For solid and substantial worth without ornament or frippery, no son of Alabama has surpassed the Hon. James L. Pugh. His presence and bearing and his conversation and speeches conveyed the same idea. Utterly without ostentation, he acted and spoke with an evident absence of self-consciousness.
Mr. Pugh was a man of stable rather than of brilliant qualities, hence he was an intensely practical man. He was indifferent to nothing of interest, was never superficial, and regarded everything from the viewpoint of the practical. He was studious, judicial in his cast of mind, of conservative temperament, and deliberate of speech. Often animated in public address, he was never excitable or explosive. His every utterance indicated deliberation.
The year of his birth was identical with that of the admission of Alabama into the Union—1819. He came from hardy North Carolina stock, and was brought by his father to Alabama when he was only four years old. At eleven he was an orphan boy, a most precarious condition for one so young in a frontier state. A bare-footed boy, left largely to shift for himself, he afforded an index of his future worth and greatness, by engaging to ride the country mail on Saturdays in order to provide means for the payment of his tuition during the remainder of the week. Later, while yet a youth, he became a clerk in a dry goods establishment in Eufaula, where he obtained frugally hoarded means with which to prosecute his studies, meanwhile lookingforward to the law as a profession. After a severe taxation of strength during the day as a clerk, he would study late at night, and by such studious application, qualified himself for entrance on his legal studies. He studied law in the office of John Gill Shorter, who afterward became governor of Alabama.
After the entrance of Mr. Pugh on the practice of law for a number of years, he was chosen an elector on the Taylor ticket, and later still, was a Buchanan elector. Thus, before the people, his way to congress was opened, and as a member of the house of representatives he was chosen in 1858. The outbreak of the war occurring two years later, like all other southern members, he withdrew from congress, shared in the secession sentiment of the state, and was among the first to enlist as a volunteer from Alabama in the service of the Confederacy. He was enrolled as a private soldier in the first Alabama regiment of infantry.
He shouldered his musket and went with his command to Pensacola, where he underwent all the fortunes of a soldier in the ranks, declining any consideration because of the position which he had held as a member of the national congress. Numerous were the offers made him by his comrades to assume his duties, and thus relieve him of hardship, but all this he politely declined, and met the exactions of military duty with cheerful alacrity. His position was one that tested his mettle, for often beneath the blazing sun he was engaged in common with his comrades in throwing up earthworks. The regiment of which he was a member, was orderedto Paducah, Kentucky, where he served for a year, when his constituents recalled him by electing him a member of the Confederate congress. In his first race he had no opposition, but in the second campaign, in 1863, he had three opponents, but was a second time elected, and served the state in the congress of the Confederacy till the downfall of the government. No one was more loyal to the young government than Mr. Pugh, for there was not a month, of the four years of its career, that he was not engaged in its service. After the capitulation of the armies, he returned to Eufaula, and resumed the practice of law.
An ardent southerner and patriot, he naturally shared in the resistance against carpetbag rule, and as occasion would demand he would lend assistance to his struggling people, though he sought no office, but was rigid in his devotion to his profession. In the memorable contest of 1876, he was a Tilden elector, and made an active canvass in this and other states. In 1875, when the backbone of reconstruction was broken, he was chosen a member of the state constitutional convention, and rendered valuable service as one of the most prominent members of that body.
In appreciation of worth and service, Mr. Pugh was chosen a National Senator from Alabama in 1880, and was a yoke-fellow of John T. Morgan in the senate for the space of eighteen years. It was universally conceded that no state had a stronger brace of senators than Alabama during that period of southern rehabilitation. He was not conspicuous as a speechmaker in the senate chamber, though hewas not silent, for as occasion demanded he was heard, and always effectively. When he did arise to speak, he commanded universal attention, partly because of the high esteem in which he was held, and partly because it was understood that when Senator Pugh spoke it was with well-digested views on measures of great importance. He retired from the senate in 1897, being at that time seventy-seven years old, and returned to his home at Eufaula, where he resided till his death.
A review of the career of Mr. Pugh will reveal the fact that in all his emergencies from private life it was in response to recognized duty. He was not spectacular, and never relied on his oratory for popular acclaim. His power before the people lay in his impressiveness as a solid speaker, for no one could listen to him without the impression of the intensity of his conviction. Whether always right or not, he believed it, and therefore spoke. Only when he felt that he could be of service was that service tendered. No more convincing expression of his patriotism could be afforded than when as a returned congressman he quietly enlisted as a private in the ranks of the army, at a time when men vastly inferior to him were solicitous for commissions. This affords an index of the sturdiness of the character of Senator Pugh. No position ever held by him was characterized by other than by the most substantial efficiency. No man who ever represented Alabama in any sphere was more practically and patriotically loyal than James Lawrence Pugh.
The Rev. Anson West, D.D., was the chief Methodist historian of the state. While the work of which he is the author properly relates itself to the history of Methodism in Alabama, there is much collateral history necessarily embraced within its compass which makes it a valuable contribution to the archives of the state. In its scope, his history extends from the earliest settlement of Alabama by the whites, to a period well within the last decade of the nineteenth century—a span of well nigh a hundred years.
The history of a people such as the Methodists are, and have been from the fountain source of statehood, and even before, is not without immense value. Methodists have been a mighty force in Alabama, and still are, and the record of their achievements affecting all the orbits of life is a mighty stimulus, as is all history, for, as Goethe puts it, “The best thing which we derive from history is the enthusiasm that it raises in us.”
