USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 17
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This ten years' retiracy satiated Brother Carroll's thirst for private life, and it was a matter of serious consideration with him for some time, whether he would break the monotony and divert himself with farming, or official position, but after con- sulting the gods, he chose the latter, and became chancellor for the State in 1878, a position he has eminently adorned down to this writing (1887).
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As chancellor, his commission has, since his first election, been twice renewed, and he is likely to hold it, until old master calls a halt, and pronounces the benediction, unless something better should strike his fancy and lure him away from the Woolsack.
He is an able, dignified and most upright judge, unostenta- tious, unassuming. No man ever wore the ermine with more becoming grace than Judge Carroll. He adheres to his- con- victions of right with unswerving tenacity and devotion, and yet is as gentle as a woman, and as true to every instinct of honor and manhood as the needle is to the pole.
JUDGE R. S. C. BROWN, VAN BUREN.
Judge Brown, a native of Tennessee, came to the territory of Arkansas about 1827, in company with William Crutchfield, a modest, refined lawyer from the same State, and settled at Van Buren, Crawford county, where he continued to reside until death.
Jndge Brown was in many respects a remarkable man ; his education was very limited, and he was very sensitive on all occasions involving discussion of grammatical questions. He weighed two hundred pounds ; his hair was almost white from youth, the lightest blonde ; his eyes light gray ; height five feet ten inches. He never made any serious pretensions to being learned or possessed of high judicial attainment, and in this he displayed good common sense. During a long official life he was ever regarded as an honest, upright man ; this gave him great strength and popularity with the people, who were always willing to honor and trust "Old Dick Brown," a name still dear to many of the old citizens who still remember him.
In 1829, and again in 1831, he was elected by the voters of Crawford county, to represent them in the territorial legislature. In 1836 the same constituency elected him to the constitu- tional convention to aid in framing the organic law of the State. Again, in 1838, the electors of old Crawford com- missioned him with a seat in the State senate. In 1840, the legislature elected him judge of what was then known as the seventh circuit, in which position he served the people six years, with little knowledge of law as a science, but great honesty of purpose.
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Tradition connects " Old Dick Brown " with many novel, original, quaint and amusing eccentricities; and, as an ex- ample of the humor the lawyers on that circuit enjoyed for six years, we give some of them, without the fear of being criti- cised for monotony. Whilst judge, he always called himself "my honor" either on or off the bench.
Judge Paschal, once said to some bystanders, that he was tempted to throw a book at the Judge's head. Some mischief- maker told him what Paschal said, and this in turn very much incensed "Old Dick," who straightway hunted Paschal, and accosted him thus : "Paschal, did you say you would throw a book at my honor's head ?" Paschal was much embarrassed, but neither affirmed nor denied, and the irate Judge continued : "I will put my honor's foot on your d-n neck. Don't you let my honor ever hear of such disrespect again."
Old lady Snow had beat an old farmer unmercifully, with an axe handle, and was indicted, charged with an assault with intent to kill, contra pacem. The old lady was found guilty of an aggravated assault, and sentenced to pay a heavy fine, and to imprisonment in jail for thirty days. Her husband imme- diately paid the fine ; but to his great astonishment and hu- miliation, Jonas March Tibbetts, the prosecuting attorney, made a motion to put the husband in execution, in virtue of that common law principle, requiring the husband to answer to the default or miscarriage of the wife.
Paschal was retained by the unfortunate husband, and resisted the motion, but the court sustained it and sent the husband to jail. After the lapse of several days, Paschal collected all the books to be had in the circuit, and moved the court to discharge the prisoner. Argument on the motion was grave and serious, and was unfinished at the noon recess. In his distress, Paschal appealed to Judge William Walker, to speak privately to the Judge, in aid of the motion.
The two judges walked arm in arm to dinner. On the way, Brown asked Walker : " What do you think of the position taken by my honor ?" To which Judge Walker replied, by asking if he would punish the husband if the wife had been found guilty of adultery. "Old Dick" burst out in convul- sions of laughter, and after a short respite, called the sheriff at
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the top of his voice, and ordered him to immediately discharge old man Suow. At the table he continued to indulge in inor- dinate laughter, and excited the curiosity of all present, par- ticularly several ladies, who insisted on being told the cause, and the old jurist told them, to their great confusion.
