wends his way again to the big house on Christmas morn ing. He drops the seed once more into the furrow; and once more the hillocks like inverted clouds burst upward into snow. He takes the bridle-path to the cabin-door or skirts the roadside to the country church; and over the heaving mounds of earth he bends with moistened eyelids untutored to read the head-stones but unable to forget the inmates.

484 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
To contend that the old-time negro was in every respect an improvement upon the modern type is to challenge cer tain contradiction and perhaps to ignore proof. He was not an ideal at best; nor was he an unregenerate at worst. Even the most religious were notorious backsliders who were constantly lapsing into "the beggarly elements of the world"; but even the most irreligious were seldom har dened offenders or pronounced criminals such as the tardy processes of law are now too slow to punish. They had much in common with Peter, but they drew back with in stinctive dread of Judas. Faults which spring from im pulse or from ignorance may prove costly, but they come within the pale of forgiveness; and most of the errors of the ante-bellum darkey were venial. Without the sense of ownership which the Anglo-Saxon has been centuries in acquiring and has not yet fully acquired, it is not sur prising that the barnyard population was sometimes re duced without an exchange of barter or the watermelonpatch too often thrust itself in the path of temptation; but these predatory excursions were usually inexpensive and harmless and they were palliated, if not excused, by the logic that the booty in question helped to make muscle and the muscle helped to make cotton.
The ante-bellum negro was an exponent of contented if not always of industrious labor. He felt no envy of capi tal and he rarely if ever resorted to strikes; and this was less because of the futility of resistance than because of the disinclination to resist. He was satisfied with his lot be cause, humble though it was, it was menaced by no anxie ties and burdened by no responsibilities and cares. He knew that the wolf was not in barking distance of his cab in-door and that the seed of the righteous were not more

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surely to be filled than were the measures of his daily wants.
Since the curse was pronounced upon Adam and the first bead of perspiration was born it is doubtful if human labor has ever clothed itself in such carols as the ante-bel lum negro sent up from between the furrows; and gentle Bobbie Burns himself was not more skillful in running sonnets with his plowshare or in turning songs with his shovel. Taught only by the tuneful warbler of the trees he smote the very battlements of heaven with song and literally wrote oratorios in the soil. He was the prince of humorists as well as the prince of story-tellers; and keenly alive to the sense of the ridiculous his laughter was as contagious as smallpox but as wholesome as mountain breezes; as innocent as ewe-lambs but as violent as in fant earthquakes.
^Esop could not surpass him in the art of creating fab]es; and he dispensed the gift of tongues with more than Pentecostal lavishness upon beast and bird and reptile, veiling many a satire and pointing many a moral for animals who stood more erect. Herodotus never wrote more solemnly of Grecian battles than he could speak of spooks encountered by the roadside or in the old deserted shanty at the witching hour of midnight. Nor was it deliberate fiction or delusive fancy in which he deigned to indulge. Like "pious TEneas" he was telling what he sazv and part of which he was. He was ready to put his hand on Holy Writ. And when he rehearsed the family legends which had come down like precious heirlooms from generation to generation, it seemed that some dark-browed Moor was reciting the chronicles of Venice; and, ever and anon, as tenderer recollections

486 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
welled up, he struck plaintive and soulful notes which even recalled the harp of the Border Minstrel.
During all the years of the war he was true and tried and steadfast. The Black Knight of the tournament was not more truly the champion of the helpless than was the Black Knight of the Southern plantation, who, with no other incentive except his devotion, kept watch over the lonely mansion-house while the owner was on the firing lines in Virginia, fighting for the slavery which kept him in bondage. He cared not for the freedom which others were anxious to force upon him.
But underlying all his characteristics and crowning all, he was thoroughly orthodox. He was sometimes in doubt as to whether it was Jonah who swallowed the whale or the whale who swallowed Jonah, but he was fully prepared to maintain either version. Transplanted from heathen Africa he readily embraced the faith. He did not have to be impressed like the Cyrenean into bearing the cross. He could not read his Bible with much ease but he could pray with great unction; and ofttimes his neighbors for miles around were disturbed by his private devotions. Life may have caught him often in error; but death found him fully re signed ; and one of the glories of slavery which, while it kept him in bondage here, prepared him for freedom here after, is that in dying he often sounded his master's name and seemed to say that his emancipated spirit was only hastening along the highway of gold to enter his master's service forever.
Recalling these scenes from out the by-gone years re minds me of what occurred when rapt in the spell of en-

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chanted interest I wandered among the frescoes which Raphael's great genius has spread upon the walls of the Vatican. Intent upon contemplating the immortal dreams I almost forgot the immortal dreamer; and, with this apology, I now turn to make obeisance to the man of merry genius who in literature if not in life has rejuve nated and preserved the old-time negro, making him breathe and shout and dance and sing as lustily as he ever did on the old Southern plantation: Joel Chandler Harris.
Between the new generation which has come upon the stage since the war and the old slave generation which is now rapidly vanishing there is so little in common that unless some one like Mr. Harris had appeared at the op portune moment with proper rescue appliances the oldtime negro must have been lost forever. But "Uncle Remus" survives. He has been saved from the wreck. He has been coated all over with Gibraltar; and while "men may come and men may go" he will still stand like the pyramids of his ancestral continent, challenging the stars and the centuries.
Uncle Remus not only speaks the dialect but he em bodies the humor and reproduces the folk-lore of the old-time negro; and he does all this so perfectly that we cease to think of him as an ideal and look upon him as an entity. Mr. Harris has persistently dis claimed any original creative merit in the production of Uncle Remits or in the authorship of the wonderful stories concerning "Brer Rabbit" and "Brer Fox," which have grown into the nursery classics of the Englishspeaking world. But perfect reproduction requires al most if not quite as much genius as original creation; and, while Mr. Harris may say that his work has been

488 RUMINISCBNCnS OP FAMOUS GHORGIANS.
simply to retell the old legends, preserving the flavor of humor in the molds of dialect, he must admit that he has succeeded where many others have failed; and he could never have put Southern literature under such lasting obligations to him unless he had caught the spirit of the old-time negro and possessed the power of kindling on the printed page the spark which vitalizes him and makes him live. This is what Mr. Harris has done for Uncle Remus; and when the merit of his work is stripped of all extraneous matter it still remains that he has carried the glow of the cabin fireside around the globe; that he has touched and warmed and vivified all landscapes with the genial rays of the Southern sun; and that even in the li brary of the scholar he has made the Southern cottonpatch as classic as the ancient arena.
The story of how Uncle Remus's menagerie began to tour the world of literature can be very briefly told. In 1876 Mr. Harris refugeed to Atlanta with his family from Savannah to escape an epidemic which had broken out in the Forest City. He had no definite plans in view, but he had been writing editorials for one of the Savannah pa pers and he thought perhaps he could get similar work to do in Atlanta. He was not disappointed in this expecta tion ; but he little dreamed that his hasty flight to Atlanta was destined to play such an important part in his subse quent fortunes and that even now he stood unconsciously in the pink aurora of his kindling fame. He became an editorial writer on the staff of the Constitution.
Captain Evan P. Howell was then managing editor of the paper; and going to Mr. Harris one day he said:

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"Harris, why can't you write some negro dialect stories like.Sam Small's? You can write them between edito rials. These stories are wonderfully popular here at home. Besides, they have been getting into the Northern papers. Try and turn in something to-night."
This was an unexpected demand upon the resources of the young editorial writer and he turned to the task with some trepidation. Mr. Small, who had shifted his brilliant services to another paper, had been writing negro dialect stories at odd intervals under the pen-name of Uncle Si; and Mr. Harris, after leisurely thinking over the matter, decided to launch his venture under the pseudonym of Uncle Remus. Tapping his forehead for some time with the reverse end of his quill, he at length dislodged the initial story which he proceeded at once to put into the mouth of this droll new character. With modest mis givings he turned in his copy at the close of the day and nervously awaited the result. Next morning the first in stallment of the Uncle Remus stories appeared on the editorial page, fresh and crisp.
Success was instant. Mr. Harris did not have to serve an apprenticeship. He caught the popular fancy from the very start. But he was now put to the task of raking his wits for all the plantation stories he had ever heard. He had created an appetite which he was obliged to appease. Luckily he had spent his boyhood days on one of the typical old Southern plantations of Putnam county, and the very air he had breathed was pungent with the aroma of the old negro legends. These all came trooping back again under the inspiration of successful authorship. Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox began to entertain the public
with the most amazing exploits and escapades. One by

490 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
one other animals joined the adventurous aggregation, until the whole animal kingdom was at last gathered under the spacious canvas; but each animal was made to furnish entertainment in his own characteristic way, without sacrificing his native peculiarities or instincts. Old and young were delighted with the new order of chivalry which Uncle Remus had founded; and on bil lowy waves of laughter Mr. Harris began to ride the high seas of literature.
These stories which he dashed off at random in the midst of his serious editorial work became his hostages to fortune: the inspirational fragments which he ex changed for the laurel leaves of fame. At the expiration of the first year Mr. Harris had spun enough yarn from the mouth of Uncle Remus to put into the folds of an oc tavo volume entitled "Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings"; and this volume became the first spicebearer of his opulent and splendid caravan.
Perhaps no writer has ever cloistered himself more se curely within the hermitage of his pen or touched the cur rent life of the world more gingerly with the contact of his personality than Mr. Harris; and there are hundreds of people within hailing distance of his home who have not even the slightest visual acquaintance with this charm ing recluse. Some are actually disposed to regard him as a myth but I happen to know from intimate association with him in the sphere of things material that he is really a man of flesh and blood whose friendship is something to be prized above rubies, and whose clever bonhommie is absolutely unrivaled except by his own genial wares.

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Having editorialized just across the hall from him and next to where Stanton wooed the muses, I can speak of him from the sanctuary of the inner circle. In the free abandon of social converse with old friends and associates there was no one whose companionship could be more en gaging; but in all the North Georgia mountains I never knew a lass who could shrink from strangers with fewer syllables or redder blushes; and, by the way, it may be observed just here that when Mr. Harris betrayed the pink sign of modesty his hair which was highly inflam mable spread the glow so completely around his head that it was almost impossible to tell where blush ended and hair commenced. An unfamiliar face had usually the same effect upon the playful moods of Mr. Harris that the schoolmaster's spectacles have on the pranks of an ur chin bent upon mischief; but. such restraints eliminated, Mr. Harris could distance any schoolboy I ever met either in literature or in life. For more than twenty-five years he kept up the treadmill grind of editorial work on the paper; but he finally retired from the staff and began to devote himself exclusively to the more congenial lines which had made his reputation. But long before severing his connection with the paper it was his habit to do most of his work at home and he merely came to the office for the purpose of getting editorial suggestions and newspaper exchanges. At the present writing Mr. Harris is about to undertake the publication of Uncle Rcmus's Magazine," for which an immense capital has been provided and an up-to-date plant is now being built; and the success of the enterprise is abundantly assured. Besides negro dialect stories, Mr. Harris has written books descriptive of other phases of Southern life. He seldom

492 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
projects an outline in advance of composition but pro ceeds at once to unfold his narrative; and he says that he is often surprised at what his characters say and do. He finds the labor of authorship perennially refreshing: and he writes with great ease, seldom revising what he has once written. He lives at West End, on the outskirts of Georgia's capital city, where his beautiful suburban home unfolds the delicious charm of country life and exhales the pure and unadulterated essence of Southern hospi tality. His wife, who was Miss La Rose, of Canada, still shares his happy lot; while his children who live around him have completely filled the measure of parental solici tude and expectation. Born in Putnam county, Georgia, in 1848, he has not yet entered upon the patriarchal estate. The cool evening shadows are still some distance off. So there is no occasion to think of him as growing old. But in some respects he can not grow old. He will still be young in feeling even when the snows upon the hill tops are white and thick. He now seems much younger than he really is because in purity of heart as well as in playfulness of spirit he has always kept close to the realm of childhood. The frost is not needed to mellow his heart; nor the sunset to make his life more golden than it is. The invalid world needs just such wholesome tonics to send the blood pulsing to the finger-tips. And Uncle Remus in flesh as well as in fame would be one of the immortals of the earth if Childhood's laughter could only ripple the crimson current or if Fame could but insure the vital centers with something of the immortality which he has given upon the printed page to Nature's child of song: the ante-bellum negro.

CHAPTER XLVIII
Chief Justice Logan E. Bleckley's *' Letter to Posterity/'
T HE traditions of the Georgia bench for wit have been most notably maintained within the memory of the present generation and in the highest ju dicial forum of the State by former Chief Justice Logan E. Bleckley, whose wit is second only to his keen discrim inating faculty in observing subtle distinctions of law. It may be observed in this connection that Judge Bleckley and Judge Nisbet are the most widely quoted of all the Supreme Court judges of Georgia beyond the State lim its, being the only occupants of the supreme bench whose opinions are recorded in "Great Decisions by Great Judges." Among the various deliverances which have come from the pen of Judge Bleckley there is hardly one which is not bathed in the smirk of an irrepressible witticism. He meted out equal and exact justice to all litigants without fear or favor; but he ever bent over the scales with an unclouded brow.
Asked on one occasion how he managed under the pressure of so much official business to word his decisions with such delicate regard for lights and shadows, the an swer which he promptly gave well illustrates his judicial habits as well as his readiness of retort. Said he: "I first revise and then I scrutinize. After I have done these two
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494 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
things I then revise the scrutiny; and, finally, to be per fectly sure, I scrutinize the revision."
In the case of a defendant who undertook to evade the law against retailing alcoholic intoxicants, without a li cense, by having his cook sell them in the kitchen, the judge rendered this opinion: "There is little doubt that the defendant was the deity of this rude shrine and that Mary was only the ministering priestess. But, if she was the divinity and he the attendant spirit to warn thirsty devotees where to drink and at whose feet to lay tribute, he is still amenable to the State as the promoter of for bidden libations. Whether in these usurped rights he was serving Mary or Mary him may make some differ ence with the gods but it makes none with men."
Dissenting from the opinion rendered by his colleagues in the case of Dodd versus Middleton he demurred in the following fashion. Said he: "If I could be reinforced by the votes as I am by the opinions of the Supreme Ju dicial Court of Massachusetts and the Court of Appeals of New York, I could easily put my brethren in the mi nority; but, as it is, they are two against one and I have no option but to yield to the force of numbers in other words to the tyranny of majorities. Though twice beaten I am still strong in the true faith and am ready to suffer for it moderately--on all proper occasions."
One more illustration will suffice. In discussing the in stinct of justice which often makes for the goal even when the avenue of approach is not distinctly apparent, he couched his views in these terms which he rounded with an apt poetic citation. Said he : "It not infrequently hap pens that a judgment is affirmed upon a theory of the case which did not occur to the court that rendered it, or that

LOGAN E. BLECKLBY.

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did occur and was expressly repudiated. The human mind is so constituted that in many instances it finds the truth when wholly unable to find the way which leads thereto.
"The pupil of impulse it forced him along His conduct still right with his argument wrong, Still aiming at honor, yet fearing to roam, The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home."

Several years ago the editor of The Green Bag, a mag azine edited in Boston and devoted largely to the ameni ties of the legal profession, published over Judge Bleckley's signature an autobiographical sketch which solicitous letters received from all parts of the country had induced him to write. In forwarding this document for publica tion Judge Bleckley prefaced what he had to say with the remark that to supply photographs was only to increase the cost of living, but that to concoct autobiography in volved psychological distress, especially to a person whose stock of materials was no larger than his own. Never theless he acceded to the friendly overture; but instead of respecting the conventional lines'of established prece dent he inaugurated an entertaining departure by ad dressing "A Letter to Posterity" from which the para graphs which occupy the remainder of this sketch are taken. The epistle is one of the literary treasures of the Georgia bar. These are the extracts:
"To Posterity Greeting: I regret that I shall be ab sent when you arrive, and that we shall never meet. I should be pleased to make your acquaintance, but it is im possible to await your coming, the present state of the law of nature being opposed to such dilatory proceedings.

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There is no hope of amending that law in time for my case. Though aware of your approach collectively as a body of respectable citizens, I shall never hear of a single individual among you. Nor is it likely you will ever hear of me by name, fame, or reputation, unless with the aid of a microphone of extraordinary power. Nevertheless, if the highways between the ages remain in good condition and repair, this communication, though virtually anony mous, may possibly reach you. In that event I bespeak for it your attention for one moment per generation, which, on a fair division of your valuable time, will be my full share and something over. I claim no vested right to your notice. If I have any color of title it is contingent upon the quality of my services to the public as a member of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Of these services there is documentary evidence of a perishable nature in certain volumes of the Georgia Reports to which I refer with unaffected diffidence. I must not be understood as re questing you to read all my opinions. I have a theory that such writing's might be terse, crisp, graceful, ani mated and entertaining; but mine afford few specimens of that kind. Yet, to treat them with justice, I am sensi ble that they are not more dry than those of some other judges.
"I came to the bench as an associate justice of the Su preme Court in the summer of 1875, and resigned early in 1880, worn down and tired out. My last deliverance was 'In the Matter of Rest,' a brief judicial poem. I would conciliate the critical taste of future generations by crav ing pardon, not for the verses, but for the doubtful deco rum of reciting them from a seat traditionally sacred to the oracles of prose. The loss of my ability to labor withr

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out great fatigue made me long for rest, but did not weaken my conviction that labor is the twin brother of happiness, the moral of the poem. Others might have suggested it as well or better in prose, but I could not. Perhaps I ought to confess that divers other poems (hap pily none of them judicial) may be laid to my charge. During most of my life I have had a strong and to me un accountable propensity to metrical transgression. Over and over again have I suffered the pains and penalties of poetic guilt. Besides a score or two of convictions, I have had many trials and narrow escapes. But even now I am not a hardened offender, for a bashful hesitation always tempers my gallantry with the Muses.
"My resignation was the result of overwork, and over work was the result of my ignorance of the law, together wjth an apprehension that I might be ignorant when I supposed I was not. To administer law it is desirable, though not always necessary, to know it. The labor of learning rapidly on a large scale, and the constant strain to shun mistakes in deciding cases, shattered my nerves and impaired my health. In its effect on the deciding faculty, the apprehension of ignorance counts for as much as ignorance itself. My mind is slow to embrace a firm faith in its supposed knowledge. However ignorant a judge may be, whenever he thoroughly believes he under stands the law of his case, he is ready to decide it, no less ready than if he had the knowledge which he thinks he has. And he will often decide correctly, for the law may be as he supposes, whether he knows it or not. My trouble is, to become fully persuaded that I know. I re mained in private life until January, 1887, when on the death of Chief Justice Jackson I became his successor."

498 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
"I will now recount briefly the principal events of my personal history prior to the beginning of my judicial career. I was born in the woods, amid the mountains of Northeastern Georgia, July 3, 1827. My native county, Rabun, had then been organized but seven or eight years, up to which period it was the wilderness home of Indians, the Cherokees. At eleven years of age I com menced writing in the office of my father, who at that time was a farmer without any lands and tenements, and with very few goods and chattels. He lived in a rented home stead, one mile from Clayton, the county town, and was clerk of three courts, the superior, inferior and ordi nary. He was a man of strong intellect, fair information, and some business experience. He had been sheriff of the county. A more sterling character was not in the world, certainly not in that large group called the middle class, to which he belonged. Loyal to truth, he scorned sham, pre tense and mendacity. He was a native of North Carolina, as was my mother also. His blood was English and Irish combined; hers German.
"I gradually acquired skill in office business, and more and more of it fell to my share, till at length I could give all of it competent attention. In this way, and by observ ing what was done and said in the courts, I contracted a relish for law, and became familiar with legal documents and forms of procedure. The statutes, strange to say, were pleasant reading, and at intervals I read them with assiduity. Of course, my comprehension of them was im perfect, and still more imperfect was my mastery of the constitution of the State and that of the United States. But I had a boy's acquaintance with all these, or with most of them, by the time I was seventeen.

LOGAN B. BLECKLEY.

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"Having prepared myself crudely for admission, I was admitted to the bar in April, 1846, shortly before I was nineteen. Though for the following two years I had a monopoly of the minor practice and a fraction of that which was of some importance, the litigation of one sparcely settled mountain county which fell to my share was too inconsiderate to break the continuity of my studies, or rather my legal meditations. I was absorbed. I had visions. I saw sovereignty. I beheld the law in its majesty and beauty. I personified it as a queen or an empress. It was my sovereign mistress, my phantom lady.
"Oh, lady, lady, lady! Since I see you everywhere,
I know you are a phantom A woman of the air!
I know you are ideal, But yet you seem to me
As manifestly real As anything can be.
Oh, soul-enchanting shadow, In the day and in the night,
As I gaze upon your beauty I tremble with delight.

"If men would hear me whisper

How beautiful you seem,

They would slumber while they listen,

And dream it in a dream;

For nothing so exquisite

f

Can the waking senses reach

Too fair and soft and tender

For the nicest arts of speech.

"In a pensive, dreamy silence I am very often found,
As if listening to a rainbow

500 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Or looking at a sound. 'Tis then I see your beauty
Reflected through my tears, And I feel that I have loved you
A thousand thousand years."
"My professional income for those two years, not counting1 insolvent fees, amounted to between thirty-five and fifty dollars per annum. Having no means with which to establish myself elsewhere and wait for a client age, I determined to suspend practice and engage in a more lucrative department of labor until I could accumu late a small capital. I sought and obtained employment as bookkeeper in the State railroad office at Atlanta. In this situation I remained for three years, my compensa tion ranging from forty dollars to sixty-six dollars per month. In the fourth year I was transferred to Milledgeville, then the capital of the State, being appointed one of the Governor's secretaries, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars. A new incumbent of the executive chair was in augurated in November, 1851, and both my health and my politics needing repairs, I returned to private life. I had saved enough from my earnings to supply me with the skeleton of a library and to support me some months as a candidate for practice."
"In March, 1852, being then nearly twenty-five years of age, I opened an office in Atlanta, and my thoughts and dreams were again of law and of nothing else. The phan tom lady haunted me as before and seemed as beautiful as ever. Indeed, though I had been cool, I had been constant in my devotions to her through the four years I was out of

LOGAN E. BLECKLEY.

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her service. Clients gradually ventured within my cham bers, and I soon had a moderate prosperity, due chiefly to acquaintance made in railroad circles during my three years' service as a railway clerk. In 1853 I was elected to the office of solicitor-general for my judicial circuit, which embraced eight counties. My term of service was four years, in the last of which happened the crowning success of my whole life, I was married.
"Until 1861 I continued the practice in Atlanta. The first battle of Manassas, alias Bull Run, occurred while I was in a camp of instruction, endeavoring to acquire some skill in the noble art of homicide. By nature I am pacific. The military spirit has but a feeble development in my constitution. Nevertheless, I tried the fortunes of a pri vate soldier for a short time in behalf of the Southern Confederacy. I was discharged on account of ill health, after a few months' service in Western Virginia, without having shed any one's blood or lost any blood of my own. The state of my martial emotions was somewhat peculiar: I loved my friends, but did not hate my enemies. With out getting 'fighting mad,' I went out to commit my share of slaughter, being actuated by a solemn sense of duty, unmixed with spite or ill will. When I consider how destructive I might have been had my health supported my prowess, I am disposed to congratulate 'gentlemen on the other side' upon my forced retirement from the ranks at an early period of the contest. To the best of my re membrance, I was very reluctant but very determined to fight. However, all my military acts were utterly null and void. After my discharge from the army, I served the Confederacy in much of its legal business at and around Atlanta. Occasionally I took part also in short terms of

502 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
camp duty as a member of the militia. In 1864, about the time General Sherman left Atlanta on his march to the sea, I was appointed to the office of Supreme Court re porter. After reporting two volumes, the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth Georgia, I resigned that office. This was in the spring of 1867. From that time till I was appoint ed to the Supreme bench in 1875, I practiced law continu ously in Atlanta.
"Such education as I received in my boyhood was ac quired at the village academy of my native county, an in stitution of meager resources and limited range of in struction. Although in the course of a somewhat studious lifetime I have added considerably to my early stock, the plain truth is that while not illiterate, I am destitute of real learning, lay or legal. My highest aspiration, so far as this life is concerned, is to do good judicial work. Service is better than salary, duty more inspiring than reward. My devotion to law is the spiritual consecration of a loving disciple, a devout minister."
We close this sketch with an observation from Chan cellor Walter B. Hill, himself one of the most radiant members of the Georgia bar, who at the height of his professional success, was called to preside over the foun tain-head of the State's educational system, and who, in the midst of his usefulness, was summoned to his crown. Says Chancellor Hill:
"Judge Bleckley's disclaimer of learning 'lay or legal,' is of a piece with his reason for resignation in 1880. His point of view is the pinnacle which not many so-called learned men ever reach, the knowledge of the extent of the domain of ignorance. He is one of the few men in Georgia who could hold his own in a discussion of Ger man metaphysics."

LOGAN E. BLECKLEY.

503

This reference of Chancellor Hill to the modest esti mate which Judge Bleckley has put upon his judicial ac complishments suggests the apologetic meekness with which he also refers to what he calls his "metrical trans gressions" ; but the fact remains that Judge Bleckley has produced some excellent verse. He has not only made Blackstone clutch the fiddle and dance the Virginia Reel, but he has made the waters of song gush from the Horeb of law and chant the music of Miriam.

CHAPTER XLIX.
The Jacksons.
W HEREVER the Jacksons have appeared in American history they have been the uncom promising champions of local self-govern ment. Moreover, the national annals will sustain the ad ditional observation that they have been the relentless foes of whatever has savored in the least degree of hyp ocrisy or sham. "Old Hickory," of Tennessee, and "Old Stonewall/' of Virginia, are most illustrious embodiments of the characteristics in question; but not less emphatically were the same Spartan traits exemplified in Governor James Jackson, of Georgia, who called down the elemental fire to extinguish the records of the Yazoo fraud.
The story of this dramatic incident in the history of Georgia has already been recited; and mention is again made of the episode only for the reason that Governor Jackson was the distinguished pioneer immigrant who brought to Georgia the family escutcheon. The exact re lationship between the various branches of the Jackson family in America does not appear from the records; but in the absence of direct testimony the inferential evidence of kindred attributes suggests that the common ancestor of all the various clans must have lived some time during
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THU JACKSONS.

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the seventeenth century, and somewhere among the Scot tish highlands.
However, it appears that Governor James Jackson came to Georgia from Devonshire, in England. Born at Moreton-Hampstead on September 21, 1757, the son of James and Mary Webber Jackson, he grew up on the edge of the Dartmouth forest, where the leafy prospects no doubt pictured to his adventurous imag ination the wider and freer stretches of the Western wilderness. But the spirit of the youthful patriot was stirred by other agents than the border breezes. He sat at the feet of an elder Jackson, who about his home fireside freely vented his opinions of the reigning house of Hanover and his sympathies with the suffering colo nists in America. The iniquitous Stamp Act must have fairly lifted the lid off the kettle. It is possible that the household was gathered together in solemn conclave; and the father having deplored the fact that he was now too old and feeble to be of help to the unfortunate vic tims of oppression across the water, the son may have impulsively declared that no such infirmities forbade him to espouse the cause of liberty. At any rate, the youthful emigrant was soon braving the Atlantic; and, under the protection of John Wereat, an intimate friend of the elder Jackson, he arrived in Savannah in 1772, being still short of the age of sixteen.

To suppose that the new arrival was too unseasoned to take any important part in the struggle which was now brewing is to confess ignorance of the Revolutionary War period of Georgia history, and to crave an introduction to

506 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the robust and muscular virtues of Jacksonian timber. Besides participating in the prelimnary discussions with an ardor which the oldest resident of the colony could not surpass, he made an enviable record in the field; and, graduating from the school of military experience with the degree of major-general, he declined, in 1788, an elec tion as Governor, on the ground that he was too young to be at the head of affairs. But he served in the State con vention which framed the original constitution of Georgia, and in the national Congress which met for the first time under the new constitution of the United States. It was not until after he had served in the Federal Senate that he accepted the governorship; an office conferred upon him in grateful recognition of his patriotic services in redeem ing Georgia from the clutches of the Yazoo fraud.
There is no occasion for repeating in this connection what has already been told in another. As soon as he had accomplished his patriotic purpose of thwarting the de signs of the swindlers the intrepid Georgian returned to Washington, where he died in 1806. Governor Jackson was united in marriage on January 30, 1785, to Mary Charlotte Young, daughter of William Young, who had been one of the first patriots to fall under the standard of freedom. Four sons were born of this union, all of whom attained distinction: William Henry, James, Jabez Young and Joseph Webber.
Professor James Jackson held the chairs of chemistry and French at the State University, then Franklin Col lege, and was familiarly called by the students "Old Ma jor" and "Old Take," the former because of an air of sol diership which he carried about with him, and the latter because of an expression which he repeatedly used in the

THE JACKSONS.

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classroom. Jabez Young Jackson and Joseph Webber Jackson were both prominent in public life, the one being a member of the United States embassy in London, and the other a member of Congress.
William Henry Jackson served Georgia in the State Senate. He belonged to the first class which graduated from the State University in 1801, and served his alma mater for more than forty years on the board of trustees, dying at the advanced age of ninety. Having been united in marriage in 1808 to Mildred Lewis Cobb, aunt of Generals Howell and T. R. R. Cobb and sister of Col onel John A. Cobb, of Athens, two children sprang from this union: James and Martha Cobb Jackson.
James Jackson became judge of the superior court, United States Congressman and Chief Justice of the State; one of the prince-regents of an illustrious line in Georgia. Martha Cobb Jackson, in 1834, was united in marriage to John T. Grant, one of the leading railway builders and industrial factors of the South. From this union sprang an only son, Colonel William D. Grant, who was reckoned at the time of his death the largest individ ual taxpayer in Georgia. In 1866 Colonel Grant married Sallie Fannie Reid, daughter of William and Martha Wingfield, of LaGrange, Georgia, and two children sprang from this alliance: John William Grant, one of the leading financiers of Georgia, and Mrs. John Marshall Slaton, wife of the distinguished speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives.

Some time after the Revolution Governor Jackson was joined in Savannah by a brother several years younger than himself, Dr. Henry Jackson, an eminent scientific

508 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
scholar, who was called to a professorship in the State University in 1811. Two years later Dr. Jackson was given a leave of absence for the purpose of accompanying Ambassador William H. Crawford to the court of Napo leon ; and he remained in Paris until after the famous return from Elba.
Mr. A. L. Hull, in his "Sketch of the University of Georgia," narrates an incident which fits into this imme diate connection. Says he: "While passing through Washington on his way abroad, Dr. Jackson met a lady to whom he was singularly attracted, but the fact of her husband being very much alive was an insuperable objec tion to his making it known to her. On his return from Europe he heard that she was a widow, and so soon as propriety permitted, he paid her his addresses and was married to her. The lady was the widow of Howell Lewis Cobb, Congressman from Georgia and uncle to Governor Howell Cobb."
If Dr. Jackson was not twice married the lady who be came his wife according to the incident above narrated, was originally Miss Rootes, daughter of Thomas Reade Rootes, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and sister of Sarah, who married Howell Lewis Cobb's other brother, John A. Cobb. Dr. Jackson was long connected with the State University; and, after withdrawing from active service, he retired to his home place near Athens, which he called "Halscot," probably coined from "Henry's Cottage." His distinguished son, General Henry Rootes Jackson, was one of Georgia's greatest men. He was lawyer, orator, poet, diplomat and soldier. It was during his boyhood days around Athens that he caught his inspiration for "The Red Old Hills of Georgia." He served with distinction in

THE JACKSONS.

509

two wars, represented the United States government at Vienna and Mexico, declined the chancellorship of the State University, and earned one of the largest profes sional incomes in Georgia.
Captain Henry Jackson, one of the most prominent lawyers of this State, was the son of General Henry R. Jackson. He was rapidly advancing to still higher honors when death prematurely checked his brilliant career. Captain Jackson married Miss Cobb, of Athens, daughter of General Thomas R. R. Cobb.
It will be seen from the matrimonial data of this brief outline sketch that the Cobbs and the Jacksons, like the Cobbs and the Lamars, have frequently intermarried; and the determination of precise kinship between some of the members of the family connection resolves itself into an interesting problem of genealogical entanglement which has to be solved by higher mathematics.

CHAPTER L.
The Twentieth Century and the Jews.
T HE indebtedness of human society to the Hebrew race is by no means restricted to the creedal doctrines of the revealed religion. If the sheer truth must be told in Gath this inventory alone is suffi cient to exhaust the assets and to mortgage the affections of the whole civilized world for all time to come. For it makes the Gentile debtor to the Israelite for larger sup plies of richer manna than the Israelite himself ever gath ered in the wilderness.
But the history of ancient Palestine contains only the first installment of the obligation.- Besides autographing, transcribing and preserving the sacred Scriptures, under divine inspiration, furnishing the theater for the Biblical events and supplying the ancestral homesteads from which Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism have emerged, the Jews have galvanized the secular activities of all the four continents, set the pace for human progress in all the diversified arts and industries and multiplied the achievements of Joseph the Hebrew upon an hundred Egyptian thrones.
Whenever an extravagant statement is made or an ig norant opinion is entertained it is only necessary to ad dress the custodian of the records in the primal command
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TWENTIETH CENTURY AND THE JEWS. 511
of the old Pentateuch: "Let there be light." To establish the truth of the proposition laid down, there files into the courtroom a host of dignified witnesses, each of which represents a sphere of activity whose belt is an equator. The world of politics presents Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconfield. The world of finance names Baron de Rothschild. The world of literature cites Israel Zangwill. The world of music chants Mendelssohn. The world of philanthropy proclaims Montefiore and Hirsch.
But some one may demur that the names above pre sented are exceptional, and do not lay the world under any tribute to the race at large. The fact is admitted, but not the inference. Shakespeare and Milton and Napoleon and Galileo and Kepler and Newton and Raphael were also exceptions, but exceptions which portrayed the ge nius of nations and embodied the spirit of epochs.
However, if the canvass is too large it is only necessary to localize the area of discussion. The lowgrounds fur nish quite as good a field for the study of Hebrew char acter as the tops of the mountains; but the change of venue may be prefaced with the statement that Jews are seldom found in dead communities. Like the arteries of the human body they move toward the vital centers. They are in no wise to be identified with the insects, which mul tiply in putrefaction and fatten upon decay; and, if they are to be classed among the insects at all, they must be assigned to the coral builders which labor neither in stag nant pools nor in noisome eddies, but which down in the ocean solitudes lay secure beams and lift substantial fab rics amid the very fountains of the troubled deep.

512 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
It is the surest sign of wholesome life in any community that it can boast of at least one typical descendant of the thrifty Jacob. He registers the existence of the quicken ing pulse. But he comes to make the money which his presence advertises; and, without invoking any partic ular favor, he opens his workshop on the corner and soon begins to flourish like the hillside cedars of his own forest of Lebanon. In the hardest of times he has money to lend if not to burn and before he is ready to execute his will he owns the grocery-store, the meat-market, the grog-shop, the planing-mill, the newspaper, the hotel and the bank.
But the larger towns and cities serve better the pur poses of illustration. In all the thorough-going centers the Jews are found in great multitudes. They are money makers to such an extent that the roll-call of the whole Hebrew population can be made from the tax-books. They may be shrewd in driving bargains but they are open-handed in sustaining public charities, in encourag ing liberal arts, in cultivating pure morals and in patron izing wholesome entertainments. The reason why others do not compete with them in matters of trade is per haps clue less to instincts than to ideas.
It is quite the fashion to caricature the Jew as exacting his interest down to the last drachma. But the Jew is not the only money-lender on the modern Rialto who has de manded his pound of flesh; nor can it be said that the Shylocks of the present day have all sprung from the thrifty race which produced the Merchant of Venice. Some of the brethren whose names are not enrolled in the synagogues but whose pews are found in other places of worship have been known to exhibit qualities which the

TWENTIETH CENTURY AND THE JEWS. 513
virtuous vampire would scorn to adopt and which would almost drive the honest leech to suicide.
Besides bearing considerably more than an average share of the burdens of government, it is an unvarnished statement of fact that no race of people on the globe are voluntarily more liberal than the Jews in supporting insti tutions of which they are not themselves the immediate beneficiaries. It is by no means unusual for them to contribute either to Christian hospitals or to Christian churches. Neither their orphans nor their indigents are wards upon the public except in the rarest instances. They furnish few inmates for the jails and penitentiaries and asylums, little business for the courts and little scandal for the newspapers. The women of Israel are proverbially chaste. They keep their households in order, their chil dren in obedience and their husbands in respect. The ob servance of the Mosaic law has given the Jews remarkable immunity from bodily ailments and afflictions. They usu ally enjoy good health, cheerful spirits, hearty appetites and long lives.
Rascals are sometimes found among the Jews. But "the lost sheep of the House of Israel" are not more nu merous than the errant waifs which have wandered from other folds. The Jew is not perfect; but neither was Adam who lived before Abraham and who has be queathed the inheritance of original sin to the whole out put of his loins, without any clause of reversion or entailment in favor of the Twelve Tribes. And while the Jews make no pretense of following the Nazarene they at least respect Him as a prophet and a teacher; and many of them are practically better Christians than some of blatant prayers and broad phylacteries, whose false dis-
17 r

514 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
cipleship is worse than nominal and whose deceitful lips even while framing the accents which profess the faith are printing the kisses which betray the Master.
Whether tested by the carpenter's tape line or the chem ist's retort the claims of the Hebrew race to aristocratic distinction must be universally allowed. The tables of de scent upon which the Jews rely for proof of remote an tiquity reach back to the tables of stone which bore the Decalogue. Beside such an ancient scroll the most pa trician documents which the Gentiles can boast become almost plebian. The New Englander is satisfied if he can trace his forefathers back to the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock; but the Jew in Jooking for ancestors on shipboard respects neither the Western Hemisphere nor the Chris tian centuries, but quietly follows his genealogical chart until it lands him at the door of the ark upon Ararat.
However, it is not antiquity alone which makes the household of the Jew illustrious. The heroes of Biblical story have all sprung from the seed of Abraham; and heading the long list which includes Moses and Elijah and David and Solomon and Daniel and Ezekiel and Isaiah and Paul and Stephen is the Man of Galilee whom Christendom ranks above all the rest: the immaculate He brew, the Prince of the House of David, and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
The battle-field of Hastings laid the foundations and traced the patents of the British nobility in rubrics which were commonplace and paltry compared with the blood of the hierarchy of Israel. Nor have the life currents which ancestry has done so much to ennoble been contaminated

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by foreign admixtures. Senator Vance, of North Caro lina, has not inaptly likened the Jews to the Gulf Stream, which journeys around the entire globe but never min gles with the ocean through which it moves. The average American is a conglomerate whose ancestors are distrib uted over the whole face of the earth and most of Euro peans are tinctured with foreign infusions. But the Jew is still the Jew. Racially he has undergone no change whatever and the blood which ripples the veins of the modern Hebrew in America is substantially the blood of the ancient Hebrew in Israel. The candidate for social honors who is knocking at the door of the four hundred is sure to be admitted if he can show one single red cor puscle which has come from William the Conqueror, but the Jew without using the microscope requires only a needle to open a vein and out leaps the same blood which was bound to the altar on Mount Moriah.
The cynic who is still inclined to sneer at the Hebrew race will do well to recall the famous retort which Dis raeli made in the House of Commons to the member who twitted him with being a Jew. "Sir," replied he, with the calm poise which truth only can give to resentment, "when your ancestors were tending swine on the plains of Scan dinavia and drinking blood from the skulls of savage vic tims slain by savage victors, mine were priests and princes in Israel, worshiping God in the temple."
The anti-Semitism of France and Russia is by no means an expression of the sentiment of Christendom toward the Jews. On the contrary it represents the death struggle of an old enmity which is slowly passing under the be-

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nign influences of twentieth century brotherhood into the fossil remains of medieval barbarism. The recognition of Oscar Strauss by President Roosevelt indicates much more clearly the present drift of the great-world currents. In this connection it is of some interest to observe that while the appointment of Mr. Strauss to the portfolio of Commerce and Labor marks the first entry of the Hebrew citizen into the President's council-board at Washington, the event was anticipated under the Confederate govern ment by the appointment of Judah P. Benjamin, first as attorney-general and afterwards as Secretary of State in the cabinet of President Davis. After the war, Mr. Ben jamin took up his residence in England, where he became the queen's counsellor. Except as foreign ambassadors, it seldom happens that men can lay double claim to dis tinction by achievements in two hemispheres; but such was the dual accomplishment of Judah P. Benjamin.
Significant of the popular feeling in America toward the Hebrew race is the fact that among the national law makers in Washington at the present time there are four Congressmen of Jewish blood and one United States Sen ator. Nor is this recognition undeserved. The history of the country from the earliest colonial days will show that the Jews have been important factors in American affairs on the military as well as on the civil side. Indeed, antedating the discovery of the New World, it was from the coffers of the Jews of Spain that the money was ob tained for the eventful voyage which brought Columbus ' to the Western Hemisphere. It was a Jew who prescribed for the exhausted crew; and a Jew who, sweeping the horizon from the breezy turrets of the rigging, first an nounced the sight of land and became the herald of the

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dawn of modern times. Though normally men of peace and inclined by instinct to trade rather than to arms, the muster-rolls of all the great conflicts will show that the Jews have been at the front whenever there was fighting to be done; and the men who have stood shoulder to shoulder with them on the fields of the Confederacy will attest that the descendants of Abraham espoused the cause of constitutional liberty with as little thought of surren der as if they were battling for the very Ark of the Cove nant.
But while the appointment of Mr. Strauss is pleasing to the country at large as an act of recognition justified by individual as well as by racial merit, it is specially grat ifying to the people of Georgia. Years ago when the Strauss family first emigrated to America it was toward this State that the pioneer movements of the household band were directed. Perhaps in the library of the old home in Rhenish Bavaria there were books on the shelves which told of how the Jews had prospered in the colony of Oglethorpe, some of them having landed on the bluffs of the Savannah river as early as 1733. In looking over the long list of distinguished Hebrews the eyes of the elder Strauss must surely have lingered upon the Sheftalls and it may be that prophecy even suggested Hirsch and Moses and Elsas and Levy and Haas and Schlesinger and Eiseman and Jacobs. The philanthropic spirit was one of the strongly marked characteristics of the Strauss family, and the humane enterprise in which the colony of Georgia originated could easily have supplied the emi grating impulse. At any rate the elder Strauss gathered up his household effects and with Isadore, Nathan and Oscar he started to Georgia.

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This was in 1854. Locating at Talbotton, Georgia, he straightway began to prosper. The two eldest boys as soon as they were old enough entered Collinsworth In stitute ; but Oscar appears to have been too young to have enjoyed the benefits of this excellent school at least for any length of time. He was only four years old when he left Bavaria, and before he was twelve the family moved to Columbus where they lived from 1862 to 1865. The war entailed heavy disasters upon Lazarus Strauss, and dismayed by the prospect which the State presented after General Sherman's energetic torch had ceased traveling from Chattanooga to Savannah he decided to start in busi ness in New York; and thereupon he moved to Gotham.
Organizing the firm of Lazarus Strauss and Sons, the establishment soon became one of the largest concerns importing chinaware in the United States, and the foun dations of the family fortune were laid. In 1887 Isadore and Nathan bought an interest in the great department house of R. H. Macy and Company, which eventually be came the sole property of the two brothers whose able financiering has made it one of the largest mercantile Es tablishments on the globe.
Soon after the family moved to New York Oscar en tered Columbia College, from which institution he grad uated with the highest honors. Ill health prevented him from enjoying the career which he had mapped out for himself at the bar, and he entered his father's firm, where his legal acquirements proved of immense advantage. But he was not prevented by his business engagements from taking an active part in politics; and he proved his capacity for public service to such an extent that Presi dent Cleveland appointed him as minister to Turkey.

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Although a Democrat, he was subsequently honored by President McKinley with the same appointment. Be sides winning the approval of the home government, he also gained the friendship of the Sultan, who wished to decorate him, but the compliment he felt constrained to decline. However, Mrs. Strauss was made the recipient of the royal favor to the extent of receiving the highest mark of respect ever paid by the Turkish sovereign to the gentler sex. It is by no means the least of the diplomatic distinctions achieved by Mr. Strauss that through the Turkish Sultan he was largely instrumental in preventing the Mohammedans in the Philippines from joining Aguinaldo. He also rendered effective service to the cause of American missions.
An accomplished literary scholar, Mr. Strauss has writ ten numerous essays on political and economic subjects for the magazines and periodicals, among them the West minster Review. He has received the degree of LI/.D. in recognition of his ripe scholarship and diplomatic serv ices to the government; and his selection, independent Democrat though he is, for portfolio honors in the cabinet of President Roosevelt is an appropriate sequel to the academic compliment.
The typical Jew of the medieval times was not the Shylock of Shakespeare, but the Isaac of Ivanhoe; and the typical Jew of the modern world is not the money-lender of Mortgage Lane, but the far-sighted and sagacious man of affairs who sits at President Roosevelt's cabinet-board: skillful, energetic, practical and patriotic; quick to detect points of advantage, prompt to seize opportune moments,

520 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
faithful in performing executive trusts and modest in wearing well-earned distinctions.
America has set an example which France and Russia must follow. The Jew is entitled to the considerate es teem not only of all who call themselves Christians, but of all who profess to be well informed; for so thoroughly is the philosophy of Israel ingrained in the structure of the world's thought rising from its roots and mingling with its sap that the man who is inclined to decry the chosen people of God can not repudiate the debt which he owes to the Jews by rejecting the Biblical theory of the universe. Nor can he date the simplest letter with the current -numerals of the Christian era without kneeling unconsciously at the manger-cradle of the Babe of Beth lehem.
Going the full length of the skeptical tether he may scorn the law, revile the prophets and eschew the gospels, but the obligation still attaches to the civilization which he enjoys and which is all the wiser for the prov erbs of Solomon, all the sweeter for the anthems of Da vid and all the holier for the beatitudes of Jesus. He may be an avowed enemy to oxygen, but the despised ele ment keeps him alive, in the water which quenches his thirst aye, in the breath which fills his nostrils. And if perchance the very name he bears in the ranks of unbelief is not enriched with the associations of the temple it still remains that the very air he breathes on the streets of Babylon is fragrant with the blooms of Galilee.