But the service rendered the state by Dr. Anson West is not to be restricted to his history of Methodism. He was a tower of strength in his generation, a man of commanding pulpit ability, a scholar of decided literary taste, and a character possessed of originality of thought and boldness of expression which challenged admiration, even though it did not always carry conviction. Not unlike most preachers, especially of the Methodist and Baptist ranks, of the period when his life dawned into manhood.Dr. West was a typical polemicist. In those early days of ecclesiastical controversy, the man who could wield the most trenchant blade, and deal the heaviest blows, elicited the most popular applause. Dr. West was a born debater, and every antagonist found him full panoplied and never averse to vindicate lustily any cause which he might espouse. Still he was a cultured gentleman, and numbered many friends among those with whom he denominationally differed. Nor were his disputations directed alone against those of an opposite school of theology, but within the pale of his own people his sword was often brandished in the espousal of a view which he cherished. It was in the field of controversy that Dr. West was at his best. Happily, those days of controversy, often not conducted in the gentlest spirit, are well behind us, but the time was when the clash of ecclesiastical combat resounded the country through. They had the redeeming value of stimulating thought, producing much literature of a sort, and creating schools which else would not have been. Not to be a combatant in those early days, was to be a man of inertness and of narrow influence.
As has already been said, there was an independence of character in Dr. West that awoke admiration in all capable of appreciating force and worth. As firmly rooted as a mountain on its base, he was incapable of a plausibility which veers toward unstableness. No matter in what relation, there was no misunderstanding any position which was taken by Dr. West. His countenance was an index to his firmness. He was sometimes firm even tosternness, an inherent quality of his character which was doubtless strengthened by the controversial period through which much of his early life was passed. But to have known him with any degree of intimacy, was to find that beneath a somewhat rugged exterior beat the heart of a genuine man. Advancing age softened and mellowed much of that which often led to a misunderstanding of his real nature.
Among the productions from his pen was a work entitled “The State of the Dead,” which work reveals much research and profound study on a much-mooted question. In the presentation of his views on divers subjects Dr. West was not unaware of encountering opposition, sometimes on the part of those with whom he was denominationally connected, but his convictions were never bridled in the expression of the independence of thought.
Nor was the life and career of Dr. West confined to his pulpit ministrations, with an occasional excursion into the field of authorship. He was a stalwart citizen and patriot, and with the courage of an Ajax he was ever ready to pronounce his views, and to wield his battle-ax, if necessary, in the advocacy of any question for the public weal. He was a man, and whatever interested men interested Dr. West. He was a citizen as well as a minister.
Dr. West was an ardent advocate of education, and often his tongue and pen were brought into requisition in the advocacy of this great cause. He had his own views of this public interest, and to have them was to express and to defend them.
Dr. West was a devout Methodist, and from his native temperament he could be none other thanan intense one, but the compass of his being was too great to circumscribe him to the boundaries of his own denomination in his relations to others. Numerous were his friends and associations beyond the pale of his own people. With the intensity and tenacity with which he clung to his church, there was not sufficient power embodied within the church to restrain him from a criticism of its policies or methods, if they happened to run counter to his own convictions. With the uniqueness of his individuality he impressed all with his earnestness and sincerity, and, much as one might oppose him, he could not withhold regard for his convictions. The sincerity of his convictions did not fail to find vent through his powerful tongue and the sharp point of his pen.
There was a wonderful blend of heroic manhood and unquestioned spirituality in the life and character of Dr. West. This served to make him impressive, and oftentimes powerful. Back of his often stern declarations lay an unquestioned spiritual force, and the combination of the two gave to Dr. West an assertiveness always to be reckoned with. His gifts and acquirements fitted him for a high sphere in the councils of his own communion, and while others differed with him, often widely, his sincerity was never a question, nor was his integrity ever challenged.
He passed through many testing periods during his eventful career, and went from the earth leaving behind him a trail of influence for good, and a vast contribution to the good of the public. He rests from his labors and his works do follow him.
The name of Eugene Allen Smith belongs to the roll of distinguished Alabama scholars. Autauga is his native county, where he was born October 27, 1841. Academic training was given him at Prattville, in his native county, till 1855, after which he went to Philadelphia to school, for a period of four years. On his return to Alabama, in 1859, he entered the junior class of the University of Alabama. The emergency of the times led to the adoption of a military system of government for the university, and Mr. Smith was a member of the first corps of cadets.
The war interfered with his course, and in 1862, he, together with other cadets, was detailed to go to Greenville to drill recruits at a camp of instruction. He did not return to the university to graduate, but received his degree of bachelor of arts from the university authorities, as the course leading to that degree had practically been taken by him. Commissioned as first lieutenant in one of the companies drilled at the camp of instruction, Mr. Smith saw service on the field, both in Tennessee and in Kentucky, sharing in the capture of Mumfordville, and in the battle of Perryville.
In recognition of his proficiency as a drill officer, Mr. Smith was detailed to the University of Alabama as instructor in tactics, at which post he continued till the end of hostilities between the states. Then he began in earnest his scholastic career, for in 1865 he went to Europe, and for three yearsstudied in the Universities of Berlin, Goettingen, and Heidelberg, devoting his time exclusively to the study of the sciences, with special reference to chemistry, physics, botany, mineralogy, and geology.
Dr. Smith’s course abroad was completed early in 1868, when he passed with the highest grade,summa cum laude, an examination for the degree of doctor of philosophy, having for his main subjects, mineralogy and geology, and for minor subjects, chemistry and botany. After reaping his degree, he remained still another semester at Heidelberg in attendance on lectures.
Possessed of an inquisitive and retentive mind, Dr. Smith, while in Europe, spent much of his time on tours of observation and scientific investigation in Russia, the Netherlands, the German states, Switzerland, the region of the Tyrol, Austria, France, and Italy, and when he started on his homeward trip he was engaged for a time in geological investigations both in England and in Scotland.
On his return to America, late in 1868, Dr. Smith went immediately to the University of Mississippi, serving as assistant on a geological survey. For three years he was devoted to the work of making chemical analyses of soils for the survey, varying his investigations by an occasional excursion into the cretaceous and tertiary formations of Mississippi, and in 1871, he published his first paper, “On the Geology of the Mississippi Bottom.”
