USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 15
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ABSALOM FOWLER.
This great lawyer was born in middle Tennessee, of poor and obscure parentage, and was of mixed Saxon and Jewish blood. It is much regretted that his early life is unknown to his most intimate friends in Arkansas who now survive him. The year when he came to Arkansas is not now easily estab- lished. Hon. Samuel W. Williams, one of his most intimate friends, is of the opinion he came here in 1833, but sev- eral well-known facts in his history clearly indicate that he came to the territory of Arkansas at an earlier date. In 1836 he was a leading spirit in the constitutional convention, the ac- knowledged leader of the whig party, and its candidate for governor in that year, positions scarcely compatible with so short a residence, when there were many able men in the whig party. Colonel Fowler's adopted daughter, now Mrs. Mary A. Nobles of Arkansas county, in a recent letter to the au- thor, says: "Colonel Fowler came from Murfreesboro, Ten- nessee, I have often heard him say, when he was about twenty- two years of age. He died June the 4th, 1859, aged fifty- seven years." This, if true, fixes his birth in 1802, and his advent in Arkansas in 1824 or 1825.
Another circumstance strongly indicates a residence nere earlier than 1833. Tradition says he came on foot from Mein- phis over the old military road to Little Rock, with his ward- robe in a pair of saddle-bags thrown over his shoulder; that he was poor, but, before the great financial crisis of 1837, had accumulated much property with the proceeds of his profes- sional labors.
His physical manhood looked the perfection of nature's works, and challenged the admiration of all who beheld it ; poor, but proud and imperious as Jove, he had no following in the beginning, no lineage to commend, no friends to pro- mote his advancement but the unclouded splendor of a great intellect wedded to untiring energy, and one of the best physi- cal constitutions ever given to the children of men, supplied them all, and conducted him to the front rank, at a bar boasting Ashley, Crittenden, William Cummins and afterward Pike, Hempstead and many others. There was no legal question too
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ELECTRO LIGHT EN
ABSALOM FOWLER.
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complicated or abstruse to appear simple and as clear as a sun- beam under the inspiration of his cultivated genius. The first twenty volumes of our reports attest the accuracy and depth of his legal attainments. Dauntless, he knew no fear, rigid in his exactions, unbending in his resolve, harsh and imperious, austere and overbearing in his great forensic conflicts, he had no devoted following like Crittenden, Ashley, Fulton, Sevier, Bob Johnson, Pike and the Conways, but his talents and genins rivaled the cold splendor of an arctic glacier throwing back the rays of a frozen sun.
In the trial of a case in the Federal court prior to 1840, Fowler prosecuting, Ashley defending, angry words and insults passed between them, and Fowler picked up a cut-glass ink- stand and hurled it at Ashley, cutting a severe gash over the eye, from which blood spouted in great profusion over books, papers and the table between them. Some years after this in the argument of an important land suit at Jacksonport, he boldly denounced a combination of land-pirates and whipped them with a scorpion's lash. That night the pirates rallied their clans and proceeded to the office occupied by Fowler to lynch him. When the mob came surging up he sprang to his feet, seized a pistol in each hand, met them at the door, and in the most imperious tones ever uttered by man, demanded a halt, and with arms presented told them he would shoot down the first man who dared advance an inch. The mob halted, reeled and was dumbfounded at the exalted, defiant spirit of one great and fearless man. Then the eloquent denouncer of crime repeated the awful castigation, and the mob slunk away as from an eruption of Vesuvius.
Colonel Samuel W. Williams, in a recent letter to the author, says : " Fowler was beyond question a great man; he was natu- rally a military genius - commanded and masterly handled the State troops when the Cherokees were rising. If he had chosen arms instead of law, he would have made a combina- tion of Grant's daring, Lee's conservatism and Stonewall Jack- son's dash. I don't think America would have had a nobler military character, if our civil war had broken out in 1840 in- stead of 1861. Beyond question he was an orator, and in practice had no superior at the bar. There is a tender side to his faults."