John Taylor, the eccentric and heroic Ishmaelite, procured the record and personal history of every member of the bar, for use, as occasion might require. Judge Brown's early history, graced this unique collection. On one occasion, at Clarksville, in 1841, Taylor was arguing a motion for a new trial, based on the assumption that the court had erroneously charged the jury, and from intimations thrown out during the progress of the argument, became strongly impressed with the conviction, that the court would adhere to the error. This inspired a feeling of revenge, and "Old John " determined, if possible, to bring the court down, with his record back in Tennessee.
This he accomplished very artfully, as he did all things. The court, up to this time, was innocent of knowledge, that this record had penetrated the wilds of Arkansas. Taylor said the circuit of our learned and noble profession, embraced many great and shining men, who scorned little, ignoble things and employments, with now and then a rare and startling exception, which brought to mind a very great and eminent groom, who once chaperoned a three-dollar stud horse. The auditors were startled ; they felt the crash coming, but no one but the court knew where it was falling. At this juncture the Judge abruptly called a halt ; then rising to his utmost assumption of dignity, said : " I kept a stud horse back in Tennessee, but it is a lie and a slander to say it was a three-dollar horse, it was a ten-dollar horse, sir. Now proceed and confine yourself to the truth, Mr. Taylor."
In the spring of 1842, at Van Buren, just before Paschal was elevated to a seat on the supreme bench, Linton and he, had a very nice question, depending altogether on the meaning and grammatical construction of one word in a new statute. Both were learned and able men, and discussed the question for several hours. At the conclusion, Linton looked with ill-sup- pressed derision at the court, then turned to James Woodson Bates, who was eminent for scholarly attainments, and asked
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him to decide the question. Bates very properly and promptly declined. the officious office, and showed some feeling at the implied assumption, that he was capable of such discourtesy to the court. Judge Brown saw and embraced the opportunity, to throw off the painful embarrassment such discussions always subjected him to, and said, with zeal and emphasis : "I never knew but two men in my life who made any parade of grammar knowledge, and it is my opinion it made d-n fools of both of them." Paschal did not relish the rude escape of the court's embarrassment, but Linton enjoyed the retort with great relish, if it was at his own expense.
One of his political friends and former neighbors was in- dicted, charged with felony, for having sold a mule he had previously posted as a stray, and the Judge was disposed to favor him all he could. The defendant, after having posted the . animal, sold it, and moved out of the county. The judge gave a long and laborious charge to the jury, and said : " It is a clear case ; if the man had to move or wanted to, he had a right to move, and the law could not make him stay, and it is a clear case he could not sell the mule under the law. But, gentle- men, hear me, he could sell the chance of him without breaking the law," and the jury so found. He was a curiosity on the stump in a canvass for office. On one occasion, he ridi- culed his opponent, for not having divided his speech into two heads, and said : "Now, gentlemen, I will divide mine into three heads," and rattled away to the conclusion without any further allusion to method or division, and, when he got through, said : " I believe I have forgotten the third head," and sat down.
In 1846, after the close of his singular but honest judicial career, he asked the people of Crawford, to send him once more to the lower house of the legislature, and they did so. In 1847 President Polk appointed him Indian agent, and he honestly and efficiently discharged the responsible duties incident to the office, and died in the discharge of official duties when traveling from the Cherokee, to an ageney further west in 1849.
He was related to the Seviers, and prided himself much on that connection. The reader, after what has been said, will be surprised to learn, that Judge Brown, was once appointed special judge of the supreme court, a striking illustration of the arts of the politician to secure popularity.
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MRS. ELIZABETH R. WRIGHT, LITTLE ROCK.