During the following summer, Dr. Smith was elected to the chair of geology and mineralogy of the University of Alabama. Two years later, in 1873, he was appointed state geologist of Alabama,and for ten years his work on the survey was gratuitously rendered to the state. In 1880 he rendered valuable service in connection with the tenth census, furnishing reports on Alabama and Florida for the cotton culture volumes of that census.
While visiting Florida in connection with this mission, Dr. Smith discovered that the greater part of the peninsula of Florida was underlaid by a substratum of the Vicksburg or Eocene limestone, which comes to the surface at intervals down the peninsula through the overlying Miocene and later formations. The results of this tour were published in the American Journal of Science for April, 1881. A more comprehensive paper was written for the fourth report of the United States Entomological Commission, which embodied a general description of the climate, geological and agricultural features of the cotton-producing states.
In connection with all this labor, Dr. Smith had charge of the departments of chemistry and geology at the State University of Alabama for many years. In 1888 a new chemical laboratory was erected at the university, which addition, under the special direction of Dr. Smith, was thoroughly equipped with all needed chemical apparatus, and is one of the best chemical departments among those of the institutions of the South.
In the meantime worthy honors came to Dr. Smith from different quarters. He was appointed honorary commissioner to the Paris Exposition, from Alabama, in 1878. He became a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, serving as secretary and vice president ofthe geological section, and serving also as a member of the committee appointed by that body on the International Geological Congress and on the Geological Congress Auxiliary of the Columbian Exposition. He is a charter member of the Geological Society of America—of which he has been Vice President, member of the council and President in 1913. He was appointed to prepare the report of the American subcommittee on the Marine Cenozoic for the International Geological Congress.
Dr. Smith has long ranked the leading scientist of Alabama, and his investigations in the field of geology have been of immense value to the state and country. His connection with the state university has been one of its chief elements of popularity. Modest and shrinking in disposition, without the least obtrusiveness or assertion, he has not been estimated at his real worth to the public, and only those who have been thrown into immediate connection with him know of the enormity of his labor and of its value to the state. The young men under his instruction, and the learned faculty of the university prize his worth, and are unstinted in the expression of their estimation of his services. No son of Alabama has been more distinguished throughout America and among the savants abroad than Dr. Eugene Allen Smith.
The real educator does more than to impart knowledge and acquaint with principles with which to translate this knowledge into practical use—he imparts himself. No youth falls under the influence of a great teacher without taking with himself thereafter somewhat of that instructor. He is not the great and successful educator who merely knows, but one who does, as well.
This was pre-eminently the dominant power of James Thomas Murfee, LL.D., whose station in life and whose labors within the realm of education made him distinguished throughout the South, and beyond. To him education was a passion, not of the spasmodic sort which spends its force at theoretical random, but which he built into constructive character in such way as wisely to direct the instruction obtained. His idea was to build knowledge into character, making the one a component of the other, and thus construct manhood, not alone for usefulness in the ordinary humdrum of life, but in order to invest the entire man with an atmosphere conducive to making life radiant, delightful and useful—to teach one not alone to do, but to be. This was the conception which Dr. Murfee had of a thorough education.
Swayed by this purpose, Dr. Murfee for a long period of years, taught in several states, but the bulk of his lifework was done in Alabama. One never met him without finding him buoyant with enthusiasm concerning education. Nor did heexpend his theories in mere phrasing, but reduced them to actual practice. His was the enthusiasm of patience. His passion was to make men, and to turn to practical account every advantage afforded in the drill of the classroom to this end. He sought to excite assertion of a salutary sort, and then to impart the power for its execution. There are hundreds of men adorning the different vocations in this state and in others, including the preacher in the pulpit, who gratefully trace the inception of their success to this great teacher of youth.
Indeed, the rule is well nigh universal that a genuinely successful man is able to date the turning point of his life to the vital touch with some superior character, from which thrill has been derived, and as life broadens into stern practicalness, additional ingredients from the same source are appropriated which continue to tincture and temper for good throughout. While the recipients of these advantages may not be always conscious of the derivation of these augmenting and contributory forces, yet the fact remains that without the abiding presence of this once dominant force, life might have been vastly different.
There would come under the sway of this master of men, at the different institutions in which he served, raw lads from obscure rural retreats, unskilled, gawky, and awkward, yet within whom were powerful possibilities, which the student of character and the incisive teacher would detect, and, like the opaque diamond in the hand of the lapidary, the crude youth would yield results often the most astonishing.
Thus through multitudes who sat at his feet Dr. Murfee has been instrumental in changing the faces of many communities, as his students have taken their places in life. This expression is attributed to Alexander the Great: “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.”
All this is suggested by the life and career of the great teacher now under review. A life so long and so useful was necessarily varied. Born in Southampton County, Virginia, on September 13, 1833, Dr. Murfee lived through a number of the most stirring periods of our national history. His collegiate career was at the Virginia Military Institute, from which he was graduated with the rare distinction of never having received a demerit in a school, the most rigid and exacting in scholastic work and discipline. It is not surprising that the result was that he bore away the highest honors of his class, which occurred in 1853.
Dr. Murfee’s gifts and disposition led him to the adoption of the vocation of teaching, and he was called first to Lynchburg, Va., in that capacity; then, later, to the chair of physical science in Madison College, Pennsylvania. In 1860 he came to Alabama as professor of mathematics and commandant of cadets at our state university. During the war that followed, soon after his advent into the state, he became the lieutenant colonel of the Forty-first Alabama Regiment, but resigned to resume his duties at the University of Alabama. Near the close of the war, when the state was overrun by the federals, he commanded the cadets in an engagement at Tuscaloosa.
After the close of the war Dr. Murfee was engaged as architect to design and erect new buildings for the university, in place of the magnificent edifices destroyed by the enemy, to which stupendous task he set his hand and mind, recommending at the same time a new scheme of university organization, all of which was accepted by the board of trustees, but he was thwarted in his efforts by the reconstruction régime.
