USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 16
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American politics. Clay possessed the higher art of oratory and an unrivaled magnetism over his auditors. Pope possessed the greater depth and expansion of brain forces, the sharpest wit, and at times a polished irony surpassing Juvenal.
Their respective partisans from town and village, hill, valley and wild wood glen, came rushing and pouring in one magnetic stream to their appointments to witness the battle of the giants, and drink deep the wisdom and inspiration of the great leaders like Paul at the feet of Gamaliel. It was not only a contest between great men, but in it for the time being the political heart of the nation seemed to focalize; because, on the result depended the issue as to whether Kentucky would wheel into republican or federal line, espouse the doctrines of Jefferson or wed those of Hamilton. Mr. Clay triumphed, and federalism found a grave in Kentucky beneath the ruins of the noblest battle she ever fought.
The history of this great intellectual contest in the heart of " the dark and bloody ground," after seventy years have rolled away, is handed down from sire to son in yet fadeless tradition. Speak of it to a Kentuckian in any quarter of the globe and his eye kindles with enthusiasm and his heart swells with pride. After this defeat he retired from politics, and devoted himself for twelve years to the practice of law, but in 1828 he again came to the front in the meridian of his splendid powers, hav- ing in the mean time learned from accomplished facts, that democratic institutions can stand the strain of war and federal pressure, without the dangerous machinery of a more central- ized power. In 1824 he voted for Jackson in preference to his great brother-in-law, John Quincy Adams, but took no part in the canvass.
His decided preference for General Jackson, in the presiden - tial campaign of 1828, over John Quincy Adams, led him to canvass Kentucky and Virginia with great zeal and ability. In this connection it must not be understood that he was a demo- crat or that he claimed to be; he had the courage of his con- victions on all occasions, and individuality of the most pro- nounced type, and only supported General Jackson as the near- est approach to his own convictions; but the democracy re- garded bis defection to Adams, as of great significance, and it
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was. His active canvass and great abilities, centered public opinion on him as Jackson's attorney-general, but that port- folio was tendered to John M. Berrien of Georgia, and Mr. Pope was appointed governor of the territory of Arkansas for the unexpired term of Governor George Izard, who died in the fall of 1828. The appointment was made March 9, 1829, and was renewed for four years in March, 1831, and he con- tinued to act as governor of the territory until superseded by Governor Fulton in April, 1835.
There is, until this chapter goes greeting to the public, some secret, hitherto-unwritten history, connected with this change of administration in the affairs of Arkansas, which sig- nificantly illustrates the stubborn will and character of the act- ors, Governor Pope and General Jackson. In 1832 General Jackson put his autograph to his congressional message of that year and sent it to Governor Pope, which was interpreted by the latter as a desire for an expression of opinion on the merits of the performance, which he proceeded to give in the most decisive terms.
Governor Pope always indulged the most decisive convictions, regardless of the time-serving consideration, as to what effect their free expression, would exert on his political fortunes. He ac- knowledged no lord of commanding mien in the field of thought, and was always the fearless and absolute master of his own con- victions. He differed widely with the president on the fiscal policy and relation of the government to the people ; he favored a United States bank and a high protective tariff, and com- batted the views of the president with much ability, in a private letter to him. This was distasteful to the iron will of the old hero, who never accustomed himself to brook opposition from any quarter, and he made up his mind to remove the independ- ent governor of Arkansas, and sent for Ambrose H. Sevier, then our delegate in congress, to consult with. Sevier was emi- nently a wise and sagacious politician, he had successfully con- tended with the Crittenden party since its organization, and foresaw probable political disaster to himself and party if Gov- ernor Pope was rashly driven to augment the strength of the opposition, and he prevailed on the president to abandon the idea of removing the governor. But the axe fell when the term
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expired, and Governor Fulton, Jackson's personal friend, inherited the succession. Governor Pope's administration, was certainly enlightened and progressive; under the old territorial administrations the officers were appointive and not elective ; he took immediate steps to have this changed by congress, and succeeded in having all the offices elective, except the governor, judges and secretary.