Celt and Saxon lines, in equal degree, share the lineage of this accomplished and refined lady, the daughter of our last terri- torial governor, and first senator in congress, William Savin Fulton, through whose blood, her paternal lineage runs back, through a long succession of trans-Atlantic Irish gentry, until it is lost in the dim and obscure outlines of tradition too remote to be traced by the historian. Her grandfather, David Fulton, a thoroughly educated and polished Irish gentleman of the old school, came to America in his youth and settled in Maryland
The maternal line, in its cis-Atlantic plant (of English origin) came to America, in early colonial times, under the protection of one of the liberal Lords Baltimore, and established them- selves in the aristocratic heart of that old colony, the eastern shore of Maryland, where Matilda Frances Nowland, the mother of Mrs. Wright, was born and grew up, a member of the highest social circle. The Mercers, Wards, Veazeys, and Biddles, all prominent families in the local history of Maryland, were near relations.
In 1815, Mary, the eldest daughter of David Fulton, and Elizabeth Savin, of the eastern shore, married William Crockett, a merchant of Gallatin, Tennessee, and descendant of the ear- liest pioneers of the Cumberland valley, a family that gave Davy Crockett to the world.
This marriage caused the removal of the family to Gallatin, Tennessee, where Eliza, another daughter, married Doctor Elmore Douglass, and Rebecca, the third daughter, there mar- ried Alfred Douglass, cousin to the doctor, his brother-in-law. The Douglasses came in the westward tide, with the first pioneers, and they have always been prominent in the highest social circles of Tennessee.
In 1820, David Fulton, and his brother-in-law, Perry Now- land, moved to Florence, Alabama, where William S. Fulton married his cousin, Matilda Nowland, whose mother was a Savin. Here Mrs. Wright was born, whilst her father was writing ponderous editorials in the interest of General Jack- son, which will be further developed in the next chapter, to which this is chiefly introductory.
Riergo Light ENG. COM .
ELIZABETH R. WRIGHT.
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When Governor Fulton was elected to the senate, his ver- satile and vivacious daughter Elizabeth, was about twelve years old. He carried her to Washington, and educated her in Georgetown, in one of the best institutions of learning. The great advantages imparted by this institution, were greatly augmented by the polished and refined training, found in the home circle, and by contact and acquaintance with most of the celebrities congregated at Washington, during herlong stay there. Gifted and accomplished, her father's pet and confidant, she took the deepest interest in all the movements on the political chess-board, which shaped his fortunes to the end.
Thoroughly cultured, and as thoroughly imbued, with her father's spirit, she became at an early age thoroughly conversant, with the exciting politics of Arkansas, and the secret ebbs and tides and currents, that finally crystallized into history. Thoroughly alive to family pride, she stands with all the delicate and refined sensibilities of her sex, like the fabled Vesta, guardian over its remains and its fame.
But it is better, that she outline these things in her own felicitous language, copied from a long letter to the author, written without any thought of publication. Such letters are generally devoid of that rigid formality authors sometimes assume, and for that reason come to us with all the more zest and relish.
LITTLE ROCK, June 7, 1887.
JOHN HALLUM, Lonoke, Ark .:
MY DEAR SIR - Passing by all doubt and misgivings, that were encouraged by my first impulses, I have decided to aid you all I can in a fair and impartial presentation of the life and character of my beloved and honored father. At first I in- stinctively shrank from the undertaking, lest some unkind critic should call me partial and egotistic. Then I thought me, there are but few of the living, if any, who are competent and willing to assume the task of preserving the fame of one of Arkansas' favorite citizens, now fast passing away. Again, I thought, it would be filial sacrilege, not to lend a helping hand, to an object so praiseworthy and honorable. Having embraced this conclusion, I ought not to deal sparingly with my confidence;
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and hence turn over to your possession, the remnant of a once voluminous correspondence, between our dear old General Jack- son (that common bond of union between Mrs. Hallum, your- self and I) and my father, with other correspondence, all written under the sacred seal of privacy, to continue inviolate so long, as the original actors were living.