CHAPTER LL
Miscellaneous Anecdotes and Witticisms.
I T was not beneath the dignity of such an astute states man as John Quincy Adams to serve the common wealth of Massachusetts in the halls of Congress after he had occupied the presidential chair of the repub lic; and Georgia has not infrequently been served in her legislative assemblies by men who have previously worn congressional honors. Among the ex-Congressmen who occupied seats in the Legislature of Georgia during the late eighties and the early nineties, were Wm. H. Felton, Hiram P. Bell, R. W. Everett and Morgan Rawls; and no members of the body were more active both on the floor and in the committee-rooms than these distinguished political veterans.
Conspicuously brilliant as were the services of Dr. Felton in the national arena it is doubtful if he ever achieved such oratorical triumphs or received such splen did ovations as marked his career in the Georgia Legis lature. He was then an old white-haired man who leaned heavily upon his stick and bent forward with his hand upon his ear to hear what was said. He was so extremely nervous that his whole body quivered like an aspen even
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when moved by no unusual excitement. The casual or ignorant observer who knew nothing of politics in Geor gia might have hastily concluded that this trembling old man was there like the pictures on the wall, for the pur pose of casting upon the assembly the austere but speech less spell of an earlier generation. But Dr. Felton was not in the Legislature of Georgia to enhance the scenic effects; nor to exemplify the golden beatitude of silence. He was there for more eloquent reasons. The light which shot from his eyes when interest was aroused or thought alert showed plainly that the old volcano was not yet ex tinct and that while it might lift the snows of Mount Blanc it concealed the flames of Vesuvius. To provoke his wrath was to hurl a lightning-rod into a thunder-storm or to wake an eagle upon his eyrie and to find that while he was an ancient eagle he was nevertheless an eagle still scarred it might be with many a wound, but scarred in the battles of the blue.
Those who witnessed the famous fire of Dr. Felton's batteries in 1884, when Representative E. G. Simmons, of Sumter, was the victim of the fusillade, will never for get the scene of that terrific bombardment. Fort Sumter was again charged with iron hail. It is needless to re call the minute particulars; but it seems that Mr. Sim mons, who was one of the ablest members of the House, had mortally offended Dr. Felton, perhaps without inten tion, in some remarks which he had made during the de bate which was then pending. Instantly Dr. Felton sprang to his feet. The nervous infirmity under which he labored imparted an electrical power to his eloquence as he turned his powder-works toward the corner in which Mr. Simmons had just resumed his seat. The long arms

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rose in the air as if to clutch the mallet of Hercules, while the fierce eyes darted fire like live coals from the forge of Vulcan. The established custom of debate was forgotten and the gentleman from Sumter became in the red-hot rhetoric of Dr. Felton "the man from Sumter." Such invective was never heard on the floor of the Georgia Legislature as then rolled in lava-like torrents from the lips of the impassioned old man eloquent. Members in breathless excitement crowded around the white-haired speaker and watched with amazed interest the scathing eruptions of the old volcano. Seizing upon one of the statements of Mr. Simmons to the effect that he had re ceived the colored vote as well as the white vote of Sum ter county in the legislative election, Dr. Felton enlarged upon the affinity existing between the colored brother and "the man from Sumter," and compared them to two drops of water hanging upon a telegraph wire in a rain-storm and gradually approaching each other until they came to gether and made one big drop. Then he proceeded to say that instead of praying to God in abstract terms to make his offspring the pattern of uprightness and probity of character he could now pray to have him made just the opposite of the man from Sumter. At last he reached the climax of his terrible philippic by pointing his slim finger at Mr. Simmons and pronouncing upon him the modified anathema of Lord Macauley.
"Sir, the one small service which you can render Geor gia is to hate her, and such as you are may all who hate her be."
Dr. Felton made it evident from this wonderful speech that age had not impaired the powers of mind which had made him such an invincible force in so many political

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campaigns in Georgia; but he did not carry off the hon ors undivided. Mr. Simmons took the floor next morn ing and explained the misconstruction which Dr. Felton had put upon his remarks; and though he lacked the dra matic fire and picturesque impressiveness of Dr. Felton, he sustained himself with splendid credit. Dr. Felton was several times reelected to the State Legislature, and was instrumental in shaping much of the legislation of the last two nineteenth century decades in Georgia. The lease of the Western and Atlantic Railroad upon the pres ent advantageous terms is largely the legislative achieve ment of Dr. Felton, who introduced and urged the meas ure which fixed the rental. The last appearance of Dr. Felton in public was in 1898, when, bowed under the weight of nearly eighty years, he appeared before the General Assembly of Georgia and made an effective plea of surpassing eloquence on behalf of the State Univer sity at Athens. Mrs. Wm. H. Felton, the wife of Geor gia's Old Man Eloquent, is one of the most brilliant and useful women that Georgia has ever produced, and is perhaps fully the peer intellectually and socially of the famous Madam Octavia Walton LeVert.
Hiram P. Bell made a record for repartee as well a^ for oratory in the proceedings of the State Legislature during the period of post-congressional service, to which refer ence has already been made. He was discussing some measure before the House general judiciary committee of which he was a member, when some one mterrnpted his rather warm argument by flippantly remarking that he was making bugbears out of what was really insig nificant.

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"Aye," said he, turning toward the committee member who had interrupted him, "call it insignificant if you like. The fiber of yonder oak the texture of these granite walls the framework of this ponderous universe these are only atoms multiplied by atoms. Two thousand years ago the Nazarene touched the spots of the leper of Ca pernaum. It was an insignificant thing. It was only an unclean leper who was healed. But the finger-touch of that insignificant act has thrilled and electrified the Chris tian centuries."

Dr. H. V. M. Miller, one of the most eloquent public men of Georgia, appropriately styled "the Demosthenes of the Mountains," because of the dynamic quality of his campaign speeches, also possessed the readiness while on his feet to make happy use of unexpected interruptions. He had just risen to deliver his commencement address before the Alumni Society of the University of Georgia, soon after the war, and had probably not more than sounded his introductory words of greeting when the ap plause which his presence had occasioned caused some of the plastering to drop from the loose ceiling overhead. This diverted the attention of the audience for the mo ment, but Dr. Miller was fully equal to the emergency and he recalled the wits of the audience with an unpre meditated and impromptu sparkle.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "I expected to bring down the house before I finished, but not before I com menced."
Dr. Miller was variously gifted. He was an eminent medical practitioner as well as an oratorical Ajax on the

526 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
political hustings. Toward the close of reconstruction he was elected with Joshua Hill to represent Georgia in the United States Senate, but on account of the blockade tac tics of the military government of State affairs the Sena tors-elect were not seated until it was nearly time for the session to expire. Dr. Miller was therefore denied an opportunity of launching any thunderbolts on the floor of the upper house of Congress; and after leaving Wash ington he devoted himself almost exclusively to'his pro fessional pursuits. He possessed one of the most richlystored minds and one of the most retentive memories of any man in Georgia, and besides keeping himself thor oughly posted on current topics and events he could flu ently and thoughtfully discuss almost any subject in phi losophy, science, art or literature. Early in life he was commissioned by the Methodist conference to preach, but he never undertook the work of itinerant evangelism.
Captain Henry Jackson, of Atlanta, was one of the leading members of the Georgia bar and one of the best speakers in the State. During the famous gubernatorial campaign of-1882, when Mr. Stephens was opposed by General L. J. Gartrell for Governor, Captain Jackson warmly supported Mr. Stephens, and when Mr. Stephens inaugurated in Atlanta his campaign of oratory in which he wheeled himself over the State in his celebrated rollerchair, Captain Jackson made the speech of introduction. He had just commenced to grow eloquent when an ardent supporter of the opposition candidate cried out, "Hur rah for Gartrell!" much to the annoyance of the elo quent speaker, especially since the outburst caused an

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unwelcome wave of applause to roll from the rear of the opera-house to the footlights. Captain Jackson saw at once that the man who had disturbed the flow of his speech was purely Causasian and moderately good-look ing, but he purposely ignored this discovery and when the uproar subsided he lifted his eyes to that part of the building from -which the interruption had proceeded and quietly said:
"If the colored brother in the gallery will please be quiet this introduction will now proceed."
Nothing which could have been struck from the anvil of thought in that heated moment could possibly have been more effective. Captain Jackson was not further dis turbed, and at the close of his eloquent introduction Mr. Stephens, still seated in his roller-chair, from which he made no effort to rise, wheeled himself to the front, and began the opening speech of his dramatic campaign. Ad vanced age and ill health had made the old Commoner quite feeble, and in order to revive his flagging spirits as his strength gave way under the physical strain of his great effort he made frequent use of the little stimulating mixture which stood close at hand on the table, but every time he reached for the bottle he did so under the humor ous pretext of drinking to the health of the pure Jeffersonian Democracy. During the campaign which this speech opened Mr. Stephens also made effective use of the expression which he had first used years before when the old Whig party was going to pieces in Georgia and he was not quite ready to join the Democrats and was very bitter against the Americans or Know-Nothings. Asked in what camp he belonged, he replied that he belonged in none. Said he: "I'm just totin' my own skillet."

528 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Judge Howard Van Epps, of Atlanta, is something of a wit as well as much of a lawyer. The exercise of this sparkling attribute was strikingly brought into play when addressing the young doctors who were about to graduate from the Atlanta Medical College several years ago. Said he:
"Ability is of prime consequence; both native and ac quired. It is fair to assume, doctors, that you have abil ity. I should say you had it and had it bad. At any rate, if the mothers who bore you and the professors who trained you have not caused it up to this hour to break out in visible eruption, you can not catch it from me in the brief exposure of this speech."
Shortly after resigning from the city court bench of Atlanta, Judge Van Epps submitted to an interview in the course of which he said: "I am growing old. Not so many years are before me now as when, twenty-five years ago, my voice trembled and my eyes fell before the request of my first client who wanted some information as to a p'int of law. God grant he got a pint. I know he got no more."
This incident is narrated of Judge Thomas W. Thomas, an eccentric but able judge of one of the circuits in East ern Georgia. Judge Thomas possessed an insuperable aversion to pleas intended simply for delay and he sought by every means within the province of the law to bring cases before him to speedy trial.
An execution had been levied upon a tract of land. When sale-day arrived the defendant, in order to gain time, presented to the sheriff an affidavit of illegality, al-

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leging for cause that the sale had not been advertised in the three most public places in the county of Lincoln. The sheriff postponed the sale and returned the papers to the clerk of the court for trial.
At the next term of the court the case was called. Judge Reese, attorney for the defendant, moved to dismiss the levy on the ground stated, citing the statute. H. J. Tying, council for the plaintiff, contended that the law requiring sales to be advertised in the three most public places in the county had become obsolete from non-usage, and, even admitting the law to be in force, the objection would not hold good, because the law always presumes that the of ficer had discharged his duty. In the midst of the argu ment the judge interposed, observing to the plaintiff's counsel that he did not wish to hear from him farther, and proceeded to deliver the following decision:
"Gentlemen, I must overrule the motion to dismiss the levy in this case, because it is not, and can not possibly, be known which are the three most public places in the county of Lincoln. Were this case before me in the county of Heard I should probably rule differently, because in that county there are three public places which are known as the most public. The first is the muster-ground, where they all go to muster once a month; the second is the clay-bank, where they all go to eat dirt once a week; and the third is the still-house, where they all go to get liquor once a day. Mr. Clerk, enter the motion overruled at de fendant's cost."

Colonel A. H. H. Dawson, once a member of Congress from Georgia, identified himself with the American party

530 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
just before the war. In reply to Mr. Stephens's appeal that the South should support Mr. Buchanan for the pres idency, Mr. Dawson thus argued upon the stump:
"My friends, we once had the great Whig party, and in this State Mr. Stephens was its great leader. The Whig party has gone to Hades. We now have the great Democratic party, and in this State Mr. Stephens is its great leader. If he only leads the Democratic party where he led the Whig party I shall be perfectly satisfied."

CHAPTER LIL
Georgia's Poems and Poets.
T O depreciate the ennobling influence of true poetry is worse than the sheerest of cynicism; it is actu ally the acme of boorishness. The arts are all ennobling; and poetry is the queen-mother of the arts. If to music belongs the voice of harmony, upon poetry, which bears the symbols of thought, must be conferred both the regal lips and the coronated brow. And since poetry is song lifted into articulate utterance it will merely heighten the meaning without disturbing the meter to make the Bard of Avon sing:
"The man that hath no poetry in himself, Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treason, stratagems and spoils."
The man who sneers at the language of the Muses as the language of the measles, intended for graduating es says and love-sick compositions, advertises his preference for bandits as congenial associates and outlaws himself from the society of the world's gentlest and truest aris tocrats. He may wear the linen of Leeds and the broadcloth of Brussels, but he can not by any stretch of courtesy be classed among the gentle Greeks; and he is only an uncouth barbarian who has never sighted the cloud-rests of Olympus.
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532 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
True poetry is the mother-tongue of the world's mas ter souls; the medium of exchange through which the landmarks of the ages deal in ideas; the language in which Chaucer sings to Tennyson in which Virgil harps to Milton in which Homer calls to Horace. It ignores all national distinctions; breaks down all barriers be tween continents and centuries; reconciles all Babel dis cords into Pentecostal harmonies; and summons all hu manity into one vast sky-roofed concert-hall in which only master minstrels are engaged to sing.
Is the ear dull or the mind stupid that the busy world ling can actually breathe the very air in which these heav enly harmonies are floating and yet be sordidly intent only upon the vaporings of discordant sounds which issue from the brazen lungs of Babylon? Is it any tribute to the ethereal spirit which is supposed to ennoble the common clay that instead of reaching for diamonds in the air he prefers to grovel with worms in the dust?
The absence of the higher faculty which enshrines the instinct of worship for the Beautiful is more to be pitied than the dull insensibility which, lacking the physical pow ers of perception, skirts heedlessly the field of roses or breathes unconsciously the balm of violets. Physical losses are ofttimes abundantly recompensed by spiritual compensations. The man who is physically blind may still feast with an inner sight upon the ideal landscapes of the imagination. The man who is physically deaf may nevertheless be gifted with an inner ear whose sense is rapturously and delicately tuned to the subtlest whisper ings of celestial music.
But the man who having eyes sees not and the man who having ears hears not, the Beautiful, is an unnatural mon-

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ster with whom decent Barabbas can not associate and beside whom even Caliban himself shines like an opal.
This little curtain-lecture is intended only for those in whom the suffocating air of the marshes has not yet sti fled the instinct which holds the seed-hope of better things and for whom there are still some beckoning charms in the crystal ozone and magic elixir of the mountains. It is utterly and idly useless to lecture those who have long since lost whatever appendages they may have once had for soaring with the skylark, and who have now left only stomach-muscles for crawling with the caterpillar.
The elimination of pure and wholesome sentiment from the gross realities of life is one of the worst of all the chips of human depravity which have drifted down from the garden of Eden. Yet even some of the very elect-salt of the earth seem to be destitute of this saving grace; and if they ever speak fluently the musical language of the higher plateaus of life the power of speech will have to be reconferred in the mystical process of the great change.

Georgia's master-minstrel, in the strictly technical sense, was Sidney Lanier. The suffrages of the world's best literary critics have conferred upon him the degree pre eminent. He was not, and will never be, like Whittier or Longfellow, the people's poet; but, like Lowell, he is steadily becoming from year to year what implies an ap preciation much more critical; the poet's poet. Scholars are now beginning to study his verses like newly-discov ered gold-bearing ores; and in the great universities of Europe his little volumes of song have been introduced as text-book* into the crowded curriculums. Fame often

534 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
loiters along the roadside, but when she does so it fre quently appears that she has only been trimming her lamp.
Too complex both in thought and in structure to be come instant or universal favorites, the tunes of this rare singer do not lend themselves readily to popular pipings; but they charm the ear of the critical lover of poetry, just as the sublime symphonies of Mozart or Beethoven charm the senses of the critical lover of music. They may not offensively be characterized as poetic oratorios.
Sidney Lanier defined and established the true rela tionship between poetry and music by delving under neath the song-waves into the hidden labyrinths and find ing the common parentage of both in the old ancestral home of harmony; and while an occupant of the chair of English in Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore he demonstrated this discovery in an extraordinary vol ume on the scientific basis of English verse. He not only understood the rules of prosody but he excelled in higher mathematics and he understood the basic principles which govern musical vibrations, being able to compute by cal culus almost any problem in harmonics. He knew the arithmetic of poetry before he shed his knickerbockers. Moreover, he mastered French, German and Spanish. He was, therefore, musician, poet, mathematician and lin guist. To this may also be added law; for he was an apt pupil of Mr. Blackstone.
Vast as were the accomplishments of this extraordinary man he suffered arena-tortures of ill health during the greater part of his adult life and hardly knew what it was to enjoy exemption from bodily complaints. Such phys ical infirmities in one whose soul was fairly brimming

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over with melodious messages was most pitiably distress ing; but his genius glowed with all the purer brightness against the foil of these pathetic handicaps.
Not since the days of Keats was poetic fire so rare ever fleshed in tabernacle so frail; but even rare Keats lacked the versatility of mind which wrought the variegated miracles of this musical magician.
It was probably the flute which first awoke the poet soul of young Lanier and started the rhythmic fountains into rapture. He mastered the banjo, the guitar, the piano and the violin, but the flute was his almost inseparable companion. He carried this instrument with him under his gray jacket when he started to the front in Virginia. It kept him company all through the war; and many were the melting airs with which this belted Orpheus charmed the bivouac.
Returning from the war to his home in Macon he soon began to wage Trojan battles with insidious disease. From school-teaching he turned to law, and from law to poetry and music, going eventually from Macon to Bal timore, where he became first flute in the Peabody or chestral concerts and distinguished himself as the finest flute-player in the world. Struggling under the bitterest cross of ill health he rose from the orchestral circle to the chair of English in Johns Hopkins University, securing this distinguished throne of letters by virtue of a series of lectures which he delivered on Shakespeare and which evinced surpassing powers of critical analysis.
Most of his intellectual output bears the date of this period barring some of his briefer poems and an earlier novel entitled "Tiger Lilies." He was just beginning to reap the first summer harvests of his young fame when

536 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the shadow in which he had so long moved now swept the coral from his bloodless lips and the song which he was singing broke dirge-like against the purple shores. Even when too feeble to carry his hand to his mouth he could still find strength enough in his responsive fingers to write "Sunrise"; and this beautiful song, which was dashed with the very pearls of the celestial daybreak, be came the dying minstrel's valedictory note: his life's sub lime recessional.
In 1888 an elegant memorial bust of the poet was un veiled in Baltimore. He is now honored on both shores of the Atlantic. And even so eminent a critic as the Lon don Times adjudges him to have been "the greatest master of melody of any of the American poets." There are few of his lines which will fail to stand the test of the most rigid scrutiny; and truer is it of Lanier even than of Keats that "his was the flower-garden of Endymion, every rose of which was watered with the dews of Para dise."
The most cursory glance at the names which Lanier has bestowed upon his poems will suffice to show the va riety of his inspirations. Nor can the reader fail to ob serve the homeliness of some of the themes to which he has tuned his harp. What could be more unpromising than "Corn." But in the rustling of the sheaves Lanier heard voices which thrilled him to the heart's core, and which, caught upon his own tuneful lips, have flooded all the fields of melody. "The Song of the Chattahoochee" and "The Marshes of Glynn" are poetic gems which have made classic the scenery of his native State. Like some pious pilgrim who marks his halting-places with altars, Lanier, wherever he went, lifted song Ebe-

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nezers. Or, to quote the language of another, "he carried starry stuff about his wings and wherever he sojourned he enriched his temporary home with the pollen of his songs."

Another rare genius whose poetic fires were robed in frail invalid flesh was "the Bard of Copse Hill" : Paul H. Hayne. He was of Georgia adoption only, having sprung from the soil of the Palmetto State, and the blood of the noted South Carolina family whose senatorial representa tive, Robert Y. Hayne, rufHed the mane of the great Webster in the famous debate of 1830. But while he was born and reared on the morning side of the Savannah river, most of the songs which he poured upon the air were woven in Georgia woods; and the cottage home of the poet near Augusta is still the tuneful Mecca of many pilgrim feet. Much more promptly than Lanier he over took the skirts of Dame Fortune, and enjoyed wide re pute; but the level of popular appreciation is still be low the brim of the meritorious goblet.
The poet of the American October, William Cullen Bryant, was drawn by the kinship of genius into the warmest literary friendship for the Georgia bard; and this esteem was warmly seconded by Longfellow, Holmes and Whittier. Perhaps the dominant characteristic of Hayne's verse was the sylvan note; and this was probably the charm which caught the ear of Bryant. Hayne knelt at nature's shrine; and Walden's hermit wooed her less ardently in prose than he in verse. He became first the interpreter of her dreams; and then slowly but surely he mounted the steps of her empire. He knew and loved all the voices of the forest; and with priestly reverence he not only heard and reproduced the devotions of the

538 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
feathered psalmist but, laying his harp upon the wood land's bosom, he caught the very heart-beats of the silent solitudes. Cares oppressed him in the haunts of men; but in the haunts of nature imagination threw around him the whispering emeralds of the old Arcadia and Pan with his merry pipings revived the heydays of the golden myths. From this ancient outdoor institution Hayne re ceived his song-diploma; and in this patriarchal sanctu ary he was christened "the poet-laureate of the South."
Living almost entirely upon the revenues of his pen and writing verse only, it need not be said that he suf fered the traditional privations of the craft; but he was perhaps more largely recompensed than any other South ern poet of his generation. Contemplating the meager income which his wares brought him this is what he makes his harp utter:
"Yet would I rather in the outward state Of Song's immortal temple lay me down
A beggar basking by that radiant gate, Than bend beneath the haughtiest empire's crown."
Beginning in 1857, Hayne published several little vol umes of verse from time to time; but finally in 1882 an elaborate edition of his poems was brought out by D. Lathrop & Co., including nearly all of the popular favorites. Among the best-known poems of Mr. Hayne are "Cambyses and the Macrobian Bow," "The Wife of Brittany," "Daphles," "Fortunio," and "The Story of Glaucus." Too weak and delicate to sustain the activities of an in tellect which was so fairly saturated with song that it broke from his dreams in the midnight darkness, Hayne died in 1886, having passed fifty-six mileposts on his

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songful journey; but much of his genius happily sur vived in his gifted son, Wm. H. Hayne, who caught the mantle of his ascending sire. The elder Hayne became the King Arthur of the younger's verse, which apt and beautiful comparison permits the world to think of him not as dying or as dead, but simply as sleeping in the Is land Valley to which he has only passed.

Minstrelsy and medicine are usually too much at vari ance to mix in the Temple of the Muses, but Dr. F. O. Ticknor while urging his horse over the country roads around Columbus bore his saddlebags into fame by mak ing his prescription-blanks the leaflets on which he wrote his immortal lyrics. The spontaneity of his genius is suf ficiently attested by the sprightly measure of his verses, which vividly suggest the stirrup. Intent upon his pro fessional engagements he gathered his inspiration chiefly by the roadside; but never galloped horseman more surely into fame since Paul Revere in 1775 awoke the dawn of American independence and bore the signalfires to Lexington.
The rhythmic ring of the horse's hoof can be distinctly heard in the opening lines of the poem entitled: "The Sword of Raphael Semmes" :
"The billows plunge like steeds that bear The knights with snow-white crests;
The sea-winds blare like bugles where The Alabama rests.
One of the most widely admired of all the poems oi Dr. Ticknor is the one entitled, "Little Giffin of Tennes-

540 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
see." The poem is based upon an incident of the war; and the poet after sketching the story in brief but beau tiful outlines closes it with this musical seal:
"I sometimes fancy that were I king Of the princely knights of the Golden ring, With the song of the minstrel in mine ear, And the tender legend that trembles here, I'd give the best on his bended knee, The whitest soul of my chivalry For Little Giffin, of Tennessee."
But the gem of all the song-group which Dr. Ticknor has given to literature is the one which has fluttered into thousands of scrapbooks all over the South, entitled, "The Virginians of the Valley," which is short enough to be quoted in full:
"The knightliest of the knightly race That, since the days of old,
Have kept the lamp of chivalry Alight in hearts of gold.
The kindliest of the kindly band That rarely hating ease
Yet rode with Spotswood round the land And Raleigh round the seas.
"Who iclimbed the blue Virginian hills Against embattled foes
And planted there, in valleys fair, The lily and the rose.
Whose fragrance lives in many lands, Whose beauty stars the earth
And lights the hearths of happy homes With loveliness and worth.
"We thought they slept the sons who kept The names of noble sires
And slumbered while the darkness crept

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541

Around their vigil fires. Buy, aye, the Golden Horseshoe Knights
Their Old Dominion keep, Whose foes have found enchanted ground
But not a knight asleep."

Dr. Ticknor was born near Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1822, and died near Columbus in 1874. His picturesque country home crowned an eminence which he called "Torch Hill," in commemoration of an Indian engage ment which took place on this spot, and which the legends describe as having been fought by torchlight. His poems were published in 1879 by J. B. Lippincott, of Philadel phia. Dr. Ticknor was a capital flutest and also a clever draftsman, having executed at odd intervals some very excellent sketches. Next to the element of beauty the most striking characteristic of his lyrics is the power of condensed expression which they exhibit. He never lin gers or loiters. He is constantly using the spur. Scenes rapidly shift; thoughts chase each other in quick succes sion. The charm of his pictures is the charm of outline; not of lights and shadows. He blends the sweetness of song with the terseness of epigram. Most of his verses were born amid the passions of sectional conflict, but they breathe no bitterness; and they deserve to be treasured among the rare gems whose luster is the common heritage of North and South.

Perhaps the most versatile as well as the most popular of all living Southern poets is Frank L. Stanton, whose musical morning salutations float daily over Georgia on the pages of the Atlanta Constitution. It is an eloquent tribute to the genius of this gifted singer that thousands

542 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
of business men over the State before even glancing at the news turn to Stanton's column on the editorial page, where under the head of "Just from Georgia" he gives them wholesome tonic for the day's work. And nearly everything he writes is straightway reproduced by the countless newspaper exchanges.
Stanton's poetry is quite as rich in playful humor as in noble sentiment; and besides dipping his poetic buckets into "wells of English undefiled" he also writes in two dialects, the negro and the cracker, and reproduces with photographic fairness and artistic finish the droll philoso phies of each. Perhaps the note of optimism which so cheerily pervades his writings can be sampled in no better fragment than the little quatrain which he makes the cracker chirp.
"This world that we're a-livin' in Is mighty hard to beat.
You git a thorn with every rose, But ain't the roses sweet?"
This is the text from which Stanton always preaches. He may get into the coal-cellar himself and suffocate among the cinders for weeks and weeks, but he entertains his readers in the sky-parlors of the crystal palace where he gives them only filtered sunshine strained from the ether-airs above the hilltops. This is the only way Stan ton ever grows pessimistic, if the cracker is allowed to have the floor again:
"What's the world a-comin' to, a feller'd like to know, When they're makin' ice to order an' manufacturin' snow; An' now, as if to vex us, another thing we hear They're makin' rain in Texas without a word of prayer.

GEORGIA'S POEMS AND POETS.

548

"They just git in a open field, where all the folks kin view, An' fire of? a cannon ball an' split a cloud in two, An' then you hear a thunderin' an' the rain conies big and
bright, But I just can't help a wonderin' if that kind o' rain is right.

"'Pears like the Lord ain't in it when the string a feller jerks Kin fire off a cannon 'at '11 bust his water-works; An' it's jest as true as preachin' an' I'm talkin' of it plain, No crop in this here country '11 ever grow from sich a rain.

"An' here's that ringin' telephone which never seems to tire, But takes your voice a-travelin' crost twenty miles o' wire! They said it reached to t'other worl', an' I reckon' it was so, For when I axed where Molly was it hollowed back: 'Hello.'"

Fully as rich in the quality of humor and equally as pun gent in the savor of real life are the portraitures of the old-time negro, written in the native dialect. Take this sample from "The Backsliding Brother":
"De scheech-owl screech fum de ol' barn lof; 'You drinked yo' dram sence you done swear off; En you gwine de way Whar' de sinners stay, En Satan gwine ter roas' you at de Jedgmint Day.'
"Den de ol' ha'nt say, fum de ol' chuch wall: 'You des so triflin' dat you had ter fall;
En you gwine de way Whar de brimstone stay, En Satan gwine ter roas' you at de Jedgmint Day.'
"Den I shake en shiver en I hunt fur kiver, En I cry ter de good Lawd: 'Please deliver!' I tell 'im plain Dat my hopes is vain, En I drinked my dram fer ter ease my pain.

544 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
"Den de screech-owl screech f'um de north ter south: 'You drinked yo' dram en you smacked yo' mouth! En you gwine de way Whar' de brimstone stay, En Satan gwine ter roas' you at de Jedgmint Day.'"
Stanton has written many beautiful love poems and poems of sentiment; but the most widely heralded of all his more serious verses is the poem entitled, "The Bells of St. Michael," whose liquid chimes he has caught. Three stanzas are selected at random:
"Great joy it was to hear them, for they sang sweet songs to me, Where the sheltered ships rock gently in the haven, safe from
sea, And the captains and the sailors heard no more the ocean's
knells, But thanked God for home and loved ones and sweet Saint Mi
chael's bells.
"They seemed to waft a welcome across the ocean's foam To all the lost and lonely, 'Come home, come home, come home! Come home where skies are brighter where love still yearns and dwells!' So sang the bells in music the sweet Saint Michael's bells.
"Oh, ring, sweet bells, forever, an echo in my breast, Soft as a mother's voice that lulls her loved one into rest! Ring welcome to the hearts at home to me your sad farewells When I sleep the last sleep dreaming of sweet Saint Michael's bells!"
Coming to Georgia in early childhood from Charleston, South Carolina, where he was born in 1858, Stanton be gan his literary career on the Smithville Neivs, which he owned and edited. He was also business manager, adver tising agent and "devil." While standing at the printer's

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545

case he cast his earlier poems directly into type without stopping to write them out in advance. Captivated by the genius of the young factotum, whose columns were always bright and sparkling, Colonel John Temple Graves gave him an editorial position on the Rome Tribune; and from the Hill City he was called to his present position on the Atlanta Constitution during the latter eighties.
Eugene Field and James Whitcomb Riley have both extolled the genius of the Georgia poet in the most enthu siastic terms, and between Stanton and Riley the closest personal friendship has long existed. Besides writing for the daily sheets, Stanton also writes for the Northern and Eastern magazines and numbers his friends in almost every nook and corner of the nation to which his songs have at last reached. The writer is prepared to say, after long and intimate association with Stanton, that he has never known a man with such a memory for things poet ical as Stanton possesses. He can reproduce from the storehouse of his recollective impressions the entire dramas of Shakespeare, with commas and semicolons in cluded; and he is almost if not quite as familiar with all the great masters of English verse. But if you ask him who is President of the United States or King of Eng land, he may have to scratch his head. He writes with wonderful ease, never using the rubber-tipped end of his pencil, and never failing to make the graphite sparkle with his polished brilliants. Few poets have ever lived in any age or country whose inspirations have waited more con stantly upon them in the daily grindings of the musicmill. He has touched with his playful fancies almost every phase of Southern life, and has braided with his mellow song-belt the whole wide sunny circle of Dixie's "Land of Memories."
18 r

546 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Years have only mellowed and enriched the genius of .another gifted Georgia poet whose songs entitle him to be enrolled among the poet-princes of the South: Major Charles W. Hubner. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, of parents who came from the distant Fatherland, he grew to manhood on the borderline between the sections; but fall ing in love with the South, he followed her beckoning lashes until he found himself upon the war-warmed hills of Atlanta; and to the cause of Southern rights he gave both his pen and his sword. Unlike Stanton's, most of Major Hubner's poetry is serious; but there are few mines of precious sentiment which he has not explored in quest of sparkles. He has written poetry which will live, be cause he has written less for the moment than for the Muse. The inspirations which feed his pen are all lofty and uplifting; and the crystal laboratories of his own German mountains, it may be said without the least exag geration, distil no purer rivulets to swell the liquid rhythm of the Rhine. Some of the volumes which Major Hubner has published are: "Wild Flowers," "Cinderella," "Poems and Essays," "The Wonder Stone," "Modern Communism" and "Souvenirs of Luther." To this list he has recently added another volume of poems. Major Hubner has filled many important editorial positions. He is one of the most cultured men and one of the most com petent literary critics in all the South. Besides touching the hearts of thousands of admiring readers, he has won enthusiastic recognition and tribute from such brother poets as Longfellow, Holmes and Whittier, and has laid the foundations for an enduring place in American liter ature.

GEORGIA'S POEMS AND POETS.

547

Father Ryan, in the exercise of his sacred calling, has lived in so many different places that no single State can appropriate him. This is well perhaps, since his fame is so indissolubly interwoven with the memory of "The Con quered Banner." But Georgia may as well claim him as any other State, or at least sue for her portion of the honor; for the poet-priest resided for several years in Augusta, where, beloved alike by Protestant and Catho lic, the memory of his patriotic and saintly genius still abides among all faiths and creeds, like the very incense of his altar. What Tom Moore has done for the Irish melodies Father Ryan has done for the Confederate mem ories ; and it may be truthfully said that his heart was an Ark of the Covenant in which the precious mementoes of the South were kept.

Since Georgia's home-coming week, which was first observed in the fall of 1906, the item of information has been revived that John Howard Payne's immortal an them, "Home, Sweet Home," though not of Georgia birth, was of Georgia inspiration; and an autograph copy of the poem was buried in the grave of his Georgia sweetheart, Miss Mary Hardin, of Athens, who down to the close of her life, which was lengthened to the Scriptural limit, carried in her heart the youthful image of the wandering exile. This soulful fragment has probably kindled more echoes throughout the world of song and mellowed more human hearts with the hymn-touch of the home sentiment than any poem which has ever been written. The poem was composed on the banks of the Thames, when the illstarred poet was struggling to obtain literary recognition

548 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
in London. It was not until some time later when visiting the Indian settlements near Athens as correspondent for some paper, that he met Miss Hardin; but he had no sooner crossed her threshold than he realized that the sub tle charm which had called forth his great poem must have been born of the smoke which drifted eastward from the chimney turrets of an ideal homestead whose hearth stone fires were kindled on the banks of the Oconee in distant Georgia.
Richard Henry Wilde, who wrote "The Summer Rose," and Mirabeau B. Lamar, who wrote "The Daugh ter of Mendoza," have already been noticed in other connections; but General Henry R. Jackson, whose en during monuments are "The Red Old Hills of Georgia," must not be overlooked in the hurried shiftings of this poetic panorama. General Jackson, who sprang from one of the most distinguished of Georgia families, de fended the United States flag in the war with Mexico and the Confederate flag in the war between the States. Be sides being an able lawyer, he was also an accomplished diplomat, representing this country at the courts of Aus tria and Mexico. He was also one of the most eloquent of Georgia's public men, and his response to the toast, "Georgia," which he delivered in Savannah shortly after the war, is one of the commonwealth gems. Most of his poems were written during the earlier years of his life, and published in 1850, under the title of "Tallulah and Other Poems." But the favorite of all the collection is the one whose opening verse in here appended:
"The red old hills of Georgia So bold and bare and bleak!
Their memory fills my spirit

GEORGIA'S POEMS AND POETS.
With thoughts I can not speak. They have no robe of verdure,
Stripped naked to the blast; And yet of all the varied earth
I love them best at last."
General Jackson was born at Athens, Georgia, in 1820, and died in Savannah in 1898. He will always be remem bered and cherished among Georgia's noblest sons.
James R. Randall, the author of "Maryland, My Mary land," was for twenty years an editorial writer on the Augusta Chronicle, and is, therefore, properly included among Georgia's famous poets. But few of the gems which were born amid the war .flames of the great civil conflict in America have become more popular through out the South; and the fame of the gentle poet locked in the sweet symphonies of this martial air is happily secure from all forgetfulness. Leaving Georgia in 1886, he went to Anniston, Alabama, after which he returned to his old home in Baltimore, Maryland.
Professor Joseph T. Derry, the author of several im portant historical works, including "The Story of the Con federate States," has recently taken up the epic pen and written in stirring lines of poetic fire a volume entitled "The Strife of Brothers," in which he rhymes the whole story of the Lost Cause from Fort Sumter to Appomattox. He was himself one of the most gallant of Confed erate soldiers, being one of the famous Oglethorpe In-

50 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
fantry which went out from Augusta; and he portrays with all the vividness of an eye-witness not only the camp-scenes and the army marches, but also the wild de lirium of battle; the plunging of warhorses, the roar of musketry, the clash of sabres, the reverberations of can non, the shouts of captains, and the death-groans of ex piring heroes. The illusion is so perfect that it almost kindles the brimstone smell of sulphur. Professor Derry may well be congratulated upon the achievement of his little booklet in which over the dry-bones of Herodotus he has poured some of the quickening breath of Homer.
Dr. A. A. Lipscomb, formerly chancellor of the Uni versity of Georgia, and one of the scholar-princes of Methodism in Georgia, was also splendidly gifted with the fire of poetry and wrote many noble poems. He was like wise an acknowledged authority on Shakespearean litera ture. But such were his accomplishments that he felt perfectly at home in almost any of the alcoves of the great library of English letters. He was literally an encyclo pedia of liberal culture; and even his fireside conversa tions were fed from the Pierian Springs.
But speaking of Methodism speeds thought backward over the century-wide plain to the landing of Oglethorpe on the bluffs of the Savannah river, when two gifted young divines of the Church of England, who belonged to the wing or order afterwards separated into Method ists, accompanied him: John and Charles Wesley; and around the Indian campfires of Colonial Georgia were born many of the sacred anthems which now mingle with the songs of Israel in the hymnology of Christendom.

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551

Theodore O'Hara, who wrote the "Bivouac of the Dead," died in Georgia, although he lived most of his life in Kentucky, and is buried in "the Blue-Grass State." Henry Lynden Flash, one of the best known of all the war-poets, also lived in Georgia for some time. And even the great Henry Timrod of South Carolina received his collegiate education at the State University at Athens. Harry Stillwell Edwards, whose name is now more closely identified with successful prose, has written some excellent verse; and Joel Chandler Harris, whose genius is em balmed in the dialect of "Uncle Remus," has also flirted with the Muses. Both Mr. Edwards and Mr. Harris are native Georgians. Former Chief Justice Logan E. Bleckley must also be honorably enrolled among the Georgia poets. Robert Loveman has written some charming verselets for the magazines and periodicals; but he sel dom attempts anything lengthy, preferring rather to pol ish sparkles than to pound wire. Samuel W. Small, one of the most versatile of Southern intellects, being an ora tor, evangelist and editor, has also written some excellent verses. Charles J. Bayne, Montgomery M. Folsom and Lucius Perry Hills have also written for many admiring readers. Nor will the list be complete without including Judge Robert Falligant, Judge R. M. Charlton, Professor William Henry Waddell, Dr. A. A. Means, William T. Dumas, P. L. Wade, W. D. Upshaw and John W. Hum phreys.
But Georgia has also produced some gifted female poets: Mrs. Mary E. Bryan, the brilliant novelist, has written some fine verse. The famous war-poem entitled "Somebody's Darling," was written by Marie LaCoste, of Savannah. Mrs. J. K. Ohl, Mrs. Mell R. Colquitt

552 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
and Miss Minnie Quinn have done brilliant work; and Maria Louise Eve must also be included among the suc cessful writers of verse. Some of the best sonnets which ever appeared in Georgia came from the pen of Orelia Key Bell, whose relative, Francis Scott Key, wrote the "Star-Spangled Banner"; but Miss Bell ceased to write years ago. Another gifted young Georgia woman who has not written much of late, but whose childhood poems suggested the bud which cradled another Felicia Hemans, is Julia Riordan. Hundreds of names could be added to this list; but enough have already been cited to illustrate sufficiently the title of this sketch: "Georgia's Poems and Poets."
With all due reverence for the respected shades of the great New England poets, it may be stoutly affirmed that the genius of verse has never blazed more purely around the elms of Cambridge than along the magnolia beaches and among the foothills of sunny Georgia; and if Long fellow and Lowell and Holmes are to-day more widely heralded throughout the world of letters it is not because the inspiration under which they sang was any purer, nor because the wings on which they soared were any more divinely tipped with fire celestial.
But it can not be denied that the South has been most wofully indifferent to the claims of literature; and the only explanation which can be advanced by her apologists is that she has never sought to cultivate what has fairly leaped unbidden from her lap, in the richest colors of the carnival. Tradition and environment have combined to make her the very home of romance. The blood which courses her veins has come from the Cavaliers of Eng-

GEORGIA'S POEMS AND POETS.

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land and the Troubadours of France. She is as rich in sentiment as she is in sunshine; as full of poetry as of perfume. And the flowers of fancy have been as indige nous to her clime as the riotous honeysuckle on her hill side bowers or the spendthrift violet in her woodland soli tudes. She has produced a Petrarch for every Laura and a Burns for every Highland Mary.
But so prodigal has been her dowry of genius that she has treated her treasures with neglect. She has carelessly allowed to perish underneath her feet many an uncut dia mond, which New England would have gladly polished and proudly lifted to her very crown of crowns. She has heedlessly permitted to die upon the air many an anthem which old England would have nurtured on her breast until it journeyed with Tennyson's immortal Brook. She has sentenced to obscurity many a name which Rome would have ennobled, and left undecorated many a brow which Athens would have wreathed. So many of her sons and daughters have picnicked with the Muses, and poetry has been so native to her soil, that she has never stopped to realize her riches and has simply left her gold ungarnered in her harvest-fields. Even her poet-princes have almost starved while they were starring, with little assistance from her purse, and with little encouragement from her applause. Thomas Nelson Page puts the sheer truth tersely when he says that "the harpers were at the feast but no one called for the song."
And to-day, though rousing somewhat from her leth argy of cold indifference to her gifted children, she is making her tardy amends to prose, when poetry stands much more in need of her apologies. Is it any wonder that Hayne and Ticknor and Timrod and Lanier have

554 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
been so slow in landing on the foothills of Fame, while Longfellow, like the youth -who bore the flag "Excelsior," has long since reached the Alpine heights? Surely it is time for the South to realize what she possesses within her own borders; for as well might Arabia send to Lap land for her perfumes, while breathing an air pungent with the aroma of her own spices.
Most of the world's great monuments of art have been lifted in the warmer latitudes. Homer's "Iliad," Dante's "Paradiso," Boccaccio's "Decameron," Virgil's "yneid," Cellini's "Perseus," Michaelangelo's "Last Judgment," Raphael's "Transfiguration," Greece's temples, Egypt's pyramids and David's Psalms these have all bloomed in the ardent airs which sweep the harp-strung shores of the Mediterranean. The warm sunlight wooes the soul of sentiment. But shall the Old World have all the hon or? What the genius of song has already done for the Southern climes of Europe may not the genius of song yet do for the Southern climes of North America, where Nature has long since lit her fairest lamp and now pleads lovingly with Rhyme and Music to help her winnow back the long lost airs of Eden ?

APPENDIX.
SONG OF THE GEORGIAN.
Nor Cavalier nor Puritan Singly within his rich veins ran;
But the Moravian's innocence, The high Salzburgher's fortitude (Strong to endure his fortunes rude)
Sweet Herbert's fine benevolence, The spirit which from Wesley sprung
(Religion's ancient miracle Which like to Love, is ever young),
The stamp of Whitfield's oracles, The Highlander's undaunted heart
Alight with proudly glowing fires These were the Georgian's mighty sires! These still to him their force impart.
Tempted of poverty, their hands Wrenched from no hapless Chief his lands
That session of the soil obtained, By honorable treaty won, Left no distressful tribe undone,
No blood its wholesome annals stained. And when the red'ning mist of death
On Tomochichi's weary eyes Fell thickly, he, with quiet breath,
Besought the grave his soul would prize "Bury me," said the dying king,
"Among my white friends where the waves Savannah's feet forever laves,
(555)

556 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
The last kind boon your love can bring." What nobler monument shall tell How Georgia's oaths inviolate dwell?
What great seal of well-earned praise Shall lie on Oglethorpe, whose dreams Begot reality which gleams
A star on which a god might gaze! Oh, hero and philanthropist,
Unspotted in a spotted world, What selfless thoughts thy hopes unfurled! Thy life with thine ideals kept tryst. And we whose cheeks must flush with pride Whene'er past days our minds divide From present cares, do we guard well Our glorious inheritance? Do our own ideals advance, Do faith and purity compel The death of all iniquity? Oh, Justice, Moderation, make Your trinity with Wisdom break The grasp of greed unfalteringly. Keep our young manhood brave and pure; Gay-hearted, on its lips a song But ready to redeem each wrong By virtue conquering evermore.
So shall the title "Georgian" be Of life's best worth true guarantee;
And they, the peerless Dead, may turn Untroubled on us their deep eyes, And see our noble cities rise
Cleansed of all foulness. May we burn With generous ardor to exceed
The golden acts of history, Since our fair State is blessed indeed
By beauty's sweet supremacy. May this ambition through us flame

APPENDIX.

557

That of our men the world shall say "Trust ye the stranger here to-day, Because he bears a Georgian name."
Clinton Dangcrfield.

[Miss "Dangerfield," who wrote the above poem for the anniver sary of the founding of Georgia, is the daughter of Mrs. Jane Wal lace Bryan, widow of the late Major Henry Bryan, of Savannah, who was the great-grandson of Jonathan Bryan, the distinguished Revolutionary patriot.]