Up to the commencement of President Jackson's first ad- ministration, it had been the uniform policy to appoint gene- rals from the army as governors of territories. Our first and second territorial governors, Miller and Izard, were gene- rals of distinction in the army. The precedent was set in the appointment of General St. Clair by General Washington as governor of the North-West territory in 1787, the first terri- torial government under our system. Then the policy was a good one, because the history of all the States and territories, new and old, is written and sealed in blood, and there ought to be no discord and division of authority and power when an enemy was to be kept at bay with small forces.
In 1829, the government established the first weekly mail between Little Rock and Memphis, which was carried over- land on horseback, via the military road then recently opened. This event was regarded as of the highest importance to Arkansas, and the press of the period hailed it as the advent of a new and progressive era.
In the first recommendation the new governor made to con- gress, he advised a river mail-route, from Little Rock to Memphis and New Orleans, by a weekly line of steamers. In an age of wonderful achievements, when electricity is harnessed to the most delicate machinery and put on duty as a post-boy, and required to make the circuit of the world with the news of the day in a few moments, we can hardly realize these things. What a mighty contrast spans the historic chasm between then, and now ! In October, 1819, Governor James Miller, with a military suite of twenty persons, embarked at Pittsburgh in the United States keel-boat Arkansas, for the capital of the infant territory, and when she rounded the bend below the Post at the end of her tow-line, on the 1st of January, 1820, seventy days out, her sailor boys in blue struck up the national air of
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" Hail Columbia," and the officials on shore fired a salute of twenty-five guns ; an hour later her noble prow touched the quay of our first inland mart. The little trading depot, estab- lished more than a century before, by the ancient Canadian voyageur, was then wearing the honors of capital city of the territory, by congressional favor, with dimensions embracing about twenty rude log cabins. Town and environs, then pre- sented the picturesque appearance of a gala day on the wild frontier, and animation, curiosity and joy reigned supreme for the hour. The aborigines of America were largely represen- ted by the Quawpaws, Osages and Cherokees, in their primitive dress of skin, feather and tinsel, supplemented with the savage gaiety imparted by rude application of war-paint. By his side, the strongest factor in the same crowd, stood the no less pictur- esque backwoodsman, with buckskin raiment and coonskin cap, his trusty rifle in hand ; as rude as he was noble, as gentle as he was brave, and as independent as Roman knight or Norman lord, from whose loins a hardy native race have sprung. The hunter's wife, with child in arms, and the squaw, with pappoose lashed to her back, lent a wildwood charm to the scene. Robert Crittenden, until then acting governor of the territory, with the judges of the superior court, Jouett from New England, Scott from Missouri, and Letcher from Kentucky, stood on the landing in republican simplicity, to receive the governor and suite. The martial roll of the drum, and inspiring note of the fife, proclaimed the disembarkation complete on the 1st day of January, 1820, and the governor and suite were escorted with both military and civic honors to the best man- sion in the capital - a log cabin.
Here is a picture as rude and wild and glorious, as any ever rocked in the classic cradles of ancient Greece or Rome. It is fraught with inspiration worthy the epic lyre of "the wandering minstrel from Chios Isle." It is worthy the genius of a Raphael, to transfer it to canvas, and rescue it from the waters of Lethe [which are fast closing over it], and baptize it in the name of immortality. It was the cradle of an infant State which is now taking her proud place in the grandest aggregation of Commonwealths known to the world - the landing of our first governor. The artist who grasps
ELECTRO LI
GOV. JAMES MILLER.
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this picture in all of its artistic details, and succeeds in trans- ferring it properly to canvas, will mount the chariot of fame and journey down the tide of time, the companion of cen- turies, and greet a thousand generations of yet unborn Arkan- sians. But let us return to Governor Pope, and leave the historic picture which we embraced only as an illustration of the wonderful vitality and energies of the age in which we live.