This implied injunction, has been kept inviolate by me, long after death broke the seal. Fire invaded Rosewood, my father's suburban villa, and in its ruins perished a large col- lection of what you call " the Fulton papers and correspond- ence." This accumulation of papers, commenced with my early girlhood, and was continued during my father's life- time, and it embraced all that was written or published of him and his warm friends: Ambrose H. Sevier, Gen- eral Jackson, the Conways, Rectors and Johnsons coming within this limitation. But there were other ambitious men, whose advent in the territory, preceded that of my father, who naturally thought they had rights prior and stronger than his to political promotion, whose names, for obvious reasons, I omit, but they will readily occur to you. The old whig party did not embrace all the opposition to him ; great and powerful men in his own party opposed him. His controversy with that able man, Governor Pope, and his opposition to the ad- mission of the territory as a State was, at one time, regarded as his political downfall, but my father's intrinsic worth, sup- plemented by General Jackson's influence, proved a wall of strength that could not be broken down by the combined in- fluence of external and internal opposition.
The destruction of those papers was indeed a funeral pyre to . me. They were the sacred repositories of my father's fame, the idols of his idolized daughter. The remnant preserved, snatched from the burning ruins, throws a flood of light, on the inward, rather than the external life of my father. In the home circle, the beauty and nobility of his moral character, lent a charm to all who came within its influence.
In submitting this correspondence to your mature judgment, and careful consideration, you will pardon the expression of my extreme solicitude, to avoid, as far as possible, in its publication, any thing that may seem harsh, or have a tendency to arouse
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the resentment of the descendants of the original actors. My observation in life, admonishes me, that whenever you cross op- posing political currents, you excite criticism and opposition, and it is quite natural for these infirmities to find expression, through traditional channels, and descendants who feel as I do, a warm and ardent interest, in all that concerns their progeni- tors. But in this I would not mislead you, nor have you think that in the discharge of a filial duty, I would shrink into the proverbial weakness of my sex, and avoid responsibility, where duty and necessity demanded, and imposed higher obligations than questionable compromises with the infirmities of the liv- ing. Within the latitude of these limitations, the correspond- ence is yours, either to give, or withhold from the public, and to use, as in your judgment, it may best serve the fame of my father.
From a number of General Jackson's letters that escaped the fire, I set particular store on that containing advice to my father, written soon after his marriage. The advice given, founded as it is in the wisdom of domestic economy, will be good through all coming time. I desire to preserve and hand this down in the original, with all the other correspondence between the grand old hero and sterling friend, and my father.
Remember me affectionately to Mrs. Hallum, and assure her that the deep interest she takes in your work, finds a kindred response in the head and heart of your friend.
ELIZABETH R. WRIGHT.
GOVERNOR WILLIAM SAVIN FULTON.
It is much regretted that no portrait of that distinguished citizen, Governor William Savin Fulton, survives. He was born in Cecil county, on the eastern shore of Maryland, June the 2d, 1795. His father, Judge David Fulton, was a thor- oughly-educated Irish gentleman, who left Ireland and settled in Maryland when a young man. He gave his son a classical education, but of this let the son speak in his own language presently. In November, 1815, the family moved to Sumner county, Tennessee, where David, the father, was for some years engaged in banking. Here the family became intimate with General Jackson, whose friendship was a powerful factor in
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promoting the fortunes of the son, who was in every way, worthy of the confidence and warm friendship extended him. By permission of Mrs. Elizabeth R. Wright, the only surviving child of Governor Fulton, an elegant and most accomplished lady, who devotedly loves the memory and fame of her hon- ored father, we copy and reproduce the following papers and correspondence. From Governor Fulton's diary : this ;
"On the second day of February, 1804, I became a student under the Rev. Samuel Knox, afterward president of Baltimore College, in which institution I graduated in September, 1813. I was taught to dance in 1807, and learned French in the col- lege in an irregular manner. I commenced reading law under the late celebrated William Pinkney, in the month of Novem- ber, 1813. I moved from Baltimore in 1815, and went into Mr. Grundy's office in Nashville, Tennessee, in April, 1816.