Called in 1871 to the presidency of Howard College, then at Marion, which institution had writhed in the throes incident to those troublous times, he brought it to the front as one of the best institutions of its grade then in the South. On the removal of Howard to Birmingham, in 1887, Dr. Murfee was tendered the presidency of the college in its new location, but preferred to remain at Marion, where he founded, in the original college buildings, the Marion Institute, of which he was the superintendent until 1906, when he retired from active service on an annuity from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This annuity was granted on the basis of “long and distinguished service to the cause of education in Alabama.”
In 1882, Dr. Murfee was appointed by President Harrison, a member of the board of visitors to the West Point Military Academy. After his retirement from active service, Dr. Murfee devoted his time leisurely to the development of the educational foundation at Marion, that it might become a source of perpetual strength to the state and to the South. On April 23, 1912, Dr. Murfee died at Miami, Fla., at the advanced age of seventy-nine years.
“Father Ryan,” as he is familiarly called, was Alabama’s sweet singer. He was a born poet, and sang because he could not help it. Emanating from the heart, his plaintive strains go straight to the head. Yet he wrote only at intervals. Moved by the afflatus which only a poet feels, he would now and then take up his poetic pen and give voice to the minstrelsy of his soul. His verse is merely fugitive snatches of song springing from an imagination essentially poetic, and a heart subdued by religious emotion. In no sense was poetry a profession with this charming lyrist, for he himself tells us that his verses “were written at random—off and on, here, there, anywhere—just when the mood came, with little of study and less of art, and always in a hurry.”
Leaping warm from the heart and taking the wings of poesy, his thought throbs with virility, and makes an appeal to the heart of another with a force that is irresistible; visions of matchless beauty rose continually before his imperial imagination and sought vent in song.
Had Father Ryan subjected his thought to the lapidary finish of the professional poet, it is doubtful if it would now be so popular. He wrote as he was moved, the fervid thought seizing the first words within reach as a vehicle, and thus they fall on the ear of the world.
Simple songs his poems are, generally melancholy, meditative, pensive, the chief virtue of them being that they touch the heart. His thoughts seemto move in popular orbits in search of objects invested with the plaintive. It is not the weirdness so often met with in Poe that one encounters in the poetry of Ryan, but the touch of moaning, the sadness of a burdened heart yearning and burning for that which it has not, but hopes for and looks for in other realms yet unrevealed. Resounding corridors of gloom, dimly lighted vestibules, processions of mourners moving till lost in darkness, the chimes of melancholy airs heard by mystic ears, the muffled footfall in mysterious darkness, the touch of vanished hands, the outreach of timorous arms through the gloom for a kindred touch, the sighing of a soul for its inheritance—these are the elements which resound his verses through.
Much of his poetry savors of his theologic thought and environment, and, naturally enough, the object frequently pertains to that dear to the devout Catholic; but it is not about the substance of his thought that we here speak, but of his undoubted genius as a poet. Equal objection might prevail against much that is written by other poets, as, for instance, the substance of some of Poe’s productions, whose “Annabel Lee” is heathen throughout, but it is poetic in its every syllable.
The symbols and paraphernalia of his church, its worship, and all that pertains to it may be encountered in one way or another in the poetry of Ryan, but the undoubted genius with which it is wrought and molded into verse is that which fascinates the lover of poetry.
That Father Ryan would have been pre-eminent in poetry had he exercised his powers, seems clear.The vividness of expression, the subtle beauty inherent in his strains, and the deft touch given his thought are those of the genuine poet. He dwells apart from the ordinary drift of thought. The coloring of his thought was derived from numerous sources, and, emitted from the furnace of his heart, it was ever in transformed shape. The rattle and clatter of the rushing world fell on the ear of his soul with the element of melody. His emotions were pent up, and when they leaped their barriers, they gave to a responsive soul-world that which we call Father Ryan’s poems. His own soul, subdued to softness and gentleness by his inner reflection, sang itself in musical cadence.
His verse, always graceful and often brilliant, flowing melodious and limpid with the lilt of a landscape rill, borrowing delicate tints of beauty from the greensward and varied bloom which fringe its banks, and flashing back the light derived from heaven, makes an instinctive appeal to the soul of the reader, and has a sobering effect on his thought. From the source to the sea there is the same gentle flow with its occasional puddle and its subdued sound of ripple.
That which our poet does is more indicative of possibility than of final actuality. His strains are merely soft touches of the fingers of the musician on the keys of the soul, and yet they evoke such melody that one wishes the reserved force of the soul, whence they come, might have fuller and freer expression, that the slight thrill experienced might rise to rhapsody.
Most rare are many of the pithy passages to bemet with in his productions. Did space permit, it would be a delight to enumerate many of these gems which glitter along his pages, but only one or two may here be indicated. On the occasion of a visit to Rome, he penned a fragment on “After Seeing Pius IX.” The first four lines are here quoted to illustrate the power of the poet derived from a mere glance of a man’s face, and in the last two of the lines quoted resides a power in metaphor rarely met with. Says the poet:
“I saw his face today; he looks a chiefWho fears not human rage, nor human guile;Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief,But in that grief the starlight of a smile.”
The transference of the idea of the twilight and the gentle star meekly peeping through, to the struggle discerned in the features of one, is a picture that would occur to none other than a poet.
Equally striking is the beauty of the figure contained in his “A Land Without Ruins,” where he says:
“Yes, give me the land where the battle’s red blastHas flashed to the future the fame of the past.”
Numerous are the striking pictures which he brings before the eye by one single stroke of the pen. Nor does Father Ryan conjure with the emotions merely to quicken and to stir for the moment. Indeed, he does not seem conscious of that which he has done and so greatly done; he merely sings out his soul in low refrain and leaves his melody lingering in the air.