STAND BY YOUR STATE, YOUNG GEORGIANS.
Young gentlemen, I do not plead with you to live for wealth or station.
The most unhappy men on this continent are those who have sacrificed most to fill conspicuous positions. The heart-burnings and envies of public life are too often the results of ambition. What a sorrowful lesson of the in stability of human grandeur and ambition may be found at the feet of the weeping empress at Chiselhurst. Just as the star of the Prince Imperial was rising to the zenith, like a flash from heaven, it falls to the ground. Just as he was gathering about him the hopes of empire the assegai of the savage hurls him to the dust. Born on the steps of a throne, amid the blazing of bonfires and the congratulations of kings, he fell in the jungles of an Afri can wilderness, without a friend to close his eyes. Born to rule over thirty millions of people, he was deserted by all and went into the chill of death without the pressure of a friendly hand. Although royalty carried flowers to> deck his bier and princes were his pall-bearers and mar-

558 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
shals knelt by his coffin and cabinet ministers bowed their heads, and his empress mother clung over him in an agony of grief, yet, alas, the glory of his life had vanished, and out of the mass of sorrowing friends his spirit floated away, leaving to earth but a crimson memory. Life's teachings admonish us that the pathway of ambition has many thorns and the purest happiness oftenest springs from the efforts of those who sow for the harvesting of peace and joy at home.
And this lies at your feet in your own State. Although she has suffered by desolation although millions of her property have been swept into ruins and thousands of her bravest been hurried to their graves although Georgia has been weakened and bled at every pore although she has been impoverished and dismantled although she has been ridden through and trampled over by armies al though she has seen in folded sleep her most gallant sons, and spirit arms reach to her from the mounds of battle fields she still has the softest skies and the most genial climate and the richest lands and the most inviting hopes to give to her children. And this is not the hour to forget her. The Roman who bought the land Hannibal's tent was spread upon when his legions were encamped before the very gates of Rome exhibited the spirit of confidence and pride of country which distinguishes a great pa triot. Although disaster stared him in the face and from the Pincian Hill the enemy, like clouds, could be seen piled around, charged with the thunder of death and deso lation, and the earth was reeling with the roll and tramp of armies, his heart was untouched by fear of her future. He knew that Rome would survive the tempests of the hour and that her future would be radiant with the splen-

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did triumphs of an august prosperity, and confident of that future whose dawn he felt would soon redden in the east, he never dreamed of abandoning her fortunes or deserting her destiny. This was more than patriotism. It was the heroism of glory. It was the sowing of a rich heritage of example on the banks of the Tiber for the emulation of the world.
One of the mistakes men make is in leaning without labor upon expectations too sanguine, waiting for the honors to pursue them, scarcely reaching out their hands to gather the fortunes that cluster at their feet. Well did one of the old poets of Salamanca express the thought:

"If men come not to gather The roses where they stand
They fade amid the foliage; They can not seek his hand."

The rose of fortune Georgia holds out to you is rich with hope and sentiment; and in its folded leaves are more honors for her sons than there are in the rose of England, the lily of France or the nettleleaf of Holstein.
Then come together in close and solemn resolve to stand by her destiny, and soon the tide will run rich and riotous through the jeweled arches of hope, flushed with her prosperity; soon will come into her borders newer and stronger elements of wealth; manufactories will spring up from her bosom and the hum of industry re sound throughout her borders; the glorious names of her .present statesmen will take the places of those who have gone up higher into glory, and will still hold her banner waving to the sky.
Come, spirit of our Empire State come from your

560 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
rivers that seek the sea from the waves that wash your shores and run up to kiss your sands; come from the air that floats over your mountain-tops; come from
"Lakes where the pearls lie hid And caves where the gems are sleeping."
Come, spirit of a glorious ancestry, from beyond the ce dars and the stars; come from the history that wraps you in its robes of light and let me invoke the memories that hang around you like the mantle of Elijah and will be the ascension robes of your new destiny; touch the chords in these young hearts these proud respresentatives of your future fame that they may rise in the majesty of their love and clasp you with a stronger and holier faith and raise monuments to your glory, higher than the towers of Baalbek. Let them warm to the fires of an intenser love and brighten with the light of a more resplendent glory; let them swear around the altar to be still fonder and still prouder that they are Georgians.
As an adopted son, who has felt the sunshine of your skies, who has been honored with your citizenship and with positions far beyond his merits, I vow to the majesty of your glory, here in the temple of your fame, and to your spirit, I would breathe out the fondest a (lection and pour prayers upon your pathway; I would clothe you with light and bathe you in a rain of summer meteors; I would crown your head with laurels, and place the palm of victory in your hands; I would lift every shadow from your heart and make rejoicing go through your valleys like a song.
Land of my adoption, where the loved sleep folded in the embrace of your flowers, would that to-day it were

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my destiny to increase the flood-tide of your glory as it will be mine to share your fortunes; for when my few more years tremble to their close I would sleep beneath your soil where the clrip of April tears might fall upon my grave and the sunshine of your skies would warm South ern flowers to blossom upon my breast. 0. A. Lochrane.
[Extract from an address delivered at the University of Georgia in 1879.1

GEORGIA.
I would I had the power of presenting with the brevity which becomes an occasion like this a worthy ideal of Georgia, the land of my love! But not as she lies upon the map, stretching from the mountains to the ocean, dear as she must be to her sons in all her variegated features; in her mountains and her valleys, in her rivers and her cataracts, in her bare red hills and her broad fields of rustling corn and of cotton snowy white; in her vast pri meval forests that roll back in softer cadence the majes tic music of the melancholy sea, and, last, but not least, in our own beautiful but modest Savannah, smiling sweetly through her veil of perennial and yet of diversified green. It is not the Georgia of the map I would invoke before you to-night. I would conjure up if I could the Georgia of the soul majestic ideal of a sovereign State, at once the mother and the queen of a gallant people Georgia as she first pressed her foot upon these western shores and beckoned hitherward from the elder world the poor but the virtuous, the oppressed but the upright, the unfortu nate but the honorable; adopting for herself a sentiment

562 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
far nobler than all the armorial bearings of "starred and spangled courts where low-born baseness wafts perfume to pride"; taking for her escutcheon the sentiment: Pov erty and virtue! Toil and be honest!
When the winter of our discontent was resting heavi ly, gloomily upon us; at the holiest hour of the mysterious midnight, a vision of surpassing loveliness rose before me: Georgia, my native State, with manacled limbs and disheveled locks and tears streaming from weary eyes, bent over a mangled form which she clasped, though with convulsed and fettered arms, to her bosom. And as I gazed the features of the blood-stained soldier rapidly changed. First, I saw Bartow and then I saw Gallic and then I saw Cobb, and there was Walker and Willis and Lamar; more rapid than light itself successively flashed out the wan but intrepid features of her countless scores of dying heroes, and she pressed them close to her bosom and closer still and yet more close until, behold! she had pressed them all right into her heart! And quickly, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, the fetters had fallen from her beautiful limbs and the tears were dried upon her lovely cheeks and the wonted fires had returned to her flashing eyes and she was all of Georgia again; an equal among equals in a union of Confederate sovereignties. Yes! the Georgia of Oglethorpe, the Georgia of 1776, the Georgia of 1860,is the Georgia of to-day; is Georgia now, with her own peculiar memories and her own peculiar hopes, her own historic and heroic names and her own loyal sons and devoted daughters; rich in resources, in trepid in soul, defiant of wrong as ever she was. God

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save her! God save our liege sovereign. God bless Geor gia, our beloved queen! God save our only queen!" General Henry R. Jackson.

"THANK GOD, I, TOO, AM A GEORGIAN!"
This monument tells not only of the glories of war, but of the blessings of peace. It perpetuates the valor of sol diers who fought against those who have furnished the foundation on which it rests. The State has ceded soil, it once defended with its treasure and blood, to those who invaded it with a destroying army to erect memorials to the soldiers of that army. The national government has furnished, to be laid on ground dedicated to the preserva tion of the very lines of battle occupied by its army, the foundation of a structure dedicated to the soldiers who charged those very lines and swept them with destruction. Strange spectacle this, which witnesses such meeting of the victorious and the defeated, but sublime as it is strange. To the dead it is the tribute the brave pay the brave, and for the living the pledge that henceforth they be brethren. The dedication of this monument honors the sentiment of the States which have erected monuments to the valor of soldiers who fought on the other side in that struggle. They, too, deserve the admiration and praise expressed by lasting memorials. Let every State whose sons participated in this battle bring here its tribute. And then I would erect another. It should be the gift of all the States. Its foundation should be broad and deep. Its endurance should withstand the wasting touch of time. In symmetrical proportions and massive grandeur it

564 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
should rise column upon column, its lofty summit crowned with the statues of two soldiers, with swords sheathed and hands grasped, and on it I would write this inscrip tion: "Here lie the victor and the vanquished. They lived in duty done; they sleep in honored graves. In memory of all her sons who fought in the war between the States those who fought and won, and those who fought and failed American patriotism erects this monu ment to American valor."
We this day celebrate a greater victory than was ever achieved over a foreign foe the victory of a great people over the passions and resentments engendered by domestic war. Other nations have conquered the world and fallen the pitiable victims of their own ungoverned passions. We have conquered ourselves. Whatever the future may have in store for us, we shall henceforth and forever dwell in peace among ourselves. Heaven grant us peace with all the world, and all the world peace. It ought to be so. The earth has drunk enough of the blood of her sons. Wars should cease. The wisdom of the world should de vise some other method of settling international disputes, and the humanity of the world demands its adoption. But if this can not be, we may rest in the assurance that the union of these States will never again be disrupted by sectional war. We rejoice to-day in a country reunited, and forever.
The patriot voice which first cried from the balcony of the old State-house in Boston, when the declaration was originally proclaimed: "Stability and perpetuity to Ameri can independence," did not fail to add, "God save our American States." I would prolong that ancestral prayer. Now and always, here and everywhere, from our hearts

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and all hearts, from every altar in family and church, from every patriotic and pious soul, let this prayer go up: "God save our American States."
What more shall I say ? Why should I have spoken at all? Standing in this presence and amid these environ ments, I feel that my voice should have been hushed by the voices of all around us. This and all the memorials here erected, these trees, this river, prophetically named Chickamauga River of Death this overshadowing mountain, the sky above and the earth beneath all these are vocal with an eloquence to which my poor speech can add nothing of worth or beauty. The feeble words I ut ter here shall perish with the passing hour. These voices shall be like the voice of day and night in the inspired and poetic conception of the Psalmist; they utter no audible speech, no articulate language, but their sacred silence itself is speech. "Their lines shall go through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." They shall tell of courage sustained by conviction, of duty faith fully done, of suffering heroically endured, of death brave ly met in a great battle and the survivors on both sides dwelling together as citizens of a common country, with mutual respect and in peace as lasting as the sleep of their fallen comrades, of State pride and national glory. Here Ohio and Illinois, and Michigan and Wisconsin, and Min nesota and Indiana, and Kansas and Missouri, and Mas sachusetts have brought their tributes to the sons who fought in the Federal army. Here, too, Tennessee has reared her memorial to Forrest and the men who followed him and commemorated the heroism of her sons. And Kentucky has come with her memorial, dedicated to her sons in both Federal and Confederate armies Kentucky,

566 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the home of Clay and Crittenden, of Morgan and Hanson, the birthplace of Davis and Lincoln.
And now to this historic and consecrated place, en riched by so much to perpetuate the hallowed memories of the past, to impart inspiration for the present and hope for the future, Georgia brings her offering. Bowed by a mother's grief for the dead, yet sustained by a mother's joy in the living, and exulting with a mother's pride in the dead and living, who were marshaled here, confidently committing their claims to the highest distinction to the judgment of a just and an enlightened public opinion, in voking upon them and their posterity the richest blessings of heaven, to their lasting memory and undying glory, she dedicates this monument.
May it stand immovable as the foundations of yonder mountain, a worthy expression of the love and gratitude which inspired it, and ceaselessly as the flow of the river at its base proclaim the duty here performed the valor here displayed, the fame here achieved. And in the years to come, every son of the Great State whose glory is aug mented by the lives and death of those whose services and sacrifices it commemorates, looking upon it and recalling their names and deeds, his eye lustrous with patriotic pride, his heart aglow with patriotic fervor, may with rap ture exclaim: "Thank God, I, too, am a Georgian!" 7. C. C. Black.
[Extract from an address delivered at the dedication of the Geor gia monument at Chickamauga Park, May 4, 1899.]

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THE OLD-TIME SLAVE.
By the precious and holy memories of the past, we pay this willing and loving tribute to the character of the oldtime slave. From the wilderness of bloom that decks the fields where he lived and moved, we bring one simple flower to lay on his inanimate dust. Many of them have passed the river, and roam the green fields beyond the swelling flood. A few of that best and noblest type of the race still lingeringly await their summons to join the ma jority on the other side. Strangers and pilgrims in the earth, buffeted by the fickle caprice of fortune, their weary feet are brushing the dews on Jordan's bank and their ears catch the faint murmurs of the breakers on the shores. May they find a shallow ford.
The little log cabin is crumbling. Its battered doors swing on rusty hinges, and the rude key and ruder lock have parted forever. The vine that sheltered the humble portal is withered, and the watchdog's honest bark is heard no more. Half hidden by thorn and thistle it stands a sad reminder of "departed joys, departed never to re turn." Dearer to memory than lofty dome or gilded pal ace, the very ground on which it stands is holy. The shadows of the fitful flame no longer play on its desolate hearth, and tenantless and dreary the rude winds murmur through the chinks. The cricket has hushed its plaintive song. The owl and the bat seek shelter amid its ruins. Rank weeds have hidden the old familiar path, winding its way around the hill, and there is nothing to remind us
of Auld Lang Syne. And how lonely, how sadly the gray-haired old sires

568 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
wander up and down in the earth and hum the song of the weary pilgrim:
"No foot of land do I possess No cottage in the wilderness."
What sweet and glorious memories linger about the old homestead and the "little log cabin by the lane!" Even to one not given to the melting mood, each hallowed spot de mands the tribute of a tear. The playground beneath the venerable and umbrageous oak, the verdant fields and the new-mown hay; the bubbling fountain and the rustic seats; the velvet lawn and the winding brook; the honey suckle and the rose, and ten thousand other charms crowd on the memory; and how gladly we would feel again their inspiration and once more quench our thirst in
"The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well."
But what would all these glorious memories be to us without the old uncles and aunties of our childhood ? The dear old souls who have long since put off this mortal and been clothed in robes immortal. With what romantic interest their lives were invested and how it deepens with the lapse of. years!
The shovel and the hoe lie rusting in the hedge, and the old scythe has lost its cunning fingers. No more the yel low grain bends to its glittering edge, for the songs of the harvest are hushed and the hands of the reaper are still. The fiddle and the bow are gone, and gone the young hearts their wild strains did ravish. Once their irresisti ble witchery charmed the wee sma' hours and inspired the song and dance the livelong night. But the hands

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which wooed its wild notes will touch its vibrant chords no more. Stringless and tuneless and mute, the sweetest relic of the long ago, it sleeps with the echoes its music waked.
And the springs have run dry, and the well-known stream has vanished with its source. We seek in vain the spots where the patient fisherman watched the tremulous line, by the light of the torch, and won the fickle finny tribe with the conjured bait. But Old Black Joe and his mysterious tackle are gone, and faded his tracks on the mossy banks. Age and toil had whitened his head and bent his form, and he passed from the shadow of his cabin to the light beyond the stars. The shadows length ened and lengthened to the east until his last sun sank to rest in the sea. The patriarch watched its fading splen dors. His humble life-work was finished. His ear caught the echoes of angelic choirs and he went to meet them with a song in his heart:

"I'm coming, I'm coming, For my head is bending low;
I hear their gentle voices calling, Old Black Joe."

The old-time darky was a philosopher. His thoughts never ranged beyond the smoke of his cabin. Content with food and raiment, his little patch of ground, and at peace with all the world, he cheerfully and proudly drove his team afield. He was a Christian. He "saw God in the clouds and heard him in the wind." If he sinned much, he prayed often, and his repentance was instantaneous and evangelical. He praised God in song all the days of his pilgrimage, and the sweet melody of his unpremeditated

570 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
hymns echoed around the earth. To his unquestioning faith the groves, the hills, the fields and his cabin were the temples of the living God. He was a poet; the eldest child of nature, rocked in her cradle and nurtured at her breast. He knew the language of birds and flowers. He conversed with all the dwellers of the forest and knew their speech by heart. He listened in wild rapture to the rustle of waving harvest, sniffed their fragrance and breathed the very breath of song. He was a true and faithful friend; true to his old master; true to his chil dren and his children's children unto the third and fourth generation. If there was an occasional predatory excur sion his wayward feet never invaded a neighbor's field. He consumed what his toil had made and the good Lord forgave him. God bless the forlorn and ragged remnants of a race now passing away. God bless the old black hand that rocked our infant cradles, smoothed the pillow of our infant sleep and fanned the fever from our cheeks. God bless the old tongue that immortalized the nursery rhyme; the old eyes that guided our truant feet; and the old heart that laughed at our childish freaks. God bless the dusky old brow, whose wrinkles told of toil and sweat and sorrow. May the green turf rest lightly on their ashes and the wild flowers deck every lonely grave where "He giveth His beloved sleep." May their golden dreams of golden slippers, of golden streets, of golden harps and of golden crowns have become golden realities. P. F. Smith.

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THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO RACE.
The love we feel for that race you can neither measure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of my old black mammy from her home up there looks down to bless and through the tumult of this night steals the sweet music of her croonings as thirty years ago she held me in her black arms and led me smiling into sleep.
This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of an old Southern home with its lofty pillars and its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and anxious faces and children alert yet helpless. I see night come down with its dangers and its apprehensions and in a big homely room I feel on my tired brow the touch of loving hands, now worn and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman and stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man; and as they lay a mother's blessing there, while at her knees the truest altar I have ever known I thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary because her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin or guard at the cham ber door, put a black man's loyalty between her and dan ger.
But I catch another vision. The crisis of battle; a sol dier struck, staggering, falls. I see a slave scuffling through the smoke, winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling death, bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay down his life in his master's stead. I see him by the weary bedside, ministering with uncomplaining patience, pray-

572 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
ing with all his humble heart that God would lift his mas ter up until death comes in mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him when the mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange fields, falter ing, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter day. And from the grave comes a voice saying: "'Follow him! Put your arms about him in his need, even as he puts his about me. Be his friend as he was mine." And out into this new world strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewilder ing both I follow! And may God forget my people when they forget these!
Whatever the future may hold for them whether they plod along in the servitude from which they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers and made to bear the cross of the fainting Christ whether they find homes again in Africa, and thus hasten the prophecy of the "psalmist who said: "And suddenly Ethiopia shall hold out her hands unto God" whether, forever dislocated and separated, they remain a weak people beset by stronger, and exist as the Turk, who lives in the jealousy rather than in the con science of Europe or whether in this miraculous repub lic they break through the caste of twenty centuries and, belying universal history, reach the full stature of citizen ship, and in peace maintain it we shall give them utter most justice and abiding friendship. And whatever we

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do, into whatever seeming estrangement we may be driven, nothing shall disturb the love we bear this repub lic.
I stand here, Mr. President, to profess no new loyalty. When General Lee, whose heart was the temple of our hopes and whose arm was clothed with our strength, re newed his allegiance to the government of Appomattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be false, and he spoke for every honest man from Maryland to Texas. From that day to this Hamilcar has nowhere in the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred or to vengeance, but every where to loyalty and to love. Henry W. Grady.
[Extract from the speech on the race problem delivered at the banquet of the Merchants Association in Boston in December, 1889.]

GEORGIA'S NEW CAPITOL BUILDING ACCEPTED.
GENTLEMEN OF THE CAPITOL COMMISSION : In the presence of the General Assembly, and in behalf of the State, I accept from your hands Georgia's new and su perb capitol. In the fashion of its architecture, in the symmetry of its proportions, in the solidity of its struc ture, in the beauty of its elaboration and completeness of arrangement, it is worthy the dignity and character of this great commonwealth. In all regards this new house of the State is my lawful and emphatic warrant for con gratulations to the Legislature that authorized it; to the architects who designed it; to the contractors who built it, to the commissioners who supervised it, and to the people who own it. I congratulate you also, Senators

574 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
and Representatives of the present General Assem bly, because it is your high privilege to celebrate its opening and dedicate it to wise and patriotic legislation. I congratulate the State because in her assembled sons she has representatives worthy of this distinguished honor and capable of drawing from these auspicious surround ings renewed inspiration for the momentous duties before them. I congratulate the commissioners, because through patient investigation, untiring energy, wise prevision and conservative expenditure, they have achieved the almost unprecedented success of completing a great public work within the original appropriation. Above all else, I con gratulate the people because the whole enterprise is clean, creditable and above suspicion. From the first bill passed by the Legislature to the expenditure of the last dollar by the commissioners, there has been neither jobbery nor thought of corruption. From granite base to iron dome, every chiseled block and moulded brick, every metallic plate and marble slab is as free from official pollution as when they lay untouched by mortal hand, in original purity in the bosom of Mother Earth. Every stroke of hammer, of trowel or brush is a record of labor honestly expended and justly rewarded. Built upon the crowning hill of her capital city, whose transformation from desola tion and ashes to' life, thrift and beauty, so aptly symbol izes the State's resurrection, this proud structure will stand through the coming centuries a fit memorial of the indomitable will and recuperative energies of this people, and of the unswerving fidelity and incorruptible integrity of their chosen representatives.
While we dedicate to the State's service this new po litical temple, we erect within it no new altars to strange

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political gods; we preach from its pulpits no strange po litical gospel, we prescribe for its service no new liturgy or strange political faith. We consecrate it to the old-time doctrines promulgated by the fathers and early prophets of the republic; recorded in the written word of the dec laration and the constitution, and sanctioned by the politi cal experience of a century. We engrave upon this tem ple's cornerstone our ancestral canons a perpetual union of coequal States: The Federal constitution the supreme law of the land; "the preservation of the general govern ment in its whole constitutional vigor"; "the support of the State governments in all their rights as the surest bulwarks against anti-Republican tendencies"; the equal ity of all men before the law; burdens and benefits im partially imposed and fairly distributed; equal encour agement and exact justice under the laws, State and Federal, for every class of citizens and every branch of industry.
We hang upon the outer walls of this new fortress the old banners inscribed with the additional and ever-living tenets of a political faith which, strengthening with its ex perience, has ripened into assurance hostility to all sectional and class legislation; hostility to all laws and systems of law which impose unnecessary burdens upon the whole people in order to bring to the few undue advantages and unjust enrichment opposition not only to trusts and monopolies and their constant evils, but un dying hostility to the discriminating, high protective sys tem and the unjust and unequal taxation which encour age, increase and perpetuate these evils. We war not only against the evils themselves, but against the governmental partiality which makes these evils so less hurtful and gall-

576 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
ing in this free government than under the aristocratic favoritism of monarchical Europe.
Let no governmental policies repugnant to the great principles of natural equity upon which the republic was founded ever find abettors within these consecrated walls. Let no unworthy or unjust action, legislative, judicial or executive, ever mar the bright record made in the con struction of this capitol. Let the pure winds of heaven play around its dome and along its corridors, and the un tarnished sunlight linger in its chambers without the pos sibility of defilement. And may its shining spires, point ing heavenward, be a perpetual invocation, calling from the skies no fiery avenging bolt, but the divine guidance for the counsellors of the State and heaven's boundless benedictions upon its people. Governor John B. Gordon.
[Extract from an address delivered before the General Assembly on the formal acceptance of the capitol building from the hands of the commission.]
GEORGIA.
When the sun tired of shining on the despotism of the Old World, and weary of his long journey across the sea, approaches these western shores consecrated to human freedom, his first rays light up the tops of gnarled oaks bearded with moss that stand "like Druids of old with voices sad and prophetic," while they keep watch and guard over long stretches of white sandy beach where the waves break into murmurs and then roll back into the silence of the deep.

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Rising just a little higher, his horizontal beams spread over lowlands far and wide, redolent with the perfume of flowers and lulled into infinite peace by the soft music of the soughing pines.
After arching with rainbows the glistening cascades of a thousand streams as they leap over the foothills of the Piedmont escarpment, he floods the rolling hills and valleys with his golden glory, and gilds the far-off peaks of the Blue Ridge with the touch of his "sov'reign kiss."
And then pausing for an instant in rapt admiration, he beholds smiling beneath him this imperial State of Georgia, stretching from the Savannah to the Chattahoochee, and sweeping from the mountains to the sea, rich in almost every product of field and forest and mine need ful for the comfort and happiness of man.
More weary of wing than Noah's dove would be the bird sent out in search of a land more fair and bright.
Even the waste-places which the elements have cut into her steep hillsides do not shame her, but serve rather as an inspiration for the genius of her loving sons. No Gre cian poet in his country's palmiest days ever sang more sweetly and grandly of Mount Olympus than did Sidney Lanier of these old red hills of Georgia. Listen to him :

"Qld hill! old hill! thou gashed and hoary Lear, Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer King, but too poor for any man to own, Discrowned, nndaughtered and alone. Yet shall the great God turn thy fate, And bring thee back into thy monarch's state, And majesty immaculate; Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn, A vision of great treasuries of corn, 19 r

578 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Thou bearest in thy vasty sides forlorn, For largess to some future bolder heart, That manfully shall take thy part, And tend thee and defend thee, With antique sinew and with modern art."
Thank God for that Georgia poet. But the people who inhabit this goodly land what shall I say of them? Generous, hospitable and industri ous, intellectual, high-minded, filled with love of country, holding still to simple faith in the Bible, reverencing and worshiping God. The men, independent, self-reliant, brave almost to a fault. The women, beautiful, faithful, loving and true. And both men and women clinging to the belief as part of their creed that
"If there be on this earthly sphere A boon, an offering that heaven holds dear, 'Tis the last libation that liberty draws From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause."
On this proud day let us all. resolve to hold our mother land still closer to our hearts, and make her future glory the inspiring purpose of our lives.
We of to-day will not halt the march of progress by idle and useless sorrowing over the glories of a sun that has set. Rather with faces turned to the morning will we joyfully hail the glowing dawn of a brighter day. But in laying broad and deep the foundation of our new South never, never will we, or can we, forget or neglect the old South of our fathers. If we should cast it away rest assured the future philosopher and historian will write it down in everlasting characters that the stone which the new builders rejected, the same should have been the head of the corner.

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The South of this generation is a new South, but new just as the sturdy sapling is new that springs from the same soil and the same root when the parent tree has been felled by the woodman's axe. The old and the new, and yet the same.
The nation that takes up arms against the flag of the Union will find that Southern men, cheered on by South ern women, will join the charge with their Northern brothers, and vie with them in such deeds of heroism as the world has never seen before. But loyalty to that flag does not require treason in act or speech to the memory of "our storm-cradled nation that fell." Brave men of the North will have a contempt for such subserviency.
Now, my friends, with such ruins and memories be hind us, and with rich, glowing hopes before us, why should we not love this good old State of Georgia ?
I love her for her thriving plains and her desolate, scarred old hills; for her crystal fountains and her gently flowing rivers. I love her for her golden sunlight and for the balmy air we breathe, and for the zephyrs that play around us. I love her for the noble hearts and brilliant intellects of her sons, and for the fairer forms and purer thoughts of her daughters. I love her for the glorious memories of the past, her triumphs and defeats, for the rights she has maintained and the wrongs she has en dured. I love her for the sacred dust she holds of dear ones gone before. Yes, I love her most of all for that mighty host of heroes who sacrificed their lives in defense of her honor and, who, clasped to her dear old bosom, now sleep beneath the sod." William H. Fleming.
[Extract from an address delivered in Atlanta on Georgia Day at the International Cotton Exposition of 1895.]

580 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
THE BIBLE.
The Bible, after prolonged research, has been admitted to be divine, by the consent of the master-minds of every age. Though the oldest book in the world, it is still ever new: its leaves never wither and its beauty never fades. In the palmiest days of persecution, when the spirit of despotism was abroad and the leaves of truth were muti lated by the fraud of the imposter, even then it might be said, as was said of the ruler's daugher, "It is not dead but sleepeth."
It is the sin of nations and the curse of the church that we have never properly appreciated the Bible as we ought. It is the book of books for the priest and for the people, for the old and for the young. It should be the ten ant of the academy as well as of the nursery, and should be incorporated in our course of education from the moth er's knee to graduation in the highest universities of the land. Everything is destined to fail unless the Bible be the fulcrum on which these laws revolve. Can such a book be read without an influence commensurate with its importance? As well might the flowers sleep when the spring winds its mellow horn to call them from their bed; as well might the mist linger upon the bosom of the lake when the sun beckons it to leave its dewy home. The Bible plants our feet amid that angel group which stood with eager wing expectant when the spirit of God first hovered over the abyss of chaos and wraps us in praise for the new-born world when the morning stars sang together for joy. The Bible builds for us the world when we are not; stretches our conceptions of the infinite be-

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yond the last orbit of astronomy; pacifies the moral dis cord of earth; reorganizes the dust of the sepulcher and tells man that heaven is his home and eternity his life time.
What, sir, was the reformation but a resurrection of the Bible? Cloistered in superstition, its moral rays had been intercepted and the intellect of man, stricken at a blow from its pride of place, was shut within the dark walls of moral despair and slept the sleep of death beneath its wizard spell. Opinion fled from the chambers of the heart and left the mind to darkness and to change. But Luther evoked the Bible and its precepts from its prisonhouse and the word of God breathed the warm breath of life upon the valley of vision and upon the sleeping Le thean sea. Intellect burst from the trance of ages, dashed aside the portals of her dark dungeon, felt the warm sun light relax her stiffened limbs, forged her fetters into swords and fought her way to freedom and to fame.
The Bible, sir, is the guide of the erring and the re claimer of the wandering; it heals the sick, consoles the dying and purifies the living. Let the master give it to the pupil, the professor to his class, the father to his son, the mother to her daughter; place it in every home in the land; then shall the love oi God cover the earth and the light of salvation overlay the land as the sunbeams of morning lie upon the mountains." Bishop George F. Pierce.
[Extract from an address delivered before the American Bible So ciety in New York in 1844.]

582 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.
With education divorced from Christian morals we hold no fellowship. No! Let the Bible be to our colleges what the Shekinah was to the temple of the olden time, at once the symbol of the presence and the worship of God. Science herself is blind to the true interests of men until her eyes are opened by the waters of Siloam's pool. Multiply your academies, erect your colleges, organize your faculties, gather your pupils together, deliver your lectures, seek all the advantages of apparatus, and cabi nets and libraries, but exclude the Scriptures and you turn loose upon society minds full armed for mischief. The rod, which in Aaron's hand would have budded and blossomed, you convert into a serpent, which will wellnigh devour all the virtues of the land; but let the warm and living spirit of Christianity, as here, thank God, it does, breathe magic balm upon the youthful minds that crowd your halls of learning, then shall hope beam over them in the light of hallowed prophecy and the revolution of Time's wheel shall evolve the destiny of each in the brightness of knowledge and virtue. Let politicians make penal enactments and seek to bind depravity with human laws as did the Philistines the man of Gaza with feeble cords, but be it our labor to plant society in the shadows of the eternal throne, draw over it the shield of omnipo tence and protect it with the thunder that issues from the thick darkness in which Jehovah dwells. Talk ye of Pierian springs and Castilian founts and Arcadian groves; give me the Testament of Jesus, the inspiration of the spirit, the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Let others seek

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the accomplishment of classic lore, wander amiu the ruins of antiquity, learn the lessons of wisdom from the gray chronicles of departed times, sit rapt in poetic mood as the evening looks down upon the lone and mighty wild, over whose bosom, wide and waste, lie scattered the moldering wrecks of cities that have crumbled into tombs; be it ours, my countrymen, to lead our children amid the gardens of God and point them to the glories of the great hereafter. Let the dying enemy of God bequeath his millions to rear a marble monument within whose capa cious dimensions the fearful experiment is to be made of rearing men without religion, but on this institution rest forever the dews of Zion and the smile of God. Bishop George F. Pierce.

ADIEU TO WESLEYAN.
Time will soon be done. The day scarcely says at morn ing's rosy dawn, "I come," ere the sound, "I am gone," sinks and dies in evening's quiet hush. The present will soon be the past. The bounding blood, struck by the chill of death, will creep in funeral motion to the heart, whose feeble pulsations can send it forth no more. Life's gay attire must be surrendered for the grave's pale shroud, and the freedom of earth for confinement in the coffin and the tomb. Take heed to your ways, your hearts and your hopes. So live that when this earthly tabernacle lies in darkened ruin and the soul shall send its power forth, it shall receive a welcome from its God and a mansion in its Father's house. My task is well nigh over. It remains

584 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
but to pronounce the parting words; and each one to our separate ways; strangers and pilgrims on the earth, girt for its toil and its grief; doomed perhaps to meet no more until we meet as kindred dwellers in the house appointed for all the living. I have no complaint to make, no wrong to forgive. If in the exercise of authority a word to wound has been spoken by me, let the motive bereave it of its harshness and the feeling it awakens be numbered with the things forgotten or at rest. Kindness has marked our intercourse, let friendship hallow our farewell.
"A word that must be and hath been, A word that makes us linger,
Yet farewell."
Bishop George F. Pierce.
[Extract from an address to the graduating class, delivered on re tiring from the presidency of Wesleyan Female College in 1838.]
AGAINST SECESSION.
My object is not to stir up strife but to allay it; not to appeal to your passions but to your reason. We all have the same objects and the same interests. That people should disagree in republican governments upon questions of public policy is natural. That men should disagree upon all matters connected with human investigation, whether relating to science or human conduct is natural. Hence in free governments parties will arise. But free citizens should express their different opinions with liber ality and charity; with no acrimony toward those of their fellows, when honestly and sincerely given. Let us, there fore, reason together.

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We are all launched in the same bark; we are all in the same craft in the wide political ocean. The same des tiny awaits us all for weal or for woe. We are launched in the good old ship which has been upon the waves for three quarters of a century; which has been in many tempests and storms; which has many times been in peril. Patriots have often feared they would have to give it up; yea, they have at times almost given it up; but still the gallant ship is afloat. Though new storms now howl around us and the tempest beats heavily against us, I say to you: don't give up the ship; don't abandon her yet. If she can possibly be preserved and our rights, interests and security be maintained, the object is worth the effort. Let us not, on account of disappointment and chagrin at the reverse of an election, give up all as lost; but let us see what can be done to prevent a wreck.
The consternation which has come upon the people is the result of a sectional election of a President of the Uni ted States; one whose opinions and avowed principles are in antagonism to our interests and rights and we be lieve, if carried out, would subvert the Constitution under which we live. But are we entirely blameless in this mat ter, my countrymen ? I give it to you as my opinion that but for the policy the Southern people pursued this fear ful result would not have occurred; and had the South stood firmly in the convention at Charleston, on her old platform of principles of non-intervention, there is in my mind but little doubt that whoever might have been the candidate of the National Democratic party would have been elected by as large a majority as that which elected Mr. Buchanan or Mr. Pierce. Therefore let us not be hasty or rash in our action, especially if the result is to be attributed even in the least to ourselves.

586 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
In my opinion, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen, is sufficient cause for any State to separate from the Union. We are pledged to support the Constitution. Can we, therefore, for the mere election of a man to the presidency, in accordance with the prescribed forms of the Constitution, make a point of resistance to the govern ment without becoming the breakers of that sacred in strument? Would we not be in the wrong? Whatever fate is to befall this country, let it never be laid to the charge of the people of the South, and especially to the people of Georgia, that we were untrue to our national engagements. Let the fault and the wrong rest upon others. If all our hopes are to blasted, if the republic is to go down, let us be found to the last moment standing on the deck with the Constitution of the United States waving over our heads.
But if the contention is made that Mr. Lincoln's policy and principles are against the Constitution and that if he carries them out they will be destructive of our rights, let us not anticipate imaginary evils. If he violates the Constitution, then will come our time to act. Do not let us break it because forsooth he may. If he does, then let us strike. The President of the United States is no em peror, no dictator; he is clothed with no absolute power; he can do nothing unless he is backed by power in Con gress. The House of Representatives is largely against him. In the very face and teeth of the heavy majority which he has obtained in the Northern States there have been large gains in the House of Representatives to the conservative constitutional party of this country. In the Senate he will also be powerless. He can not appoint an officer without the consent of the Senate. Why, then,

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should we disrupt the ties of this Union when his hands are tied ?
As much as I admire this Union, as much as it has done for civilization, as much as the hopes of the world hang upon it, I would never submit to aggression upon my rights to maintain it longer. I will have equality for the citizens of Georgia or I will look for new safeguards elsewhere. The only question now is, can this be secured in the Union?
We seldom think of the single element of oxygen in the air we breathe, and yet let this simple unseen and unfelt agent be withdrawn this life-giving element be taken away from this all-pervading fluid around us and what instant and appalling changes would take place in all or ganic creation. It may be that we are what we are "in spite of the general government," but it may be that with out it we should be far different from what we are now. It is true there is no equal part of the earth with resources superior perhaps to ours. That portion of this coun try known as the Southern states stretching from the Chesapeake to the Rio Grande is fully equal to the picture drawn by the honorable and eloquent Senator last night in all natural capacities; but how many ages and centuries elapsed before these capacities were developed? Uned ucated and uncivilized man roamed over these lands, for how long no history informs us. The organization of society has much to do with the development of the nat ural resources of any country or any people. Our insti tutions constitute the matrix from which spring all our characteristics of development and greatness. Look at Greece! There is the same fertile soil, the same blue sky, the same inlets and harbors, the same v^Egean, the same

588 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Olympus there is the same land where Homer sang and Pericles spoke it is in nature the same old Greece; but it is living Greece no more!
Descendants of the same people inhabit the country; yet what is the reason for this mighty difference? In the midst of present degradation we see the glorious frag ments of ancient works of art; but upon them all Ichabod is written. Why is this so? I answer: Because their institutions have been destroyed. These were the matrix from which this grand development sprung. And when once the institutions of our people shall have been de stroyed there is no earthly power which can bring back the Promethean spark to kindle them here again any more than in that ancient land of eloquence, poetry and song.
The same may be said of Italy. Where is Rome, once the mistress of the world. There are the same seven hills now, the same soil, the same natural resources; but what a ruin of human greatness meets the eye of the traveler! Why this sad difference ? It is the destruction of her in stitutions which has caused it. And, my countrymen, if we shall in an evil hour rashly pull down and destroy those institutions which the patriotic hands of our fathers la bored so long and so hard to build up and which have done so much for us and for humanity, who can venture the prediction that similar results will not ensue? Let us avoid them if we can. I trust the spirit is amongst us which will enable us to do it. Let us not rashly try the experiment of change; for as in Greece and Italy and South America, when our liberty is once lost it may never be restored to us again. Alexander H. Stephens.
[Extract from an address delivered before the State Legislature on November 14, 1860.]

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IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL SECESSION.
This is but the beginning of the end. Fanaticism is madness. It ignores consequences, it overrides obstacles, it ruthlessly sunders the dearest ties of the heart, it takes affection from the lover, it steels the mother against her own offspring, the creature against his God. We call it blind because it can not see; we call it deaf because it can not hear; we call it foolish because it can not reason; we call it cruel because it can not feel. By what channel, then, can we reach its citadel? Firmly planted therein, with every avenue closed to ingress and yet every door of evil influences open to the bitter issues which flow without, the deluded victim glories in his own shame and scatters ruin and destruction in the mad dream that he is doing God's service.
Such is the teaching of philosophy; and history, her handmaid, confirms this truth. The bloody minds of those who, with sinful hands, murdered the Lord of Glory were never sated until the Roman legions sacked the city of David and the eagles of Rome floated over the ruins of the temple. The fires of Smithfield never ceased to burn until the maiden queen, with her strong arm and stronger will, sealed in the blood of Mary the covenant of peace to the church. The wheel of the Juggernaut never failed to crush the bones of infatuated victims until the shaggy mane of the British Lion was drenched in the blood of Oriental imbecility. The bloody crescent of the false prophet never ceased to behold the gory victims which Islam claimed until on many a battle-field the redemption in blood came to rescue the children of Faith. The Ganges

590 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
bore in its turbid waters the innocent victims of the delu sion of mothers until England assumed the position which God held to Abraham on the Mount and staying the mur derous arms, bade the well-spring of a mother's love once more to gush from a mother's heart. All history speaks but one voice. Tell me when and where the craving ap petite of fanaticism was ever gorged with victims; when and where the bloody hands were ever stayed by the con sciousness of satiety; when and where the deaf ears ever listened to reason or argument or persuasion; when and where it ever died from fatigue or yielded except in blood ? And, when you have done this, you may then convince me that this triumph is temporary and bid me hope on.
We have seen that this election is legally unconstitu tional and that politically the issue on which it is uncon stitutional is both vital in its importance and permanent in its results. What, then, is our remedy? Shall it be the boy's redress of recrimination, the bully's redress of braggadocio or boasting, or the manly freeman's redress of independence ? This is a most solemn question and no man should rashly advise his countrymen at such a time. For myself, for months, nay years, I have foreseen this coming cloud. I have given it all the study of which my mind is possessed. I have called my heart into the coun cil and listened to its beatings. Nay more, my friends, I fear not to say, I have gone to the God I worship and begged Him to advise me. On the night of the sixth of November I called my wife and little ones together around my family altar and together we prayed to God to stay the wrath of our oppressors and preserve the Un ion of our fathers. The rising sun of the seventh of No vember found me on my knees, begging the same kind

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Parent to make that wrath to praise Him and the remain der of wrath to restrain. I believe that the hearts of men are in His hands and when the telegraph announced to me that the voice of the North proclaimed at the ballotbox that I should be a slave I heard in the same sound the voice of my God speaking- through His providence and saying to his child: "Be free! Be free!" Marvel not then that I say my voice is for immediate, unconditional secession.
While hope of better things lived I could be patient and hope on; but when hope died darkness came, and the only gleam of light on the dark horizon which meets my eye is from Georgia's star independent--and, if necessary, alone. But we shall not be alone. Our sister on the east holds out imploring arms to welcome us in our march. Our daughters on the west wait only for the mother to speak. Our neighbor on the south, to whom just now we are generously yielding part of our territory, begs for our counsel and our lead. Empire State as she is and deserves to be, Georgia must be no laggard in the race. The head of the column is her birthright and her due. To the column's head let us march!
My friends, there is danger in delay. The North, flushed with victory, construes and will construe every indication of hesitancy into craven fear, every voice for delay into the quakings of cowardice. The stern, un yielding look of the brave man makes the snarling cur sneak back to his kennel, but let the cheek blanch before the foe and the lip quiver and the knee shake, and do you wonder that when you stand your ground the miserable cur is biting at your heels ? Delay, therefore, invites ag gression and destroys all confidence in our courage. Let

592 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Georgia speak now and a Northern regiment will never cross the borderline. Let Georgia delay, and they will make scourges to whip the cowards to obedience. Delay is dangerous because now we have at the North a respect able body of men who sympathize with us in our oppres sion and will not aid the oppressor. They are melting away like frost-work before the burning zeal of this fa natical sun and ere long their own thinned ranks and their inevitable contempt for our timidity will render them powerless as a barrier to Northern aggression. Delay is dangerous because now the army and navy are in the hands of an administration that recognizes our right to withdraw. On the fourth day of next March the power ful arm of the executive will be wielded by a foe as unre lenting as he is cruel. Delay is dangerous because it de moralizes our position enervates the army which is now ready to rise in our defense keeps open our territory to the emissaries of the North teaches us to weigh our honor in the scales of interest and drives back to die the warm outgushings of our wounded hearts.
Shall I be told that the country is prosperous, that the crops are good, that the people feel not the burning heel of the oppressor? I will not allude to the difficulties al ready felt in financial circles and the distrust which, like the barometer, ever indicates the coming storm. Behold, on yonder ocean, the leaking vessel. See the indications of her fate in the gradual, slow but sure rising of the water on the bows. On the upper, aye, the upper deck, behold the gay party basking in the warm sunshine and rejoicing in the gentle breeze. Do you tell me when I warn them of their danger and point them to the ap proaching billows, they will answer that they can not move

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because the sunlight of heaven is bright around them and the zephyr fans sweetly their wearied limbs. No, never. They will weigh my evidence. They will examine into the hold. They will act as wise men before they are en gulfed in the sea.
Oh, where is the overt act for which you are asked to delay? I can imagine nothing else except the assassin's knife at your throat and the incendiary's torch under your dwelling. My friends, delay is dangerous, for ere long you will be imprisoned by walls of free States all around you. Your increasing slaves will drive out the only race that can move the whites and the masters who still cling to their father's graves will, like a scorpion in a ring of fire, but sting themselves to die.
But the last and most potent argument to my mind in favor of immediate action is that by it alone can we pre serve peace. I think I have shown that we have no dan ger to fear from servile insurrection or from Northern bayonets. Whence, then, is the danger ? At home among ourselves, with Georgia as the theater and our brethren as the victims. Suppose we are equally divided. A small
majority will decide the question. As good citizens we ought to submit. I should so counsel all my fellow citi zens. But you know and I know that there are zealous, warm spirits who would rather grace a traitor's gallows that wear a slave's badge. Collisions between them and the general government are almost inevitable. What then? Will this arm be raised to strike them down? Never, no, never! Will you stand by and see them gib beted on Federal bayonets or sentenced by Federal courts ? I have spoken for myself; answer for yourselves. When the dogs of war first lap the blood of freemen, what will

594 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
be the consequences? I think I see in the future a gory head rise above the horizon. Its name is Civil War. Already I can see the prints of his bloody fingers upon our lintels and door-posts. The vision sickens me already; and I turn your view away. O Georgians, avert from your State this bloody scourge. Surely your love of the Union is not so great but that you can offer it on the altar of fraternal peace. Come, then, legislators, selected, as you are, to represent the wisdom and intelligence of Geor gia; wait not till the grog-shops and cross-roads shall send up a discordant voice from a divided people; but act as leaders in guiding and forming public opinion. Speak no uncertain words, but let your united voice go forth to be resounded from every mountain-top and echoed from every gaping valley; let it be written in the rainbow which arches our falls and read in the crest of every wave upon our ocean shores, until it shall put a tongue in every bleeding wound of Georgia's mangled honor, which shall cry to heaven for Liberty or Death!
General T. R. R. Cobb.
[Extract from an address in advocacy of secession delivered be fore the General Assembly of Georgia at Milledgeville on November 12, 1860, just after President Lincoln's election.]
WHAT THE SOUTH DEMANDS.
Senators, my countrymen have demanded no new gov ernment. They have demanded no new Constitution. The discontented States have demanded nothing but clear^ distinct constitutional rights, rights older than the Con stitution. What do these rebels demand ? First, that the

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people of the United States shall have an equal right to emigrate and settle in the territories with whatever prop erty they may possess. Second, that property in slaves shall be entitled to the same protection from the govern ment as any other property, leaving the State the right to prohibit or abolish. Third, that persons committing crimes against slave property in one State and flying to another shall be given up. Fourth, that fugitive slaves shall be surrendered. Fifth, that Congress shall pass laws for the punishment of all persons who shall aid and abet invasion and insurrection in any other State. We demand these five propositions. Are they not right? Are they not just? We will pause and consider them; but, mark me, we will not let you decide the questions for us. I have little care to dispute remedies with you unless you propose to redress our wrongs. But no matter what may be our grievances, the honorable Senator from Kentucky says we can not secede. Well, what can we do ? We can not revolutionize. He will say it is treason. What can we do? Submit? We will stand by the right; we will take the Constitution; we will defend it with the sword, with the halter around our necks. You can not intimidate my constituents by talking to them of treason.
You will not regard Confederate obligations; you will not regard constitutional obligations; you will not regard your oaths. What, then, am I to do ? Am I a free man ? Is my State a free State? We are free men. We have rights. I have stated them. We have wrongs. I have recounted them. I have demonstrated that the party now coming into power has declared us outlaws and is deter mined to exclude thousands of millions of our property from the common territory; that it has declared us under

596 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the ban of the Union and out of the protection of the laws of the United States everywhere. They have refused to protect us from invasion and insurrection by the Fed eral power and the Constitution denies to us in the Union the right to raise fleets and armies for our own defense. All these charges I have proven by the record; and I put them before the civilized world and demand the judgment of to-day, of to-morrow, of distant ages and of heaven itself upon the justice of these causes. We have appealed time and again for these constitutional rights. You have refused them. We appeal again. Restore to us those rights as we had them; as your court adjudges them to be; just as our own people have said they are. Redress these flagrant wrongs seen of all men and it will re store fraternity and unity and peace to us all. Refuse them and what then ? We shall then ask you : Let us de part in peace. Refuse this, and you present us war. We accept it and inscribing upon our banners the glorious words, "Liberty and Equality," we will trust to the blood of the brave and the God of battles for security and tran quillity. Robert Toombs.
[Extract from the farewell address delivered in the United States Senate on January 7, 1861.]
THE SOLDIER'S VOTE.
Would that I knew, and yet I scarcely dare picture, how and where that soldier vote was cast. On what ensan guined field, by what historic stream? Were the polls opened on the rushing Rapidan or by the sullen Chickamauga. Oh, where did the gaunt and ragged Georgians

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vote? Was election music or election banners lacking? No. The one was the hiss of the minies and the thudding of the guns; the other the shell-riven fragments of that banner whose story "sung by poets and by sages shall go sounding down through ages." Campaign documents, were they lacking ? No, by the thousands they were there. Carefully cherished in jackets of gray. Letters from home they were. They told the story of suffering wives, and starving children, but also they told how the messen ger from the Governor had brought bread and clothing to aged parents, to wives and little ones. And that Gov ernor, the soldiers shrewdly knew, had also furnished the threadbare clothes they wore, the thin blankets looped across their broad shoulders, the best he could get, aye the very arms they bore, and thickly fell the votes of Geor gia boys for the boy from Gaddistown. Piteous is the story told by that soldier vote in all only fifteen thou sand. One hundred and twenty thousand of her youth and manhood had Georgia given to the red-cross flag. Where were they now? Pallid and suffering prisoners of war. Agonized with wounds and with disease in the crowded wards of dreary hospitals. How many are sleep ing in the gloomy shades of the Wilderness, how many under the crumbling ramparts of Vicksburg; what multi tudes on the fateful slopes and amid the battle-riven rocks of those heights of Gettysburg, from whose gory sum mits the high-water mark of the Confederacy had re coiled the wave red with the blood of heroes. Where'er thou sleepest
"Rest on embalmed and sainted dead! Dear as the blood ye gave;
No impious footsteps there shall tread The herbage of your grave.