In April, 1817, I commenced practicing law, having been sometime previously licensed in the State of Tennessee. I removed to the town of Florence, Lauderdale county, Alabama, in the month of June, 1820. I have made one journey to Baltimore, one to North Carolina, one through the State of Alabama, and several into Tennessee, since my removal to Alabama. I wrote all the editorials for the Florence Gazette, since October, 1821. I was licensed to practice law in Ala- bama, in June, 1821, and at the same time was elected, by the legislature of the State of Alabama, judge of the county court of Lauderdale county. In the months of September and October in 1814, I served as aid to Colonel Armstead, and was much exposed, and performed the principal service during the bombardment of Fort McHenry, for which I was highly com- plimented, both by Colonel Armstead and Commodore Rogers, under whom I afterward served in the same capacity at his request, while he commanded the fort during Colonel Arm- stead's illness. When I parted with Colonel Armstead, at his sick-bed, he took me by the hand and said : "Fulton, I shall never forget you." In January, 1818, I was appointed private secretary to General Jackson, and served in that capacity dur- ing the Seminole campaign, when we underwent every hard- ship, but had no fighting. In December, 1814, I delivered the anniversary oration of the Belles-Lettres Society of Balti-
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more, in Baltimore College Hall, before an audience com- posed of the most respectable persons in the city. On the 4th of July, 1817, I delivered an oration to the town of Nashville, Tennessee, by appointment of the same society.
On the 4th of July, 1821, by request of the citizens of Florence, I delivered them an oration at the Florence Inn. I made my debut at the bar in the town of Gallatin, in the State of Tennessee, in the circuit court in April, 1817. I presided for the first time as judge in the month of January, 1822, in a temporary court-house in the town of Florence, Alabama. I have kept this diary regularly since the 19th of January, 1814.
Much of Governor Fulton's life and character is disclosed in his interesting cor- respondence with General Jackson and others, and as it throws a flood of light on the subject and the early history of Arkansas, we give much of it to the reader.
The following characteristic letter, was written by General Jackson after the presidential bee began to buzz in his ear. David Fulton, the father of the governor, was then editing the Florence Gazette in the interest of democracy, and the old gen- eral who prompted ponderous editorials behind the scenes. As Mrs. Wright, well says, " what he says of domestic economy to his newly-married friend will always be of interest."
[To those who may not be familiar with the facts and circumstances alluded to in the letter which follows, and which led to the execution of Ambrister and Arbuth- not, an explanatory note will be acceptable.
In 1818 the government ordered Major-General Jackson to take the field against the Seminole Indians, and to call on the adjoming States for as many troops as he might deem necessary. He raised one thousand men very soon, and marched into the Seminole country, and the Indians fled to the Spanish commanders in Florida, for protection. General Jackson, believing the Spanish authorities encouraged the Indians in this evasion of responsibility, did not regard technical distinctions of international law, nor await dilatory negotiations between Spain and his govern- ment, but marched into Florida, took St. Marks, and drove the Spaniards to Pen- sacola. Finding the authorities at Pensacola continued to encourage and protect the Indians, he proceeded to Pensacola and drove the Spaniards to Havana.
At the Spanish post of St. Marks, he captured two English traders named Am- brister and Arbuthnot, who claimed the protection of the English government.
General Jackson, believing these men were supplying the Indians with arms and ammunition, and that they iucited the Indians to hostilities, ordered the court of inquiry, to which he alludes in the letter, and executed them. (See Stepbens' History of the United States, p. 424. )
It is curious to note the fact that Stephens and Fulton and all historians call the tribunal organized by General Jackson to take into consideration the charges against Ambrister and Arbuthnot a court-martial. General Jackson in this letter says that it was merely a court of inquiry whose power was limited to hearing proof and recommending what should in its judgment be done. In other words, the sole responsibility for executing these men rests with General Jackson, and not with the court, as claimed by historians. General Jackson's conduct in this matter was inquired into by both houses of congress, but his popularity was too great, and he 24
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was justified by large majorities. These acts were made political slogans - the battle cry of the old whig party in its death struggles with the democratic party. Governor Fulton was, as we have seen, private secretary to General Jackson during the Seminole campaign - when these historical events occurred. No man on earth ever loved and adhered closer to his friends than General Jackson, and no man ever more defiantly met his enemies. ]
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