Ryan was patriotic to the core. In the thunderous years of the great Civil War his pen was busy with the ink of patriotic fire, but the aftermath of the war was more aptly suited to his nature. When in her night of sorrow, the South was a land of mounded graves, within which slept a generation of young heroes, while blackened chimneys stood sentinel over them, and while the monuments of the South were only heaps of charred ruins, and her once fair fields were littered with wreck and disaster, these appealed to our lyrist with unwonted force. The spirit of his Hibernian blood was invincible, and when embodied in a stream of poetic fire it illuminated scenes which else were dreary and desolate. From out the environment of darkness and ruin, his spirit sought the solace which the future must bring in recognition of principle, and thus he sang. Thousands who differed with Father Ryan religiously, honored him as a gifted singer. He has but scant recognition in the literary history of the country, but this is to be expected. He was largely a poet of locality, both geographically and religiously, and wrote not so much for others as for his own pastime, but Alabama owes him much as her greatest poet. Because of the genuine merit inhering in his verse, and because of the unquestioned worth attaching to his productions, he is easily the file leader of the literary spirits of Alabama.
The presentation of the name of Colonel Powell suggests a turning point in the history of the state. A new era had dawned of which Colonel Powell was an exponent. The long agitation with which the country was rocked for decades, had culminated in bloody conflict which was waged to exhaustion. The turbulence of rehabilitation represented in the struggles of reconstruction had followed, and now the eyes of the people were once more turned to the ways of peace and re-established prosperity. Resources practically immeasurable were untouched in the soils and mountains of a great state, and public thought began to peer into the future with a longing for tranquil prosperity. A class of men represented by the subject of this sketch was in demand, and, as is always true, when the demand exists for men they are to be found. Thus appeared this pioneer at the threshold of a new era.
A native of Brunswick County, Virginia, Mr. Powell, while yet a beardless youth, had ridden the distance from Virginia to Alabama on horseback. This was before Alabama had emerged into statehood. On his faithful horse he reached the straggling village of Montgomery with less than twenty dollars in his pockets. Entering on life in the new region to which he had come, as a mail contractor, he gradually rose to the direction of a line of stage coaches for the transportation of mail and passengers, and with a widening horizon of business tact and comprehensiveness of enterprise for which hewas remarkable, he adjusted his stage coach enterprise to a chain of hotels, the most noted of which were located at Montgomery, Lowndesboro and Wetumpka. These interests flourished as the people continued to pour into the new state. As the forests were transmuted into smiling fields, villages, and towns began to emerge into populous centers, and institutions began to flourish. While Powell was instrumental in making new conditions, the conditions were making Powell. A man grows by the means which he creates. While he makes a fortune the fortune makes him. Gifted with an enterprising and constructive mind, Mr. Powell was gradually coming to that stage for which his life was fitting him. The combination of conditions which followed in the wake of the turbulence of years, was one which would arrest the enterprising eye of a man of executive skill, and breadth of vision, which James R. Powell had. Two unfinished lines of railway penetrated the state, in part, one reaching from the Gulf northward, but checked by mountain barriers, the other stretching from the fertile West southward, but halting before the mountains, beyond which was the line with which it was destined to be linked in the creation of one of the greatest arteries of commerce in the South. Between the two, lay a wide barrier of mountain region, in which were embosomed untouched treasures which were destined in their development to excite the interest of the world.
With these resources was associated in the fertile brain of James R. Powell, the picture of a mineral metropolis in the mountains of north Alabama, andin a region where men least dreamed of such a possible creation. He had engineered primitive mail routes, first on horseback, and later by the rumbling coach, and widening the expansion of interest and effort by the establishment of timely hostelries, but here he was destined to crown his unusual career as the builder of a mighty city. Hence, Birmingham.
In the rush and rattle of a great mart, such as Birmingham has become, those of a later generation, who throng its streets of architectural magnificence, and gaze on its piles of splendor, are apt to forget those who laid the foundation stones of the great municipality, and made possible a mighty urban center, destined to eclipse all others of the South in compass and in the number of its people. Men are apt to tread with careless feet over the unmarked graves of the harbingers of that bequeathed to a later generation, forgetful of the brain which contrived and the hand which executed.
It is not the phrase of empty eulogium to speak of James R. Powell as one of the greatest of Alabamians. Unlettered in the schools, he followed the unerring finger of a transparent judgment, and unawed by formidableness of difficulty or vastness of scheme, he planned and wrought, both wisely, and, propelled by a pluck born of the enthusiasm of patience, he succeeded. The career of a man like this in a generation, or even in a century, is a vital inspiration, and far worthier of record more elaborate, than a brief and humble sketch like this.
Incidents in his career illustrative of his native and inherent greatness, are worthy of at least a casual notice not only, but of permanent embalmmentin the memories of those who reaped where he sowed. Men like the subject of the present sketch are apt to be thought of as sordid and selfish, while with intensity of spirit and strenuousness of brow, they drive impetuously over obstruction, forgetful of the gentler amenities of life. Oftener, however, than is supposed, there is beneath the intense exterior, hearts of corresponding compass with the sweep of executive activity. There were many instances of gentle and substantial worth woven into the career of Colonel Powell, only one of which is here given.
The record of the severity of the winter of 1863 is phenomenal in meteorological chronicles. The lakes and ponds were covered with a thick stratum of ice. An object of wonder to many, the phenomenon addressed itself to the practical side of the mind of Colonel Powell, who cut large quantities of the ice and carefully stored it away. The manufacture of ice was then practically unknown as a commodity for market, and it was in great demand in the hospitals of the Confederacy. He declined an offer of forty thousand dollars for his store of ice, and presented it to the Confederate army hospital department, for use in Alabama and Georgia. Many acts of generous spirit were his, but they belong to the chronicles of unwritten history.
In 1871, James R. Powell, at the head of the famous Elyton Land Company, was scouring the territory of Jefferson County with the plan in view of founding here a large city, the logical result of the immense resources embedded in the hills and mountains of this favored region. The Louisville& Nashville Railroad had supplied the missing link between the North and South, and Colonel Powell was among the first to see the possibility of a great city in this region. While the local and adjacent resources were then only imperfectly known, they were sufficiently known to justify the colossal proposal of a mighty emporium. The task was herculean, but the projector was a man of wide experience in grappling with odds, and in subordinating to the mastery of his will the disputing difficulties. Small minds quarrel and quibble over points of inconsequence, while giants stride over them with serene non-recognition.