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He made a brilliant canvass in 1836 against James S. Con- way for governor, but, in a total of seven thousand seven hundred and sixteen votes, was defeated by a majority of one thousand one hundred and two. In 1838, and again in 1844-5, he was a member of the legislature from Pulaski, after which he seems to have dropped out of politics and devoted all his time to his profession. He wore out a splendid physical constitution in the ceaseless drafts made on it by tremendous energies. In April, 1859, whilst engaged in the earnest argument of a case in the Federal court at Little Rock, he was stricken with paralysis, from which he never recovered. He lingered until the 4th of June, when one of the greatest lawyers Arkansas ever had passed away.
GOVERNOR THOMAS S. DREW.
Madam Fortune, in her republican log cabin, becomes a fickle dame in the disposition of her wares. A rail splitter, tailor, and tanner, each in turn through her favor became president ; a cobbler, vice-president ; a well-digger, governor of a neighbor- ing Commonwealth, and a New England peddler-boy governor of Arkansas.
Thomas S. Drew was a native of New England, an honest farmer's son. After acquiring a good common-school educa- tion he left home to seek his fortune in the south-west, and came into Arkansas through the gates of Missouri in early ter- ritorial times, following the unpretending avocation of peddler for several years. He was truthful, open, frank, honest, and readily won the confidence of the early pioneer, and was always a welcome and desired visitor on his periodical circuit to dis- pose of his wares. The toiling husbandman, the hunter, and good housewife commissioned him for a thousand favors when purchasing in the east, and always found him responsively accommodating.
When the settlements began to be prolific enough with chil- dren he changed his avocation to that of school teacher on the primitive basis, and finally wedded a pioneer's daughter, who brought a dowry of fifteen to twenty slaves and a good plantation to the nuptial union, and he became farmer Drew on a prosper-
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ELECTRO LIGHT EN
GOV. THOMAS S. DREW.
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ons basis, honored and respected for the unchallenged integrity of his life.
Devoid of political ambition, he never aspired to political station, but was content with the even tenor of a peaceful and quiet domestic life. Two years' departure from these natural inclinations (1823 to 1825), during which he held the office of clerk of Clark county, satisfied him with official station. Un- contaminated by desire to indulge the vanities and luxuries of showy and ostentatious life, he was contented with the limited smiles of prosperous husbandry. The prospect of his most daring, youthful vision was filled with the tinkling bells and music of his lowing herds on the neighboring hills and the golden fields of waving grain that made him a sylvan king, the happiest of husbands and the most devoted of fathers; but the tempter came unbidden in an evil hour and in complete disguise. The democratic convention assembled at the capitol in 1844, and with but three dissenting voices, nominated Elias N. Conway for governor, and he firmly declined the nomina- tion on the ground that his business engagements did not admit the assumption of other responsibilities. Prominent members of the convention then advised with him as to who would be an available man to put in nomination, and he advised them to confer the honor on Thomas S. Drew, of Independence county, his honest old farmer friend, and the convention, with great unanimity, acted on his advice, and the democracy ratified the nomination at the polls. Political lightning thus struck one of the best and happiest farmers in Arkansas, whether as a blessing or curse, let the sequel tell. He was duly inaugu- rated in the fall of 1844, and moved his family to the seat of government, and at the expiration of his first term of four years was re-nominated and re-elected. At the end of the first year of his second term his fortune was dissipated, gone, and the meager salary of $1, 800 forced him to resign and try farm- ing again. He returned to Independence county broken in fortune; from thence he moved to California and tried to retrieve his fortunes, but failed; from California. he drifted into Texas and died at Lampassas in that State, in 1880, at an advanced age. He was possessed of but ordinary ability, but no one ever doubted or questioned his integrity either in the
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private or official walks of life. His family was extravagant, and he failed in essaying honors for which nature had not moulded him. His life "points a moral and adorns a tale " of value to all who seek to profit by the experience of others.
JUDGE BENJAMIN JOHNSON AND SON, HON. ROBERT WARD JOHNSON, LITTLE ROCK.
These honored and distinguished gentlemen are prominent members of a very distinguished family, both in our local and national history. Written and oral traditions of the family carry the historian back to early times in the old colony of Virginia, and there leave him to contemplate the dim, illegible outlines of the past and forgotten at a period where oblivion closes the gate and refuses to give up her treasure.