598 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Nor shall your glory be forgot While Fame her record keeps,
Or Honor points the hallowed spot Where valor proudly sleeps."
Since first the morning stars sang together, no greater tribute of fidelity to duty, of humanity to suffering, of faithfulness in all things, has come to mortal man than the confidence and love recorded by that immortal rem nant, Georgia's soldier vote. Emory Speer.
AGAINST ACCEPTING THE TERMS OF PEACE PROPOSED AT HAMPTON ROADS.
I do not speak to you with threats, but I do speak to you in frankness. And I tell you, if you, at home, are willing to submit to terms so degrading, the army will not! The soldiers can give up property; they have given it up. They can leave home and wife and children; they have left them. They can endure cold and heat and hun ger and nakedness. They have endured all these for four long years. They can climb mountains, wade rivers, make long marches, walk without shoes, sleep without tents, fight without trembling and die without fear. All these things have been done from Texas to Maryland. They can listen to the bursting shells without quaking knees, and watch the flashing guns without blinking eyes. They have heard and seen them in a hundred battles. You can not startle them with the enemy's numbers; they have met that enemy on a hundred fields without a count, save of the slain and captured. They can bury their fallen comrades and still press on. Ah, ten times ten thousand quick-shoveled mounds hide the still clenched teeth and

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fearless miens of sleeping braves from Oak Hills to Get tysburg. They are in the valley of the Mississippi and to their memories the great father of waters will mingle a hoarse, deep dirge with the tolling bells of floating steam ers, while commerce shall gather the rich fruits of their labors. They are among the hills of Georgia, and the sweet, winding Etowah shall hymn their requiem as long as the iron mountain, around whose base she pours her waters, shall remain. And Virginia unrivaled old moth er holds them, to-day, all over her great, wide bosom, and there she will ever hold them, richer in them alone than India with her treasures and prouder than Egypt lifting her changeless pyramids to the skies!
And what is it so richer than wealth, so dearer than home and wife and children, so more valued than ease and health and life that for it the true, brave soldier is wil ling to lose all, and endure and suffer and toil and fight and die, and never falter ? It is that without which there can be no enjoyment in wealth, no home for family, no safety in ease and no pleasure in life. It is the honor and independence of our country! And do you suppose that these gallant heroes, who have lost so much, who have en dured so much, who have suffered so much, and who have buried so many, and all to maintain that honor and in dependence, will tamely agree that you, who never felt the Sirocco breath of this war's wild blast, shall now sur render all national honor and independence forever ? Will they agree that you shall say all their privations have been endured in the cause of treason ? Will they, at your bid ding, lay down their arms and, like penitent felons, trust the enemy they have been fighting for pardon ? Will they ever consent that you, taking the friendly hand of the en emy who slew them, shall go over the fields of Manassas

600 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
and Fredericsburg, Shiloh and Chickamauga and write above the graves of their comrades who are resting there that blackest of libels "Traitors lie here" ? Will Geor gia write that epitaph for Bartow and Cobb and her thou sands of sons who have fought and died to illustrate her honor? Will Virginians write it for Jackson? Whose hand shall write it and not be paralyzed ? Whose tongue shall utter it and not grow speechless? Who will bear the message to those foreign nations who are carving statues and erecting monuments to his memory, to forbear the unholy work of perpetuating the name and features of a traitor? But even if the army could endure all this and lay down their arms, think you they .would not grasp them again when they should see that nobler than Brutus that purer than Cromwell and that greater than Wash ington, the glorious Lee, led up to the prison-stand to re ceive the sentence of an inveterate or the pardon of a peni tent culprit, from the mouth of such a jester as Lincoln? Enough! Away with the thought of peace on such terms. 'Tis the wildest dream that restless ambition or selfish avarice or slinking cowardice could conjure in the highest flights of the most anguished imaginings. The day you make friends with the enemy on such terms you will make eternal enemies of your own brave sons and brothers who have been defending you against that enemy's malice. You will have an enemy in every household, a battle at every fireside, and a war that will blight your fields and curse the land with horror forever.
For glory is the soldier's prize, The soldier's wealth is honor.
--Benj. H. Hill.
[Extract from an address delivered at LaGrange, Georgia, on March n, 1865.]

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THE HEROISM OF THE FLOYD RIFLES. '
It is written of Pericles that, when he was to speak in public, his solicitude was such that he first addressed a prayer to the gods, that not a word might escape his lips unsuitable to the occasion. This solicitude oppresses me to-night, and gladly would I consult some Delphic oracle as to my form of speech and my duty on this occasion, for doubtless you intended that this should be a gala eve ning a fitting termination of the interesting exercises of your thirty-eighth anniversary. Yet, when I heard the roll-call of those who went out to battle; when I recall the names of the missing ones, who are sleeping in Vir ginia's consecrated soil, in your own beautiful "City of the Dead," and upon historic battle-fields; when I read the inscription upon the badge of honor to be presented here; when I remember it has been donated by one of your company who survived the carnage of Gettysburg, as a testimonial of the chivalric bearing and gallant charge of that company in that memorable struggle, a burden of memories oppress the soul. The sunshine of anticipated pleasure is darkened by the cloud of sad recollections, and the expected joy is transformed and sublimed to the reali zation of emotions too sorrowful to utter, yet too sacred to renounce. The Past is being reviewed by the Present, and as the solemn retrospect passes with its grand pa geantry of thrilling events and battle scenes, imagination, "heedless of the voice," of inspiration, is absorbed in the grandeur of the display, while memory hushes her sorrowsong, and witnesses the review, with brows jeweled with the tear-drops of affection, and a heart embalmed with

602 .REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the richest incense of love. These notes of sadness, in termingling with the joyful lyrics you expected to hear, may produce unpleasant discord, but the harp would breathe unnatural music now whose tremulous strings did not vibrate with the sad harmonies that stir my soul. Not only does Gettysburg rise before me the shadows of death upon her hills, their sides crimsoned with patriot blood but other hard-fought fields, in quick succession, pass before memory's eye, upon which the star of Con federate hope
"Changed like the changeful moon, That each night varies, hardly now perceived, And now she shows her bright horn; by degrees She fills her orb with light. * * * She then begins once more To waste her glories, 'till dissolved and lost She sinks again to darkness."
And I again survey those fields, furrowed by the warshod steps of Mars, where
"The clang of arms, The shriek of agony, the groan of death, In one wild uproar, shook the air."
That army has passed away scattered like autumnal leaves yet the glory of its deeds has left a brilliant reflex upon the pages of history, while he who led it in victory or defeat now sleeps on "fame's eternal camping-ground." "Peace to his large and noble dust," as it mingles with the sands that cover Virginia's own Washington and Jackson. In all the elements of greatness he was truly great. With the nobility of his nature and the grandeur of his charac-

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ter were mingled the gentleness of Christian humility the ineffable beauty of Christian devotion. Others were great, but the light of their fame pales before the sunlike splendor of his glory. Carthage had her Hannibal, Macedon her Alexander, France her Napoleon, England her Wellington, yet the nineteenth century has fixed in the Southern heavens this "day star from on high," of Chris tian heroism, which, covering them with its glory and fill ing the earth with its brilliancy, will shine on and on "down the ages," undimmed by the lapse of time, un clouded by the mist of years. If he was great in pros perity, he was truly noble in adversity, and never was his moral greatness so imposing as when the grand old chief tain, surrounded by his battle-scarred warriors, sheathed his trenchant blade, and, folding his arms across his manly breast, gave his last command: "Furl your banners and stack your arms."
Never had heroes such a leader, and never had a leader men more patient under hardships, more patriotic in pur pose, more chivalric in bearing, more heroic in danger. Truly may it be said: they made laurels for commanding generals; and believe me, the patriotic women of Au gusta properly appreciated the worth of the private sol dier, when upon the monument erected to the memory of their Confederate dead, though they surmounted its base by the statutes of four of our leading generals, upon its top, high over all, they placed a private soldier, the crown ing ornament of the monumental shaft. Yes, these were they who made your armies illustrious, and gained for officers honors and renown. To them be never-ending gratitude undying honor.

604 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
I congratulate you, sir, in securing this memorial of your company's daring on the bloody fields of battle. It is hallowed by sacred reminiscences and endeared by blood-bought memories. And as the trees that grew over the grave of the daughter of Thrace, at certain periods of the year shed their dewy tears over her resting-place, so will the laurel emblem on this beautiful medallion, distill from manly eyes the tear of sympathy over the memo ries of those whose deeds it chronicles and whose glories it perpetuates.
I congratulate the company that he who will wear it, though in another command, faced the "leaden rain and iron hail" of the field of Gettysburg. This beautiful medal will ever remind you of that fearful struggle, and as you recall the scenes of carnage and of death, as mem ory sounds in your ears and arrays before you the wardrum's beat, the deafening musketry, the hill-shaking cannonry, the heroic charge, the groans of the wounded, and the mangled forms of your slaughtered companions, let it fire your soul with new zeal in the interest of your corps, who, with the sword of war, has engraved in char acters of blood her own history on the pages of glory and renown. Yet, sir, that company has now another history to write, for she is again called upon to strike for liberty, not the liberty of war and misrule, but of peace and good government, the liberty of an elevated public sentiment and a liberated State, the liberty of wholesome laws and remunerative industries, the liberty of' educational su premacy and financial independence, and may you storm these heights with the same heroism that characterized your assault upon the cannon-girt hills of Gettysburg. In this service let the fiery cross, borne by patriot hands

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over mountain passes, through forests dense and "heath ery braes," assemble the clansmen at once at "Lanric Mead," while each heart is cheered and every bosom is thrilled,
"As valley and sequestered glen, Musters its horde of valiant men, That meet as torrents from the heights In highland dales their streams unite,"
ready to strike for Clan Alpine's cause. In this service let the Floyd Rifles, as they did in their "contest for free dom and struggle for independence," enlist for the war, and as the combat thickens let the heaven-inspired com mand, "Go forward," ring along your lines as it did on that memorable day in July when death decimated your ranks as glory wrote your record, and the well-aimed mus ketry and the double-shotted cannonry of opposition will not check your assault until you have scaled the frowning heights of Cemetery Range, and planted your banner in triumph upon its loftiest eminence.
Floyd Rifles, Macon Volunteers, heroes of a revolution that is gone, be ye heroes in the revolution that is, and in spired by the sacred memories of the past, and enthused by the recital of your deeds of daring and of heroism, press forward in this grand struggle, and these presentation exercises will redound to the welfare of the people and the everlasting glory of the State. And in coming years when peace shall hover over your altars, when plenty shall bless your boards and glory crown your State, may some gifted son of Georgia, with eloquence breathing, glowing, burn ing with the inspiration of your achievements and your success, present you with the evidences of your triumphs, as I now, in unpretending simplicity, present to Sergeant

606 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Davis this Ross testimonial of the Spartan daring and Roman courage of the gallant Floyd Rifles. Colonel Thomas Hardcman, Jr.
[Extract from an address delivered on the presentation of the Gettysburg medal to Sergeant Davis of the Floyd Rifles, in Macon, June 18, 1879.]
LEE AND DAVIS.
No people, ancient or modern, can look with greater pride to the judgments of history than can we of the South to the verdict which history will be compelled to render upon the merits and characters of our two chief leaders: the one in the military and the other in the civil service. Most other leaders are great because of fortu nate results and most other heroes because of success. Davis and Lee because of qualities in themselves are great in the face of fortune and heroes in spite of defeat.
When the future historian shall come to survey the character of Lee he will find it rising like some mountainpeak above the undulating plain of humanity and he must lift his eyes toward heaven to catch its summit. He pos sessed every virtue of other great commanders without their vices. He was a foe without hate, a friend without treachery, a soldier without cruelty, a victor without op pression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen withoutwrong ; a neighbor without reproach; a Christian with out hypocrisy and a man without guile. He was Caesar without his ambition; Frederick without his tyranny; Napoleon without his selfishness, and Washington with-

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out his reward. He was gentle as a woman in life; mod est and pure as a virgin in thought; watchful as a Ro man vestal in duty; submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles.
*****
Jefferson Davis was as great in the cabinet as was Lee in the field. He was more resentful in temper and more aggressive by nature than Lee. His position, too, ex posed him more frequently to assaults from our own people. He had to make all appointments and though often upon the recommendation of others all the blame of mistakes was charged to him. He also made recom mendations for enactments, and though these measures, especially the military portion, invariably had the concur rence of Lee and often originated with that chieftain, the opposition of malcontents was directed at Davis. . . . . I could detain you all night correcting false impressions which have been industriously made against this great and good man. I knew Jefferson Davis as I knew few men. I have been near him in his public duties; I have seen him by his private fireside; I have witnessed his humble Christian devotions; and I challenge the judg ment of history when I say, no people were ever led through the fiery struggle of liberty by a nobler, truer patriot; while the carnage of war and the trials of public life never revealed a purer or a more beautiful Christian character.
*****
I would be ashamed of my own unworthiness if I did not venerate Lee. I would scorn my own nature if I did not love Davis. I would question my own integrity and patriotism if I did not honor and admire both. There

608 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
are some who affect to praise Lee and condemn Davis. But of all such Lee himself would be ashamed. No two leaders ever leaned each on the other in such beautiful trust and absolute confidence. Hand in hand and heart to heart, they moved in front of the dire struggle of their people for independence : a noble pair of brothers. And if fidelity to right, endurance of trials and self-sacrifice for others can win title to a place with the good in the great hereafter, then Davis and Lee will meet where wars are not waged and slanderers are not heard; and as, heart to heart and wing to wing, they fly through the courts of heaven, admiring angels will say: "What a noble pair of brothers!" Benjamin H. Hill.
[Extract from an address before the Southern Historical Society in Atlanta, February 18, 1874.]
DENOUNCING THE MILITARY MEASURES OF RECONSTRUCTION.
The histories of the greatest and the most enduring na tions of the earth are filled with defeats as well as victo ries, suffering as well as happiness, shame and reproach as well as honor and glory. Purification, in the crucible of adversity, seems to be the price or the penalty of national greatness. Through this test have passed the nations whose power and genius have governed, whose existence has blessed and whose wisdom still guides and directs the world. Through this test have passed the illustrious men whose names have been canonized by mankind, the mas ters of fortune, the favorites of all the gods, the few im-

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mortal names which were not born to die. The heroic struggles of the great and the good, the brave and the true men of the world, in all ages and countries, in the face of the greatest disasters and in spite of the greatest dangers, in behalf of home and country and human rights, are the noblest legacies left by the past to the present gen eration of men; they are trophies of which poor humani ty may well be proud, trophies worthy to be laid at the feet of Jehovah.
'That is a bright page in Roman history which narrates that when thousands of her most gallant and distinguished youth were slain, her veteran legions broken and scattered and the victorious enemy was marching upon her capitol, marking his pathway by fire and sword, with nothing to resist his progress but a stern old warrior and patriot whose chief resource lay in his unconquerable will, the Roman Senate met and first offered propitiatory sacri fices to the gods and then voted the thanks of Rome to the defeated leader of her armies for not despairing of the republic. From that hour the star of Hannibal culminated from the equator. The people imbibed the spirit of the conscript fathers; courage and hope drove out fear and despair; and Rome was saved.
Men and women of Georgia, you, too, deserve the thanks of your country for the evidence you give this day that you have not despaired of the republic. Though despoiled, plundered and manacled, your spirits are un broken ; you have heart and hope to make new sacrifices aye, to make all sacrifices to regain your lost liberties and to redeem your country from bondage.
The avenging nemesis which follows in the train of conquest is already confronting the victors in the shape
20r

610 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
of the Radical party. Born in sectional hatred, which it has ever assiduously cultivated; nurtured by the evil passions which that hatred engenders; reared to its pres ent dangerous proportions by the lawlessness of civil war and the general disorders of the times, this monster has become the great danger to the whole commonwealth. Its thirst for power and plunder has not been fatigued, much less appeased, by its tyrannies, its robberies and its ruin of the South. Therefore, to gratify these unholy passions it has conspired to seize supreme power by force and fraud and to erect a military despotism upon the ruins of constitutional liberty. The Democracy has arraigned this faction before the grand inquest of the nation for high crimes and misdemeanors. The declaration of principles adopted by the convention has no uncertain sound. The old shibboleths of liberty are again proclaimed as living principles; and whatever else may be lost these have sur vived the conflict of arms and will live at least in the heart of the Democratic party. Those whose blades glittered in the foremost ranks of the Federal army scorn the base uses to which the victory has been applied, and now de mand that the rights of the vanquished shall be respected, that these wrongs shall be redressed and that justice shall be done.
The one great question which swallows up all the rest concerns the validity of a series of Acts known as the congressional plan of reconstruction. Among patriots this so-called "plan" leaves no room for difference of opinion or action; and while the immediate evils fall with crushing weight upon you its ultimate effects will be equally disastrous to constitutional liberty and free gov ernment in every part of the republic. It contains no

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principle or policy, no purpose or object to commend it to your approval, nothing to mitigate your sternest hostility to all of its provisions. In lieu of the constitution and the laws it erects a military despotism hitherto rare in the an nals of human crime; a military despotism freed from the forms of military administration; an organized anarchy upheld and administered by bayonets.
These are neither the ordinary nor the appropriate in strumentalities for the construction or reconstruction of good government; but that result would be wholly incon sistent with the grand design of the authors of this pyra mid of iniquities, which was to perpetuate despotic power in the hands of the present dominant faction by means of negro supremacy. The simplest and most direct mode of reaching this result and the one in entire harmony with the genius of the plan would have been to have en franchised all of the negroes and to have disfranchised all of the white race. But it was determined by the assem bled wisdom of the party that the plan would gain in safety what it lost in simplicity and boldness by tempering audacity with craft and force with fraud.
Such measures can derive no justicfiation, support or apology from either the constitution of the United States, the laws of nations or the acts of the people of the Con federate States. They stand, therefore, in all their naked deformity open to the indignant gaze of all honest men. By the aid of a military dictator, eminently fitted to exe cute them through the agency of bayonets, stuffed ballotboxes, fraudulent registries and returns, they have accom plished their appointed work. A mockery, called the con stitution of the State of Georgia, has been imposed upon the people, which makes all good government impossible

612 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
as long as it stands. An ignorant and unprincipled ad venturer has been installed under it as the chief magis trate of the State, clothed with imperial power over the interests and destinies of this people, who is already prosti tuting the power and patronage bestowed upon him for that purpose, in buying posts of honor and trust for his co-conspirators, in corrupting the judiciary, in rewarding profligate followers, in attempting to intimidate and de bauch the people themselves in order to perpetuate the faction to whose base measures alone he owes his eleva tion.
All these and many more such wrongs have been in flicted upon you' without your consent. Your consent alone can give the least validity to these usurpations. Let no power on earth wring that consent from your manly bosoms. Take no counsel of fear it is the meanest of masters; spurn the temptations of office and gold from the polluted hands of your oppressors; he who holds only his own sepulchre, at the price of these chains, owns a heri tage of shame. All honor to the national Democracy who have risen in their might to strike these fetters from your limbs. You, one and all, owe it to them, to your selves, your posterity and your country to rush to their standard, and labor with them in this great work of deliv erance and liberty. They have thrown wide the portals of admission; "forgetting all past differences of opinion, they invite all to unite in the present great struggle for the liberties of the people." Come, unite with them. Your country says come, honor says come duty says come liberty says come the country is in danger let every freeman hasten to the rescue. Robert Toombs.
[Extract from the Bush Arbor speech delivered in Atlanta on July 23, 1868.]

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DESPOTISM ENFORCED BY BAYONETS,
Ten States of this Union are to-night under revolu tionary governments, originated and imposed upon them by an external power and supported only by the bayonet. These revolutionary governments displace, repress and, for the time being, suppress the regular republican consti tutional governments which have existed here all the while with an unbroken succession. These revolutionary governments are in the hands of carpet-baggers and scal awags, who treat the laws of their own origination with disgraceful contempt; and, under the forms of official au thority, heap upon our people injuries and insults which never before were borne by men born and bred and edu cated in the principles of liberty. Shameless plunder, ma lignant slander, corrupt favoritism, impunity for crimes when committed by the partisans of the government, gi gantic extension of the credit of the States to penniless adventurers who come among us under the false and fraudulent plea of developing our resources, robbery of the very people who are sought to be used as the chief instruments of upholding this gigantic system of revolu tionary fraud and force. These are the products of re construction. This is the situation; and yet there are those who say: "Let us accept the situation." In the last presidential campaign we heard the potent words: "Let us have peace." They had their effect. They carried the presidential election. Yet wise men then knew as all men now know that they were a delusion and a snare. They meant that freemen with their necks under the heel of despotism should remain submissive and quiet. Such a

614 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
peace Turkey has. Such a peace Poland has. Such a peace, thank God, Ireland refuses to have! No people, trained in the principles of liberty, will ever accept of any peace that is not founded on liberty. Tyrants and despots may reconstruct and rereconstruct and rerereconstruct ad infinitum, but they will never have peace from Americanborn freemen until they give them their rights! Judge Linton Stephens.
INSTRUCTING THE FEDERAL MILITARY.
CITIZENS : I am disposed to ask a favor of an other class of our fellow citizens ; a class of whom I have not asked favors heretofore. They have been amongst us for the last three years, men of the North, some of them in high military position, some of them wearing the sim ple vestments of private life. Now, the time has come when many of these are to leave us and go back to their homes, and in the part which they have played to re turn no more forever. Of these gentlemen personally I know nothing, but I ask them to bear a message from the people of the South to the people of the North.
You have been here for three years. When you return to your homes tell your people that you found our land one general plain of desolation; that ashes stood where this beautiful city now stands. You found our people overwhelmed by numbers, a conquered people, if you please, but a brave and generous people still. You have been in our midst and have seen the wrongs that have been done this people. You have seen their old men and their young men torn from the bosoms of their families,

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and from their labor and occupation, without warrant or authority of constitutional law. You have seen them carried to the dungeon and from the dungeon to the courts which had no jurisdiction under the constitution. Tell your people of the North these things when you go. Tell them, too, you have seen the polls opened, you have seen Georgia's noblest sons, born upon her soil and reared under her free institutions sons whom she has delighted to honor sons whom you have received with welcoming arms in all the Northern States you have seen these sons, upon whose character not one single blot rests you have seen them driven from the polls. Tell them that! Tell them that you have seen the poor, ignorant, debased, un happy, unfortunate and deluded negro taken, not by voice of persuasion and of argument, but a power which he could not and dare not resist, and you have seen him go and fill up that ballot-box which formerly received the votes of the good and true men of Georgia. Tell them that you have stood here in her legislative halls. Grayheaded fathers .have told you that these seats were once rilled by the noblest and truest men of the land her Crawford, her Troup, her Forsyth, her Berrien, her Lumpkin, her Wayne. Tell them who you saw there on yesterday! True, some of her sons, good and true men, were there to try to save and rescue the State from wrong, but tell them that my own old county of Clark these men will recognize the names when I speak of Clayton, Dougherty, Hull and Hope, and in later days the brave and gallant Deloney and other good citizens tell them when you go to the North that these seats formerly occu pied by these men were occupied by illiterate blacks. Tell them when you go back that in times past you were told

616 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
that the good men of Georgia assembled at her Capitol to inaugurate her government these men whose names I have mentioned to you but never before in all the his tory of this State was any man, be he good or bad, placed in that chair, with those insignia of office but in response to the voice of the people of Georgia!
These are solemn truths and it becomes you as honest men to bear the message I this day give you. Tell them that on the fourth day of July a day memorable in the history of your country a day honored and celebrated by the good men of the land Georgia was summoned by the party who now rules her destiny to assemble in mass convention in her Capitol. You were here and saw that scene. Go, I ask it as a favor; I will humble myself so far as to beg that the truth may be carried from Geor gia and spread broadcast among your people. You wit nessed that assembly. Go, gentlemen of the North, and tell your people that there was assembled in Georgia this grand and noble old State that crowd; and a more respectable one works on my plantation every day, because they work for their daily bread and meat. Tell them that this was the people in whose hands and under whose con trol you left this noble old State to seek your own homes; and then tell them that on the twenty-third of July there was another assemblage calling themselves the people of Georgia. Come, now, and stand here by my side. I want you to cast your eyes over this vast assembly. Come and look upon these daughters of Georgia, and, gentlemen of the North, tell me you have hearts you have souls you have in your own States mothers, wives and sisters; I ask you to come here to-day and stand upon this plat form and look upon our mothers, and sisters and wives

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and little ones, and tell me in your heart is it right and just and proper? Does your own heart dictate it, that those women and children ought to be under the dominion of those negroes that assembled on the Fourth of July? If there is one pulsation left in your heart if there is one single throb left to beat for the people of the South come and look upon this picture.
Oh, men of the North, as you travel homeward spread these truths broadcast; and when you receive a cordial welcome into your own household, and that wife and mother and daughter impress upon your lips the kiss of affection and love, remember, I beg you, remember the mothers and wives and daughters of Georgia. If you can not feel for them in that hour, then the spirit of love and affection has departed from you, never again to be reclaimed. Tell them that in the midst of all this desola tion there was not in all Georgia one single daughter that bowed her head to the yoke. Tell them that our brave men stood submissive at the point of the bayonet. Tell them that kindness and generosity would have won back the allegiance of their hearts, but all the bayonets that ever were made in the American Union can not drive manhood from their breasts. Tell them that these men were brave and generous to the last, hating their enemies, loving their friends, and, even if it had been neces sary, from the scaffold they would have hurled defiance into the teeth of their oppressors. They would have wel comed every noble and generous heart to the South with a cordiality they extend alone to those they love. Tell them, moreover, Georgia has a home for every true man of the North. She has a welcome for every true man that will come to live among us and with us and be of us. But she

618 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
has neither a true welcome nor a false hospitality to offer to those who come to wrong and oppress them, and when you have told them all this, tell them that in Georgia there was but one voice, one heart, one soul, one spirit.
And when you are asked by your people what are the views and sentiments and purposes of the people of the South, do us the justice to pronounce the charge that we are hostile to the Union and the constitution as false and unfounded. Tell them that the people of the South are ready and anxious for the restoration of perfect harmony and conciliation whenever the terms upon which the res toration is offered are such as brave and honorable men can accept that they long for peace, but it must not be linked with dishonor. Tell them that as you communed with our people you found that the aspirations of our young men, the prayer of our old men, and the ardent desire of all, were to restore a violated constitution, ce ment a weakened Union, and unite all the people of this great country in a common and cordial brotherhood. Hozvcll Cobb.
[Extract from the Bush Arbor speech delivered in Atlanta in 1868.1
" OH, HEAVEN, FOR SOME BLISTERING WORDS!
What think you of Northern men who are prepared to perpetrate this great wrong and outrage upon our people? Can you say to them, "Brother?" Can you say to them, "Friend?" Can you welcome them to your house, when they come to your midst either with the insignia of office or in the habiliments of private citizens ? Why should they

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wonder and stand amazed because we bid them not to the feast, when our friends are invited to assemble and make merry among themselves? Shall these men, ought these men, to expect it ? Pardon me if I dwell upon it. I want to express it, and I urge it upon you, until there shall exist in the heart and soul of every son and daughter that walks and breathes her pure air, and lives upon her happy soil, this conviction, that these men of the North, these Chicago men, these men who call upon you to vote for Grant and Colfax, are neither worthy of your vote, your respect, or of your confidence, much less of your kindness and hospi tality. My friends, they are our enemies. I state it in cool and calm debate. If they were our friends they could not doubly wrong us, and if there beat in their bosoms one single kindly emotion for the people of the South, they would never have made this public declaration to the world of your unworthiness and the contempt which they feel for you. Enemies they were in war; enemies they continue to be in peace. In war we drew the sword and bade them defiance; in peace we gather up the manhood of the South, and raising the banner of constitutional equality, and gathering around it the good men of the North as well as the South, we hurl into their teeth to day the same defiance, and bid them come on to the strug gle. We are ready for it if they are. But, my coun trymen, if those are the feelings which rise in our bosom in reference to these men of the North these men who have no bond of union with you these men who never trod upon your soil unless it was to plun der and to rob these men who know not these women and these children these men who have never worshiped at. your altars, who never communed with the good men

620 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
and women of your State around that altar erected to the living God if these are your feelings toward strangers in blood, and sympathy, and association, what can be your feelings toward those men of Georgia who traveled these hundreds of miles to meet these men at Chicago, who sat upon the bench with them, who went into the council chamber with them, and who there joined their voices and united their hearts in pronouncing that the men whom they have left behind them the men of Georgia who had honored them overmuch, who had lifted them from the lowest dregs of society and elevated them to the highest offices of honor, profit and trust. What say you of such men who went to Chicago, and there, crouching at the feet of our enemies, declared that these good people of Georgia deserved the fate that had come upon them, of being put under the ban of negro supremacy ? My coun trymen, don't think I speak harsh words because I say hard truths. I say to you, my friends, you owe it to your selves, you owe it to the noble dead who sleep in their graves, to observe these things. You scatter flowers over those graves. God bless you for it! They are the graves s)f good, and true and honest, and noble, and brave and generous men. But as you return from that solemn duty turn your back to the right and left upon those who dis honor the memory of the dead. You owe it to the living, you owe it to your own children and to their children. Write down in their memories this day and all days and for all time to come the feeling and spirit of abhorrence with which you regard these men. Oh, heaven! for some blistering words that I may write infamy upon the fore head of these men that they may travel through earth de spised of all men and rejected of heaven, scorned by the

APPENDIX.

621

devil himself. They may seek their final congenial resting place under the mudsills of that ancient institution pre pared for them from the beginning of the world.
Fellow citizens, I come to-day in the spirit of tolerance. I want to bury in Georgia bitter recollections of the past. You and I have differed for days and for years since the hour in which my voice was first raised in the public meetings of my country. I come to-day to present you a platform, present candidates, and invite every good and true man in Georgia to join with me in the good work. Come if you have gone far astray come back. The doors are wide open, wide enough, broad enough to re ceive every white man in Georgia, unless you should dis cover him coming to you creeping and crawling under the Chicago platform. Upon them there should be no mercy. They have dishonored themselves and sought to dishonor you. Anathematize them. Drive them from the pale of social and political fellowship. Leave them to wallow in their own mire and filth. Nobody will envy them, and if they are never taken out of the gully until I reach forth my hand to take them up, they will die in their natural ele ment. But all others come that have differed about reconstruction. I could not go with you. I thought you were wrong. We differed in reference to the constitutional amendment. I thought you were still further from the path. But, my friends, come now come, retrace your steps. You stand upon the bank; you have taken the last step you can take and recover lost ground. Come out from among this people. I appeal to you in the name of the past, in the memories of the past, in the hopes of the future. Sons of Georgia, come out from among this people. I appeal to you in their name.

622 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Oh! can you stand here and look upon these faces full of mourning for the past, full of grief over that which can not be redeemed? But a beam of hope comes gushing from each eye. Let it gush upon the altars of the heart, rekindle the flames that have almost gone out, and here to-day let Georgia's sons come and unite in the great and glorious work. Her banner hangs drooping. Her proud institutions live only in memory. When she was a white man's 'government she was proud, honored, happy, pros perous. Come, and at this altar unite with me, and, by the grace of heaven, let us once more make Georgia a white man's government. It is for you to say, by your votes and by your actions, whether the sun of her great ness shall again reach to meridian splendor. Old men come. Mothers, to your altars, and carry your daughters with you. Ask the prayers of heaven upon your friends, upon your fathers, your husbands and sons. Young men, in whose veins the red blood of youth runs so quickly, let the ardor of your temperaments, the pulsations of your hearts, all beat for Georgia! Your old State, the State of your fathers, that holds in reserve honors innumerablefor yon and them, come. Come one and all, and let us snatch the old banner from the dust, give it again to the breeze, and, if needs be, to the God of battles, and strike one more honest blow for constitutional liberty. Howell Cobb.
[Extract from the Bush Arbor speech delivered in Atlanta in 1868.]

APPENDIX.

623

"LET THE OFFICE BE MINE TO KINDLE THE FLAMES!"
Spirits of our departed braves, we are not dishonored yet; and though the vile, the low, the corrupt and the perjured are seeking to be our rulers, and have seized upon our high places, the noble, the valiant and the true are still left to us, and through all our borders are taking courage and hymning the notes of coming triumph! Ye miserable spawns of political accidency, hatched by the putrid growth of revolutionary corruption into an eph emeral existence renegades from every law of God and violaters of every right of man we serve you with notice this day that this victory is coming. The men of the South and the men of the North patriots everywhere are sending up their vows to heaven that this is and for ever shall be a Union of equal States.
If we shall again have liberty and law under the consti tution, as I now hope and believe, what shall be done with those who have taken advantage of these corrupt times to insult innocence, trample upon rights and oppress help lessness ? These criminals will be among us and must be assigned appropriate positions. What shall we do with them? Ye who have traveled through the blood and losses, and sorrows of war for asserting nothing but what the very framers of the constitution taught was right; ye who have been taunted and reviled as rebels and traitors; ye who have been disfranchised in the land of your fath ers, and made exiles in the home of your birth! When this victory shall come, what shall we do with the crimi nals? I would not hurt a hair of their heads, do them no

624 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
personal harm, deprive them of no right. Give them over; oh, give over the miscreants to the inextinguishable hell of their own consciousness of infamy. But some things you must do for the protection of your children and of your selves and for the vindication of your honor. I affirm it and I want it heard. It is going to be a law of this country and a law more irrepealable than the laws of the Medes and Persians. Not one man that dares record his vote for the inequality and vassalage of the Southern States and the degradation of his own race ought ever to be received into a decent family in Georgia, or in the South, now or hereafter. If we have not the power to help make the laws for our government or for society, thank God we can at least pass social laws for our own homes. I charge you this day, as you honor your children and your household, and would preserve your good name for your posterity, never suffer a single native renegade who votes for the vassalage of these States and (the disgrace of your children and your race to darken your doors or speak to any member of your household.
. Another thing I insist shall be done: A people who will not resent such innovations upon their rights are not worthy of freedom.
*****
But my vow is recorded and I shall redeem it; I find the people willing to sustain me. Men who have tram pled upon the rights of the citizens of Georgia, at a time when the laws were paralyzed, shall feel the power of that restored law when liberty is reawakened. Ye vile miscre ants of the convention who stole the money of the State to pay your per diem, I serve you with notice this day that you shall pay it back. Ye constitution makers! Ye

APPENDIX.

625

men who sprang at one bound from the penitentiaries of the country to frame constitutions for honest people; ye men who oscillate from grand jury rooms with charges of perjury upon you up to legislative halls and other high places in the land, I serve you with notice to-day that the money shall be repaid with interest. And you who are de priving the people of liberty, threatening and conspiring against their lives, I tell you the day is coming when the judges shall be on the prisoner's box and the persecutors shall be clamoring for mercy. "Thou shalt not take the life or liberty or property of a citizen, except according to the laws of the land and the judgment of his peers" is the first and great commandment in liberty's decalogue, and upon it all the other commandments hang. It was given as a concession of power to the people more than six hun dred years ago, at the political Horeb of Anglo-Saxon history, and no man from that day to this has violated or disregarded it who was not a tyrant or a traitor or both. No man in English history ever trampled upon those sacred rights without being called to account. Wicked men have the power now; they have bayonets to protect them and they feel they can insult and oppress with im punity forever. So did Judas feel safe when he helped to eat the Lord's Supper with the Lord. Catiline held pow er in Rome. Arnold once held a commission in the Amer ican army. And you, you vile creatures whose infamy no epithet can describe and no precedent parallel, you will find your names more odious than those of Catiline and Ar nold combined.

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One thing more will be necessary to a proper expression of the abhorrence of our people for the infamous attempt

626 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
to destroy the Union by destroying the equality of the States, and for the measures, authors and advocates of this whole scheme to degrade the States and people of the South. When liberty shall return; when the law shall be again respected and good men shall be our rulers, we must gather all the journals and constitutions and enactments and records of every character of the conventions and as* semblies thus forced upon us by force and fraud and usur pation, and, catching fire from heaven, burn them up forever! And right here, my countrymen, I want you to understand that I am a candidate but for one office on earth. When the glorious day shall come, and the free women and the free men and the laughing children and the proud youth of Georgia shall gather together to fire the miserable, hideous record of infamy, let the office be mine to kindle the flames! Benjamin H. Hill.
[Extract from an address delivered in Atlanta, Georgia, at the fa mous Bush Arbor gathering, July 23, 1868.]
DEFIANCE TO FEDERAL BAYONETS.
What excuse can we offer to our posterity and to the world if we, in this day, with the lessons of history be fore us, allow free institutions to perish on this continent? And our race will have been the soonest run. We have not yet lived a century. It is but seventy-eight years since the constitution was framed, and but ninety-one years since independence was declared by our fathers, while the commonwealth of Rome lived four hundred years before the measures which produced her decay were proposed. What a spectacle! The best people, the richest soil, the

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627

most valuable productions, established as if by the provi dence of God as a new era in the history of the world, and bidding fair to be the shortest lived of any free gov ernment in the history of nations.
There is no difficulty whatever and I assert it with out fear of contradiction in discovering when and how a nation is dying. The great symptoms of the decay and death of a government is the disregard of the fundamental law of that government. I charge before heaven and the American people this day that every evil by which we have been afflicted is attributable directly to the violation of the constitution. Tinkers may work, quacks may prescribe and demagogues may deceive, but I declare to you there is no remedy for us and no hope of escape from the threat ened evils but in adhering to the constitution. I have come to talk freely to you about the dangers of the coun try. I have no personal attacks to make on an enemy, even if I have one. God knows, if I could, with my own hands, I would gladly place a crown of imperishable honor on the brow of my bitterest foe, if I could thereby rescue my country from the perils that environ it! But, if I have an enemy and have a vindictive spirit and desire him to become forever infamous, I could ask no more of him than that he should support the hellish schemes of those who are seeking to subvert the constitution and destroy our liberty. He is digging a grave for himself which posterity will never water with a tear.
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It is my business to support the constitution and my duty and pleasure to persuade others to do so. Some of you who favor the acceptance of these military bills take an oath to this effect and still intend to vote for a conven-

62S REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

tion which you admit to be unconstitutional. How is this ?

If you have a conscience I have said enough. If you vote

for the convention you are perjured. Oh, I pity the race

of colored people who have never been taught what an

oath is or what the constitution means. They are drawn

up by a selfish conclave of traitors to inflict a death-blow

upon the life of the republic by swearing them into a false

hood. They are to begin their political life by perjury to

accomplish treason. I would not visit the penalty upon

them. They are neither legally nor morally responsible;

but you it is educated, designing white men who thus

devote yourself to the unholy work, who are the guilty

parties. You prate about your loyalty! I look you in

the eye and denounce you. You are morally and legally

perjured traitors. You perjure yourself and perjure the

poor negro to help your treason. You can't escape it.

You may boast of it now, while passion is rife, but the

time will come when the very thought will wither your

soul and make you hide from the face of mankind.

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It may be that we of the United States have been so crazy in leaving the constitution the only ark of safety that our Heavenly Father has doomed us to perish; but I am gratified with a hope that it is not so. And if not, there is but one method for our rescue and that is by a prompt restoration of the constitution. Will it come? Will we escape an agrarian war, with resulting despotism, and save our institutions for our children? I hope we shall. I believe we shall. Though an effort is being made to destroy us as Rome was destroyed, I believe the effort will fail. I have great faith in the Anglo-Saxon blood. I derive great encouragement from Anglo-Saxon history.

APPENDIX.