The spring of 1830, opened with a violent political war be- tween Governor Pope, then the representative of Jackson's administration, and the Crittenden party, which had then crystallized into a welding fusion with the whig party. In those days politics was the warmest institution north of the tropics. In March, 1830, the Advocate, a whig paper, was established by Crittenden and Bertrand, his relative and co- laborer in the opposition vineyard. The Gazette was then the democratic or Ashley organ, and was never noted for enthusiasmn for Governor Pope, whose talents were of the first order. To build him up, would be arming a dangerous rival. Rivals do not generally embrace so much disinterested activity. How far these considerations influenced the violent opposition is now, to some extent conjectural. Selfish motives, where ambition lures to the prize, are generally passionate and powerful, and leave their foot-prints on record. This was with varying de- grees of intensity, continued without intermission, and finally led Governor Pope to establish the Intelligencer, as the gov- erument organ, with " Honest John Steele," chief of the edi- torial staff, who was at times ably supplemented, with war ma- terial from the governor's arsenal. After the Intelligencer, was established, government patronage was withdrawn from the Gazette, and her editorial thunder, sharpened by a hungry stomach, was turned against the governor. Now the ponder- ous editorials of the Intelligencer, came right and left to both adversaries, like the blows of Vulcan.
His term expired in March, 1835, and for reasons already stated, President Jackson did not renew his commission. Thus ended in Arkansas, the career of one of the ablest men America has produced. He returned to Kentucky in May, 1835, and in 1836, was nominated by the whigs in the sixth district for con-
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gress, and was elected by a large majority over Tom Moore, his democratic opponent, and was re-elected in 1838 and 1840, but in 1842 he was defeated by the celebrated Tom Hardin, which ended his political career. Pope county was named after him. He died in 1844, full of years and full of honors, at the advanced age of seventy-four. He lost an arm by an accident in a mill, at the age of fourteen. In youth and mature man- hood, he was tall and slender, over six feet in height, but in old age grew very corpulent. Judge Pope of the Federal court of Illinois, the father of Major-General John Pope of the United States army, (now retired), was his brother. Governor Churchill of Arkansas is his grandnephew. Fountain Pope, his nephew and first private secretary, was mortally wounded in a duel in 1831, with C. F. M. Noland. He was succeeded as private sec- retary by another nephew, Judge William F. Pope, now of Lit- tle Rock, who came in 1832. Judge Pope is an accomplished gentleman of the old school; his mind is a vast storehouse of events current half a century ago, and his memory retains early impressions with great tenacity. The author has drawn from that magazine of learning for many facts. He has been with us since 1832, and was postmaster under four different admin- istrations -- Tyler's, Filmore's, Lincoln's and Davis'. Governor Pope was one of the ablest criminal lawyers America has pro- duced ; some of his efforts in that direction are master produc- tions, and rival the best efforts of Curran and Erskine. In 1824 or 1825, in connection with his young law partner, the accom- plished Thomas J. Lacy, he defended Beauchamp, charged with the murder of Sol. P. Sharpe of Kentucky, an ex-member of congress, and at the time of the tragedy a prominent candidate for the United States senate. The murder grew out of the alleged seduction of Beauchamp's wife, before her marriage. The trial attracted national notoriety, and is one of the most celebrated in our forensic literature. Governor Pope's address on that occasion ranks with the great masters.
GENERAL GRANDISON D. ROYSTON, WASHINGTON.
This grand old Roman citizen has a great history in Arkan -. sas. He was born in Carter county, Tennessee, December the 9th, 1809, of unmixed English blood. His father, Joshua
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GRANDISON D. ROYSTON.
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Royston, was a native of Maryland, a farmer and Indian trader, of great energy of character. His mother was Eliza- beth S. Watson, a native of Virginia, and daughter of that distinguished Methodist divine, Rev. Samuel Watson, one of the early pioneers of the Holston conference in East Tennes- see. She was possessed of fine literary taste, culture and at- tainments. The son inherited a robust constitution from his father, and the application and tastes of his mother for books. He was in early life sent to the common neighborhood schools, and there prepared for an academic course, which he took at a Presbyterian academy in Washington county, Ten- nessec, under the tutorship of Henry IIoss, a celebrated teacher of that day. After thorough academic training, he entered the law office of Judge Emerson at Jonesboro, Tennessee, and two years thereafter was admitted to the bar [December, 1831].