Without tiring, Colonel Powell gave the world accounts of the fabulous resources of the district of the prospective city. The facts first published throughout the United States and Europe, were first regarded as speculative rose-water, but they in truth represented only a stiver of that which subsequently came to be known.
Birmingham was first a straggling, struggling village, penetrated here and there at irregular distances, by rugged highways, the terror of the driver in a rainy season. Diminutive houses dotted the scene over, without respect to order or system. One small brick structure stood where now stands the Brown-Marx Building, then the most substantial expression of confidence yet given. Highways of deep red clay ran past the building on either side, and among the shanties and small houses was an occasional dingy tent.
Under such conditions, Colonel Powell, with his usual daring, ventured to invite the session of theAlabama Press Association to hold its session in “the city of Birmingham,” in 1873. He succeeded, but, not content with this, he appeared before the body and again pleaded that the following session be held here also. He encountered stout opposition for two reasons, namely, Birmingham was a most uninviting place, without accommodation, and other places of the state wanted the next session. But, combining diplomacy with suavity, Powell prevailed a second time. Having succeeded in this, he urged that the New York Press Association, which would be meeting at the same time, be invited to join their brethren of the quill in Alabama. Such temerity staggered the body. Besides the ragged and rugged conditions existing, the New York press was hostile to that of the South, because of its opposition to President Grant in his southern policy. Insuperable seemed the barriers in the way of such an accomplishment as Colonel Powell sought, but he overbore all obstruction, and succeeded.
The result of such movement, coupled with the geological investigations going steadily on meanwhile, made Birmingham secure. The voice of the northern press resounded throughout all the states, and went beyond the Atlantic. Honorable Abram S. Hewitt, of New York, sounded the prophetic expression: “The fact is plain—Alabama is to become the iron manufacturing center of the habitable globe.” A wave of awakening light spread throughout the financial world, and Birmingham was secure.
But a new disaster arose. A scourge of Asiatic cholera smote the young city now struggling to the birth. The dead were numerous, and a funeral pallhung over the town. Colonel Powell remained with Roman courage on the ground, caring for the suffering, burying the dead, and preserving order. Pestilence stalked along the rugged streets and wasted at noonday, but the faith of this man of iron nerve was unshaken. His courage stiffened that of others—his faith was contagious. No wonder that he came to be called “The Duke of Birmingham.” No special shaft marks the recognition of this mighty builder of a great city, but the city attests his power. In the dim light in St. Paul’s, in London, the tourist reads a tablet, “Christopher Wren, builder. Would you seek his monument? Look around.” Not otherwise is the relation of Greater Birmingham to James R. Powell. Its towering turrets and lofty buildings, its residence palaces and shaded streets, its smoking stacks and hives of mineral mines, and its numerous railway lines with their cargoes of daily traffic—these are his monument.
That one so great and noble should come to a death so novel and untimely is a mystery. He fell a victim to a pistol fired by a beardless youth in a Mississippi tavern, in 1883. For all the future his monument will stand, Alabama’s greatest city.
In the year 1851 there might have been seen working in a grocery store, in Montgomery, a sprightly lad of ten, whose father had just died, and whose mother had removed to the Capital City. This boy was Henry DeBardeleben, destined to become prominent not alone in the development of the resources of the state of Alabama, but a picturesque figure in the coal and iron industry of the South.
Friendships of other days had united the Pratts and the DeBardelebens, which led to the guardianship of the lad by Alabama’s pioneer manufacturer, Daniel Pratt, under whom Mr. DeBardeleben was directly and fortunately fitted for life. His academic course over, the young man was placed as superintendent over the famous gin factory at Prattville. Mr. DeBardeleben found in business a more congenial air than he found in books. The harness of work in the supervision of a manufactory was more easily adjusted to the young man than was that of the schoolroom, and the young man shed the one and gladly donned the other, for, from the outset, he cared but little for books, only as they could be used as tools to bring something to pass.
In the new sphere in which he now was, young DeBardeleben was of just the cast of temperament to seize the principles of business, work them into habit, and translate them into life. He learned those under the tutelage of Daniel Pratt, and in later years often alluded to them by the power of association with conditions encountered in future life. Forinstance, Mr. Pratt would never allow a piece of timber the least defective to be used in the manufacture of gins. It must be thoroughly seasoned, and be sound in every respect. Then, too, no defect must be sought to be concealed by an oversmear of paint, but solid merit must be in every splinter, screw and nail. Besides, no promise must be made that was not to be literally kept, if possible, and all bills must be promptly met to the day. In addition still, there must be no lounging or lolling during working hours, for idleness was akin to criminality in the mind of Daniel Pratt, and things must move while they were working.
Easily susceptible, the young man grasped these as cardinal principles of life, and they became to him abiding oracles for which he cherished the highest regard. Becoming the son-in-law of Mr. Pratt, marrying his only daughter, and, indeed, his only child, Mr. DeBardeleben necessarily became the more intimate with the proprietor and father-in-law.
One of the first interests enlisting the attention of Mr. DeBardeleben was that of a central system of railway through the heart of Alabama. A railroad from the Gulf reached the base of the mountains of north Alabama, but there it stopped. From the opposite direction another descended from Nashville into Alabama, and likewise stopped on the opposite side of the mountains. To see this missing link supplied by the knitting together of the two ends was a matter of deep concern to Mr. DeBardeleben, and he rested not till it was done. That accomplished, the opening of the resourcesembedded in the mountains and hills of north Alabama enlisted him. As he came to learn more of these abounding deposits his enthusiasm was enlisted as never before, and visions of accomplishment rose before him to lure him to fresher endeavor. It is not possible within the narrow compass of a slight sketch even to name the enterprises to which he set his hand, and only the barest outline of the man and of his achievements is possible.