629

Our liberty was not born in a day. It is not the work of one generation. It is the fruit of a hundred struggles. Many have been the efforts to destroy it after the English constitution was trampled upon. Often traitors sought to substitute arbitrary will for well-established law; and often have the people for a time been misled. But thus far they have always waked up and called the traitors and factionists to account.
Charles I. trampled on the constitution. He had judges who decided that his will was law and all who resisted that will and defended the constitution were punished as disloyal. And it did seem as if his power was irresistible. No doubt if you weak-kneed radicals of the South had lived in that day you would have said: "The constitution is dead and we must consent to what we can not resist." But John Hampden would not consent. He resisted. He was tried as a criminal for resisting and was condemned. But what was the sequel? The people finally arose in power. Charles and his ministers perished. The very judges that condemned Hampden were themselves tried and condemned as criminals; and the very officers, the sheriffs who executed the orders of Charles and his courts, were sued by the citizens for damages and made to pay nearly a million of dollars for executing the processes of an unconstitutional law. So Cromwell and his parliament violated the constitution and, though they also flourished for a season, they, too, were overthrown. So James II. trampled on the constitution and had to fly his kingdom a fugitive for life.
In all these struggles good men for a time suffered and bad men for a time ruled, but the English race have never failed to rescue their chartered liberties from the power

630 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
both of traitors and fanatics. I tell you the American people will not always be deceived. They will rise in de fense of the constitution and traitors will tremble. They who rallied three million strong to defeat what they con sidered an armed assault on the constitution and union will not sleep until a few hundred traitors from behind the masked battery of congressional oaths and deceptive pre tensions of loyalty shall utterly batter down the constitu tion and union forever. I warn you, by the history of your own fathers, by every instinct of manhood, by every right of liberty, by every impulse of justice, that the clay is coming when you will feel the power of an outraged and betrayed people. Go on confiscating! Arrest without warrant or probable cause; destroy habeas corpus; deny trial by jury; abrogate State governments; defile your own race and flippantly say the constitution is dead! On, on with your work of ruin, ye hell-born rioters in sacred things, but remember that for all these things the people will bring you into judgment! Benjamin H. Hill.
[Extract from the Davis Hall speech delivered in Atlanta on July 16, 1867, in the presence of armed Federal troops, against the meas ures of reconstruction.]
THE MAN OF THE HOUR.
There are trials severer than war and calamities worse than the defeat of arms. The South was to pass through such trials and be threatened with such calamities by the events of that period. Now and then it seems that all the latent and pent-up forces of the natural world are turned loose for terrible destruction. The foundations of the

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631

earth, laid in the depths of the ages, are shaken by mighty upheavals; the heavens, whose blackness is unrelieved by a single star, roll their portentous thunderings "and nature, through all her works, gives signs of woe." The fruits of years of industry are swept away in an hour; the landmarks of ages are obliterated without a vestige; the sturdiest oak that has struck deep its roots in the bosom of the earth is the plaything of the maddened winds; the rocks that mark the formation of whole geological periods are rent and deep gorges in the mountain side, like ugly scars in the face of the earth, tell of the force and fury of the storm. Such was that period to our social, domestic and political institutions. Law no longer held benign sway, but gave place to the mandate of petty dictators, enforced by the bayonet. What little of property remained was held by no tenure but the capricious will of the plun derer ; liberty and life were at the mercy of the conqueror; the sanctity of home was invaded; vice triumphed over virtue; ignorance ruled in lordly and haughty dominion over intelligence; the weak were oppressed, the unoffend ing insulted, the fallen warred on; truth was silenced; falsehood, unblushing and brazon, stalked abroad un challenged; anxiety filled every heart; apprehension clouded every prospect; despair shadowed every hearth stone; society was disorganized; Legislatures dispersed; judges torn from their benches by the strong arm of mili tary power; States subverted, arrests made, trials held and sentences pronounced without evidence; madness, lust, hate and crime of every hue, defiant, wicked and dia bolical, ruled the hour, until the very air was rent with the cry and heaven's deep concave echoed the wail: "Alas!

632 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Our country sinks beneath the yoke. She weeps. She bleeds, and each new day a gash is added to her wounds."

Among all the true sons of Georgia and of the South

in that day one form stands conspicuous. No fear

blanched his cheek, no danger daunted his courageous

soul. Unawed by power, unbribed by honor, he stood in

the midst of the perils that environed him, brave as Paul

before the Sanhedrin, ready for bonds or death, true as

the men at Runnymede and as eloquent as Henry kindling

the fires of the revolution. His crested helmet waves

high where the battle is fiercest. The pure rays of the sun

reflected from his glittering shield are not purer than the

fires that burn in the breast it covers. His clarion voice

rang out louder than the din of battle, like the bugle blast

of the Highland chief, resounding over hill and mountain

and glen, summoning his clans to the defense of home and

liberty. It was the form and voice of Hill.

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They tell us to let the dead past be buried. Well, be it so. We are willing to forget; we this day proclaim and bind it by the highest sanction the sacred obligation of Southern honor that we have forgotten all of the past that should not be cherished. . . . But there is a past that is not dead that can not die. It moves upon us, it speaks to us. Every instinct of noble manhood,, every impulse of gratitude, every obligation of honor de mands that we cherish it. We are bound to it by ties stronger than the cable that binds the continent and laid as deep in human nature. We can not cease to honor it until we lose the sentiment that has moved all ages and countries. We find the expression of that sentiment in

APPENDIX.

033

every memorial we erect to commemorate those we love.

In the unpretentious slab of the country churchyard, in the

painted windows of the cathedral, in the unpolished head

stone and the costliest mausoleum of our cities of the

dead. It dedicated the Roman Pantheon. It has filled

Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey with memo

rials of those who for centuries have made the poetry, the

literature, the science, the statesmanship, the oratory, the

military and naval glory, the civilization oi England. It

has adorned the squares of our own Washington City and

filled every rotunda, corridor and niche of the Capitol

with statues and monuments and busts until we have

assembled a congress of the dead to- instruct, inspire and

guide the congress of the living, while, higher than all sur

rounding objects, towering above the lofty dome of the

Capitol, stands the obelisk to Washington!

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The great and good do not die. Eighteen centuries ago the head of the great apostle fell before the sword of the bloody executioner, but through long ages of oppression his example animated the persecuted church, and to-day stimulates the missionary spirit to press on through the rigors of every clime and the darkness of every heathen superstition to the final and universal triumph of that cross for which he died. Four centuries ago the body of John WyclifT was exhumed and burnt to ashes and these cast into the water, but "the Avon to the Severn runs the Severn to the sea," and the doctrines for which he died cover and bless the world. Half a century ago the living voice of O'Connell \vas hushed, but that voice to-day stirs the high-born passions of every true Irish heart through-

634 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
out the world. The echoes of Prentiss's eloquence still linger in the valley of the Mississippi. Breckinridge's bjody lies under the sod of Kentucky, but he lives among her sons an inspiration and a glory.
And to-day there comes to us, and shall come to those after us, the voice of our dead, solemn with the emphasis of another world, more eloquent than that with which he was wont to charm us; and it says: Children of Georgia, love thy mother. Cherish all that is good and just in her past. Study her highest interests. Discover, protect and foster all that will promote her future. Respect and obey her laws. Guard well her sacred honor. Give your rich est treasures and best efforts to her material, social, intel lectual and moral advancement until she shines the bright est jewel in the diadem of the republic. Men of the South, sons of the proud cavalier, never lower your standard of private of public honor. Keep the church pure and the State uncorrupted. Be true to yourselves, your country and your God, and fulfill the high destiny that lies before you. Citizens of the republic, love your system of govern ment, study and venerate the constitution, cherish the Union, oppose all sectionalism, promote the weal and maintain the honor of the republic. "Who< saves his coun try saves himself, saves all things, and all things saved do bless him. Who lets his country die, lets all things die, dies himself ignobly and all things dying curse him."
Illustrious citizen of the State, of the South, of the republic, thou hast taught us to be brave in danger, to be true without the hope of success, to be patriotic in all things. We honor thee for thy matchless eloquence, for thy dauntless courage, for thy lofty patriotism. For the

APPENDIX.

635

lessons thoti has taught us, for the honorable example thou hast left us, for the faithful service thou hast done us, we dedicate this statue to thy name and memory. Telling of thee it shall animate the young with the highest and worthiest aspirations for distinction; cheer the aged with hopes for the future and strengthen all in the perils that may await us. May it stand enduring as the foun dation of yonder Capitol, not more firmly laid in the earth than thy just fame in the memories and hearts of this people. But whether it stand, pointing to the glories of the past, inspiring us with hopes for the future, or fall before some unfriendly storm, thou shalt live, for we this day crown thee with higher honor than forum or Senate can confer. In this "spacious temple of the firmament," lit by the splendor of this unclouded Southern sun, on this august occasion, dignified by the highest officers of munic ipality and State, and still more by the presence of the most illustrious living as well as the spirits of the most illustrious dead, we come in grand procession, child hood and age, young men and maidens, old men and ma trons, from country and village and city, from hovel and cottage and mansion, from shop and mart and office, from every pursuit and rank and station, and with united hearts and voices crown thee with the undying admira tion, gratitude and love of thy countrymen. /. C. C. Black.
[Extract from an address delivered at the unveiling of the Hill monument in Atlanta in 1886.]

G3G REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
THE LAND OF MEMORIES.
If the worst is to befall us; if our most serious appre hensions and gloomiest forebodings are to be realized; if centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free institutions, as established by our common ances tors, is to be subverted and an empire is to be established in place of them; if such is to be the last scene in the great tragic drama now being enacted; then be assured that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own con science, but by the judgment of mankind, of all responsi bility for so terrible a catastrophe and from all the guilt of so great a crime against humanity. Amidst our own ruins, bereft of fortunes and estates, as well as liberty, with nothing remaining to us but a good name and a public character unsullied and untarnished, we will in our common misfortunes still cling in our affections to "the land of memories" and find expression for our sentiments when surveying the past as well as of our distant hopes when looking to the future, in the grand words of Father Ryan, one of our most eminent divines and one of Ameri ca's best poets: "A land without ruins is a land without memories ; a land without memories is a land without lib erty ! A land that wears a laurel crown may be fair to see, but twine a few sacl cypress leaves around the brow of any land and, be that land beautiless and bleak, it be comes lovely in its consecrated coronet of sorrow, and it wins the sympathy of the heart and history. Crowns of roses fade; crowns of thorns endure! Calvaries and cru cifixes take deepest hold upon humanity! The triumph of might are transient; they pass away and are forgot-

APPENDIX.

637

ten; the sufferings of right are graven deepest on the chronicles of nations!"
"Yes, give me a land where the ruins are spread And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead; Yes, give me a land that is blest by the dust, And bright with the deeds of the down-trodden just. Yes, give me a land that hath legend and lays Enshrining the memories of long-vanished days; Yes, give me a land that hath story and song To tell of the strife of the right with the wrong; Yes, give me the land with a grave in each spot And names in the graves that shall not be forgot. Yes, give me the land of the wreck and the tomb, There's a grandeur in graves, there's a glory in gloom! For out of the gloom future brightness is born, As after the night looms the sunrise of morn; And the graves of the dead with the grass overgrown May yet form the footstool of Liberty's throne, And each single wreck in the war-path of might Shall yet be a rock in the temple of right!"
Alexander H. Stephens.

THE DUTY OF THE HOUR.
The first step toward local or general harmony is the banishment from our breasts of every feeling and senti ment calculated to stir the discord of the past. Nothing could be more injurious or mischievous to the future of this country than the agitation at present of questions which divided the people anterior to or during the exist ence of the late war.
On no occasion, and especially in the bestowment of office, ought such differences of opinion in the past ever to

638 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
be mentioned either for or against any one, otherwise equally entitled to confidence. These ideas or sentiments of other times and circumstances are not the germs from which hopeful organizations can now arise.
Let all differences of opinion, touching errors or sup posed errors, of the head or heart, on the part of any in the past, growing out of these matters, be at once and for ever in the dark bosom of oblivion buried. Let there be no crimination or recrimination on account of acts of other days; no canvassing of past conduct or motives.
Great disasters are upon us and upon the whole coun try; and without inquiring how these originated or at whose door the fault should be laid, let us now as common sharers of common misfortunes, on all occasions, consult only as to the best means, under the circumstances as we find them, to secure the best ends toward future amelio ration.
Good government is what we want. This should be the leading desire and the controlling object with all; and I need not assure you, if this can be attained, that our des olated fields, our towns and villages and cities, now in ruins, will soon, like the Phcenix, rise again from the ashes; and all our waste-places will again, at no distant day, blossoms as the rose. Alexander H. Stephens.

APPENDIX.

639

ADVOCATING THE SUPPORT OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON.
Dark and gloomy as the present hour is, I do not de spair of free institutions. Let but the virtue, intelligence and patriotism of the people throughout the whole coun try be properly appealed to, aroused and brought into ac tion, and all may yet be well. The masses everywhere are alike interested in this great object. Let old issues, old questions, old differences and old feuds be regarded as fossils of another epoch. They belong to what may here after be considered the Silurian period of our history. Great, new, living questions are before us. Let it not be said of us in this day not yet passed of our country's greatest trial and agony, that "there was a party for Caesar, a party for Pompey and a party for Brutus, but no party for Rome."
Should President Johnson be sustained in his patriotic efforts at restoration, our situation will be greatly changed from what it was before. We shall have lost what was known as our peculiar institution, which was so intertwined with the whole frame-work of our State body politic. We shall have lost nearly half the accumulated capital of a century. But we shall have still left all the essentials of free government contained and embodied in the old Constitution, untouched and unimpaired, as they came from the hands of our fathers. I can see no reason why, under such restoration, we as a whole may not enter upon a new career, exciting increased wonder in the old world by grander achievements hereafter to be made than by any heretofore attained, in the peaceful and harmoni-

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ous workings of our American system of self-government, All this is possible if the hearts of the people be right. It is my earnest desire to see it. Fondly would I indulge my fancy in gazing upon such a picture of the future. With what rapture may we not suppose the spirits of our fathers would hail its opening scenes from the mansions above. But, if instead of all this, the passions of the day shall continue to bear sway; if prejudice shall rule the hour; if a conflict of races shall arise; if ambition shall turn the scale; if the sword shall be thrown in the balance against patriotism; if the embers of the late war shall be kept a-glowing until with new fuel they shall flame up again; then our present gloom is but the shadow, the penumbra of that still deeper and darker eclipse, which is totally to obscure this hemisphere and blight forever the anxious anticipations and expectations of mankind, then, here after, by some bard it may be sung :
"The Star of Hope shone brightest in the West, The hope of Liberty, the last, the best, That, too, has set upon her darkened shore, And Hope and Freedom light up earth no more."
May we not all on this occasion, on this anniversary of the birthday of Washington, join in a fervent prayer to heaven that the Great Ruler of Events may avert from this land such a fall, such a fate and such a requiem! Alexander H. Stephens.
[Extract from an address delivered before the Legislature of Georgia on February 22, 1866.]

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EULOGY ON CHARLES SUMNER.
Sir., it was my misfortune, perhaps my fault, personally never to have known this distinguished philanthropist and statesman. The impulse was often upon me to go to him and offer him my hand and my heart with it and ex press to him my thanks for his kind and considerate course toward the people with whom I am identified. If I did not yield to that impulse it was because the thought occurred that other days were coming in which such a demonstra tion might be more opportune and less liable to miscon struction. Suddenly and without premonition a day has come at last to which, for such a purpose there is no to morrow. My regret is therefore intensified by the thought that I failed to speak to him out of the fullness of my heart while there was yet time.
How often it is that death thus brings unavailingly back to our remembrance opportunities unimproved in which generous overtures prompted by the heart remain unoffered; frank avowals which rose to the lips remain un spoken; and the injustice and wrong of bitter resent ments remain unimpaired. Charles Sumner in life be lieved that an occasion for strife and distrust between the North and South had passed away and that there no lon ger remained any cause for continued estrangement be tween these two sections of our common country. Are there not many of us who believe the same thing? Is not that the common sentiment; or, if it is not, ought it not to be? Bound to each other by a common Constitution, destined to live together under a common government, forming unitedly but a single member of the great family
21r

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of nations, shall we not now at last endeavor to grow to ward each other once more in heart as we are already indissolubly linked to each other in fortunes? Shall we not, over the honored remains of this great champion of human liberty, this feeling sympathizer with human sor row, this earnest pleader for the exercise of human ten derness and charity, lay aside the concealments which serve only to perpetuate misunderstandings and distrust, and frankly confess that, on both sides we most earnestly desire to be one: one not merely in community of lan guage and literature and traditions and country, but more and better than all that, one also in feeling and in heart? Am I mistaken in all this?
Do the concealments of which I speak still cover ani mosities which neither time nor reflection or the march of events have yet sufficed to subdue? I can not believe it. Since I have been here I have watched with anxious scrutiny your sentiments as expressed not merely in pub lic debate but in the abandon of personal confidence. I know well the sentiments of these, my Southern brothers, whose hearts are so enfolded that the feeling of each is the feeling of all; and I see on both sides only the seeming of a constraint which each apparently hesitates to dismiss. The South prostrate, exhausted, drained of her lifeblood as well as of her material resources, yet still honor able and true accepts the bitter award of the bloody ar bitrament, without reservation, resolutely determined to abide the result with chivalrous fidelity; yet, as if struck dumb by the magnitude of her reverses, she suffers on in silence. The North, exultant in her triumph and elated by success, still cherishes, we are assured, a heart full of magnanimous emotions toward her disarmed and discom-

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fited antagonist; and yet, as if mastered by some mys terious spell, silencing her better impulses, her words and acts are the words and acts of suspicion and distrust.
Would that the spirit of the illustrious dead whom we lament to-day could speak from the grave to both parties to this deplorable discord in tones which should reach each and every heart throughout this broad territory: "My countrymen, know one another and you will love one another!" L. Q. C. Lamar.

[Extract from an address delivered in the national House of Representatives, on the death of Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, on April 28, 1874.]

THE STARS AND THE STRIPES.
But, my fellow citizens, it is with no ordinary pride that I, who have opposed all these sectional parties, can stand here in the city of Atlanta, in the very center of all our sorrows, and raise my voice, fearing no successful con tradiction when I affirm that the Union never made war upon the South. It was not the Union, my countrymen, that slew your children; it was not the Union that burned your cities; it was not the Union that laid waste your country, invaded your homes and mocked at your calami ties ; it was not the Union that reconstructed your States; it was not the Union that disfranchised intelligent citizens and denied them participation in their own governments. No! No! Charge not these things upon the Union of your fathers. Every one of these wrongs was inflicted by a diabolical sectionalism in the very teeth of every prin-

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ciple of the American Union. So equally I say the South never made war upon the Union. There has never been an hour when nine out of ten of us would not have given our lives for this Union. We did not leave that Union be cause we were dissatisfied with it; we did not leave the Union to make war upon it. We left the Union because a sectional party had seized it and we hoped thereby to avoid a conflict. But, if war must come, we intended to fight a sectional party and not the Union. Therefore the late war, with all its disastrous consequences, was the re sult of sectionalism; in the North and of sectionalism in the South, and none, I repeat, of these disasters are chargeable upon the Union.
When unimpassioned reason shall review our past, there is no subject in all our history on which our Ameri can statesmanship, North and South, will be adjudged to have been so unwise, so imbecile, and so utterly deficient as upon that one subject, which stimulated these sectional parties into existence. Above all the din of these sectional quarrelings I would raise my voice and proclaim to all our people that there is no right or liberty for any race of any color in America save in the preservation of that great American Union according to the principles symbolized by that flag. Destroy the general government and the States will rush into anarchy. Destroy the States and we will all rush into despotism and slavery. Preserve the geirsral government; preserve the States; and preserve tr,th by keeping each untrammeled in their appropriate .spheres; and we shall preserve the rights and liberties of all sections and of all races for all time.
My countrymen, have you studied the wonderful system of free constitutional government? Have you compared

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it with former systems and noted how our fathers sought to improve their defects? Let me commend this study to every American citizen to-day. To him who loves liberty it is more enchanting than romance, more bewitch ing than love and more elevating than any other science. Our fathers accepted this plan with improvements in the details which can not be found in any other system. With what a noble impulse of patriotism they came together from distant States and joined their counsel to perfect their system, thenceforward to be known as the American system of free constitutional government. The snows that nightly fall on Mount Washington are not purer than the motives which begot it. The fresh dew-laden zephyrs from the orange-groves of the South are not sweeter than the hopes which its advent inspired. The flight of our symbolic eagle, though he blow his breath on the sun, can not be higher than its expected destiny. Have the mo tives which inspired our fathers become all corrupt in their children? Are the hopes that sustained them all poisoned to us ? Is that high expected destiny all eclipsed and before its noon ? No, no, forever no! Patriots North, patriots South, patriots everywhere! Let us hal low this year of jubilee by burying all our sectional ani mosities. Let us close our ears to the men and the parties that teach us to hate each other.
Raise high that flag of our fathers. Let Southern 1 breezes kiss it. Let Southern skies reflect it. Southern patriots will love it; Southern sons will defend it, and Southern heroes will die for it! And as its folds unfurl beneath the heavens let our voices unite and swell the loud invocation: Flag of the Union! Wave on! Wave ever! But wave over freemen, not over subjects. Wave over

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States, not over provinces! And now let the voices of pa triots from the North and from the East and from the West join our voices from the South and send to heaven one universal according chorus: Wave on, flag of our fathers! Wave forever! But wave over a Union of equals, not over a despotism of lords and vassals; over a land of law, of liberty, of peace, and not of anarchy, op pression and strife. Benj. H. Hill.
[Extract from an address delivered in Atlanta, in 1876, on the re ception of a flag presented to the city by visitors from the State of Ohio.]
THE SOUTH'S MESSAGE TO THE PLUMED KNIGHT.
I do not doubt that I am the bearer of an unwelcome message to the gentleman from Maine and his party. He says that there are Confederates in this body and that they are going to combine with a few from the North for the purpose of controlling this government. If one were to listen to the gentlemen on the other side he would be in doubt whether they rejoiced more when the South left the Union, or regretted most when the South came back to the Union which their fathers helped to form and to which they will forever hereafter contribute as much of patriotic ardor, of noble devotion, and of willing sacrifice as the constituents of the gentleman from Maine.
Oh, Mr. Speaker, why can not gentlemen on the other side rise to the height of this great argument of patriot ism ? Is the bosom of the country always to be torn with this miserable sectional debate whenever a presidential

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election is pending? To that great debate of half a cen tury ago there were left no unadjourned questions. The victory of the North was absolute and God knows the sub mission of the South was complete. But, sir, we have recovered from the humiliation of defeat, and we come here among you and we ask you to give us the greetings accorded to brothers by brothers. We propose to join you in every patriotic endeavor and to unite with you in every patriotic aspiration that looks to the benefit, the advance ment and the honor of every part of our common country. We divide with you the glories of the revolution and of the succeeding years of our national life before that unhappy division that four years' night of gloom and despair and so we shall divide with you the glories of all the future.
Sir, my message is this: There are no Confederates in this house; there are now no Confederates anywhere; there are no Confederate schemes, ambitions, hopes, de sires or purposes here; but the South is here and here she intends to remain. Go on and pass your qualifying acts ; trample upon the Constitution which you have sworn to support; abrogate the pledges of your fathers; incite raid upon our people and multiply your infidelities until they shall be like the stars of heaven or the sands of the seashore without number; but know this, that for all your iniquities the South will never again seek a remedy in the madness of another secession. We are here; we are in the house of our fathers, our brothers are our compan ions, and we are here to stay, thank God!
We come to gratify no revenges, to retaliate no wrongs, to resent no past insults, to reopen no strife. We come with the patriotic purpose to do whatever in our political

643 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
power shall lie to restore an honest, economical and con stitutional administration of the government. We come charging upon the Union no wrongs to us. The Union never wronged us. The Union has been an unmixed blessing to every section, to every State, to every man of every color in America. We charge all our wrongs upon that "higher law" fanaticism which never kept a pledge nor obeyed a law. The South did seek to go to herself; but so far from having lost our fidelity to the Constitution which our fathers made, we hugged that Constitution to our bosoms and we carried it with us.
Brave Union men of the North, followers of Webster and Fillmore and Clay and Cass and Douglas you who fought for the Union for the sake of the Union you who ceased to fight when the battle ended and the sword was sheathed we have no quarrel with you, whether Repub licans or Democrats. We felt your heavy arm in the car nage of battle, but above the roar of the cannon we heard your voice of kindness calling, "Brothers, come back!" and we bear witness to you this day that that voice of kindness did more to thin the Confederate ranks and to weaken the Confederate cause than did all the artillery employed in the struggle. We are here to cooperate with you; to do whatever we can, in spite of all our sorrows, to rebuild the Union; to restore peace; to be a blessing to the country and to make the American Union what our fathers intended it to be the glory of America and a blessing to humanity. Benf. H. Hill.
[Extract from a speech delivered in the National House of Rep resentatives January u, 1876, on the general amnesty bill, being a reply to Mr. Blaine.]

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WHAT WAS THE SOUTH AND WHO WERE HER PEOPLE ?
What was the South and who were her people ? There are those who think she nurtured a upas whose very shadow blighted wherever it fell, and made her civiliza tion inferior. What was that civilization? Let its prod ucts, as seen in the people it produced and the history and character of that people, answer. Where do you look for the civilization of a people? In their history, in their achievements, in their institutions, in their character, in their men and women, in their love of liberty and country, in their fear of God, in their contributions to society and the race.
Measured by this high standard, where can you find a grander or a nobler civilization than hers? Where has there been greater love of learning than that which estab lished her colleges and universities? Where better pre paratory schools, sustained by private patronage and not the exactions of the tax-gatherer, schools now unhappily dwarfed and well-nigh blighted by our modern system? Whose people had higher sense of personal honor ? Whose business and commerce were controlled by higher integ rity? Whose public men had cleaner hands and purer records? Whose soldiers were braver or knightlier? Whose orators more eloquent and persuasive? Whose statesmen more wise and conservative ? Whose young men more chivalrous? Whose young women more chaste? Whose fathers and mothers worthier examples? Whose homes more abounded in hospitality ? Where was there more respect for woman, for the church, for the

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Sabbath, for God and for law? Where was there more love of home, of country and of liberty ?
Deriving their theories of government from the Con stitution, her public officers never abandoned those prin ciples upon which alone the government could stand; es teeming their public virtue as highly as their private hon or, they watched and exposed every form of extravagance and every approach of corruption. Her religious teach ers, deriving their theology from the Bible, guarded the church from being spoiled "through philosophy and vain deceit after the traditions of men." Her women adorned the highest social circles of Europe and America with their modesty, beauty and culture. Her men, in every society, won a higher title than "the grand old name of gentleman" : that of Southern gentleman.
Thus in herself, what contributions did she make to the material growth of the country ? Look at the map of that country and see the five States formed out of the ter ritory north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, gen erously and patriotically surrendered by Virginia. Look at that vast extent of country, acquired under the admin istration of one of her presidents, which to-day consti tutes the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota west of the Mississippi, Colorado north of the Arkansas, besides the Indian Ter ritory, and the Territories of Dakota, Wyoming and Montana!
Is it asked what has she added to the glories of the re public ? Who wrote the Declaration of Independence ? Jef ferson. Who led the armies of the republic in maintain ing and establishing that independence ? Who gave man kind new ideas of greatness? Who has furnished the

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sublimest illustration of self-government? Who has taught us that human virtue can set proper limits to hu man ambition? .... Washington. What State made the first call for the convention that framed the Constitution ? Virginia. Who was the father of the Con stitution? Madison. Who made our system of juris prudence unsurpassed by the civil law of Rome or the common law of England? Marshall. Who was Mar shall's worthy successor? Taney. Washington, Jeffer son, Madison, Marshall, Taney these were her sons. . . . . Is it asked where her history was written? It was written upon the brightest page of American an nals. It was written upon the records of the convention that framed the Constitution. It was written in the de bates of congresses that met, not to wrangle over ques tions of mere party supremacy, but like statesmen and philosophers, to discuss and solve great problems of hu man government. It was written in the decisions of the country's most illustrious judges, in the treaties of her most skillful diplomats, in the blood of the revolution and the battles of every subsequent war led by her gen erals, from Chippewa to the proud halls of the Montezumas.

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!"

Forced to defend our homes and liberties after every honorable effort for peaceful separation, we went to war Our leaders were worthy of their high commission. Our people sealed their sincerity with the richest treasure ever offered and the noblest holocaust ever consumed upon

652 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the altar of country. . . . Our flag went down at Appomattox. Weakened by stabs from behind, inflicted by hands which should have upheld her; her front cov ered with the wounds of the mightiest war of modern times, dripping with as pure blood as ever hallowed free dom's cause, our Confederacy fell and Liberty stood weep ing at the grave of her youngest and fairest daughter. /. C. C. Black.
[Extract from an address delivered at the unveiling of the Hill monument in Atlanta in 1886.]
GEORGIA'S EDUCATIONAL NEEDS BEFORE THE WAR,
The lessons which the Creator teaches us are as varied as the works of His creation. There are not only "books in running brooks," but wisdom in everything. The po sition of the human eye in the body would seem to teach that our vision should be onward and upward but never backward. The past should be consulted only for warn ing and for guidance. The man who sits satisfied with the victories already achieved and the laurels already won will soon find the memory of those victories becoming dim and the brightness of those laurels faded. The uni verse of God is all motion and action and the man or na tion who stands still for a moment loses position in the great caravan of creation. Indolence or inactivity on the part of a State brings as certain a harvest of retrogradation and effeteness as the same vices will yield for the individual. Action is the command of God; and the vio-

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lation of His law by man or nation is avenged by the fruits of disobedience.
Georgia has been termed the Empire State of the South. The honor has not been won with'out labor nor bestowed without desert. The enterprise of her citizens, the mag nificence of her internal improvements, the genius of her sons and the greatness of her statesmen, demanded the prize, for the victory was hers. But, unfortunately for Georgia, too many of her sons are so engrossed in the contemplation of her past successes and so satisfied with her progress already made, that they seem not to appre ciate the necessity for renewed effort and still greater strides in the race for greatness and for power. Our sis ter States are not content to leave to Georgia an uncontested palm. Taught by her example, with energy they have entered the lists. Ohio admits that the lands around us are more congenial to the vine than her own virgin soil. North Carolina must confess that the pine forests of our Southern counties yield more richly of the resin and turpentine than her own long-cherished and almost exhausted barrens. Maine looks with envy and with wonder at the undeveloped lumber trade upon our coasts and rivers and knows well what Georgia seems so slow to learn; that her live oak and yellow pine are indispensable to the shipbuilders of the world. Pulverized tripoli is im ported and sold in our stores, while masses of the same lie on the sides of our railroads, heedlessly thrown up from the excavations. Huge hills of black lead cumber the ground in our mountain region, while we daily make memoranda with pencils manufactured in some distant State. The copper dug from our mountain-sides is sent North to be smelted. The duty paid on iron for our rail-

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roads would almost equip them; and the equipments themselves furnish annually employment for thousands and rich profits for employers. But why continue the enumeration? The mine of our resources is not yet reached, much less exhausted. We have only worked out the approach. The tunnel is still before us.
However,,this is not the fitting occasion nor am I the proper person to call the people of Georgia to the work of her physical development. The more appropriate and congenial theme is present before me: the educational wants of this Empire State. We want teachers, homeborn and home-bred. We want Southern text-books for teaching truths not to be unlearned. We want a place where college-graduates who appreciate correctly their diplomas may prosecute successfully those branches of learning to which their inclinations may lead them. In the magnitude of these educational wants many others of minor importance are forgotten. Home authorship; home magazines; home literature; home printing and publish ing ; each of these would be worthy of our consideration. But we will not render the patient hopeless by further complicating the disease. We have discovered enough. Now for the remedy. Till the prescription is made, but half of the duty of the physician is done. Our wants are teachers, text-books and advanced schools of art and science. We propose for them all a single remedy: a State University. Attach to this institution a normal school where young men will be prepared thoroughly and without expense for the great and honorable work of teaching our youth. Let them be gathered from every county in the State, and let the price of their education be a simple obligation to spend a limited number of years

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in teaching within the limits of such counties; and from these will come our teachers. Then establish in connec tion with each chair a scholarship endowed so as to fur nish the incumbent annually such an income as will enable the poorest to prosecute his labors with ease. Let this incumbent be selected from the graduates of our several colleges and require of him no duties save the prosecution of his studies. In connection therewith create a fund the income of which will be sufficient to help indigent au thors in the publication of works; and from these will come our text-books. This or some such plan we must adopt or we will be forever tributary to Boston and New York. Nor is it necessary to add that to a university alone can be attached those advanced schools of art and science whose wants we have ascertained. They are the component elements of such an organization. Perhaps in some of you the feeling may arise that if you could ef fect an object so desirable you would willingly make the effort; but your profession, your present duties, your dis trust of your own abilities forbid the attempt. Could the crown be clearly seen which would rest upon your heads for achieving these great results which of you would hesi tate to meet the sacrifice, buffet the opposition, endure the labor and win and wear the crown? Make the effort Failure is full of honor. Success full of glory.

It was hot by vile loitering in ease That Greece attained the brighter palm of art;
That soft yet ardent Athens learned to please, To point the wit and to sublime the heart In all supreme. Complete in every part,
It was not thence majestic Rome arose, And o'er the nations shook her conquering dart.

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For sluggard's brow the laurel never grows; Renown is not the child of indolent Repose.
Had unambitious mortals minded naught But in loose joy to wear their time away;
Had they alone the lap of dalliance sought, Pleased on her pillow their dull heads to lay Rude Nature's state had been our state to-day.
No cities o'er their towering fronts had raised No arts had made us opulent and gay,
With brother brutes the human race had grazed, None e'er had soared to fame none honored been none praised.
Would you, then, learn to dissipate the band Of the huge threatening difficulties dire
That in the weak man's way like lions stand, His soul appal and damp his rising fire? Resolve! resolve! and to be men aspire.
Exert that noblest privilege alone Here to mankind indulged control desire
Let God-like reason from her sovereign throne Speak the commanding word, "I will," and it is done.
--General T. R. R. Cobb.
[Extract from an address delivered before the Alumni Society of Franklin College on August 4, 1857.]
"THOU ART A SCHOLAR, SPEAK TO IT, HORATIO/'
Superstitious follies are not all gone. Many, even educated people, yet believe in lucky and unlucky stars and days and numbers; cross themselves if they turn back on a journey; tremble if an owl hoots by night; apply mad-stones for hydrophobia; consult fortune-tellers; and believe yet in "divine healing" and even contend that pain

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and suffering are unreal creations of wicked imaginations. When Shakespeare's ghost of the murdered king of
Denmark at midnight, stalked before the guard, trembling Marcellus said to his fellow-soldier: "Thou are a scholar, speak to it, Horatio." You are scholars and therefore it it is your right and duty to speak to and of all such fol lies and deceptions and drive them from the stage of action. You need not fear the denunciations of men or dread that Jove will split your skulls with lightning. The God of our salvation had as one of his specially chosen disciples Luke, the beloved physician.
Your opportunity is grand and glorious. They who risked their lives fighting in our late war have a nation's thanks and admiration. Havana has been taken from the Spaniards, but who will earn thanks and admiration by rescuing it from yellow fever ? In our Pacific acquisitions of territory, we approach the confines of Asia, whence came and still comes that fell destroyer cholera. What Hercules will slay that monster? Such cases need the purse of the nation as well as medical knowledge. But every-day opportunities will be to you personally abun dant. Disease comes from the open houses of the poor as well as from the close rooms of the wealthy; from biting hunger and from overcrowded stomachs; "Death lurks in every passing breeze, and rides upon the storm/' What will you do to stay its march ? Shall consumption continue to fill one-twelfth of all the graves in our coun try, and your profession still admit it to be incurable ? You have discovered the microbes of typhus and typhoid fe vers; can you not kill the lurking devils? Shall diseases of the brain disorder the powers which make man "but little lower than the angels," and will you stand by and

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forever answer, like the cowardly Scotch doctor of medi cine in Macbeth: "This disease is beyond my practice:
I think, but dare not speak" ? Consider the thousands who die in childhood; can you do nothing to stop this "slaughter of the innocents" ? Let these questions be summed up in the wail of old Jeremiah: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why, then, is not the health of the daughter of my peo ple recovered?" Let the answer of yourselves and all your profession be, with loud acclaim, there is balm everywhere and physicians are everywhere, searching and applying remedies to all diseases, and the health of the people shall be recovered for the good of humanity and the glory of God.
But a word further. It is no part of my work to preach to you a sermon. But I have been talking of the human body solely from a material and scientific medical standpoint, and some may think that it has been treated too lightly. No such thing was intended. I respect the King's palace not only for its beauty and splendor, bat because it holds the King, the people's sovereign. The palace may be destroyed, but "the King never dies." Nathaniel J. Hammond.
[Extract from an address delivered at the annual commencement of the Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons, April 3, 1899. This noble address, which was marked by wonderful historical re.scarch, was Colonel Hammond's last public speech.]

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THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE AMERICAxN SCHOLAR.
For the first time in man's responsibility, I speak in Virginia to Virginians. Beyond its ancient glories which made it matchless among States, its later martyrdom has made it the mecca of my people. It was on these hills that our fathers gave new and deeper meaning to hero ism and advanced the world in honor. It is in these valleys that our dead lie sleeping. Out there is Appomattox, where on every ragged gray cap the Lord God Almighty laid the sword of His imperishable knight hood. Beyond is Petersburg, where he whose name I bear, and who was prince to me among men, dropped his stainless sword and yielded up his stainless life. Dear to me, sir, are the people among whom my father died; sacred to me, sir, the soil that drank his precious blood. From a heart stirred by these emotions and sobered bv these memories, let me speak to you to-day, my country men.
We are standing in the daybreak of the second cen tury of this republic. The fixed stars are fading from the sky, and we grope in uncertain light. Strange shapes have come with the night. Established ways are lost > new roads perplex, and widening fields stretch beyond the sight. The unrest of dawn impels us to and fro but Doubt stalks amid the confusion, and even on the beaten paths the shifting crowds are halted, and from the shadows the sentries cry: "Who comes there ?" In the obscurity of the morning tremendous forces are at work. Nothing is steadfast or approved. The miracles

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of the present belie the simple truths of the past. The church is besieged from without and betrayed from with in. Behind the courts smoulders the rioter's torch and looms the gibbet of the anarchists. Government is the contention of partisans and the prey of spoilsmen. Trade is restless in the grasp of monopoly, and commerce shackled with limitation. The cities are swollen and the fields are stripped. Splendor streams from the castle, and squalor crouches in the home. The universal brother hood is dissolving, and the people are huddling into classes. The hiss of the Nihilist disturbs the covert, and the roar of the mob murmurs along the highway. Amid it all beats the great American heart undismayed, and standing fast by the challenge of his conscience, the citi zen of the Republic, tranquil and resolute, notes the drifting of the spectral currents, and calmly awaits the full disclosures of the day.
Who shall be the heralds of this coming day? Who shall thread the way of honor and safety through these besetting problems? Who shall rally the people to the defense of their liberties and stir them until they shall cry aloud to be led against the enemies of the Republic ? You, my countrymen, you! The university is the trainingcamp of the future. The scholar the champion of the coming years. Napoleon overran Europe with drum-tap and bivouac the next Napoleon shall form his battal ions at the tap of the schoolhouse bell and his captains shall come with cap and gown. Waterloo was won at Oxford Sedan at Berlin. So Germany plants her col leges in the shadow of the French forts, and the professor smiles amid his students as he notes the sentinel stalking against the sky. The farmer has learned that brains mix

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better with his soil than the waste of seabirds, and the professor walks by his side as he spreads the showers in the verdure of his field, and locks the sunshine in the glory of his harvest. A button is pressed by a child's finger and the work of a million men is done. The hand is nothing the brain everything. Physical prowess has had its day and the age of reason has come. The lionhearted Richard challenging Saladin to single combat Is absurd, for even Gog and Magog shall wage the Arma geddon from their closets and look not upon the blood that runs to the bridle-bit. v Science is everything! She butchers a hog in Chicago, draws Boston within three hours of New York, renews the famished soil, routs her viewless bondsmen from the electric center of the earth, and then turns to watch the new Icarus as mounting in his flight to the sun he darkens the burnished ceiling of the sky with the shadow of his wing.
Learning is supreme and you are its prophets. Here the Olympic games of the Republic and you its chosen athletes. It is yours, then, to grapple with these problems, to confront and master these dangers. Yours to decide whether the tremendous forces of this Republic shall be kept in balance, or whether unbalanced they shall bring chaos; whether sixty million men are capable of self-gov ernment, or whether liberty shall be lost to them who would give their lives to maintain it. Your responsibility is appalling. You stand in the pass behind which the world's liberties are guarded. This government carries the hopes of the human race. Blot out the beacon thit lights the portals of this Republic and the world is adrift again. But save the Republic; establish the light of its beacon over the troubled waters, and one by one the

662 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
nations of the earth shall drop anchor and be at rest in the harbor of universal liberty. Henry W. Grady.
[Extract from an address on Centralization, delivered before the literary societies of the University of Virginia, June 25, 1889.]
NIL DESPERANDUM EST.
YOUNG GBNTXSMEN : This is not the end of the race upon which you have entered. It is but the first step on that long" and arduous road that leads to fame's proud temple that shines afar. The young eaglets that upon the first trial of wing from their eyries may not be able to bear themselves up so well as their better fledged fellows may, nevertheless, anon rise equally high as they and move as gracefully and majestically in those upper regions into which none but eagles soar. And many a man has been actually scraped and coughed down in legislative assemblies, who has afterwards made thrones and king doms tremble under the power of his eloquence. The most renowned of all orators not only gained no dis tinction, took no prize, but was hissed on his first effort before the public, and the acknowledged chief of all declaimers England has ever produced was ridiculed and lampooned most severely upon his first appearance on the London stage. Let your ardor therefore be not in the least degree checked or abated. Let it rather be rekindled with renewed energies. Let your spirits react as the palm tree from which the emblem of victory was taken of old. Let your energies rise against any and all opposing weights. If you feel the internal fires glow aright if you have the firm and deep resolve within, based upon the es-

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sential requisites of truth, honor and integrity be as sured that nothing is wanting for ultimate success but length of clays, sound bodies and minds and continued ef fort. Effort is necessary for success in all things. In oratory, as well as in everything else, it can be attained only by application, industry, toil and perseverance. For tune favors those who are not only brave, but who can stand the exertions and fatigues of the" campaign. Pa tience is a master virtue. It signifies not only the faculty which enables one to bear crosses and disappointments, but also that which sustains physical endurance, bodily privation, self-denial, and which underlies all the nobler traits of character. It implies self-knowledge and selfcontrol. The first great essential for you is to know yourselves thoroughly your capacities and incapacities your capabilities and incapabilities as well as your aims, objects and wishes. Goethe, the German poet and phi losopher, has said that he is fortunate who early in life learns the immeasurable distance between the objects which he desires and his capabilities to attain them. This knowledge, like the general's reconnoissance of the field on which the battle is to be fought, acquaints one who would win with all the difficulties, obstacles and impedi ments which lie in the way and enables him to avoid or surmount them as convenience or necessity may require. With self-control and self-discipline firmly planted upon correct principles, set your mark where you please, high or low, with continued, enduring efforts. Fear not ulti mate success. Let your motto be: "Nil clesperandum est." Alexander H. Stephens.
[Extract from an address delivered to the Sophomore Prize Declaimers at the State University in 1859.]

664 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
INTELLECTUAL MOTIVE POWER.
Motion is the law of living nature. Inaction is the symbol of death, if it be not death itself. The hugest engines, with strength and capacity sufficient to drive the mightiest ships across the stormy deep, are utterly useless without motive power. Energy is the motive power of intellectual capacity. It is the propelling force; and as in physics, momentum is resolvable into quantity of matter and velocity, so in metaphysics, the extent of human ac complishment may be resolvable in the degree of intel lectual endowment and the energy with which it is di rected. A small body driven by a great force will pro duce a result equal to, if not greater than, that of a much larger body moved by a considerably less force. So it is with minds. And hence we often see men of com paratively small capacity, by greater energy alone, leave and justly leave their superiors in natural gifts far be hind them in the race for honors, distinction and prefer ment.
This is perhaps the most striking characteristic of those great minds and intellects which never fail to im press their names, their views, their ideas and their opin ions, indelibly upon the history of the times in which they live. Men of this class are those pioneers of thought who sometimes, even in advance of the age, are known and marked in history as originators and discoverers, or those who overturn old orders and systems and build up new ones. To this class belong Columbus, L,uther, Cromwell, Watt, Fulton, Franklin and Washington. It was to this same class that General Andrew Jackson be longed. He not only had a clear conception of what he

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wanted, but also a will and a purpose and energy in execution. Likewise it is in this same class of men that Henry Clay will be assigned a place. Mr. Clay's achieve ments, which will render his name as lasting as the his tory of his country, were the result of nothing so much as that element of character which I have denominated energy. Thrown upon life at an early age, without any means or resources, save his natural powers and abilities, and without the advantages of anything beyond a com mon school education, he had nothing to rely upon but himself, and nothing upon which to place a hope but his own exertions. But, fired with a high and noble ambi tion, he resolved, young as he was, and cheerless as was his prospects, to meet and surmount every embarrass ment and obstacle by which he was surrounded. His aims and objects were high and worthy. They were not to secure laurels won on the battle-field, but those wreaths which adorn the brow of the wise, the firm, the sagacious and far-seeing statesman. The honor and glory of his life was
"The applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land And read his history in a nation's eyes."
One word in conclusion. It is the reply of Cardinal Richelieu upon a memorable occasion as we have it in the play. At one of the most critical points in the for tunes of the Cardinal, as well as of France, it became a matter of the utmost importance that a particular paper should be obtained by him to be presented to the King. The Cardinal was prime minister. A conspiracy had been formed on the part of some of the nobles, not only

666 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
against him, but against the throne itself. These nobles had succeeded, as part of their plan, in alienating the king from his minister. The paper contained the posi tive evidence of the conspiracy. His own fate and his sovereign's depended upon his getting immediate pos session of the paper. He was a man of energy and had never been thwarted or unsuccessful in any enterprise. For years he had ruled France with almost absolute sway. At this juncture, when nothing could save his fortune but the paper in question, Richelieu called to his assist ance a young man of spirit and courage and enjoined upon him the arduous and difficult task of securing the packet. But the young man, being only impressed with the importance of his mission and providing in his mind for the various contingencies which might arise, says: "If I fail " Richelieu, not allowing the sentence to be finished, and stopping the utterance of a possibility of a doubt touching his success, replies :
Fail! Fail! In the lexicon of youth which Fate reserves For a bright manhood there's no such word as fail.
--Alexander H. Stephens.
[Extract from an address delivered before the literary societies of Emory College in 1852.]
TOOMBS.
In the morning, at high noon, and even beyond the meridian of his manhood, he was intellectually the peer of the most gifted, and towered Atlas-like above the common range. His genius was conspicuous. His pow-

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ers of oratory were over-mastering. His mental oper ations were quick as lightning, and, like the lightning, they were dazzling in their brilliancy and resistless in their play. Remarkable were his conversational gifts, and most searching his analyses of character and event. In hospitality he was generous, and in his domestic re lations tender and true. The highest flights of fancy, the profoundest depths of pathos, the broadest range of biting sarcasm and withering invective, generaliza tions of the boldest character, and arguments the most logical, were equally at his command. As a lawyer he was powerful, as an advocate well-nigh resistless. He was a close student, and deeply versed in the laws, state craft, and political history of this commonwealth and nation. In all his gladiatorial combats, whether at the bar, upon the hustings, or in legislative halls, we recall no instance in which he met his overmatch. Even during his years of decadence there were occasions when the almost extinct volcano glowed again with its wonted fires when the ivy-mantled keep of the crumbling cas tle resumed its pristine defiance with deep-toned culverin and ponderous mace when, amid the colossal fragments of the tottering temple, men recognized the unsubdued spirit of Samson Agonistes. Col. Chas. C. Jones, Jr.
[Extract from an address on Robert Toombs delivered in 1886.]

ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS,
And what, my fellow citizens, can I add to the mani fest lesson of the hour or say in the "immediate presence of the dead ? In the attempt, even feebly, to recount the

668 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
virtues of this distinguished Georgian, I find myself, in the language of the eloquent Bossuet, when pronouncing his splendid eulogy upon the Prince of Conde, over whelmed by the greatness of the theme and the needlessness of the task. Is there a hamlet within the wide borders of this land in which his name is not a house hold word? Beats there a heart in this vast audience that bears not willing testimony to his amiable qualities, sterling worth and conspicuous ability? Everywhere are his noble characteristics, his labors, and his achievements rehearsed. In extolling them we can give no informa tion even to strangers; and, although I may remind you of them, anything I could now say would be anticipated by your thoughts, and I should suffer the reproach of fall ing far below them.
While it is true that
. . . "The tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony,"
more potent by far are the lessons inculcated by consist ent lives and the legacies bequeathed by deathless ex amples. Some men there are would to God their name was legion! whose walk and conversation are sermons, and whose characters are in themselves divine songs. Our Governor, in yielding up his spirit, made no sign, uttered no last injunction, expressed no final wish; but he lived ever mindful of death, and so ordered his affairs that when summoned to enter upon the iter tenebricosum, he went forth unfalteringly, with his lamp trimmed and burning.
It is a brave thing thus to die in harness, and, without pause in the energetic, conscientious performance of the

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highest obligations, to pass, in the twinkling of an eye, from the field of dignified labor to the regions of beatific rest.
"Thank God, I have done my duty!" were the last words of the gallant Nelson, as amid the thunders and carnage of the battle of Trafalgar, and in the moment of assured victory, he rendered up his heroic life to his country and Creator. He died as a leader of armies and navies loves best to die with his stars upon him and with the shouts of triumph ringing in his ear. Not less noble, not less impressive, is the death of the civilian who, in the midst of weighty affairs, clothed in the mantle of high office, and instant in the fulfilment of important en gagements, encounters the last enemy. There is some thing manly, something excellent, something worthy of all admiration in the conduct of our executive during his supreme moments. Died in the service of the Common wealth--be this his proud epitaph. Here, in the presence of so much that is ennobling in the past, bury we our present griefs.
Firm was he in his convictions, brave of purpose, and fearless in action. Never was the purity of his motives questioned. Through all the fluctuations of party schemes, and amid the pollutions and enticements which environed the pathway of the legislator at Washington, he passed uncontaminated. From the political furnace, in which he so long walked, he emerged without the smell of fire upon his garments.
History has written this epitaph for the tomb of Epaminondas: "He coveted and took from the Republic nothing save glory." In the days of her greatest re nown, it was the boast of Greece that her sons were in-

670 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
sensible to all rewards except such as were reaped in the paths of virtue. In this epoch of suspicion, of corrup tion, and of questionable conduct, proudly does Georgia point to the unsullied record of that son whom she this day opens her generous bosom to receive in a loving, peaceful, and final embrace.
Well has it been said that the substantial glory of a na tion concenters about her virtuous citizens and upright statesmen. No people can be fated to ignominy or mis^ fortune who learn with docility the lessons inculcated by their examples, and cherish the memories bequeathed by their unselfish devotion.
In the catalogue of worthies, living and dead, who are numbered among the sons of this grand commonwealth, none may be named more illustrious than he who but yesterday rested from his important labors and entered into peace.
"His twelve long hours Bright to the edge of darkness; then the calm Repose of twilight and a crown of stars."
And now in the presence of him, the Founder of the colony of Georgia, who located her primal settlements, propitiated the savages, by force of arms hurled back the Spanish invader, and in wisdom paved the way for the development of a few into a mighty nation in the presence of him, who, in his zeal for the fair fame of Georgia, called down fire from heaven to purge the pub lic records from every trace of fraud in the presence of him who, in brave maintenance of State rights, pro claimed to the President of this Union, /'The argument is exhausted, we will stand by our arms" in the pres ence of all these worthies, whose portraits dignify the

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walls of this Representative Chamber in your presence, my fellow citizens, upon whom the government and the honor of the commonwealth now devolve, and by your permission, I make bold to affirm that when the images of all the living and the dead who are illustrating, and who have illustrated Georgia by noble deeds and virtuous lives, are lifted up in that Pantheon where Truth has fixed her eternal home, no statue will there appear purer, brighter, or more illustrious that that of Alexancler Hamilton Stephens. Col. Chas. C. Jones, Jr.
[Extract from a speech delivered at the memorial exercises in At lanta, March 8, 1883.]

MR. STEPHENS AT THE SESQUI-CENTENNIAL IN SAVANNAH.
Mr. Chairman, permit me to say, the presence of that wonderful man in Savannah came like a revelation to her people. No reaper ever gathered sheaves of grain as he gathered sheaves of hearts. But still the question recurs: How came this to be so ? What was there in the man which thus caused human hearts to swarm to him, as the bees of Hymettus swarmed to the honeyed lips of the fabled singer? Let us, for one moment, re flect. I ask the most enlightened thinker of us all: What is it what in rhetoric, what in poetry, what in thought nay, what in history, what in the world of action what is it, I repeat, which has the most God like power to concentrate human contemplation to quicken and fasten human affection? Ascend, if you please, through the telescope, far up into the infinite;

672 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
descend through the microscope far down into the in finitesimal. Behold, contrast is the compass which spans the universe which measures the civilization of man. Lo, a God from heaven nailed to the wooden cross of earth. Contrast is the figure which Omnipotence itself has used to rouse and win the love of mankind.
And in whom among the living nay, in whom among the dead has contrast ever been enthroned so deeply as in the man whom Georgia mourns to-day. Let those who stand at a distance prate, if they please, of exag geration. We, who knew him, know that here exaggera tion is impossible. What figure strong enough to illus trate the truth? a condor emerging from the egg of a dove; the pyramid of Cheops balanced upon a schoolboy's marble; the genii escaping from the Arabic casket to eclipse the sun at noonday. Nay, let the imagination loose give to her the wildest of eagle's wings she can not exaggerate. Behold the poor, frail, emaciated phys ical frame; and then see rising from it the mental and moral development.
"Like some tall cliff that rears its awful form, Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm. Though rolling clouds around its breast are snread Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
Evoke from history, if you please, the grandest of her heroes her Alexanders, her Caesars, her Bonapartes rest assured that in the comparison he will triumph. Cir cumstance, the king-maker, fought for them; circum stance, the man-destroyer, warred against him. Who among us that observes, who among us that reflects, is not aware that, with the representative man, chronic disease, continuous pain, the perpetual consciousness that

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death may be near, concentrate thought and emotion on self, capture the noblest exemplars of our common hu manity, and rivet them down to the very dust of self? But how was it with him? The more he suffered him self, the more he strove to relieve the suffering of others. Every pang that struck at his vitals but sowed the seed of a grander charity. Heroic conqueror of self and cir cumstances ! to whom can we fitly apply the term God like, if not to him?
And so he came to Savannah with the serene light of heaven already in his eye. Our people swarmed about him as he moved along our streets. The high, the hum ble, the learned, the ignorant all ages, all colors fol lowed him, lord as he was of the universal heart. From home to home he went, repelling no invitation which by possibility he could accept. Weak and suffering, he gave himself to the pleasure of others. Last of all he came to us. Memorable clay! Who of us can ever forget it ? Richard was all himself again. There was the feeble ring of the old clarion-like voice which years before had charmed me as never had charmer charmed so wisely. There was the same weird light of the wonderful eye as he recalled the memories of the past. Conversation was directed to eloquence, and how eloquently did he recount his own experience of eloquent men. From Webster, of the North, he came to the giants of Georgia history; Titan-like Toombs, hurling his Hamilcar bolt against the foes of his country; impassioned Lumpkin, with tornadolike eloquence rain, sleet, hail, whirlwind, all mingled together sweeping everything before it; the classic Berrien; the Apollo-like Forsyth; and, looming up in the re moter distance, the Alpine intellect of Crawford. Oh,
22 r

674 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
what a feast of reason! what a flow of soul! When there was a pause, I said to him: "Governor, you have given us the great men who figure in Georgia history; tell us something now about your tramp." The sweet smile that played athwart his lips what words can ever express? And the eloquence of his practical life how it beggars the tongue of man! If ever human words did express it, they came from his own humble servant: "Mars Alec is kinder to dogs than most people is to folks." What Demosthenian or Ciceronian lips have ever formulated such an eulogium?
"Governor," one of us said, "we hear that you have a room at Liberty Hall for tramps." "Yes," he replied, "I feel it my duty to try to make everybody as happy as 1 can." We saw the tips of the angel wings. We realized that an angel had blessed our house, and we felt oh, how profoundly that everywhere the lines over which those wheels had rolled were holy that no Georgian could cross them with a base thought in his head, or a mean, malignant feeling in his heart, without becoming a traitor to the mother earth which gave that frail, at tenuated form to the breathing world, and is now about to hug it back to herself again. Gen. Henry R. Jackson.
[Extract from a speech delivered at the memorial exercises in At lanta, March 8, 1883.]
THE GREAT COMMONER.
No name has been longer or better known in public life or more universally honored than the name of the Great Commoner whose sad demise we meet to mourn.

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Whether as attorney at law, or as member of the legis lature of his native State; or as member of Congress, where his services have given him so much renown for so long a time; or as vice-president of the Confederate States; or as Governor of our own beloved State, he has been the same eloquent and able champion of constitu tional liberty, local self-government, and human rights.
Even in his retirement which was self-imposed for a time his literary and historical labors on the same line for the protection of human liberty have enrolled his name indelibly on a bright page in the temple of fame. His feeble, delicate form, worn down with disease, after a long struggle succumbed to death; but his gigantic in tellect was brilliant and powerful during his whole career. The name of Alexander H. Stephens can never die as long as liberty dwells on earth, and intellect and virtue are honored by the good and the great. He was em phatically a good man as well as a great man. His sym pathy was as extensive as the miseries of his race. He was always ready to minister consolation in every case of distress, and relief to the extent of his ability in every case of need. His life was devoted to the pleasure and welfare of others. He was the ardent friend of educa tion, and did more than any other man who has lived in Georgia for the education of young men in need of as sistance. But such was his modesty, that even his most intimate friends seldom heard him speak of what he was doing or suffering for others.
He has left behind him a spotless character. He has blessed the generation in which he lived with a noble ex ample. He has been, in the highest sense of the term, a public benefactor. His great intellectuality, his distin-

676 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
guished patriotism, his acknowledged statesmanship, his profound philosophy, his accurate knowledge of human nature, his keen penetration into the future, his wisdom in council, his fidelity to principle and to friendship, his phi lanthropy, his sympathy with the poor, his relief of the needy, and his universal Christian charity, are qualities more to be desired, decorations of human character oi greater value, than all the wealth of Croesus or the glitter of the royal diadem, emblem of absolutism, which spark les upon the brow of the Czar of all the Russias.
But our friends, true and cherished the friend of his race so patient in his suffering and so true to every trust has been called from his labors, that his works may follow him and that he may enter upon the enjoy ments of his everlasting reward. Individually, I feel that my loss is irreparable. For more than a quarter of a century, he had not only borne to me the relation of a friend, but he was my bosom friend. I loved him; 1 honored him; I conferred freely with him. He was wise, and good, and great. But my loved and honored friend sleeps the long sleep of death, and I am left to mourn his loss. If the proprieties of the occasion permitted, I could not trust myself to enlarge. I feel more like weep ing than speaking. Friend, counsellor, companion he is gone, and I can see him no more in this world!
"He was a man take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."
Peace to his ashes! And while his immortal spirit dwells
with God who gave it, may perpetual blessings cluster
around his honored name!" Joseph H. Brown.
[Extract from a speech delivered at the memorial exercises in At lanta March 8, 1883.]

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GEORGIA BEREAVED OF ANOTHER SON.
The reaper goes forth, and one after another is har vested unto death. Omitting the carnival of blood from 1861 to 1865, how often have we been called since those dark days to grieve over our first and foremost men.
We have stood and wept over the grave of the great Cobb, whose mighty brain and loving heart not only com manded the admiration but won the affection of all who fell within the range of their influence. Johnson, too, the grand old Georgian who shed honor upon Ills native State, has passed away. Benning, the incorruptible and able judge, the gallant leader of a brigade in Longstreet's bloody corps, and who followed the plume of that great captain for four long, weary years he, too, has been called away. Chappell, one of the noblest and purest of his race, sleeps his last sleep in the soil of the State he so long served and loved so well. Stephens, the younger, though he died in manhood's prime, has given himself an honored name and place with the great judges who in the past gave such grandeur to the Georgia bench. It was but yesterday that Warner, one of the most hon ored of those upon whom Georgia ever placed the ermine, fell asleep among you, and upon that great judge we shall never look again.
Of course I need not remind this people that the em blem of Georgia's grief and the republic's sorrow have scarcely disappeared over the new-made grave of Benja min Harvey Hill.
And now again we are surrounded with new evi dences of mourning. After the midnight watch of Sat urday last had marked the time, and when this mighty

678 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
city of struggling life and unceasing activity had been hushed into silence, and just before the
"Morn, waked by the circling hours, With rosy hands unbarred the gates of light,"
the heart of another great Georgian ceased its weary throbbings, and the spirit winged its way to its eternal home to join the mother whose image was ever present with him during his long and eventful life. The death of Governor Stephens was no surprise to him; he had grappled with it a thousand times before, and never feared to face its grim presence, because he had lived for death as well as life.
When we have looked at his delicate form, and listened to his words of wisdom in conversation or in speech, we could but exclaim, what a wonderful man is this! Feeble though he was, he has given his life to labor not so much for himself as for others; and but recently, finding his means too limited to meet the demands upon his charity, even after meagerly supplying his own wants, his regret was not so much for himself as it was for those whom he could not help. But his work, is clone, his labor is ended, and he is to be buried out of our sight forever. No more again shall we ever see that bright and pierc ing eye that pallid and wasted form. That free heart will throb no more in sympathy with other suffering hearts; that hand opened so often to alms is shut for ever. But it is pleasant to remember that he lived out man's allotted time, and passed to his final rest with a painless death.
"He sat as sets the morning star, Which goes not down behind the darkened west,

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Nor hides obscure amid the tempests of the sky, But melts away into the very light of heaven."
Judge Martin J. Crawford.
[Extract from a speech delivered at the memorial exercises in At lanta, March 8, 1883, in honor of Governor Stephens.]

ADIEU TO GADDISTOWN.
It was the year 1840. The wooded summits of the Blue Ridge had put on their autumnal colors. These romantic mountains coming down from the lofty alti tudes of the Appalachian range, and penetrating the northeastern section of Georgia, have an occasional de pression. These a poet might term the mountain passes, but the mountaineers call them the "gaps." One, thread ed by a rugged trail connecting the county of Union on the north with Lumpkin on the south, is known as *he Woody Gap. At an early hour of the day of which 1 speak, a slender and sinewy lad came steadily through this gap and down the Indian trail. In front of him, yoked together, he drove a pair of young steers. Pres ently there followed another and a younger boy. He was mounted on a small horse, whose well-defined mus cles and obvious ribs did not suggest a life of inglorious ease. In mountain solitudes there is little change. Now. as then, looking southward from the Woody Gap, the traveler may behold successive and lower ranges of bil lowy mountains, which together approach the sublime, and far beyond in shimmering loveliness stretching ap parently to the infinite, the "ocean view," as it is termed, that Piedmont country of Georgia, some day to afford

680 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

sustenance to many millions of happy freemen. To the northward a more precipitous slope seems to terminate

in a lovely mountain vale. Glancing through its lux

uriant crops, and by its simple homes, the silvery waters of the Toccoa make their way toward the far distant Mississippi. The valley, like the mountain, is also little changed. Its homes have the same, unpretentious char acter, its people the primitive virtues of the old Ameri

can stock. The shriek of the locomotive, and the roar of the railway train, to this day, have not penetrated the sylvan settlement. No village is there. The valley, like many another locality in our mountains, after the fashion

of the Cherokees, is called a town. There is Brasstown, and Fightingtown, and across the Tennessee line, Ducktown. This is Gaddistown, and thence from a rude log cabin, that day had departed the boy who was driving the steers, to become the only man who, in all the history of our State, was for four successive terms its Governor, a State Senator, a Judge of its Superior Court, a Chief Justice of its Supreme Court, and twice its representative in the Senate of the United States. That boy was Joseph

Emerson Brown.

H

*

*

*

To contemplate the successive pictures which present his marvelous career has been a grateful task, but those scenes upon which I love to "brood with miser care," do not relate so much to the days of its greatness as of its beginning. On the clay of his funeral, among the thousands who loved him massed in Georgia's Represen tatives Hall, I stood beside the venerable form, majestic in the peacefulness of death, and beheld for the last time tl e noble face now made ethereal as if by the last caresses

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of angel hands which had borne the loosened spirit to the home eternal in the heavens to hear the words of the Master, "Well done: thou good and faithful serv ant; enter thou into the joys of thy Lord." Even then irresistible thoughts and words were of his boyhood in the remote sequestered vale; of his humble home, such homes as sent forth Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lin coln. And now, beyond the azure mountains, and through the vista of all the years, I see the boy as with untiring hand he turns the spinning-wheel, as he swings the axe, as he guides the plow, as in sportive moments he breasts the bright waters of the mountain stream or when worn with toil he bathes his weary feet in its shining shallows. And my heart goes out to him, as followed by the longing and loving eyes of mother and father, he waves them a brave farewell and with his little oxen up and over the mountain disappears from their sight, to enter on that great life I have attempted to describe, in that mission for humanity for which the God of nature had designed him. Oh, my young countrymen, contemplate his char acter and dwell upon his career, for
"Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime."
Emory Speer.

GRADY.
I am one among the thousands who loved him and I stand with the millions who lament his death. I loved him in the promise of his glowing youth when across my boyish vision he walked with winning grace from easy

682 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
effort to success. I loved him in the flush of splendid manhood when a nation hung upon his words; and now with the dross of human friendship smitten in my soul, I love him best of all as he lies out yonder underneath December skies with face as tranquil and with smile as sweet as victor ever wore.
In this sweet and solemn hour all the rare and radiant adjectives that blossomed in the shining pathway of his pen seem to have come from every quarter of the con tinent to lay themselves in loving tribute at their master's feet; but rich as the music which they bring, the cadences of all our eulogy
"Sigh for the touch of a vanished hand And the sound of a voice that is still."
And here today within this hall glorified by the echoes of his eloquence, standing to answer the impulse of my heart to the roll-call of his friends and stricken with an emptiness of words, I know that when the finger of God touched his eyelids into sleep there gathered a silence on the only lips that could weave the sun-bright story of his days or mete sufficient eulogy to the incomparable rich ness of his life.
I agree with Patrick Collins that he was the most brilliant son of this republic. If the annals of these times are told with truth, they will give him place as the phenomenon of his period: the Admirable Crichton of the age in which he lived. No eloquence has equaled his since Sargeant Prentiss faded from the earth. No pen has plowed such noble furrows in his country's fallow fields since the wrist of Horace Greeley rested. No age of the republic has witnessed such marvelous conjunction of a magic pen with the velvet splendor of a mellow

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tongue, and though the warlike rival of these wondrous forces never rose within his life, it is writ of all his living that the noble fires of his genius were kindled in his boyhood from the gleam that died upon his father's sword.
I have loved to follow, and I love to follow now, the pathway of that diamond pen as it flashed like an in spiration over every phase of life in Georgia. It touched the sick body of a desolate and despairing agriculture with the impulse of a better method, and the farmer, catching the glow of promise in his words, left off sigh ing and went to singing in his fields, until at last the bet ter day has come, and as the sunshine melts into his harvests with the tender rain, the heart of humanity is glad in his hope and the glow on his fields seems the smile of the Lord. Its brave point went with cheerful prophecy and engaging manliness into the ranks of toil, until the workman at his anvil felt the dignity of labor pulse the somber routine of the hours, and the curse of Adam softening in the faith of silver sentences, became the blessing and the comfort of his days. Into an era of practical politics it dashed with the grace of an earlier chivalry, and in an age of pushing and unseemly scram ble, it woke the spirit of a loftier sentiment, while around the glow of splendid narrative and the charm of entrancing plea there grew a goodlier company of youth linked to the republic's nobler legends and holding fast that generous loyalty which builds the highest bulwark of the State.
First of all the instruments which fitted his genius to expression was his radiant pen. Long after it had blazed his way to eminence and usefulness, he waked the powers of that s/.rpassing oratory which has bettered

684 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
all the sentiment of his country and enriched the ripe vocabulary of the world. Nothing in the history of hu man speech will equal the stately steppings of his elo quence into glory. In a single night he caught the heart of the country into his warm embrace, and leaped from a banquet revelry into national fame. It is, at last, the crowning evidence of his genius, that he held to the end, unbroken, the high fame so easily won, and sweeping from triumph unto triumph, with not one leaf of his laurels withered by time or staled by circumstance, died on yes terday the foremost orator of all the world.
It is marvelous, past all telling, how he caught the heart of the country in the fervid glow of his own. All the forces of our statesmanship have not prevailed for union like the ringing speeches of this bright, mag netic man. His eloquence was the electric current over which the positive and negative poles of American senti ment were rushing to a warm embrace. It was the trans parent medium through which sections were learning to see each other clearer and to love each other better. He was melting bitterness in the warmth of his patriotic fervor, sections were being linked in the logic of his liquid sentences and when he died he was literally loving a nation into peace.
Fit and dramatic climax to a glorious mission that he should have lived to carry the South's last message to the center of the nation's culture and then with the gra cious answer to his transcendent service locked in his loyal heart, come back to die among the people he had served! Fitter still that as he walked in final triumph through the streets of his beloved city he should have caught upon his kingly brow that wreath of Southern roses

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richer jewels than Victoria wears -plucked by the hands of Georgia women, borne, by the hands of Georgia men and flung about him with a tenderness which crowned him for his burial that in the unspeakable fragrance of Georgia's full and sweet approval he might "wrap the drapery of his couch about him and lie down to pleasant dreams!"
If I should seek to touch the core of all his greatness, I would lay my hand upon his heart. I would speak of his humanity his almost inspired sympathies, his sweet philanthrophy and the noble heartfulness that ran like a silver current through his life. His heart was the furnace where he fashioned all his glowing speech. Love was the current that sent his golden sentences pulsing through the world, and in the honest throb of human sympathies he found the anchor that held him steadfast to all things great and true. He was the incarnate tri umph of a heartful man.
I thank God, as I stand above my buried friend, that there is not one ignoble memory in all the shining path way of his fame! In all the glorious gifts that God Almighty gave him, not one was ever bent to willing service in unworthy cause. He lived to make the world about him better. With all his splendid might he helped to build a happier, heartier and more wholesome senti ment among his kind. And in fondness, mixed with reverence, I believe that the Christ of Calvary, who died for men, has found a welcome sweet for one who fleshed within his person the golden spirit of the New Command ment and spent his powers in glorious living for his race.
O brilliant and incomparable Grady! We lay for a

686 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
season thy precious dust beneath the soil that bore and cherished thee, but we fling back against all our brighten ing skies the thoughtless speech that calls thee dead! God reigns and his purpose lives, and although these brave lips are silent here, the seeds sown in thy incarnate eloquence will sprinkle patriots through the years to come, and perpetuate thy living in a race of nobler men!
But all our words are empty, and they mock the air. If we would speak the eulogy that fills this day, let us build within this city that he loved, a monument tall as his services, and noble as the place he filled. Let every Georgian lend a hand, and as it rises to confront in majesty his darkened home, let the widow who weeps there be told that every stone that makes it has been sawn from the solid prosperity which he builded and the light which plays upon the summit is, in afterglow, the sunshine which he brought into the world.
And for the rest silence. The sweetest thing about his funeral was that no sound broke the stillness, save the reading of the Scriptures and the melody of music. No fire that can be kindled upon the altar of speech can relume the radiant spark that perished yesterday. No blaze born in all our eulogy can burn beside the sunlight of his useful life.
After all there is nothing grander than such living. I have seen the light that gleamed at midnight from the headlight of some giant engine rushing onward through the darkness, heedless of opposition, fearless of danger; and I thought it was grand. I have seen the light come over the Eastern hills in glory, driving the lazy dark ness like mist before a sea-born gale, till leaf and tree and blade of grass sparkled in the myriad diamonds of

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the morning ray; and I thought it was grand. I have seen the light that leaped at midnight across the stormswept sky, shivering over chaotic clouds, mid howling winds, till cloud and darkness and the shadow-haunted earth flashed into mid-day splendor, and I knew it was grand. But the grandest thing, next to the radiance that flows from the Almighty throne is the light of a noble and beautiful life wrapping itself in benediction around the destinies of men and finding its home in the blessed bosom of the everlasting God. John Temple Graves.
[This is the full text of the brilliant eulogy delivered at the Grady memorial exercises in Atlanta on December 28, 1889.]

GRADY.
O Death, there is thy sting; O Grave, there is thy victory. Though our ranks are full of gifted and famous men, in all the tribes of our Israel, there is no Elisha upon whom the mantle of this translated Elijah can descend.
My fellow Georgians, how shall I speak to you of him? It is meet that sympathy should veil her weeping eyes, when she mourns the darling child who bore her gentle image ever mirrored in his life. As well may the tongue speak when the soul has departed, as South ern oratory declaim when Southern eloquence is buried in the grave of Grady. Even American patriotism is voiceless as she stands beside the coffined chieftain of her fast-assembling host. Was he good? Let his neighbors answer. To-night Atlanta is shrouded in as deep a pall

688 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
as that which wrapped Egypt in gloom when the angel of the Lord smote the first-born in every house. In the busiest city of the State the rattle of commerce to day was suspended, the hum of industry was hushed, and in that gay capital bright pleasure hath stayed her shining feet to drop a tear upon the grave of him the people loved so well. Was he great? From the pin nacle of no official station has he fallen; the pomp and circumstance of war did not place him upon a pedestal of prominence; no book has he given to the literature of the nation; no wealth has he amassed with which to crystalize his generosity into fame; and yet to-night a continent stands weeping by his new-made grave, ana as the waves come laden with the message of the Infinite to the base of the now twice historic Plymouth Rock, the sympathetic sobbing of the sea can only whisper to the stricken land, "Peace, be still; my everlasting arms are round you."
Grady's greatness can not be measured by his speeches, though they were so masterful that they form a portion of his country's history. It will rather be gauged by that patient, brilliant daily work, which made it possible for him to command the nation's ear; that power of which these public utterances were but the exponents: his daily toil in his private sanctum in the stately building of that magnificent manufactory of public thought, which he wielded as a weaver does his shuttle. A small and scantily furnished room, with nothing in it save Grady, his genius and his God, and yet thus illumined, it warmed with the light of fraternal love both sections of a republic, compared to which that of historic Greece was but as a perfumed lamp to the

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noontide splendor of the sun. As a journalist Mr. Grady

had no superior in America. As a writer he exercised

the princely prerogative of genius which is to create and

not obey the laws of rhetoric. As well attempt to teach

the nightingale to sing by note, or track the summer

lightning as we do the sun, as measure Grady's style by

any rhetorician's rule. I have thought that Mr. Grady

was more of an orator than a writer, and brilliant as

his success in journalism was, it was but the moonlight

which reflected the sun that dawned only to be obscured

by death. Certainly no man in any country or in any

age, ever won fame as an orator faster than he. With

a wide reputation as a writer, but scarcely any as a

speaker, even in his own State, he appeared one night

at a banquet in New York, made a speech of twenty

minutes, and the next day was known throughout the

United States as the foremost of Southern orators. N"o

swifter stride has been made to fame since the clays ot

David, for like that heroic stripling, with the sling of

courage and the stone of truth, he slew Sectionalism, the

Goliath which had so long threatened and oppressed his

people.

****

My countrymen, if it shall be written in the history of America that by virtue of her Toombs and Cobb and Brown, on the breast of our native State was cradled a revolution which rocked a continent, upon another page of that history it shall be recorded that Georgia's Grady was the Moses who led the Southern people through a wilderness of weakness and of want at least to the Pisgah whence, with prophetic eye, he could discern a New South: true to the traditions of the past as was the

690 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
steel which glittered on the victorious arm at Manassas, but whose hopeful hearts and helpful hands were soon to transform desolation into wealth and convert the de feat of one section of our common country into the haughty herald of that country's future rank in the civ ilization of the world.
****
Sleep on, my friend, my brother, brilliant and beloved let no distempered dream of unaccomplished greatness haunt thy long last sleep. The country that you loved, that you redeemed and disenthralled, will be your splen did and ever growing monument, and the blessings of a grateful people will be the grand inscription, which will grow longer as that monument rises higher among the nations of the earth. Wherever the peach shall blush beneath the kisses of the Southern sun, wherever the affluent grape shall don the royal purple of Southern sov ereignty, a votive offering from the one and a rich liba tion from the other, the grateful husbandman will ten der unto you. The music of no machinery shall be heard within this Southland which does not chant a paean in your praise. Wherever Eloquence, the deity whom this people hath ever worshiped, shall retain a temple, no pilgrim shall enter there, save he bear thy dear name as a sacred shibboleth on his lips. So long as patriotism shall remain the shining angel who guards the destinies of our republic, her starry finger will point to Grady on Plymouth Rock, for Fame will choose to chisel his statue there, standing as the sentinel whom God had placed to "keep eternal watch over the liberties of a reunited peo ple ! R. W. Patterson.
[Extract from an address delivered at the Grady memorial exer cises ia Macon on December 28, 1889.]

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WHAT THE SOUTH ASKS.
Such, Mr. President, is this problem as we see it; such is the temper in which we approach it; such the progress made. What do we ask of you ? First, patience; out of this alone can come perfect work. Second, con fidence; in this alone can you judge fairly. Third, sympa thy, in this you can help us best. Fourth, give us your sons as hostages. When you plant your capital in millions, send your sons that they may help know how true are our hearts and may help to swell the Anglo-Saxon cur rent until it can carry without danger this black in fusion. Fifth, loyalty to the republic for there is sec tionalism in loyalty as in estrangement. This hour little needs the loyalty that is loyal to one section and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts that knows no South, no North, no East, no West; but endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State in our Union.
A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of us to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir, are Americans and we fight for human liberty. The up lifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth. France, Brazil these are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression this is our mission. And we shall not fail. God has sown In our soil the seed of His millennial harvest, and he will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until His full and

692 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
perfect day has come. Our history, sir, has been a con stant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless and trackless ocean, a new world rose to the. sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day when the old world will come to marvel and to learn, amid our gath ered treasures let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a republic compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love loving from the Lakes to the Gulf the wounds of war healed in every nean as on every hill serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory blazing out the path, and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God's appointed time!
Henry W. Grady.
[Extract from the speech on the Race Problem, delivered at the banquet of the Merchants Association in Boston in 1889.]
THE ARK OF THE COVENANT LODGED WITH THE AMERICAN NATION.
Young gentlemen, your republic on the glory of which depends all that men hold dear is menaced with great dangers. Against these dangers defend her as you would defend the most precious concerns of your own life. Against the dangers of centralizing all political powers, put the approved and imperishable principle oi local self-government. Between the rich and the poor, now drifting into separate camps, build up the great middle class, which, neither drunk with wealth nor em-

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bittered by poverty, shall lift up the suffering and con trol the strong. To the jangling of races and creeds that threaten the courts of men and the temples of God, oppose the home and the citizen a homogeneous and honest people and the simple faith that sustained your fathers and mothers in their stainless lives and led them serene and smiling into the valley of the shadow.
Let it be understood in my parting words to you that I am no pessimist as to this republic. I always bet on sunshine in America. I know that my country has reached the point of perilous greatness, and that strange forces not to be measured or comprehended are hurrying her to heights that dazzle and blind all mortal eyes but I know that beyond the uttermost glory is enthroned the Lord God Almighty, and that when the hour of her trial has come He will lift up His everlasting gates and bend down above her in mercy and in love. For with her He has surely lodged the ark of His covenant with the sons of men. Emerson wisely said, "Our whole history looks like the last effort by Divine Provi dence in behalf of the human race." And the republic will endure. Centralization will be checked, and liberty saved plutocracy overthrown and equality restored. The struggle for human rights never goes backward among the English-speaking peoples. Our brothers across the sea have fought from despotism to liberty, and in the wisdom of local self-government have planted col onies around the world. This very day Mr. Gladstone, the wisest man that has lived since your Jefferson died with the light of another world beating in his face until he seems to have caught the wisdom of the Infinite and towers half human and half divine from his eminence

694 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
--this man,turning away from the traditions of his life, begs his countrymen to strip the crown of its last usurped authority, and lodge it with the people, where it belongs. The trend of the times is with us. The world moves steadily from gloom to brightness. And bending down humbly as Elisha did, and praying that my eyes shall be made to see, I catch the vision of this republic its mighty forces in balance, and its unspeakable glory fall ing on all its children chief among the federation of English-speaking people plenty streaming from its borders, and light from its mountain tops working out its mission under God's approving eye, until the dark continents are opened and the highways of earth estab lished, and the shadows lifted and the jargon of the nations stilled and the perplexities of Babel straightened and under one language, one liberty, and one God, all the nations of the world hearkening to the American drum-beat and girding up their loins, shall march amid the breaking of the millennial dawn into the paths of righteousness and of peace! Henry W. Grady.
[Extract from an address on Centralization, delivered before the literary societies of the University of Virginia on June 25, 1887.]
THE SOUTH OF THE FUTURE WILL REMEMBER THE SOUTH OF THE PAST.
The New York Southerner who was most familiar with the face of the South thirty-five years ago, and has not looked upon it since, would, if suddenly transported to scenes that were best known to him then, unless his eyes happened to fall upon some well-preserved land-

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mark, be likely to inquire in what part of the world he stood; and to have the desired information imparted in accents that would tempt him to exclaim, in the language of those who questioned Peter in the porch of the high priest's palace, "Thy speech betrayeth thee."
Did ever flow from harp or lute to him who had so journed long where another manner of speech prevailed music so sweet as the tones of a voice which by its sim plest utterance recalled a thousand happy memories, the dearest associations of home and "Auld Lang Syne?" After he has seen many of the wonders of nature and art, Robert Louis Stevenson, in a far land, longing for the bleak hills amid which his childhood was cradled, de clared that the common street lamps of Edinburgh were more beautiful to him than the splendid galaxies that glorified the tropic heavens.
It was the boast of Bonaparte that if he were taken blindfolded from the other side of the world and put down at midnight on the loneliest spot in Corsica, he would know at once where he was by the smell of the soil, so closely had he communed with Mother Earth.
****
There is no prediction of the South of the future that is surer of fulfilment than that she will cherish the proud memories of her past, cling to her old ideals of woman hood and manhood, hold in undying honor those who made unspeakable sacrifices and endured untold tribula tions for her sake.
She has no desire that those with whom she contended on the arena of reason and the field of war shall be mis represented to her own forthcoming generations. And she insists that her record, as actually made, shall b~

696 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
written in the white light of God's truth, and that done, she will calmly await the unbiased judgment of the fu ture.
In this truly patriotic work of protecting historical truth the women of the South are even more active than her men.
To it they are giving an organized, enthusiastic and unwavering support.
They have inspired and kept alive the ardor with which anniversaries have been established and memorials raised to commemorate events, lives and achievements that no self-respecting people could forget. The narrow-minded few who protest against these monuments and observ ances might learn a lesson in magnanimity from the pagan.
That is a beautiful story which Plutarch has preserved in these words:
"There stood at Milan, in Gaul, within the Alps, a brazen statue which Caesar in after-times noticed, and, passing by it, presently stopped short and in the hearing of many commanded the magistrates to come before him. He told them their town had broken its league, harbor ing an enemy. The magistrates at first simply denied the thing, and not knowing what he meant, looked one upon another, when Caesar, turning toward the statue and gathering his brows, said: "Pray, is not that our enemy who stands there?" They were all in confusion and had nothing to answer, but he, smiling much, com mended the Gauls, as who had been firm to their friends, though in adversity, and ordered that the statue should remain standing as he found it."
But we have in the counsel and actions of illustrious

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men of our own blood and time even nobler examples ol the beauty of liberality, even more impressive rebukes of persistent unforgiveness than any that the pages of hea then history can supply.
The first plea that Robert Edward Lee uttered after he taid down his stainless sword was for the reconcilia tion of the lately warring sections of his country.
In his poverty, turning his back upon what we must term urgent invitations to ease and plenty, for we would wrong that lofty spirit to call them temptations, he dedi cated himself to the service of the young men of the deso lated South and the first words he addressed to them as they waited for him to point out the path which they were sure would be the way of honor and righteousness, went out in an appeal from the depths of his great heart that they should remember that this was their reunited country to whose common flag and fortunes they should feel bound, alike by the pledges of their fathers and their own highest sense of duty.
In the hour of his hard-won triumph Ulysses S. Grant, by his generosity of soul, did more than all the states men of his time to win back the South to the Union in sympathy, as well as in name.
And, standing in Georgia's capital, that gracious and loving man upon whose bier the tears of the whole coun try lately fell, touched the hearts of the multitude to whom he spoke and the hearts of the millions to whom the electric flash carried the thrill of his splendid senti ment that not the South alone, but the whole nation, should take a pride in the deeds of the men who fought and fell in the gray and should care for their graves.
Oh, that every part of the republic may be pervaded

698 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
by the broad patriotism which holds that the man, North or South, who attempts to relume the dying embers of sectional hate is the enemy of his country and brands himself unworthy of his high national birthright. Breathes there a man with soul so shriveled that he can contemplate unmoved those daughters of the South who unfalteringly left the lilies of life and walked on its thorns, dared disease and defied death itself amid the horrors of hospitals and on the field of slaughter that they might take some ministration of mercy to the strick en knights of the Southern cross and those of the manystarred flag over the humblest of whom they knelt in a devotion which the proudest prince of the purple well might envy ? Lives there anywhere aught but honor and reverence for the women who dedicate monuments to heroes and lovingly lay laurels upon the billowed sod beneath which they sleep.
The South of the future will be poorer than the South of the present in much that makes life worth living, if these memories languish and these hallowed customs pass to forgetfulness.
Even with our short vision we can read for the South of the future a clear title to material wealth beside which the garnered treasures that rilled the coffers of the South of the past and all the golden rewards that the genius and thrift of the South of the present have yet reaped will seem poor and paltry. But tell me, you who love her, what shall it profit the South if she gain the whole world and lose her own soul ?
After years of painful groping through uncertainties and tedious toiling over difficulties that would have ap palled a courage less sublime than hers, the light is bright-

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ening and the barriers are breaking on the pathway up which the South of the present is moving in majesty to the richer realities of the South of the future. Every day seems to bring us nearer to the fruition of the heroic hope of one upon whom the South never relied in vain, and who, in the hour of her deepest desolation uplifted her heavy heart when he exultantly exclaimed:
"True, alas! Hector is slain, and Priam is dethroned and Troy, proud Troy, has glared by the torch, crum bled 'neath the blows and wept 'mid the jeers of revelling Greeks in every household. But more than a hundred Encases live! On more than a hundred broader, deeper Tibers, we will found greater cities, rear richer temples, raise loftier towers, until all the world shall respect and fear, and even the Greeks shall covet, honor, and obey!"
F. H. Richardson.
[Extract from an address delivered before the Southern Society of New York in 1902.]

THE WOMEN OF THE CONFEDERACY.
How well the brave sons of the Confederacy kept faith with her holy women, the blood-stained battle-fields from Pennsylvania to Texas richly attest. In song and marble and bronze, those deeds have been memorialized and his tory is writing them in emperishable glory.
But who has, or ever shall, record the achievements of our women in that war? What history has written the story of her noble deeds of her sacrifices and suffer ings? What painter has put them on canvas? What sculptor has yet chiseled in enduring marble the majesty,

700 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the greatness, the goodness, the unselfishness, the devo tion, the faith and the beauty of her service to her coun try?
Poet, historian, painter, sculptor- all will find here almost untouched, their richest and most inexhaustible treasure-house. Which of her many-sided traits, which of her many tragic situations, will seize first the im agination of that future artist or appeal strongest to the inspiration of the poet who is to write the South's great epic? Or, when the historian comes to write of her, where shall his story begin and where end ? When shall her figure rise most grand and luminous before their eyes ; what service of hers, what act shall they, most admiring, seek to perpetuate, each in his own undying art?
Was it her unspeakable sacrifice in the beginning when she first buckled on her loved ones the armour of that holy war and sent them away from home to fight for their country ; or later her uncomplaining endurance of untold privation and loneliness and desolation at home while her defenders were facing the enemy and driving back the invader; or her divine fortitude, when father, husband, son, brother or lover fell on the distant battle field and came back to her no more forever; or when she moved like an angel through the hospitals or in the rear of the firing-line, ministering to our wounded sol diers and soothing their last hours with her gentle words and soft deft hands; or when in the darkest hours of our blessed cause when the brave heroes in front were being crushed by overwhelming numbers, her faith, kin dled by heavenly fires, kept alive the waning hopes and drooping courage of our naked, starving and shattered

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armies; or when at the end all save honor was lost, she met with her smiles the ragged remnant of the re turning soldiers and pledged them her eternal faith ana sympathy, and began at once her work of strewing flow ers over the graves and building monuments to commem orate the deathless deeds of the dead; or when, as to day, the fairest, gentlest and most beautiful of all the Southland, meet in these annual reunions to greet, to cheer and show honor to these battle-scarred veterans whose eyes are growing dimmer, and whose steps more faltering each passing year, but whose voice and pres ence were never more gracious to these loyal and! loving ladies than now? We do not know. But this we do know; when in the fullness of time the chivalry ana genius of the South shall be prepared worthily to per form this holy trust and give to the world some fit and enduring memorial of woman's greatness and glory in that war, no matter which of her virtues shall be selected as the crowning piece of that immortal structure, it will be pleasing in the sight of God and an inspiration to woman kind forever.
God bless the cause of the Confederacy, for it was freedom's holy cause. God bless and protect the rem nant of the Confederate veterans still left with us; and Confederate women the mothers and daughters of the Confederacy. Boykin Wright.
[Extract from an address delivered at the Confederate reunion in Augusta, November 10, 1903.]

702 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
"HOLY WOMAN, THINE THE OFFICE!
Profound emotion must needs find expression. In the scope of national life, no less than in the bounds of in dividual experience, the strong swift currents of senti ment and of feeling, the grand moral and spiritual es sences that make up the character and mark the identity of individuals and of States, must inevitably find an outlet. Within the memory of the present generation, eleven heroic States stood fast by the altar of liberty, every lip set in defiance, every muscle corded in desperate resistance to invasion and oppression. How much of the weal or woe of human kind hung trembling in the balance of that perilous season! The very air seemed freighted with the importance, the dignity, the solemn grandeur of the occasion. Every pulse beat fast with the sentiment that animated the breast of patriotism. Children caught the infection of arms at their play. Cheery courage sang out sweetly in the lullabies of moth ers to their babes. Firmness and devotion shone in the eyes, and dispelled their subtle influence in the touch wherever women walked amid the groans of the wounded or bent in angel-ministry over the rude coucbes of the dying. Heroism as marvelous as that which flamed in the man's heart of the girl, Cloelia, hung a new beauty in the cheek of wife and maiden whilst she devoted a husband or lover to the Confederacy, and bade him, blushing with pride and affection, "God-speed to the wars!" Valor as impetuous as that which rushed under the lilies of France to the death grapple at Lodi irre sistible as that which nerved the breast of Horatius, as

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single-handed he fought off the enemies of Rome on the Sublician bridge, whilst the timbers were being destroyed behind him; deathless as that which steeled his heart when, the last beams destroyed and Rome saved, he cast his body into the rushing waters, exclaiming, "Father Tiber, receive me, I pray thee, and bear up my soul!" Valor, even like this, gleamed in the countenance of the soldier of the States, whilst he fought, and lingered there as he fell, firmly set in the stiff face, as it were, sealed there by the finger of the Deity.
What wonder that the flow of the current was so broad, so impetuous and strong! What wonder that from Maryland to Texas, wherever opposing armies sprang to the shock, the noblest blood of the States rained down like water into the field of Mars! What won der that, after a few short months of preparation, the young Confederacy stood out in the beams of the sun disciplined in the skill of a veteran and armed in the strength of a giant! The South fought upon her own soil, for her own institutions, and in the full blaze of memories as glorious as were ever emblazoned in the pages of the historian or trumpeted in the harp of the bard. Standing in the midst of an extensive territory teeming with every fruit that dewdrop can refresh or sunbeam embellish; possessed of an atmosphere fragrant with the breath of every flower; with scenery as variant, products as luxuriant, sky as fair, as anywhere nature treads in her most generous mood; with a past as sacred as any where genius has toiled or grandeur reposed Every rock some holy memory! Every oak custodian of some treasured charter! Every hillside Westminster of some illustrious dust! And vet, alas! was it treason

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to love these simple objects? Animated by the principles, and aided by the institutions peculiar to that civilization that was at once her strength and her boast, the South, from the earliest period of her history, had dedicated to the Union the first fruits of her industry, her genius and her patriotism. In peace, with liberal and lavish hand, she poured her wealth into the treasury; in war, she bul warked the borders of America with her body and her blood. She gave to the Union generals before whose ir resistible onset the arrogant veterans of England stub bornly yielded the last foot of American soil. She fur nished to the Union statesmen whose subtle craft and God like wisdom startled the wonder of all Europe, and ex torted, even from the lips of enemies, the noblest pane gyrics that ever gratified the vanity or crowned the worth of genius. She dedicated to the Union orators whose patriotic outbursts dazed even the eagle eyes of Webster, and the triumph of whose eloquent periods, thrilling still as some sweet strains furtively snatched from the sym phonies of the angels, are sounding on down to eternity itself. And yet when, long-continued services ignored, benefits forgotten, glory envied and justice despised, those institutions were assailed with merciless fury, and those principles cherished as the sweet loves of the fire side denied! Their existence endangered! The storm bursting! Liberty languishing, and life itself imperiled! Merciful God! Was it, alas! rebellion that, "having exhausted the argument, we stood by our arms ?"
Valor did not avail. Devotion met not its merited re ward. Swiftly as the lightning leaps amid the roaring clouds, suddenly as the meteor falls in heaven, the splen did fabric of our civilization fell. But disaster brought no repining. Fortitude silently supplanted heroism.