That they were men of strong individuality and pronounced types of character is sufficiently attested by their descendants. We find them staunch settlers in Orange county at an early day, from whence Robert Johnson immigrated in 1779 to the "dark and bloody ground," and settled in what has since been mapped out as Scott county. He raised a family of thirteen boys and girls, and gave his country sons distinguished alike in war and peace. Two of his sons, James and Richard M. Johnson, were distinguished soldiers in the war of 1812. On the 5th of October, 1813, at the battle of the Thames, Rich- ard killed that celebrated Indian warrior Tecumseh. James died whilst serving his first term in congress. John L. John-, son served two terms in congress and was then elected judge of the court of appeals of Kentucky, which he subsequently . resigned and became one of the most remarkable ministers of the gospel America has ever produced, preaching in the service of the Campbellite or Christian church for more than thirty years, in every section of the Union, without pay. He was learned, eloquent and profound, and practiced all the virtues of the creed he professed. Richard M. Johnson was fifteen years a member of the national house of representatives, ten years a member of the senate of the United States, and four years vice-president of the United States.
Two of the sons, Joel and Henry, became distinguished planters in the lower Mississippi valley. Benjamin Johnson,
ELECTRO LIGHTENO CON.Y.
HON. BENJAMIN JOHNSON.
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HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
brother to these celebrated sons of Kentucky, the subject of this notice, was born in Scott county, Kentucky, the 22d of January, 1784. He was a young man of brilliant promise and expectations - was universally esteemed for amiability and purity of character. He was admitted to the bar in the Lexing- ton circuit, where. his ability and popularity soon marked him for the high station of the jurist, to which he was elevated by election several times before President Monroe in 1821 ap- , pointed him to the territorial bench in Arkansas, an appoint- ment which was renewed through all the changing and succes- sive administrations until the State in 1836 was admitted into the Union. When that event transpired General Jackson ap- pointed him judge of the Federal court for the district of Ar- kansas, a position he adorned and honored until his death in 1849. He was universally esteemed and admired, not only by the bar, but by the whole body of his fellow citizens. He was on the bench thirty-eight years. One of his daughters married Ambrose H. Sevier, long a senator in congress. One of his granddaughters is the wife of Governor Churchill. Robert Ward Johnson, his distinguished son, was born in Scott county, Kentucky, on the 22d of July, 1814, and came to Arkansas in 1821, with his father. His academic training was imparted at Indian Academy, near Frankfort, his collegiate, at St. Joseph's College, Bardstown, where he was graduated in 1833. Leav- ing Bardstown he entered the law department of Yale, where, at the expiration of two years, he was graduated bachelor of laws. He returned to Little Rock in the fall of 1835, where he met a genial companion of high hopes and promises in the person of Samuel H. Hempstead, with whom he formed a law- partnership which continued until 1847. In 1840 Governor Yell commissioned him prosecuting attorney for the circuit embracing Little Rock, which made him ex-officio attorney- general for the State, a position he resigned two years after- ward.
During his term of office, Trowbridge, then mayor of Little Rock, was discovered to be the leader of a band of counterfeit- ers, and many men of local prominence were accused of being connected with him. They were indicted by the grand jury, and prosecuted with fearless ability by Colonel Johnson. This
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trial enhanced his fame as a lawyer, and brought him prom- inently into public notice. As we have seen, he is descended from a line who always had strong moorings in the public heart, and he seems to have been better fitted for the political than the forensic arena, though possessing great talents for both.
In 1840 and again in 1842 he was a formidable competitor for the legislature in the strong whig borough of Pulaski, against such men as Gibson, Trapnall and Bertrand, the ablest leaders of the opposition, and was defeated only by a few votes . the first, and only one vote the last race. The achievement was remarkable for one so young against such odds in favor of old veterans. These local contests extended his fame through- out the State as a party leader, and focalized the attention of the democratic party on him as a candidate for congress in 1846, and he was elected without opposition in the fall of that year.