The combination of elements in his character was exceedingly rare. He was a great and perpetual dreamer, but his dreaming was of the solid and constructive sort. No day dreams nor woven rainbows were his, merely for entertainment of lazy hours. He pictured possibilities, not visionary vacuities. He had poetry in his being, but it was the poetry that was practical. He was a great poet and a great business prince combined. He was not unmindful of the formidableness of difficulty, but it inspired rather than deterred him. Underneath the ardor of the man was a solid substratum of calculation, and a calculation that took into account herculean effort. His penetration was sharp, quick and decisive.
In this sweeping delineation the fact is not overlooked that Mr. DeBardeleben was forced to succumb to the inevitable when Birmingham fell a victim to the cholera scourge, and equally to the prostration occasioned by the memorable Black Friday in Wall street, the effects of which event fell with crashing weight on every interest throughout the Union. Furnaces grew cold, the pick in themine lay idle, eager laborers sat holding their hands in idleness, and a nightmare fell on the nation throughout. To have known Birmingham in those days would have been to know a forlorn town, straggling and gloomy, while the environing districts were silent and smokeless.
But the darkness gradually wore back to light.
With the return of dawn, men were open-eyed for advantage in the great mineral domains of Alabama. Mr. DeBardeleben returned to Birmingham in 1877 with an immense fortune at his command, for he was the successor of Daniel Pratt. Now he became united with Colonel Sloss and Mr. T. H. Aldrich, names forever inseparable from the history of the mineral development of north Alabama, and an invincible trio it was.
In the immense enterprises now entered on by the three, there was sufficient in the colossal proportions of the undertakings for the adjustment and adaptation of the peculiar gifts of all. Mr. DeBardeleben was the chief planner and sagacious seer of the group, and daring he was in all the enterprises proposed, but he was willing not alone to see, but to do. The expansive fields of ore constantly challenged his highest forces of enthusiasm and energy, and he chafed under his own limitations, as a man, to meet the challenge forthwith. Dreaming in the solid way already indicated, planning by day and night, and meanwhile always doing, Mr. DeBardeleben was a prodigious factor of development in this marvelous district.
It was the dawn of a great era in the history of the Birmingham district when Henry FairchildDeBardeleben combined his immense energy and equally immense fortune in its development. He took the refluent tide of prosperity at its fountain, and, directing it into new channels, rehabilitated the district, and in the transformation made others forgetful of the preceding gloom. Indifferent to fame, he was intent on gratifying his unceasing enterprise and energy by seeing the strides of development made.
Altogether worthy of enrollment among the great men of Alabama, is the name of Governor William C. Oates. His service to the state for many years was varied and loyal. He was crowned with honors by his countrymen and was altogether worthy. Reared to manhood with only ordinary educational advantages, he was for many years recognized as one of the foremost citizens of the state. He was a man of solid qualities without the glint of the picturesque or the foil of the superficial. Honesty was his purpose in life, and in view of this quality, his faults were as transparent as were his merits. In no cause or issue was there a misapprehension of his position. If in some respects he was rugged, it was due to the fact that he did not propose to pose for that which he was not. He had his enemies, but they were no more cordial in their opposition than were his numerous and strong friends in their attachment and loyalty.
In the dawn of manhood he gave but little promise of success. Leaving home at the age of sixteen, he roved the far Southwest for a period of years, struck the hard sides of life, and returned to his home more matured in wisdom by his bitter experience, and came to realize the necessity of stability of plan and purpose in order to succeed. In the raw region of Henry County, as it then was, Oates taught a rural school for a period of months, later readdressed himself to study, and finished his course at a high school at Lawrenceville. At that time thebar opened the widest and most inviting gateway to eminence, and Oates aspired to be a lawyer.
In the office of Pugh, Bullock & Buford, at Eufaula, the rustic aspirant learned the principles of his chosen profession, and was admitted to the bar in 1858. Locating in the rural village of Abbeville, the seat of justice of Henry County, he rose to be the leading lawyer of southeast Alabama, and gradually came to be recognized as one of the best lawyers of the state. His matter-of-fact manner and sturdy honesty won him a wide circle of confidence, and men would ride on horseback long distances to engage his professional service.
The rural press was not so abundant at that early day as it has since become, and because of a lack of representation in that then inaccessible region, he edited a newspaper at Abbeville. He was engaged in the combined functions of editing a country journal and practicing law, when the storm of war broke over the land in 1861. Raising a company of volunteers, he became the captain, and was attached to the Fifteenth Alabama Regiment of Infantry. He led his command into twenty-seven battles and became conspicuous for his courage on the field. He received his commission as colonel in 1863, and received a wound at Brown’s Ferry, on the Tennessee River, near the close of that year. At Fussell’s Mills, near Petersburg, Va., he sustained the loss of his right arm, but after recovering from the wound, he resumed the command of his regiment, which command he retained until the close of the war.
Returning to Abbeville after his capitulation,Colonel Oates again took up his practice, and came to be esteemed one of the leading citizens of the state. With all important movements in the state he was connected, and his practice meanwhile became immense, so that Colonel Oates came to be regarded not only as one of the most successful and leading lawyers of the state, but one of the most prosperous. In many ways his name was prominently known throughout the state, and a number of times mentioned in connection with gubernatorial honors. This was notably true in the two conventions for the nomination of a governor in the years 1870 and 1872.
In 1870 he represented Henry County in the state legislature, where he became a distinguished leader. His service as a legislator brought him still more prominently before the public. He was a member of the constitutional convention in 1875, and from 1881 to 1894 he served his district, the third Alabama, in the National Congress. His long and useful career in congress gave him an influence second to that of none other of the Alabama delegation. He was serving in congress when he was chosen governor of the state in 1895.
Shortly after this came the monetary slogan of the free coinage of silver at the sixteen-to-one ratio, of which William Jennings Bryan was the apostle, and Governor Oates was with the minority of eminent Alabamians who resisted the doctrine, in consequence of which he paid the penalty of defeat at the polls for the national senatorship in a subsequent election.