With no capital but good mind, constitution and resolute will, he made his way to the territory of Arkansas, and located, in April, 1832, in Fayetteville, Washington county, then a sparsely-settled village of but few inhabitants. Here he re- mained eight months, teaching school five days during the week, and practising law before justices' courts on Saturday. In December, 1832, he changed his location to Washington in Hempstead county, where he has remained ever since.
The first twenty five years of professional employment were very laborious and lucrative. The State was his circuit, no railroads, and few dirt roads, and no bridges ; court-houses, hun- dreds of miles apart. Flooded streams and rivers were not considered an impediment in those days ; they were crossed on the back of a swimming charger. These circuits, with clothing and library in a pair of leather saddle-bags, were made twice each year, and when a cabin was not found on the wayside they camped out. Hempstead, Fowler, Trapnall, Cummins, Pike, Bertrand, English, Walker, Linton, Watkins and many others constituted these legal cavalcades, and in later times the younger members joined the semi-annual procession over the State.
In 1833 there were three judicial circuits in the State. In the fall of that year General Royston was elected prosecuting attorney for the third circuit, and discharged the duties of the
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office two years. His title as general, by which he is univer- sally known, came to him by commission as brigadier-general, from Governor Drew, on whose staff he served several years. In the fall of 1835, the electors of the territory of Arkansas elected delegates to assemble in Little Rock in January, 1836, to frame and adopt a constitution preparatory to admission as a State into the Union. General Royston represented the elec- tors of Hempstead in that convention. The labors of the con- vention were concluded on the 30th of January, 1836. Gen- eral Royston acted a very prominent part in that convention. In the fall of 1836 he was elected to the first legislature under the new State government.
There were two sessions of this legislature. The adjourned session convened in November, 1837. John Wilson was speaker of the house. A bill providing a premium on wolf scalps was under consideration, when several members jocularly offered amendments, and amongst others, John J. Anthony offered an amendment, authorizing the president of the State Bank to certify to the genuineness of the scalps. The speaker was president of the bank, and construed this as a personal insult, and after a few words of altercation between him and Anthony, he left the speaker's chair and advanced on Anthony, and in the struggle killed Anthony with a bowie knife. Anthony died on the floor of the house instantly. This unfortunate circum- stance has been of incalculable detriment to the good name of the State abroad, where it has been taken as typical of Arkansas life. Wilson was expelled, and General Royston was elected speaker of the house. At the first session of the first legisla- ture General Royston was on joint ballot of the house and senate elected judge of the circuit court, but at once declined to accept the office; he was then making professional fees very largely in excess of the then niggardly salary of $1,000 per annum. Offices were now pouring in on him.
In 1836, General Jackson appointed him United States dis- trict attorney for the district of Arkansas, but before confirma- tion by the senate withdrew his name [a la Jackson], because it came to the old hero's ears that on a resolution before the leg- islature of Arkansas instructing her representatives in congress to vote for the celebrated expunging resolutions, General Roys-
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ton had voted in the negative. This he did on the ground that the senate of the United States was the only tribunal having jurisdiction. In 1841, President Tyler appointed him United States district attorney, for the district of Arkansas, and he held the office a short time and resigned, finding his practice more lucrative than official emoluments.
In 1858 he was elected to the State senate from the district composed of the counties of Hempstead, Pike and Lafayette; and at this session, became the father of the levee system of the State, so intimately related to the swamp and overflowed land system, which is yet retained. He did not believe in, nor support the doctrine of secession, because he wisely thought no government could stand with that element of dissolution engrafted on it : but, like a great many others, he acquiesced in the decision of the overwhelming majority.
In 1861 he was elected to the Confederate congress, and served his State in that capacity two years. In 1874 he was elected from Hempstead county to the constitutional conven- tion, and was elected president of that body. In 1876 he was a delegate from the State at large, to the national democratic convention at St. Louis, and voted for Tilden and Hendricks. He has always been a democrat, a follower of Jefferson, and is to-day (1887) apparently as lithe, active and stout as he was at thirty years of age, and may the old Roman long be spared to us.
General Royston is a man of culture, refinement, engaging and winning manners, and has always enjoyed the confidence of the people.