In 1848 he had strong opposition for the nomination in his own party, in the person of the talented and ambitious Judge W. S. Oldham, an associate justice of the supreme court of the State, and afterward a senator in the Confederate cong- ress from Texas, and in 1861 commissioner from the Confed- erate States to Arkansas, to win her over to the revolutionary government at Montgomery. This strong man was over- whelmingly defeated by the well-arranged combinations of Mr. Johnson in the "great north-west" where Judge Oldham lived.
This was accomplished by running the always popular Alfred M. Wilson of Fayetteville as a tender to Colonel Johnson ; he rode the old tidal wave of " the north-west," swept the founda- tions from under Judge Oldham, and thus secured the nomina- tion and election of Colonel Johnson. This defeat inspired the removal of Judge Oldham soon after to Texas. He was re- elected in 1850, and declined the nomination in 1852, desiring. to retire from politics, but when Doctor Solon Borland resigned his seat in the senate of the United States to accept a for- eign mission in 1853, Governor Conway appointed him to the vacancy until the legislature could in the fall of 1854 fill it by election, and he did not feel at liberty to decline the exalted
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station. When the legislature convened he was unanimously elected, not only to fill the unexpired term, but for the suc- ceeding term of six years ending March 4, 1861.
He opposed the compromise measures of Mr. Clay and the repeal of the Missouri compromise, because underlying these principles he foresaw the coming conflict between the free and the slave States, and regarded these measures as tending to pre- cipitate, rather then prevent civil war.
He was much devoted to the union of the States, as founded in the organic sanctions and restraints imposed by the fathers, but he did not regard his loyalty to the government, as adminis- tered by a dominant sectional faction, which made war on, and set at defiance the constitutional guaranties thrown around the institution of slavery, as of higher obligation than the allegi- ance he owed to his native south.
When he saw the south embarking on the bloody ocean of revolution, founded in the greatest civil war since Cæsar and Pompey fought at Pharsalia for the mastery of the Roman empire, he embraced the cause of the south.
He believed in the doctrine of secession, but in the applica- tion of the principle as a dernier resort. In this, in common with many able men of the south, he followed the disorganiz- ing heresies of that great intellect, John C. Calhoun, too far. Nullification and secession are twin sisters, and can have no obligation in our system, unless admitted as elements of de- struction ; that sort of energy was never invoked and never incorporated in our federation. No government can long exist which recognizes the doctrine. Change the term, and call it revolution, and coming generations will find little to condemn in the south for resisting the encroachment of a fac- tion, founded in open disregard of sacred guaranties.
Mr. Johnson, in 1860, when his successor was chosen, de- clined to be a candidate for the senate. He came home from Washington after the inauguration of President Lincoln, and entered on an active canvass of those sections of the State where the Union sentiment prevailed, taking strong ground in justification of the south. When the secession convention re assembled in May, it elected five delegates to the provis- ional government at Montgomery, viz. : R. W. Johnson of 21
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Jefferson county ; A. H. Garland and Albert Rush of Pu- laski county ; H. F. Thomason of Crawford county ; and W. W. Watkins of Carroll county.
In November, 1862, Mr. Johnson was elected senator to the Confederate congress, and served in that capacity until the end.
After the fall of Richmond, he fled to the Brazos in Texas, and from thence started to Mexico in voluntary exile, rather than submit to the fate he supposed awaited him if he remained in the United States; but in Galveston he met General Gor- don Granger, of the United States army, an old friend, who extended him every courtesy, and put him in communication with President Johnson, which resulted in his going to Wash- ington instead of Mexico. President Johnson gave him pro- tection, and he returned to his large landed estates in Jefferson county. Here he struggled heroically for two years to rebuild, and to save something out of the wreck of his once princely fortune, but failed, and gave up all to his creditors.
The practice of his profession now became a necessity, and he met the demand with the vigor and courage of younger and better days.