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I would add no bitterness to the tearful reflections this occasion invokes. I would speak "less in anger than in sorrow," standing here in the subdued Shekinah-light of the Master's presence. Peace, it is said, is unfolding her white wings over this distracted land. I pray that this may be true. New experiments of pacification, it is said, are being daily practiced to induce this bright angel to resume her dwelling-place in States from, whose borders she has been insidiously and ruthlessly banished. I pray that they may at least be successful. Viewed from this monument, the stars and stripes may be seen floating gayly in the breeze, and, it is said, that wherever that flag is found, in whatever part of the earth the brilliant folds are flying, obedience is yielded to her authority, respect to her prowess, and veneration to her glory. Gocl grant that it may always be so, and that injustice and oppression may never again deepen the blush of her crimson! I would say no word in opposition to that conservative spirit that seems to be the fashion of the hour. On the contrary, I would contribute whatever poor ability I possess to any efforts the administration may be pleased to make toward establishing cordial love and lasting reunion.
But I appeal to the shades of these departed heroes; 1 entreat these mute lips to declare, whether, in the hasty declarations of the ambitious, the shameful protestations of the venal, or the eager recantations of the infamous, there be any whose extravagant self-abasement has brought shame and disgrace upon these principles whose everlasting truth has been sealed with the blood of so many patriot-martyrs! If there be anywhere such a wretch, burnished by the beams of our Southern sun, let
23 r

706 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
him know that while the South is pacific, she loathes apostasy. That while today she is true, she scorns the imputation that yesterday she was false. That while in all her borders, the Union has no enemy, and treason no friend, the loyal South in her inner, deeper, holier life, when her spirit struggles and her tears fall, is unalter ably attached to the principles and men of '61, and finds sweetest consolations to her sorrowing patriotism in strewing the first blossoms of spring over the mounds of the fallen ones who "wore the grey." Ah! Holy wo man ! Thy face sweetly flushing; thy white breast softly falling; thy pure body noiselessly gliding; grace nestling in thy fragile fingers; balmy incense breathing in thy parted lips; gentle love hiding in thy shining eyes, thine! Thine the office! Judge Hozvard Van Epps.
[Extract from an address delivered in Atlanta on Memorial Day, April 26, 1877.]
THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS' HOME.
But, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, one of the strong est reasons for accepting this home lies in the fact that it will reach a class of needy soldiers for whom no pro vision at all is now made. We pension those who lost a limb or were permanently disabled in the war. But, sir, what shall we say of that other soldier, who fought in the thickest of the battle; who braved every danger, but by a merciful Providence was protected from the mis siles of destruction? Was he less heroic than his more unfortunate comrade who was smitten? Did he not serve his country as well?

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And now that the fortune of the busy crowding world more cruel to him than the fortune of war has stricken him down, shall Georgia extend him no helping hand? Nay, more, shall she refuse to accept what other hearts and hands have built and now proffer her in fee simple, free of cost, conditioned only to maintain those needy few who may be driven to seek its shelter from the storms of life? Let us by our votes answer no, forever no.
Georgia can give no service pension to the brave men who fought for her. She can not compensate them with an equivalent for their services. Not all the "wealth of Ormus and of Ind" would suffice for that. But Georgia can and should shelter the old and needy who served her in her day of extremity.
Yonder is the home, a magnificent property, an ele gant building ready to welcome through its open doors the heroes for whose refuge it was built. It represents no millionaire's bounty. No tax-gatherer forced that money from unwilling hands. The rich, the poor, the high, the low, the old, the young, men, women and chil dren, contributed of their means to that sacred fund. The magic pen of Grady touched the great heart of the peo ple, and their limited treasures poured forth as freely as the waters flowed from the smitten rock of the desert.
Pericles says that the highest duty a nation owes to its heroic dead is to raise monuments to their memory. So well have the loving women of the South labored in that noble cause, that almost every city and town and village in our land boasts a marble shaft pointing from earth toward heaven in honor of their dead fathers and brothers and husbands and sons and lovers. Let us to-day announce

708 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
a kindred sentiment to that of this great Athenian states man, and proclaim that the highest duty a nation owes to its living heroes, the comrades in arms of its heroic dead, is to shelter, comfort and protect them in their declining years. "Age and want! Oh, ill-matched pair!" If there is one temporal blessing for which, above all others, I would pray to heaven, it is that I may be saved from a poverty-stricken old age. In youth, when hope is buoyant, we can smile at fortune's frowns. In the strength of manhood we can dare fortune to its worst. But when the infirmities of age come upon us, when the joints stiffen and the eyes grow dim, and the mind loses its firm grasp on thought, then indeed we are to be pitied, if in poverty and want and loneliness we walk on the "silent solemn shore of that vast ocean we must sail so soon." Wm. H. Fleming.
[Extract from speech delivered in the Legislature of Georgia in support of the Soldiers' Home bill.]
JOHNSTON AND LEE.
Many have been the eulogies upon the Army of North ern Virginia. Poets have sung, and historians have writ ten, and orators have spoken of its deeds of heroism and of valor, but the story of the other army can also furnish a theme for the poet, and the historian, and the orator. No grander epic in martial story can ever be anthemed than the march of the Army of Tennessee from Mission ary Ridge to Atlanta. It is the story of many hard fought battles Ringgold, Dalton, Calhoun, Resaca, Rome, New Hope Church, Marietta, Kennesaw; at which last

APPENDIX.

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were three weeks of battling, Johnston in the lead, Hood and Hardee, and Polk, as his able lieutenants, and with them gallant Pat Cleburne, the Stonewall of the Western Army, and at his side a score of others equally as brave. Some of you whom I see before me were with that gal lant band. You well know how, in May, 1864, this dead lock of armies began, with over one hundred thousand men on the Union side against sixty thousand on your side. How foot by foot Johnston fell back along the hotly-contested fields to which I have referred; and how, when Peachtree Creek was reached, his opponent's army had been reduced by half, and he had himself lost less than ten thousand men. He had drawn the "Hero of Colum bia" into our own country, with mountains and rivers be hind him, his army half gone, his line of supply in con stant danger, and he fronting a splendidly equipped, well preserved and confident army of over fifty thousand men. Surely the step was an error that led to the change of this condition. When this step was taken the Federal com mander uttered these ominous words: "Heretofore the fighting has been as Johnston pleased; now it will be as I please." Then came Atlanta and Jonesboro and the begin ning of the end. Johnston's policy was to preserve his army at any price. He planned to draw his enemy from his base of supply and to give him battle only when most
disastrous. History tells of the Roman Fabius, who opposed Han
nibal and his Carthaginian army in its invasion of Italy. He was entrusted by the unanimous will of the people with the preservation of the republic. The system which he adopted to check the advance of Hannibal is well known. By a succession of movements, marches and counter-

710 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
marches, always choosing good defensive positions, he harassed his antagonist who could never draw him into ground favorable for his attack, while Fabius watched every opportunity for availing himself of any error or neglect on the part of the Carthaginian. This mode of warfare which was new to the Roman, acquired for Fa bius the name of "the Delayer," and he was censured by the young, the rash and the ignorant. Fabius returned to Rome and the command of the army was entrusted to Varro, who rushed imprudently to battle and the defeat of the Roman army at Cannae changed the history of Rome. Who knows but that the history of the Confeder ate States of America might have been written differently had not the criticism of the rash and the thoughtless and the ignorant been allowed to lead to a substitution of the Confederate Fabius with a brave but impetuous Varro ?
I will not enlarge upon what have been the results of the great Civil War; but one, and perhaps the greatest of all, the results accomplished was to settle for all time that we were a free and united people, and that the efforts of a tyrannical majority to overrule a weak but determined mi nority will, whenever attempted, plunge the country into civil war. This lesson alone is to posterity worth the sac rifice. Again, the principle for which the fight was made by the South has been determined as correct by the re sults of the war. The Supreme Court of our reunited country, within a decade after the close of the Civil War, has held to be sound the doctrine upon which all the South ern States withdrew from the Union. So it may be said that the independent sovereignty of the individual States of our Union have forever been guaranteed by this great but

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crimson seal of civil war, and thus has been preserved what Mr. Calhoun has been pleased to term the "very breath of the nostrils of the government."
But if the great struggle had done naught else, is it not enough that it has given to posterity, to the young men and women of our country as an exemplar, and to older ones as a memory, such a character as Robert Edward Lee ? He was great in victory. As his brave soldiers marched be fore him into victorious battles, their countenances seemed to speak the glorious words: "Ah, beloved general, we who are about to die, salute you." He was still greater in de feat. Then it was there came from his lips, as if inspired, the immortal words: "Duty is the sublimest word in our language," and "Human virtue should be equal to human
calamity." The lesson of his life is before us. "A leader
of armies he closes his career in complete disaster, but military scientists study his campaigns and find in them designs as bold and brilliant, and actions as intense and energetic as ever illustrated the art of war; the gallant captain beholds in his bearing courage as rare as ever faced a desperate field, or restored a lost one; the private soldier looks up at an image as benignant and command ing as ever thrilled the heart with highest impulse of de votion. He lived and died the type of the Confederate nation, and the brave and the true of every land pay him tribute." The first soldiers of foreign climes salute him with eulogy; the scholar decorates his page with dedica tion to his name; the artist enshrines his form and fea tures in noblest work of brush and chisel, and the poet voices the heroic pathos of his life in tender and lofty strains, and thus

712 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
"When a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind lies Upon the paths of men."
Henry R. Goetchius.
[Extract from an address delivered in Columbus on the anniver sary of the birth of Robert E. Lee, January 19, 1900.]
SIDNEY LANIER.
Sidney Lanier sings the psalm of his own life in the "Song of the Chattahoochee." Pure was that life as the mountain stream that, in his native Georgia, flows
"Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall."
Manifold hindrances uprose at every step to deflect or bar his course set toward poetry as the mountain brook was set toward the sea. He was held in thrall to the nar row channel of his earlier life by the languor of wasting disease; and by the pressure on his "home fond heart" of family care. Bread for wife and children could be earned in the uncongenial toil of a lawyer's office, at the sacri fice of the destiny which throbbed within him; only a strong faith could prophesy that the manna would fall from those larger heavens whose atmosphere his spirit craved as its vital air.
Listen how in the allegory of the song these alluring appeals are heard, and the barriers make themselves felt
"All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried, Abide, Abide,

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The wilful water-weeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, And the ferns and the fondling grass said, Stay, The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed, Abide, Abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in the valleys of Hall."
But no! The arid wastes of time parched with the eagerness of its own greed, the drooping flowers of beau ty and love and holiness the sea of song stretching its sympathies around the hard, prosaic crust of human life all need and sorely need the pure and quickening message which strives within him to find vent. Duty whispers low, "thou must." Hear, then, in the allegory of the poem, how the stream asserts its outgoing mission:

"But, oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail; I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall."
Lanier is the type "in a nineteenth century way" of the union of musical and poetic functions in the old-time bard or minstrel. The real significance of the connection of his musical genius with his poetic art lies not so much in the skill of his metrical forms as in the enrichment of his poetic inspirations.
Most strikingly this rare conjunction of poetic gifts enabled him to surpass other poets in the description of

714 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
sounds; not perhaps in the description of the sounds of voluble bells, and lowing herds, and surging seas, but, the sounds which, as George Eliot says, "lie on the other side of silence." "He could hear the squirrel's heart beat" If to other poets it has been given to behold "the light that never was on land or sea," to him it was given to hear voices in the depths of woods and the brooding of the marshes which no ear but his had ever caught. To his quickened hearing the indistinguishable vibrations of the wings of bees made "loud fanfare." The rustling and whispering of little green leaves awoke his "Sunrise" from sleep. How exquisite this description from "Corn" :
"The copse-depths into, little noises start That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart."
Lanier is the poet of passionate purity. He is the Lau reate of the White Cross movement of a later time the knightly order of Sir Galahads whose "strength is as the strength of ten," because their hearts are pure. Woman's protest against the burning injustice of public opinion which man has established was never more finely uttered than in the lines
"Must woman scorch for a single sin Which her betrayers may revel in?"
In an age of materialism, he has sung of the finer things of the spirit. To a generation rushing madly after wealth, hardly pausing for a moment around an open grave, making "business a battle," wedging the poor
"Against an inward opening door That pressure tightens evermore,"

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715

and sound the cry,
"Alas, for the poor to have some part, In yon sweet living land of art."

His song and his life are a splendid lesson for this needy time. The lesson that to be and to know are greater than to get and to have.
He has enriched poetry with the revelation of aspects of nature hitherto unsung. He was the first that ever burst into that silent sea, "the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn." He is the first who has sung in lasting melody the waving of the corn. His heart was open to all of Nature's revelation as the morn ing glory to the sun. A mere glance at the titles of the poems will show how many objects touched the springs of affection within him. Wherever he went Tampa, Brunswick, Chester he "carried starry stuff about his wings," and has enriched his temporary homes with the pollen of his songs. The "peddler bee," the "gospelling glooms of live oaks," the "marsh plants, thirsty-cupped for rain," the "prayer of leaves, with myriad palms upturned in air"; the mockingbird, "trim Shakespeare of the tree" who "summed the woods in song" these are but a few of the rare felicities of phrase which glow through the little green-gilt volume of poems like the "globe of gold" that on a Florida Sunday studded bright the green heavens of the orange-groves.
The story of his life is a heritage for all time. The undaunted faith that in the face of every practical discour agement bade him take flute and pen for sword and staff, and give his allegiance to the twin arts he had so long worshiped the manly and uncomplaining struggle

716 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
against poverty and unrecognition the almost airy hero ism with which he looked Death in the eye, calling it the "rich stirrup cup of time" that should send him glad on his journey to the undiscovered country all this is a record that the world will not willingly let die. "The idea of his j life shall sweetly creep into men's study of imagination."
Summing up all these qualities, and thinking of others that can not now be named, it is not too much to say in the words of Chief Justice Bleckley, himself a poet, that "his fair fame which is now a mere germ may one day grow to be a tall cedar in the poetic Lebanon." Walter B. Hill.
BURNS.
1759-1796. These thirty-seven years represent the brief period of the mortal life of Robert Burns. But what figures shall limit the duration of his influence!
There is music and music. There is the music of the artist, which, awakened from the instrument by deft ringers touched, goes forth to meet the loud applause of listening multitudes. And there is the music that wells untutored from the poet's heart, which is to Nature's heart attuned, and rising on the morning's wings, mounts up ward toward the infinite source of beauty and of song.
Burns was the poet of nature and of daily life, and the things of life bring his memory constantly before us.
Some of you have walked abroad across the fields, and watching how the daisies bloom and fall beneath the heed less plowman's tread, and thinking of the ephemeral glory of man, have said:

P: ' V "

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"Stern ruin's plowshare drives elate Full on thy bloom."
Or watching vanity, which could not see upon itself the creeping folly that was to others plain, have said:
"O wad some pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us."
Or mayhap some of us have stood beside the grave where slept a dear one mother, daughter, sister and turning back to life's care-ladened way, thinking of its sad brevity, have taken to our hearts the words:
"Like a passing thought she fled In light away/'
And in this present time, when greed of gain seems sometimes to obscure all else, it may not be amiss to recall the legitimate use of acquisition as Burns sets it forth:
"Not for to hide it in a hedge Nor for a train-attendant,
But for the glorious privilege Of being independent."
I will not say that Burns' faults were excusable. But perhaps his realization of his own weaknesses made him more tender toward erring, sinning humanity.
From out the heather of the Scottish hills, from out the ripening grain that nodded in the golden sunlight of the Scottish vales; aye, from between the very plowshares that furrowed up the fields of toil, there rose a voice full of the beauty of poetry and song. Not often shrill with the clarion tones of struggling freedom's call; not blaringwith the loud alarms of war; nor tainted with the rau cous eloquence of passionate appeal, but sweet with a mes sage to human hearts of nature, humanity and love.

718 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
As the lark at morning leaves its nest, and shaking from its wings the drowsy dreaming of the night, soars up to meet the approaching dawn, and pours forth from its tune ful throat upon the ears of the waking world a song un taught save by its mother nature, yet passing all the strains of human melody; so from out the thatched-roofed cot tage nestling near the Doon came Robert Burns, and rising on the wings of song, poured forth a melody that has reached the ears of a listening world and set his hearers to weeping in very sympathy with him, and yet to smiling through their tears. His song was as gentle as the winds that rustled adown the heathered slopes of Scotia's hills, as rippling as the waters that babbled over the brooklet's stony bed, or flowed beneath the bridge or murmured softly along the "banks and braes o' bonnie Doon."
The two striking characteristics which I would especialy notice in Burns are his sweetness and his humanity.
Two great masters of humor and pathos come to my mind together Burns and Dickens. As wide apart as the poles in training, surroundings and methods, the one liv ing in the midst of nature and drinking in the inspiration of the hills and fields and streams, the other watching hu man nature in the crowded marts and busy walks of city life, yet both proclaimed alike one message the common brotherhood of man. Each in his way brings home to us that, however wide apart we may be in circumstances or in spheres of action, there are great heart-throbs of hope and fear, of joy and sorrow, of love and hate, of anticipation and disappointment common to us all; and that at last we are brothers in a common humanity; that the babe who croons beneath the coronet and whose cradle is shaded by silken curtains, and the babe who is hushed to sleep in a

APPENDIX.

719

rough box mounted on crude rockers, each is at the thresh old of life, and each represents the potentialities of hu man existence; that both may move along life's pathway with much in common, though so far apart; and at the end "death knocks with equal hand at the door of the cot tage and the palace gate."
Many have taught that death was the great leveler, and that all are alike in His presence, but these have taught that in life there is a brotherhood of man, and that in this common humanity a fellow feeling should "make us won drous kind."
No matter what our circumstances or state, if we have done our duty as best we may, 'tis well; and even though no trump of fame may sound our praise, or stamp of high degree be placed upon our names, with Burns we know "the rank is but the guinea's stamp" and "a man's a .man for a' that and a' that."
As the traveler stands and looks at the cottage where Burns was born, how his heart throbs, and what a poetic inspiration awakens within him!

"Though Scotland boasts a thousand names Of patriot, king and peer,
The noblest, grandest, of them all Was loved and cradled here.
Here lived the gentle peasant-prince The loving cotter-king
Compared with whom the greatest lord Is but a titled thing.

" 'Tis but a cot roofed in with straw,

A hovel made of clay:

One door shuts out the snow and storm

One window greets the day.

And yet I stand within this room

, * J'

720 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.

And hold all thrones in scorn; For here, beneath this lowly thatch,
Love's sweetest bard was born.

"Within this hallowed hut I feel

.! ^

Like one who clasps a shrine,

When the glad lips at last have touched

The something deemed divine.

And here the world through all the years,

As long as day returns,

The tribute of its love and tears

; Will pay to Robert Burns."

/. H. Lumpkin.

[An address delivered before the Burns Club of Atlanta.]

ULYSSES S. GRANT.
For the life of a mighty nation thus conceived by the patriots and sages of the Revolution and nurtured by the providence of God, this great American fought. It was for this, at Shiloh, with the river at the back of his torn and bleeding battalions, he scorned the thought of retreat. It was for this at Vicksburg he braved the miasma of the swamp, and the roar of the crevasse, until the levees along the river were but cities of the dead. For this he dared to cross the turbid floods of the Mississippi and like Caesar at the siege of Alesia, interposed his command between two armies. For this he stormed the face of Mission Ridge. For this he led the massy columns of his brave soldiery into the gloomy shades of the wilderness, and en tered upon the year of battles when the rifles were never voiceless and the dread artillery was scarcely hushed.

APPENDIX.

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To this silent man, in his youth and simple young man hood, who had been evolving powers of which he himself was not aware, was accorded in the second year of his lead ership the greatest military command under government the world has ever known. That his armies were tremen dous is true, but other generals trained like him, with equal opportunities, had equal armies and they had all failed even as the sons of the ancient Hebrew passed before the prophet of God, and Samuel said: "The Lord had not chosen thee, but when David came, the Lord said arise, anoint him for this is he." And had he not foemen worthy of his steel? Who so ready as he to record his estimate of their constancy ancj their valor? The sin cerity of their convictions he did not question. Here in his imperial state where the nobility of your manhood has given "bond in stone and ever during brass to guard and to immortalize" the ashes of the Confederate dead, here where lived your great commander who in his last recorded words declared that they deemed their principles dearer than life itself, it needs not that I should laud the manhood or defend the sincerity of Southern men. No affront would he permit, when they stacked arms, to the worn and wasted veterans of Lee. The great commander was in battle their sternest foe, their gentlest victor in defeat. "They are our countrymen now," he said to his gallant soldiers before the last wreath of smoke had floated away from the firing lines at Appomattox. How he kept his soldierly word to General Robert Edward Lee when the parole of that great soldier was threatened will forever endear his memory to Southern men. We are brethren now, shoulder to shoulder, under the glory-bright en sign of our common country, and I thank God that with the

722 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
clear vision of the dying the noble patriot whom we com memorate to-day, lived to this truth. In simple phrase and infinite pathos he wrote: "I feel that we are on the eve of a new era when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and Confederate. I can not stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy, but I feel it within me that it is to be so. The universal kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last seemed to me the beginning of the answer to 'Let us have peace.' " With such emotions in his heart, this great American died.
And, my countrymen, his prophetic words were true. Now in our country's need we are a reunited people. His magnanimity to Southern men, his soldierly fidelity to his great adversary has found its reward in the devotion to his country of that other Lee, who amid the curses and the treachery of the stealthy Spaniards, the pestilence among their victims and the cruel massacre of our sleeping sail ors, with consummate courage and manliness has main tained the honor of the flag. Far to the South in the State of my birth and my love, in a park in beautiful Savannah, where soft winds from the Atlantic rustle the palms, swing the silver censers of the acacia, and disperse the fragrance of the magnolia and the rose, noble men and gentle women have reared a monument to the Confederate dead. On its face, taken from the grand poetry of Scripture, are these words:
"Come from the four winds, O breath, And breathe upon the slain, that they may live."
The prayer has been granted. They live, oh, my countrymen, they live in millions of their gallant sons and

APPENDIX.

723

kinsmen, quickened into life and power as American citi zens by the generosity of Grant, and the magnanimity of the nation he served, and in the day of our country's need, under the flag of our fathers, in even line with the veterans of the Union, and the noble manhood of the North, the ground shaking with their measured tread, and the cries of the enemy drowned by the rebel yell, clear ing the way with their flaming volley, they will bear down upon our country's foe. Then the truth will be seen of all men that the union which Washington fostered, and Grant did so much to save will be indeed perpetual, the greatest citadel of civil and religious liberty on earth, a glory to the Most High God and a blessing to humanity in all the years to come. Judge Hmory Speer.
[Extract from an address delivered at Galena in 1898 on the anni versary of the birth of General Ulysses S. Grant.]

THE MAN WITH HIS HAT IN HIS HAND.
On the day I received an invitation to address this dis tinguished gathering, chance took me to the Federal mili tary post in the suburbs of my home city. The Twentyninth Regiment of United States volunteers, then quar tered there, had that day received orders for their trip of ten thousand miles. The troops were formed in full regi mental parade in the presence of thousands of spectators, among whom were anxious and weeping mothers, loving sisters and sweethearts, and a vast multitude of others who had gone to look, possibly for the last time, upon departing friends. Of the enlisted men a great percentage were from my own State, most of them from simple farm-

724 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
houses and the quiet and unpretentious hearthstones which abound in the rural communities of Georgia.
There were sturdy and rugged mountaineers from the Blue Ridge counties strong, steady and intrepid, with the simplicity characteristic of the mountain fastnesses from which they came. There were boys from the wire grass plain, unassuming and unaffected, their eyes light ed with the fire of determination, and their hearts beat ing in unison with the loyalty of their purpose. The men moved like machines. The regiment of raw recruits had become in a few months a command of trained and dis ciplined soldiers. The very air was fraught with the im pressive significance of the scene, which had its counter part in many of the States where patriots enlisted faster than the muster roll was called. I thought of the homes these soldier boys were leaving, the loved one left to nurse their anxious fears, the aged mother's last caress, the father's sad farewell. And I thought of the lot these patriot lads had chosen, the tired marches beneath the blistering sun, the restless nights in rain-soaked tents that kept out naught but sleep, the ambushed shots of savages and the bite of the pagan's lead. I saw hearts then strong with the pulse of youth stilled by the arrow's sting; eyes then bright with the light of life stare up from the sod den fields.
Leaning against a tree close beside me was a whitehaired mountaineer who looked with intent eyes and with an expression of the keenest sympathy upon the move ments of the men in uniform. His gaze was riveted on the regiment, and the frequent applause of the visiting multi tude fell apparently unheard on his ears. The regiment had finished its evolutions; the commissioned officers had

APPENDIX.

725

lined themselves to make their regulation march to the front for report and dismissal. The bugler had sounded the signal; the artillery had belched its adieu as the King of Day withdrew beyond the hills; the halyards had been grasped, and the flag slowly fell, saluting the retiring sun. As the flag started its descent, the scene was character ized by a solemnity which seemed sacred in its intensity. From the regimental band there floated upon the stillness of the autumn evening the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Instinctively and apparently unconsciously my tall neighbor by the tree removed his hat from his head and held it in his hand in reverential recognition until the flag had been furled and the last strain of the national anthem had been lost in the resonant tramp of the troops as they left the field.
What a picture that was the man with his hat in his hand, as he stood uncovered during that impressive cere mony! I moved involuntarily toward him, and im pressed with his reverential attitude, I asked him where he was from. "I am," said he, "from Pickens county"; and in casual conversation it developed that this raw moun taineer had come to Atlanta to say farewell to an only son who stood in line before him, and upon whom his tearbedimmed eyes might then be resting for the last time. The silent exhibition of patriotism and loyalty I had just witnessed had been prompted by a soul as rugged but as placid as the great blue mountains which gave it birth, and by an inspiration kindled from the very bosom of na ture itself.
There was the connecting link between the hearthstone and the capitol! There was the citizen who, representing the only real, substantial element of the nation's reserve

726 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
strength "the citizen standing in the doorway of his home, contented on his threshold" had answered his. country's call the man of whom Henry Grady so elo quently said: "He shall save the republic when the drum tap is futile and the barracks are exhausted." In him was duty typified, and in him slumbered the germ of sac rifice. There was that in the spontaneous action of the man that spoke of hardships to be endured and dangers to be dared for country's sake; there was that in the rever ential attitude that said, even though the libation of his heart's blood should be required in far-off lands, his life would be laid down as lightly as his hat was lifted to his country's call. Denied by age the privilege of sharing the hardships and the dangers of the comrades of his boy, no rule could regulate his patriotic ardor, no limitation could restrain the instinct of his homage.
As I comprehended the scene I thought of a great pic ture familiar to all of you "The Angelus." You can catch the strains of the village bell as it rings across the harvest fields, singing tribute to the Divine Power whose image is reflected in the grandeur of the autumn sunset. A peasant, weary from his hard day's toil, a simple atom in the mass of humanity, a frugal, quiet worker whose world is measured by the furrow he daily turns, but a king in the richness of his faith this child of God stands with bowed head uncovered in the presence of his Maker, as the echoes of the music from the sanctuary fade away be yond the distant hills. Oh, the significance of that in spiring scene! You have seen the rushing torrent of Ni agara plunge over the yawning abyss; you have seen the storm-swept ocean break in maddened fury against the shore; you have seen lightning lash the earth and the

APPENDIX,

727

thunders roll defiance until the very heavens seemed to reign in pandemonium and you thought these things sublime. But there, standing uncovered in his fallow field, with hat in hand, is a silent, solemn figure grander than all of them. It is the living tribute of a Christian faith to the great Power which controls the tempest, reg ulates the heavens and sets the universe a-coursing to the music of the spheres. It is that reverence and faith which, exemplified in all the creeds, have wrought re ligion out of paganism and civilization out of chaos; which have fired the hearts of the martyrs and steeled the arms of the Crusaders; which have consecrated man kind to the great purpose of creation. Clark Howell.
[Extract from an address delivered in Buffalo, New York, in 1900.]

" GOOD-NIGHT, GREAT CHIEF."
Twelve moons ago when the goldenrods were bloom ing and the mockingbirds were singing, and our hearts were light and gay, we met around our great council fire. How rosy was the future! Not a cloud floated in the sky. Not a wave rippled on the waters. Peace, joy and glad ness ruled the hour. From among all the braves and war riors assembled there we selected the wisest, the bravest and the best, and in his strong pure hand we placed the golden tomahawk of authority, knowing full well that he would wield it grandly and nobly. How his great heart leaped with exultation and pride at the distinction con ferred upon him! How hopefully and confidently he viewed the future! How great and wise were the plans he made. He was the honored, the revered leader

728 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
and the great chief of over three hundred and fifty thou sand loyal, faithful red men! How grandly, how nobly did he measure up to the expectation of the brotherhood! At the magic touch of his matchless hand the machinery of our fraternal government pulsated with new life, with renewed zeal, with transcendent force and irresistible power.
From council fire to council fire the glad acclaim went forth, "Hail to the chief!" and joy unconfined held full sway around every council fire in the land. The warriors and the braves, with light hearts and swift feet, went merrily on the chase. The Sachems and Sagamores held their council sleeps and wisely planned for the future. Never in the history of our beloved order was its organ ization more perfect or superb. When, lo, from yonder highest peak a flaming arrow shot across the sky. An omen of evil! The stoutest heart quails; and the stern faces of the warriors and braves pale before that dread signal. Soon from hilltop to hilltop, from council fire to council fire, the message is flashed: "The great Incohonee is dead," and the brotherhood all over the land stand with bowed heads and sad hearts in the shadow of a great sorrow.
On the 29th day of March, 1905, in his beautiful home in Montgomery, Alabama, Thomas Henry Watts fell asleep. I reverently and sorrowfully stood by his bier and looked for the last time upon that strong, manly, but kind and sympathetic face we all knew so well and loved so much. I looked affectionately at that dumb mouth that had so often charmed us with its eloquence and guided us with its wisdom.
I saw his mortal remains borne through the streets

APPENDIX.

729

where the broad magnolia leaves unfold beside the asters flowers of gold, to the beautiful city of the dead, and there in the silence of the departing day, surrounded by the speechless monuments of the dead, and a vast multitude of friends, I heard the solemn words, "earth to earth, dust to dust," and all that was mortal of Thomas Henry Watts, Great Incohonee of the Improved Order of Red Men, was placed "under the sod and the dew to await the judgment day."
Proud old England grows her myrtle, but it is not too kingly to deck the brow of Thomas Henry Watts. Sunny Italy has her quarries of fairest marble, but none too white to mark his last resting-place. America has her Mount Washington, sky-kissed and snow-capped, but it is not too high to pedestal the statue of our departed brother. And on this glorious autumnal day, the kissing sunbeams that play and dance on these mountain summits, lighting them with a gorgeous splendor, are not purer than the noble purposes that actuated his pure and noble life.
I have stood on the deck of a magnificent ship as it majestically sailed the sea, and witnessed the moon in all its splendor rise out of the mystery of the deep and shed its shimmering rays over the waters like millions of diamonds sparkling and dancing on the waves, and I thought the scene was surpassingly beautiful.
I have stood on a great mountain peak at dawn and witnessed the sun come forth in all its majesty and power and fill the world with light and glory, and I thought it was beautiful and grand.
I have seen in the darkness of midnight the forked lightning leap from hill to hill, from crest to crest, and cut and shiver the inky clouds into rivers of fire, while

730 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
the thunder rolled and reverberated in the distance, and the universe trembled in the Titanic power of the Storm King, and I exclaimed how beautiful, how grand, how sublime is the omnipotent power of God. But, brother, the most beautiful, the grandest, the sublimest creation or manifestation of God's omnipotence is a man, created in his own image, who loves his fellow man. One who ministers to the wants and necessities of his fellow man as softly and gently as the moonbeams fall upon the mid night sea, one who visits the sick and fills the room with a radiance as bright and glorious as the light of the new day; one who dispels the clouds of adversity as the light ning cleaves the clouds in a sombre sky; such a man was Thomas Henry Watts.
In the great Valhalla beyond the grave, where the spirits of immortals dwell, our friend now rests with the noblest and the best. Good-night, great chief, good night, until some golden day by the still waters we shall meet again, when the joyous greeting shall be an ever lasting good morning. Judge R. T. Daniel.
NEGRO SUFFRAGE,
I contend that certain truths that I now propose to state are axiomatic and undeniable. What are these truths? They are these: That the right to vote is not an absolute natural right that exists for the benefit of the individual, but a great civil and political privilege, conferred or with held for the benefit of and in the interest of society and good government, and that men who so little appreciate their votes as to sell them ought to be deprived of them

APPENDIX.

731

forever; and from these propositions I draw the neces sary conclusion, in the light of the South's unvarying ex perience with the negro vote, that the negro ought to be disfranchised.
There is another and, if possible, a still more weighty reason why I oppose negro suffrage. The natural, indeed the irresistible, tendency of political equality is toward social equality. No two races have ever yet lived side by side in anything like equal numbers on terms of political and social equality without amalgamation. All history proclaims the truth of this doctrine, without an exception in any age or in any clime.
Amalgamation being impossible so long as there is a single drop of blood in the veins of a single Southern white man, it follows that there can be neither social nor political equality between the races; that so long as they live together there must be the positions of superior and inferior, and that the white race will demand and take the superior position is beyond controversy. Six thou sand years of history proclaim his right to it. Superior mental and moral force assert it. Justice and equity unite in confirming his title to it in this land that his adventur ous ancestors discovered and conquered from its savage inhabitants, wrested from foreign tyranny, and in which they have founded and preserved that government that is to-day the richest, the most powerful, and the most glo rious on earth.
And who is the negro that he should dispute this de mand? A race that never yet founded a government or built a State that did not soon lapse into barbarism; a race that never yet made a single step toward civilization, except under the fostering care and guidance of the white

732 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
man; a race into whose care was committed one of the great continents, and who has made it ever since the re motest times a land of utter darkness, until to-day the nations of Europe, in the onward march of irresistible civilization, are dividing his heritage, the greatest of the continents, among themselves.
Well, has it been suggested that it is the most brazen of inconsistencies for the national government to guarantee the suffrage to black men iri the South while it denies it to brown men in the Philippines and to white men in Porto Rico.
These amendments were adopted at a time when party feeling ran high, when sectional bitterness filled the land, when almost every family both at the North and the South was mourning some loved one lost in the Civil War, and men therefore were not prepared to speak or vote calmly and reasonably. They were adopted at a time when the leaders of the radical wing of the Republican party had the bleeding and prostrate South under foot and the bal ance of the nation at their beck and call, and, intoxicated with success and drunk with power, sought to perpetuate their party in control of the national government, and yet, even under all these circumstances, the adoption of these amendments was accomplished against the express will of the majority of the people of the Union by treach ery in the North and by force in the South.
If the people of the Union, even in those days when passions were hot, were unwilling to revolutionize their constitutional system by taking from the States the right to control this suffrage question, can it be possible that now, when the soothing hand of time has healed the wounds that were then smarting, when the people of the

APPENDIX.

733

South have demonstrated once more in blood and fire their loyalty to the Union and her sons have marched side by side with the sons of the North, of the East and of the West against a common foe, the fight against these iniquitous amendments is more hopeless than it was in the days of their adoption? I must confess I can not so view it.
The North and East are struggling to-day with mighty suffrage problems of their own. The great West has its burdens. The Chinese are swarming to the Pacific slope; every day is bringing thoughtful men of all parties, of all sections, and of all States closer together in the belief that North, East, West and South must all have protection from the dangers that menace each section from ignorance and corruption at the polls; that the kind of protection that each commonwealth requires is varied by many local conditions peculiar to,itself, and that for these reasons there ought to be a return to the old compact of our fathers to the ancient landmarks of the republic. Thomas W. Hardzvick.
[Extract from an address delivered in the National House of Rep resentatives, January 27, 1904.]

THE MISSION OF THE LAWYER.
It is to the lawyer who loves his profession more than its emoluments that we must look to maintain its dignity and high standard. Duty is a strong word, but when it is divorced from love it becomes shorn of the locks that give it strength. He who would attain to the place of highest excellence in his profession must learn

734, REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
to love it; and he who would love his profession must seek to find in it the things that are lovely. These things are to be found by the man who seeks for them. To the uninitiated the law is full of cobwebs and dust, and we frequently hear them speak of dry legal principles; but to the lawyer the cobwebs become cords, strong enough to bind men to the right, and the dust becomes fertile soil, and the dry legal principles become clothed with living flesh and beauty.
The true lawyer takes delight in the contemplation of truth, as it is embodied and finds its expression in legal principles, because he sees it, not as a mere abstraction, but in its application to the ascertainment and enforce ment of human rights. Abstract truth may glitter, and may even possess a fascination for certain minds; but before it can have power to engage the best energies of men, and call forth their highest activities, it must take the concrete form and glow with the warmth that can only come from its incarnation in the actual realities of human life and conduct. The profession of the lawyer brings him in daily contact with the practical, living ques tions of human rights, and the best methods of enforcing them, and he becomes enamored of the truth which he sees in the law, because in it he finds a weapon of offense or defense, by means of which he can enforce the rights of his fellow men, or protect them against oppression and wrong.
The lawyer in the practice of his profession comes in close contact with humanity at one of its points of greatest need, and thus a sympathetic relation is established, which is highly favorable to the development of the law of love. The more one has in common with his fellows, the more does he find his heart becoming enlarged toward them.

APPENDIX.

735

The love of the lawyer for the law furnishes him with the highest motive that can animate him in the pursuit of his profession. The true lawyer would rather be a pioneer in the discovery of an important legal principle, or in the redemption of it from the rubbish of obscurity, than to earn a fee; for in the one case he is rendering a service to the civilized world, and to all the generations that are to come after him, and thus laying up for himself a goodly heritage for the time to come; while in the other, he may not be doing more than rendering a temporary and comparatively unimportant service to himself alone. Moth and rust may corrupt his gains, and thieves may break through and steal them, but the other has passed into the realm that is beyond the reach of corrupting in fluences and destroying agencies. Better to enroll our names along with Mansfield and Marshall and Webster, and every other earnest and faithful representative and advocate of exalted truth, than merely to take our place in the ranks of those whose chief distinction lies in their ability to get control of the forces that transmute all the energies of life into the material gain of an inordinately large professional income.
Any failure of any part of the body to perform its appropriate function results in distress to the entire or ganism. The same thing is true in the highly complex organism which binds men together in their social rela tions. The legal profession constitutes a very important part of this organism, exercising its function, as we have already seen, in the relief of the wants of the mind, rather than those of a less important nature; and the failure of that profession to meet the full measure of its responsi bility in the performance of its important function pro-

736 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
duces, in a greater or less degree, distress and disturbance throughout the whole social organism.
We may succeed in hiding our misdeeds and our short coming from others, but we can not hide them from our selves. Once written upon the tablets of consciousness they refuse ever to be rubbed out. No process can ob literate them. Nor can we cover them so that they will not come to the light, for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed or hidden that shall not be made known.
It is here, in the conscience of the profession, that we are to look for the power that will enable it to rise to the full height and attain to the full measure of its responsi bility and privilege. Just as we give highest honor to the man who has placed his conscience in the forefront of the battle of life, so must it be with our profession. Set apart and consecrated to the noble work of the ascertainment and enforcement of human rights, and the discovery and prevention of those hidden and baneful causes which have for their outcome the oppression of humanity and the perversion of justice and truth, it becomes us to strive, with all diligence, by keeping the professional conscience void of offense, by seeking out the right paths and pur suing them, and by abhorring all that is base and ignoble, to go forward in the accomplishment of the great mission to which we have been called, thus taking our place and meeting our responsibility, so that we may not be found wanting, as human society struggles nearer and nearer toward the goal of perfect law and order. Judge W. R. Hammond.
[Extract from an address delivered before the Georgia Bar At. ciation at the annual session in 1904.]

APPENDIX.

737

GEORGIANS MUST STAND TOGETHER,

2

I

It has been said that a distinguished gentleman has

|J

been compiling lessons from ancient history for the con-

*

sideration of his people. I beg to call his attention also

>f

to a clause in Roman history when Jugurtha was excluded

from the gates of Rome for a too bold attempt to bribe the

Roman Senate. He turned, and tauntingly pointing to

the gates of Rome, suggested that the Romans place

thereon the inscription: "A venal city; for sale, if she

can find a purchaser."

It may not have come to this point at this period of

(

time, but I beg you to pause and reflect before it becomes

'<

too late. If this struggle goes on and the two bodies of

the Anglo-Saxon race in Georgia continue to meet at the

ballot-box in battle array, with the same blood flowing

in the veins of the ranks of each, with brother arrayed

against brother, father against father, and with divided

&

families, what can be the result? Look back at his-

^

tory and you will see that the Anglo-Saxon race always

==

hated its own blood worse than any other enemy after it

7?

had once struggled within its families. Take the history

il

of England. Look at the War of the Roses. Look at

the hatreds that were generated and handed down for

generations. Pause and reflect, I pray you, in the name

of beloved Georgia, because if you go on you will find

that these two divisions in our State will in the end, in a

spirit of animosity, resort to any means to gain the control

<

of our unhappy State, and voti may then write over the

y

^rtal? of this capitol the memorable words, "A State for

f

sale, if she can find a purchaser." I appeal to you young

738 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
men, to pause and reflect that with a divided party yot can not hope for success unless you have a pocketbook.
Why is it that you see party conventions meet and put in nomination men who do not desire the office, bus who combine with other qualifications the fact that the) possess a bank account ? By and by our people will grov\ tired of struggling with each other and of the vast ex penditure of money that becomes necessary to control th floating vote. Then you may see some monied power advance the funds necessary to carry on this struggle, anc Georgia will not be worth living in or for. There is but one way in which this condition of affairs can be avertec and that is for our people to come together and to blot out any and every unfortunate division and stand to gather, as they have stood before, for Georgia and th Democratic party; and when I mention the Democrat! party as the rallying point for the intelligence of Georgia I speak of it feelingly and lovingly, because the wore democracy represents, and has represented, all that is tru and noble in politics in Georgia. It carried the standan that brought us out of worse than Egyptian darkness After the war it brought us out of darkness into the ligh and gave us control of our State government, and from 1877 down to the present time you have seen a condition of affairs in Georgia that has been unexampled and un surpassed. You have seen upright government and fair ness of administration. You have seen nothing at which a Georgian could blush, but everything of which we should feel proud. And this state of affairs can be con tinued if we will only be true to each other.
Now, the solution I would suggest to you is this : Pause your hand when you would strike a blow that would in-

APPENDIX.

739

jure your State; perfect your primary election laws; per fect them so they will speak absolutely, and finally, and inily the verdict of the people, and then when this is done, come together and register your verdict in the final elec tion, and whether we stand together under the name of Democracy or what name, we will stand together as united Georgians and hold to the control of our State and to the supremacy of the intelligence of Georgia, and while we may wish to see success in national affairs, we can calmly view the conflicts that will take place in the national government so long as we protect Georgia and keep Georgia from political divisions that mean her po litical ruin. Louis P. Garrard.
[Extract from an address delivered before the General Assembly of Georgia, October 30, 1894.]

AT THE GRAVE OF ALSTON.
The question naturally arises: Why this affectionate and unparalleled exhibition? What charms attached to the person? What virtues adorned the life? What glow and glory of character accumulated upon and crowned the manes of the man who is the subject of this singular and profound manifestation of esteem? Robert A. Alston was murdered at the door of the treasury vault under the very feet of the Governor. But the circumstances of vio lence and crime accompanying his taking off, while in themselves deplorable, are not sufficient of themselves to explain the manifestation upon the part of the colored people of this county and of this State. Men have fallen before in the flush of their youth. The widow has

740 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
yielded up in silence her only son, and her sole support in years and feebleness. The bridegroom has been snatched from the altar. The young mother has exhaled the life of her lungs into the nostrils of her babe. Our fellow men have been cut down in the flush of their strong young morning; in the shut-up bud of whose youth one might plainly enough discern the germ, the outline, the tinting and the fragrance of the royal rose: Young kings innumerable fallen with the foot lifted to mount the throne!
Oh, Death! Thou bandit of every roadside! Thou pirate of every ocean! Thou hast invaded the sweetest homes. Thou hast brought low the loftiest ambitions; love thou hast enhungered; joy hast thou converted into mourning. Thou hast filled the air with the wails of widowhood. Thou hast salted the earth with the tears of orphanage. Oh, Death! Death! The blistered track along which thou hast furrowed thy march down the centuries is clearly blazed on stones set up in human hearts. Humanity is familiar with thy port and mien and carriage. Oh, Death! Sudden death; death of youth; the wife wailing for the husband; children crying aloud for the father; death by accident, by disease, by violence: All these things are as familiar to the ears of mortality as the knells of funeral bells.
And thou, oh, L,ife! How glorious thou art! When we look upon these meadows covered with greenest ver dure; these vast overarching primeval forests; these myriad flowers, so bright and glad and winsome; these singing birds of the fair Southland, so transcendently mirthful and musical; these hills and mountains, reach ing far, towering high vast sky-vaulted star-blazoned

APPENDIX.