General Pike, General Royston, Hon. Jesse Turner and Hor. A. M. Wilson of Fayetteville are now (1887) the only living representatives of the " old bar " of Arkansas.
General Pike is fond of relating an amusing but unfortunate incident in the life of General Royston, which happened about 1840. The legal " circuit rider," when he could not ford, had to swim the streams in those days. On one occasion General Pike, General Royston and many others stripped to swim a stream in south-west Arkansas. After dismounting each dis- ciple of Blackstone rolled up his clothing and strapped it across his shoulders, to keep it above the tide. On this occa-
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sion General Royston had $300 in bank bills, and for better security held his pocket-book in his mouth. After the horse had advanced some distance in the foaming stream, he sud- denly stepped off of a precipitous ledge of rock and baptized the rider. The general's mouth, forgetful of the treasure it was charged to keep, flew open in an involuntary spasmodic effort to expel the water, and the money was lost.
JUDGE DAVID WILLIAMSON CARROLL, LITTLE ROCK.
Judge Carroll was born in Maryland some time since the beginning of this century, but the date is past finding out. The judge is mentally and physically robust, and bids fair to chase the coming century half around its circuit, but he con- siders it impertinent to ask a gentleman when he was born. In this respect he very much resembles the president of the late confederacy. When President Davis was first met by the writer after the collapse at Appomattox, the author so far forgot himself as to remark : " You have turned quite gray since I last saw you, Mr. President," to which he energetically replied : "Great God, Hallum, can't you say something pleas- ant ?" So it will be with Judge Carroll when his eye falls on this paragraph. Biographies are worth but little when peculi- arities which distinguished the individual are ignored.
The judge is a lineal descendant of David Carroll of Mary- land, who was a member of the great convention of the origi- nal States which drafted the constitution of the United States, and he is a collateral descendant of John Carroll of Carroll- ton. His good name thus runs back and connects with the richest blood of the revolution - names forever memorable in the history of free institutions - prominent and conspicuous actors in laying the foundations of the noblest heritage of man yet enjoyed on earth. He is also nearly related to the Right Reverend John Carroll, first bishop of Baltimore.
Judge Carroll was liberally educated at St. Mary's College, Baltimore. In 1836 he came to Arkansas as a sort of protege, of Judge Edward Cross, and entered the surveyor-general's office at Pine Bluff, under that gentleman, in which position he continued until 1839, when he returned to Maryland and engaged in farming for several years. In 1844 he returned to
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l'ine Bluff and taught school there one year. In 1846 he was appointed deputy clerk in the United States district court. Judge Benjamin Johnson then presided in that court. Here he imbibed a taste for law and read it with avidity at all times when not engaged in the discharge of clerical duties.
In 1848, he was admitted to the bar, and from this time on- ward his career has been a successful one. Very soon after he was enrolled, the legislature elected him as one of the attorney's for the State Bank, an honorable and lucrative position. Judge Carroll always acted with the democratic party. Pu- laski county in the days of whiggery was one of its strongholds. In 1850 both parties put out their strongest men for the legis- lature, and the election resulted in the choice of Frederick W. Trapnall, whig, and David W. Carroll, democrat. In 1853 he was elected by the legislature land agent for the Pine Bluff district, an office since abolished. In 1860 he was elected prose- cuting attorney in the Pine Bluff district. In 1864, when A. H. Garland was promoted from the Confederate house of rep- resentatives, to the Confederate senate, Judge Carroll was elected to fill the vacancy, in the Confederate congress. The treaty at Appomattox, forced him the first time in life, to abandon an office, and he has steadily refused to die to create a vacancy. Next after farming, he likes official position best.
In 1866 the Judge found another good opening, and ac- cepted a commission, as probate and county judge of Jefferson county, and held it until he was reconstructed out of it under the imperious constitution and reconstruction laws of 1868; and thus experienced the second time, the compulsory process of ouster, when an appeal to his constituents would not avail. This gave him the first good opportunity he ever enjoyed, to practice law without official interruption, and he embraced it for ten years with great success, Pine Bluff being the base of operations.
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