The author knew him well before the war, when he was in the noon-tide of both financial and political fortune; but Robert W. Johnson never appeared to so much advantage as when overwhelmed with misfortune. Then it was the no- bility of his nature towered above the wreck around him and exhibited a soul superior to disaster. In the fall of 1868 he moved to Washington city and entered into partnership with General Albert Pike This was a happy and successful union, · lasting nine years, after which he resumed his former home in Little Rock. Congress, in 1877, by special act, removed his political disabilities. In 1878 he was a candidate for the United States senate, and made an earnest, animated canvass of the State, but was defeated by a very small majority in favor of his opponent, the Hon. J. D. Walker of Fayetteville. He died at his residence in Little Rock on the 26th of July, 1879. He possessed a very sanguine temperament, and gave way to no obstacle in the pathway of honorable ambition. No man was more devoted to friends, nor more defiant to enemies. Ile was a splendid conversationalist, and never tired in entertain- ing friends.
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Mr. Johnson married two daughters of Dr. George W. Smith of Louisville, Kentucky ; the last wife and three children by the first survive him - Benjamin S. Johnson of Little Rock, and Frank S. Johnson of San Francisco, California, both able lawyers, and Sallie Frances, the wife of John C. Breckenridge, son of the late Major-General John C. Breck- enridge.
GOVERNOR JOHN POPE.
Governor Pope, one of the most eminent and celebrated characters connected with the early history of Arkansas, was born in Westmoreland county, Virginia, in 1770, the grand- son of Thomas Pope, who was the father of George Washing- ton's mother.
No higher lineage, no nobler blood flows through ancestral tides in this or any other country or age, The heraldry of this line was baptized in a spotless fame by the " Father of his country," and it will survive the invasions of time as the best legacy, the world's best character, could give mankind until history perishes in the fall of man.
At the age of seventeen he entered that ancient seat of learn- ing in the Old Dominion, William and Mary, where so many noble youths drank deep at the Attic fount of inspiration, and took on that noble character which has left its impress where- ever her sons have gone. He spent five years at this institution in laying deep the foundations of his future usefulness and fame. Three years carried him through the curriculum of the literary, and two through the law department, in both of which he graduated with flattering honors.
About this time his father and family joined the western tide of immigrants and located on the fertile lands near where Louisville has since grown up; John, the son, located in Lex- ington in 1794, and soon entered on his brilliant career in law and politics.
Five years later an unknown and unheralded youth, born in Hanover county, Virginia, in 1777, a stranger to fame, an alien to wealth and all the advantages it imparts to youth, entered the same village, determined to achieve emancipation from the obscurity in which he was born; his arrows were
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pointed toward the sun ; his foundations were broad and deep and strong enough, to support a pyramid of fame in the coming years ; his mind was the restless nurse of exalted ambition with a reserved force sufficient to support its flight. In the crystallization of political forces and concentration of ener- gies in the formation of parties, he embraced the school of Jefferson rather than that of Hamilton. as the one nearest the hearts and affections of the people.
Pope was not devoid of high aspirations, but he never suffered his ambition to mould or color his political convictions. He was a great admirer of that brainiest of all American states- men, Alexander Hamilton, and became a federalist.
These two young men, John Pope and Henry Clay, were destined at no distant day to become great rivals in a great field, candidates for fame before the same constituency on platforms widely divergent. Both soon became conspicuous leaders in the legislature of Kentucky, and both soon broke down the barriers which confined them to local fame, and became con- spicuous actors in national politics. The legislature of Ken- tucky, in 1806, elected both of them to the senate of the United States, Mr. Clay to fill the unexpired term of John Adair, Mr. Pope for the full term. During his senatorial career Pope married Miss Johnson, of Maryland, sister to Mrs. John Quincy Adams, by whom he had two daughters, both celebrated for their attainments and beauty. Florida died in early woman- hood unmarried. The eldest daughter married the gifted John W. Cocke, a member of the bar, who came to Arkansas in 1836.
Governor Pope, though a federalist, supported President Madison's administration, but was strongly opposed to the war of 1812, his great rival, Mr. Clay, being one of the leaders of the war party. His opposition to the war caused his defeat for the senate in 1813, and he was succeeded by Jesse Bledsoe. He never entered the senate again. When he retired from the senate he resumed the practice of his profession at Lexington, until 1816, when he was nominated for congress by the federal party. The national republican party put Clay in the field against him.
These two great champions immediately entered on perhaps the ablest and most brilliant conflict ever fought in the arena of
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