741

Westminsters in whose sacred niches resposes so much dead and gone grandeur, and yet so much of living beauty and glory when all these pass before the healthful mind the song carols up out of the heart, cutting its wing-way up into the ether-heights of soul-ecstasy, trilling and thrilling forth in notes glad and joyous as the matutinal song of the English lark!
Reflecting upon the many traits of character which dis tinguish Colonel Alston, I am led to conclude that sym pathy for the weak, the suffering, the needy, was the most prominent sentiment in his heart. That is the quality in him which has evoked from the colored people of DeKalb the sentiment of this occasion. Colonel Alston loved you, my friends. You do well to honor his memory. He loved you because you were weak, because suddenly emanci pated from slavery and ignorance, you were struggling desperately for footing as freemen. He was the type of the new sentiment which has grown up in the South toward the colored people, and stood a few steps, but only a few steps, in advance of his party. The North to-day understands but imperfectly the true relations of friend liness and good-will that exist between the whites and blacks of Georgia and of the South. I assert that there is little race prejudice or bitterness left. The vast numbers of those who, as hereditary slaves, toiled bravely to pro duce supplies for the support of the army, and who, in oldfashioned gentleness and affection protected the women and children of the South; who, since the termination of the war, have been busy accumulating property, cornbatting ignorance and progressing in wealth, intelligence and morals; this people have earned and have received the respect and friendship of Southern whites. But these

742 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
friendly relations are reciprocal. You entertain the same sentiment of cordial good will toward my own race. And hence you come to-day to honor one who refused not to treat you with fairness, to deal with you in the strictest justice, and to encourage you by the words of his lips and the benefaction of his hands.
We honor, we can not help honoring, Alston. The grand man who, standing in philosophic and virtuous elevation, looking around upon his fellow men, discov ered none so worthy his attention and regard as the poor, the weak, and the humble! It is said that while his body was being lowered into the grave in the rear of the great throng a ragged, barefooted boy, his soiled and dirty face furrowed with the track plowed by streams of tears, sobbed alone and unregarded. The grief of that friendless boy whose neglected head Alston may have once stroked with his royal fingers was a tribute no less touching than the assemblage of his colored friends, so full of awe and reverence for his memory. It is said that as his poor bruised body was being conveyed with slow, sorrowing steps to its last resting-place, in the doorways of no less than six squalid cabins there were standing pale-faced women weeping great bursts of sorrow. Oh, why these manifestations ? Not because a youth of talent had fallen in the capital, leaving wife bereft and children desolate, but because in the flash of that murderous pistol a bullet was winged to destroy the life of Colonel Robert A. Alston, a husband to the widow, a father to the fatherless, humanity's friend and lover! For this we shall never dry our eyes. And as a consequence no selected choir of trained voices is brought together to sing his praises, but out of the great congregation of the people a grand an-

APPENDIX.

743

them is rising in which the poor and weak and desolate are joining, in which the colored freemen of Georgia Nature's singing children are joining, and which blend ing with the symphonies of creation and swollen by the seraphic and cherubic voices and by the innumerable hosts of angelic hierarchies, is to-day, I trust, reverberating around the throne of God. Judge Hozvard Van Hpps.
[Extract from an address delivered on the occasion of the decora tion of Colonel Robert A. Alston's grave by the colored people of DeKalb county.]

AGAINST IMPERIALISM.
Unless met by superior power there is no halt to the imperial tread when once it starts upon its conquering and its despoiling march. Until it meets with disaster it can only be stayed by the command of the people. The thirst for empire is like the desire for human blood, which is stirred to an unquenchable appetite in the veins of every man who tastes it. The cry will be "More! More \" It was a long step into the middle of the sea to take Hawaii. It was a much longer step across the widest of all the oceans to take the Philippines. It is now a much shorter step from the Philippines to the continent of Asia. Everywhere the bounties which Providence has bestowed upon foreign nations invite the greed for spoil and the lust for domination.
And thus from step to step the march of empire will go on and as a necessary inevitable consequence a standing army of half a million men and an annual expenditure drawn from the pockets of the people, the magnitude of which one hardly dares venture to estimate.

744 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
Mr. President, it is not a pleasant thing to suggest that there may be a limit beyond which the United States may not safely go. It is a much easier task to tickle the ear of the American people with high-flown panegyrics and to excite the popular enthusiasm with the glittering recital of the dazzling dreams of empire. But those officially charged with the responsibility, the peace, the safety and the future of a great nation, and with the duty of preserv ing its principles and its institutions will find the discharge of the highest duty not always in the field most inviting to personal gratification or pleasing to the love of personal applause.
But, sir, it is not simply in the contemplation of the possibility of a war entailing great sacrifices and possible reverses that I am opposed to a policy which will bring wars. War at best, even victorious war, in a righteous cause, is a great curse. It always works a change in the civil institutions of a free country, and endangers the liberties of the people. It accustoms the people to the excesses of arbitrary power, and weakens loyalty to the authority of law. It familiarizes them with the contem plation of blood and carnage; brutalizes the instincts, and destroys the gentler and nobler humanities. It even in vades the pulpit; and, strange to say, some of those called to minister in holy things endeavor to paint the good God as a God delighting in war and bloodshed, forgetting that the new dispensation was ushered in with the divine message, "Peace on earth, good will to man," and scarce ly remembering that even under the old dispensation Da vid was not allowed to build the temple because he was a man of blood.
The people of the United States to-day know less of

APPENDIX.

74 -5

war than those of thirty-five years ago, and the people of the North, as closely as the great war of that time came to their homes and their firesides, know less of it than the people of the South. Because they know what it is they are opposed to unnecessary war. And yet, sir, the people of my section, as much as they deprecate war, recognize that wars are sometimes necessary and that there are some things worse than war. They recognize that the loss of national liberty is worse than war; they recognize that no war is too great a sacrifice to secure and protect liberty; and, what is more, whenever the country is engaged in war they give it their active support, regardless of whether it is or is not a war which they approve. If the published reports are correct, the State which in proportion to population furnished the greatest number of soldiers to the late war was the State of Georgia. And although her people in general deprecate and deplore the present war in the Philippines and believe it could have been and should have been avoided, it is nevertheless true that twothirds of the men of one of the volunteer regiments raised during the past year for that service and now serving in the Philippines were enlisted in Georgia.
Again, sir, among the imperialists, those who soar on a loftier wing are fond of appealing to the patriotic emo tions and pride of the American people by the oft-re peated statement that the results of the Spanish war have made the United States a world power. What a wonder ful discovery, Mr. President, that we have become a world power. Why, sir, when in the result of the Revolutionary War we made good the great Declaration of the Fourth of July, 1776, we became the greatest of world powers; the greatest of world powers, sir, because in spite of the

746 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
fewness of our numbers and the smallness of our re sources, we had not only announced, but maintained and secured, a great principle, thereafter to stand as the menace of every tyrant, the hope and inspiration of every people, however humble, who longed for liberty. Just become, sir, a world power? A nation whose flag has never gone down in defeat just become a world power, when for seventy-five years it has stood as the guardian of the whole western hemisphere and said to the whole world, "Not one step further on this hemisphere," and for seventy-five years the whole world has obeyed the com mand ?
And this discovery that we have just become a world power is due to a mere skirmish in which we overcame the weak and decayed power of Spain, when in truth we had so recently with our own blood written the history of the greatest and fiercest and bloodiest battles of modern times. Why, sir, within your memory there occurred within eighty miles of this capitol a battle in which more men were killed and wounded in half an hour than were killed and wounded in both American and Spanish armies dur ing the entire Spanish war. And the highest demonstra tion that we were a world power was when the division ended and when there stood again united for all time the people who when divided had between themselves fought battles under the shock of which the earth quaked and the very mountains rocked. A. O. Bacon.
[Extract from an address delivered in the United States Senate on January 30, 1900, against the retention of the Philippines.]

APPENDIX.
THE FUTURE OF CUBA.
If we but perform the duty of to-day the duty to con science and to Cuba, the duty to our own people the man does not live who can foresee or foretell the possible results that from this small beginning may eventually come. It is more than probable that when the dream of "Cuba libre" is transformed into a reality; when groans and blood and suffering are supplanted by smiles and blossoms and ease; when poverty gives way to wealth; when anarchy is driven from every corner, and law and order sit in supreme command; when oppression and un due exactions are finally and completely succeeded by free dom and liberty and justice, that there will come as if by magic a new and a regenerated Cuba.
As the new Cuba unfolds to the world, its beauty and its richness will dazzle the most high. Favored by sun and soil, blessed by wind and climate, endowed with all the gifts that a bountiful and generous nature can bestow, Cuba needs but the revivifying touch of just laws and stable government to bloom and thrive and grow as no country has ever done before. No man can measure her possibilities and none foresee the heights to which she may climb. For four hundred years she has been the prey of Spanish plunderers and the victims of cruelty, treachery and crime. Her hills and valleys are rich in tne bones of her martyred sons who have died to throw off the hated yoke.
Amid the ravages of war and pestilence and oppression her riches have been obscured and her beauties trampled under foot, but they have not been destroyed. Thev but

748 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
await the summons to come forth, increased, enhanced and glorified by the baptism of blood and tears through which they have passed. Four hundred years of darkness, of despair, of hopeless struggle, and then freedom! Who can paint the picture ?
From glorious America came the freedom that to-day illumines the blood-stained island and throws into the background the long, dark night, and from the same glori ous America must come the help by which the means can be had to use and enjoy the priceless freedom she gave. Our duty leads us on until we have fulfilled our high mis sion until the means have been given to enable Cuba, "the gem of the Antilles," to come into her inheritance and to stand forth in the plenitude of her long-denied glory and power.
When we have done this we must ever exult and be glad at the excellence of our handiwork, for if she be a part of us, she will be a rich and incomparable part, and if she be but a sister republic, nestling close beside us, we will be proud to call her our friend and ally. Wm. G. Brantley.
[Extract from a speech delivered in the National House of Repre sentatives on March u, 1902.]
IN FLORIDA BY THE SEA.
I am standing alone by the sea. The sea that stretches away and away, till the eyes can see no farther, and the canopy of heaven, with its curtains of blue, joins the waters, and makes to our vision the end of the world. The ocean is so old and yet so new like the old sweet story that was whispered in the garden by our first parents and

APPENDIX.

749

has been told in hovel, in cottage and in palace for cen

turies upon centuries since, and yet is ever, ever new.

The starlight is falling upon the waters, and mirrored

down in the far depths it looks as if the vasty deep were

giving up its jewels, glittering and brilliant. The waves,

rippling onward to the shore, catch the glint of the star-

'<

light, and seem to be bearing the precious gems to us, till

we almost reach out our hands to gr.isp them, but they

are gone.

Ah me! so it is that our day-dreams often crumble and

is

vanish, when we would seek to touch them.

Yonder in the distance looms against the sky a passing

ship, its white sails spreading in the gentle breeze like

great white wings, as if some giant sea-bird were poising



for its flight.

I know that hope and ambition and expectation are as

much a part of its burden as its listed cargo, and I know

that in the little cottage under the hill the prayers of loving

ones are going up for those who sail upon the trackless

deep, and for their safe return, even as we send forth

our fondest hopes and best endeavors, with prayers that

He who rules the ocean and the storm may bring them

back at last, freighted with success and happiness and

peace. Oh, sea, if thou wouldst only whisper from thy

great, sad, throbbing heart, what shall be the fate of our

ship!

I turn and walk across the sandy beach, and through the

soughing pines, to where the river drags slowly onward,

and underneath the overshadowing boughs, to where a

great oak stretches out its gnarled and twisted branches,

and droops its pendent moss, like tears of sympathy for

human woes. And now the wind is whispering in the

750 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
trees, as though it, too, had secrets, if it would only tell, or if the human ear were only finely tuned enough to catch what Nature says. Did I only imagine it, or standing there alone beneath the swaying limbs and beside the calmly flowing waters, did the dear old Dame unbend a moment and deign to bear a message to her humble child ? Was it only a thought, or did the wind stoop as it passed through the rustling leaves stoop till it pressed, like Nature's lips, against my ear, and murmur a name? They said the tree was sometimes called "the haunted oak." It may be so, or it may be haunted only by memo ries and imaginings; but it seemed for a moment that I could catch a glimpse of a face I knew whose ? Ah! if you love Nature as a mother, and you will walk upon the shore, or stand beside the river and listen to the music of the wind, perhaps some name will sound in your ear, too, and some face come before your eyes. And whether the name and face were borne to you upon the winds and waves, or simply welled up from the pulsing of your heart, let Nature tell when in the great hereafter she shall tell the other secrets of the winds and waves. Judge J. H. Lumpkin.
BRILLIANT THOUGHT FLASHES AND ELOQUENT THUNDER PEALS.
Love is Immortal.--"Sergeant Telford, of the English bar, endeavored to depict the yearning of the Greek heart for immortality in his great tragedy entitled "Ion." Ion has devoted himself to death in performance of a vow. Clemanthe, who loved him much, has exhausted her femi nine arts in the effort to dissuade him from destruction,

APPENDIX.

, 751

and failed. Resigning herself to the inevitable, she asks him out of her aching throat: "And shall we never meet each other?" He replies:
"I have asked That awful question of the hills that seem Eternal; of the flowing streams That lucid flow forever; of the stars Amid whose fields of azure my raised spirit Hath trod in glory. All were dumb! But now while thus I gaze into thy living face I feel the love that kindles through its beauty Can never wholly perish. We shall meet again."
"Creeds are clashing in these restless and inquisitorial times. Columns are falling heavily to the ground, once deemed to be imperishable. Many feet are slipping in the shifting sands of the strenuous surge. But an instinctive feeling arises with all the semblance of divine implanting that whatever part of us is doomed to destruction, love is immortal. May we not, in spite of the darkness in which we grope, indulge the hope which so gladdened the heart of the ancient Greek: We shall meet again."
[Judge Howard Van Epps on the death of Chief Justice T. J. Simmons.]

Georgia.--"Oh, proud Georgia! Mother of soldiers, scholars, statesmen, grand men and noble women, seated on your everlasting hills, clothed in the rich drapery of forest and of plain; decked in your rich rude jewels, and with lap well filled with amaranth of immortality, sheaves and choicest gifts for your children; in one hand cities, the other outstretched in benevolent deeds and ever ready for the protection of your people; your feet resting at the

752 REMINISCENCES OF FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
sea, 'mid orange-blossoms, emblems of your worth; your tresses bound with mountain laurel, fit emblem of your vir tue and your glorious achievements; psks strew your pathway; with your sisters go on in you^^ajesty while the nations wondering watch your sure a^Bpeady march to new victories and to greater glory." ||rU. Kontz.
An Eloquent Figure.--"Democratic principles restored by supporting Grant or Greeley! I would just as soon think of advancing the principles of Christianity by haul ing down the banner of Christ and hoisting the colors of Mahomet." Linton Stephens.
Keeping Other People's Consciences.--"Men must learn the important lesson taught by the experience of the world that they will best promote the cause of justice and mor ality by placing sentinels over their own consciences, in stead of becoming the general conscience-keepers of their neighbors." Howell Cobb.
Complimenting Mr. Hamilton. "I take this occasion thus to speak of Mr. Hamilton, because in his clay it suited the purposes of many of his contemporaries to detract from his merits, his name and his character; men who barked at his heels just as the wolves and the hyenas do, upon the track of the noble king of the forest; men who never met him in open conflict but to be vanquished, and many of whom ever quailed from his presence." Alex ander H. Stephens.
An Impassioned Outburst.--"Such a man would have administered the hemlock to Socrates because the mob

APPENDIX.

753

desired it; would have executed Sidney because power decreed it; and would have esteemed Barabbas honored above the Savior because the rabble by an overwhelming majority elected him. Such a man could stand on the bleeding corpse of the Constitution and amid its deaththroes, flatter its murderers for favor." Benj. H. Hill.

Daniel Webster.--"The fame of his statesmanship has illustrated the flag of his country wherever its gorgeous folds have streamed, and will prove as enduring as the granite mountains of his childhood's home." Emory Speer.

Trials and Sorrow Necessary to Human Life.-- "Trials, failures and suffering are a part of every human life, and are necessary to its complete fulfillment. The divinest life this world has ever known came to its perfect work through trials and sorrow and death. Never till after the bloody sweat of Gethsemane, the agony of the cross and the burial in a borrowed grave, did the angels come to roll the stone back from the tomb and worship as their Master rose again. And so mayhaps sometimes 'tis not till we have borne the cross and all of life seems buried, the messengers of light shall come to roll away the stone from off our heart-graves, and waken to a no bler life the diviner part, which is not dead, but sleepeth which does not, can not die." /. H. Lumpkin.

Grady's Commencement Address.--"It was an exquis ite fiction of ideal life. He painted in words an island of beauty; in the sweetness of his sentences the fragrance of flowers sweeter than nature's own seemed to be wafted to

754 REMINISCENCES OP FAMOUS GEORGIANS.
rapt listeners; the loveliness of his creation stood out so vividly to the eye of intellect that no one view of any grace in statuary or beauty in picture of any artist would be remembered better. It was an island worthy to lay in the same sea with Tennyson's Island of Avilion, where Knight and King Arthur was to rest his soul, and I would wish the soul of my classmate the sweet and eternal rest of his own happy island, embowered in the beauties of his own sweet fancies forever, did I not believe that he has touched the pearl-strewn shore of a better and lovelier land than even this, or even that of which he dreamed; that he 'rests in the balm-breathing gardens of God!'
"I shall always recall him as dying like that lad from Lombardy, pictured by Browning. I shall think that the South, decked like a queen in all her jewels of glory and of love, came to his dying couch and said:
" 'Thou art a Lombard, my brother! Happy art thou,' she cried, And smiled like Italy on him. He dreamed in her face and died!"
Albert H. Cox.

IN DEX.

Adams, John.. .. .. .. ..15, 396 Adams, John Quincy...p, 45, 520 Aiken, Warren ..............262 Alcaeus ........... ..... 150, 155 Alexander, Dr. J. F..........301 Anderson, Col. Clifford. .408, 415 Anderson, John W. .........247 undrew, Bishop James O. .469,
470, 471 Andrews, Judge Garnett. .58,
wo, 369 Arnold, Benedict ............ 180 rjrp, Bill (Maj. Chas H.
Smith). Sketch ........473. 481 Ashburn, G. W. .............273 Avery, Col. I. W. .......250, 403
B
Bacon, U. S. Senator A. O. 23, 312, Appendix.
Bacon, Rev. A. O............ 24 Bagley, Maj. E. F...........233 Bagley, Worth ..............342 Bailey, David J.............. .246 Baltimore, Lord ............. 156 Barclay, Anthony ............ 153 Bartow, Col. Francis S...8i, in Barrow, Pope .............. .404 Bayard, James A............. 109 Bayne, Chas. J. ..............551 Beecher, Henry Ward .......325 Beckwith, Bishop John W.
218, 219 Bell, Hiram P............521, 525 Bell, John ................... 109 Bell, Orelia Key ............. 552 Beman, Dr. ................. 164

Benning, Gen. Henry L-...... 198 Benning, John ........... 165, 198 Benning, Pleasant M. ........ 198 Benning, Sarah Cobb ......... 165 Bentpn, Thos. H. ........... 35 Berrien, John McPherson, U.
S. Senator and Cabinet Of ficer ...... ........... 108, 368
Black, Col. J. C. C.....Appendix. Blaine, James G. ............ 193 biandford, Judge Mark, H... .479 Bleckley, Chief Justice Logan
E. Sketch .............493-503 Incidentals ........358, 372, 531 Blue, Victor ................. 342 Bradwell, Capt. S. D. ....... 23 Brantley, Wm. G....... Appendix. Bronson, Gov. ...........22, 24 Brown, Joseph E., War Gov ernor, U. S. Senator, Chief Justice of Supreme Court and Railroad President. Sketches:
"Who is Joe Brown?". .239-253
Another Cincinnatus ...254-260 Georgia's War Governor.261-268 From The Fiery Furnace to
The Senatorial Toga. .269-282 Challenged by General
Toombs ... ... .... .380-382 Incidental 55, 96, loo, 133,
286, 292, 311, 317, 199, 402, 403, 407, 416, Appendix.
Brown, Julius L.............429 Brown, Mackay .............243. Brown, Walter R. ............408 Browne, Prof. W. M.........219 Broyles, Maj. Aaron........244 Brumby, Cant. Tom .........342

756

INDEX.

Bryan, Mrs. Mary E. .......-551 Bryant, Wm. Cullen ........537 Buchanan, James .... .66, 67,
142, 207, 213, 215, 536 Buckner, Gen. S. B. .......347 Buell, General ...............345 Bulloch, Archibald, Revolu tionary Patriot, President Executive Council of Geor gia, Sketch ............. 14- 18 Bulloch, Irvine S. ........... 19 Bulloch, James D............ 19 Bulloch, James S. ........... 18 Bulloch, Martha, President Roosevelt's mother ........ 19 Bullock, Gov. Rufus K. ......273 Butler, General .............. 180 Burr, Aaron ................. 186 Byron, Lord .............. 75, 147
C Calhoun, John C...........6, 9 Camak, Capt. T. .............233 Uarlton, Dr. H. H. ..... .469, 410 Carnenter, Senator ..........311 Cass, Gen. Lewis ........ 109, 213 Chandler, Daniel ............. 58 Chappell, Absalom H. .36, 158, 167 Chappell, J. Harris .......... 167 Chappell, L. H. .............. 167 Chappell, T. J. .. ...........167 Charlton, Judge R. M....368, 369 Charlton, Judge T. U. P......36g Chase, Salmon P............. 109 Chisholm, Edw. D. ..........247 Clark, Gov. John ............ 10 Clark, Judge Richard H. .224, 246 Clay, Henry ...9, 66, 82, 209, 211 Clayton, A. S. ...............368 Clayton, W. W. ........... ..246 Jayton's Georgia Justice. .... 159 Cleveland, Grover. ... . 179, 444,446 Clinton, DeWitt ............. 5 Cobb (or Cobbs), Ambrose.,. .196 Cobb, Andrew J., Asso. Jus
tice Supreme Court .......201 Cobb, Howell, Governor,
Speaker of National House

of Representatives, Secre tary of Treasury and MajorGeneral. Sketch, 203-220; Bush Arbor Speech, 299-309; Incidentals, 96, 100, 107, 108, 163, 164, 165, 201, 237, 249 Appendix. Cobb, Mrs. Gen. Howell.. 162, 167 Cobb, Judge Howell .........201 Cobb, Howell Lewis . .. .200, 508 Cobb (or Cobbs) Col. John
196, 199, 200 Cobb, John Addison. .200, 201,
219, ^07, 508 Cobb, Capt. J. A. ...........201 Cobb, Maj. John B...........201 Cobb (or Cobbs), Toseoh ....196 Cobb, Joseph Beckham ....... 198 Cobb. Maj. Lamar ...........201 Cobb (or Cobbs), Nicholas.. .196 Cobb, Sarah ................. 165 Cobb (or Cobbs), Col. Thom
as, sometimes called "Granddaddy" ...... 196, 197, 198, 200 Cobb, Trios. R. R., lawyer, author, orator and soldier. Sketches: The Patrick Henry of Secession in Geor gia, 221-229; The Martyr of Fredericksburg, 230-238; In cidentals, 75, in, 201, 216, 332, 341, =;o7, Appendix. Cobb, Thos. W., United States Senator and Superior Court Judge... 103, iqq, 160,
198, 368 Cobb on Slavery ............224 Cobb Invincibles ........... .233 Cobb's Legion ...........201, 232 Cobbs, The .............. 194-202 ' Colley, F. H. ................409 Colauitt, Alfred H., United
States Senator, Governor and Major-General, Sketch, 390-404. Incidentals, 248, 281, 406. 416. Colauitt, Mrs. Mell R.........551 Colquitt, Col. Peyton H.......3g6

INDEX.

757

Colquitt, Walter T., -United States Senator, Superior Court judge, advocate and orator, Sketch, 390-404. In cidentals 255, 359, 368.
Columbus Independent ....... 171 Cone, Judge F. H. ......381, 382 Conscript Laws .........285, 286 Conkling, Roscoe. .182, 190, et seq. Cox, Albert H. ..............435 Crampton's Gap.... .165, 216, 236 Crawford, Joel .............. 159 Crawford, Nathaniel M".......463 Crawford, Gov. Geo. W....... 144 Crawford, Wm. H., United
States Senator, Secretary of Treasury, Minister to France and rresidential Candidate, Sketch, i-n; In cidental ......... ......... 59 L-uthbert, Alfred. United States Senator .............395 Crawford, Judge Martin J.
Appendix.
D Daniel, John B. .............. 50 Daniel, Judge R. T.... Appendix. Davis Hall ..................290 Davis, Jefferson ......in, 113
114, 115, 118, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 217, 265, 266, 285, 348 Dawson, Col. A. H. H........S29 Dawson, Wm. C., United States Senator .........58, 368 Deloney, Capt. W. G. ........233 Derry, Prof. Joseph T....549-550 Dickens, Chas. ...........40, 163 Dooly, Col. John ............ 38 Doolv, Judge John M. Wit, 37-46; Incidentals 33, 140. Dooly, Capt. Thos. .......... 38 Douglas, Stephen A. .66, 109,
207, 208 Dougherty Hussars ..........233 DuBignon. Fleming G. .......409 DuBose. Gen. Dudley M. ..... 87 Dumas, Wm. T. ............ .551

Early, Gen. Jubal A..........329 Edmonds, Senator ........... 186 Edwards, Harry Stillwell ....551 Elliott, John, United States
Senator ............20, 22, 24 Evans, Augusta J. (Mrs. Wil
son) ............ .........121 Evans, Gen. Clement A........333 Eve, Maria Louisa ........... 552 iwerett, R. W. .............. 521 Falligant, Judge Robert. .334, 551 Felton, Dr. Wm. H. Sketch,
521-524. Incidental ........ 55 Felton, Mrs. Wm. H.......... 524 Few, Dr. Ignatius ............456 Field, Eugene- ...............545 Flash, Harrv, Lynden .......551 Fleming, Wm. H...... .Appendix. Fleming, W. B. .............. 22 Folsom, M. M. ..............551 Forsyth, John, United States
Senator, Governor and Cab inet Officer ............ 154, 371 Fort Pulaski ...... .........263 Fort Warren ................ 78 Foster, Col. Geo. ............461 Foster, Thos. F............. .461 Fulton Dragoons ............233 Furlow, T. M. ..............266 Gardner, James .... .208, 258, 259 Garland, Senator ............ 185 Garnett, R. H. ...............232 Garrard, Louis F...... Appendix. Gartrell, Gen. Lucius J., law yer, Congressman and sol dier. .81, 247, 406, 408, 410, 526 Georgia Miscellanies ......... 158 Georgia Troopers ............233 Georgia's Modern Prome theus ...... ............... 26 Gholstin, Louis ............. .429 Gildersleeve, Dr. Cyrus ...... 24

758

INDEX.

Gilmer, Gov. Geo. R.......9, 33 Glenn, Luther J............. .233 Goetchius, Henry R. .. .Appendix. Goldsmith, Oliver .......... .428 Gordon, John B., United
States Senator, Governor, Lieut.-General and Com mander of the United Con federate Veterans, Sketch, 319-341. Incidentals, 71, 231, 232, 275, 402, 407. Appen dix. Gordon, Mrs. Gen. ...... 227-230 Grady, Henry W., orator and editor, Sketches. When Gradv's Tide Turned, 417426; Gradv as an Upbuilder, 427-434; Grady as an orator, 435-443; How Grady Played Cromwell, 444-446; Inci dentals, 104, 199, 297. Grant, Col. John T. ......... .507 Grant, Capt. W. D. ......... 507 Grant, John W. ..............507 Graves, John Temple, editor and orator ..........Appendix. Gray, Alice ..............117, 118 Greeley, Horace .........278, 387 Gresham, Rev. Joseph .......245 Grier, Col. Aaron ............ 50 Grier, Robert ................ 50 Grier's Almanac ............. 50 Gwinnett, Button ............ 22 Gunn, James .......... i. .31, 32
H
Hall, Judge Samuel ..........209 Hamilton, Alex .............. 67 Hammond, N. J....479, Appendix. Hammpnd, Judge W. R., Ap
pendix. Haralson, Hugh A. ......... .322 Hardee," General .............247 ilardeman, Thos. .406, 408,
410 ................. Appendix. Hardin, Miss Mary............547 Hardwick, Thos. W. . .Appendix.

Harrell, D. B. ..........409, 410 Harris, Judge Iverson L. .55 -jfic Harris, Joel Chandler (Uncle
Remus), author and editor. Sketch, 482-492. Incidental.551 Harrison, Geo. P. ...........247 Harrison, Wm. Henry .......395 Hawkins, W. A. ........... .499 Hawley, Gen. J. R. ........ .^OI Hayne, Paul H., poet. ... .537-539 Hayne, Robert Y. .......... zv, HTTayne, WTITm. HTT. .............53OO 9/ Heard House ...............113 Henderson, Jno T. ........... 88 Henry, Patrick ........29, 31, 221 Hill, Benjamin H., United States Senator, Confederate States Senator, advocate and orator, Sketches: Cham pion of Mr. Davis, 283-289; Defiance of Federal Bayo nets, 290-298; Bush Arbor Speech, 299-309; Almost Home and Home at Last, 310-318; Challenged by Mr. Stephens, 380-385; Inciden tals, ioo, 149, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 256, 266. 272, Ap pendix. /Hill, Joshua ..............71, 266 Hill, Chancellor Walter B.
370, 435, 503, Appendix. Hills, L. P. .................551 Hillyer, Judge Geo. ..........236 Hillyer, Henry ..............439
Hillyer, Judge Junius ......216 Hillyer, Shaler G. ...........463 Hoar, Geo. F. ....... 184 et seq. Hobson, Richmond P. ........... Holmes, Rev. Abiel .......... 22 Holmes, Dr. O. W. ... 14, 22, 537 Homespun Yarns ............212 Holt, Hines .................396 Holt, Judge Thaddeus .......396 Holt, Judge W. W. .........396 Holt, Gen. W. S. ...........396 Hood, Gen. T. B. ...........268 Hopson, Joseph ..............351

INDEX.

759

Houston, Gen. Sam'1 ......... 173 Howard, Col. T. C. .........247 Howell, Clark ......... Appendix. Howell, Capt. E. P. ......... Howley. Governor ........... 22 Hubner, Major Charles W.,
Poet .......................546 Hull, A. L. ............. 104, 508 Hull, Wm. Hope ............259 Humphreys, Jno. W. .........551 Hunter, R. M. T. ............323
Ingalls, John J. .............. 182 Ingersoll, Robt. G. ...........182 Irwin, David ................ 224 Irwin, Lt. Chas. E...H7, up,
120, 122 Iverson, Alfred, United States
Senator ................22, 284
Jackson, Andrew... 9, 45, 204, 343, 355
Jackson, Capt. Henry. .509, 526, 527
Jackson, Prof. Henry ........ 6 Jackson, Gen. Henry R., sol
dier, diplomat and lawyer, 6, 83, 267. 284, 508, 548, 549Appendix. Jackson, James. Chief Justice' of Supreme Court and Con gressman. . ... ... 135, 218, 497 Jackson, James, United States Senator, Governor and Majpr-General in the Revolu tion (Georgia's Modern Prometheus), Sketch, 2636. Incidentals, ^04, 505. Jackson, Prof. James ....94, 506 Jackson, Joseph Webber. .506, 507 Jackson, Gen. T. J. (StoneWall) ......234, 330, 340, 341 Jackson, William H......5o6, 507 Jacksons, The ........... .504-509

Jenkins, Gov. Chas. J.-53, 65, 138, 247
Johnson, Andrew. .. .271, 272, 291 Johnson, Herschel V., Gover
nor, United States Senator and Superior Court Judge.
54, 7i, 76, 132, 395 Johnson, Gov. James ........ 400 Johnston, Gen. J. E.. .113, 217,
268, 348 Joiner, Chief W. R. .........445 Jones, Col. Chas. C., Jr....22
Appendix. Jones, John A. .............. 247 Jones, Dr. Wm. L........... 23
K
Kell, Capt. John Mclntosh... 22 Kellogg, Wm. Pitt ..........311 Kenan, A. H. ...............247 Key, Francis Scott ..........552 King, John P. ...............355 King. Porter ................ 350 Knight, C. B. ................233 Kontz, A. L. ................ 88 Kontz, E. C.....74, 88, Appendix.
La Coste, Marie .............551 Lamar, Albert, R., editor ... 166 Lamar, Andrew J. ........... 164 Lamar, Rev. A. J. ........... 166 Lamar, Basil ................ 165 Lamar, Col. C. A. L........... 166 Lamar, Gazaway B., Con
gressman .................. 166 Lamar, Henry G., Congress
man .............. 166, 258, 259 Lamar, Rev. J. S. ........... 166 Lamar, Jefferson J...162, 166, 217 Lamar, John (i)....!56, 157, 158 Lamar, John (2).... 163, 169, 170 Lamar, Joseph B., California
Jurist ...... ...............166 Lamar, Joseph R., Associate
Justice of Supreme Court ... 166 Lemar, Capt. Lafayette ...93, 155

'"55

760

INDEX.

Lamar, Loretta .......... 158, 167 Lamar, Lucius M........166, 445 Lamar, Lucius Quintus Cin-
cinnatus, Jr., United States Senator, Cabinet Officer, and Associate Justice, Sketches: L. Q. C. Lamar, of Missis sippi, 176-182. Reply to Hoar, 183-189; Tilt With Conkling, 190-19,3. Inciden
tals, 158, 161, 162, 467, Ap
pendix. Lamar, Lucius Quintus Cin-
cinnatus, Sr., Superior Court Judge. ........ 158, 159, 167, 368 Lamar, John Basil, author and soldier. ...... .163, 164, 165,
212, 217, 233
Lamar, Mary Ann (Mrs. Gen. Howell Cobb) ........ 167, 212
Lamar, Mirabeau Bonaparte, Major-General and second president of Texas Repub lic; orator, diolomat, states
man and poet, Sketch, 169-175. Incidentals, 158,
161, 162, 167, 548. Lamar, Peter .....'....... 156, 157 Lamar, Col. Peter ....... 165, 198 Lamar, Rebecca ......... 158, 163 Lamar, Rebecca (the Heroine
of the Pulaski) ...... 166, 167 Lamar, Robert ............... 157 Lamar, Thomas ......... 156, 157 Lamar, Thos. Randolph ...... 102 Lamar, William B., Congress
man from Florida, and exJudge ....... ............. 166 Lamar, Zachariah ........ 161, 163 Lamar, Col. Zachariah... 162,
170, 212
Lamar Infantry .............233 Lamars, The ............. 156-168 Lanier, Sidney, musician and
poet, sketch ........... .533-537 Lawson, Thos. G. ............415 Lawton, Gen. Alexander R.,
263, 278, 281, 415

Lawton, Capt. W, G. ........233
Lawton, W. J. ..............247 LeConte, Dr. John .......... 22 LeConte, Dr. Joseph ......... 22
LeConte, Louis ...... ....... 22 Lee, Gen. Fitzhugh ..... .334, 335 Lee, Gen. Robert E., A tribute
to. 339-341. Incidentals, 77, 231, 238, 268, 269
Lester, Rufus E.... .406, 408, 410 Lewis, Howell ...............200 Lewis, Dr. Jno, W. .........245 LeVert, Madam Octavia Wal-
ton ......... .......... ....524 Liberty Hall .......... 72. 73, 74 Lincoln, Abraham. .76, 78, 127,
206, 214, 228, 263 Lindsay, Col. John .......... 50 Lipscomb, Dr. A. A. ......... 550 Lipscomb, Mrs. M. A. .......202
Livingston, L. F. ............409 Lochrane, Chief Justice O. A.,
Appendix. Long, Dr. Crawford W. ..... 153 Longfellow, H. W. ...... 5^7, 552 Longstreet, Judge A. B.,
37,176,177,369 Longstreet, Gen. James...334, 340
Love, Peter E. ...............247 Loveman, Robert ............551 Lowell, James Russell .......552
Lowry, W. M. ...............409 Lumpkin, George ............351 Lumpkin, John H., Candi
date for Governor in 1857, against Joseph E. Brown.
258, 259, 350, 351 Lumpkin, Joseph ........... .351
Lumpkin, Joseph Henry, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, advocate and orator,
Sketch, 357-366. Incidentals, 58, 59, 202, 226, 3^0, .371, 379, 392
Lumpkin, Joseph Henry, As sociate Justice of the Su preme Court ....350. Appendix.
Lumpkin, Martha ............ ~><3

INDEX,

761

Lumpkin, Samuel, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court ...... ..............350
Lumpkin, William ...........352 Lumpkin, Col. W. W. ....... 350 ivumpkin, Wilson, Governor
and United States Senator, Sketch .................3SO-3S7 Lumpkihs, The .......... .350-366 Lundy, Judge Win. ........... 93 Lyon, Tudge R. F. ........... 166
'M
McDaniel, Capt. C. A.. ......233 McDonald, Gov. C. J.....io8, 211 McDuffie, Senator ........... 101 McLendon, S. G. ........409, 441 Mclntosh, Gen. Lachlan. .17, 22, 24 Maclaren, Dr. Alex ..........275 Madison, James ........... 6, 343 Magruder, Gen. J. B. ........216 Mallory, Stephen R. ..........289 Marshall, John ..........343, 358 Martin, Maj. Luther ......... 119 Matthews, Governor ......... 31 Mayes, Chancellor ........... 161 Means, Dr. A. A. ...........551 Mell, Chancellor, P. H., edu
cator. Theologian, Parlia mentarian and Author. Sketch...... ..... .....447-453 Mell Volunteers .............233 Midway Church .............. 21 Milburn, Wm. Henry ........ 69 Miller, Andrew J........246, 248 Miller, Dr. H. V. M., United States benator .........88, 525 Miller, Stephen H ........... 8 Monroe, James ............8, 343 Moore, Judge Benning B.....ig8 Moore, Tom ................ 150 Morton. Oliver P............. 135 Moses, R. J. .................299 Natioleon and Ambassador Crawford ..... ............ 6
N
Newman, Judge Wm. T.. ... .408

New York Herald ...........216 Nisbet, Eugenius A., Associate
Justice of Supreme Court and Author of Ordinance of Secession, .in, 264, 357, 362,
37L 379 Nisbet, Capt. John ...........375 North American Magazine,
151, 152 Northen, Gov. W. T. ........409 Norwood, Thos. M., United
States Senator and author, 408, 415, 416
Notes on the Situation. ......297
O
O'Hara, Theodore ...........551 Ohl, Mrs. J. K. .............551 O'Kelly, Patrick ............. 149 "Old Rock" .................. 168
Page, Thomas Nelson .......5 c t Panola Guards ..............233 Parkhurst, Dr. C. H. .......267 Patterson, R. W...... .Appendix. Payne, John Howard ........ 549 Pendleton, General ..........334 Peeples, T. M. ..............409 Peter the Hermit ............201 Phillips, Wm. ................259 Pierce, Franklin .............207 Pierce, George F., Bishoo of
the Southern Methodist Church, educator and ora tor, Sketch, 454-472. Inci dental, 134 Appendix. Pierce, Lovick, theologian and orator, Sketch ........454, 472 Pierce, Reddick .............457 Pierces, The .............454-472 Polk, James K...........203, 205 Polk, Gen. Leonidas .........347 Porter, Rev. Rufus K.... .233, 235 Powell, Capt. F. S. ..........233 Prentiss, Sargeant S. ........435 Purse, Thomas ..............246

762

INDEX.

Q
Quinn, Minnie ...............551
Raccoon Roughs ............ -321 Raines, Dr. .................. US Ramsey, J. M. ............... 241 Randall, James R. ...........549 Randolph, John .....g, 31, 69, 70 Rawls, Morgan ............. .521 Reynolds, Parmedus .........247 Richardson, F. H..... .Appendix. Richelieu, Cardinal ..........156 Richmond Hussars ...........233 Riley, James Whitcomb ......545 Riordan, Julia .............. .552 Rogers, Samuel .............427 Roosevelt, Theodore ....... 12-25 Rootes, Thos. R. ........201, 508 Ross, John B. ...............396 Rutherford, Mildred ..... 163, 202 Rutherford, Prof. Williams,
56, 202 Ryan, Father ................ 547
S Sayre, Nathan C. ........... 58 Scott, Thos. F. ..............463 Scott, Gen. Winfield .........343 Scott, Dr. W. J. ............392 Screven, Gen. John .......22, 24 Siedell, Col. C. W. ........... 88 Reward, Wm. H. ............ 109 Shackelford, A. D. ..........247 Sherman, Gen. W. T...
H3, 348, 429, 438 Slaton, John M. .............507 Small. Sam W. ..........489, 551 Smith, Chas. H. (Bill Arp),
Sketch ....... .........473-481 Smith, Dr. Geo. C.. . 197, 455, 464 Smith, Governor Hoke .......429 Smith, P. F. .........Appendix. Speer, Emory, United States
District Court Judge, Con gressman and orator,
2/12, 245, 270, Appendix.

Soencer, Samuel ............ igg Spotswood, Governor ........ 195 Spurlock, J. M. ..............347 Stacy, Dr. James ............ 23 Stanley, Capt. M. ........... 233 Stanton, Frank L, poet,
Sketch ................. 542-545 Steiner, Dr. ................. 87 Stephens, Aaron G. .......... 51 Stephens, Capt. Alex..... .48, 49 Stephens, Alexander H., Vice-
President of the Confeder ate States, Congressman, Governor, author and ora tor, Sketches. Dramatic Debut, 52-63; Sage of Lib erty Hall, 64-79; Last Days, 80-90; Tootnbs and Ste phens, 123-129; Challenges Mr. Hill, 280-385; Inciden tals, 49, 100, 107, 118, 201, 204, 266, 270, 285, 317, 415. Appendix. Stephens, Andrew B. ......... 49 Stephens, John A. ........77, 88 Stephens, John L. ........... Stephens, Linton, Associate Justice Supreme Court. Sketch, 91-99. Incidental, 51, 75, 127, 134, 247, Ap pendix. Stephens Rifles ..............233 Stephenses, The ...........47-51 Stewart, Gen. Daniel... 14, 20, 21 Stewart, Judge John D.......408 Stiles, Wm. H. .........258, 259 Story, Judge ................. 95 Stovall, Pleasant A.. 102, 115, 137 Stovall, Capt. T. P. ..........233 Straus, Oscar S., Cabinet Of ficer..........516, 517, 518, 519 Straus, Nathan .........517, 518 Straus, Isidore ........ .517, 518 Straus, Lazarus ..............518 Sumner, Charles ............. 109
T Tail, Judge ............. .40, 41

INDEX.

763

Talmage, Dr. ............... .438 Taney, R. B. ............. ...343 Taylor, Gen. Zachary ........ 174 Thomas, Judge Thos. W. .528, 529 Thurmond, Alien G. ......... .311 Ticknor, Dr. F. O-, poet. . 196,
539, 540, 541 Tilden, Samuel J. .......... .274 Timrod, Henry ............. .551 Todd, Dr. J. S. ............. .396 Toombs, Robert, United -"
States Senator, Confederate Cabinet Officer, soldier, orator and statesman, Sketches : The Impassioned Mirabeau, 100-102: Dramat ic Flight into Exile, 113122; Toombs and Stephens, 123-129; Challenges Joseph E. Brown, 380-385; Bush Arbor Speech, 299-309. In cidentals, 58, 74, 79, 198, 204, 207, 209, 266, 270, 279, 280, 284. Appendix. Toombs, Maj. Robert .......352 Towns, Gov. Geo. W.IO7, 211, 246 Trammel!, L. N. ....259, 260. 409 Trippe, Judge R. P. .........247 Troup, Gov. Geo. M. ......... 44 Troup Artillery ............. .233
Uncle Remus (Joel Chandler Harris) . Sketch ....... .482-492
Underwood, Jno. W. H..I4O, 144 Underwood, Wm. H., Jurist
and Wit. Sketch ....... 140-146 Urquhart, Rev. John ......... 158 Upshaw, W. D. ............ .551

W
Waddell, Dr. Jno. N. .......463 Waddell, Dr. Moses ....5, II, 103 Waddell, Prof. Wm. Henry. .551 Wade, P. L..................-55I Walker, Maj. Freeman ....... 45 Wallace. Maj. Campbell ...... 55 Walsh, Patrick. .... .408, 411, 415 Ward, John E. .............. 23 Warner, Hiram, Associate
Justice Supreme Court, Sketch, 371-379, Incidentals, 258, 259, 357, 406, 408, 410. Washington. George .... 196, 343 Watson, Thos. E., Lawyer, Editor. Orator and States man, Advent into Politics. 411-415. Incidental. 405. Webster, Daniel...9, 66. 124,
256, 396 Wellborn, C. J. .............409 Wereat, John ................ 505 Western and Atlantic Rail
road .....'. ...... .....57, 274 Wesley, Chas. ............... 550 Wesley, John ............... 550 Wheeler, Gen. Joseph, Sketch,
342-349 White, Dr. S. G. ...........232 Wilde, James ............... 153 Wilde, Richard 'Henry, poet,
Sketch, 147-155. Incidental. 548 Williams, Col. John .......... 153 Williams, Col. John Joseph... 218 Wilson. Gen. J. H. ..........217 Wilkins, Grant .............. 23 Winship, Emory .............342 Worrell, E. H. ..............247 Wright, Boykin .......Apnendix.

Van Alien. Peter ............. 10 Van Buren, Martin ..........395 Van Epps, Judge Howard,
528 Appendix.
Vason, D. A. ...........409, 410 Voorhes, Dan W. ............311

Yazoo Fraud ................ 26 Young, Gen. P. M. B....232. 408 Yancey, B. C. ............233, 288 Yancey, Wm. L. ....287, 288, 374 Yancey, Goodloe ............288 Young, Wm. ................ 506