When the Spanish-American War began in 1898Governor Oates was commissioned a brigadier general and served throughout the ninety-three days of that sharp and decisive contest.
He was again chosen a member of the convention which revised the state constitution, in which body his services were of immense value to Alabama. His closing years were spent in the city of Montgomery, where he continued to practice law till compelled by failure of vision to surrender it. He died at an advanced age.
Reviewing a sketch so brief and imperfect, and one altogether unworthy of his long career of usefulness, we are enabled to glean sufficient to learn that for a full half century Governor Oates was engaged in contributing to the growth and development of the state. The stations filled by him with ability so signal, and extending through so many years, attest his usefulness as a valuable citizen of Alabama. As a lawyer of distinction, a soldier as courageous as any son of Alabama, a delegate in molding the fundamental law of the commonwealth, a statesman whose qualities were signally demonstrated in the halls of congress, and in the gubernatorial chair, there is due him the worthiest praise. Solid rather than brilliant, rugged rather than polished, useful rather than ornate, and substantial without the alloy of artificiality, there were embodied in Governor Oates elements of genuine greatness. In nothing mediocre, he rendered a permanent service to Alabama and went to his grave as one of the state’s most distinguished public servants.
Judge Jonathan Haralson was an eminent type of that generation of southern gentlemen who were a connecting link between the old and the new South. He had just reached the threshold of cultured manhood when the crash of war came. He was of the finished mold of the young southerners of that period. He descended from a noble stock that was pre-eminent in southern society and in the affairs of his native section. His father belonged to that wealthy class of typical planters that gave prestige to the South on two continents. His uncle, General Hugh A. Haralson, was one of the most distinguished congressmen from Georgia, and for many years together was one of the most learned jurists of that state.
Graduating from the University of Alabama in 1851, Judge Jonathan Haralson studied law and was admitted to the bar a year later, but in order to equip himself thoroughly he went to the law school of the University of Louisiana, where he spent a year and obtained his degree of LL.B. He immediately entered on the practice in Selma, where he became eminent as a citizen, barrister, and an active Christian.
When, in 1876, the legislature of Alabama organized the city court of Selma, a court of common law with civil, criminal and equity jurisdiction, the bar of Dallas County recommended Judge Haralson to Governor Houston for the judgeship of this court. For sixteen years he presided over the court withsignal ability. At the end of that time he was elected to the supreme bench of the state, where he served for twelve years.
One of the distinctions conspicuous among others possessed by Judge Haralson is worthy of special mention. His unusual culture, affableness of disposition, cheerfulness, varied ability, and prominence in Christian work found for him unsought niches of high honor in Christian work. Purely in recognition of his worth, he was chosen the president of the Baptist State Convention of Alabama in 1874, which position he held for eighteen years, and was the most distinguished layman in the denomination of the state during that time. In 1888 he was chosen the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which embraces the largest Baptist constituency in the world, and for ten successive years presided over that great body. He was a model parliamentarian, and came to rank as one of the foremost laymen of his denomination in the union. His retirement from that position was voluntary, for no one ever enjoyed more universal confidence and popularity than he.
Other honors still were his. He was for many years a member of the board of trustees of the Polytechnic Institute at Auburn, chairman of the board of trustees of Howard College, and a member of the American Baptist Education Society. An index to the character of Judge Haralson is afforded in the remark which he has been heard to make that he suffered nothing to interfere with his religious obligations. His conception of life throughout was ideal. Himself a model of genuine manliness, hesought to stimulate it in others. In all things his method was that of exactness. There was a scrupulous care in his bearing, his speech, his conduct toward others, and to the close of his life, the little amenities that make up so much of life, were not lacking in his character. While his high sense of manliness begot firmness, it was of that type which always bore the stamp of gentleness.
His suavity won him friends by the multitude, and his character and ability gained for him unlimited confidence. Presiding over bodies sometimes rent by agitation, where skill and firmness were put to the severest test, such was his personal influence, and such the confidence reposed in him, that no appeals from his decision as a parliamentary officer were ever taken.
Judge Haralson has but recently passed away, leaving behind him a record of public life of more than fifty years, with not a dent in his shield or a tarnish on his armor. He labored as long as he was able, and under the weight of years voluntarily retired from public life. His death occurred in his eighty-second year. In the quietude of his own home circle in Montgomery, after his retirement from the supreme bench, he serenely awaited the call of death.
Among the public men produced by Alabama, none ever excelled Judge Jonathan Haralson in loftiness of character, incorruptibleness of life, gentleness of disposition, and fidelity to duty. He was never the least ostentatious. His manner was quiet and cordial, and never the least reserved. While his conclusions were always positive andfirm, they were so tempered by gentleness as to leave never a shadow behind. He was as cautious of the feelings of others as he was for those of his own.
No man was freer of self-seeking. It was purely in recognition of his worth that he was called forth by others to the varied functions which he performed. His companionableness bound to him the best of men who loved him because of the loftiness of his life.
He lived throughout, the life of a typical southern gentleman—easy and quiet of manner, pleasing always in his address, unstilted, yet possessed of all the graces of the highest expression of culture. He was never profuse of praise or of compliment, but indulged in a sort of pleasing raillery and jest in which was couched an estimate which he entertained, and which meant immensely more from him than would the extravagance of many another. In a circle of friends he was invariably charming. His appreciation of a joke was delightful, and in this he indulged to the close. Jocular without yielding to unseemly levity, easy without undue freedom or familiarity, sometimes slightly stinging in his jovial criticisms of those for whom he had the highest regard, he always recognized the boundary of propriety, and never suffered himself to be betrayed beyond. There was no assumption either in his speech or manner. He was simple, while at the same time great in very many respects, invariably respectful, and dutiful to every trust, as a friend and as an official—these were the dominant traits in the character and life of Judge Jonathan Haralson.