USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 28
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mankind crossed his path, which, in the fiery impetuosity of his nature, he thought necessitated the taking of human life to save his own .- - Smith, a man of local prominence, for some cause not known to the author, threatened the life of Judge Scott, and the latter killed him with a double-barrel shot-gun in the streets of Gainesville. Many thousands of dol- lars were expended in the prosecution and defense. It became one of the causes celebres in Alabama.
The whole controversy depended on the question as to whether Judge Scott had waited sufficiently long for the devel- opment of the overt act, or whether there was in fact any overt act by the deceased to carry his threats into execution. The jury acquitted him. Judge Scott was tender-hearted as a woman and very sympathetic in his nature, but when aroused by some great or threatened injury he became a lion and developed the highest order of courage. He came to Arkan- sas and settled at Camden in May, 1844, where he continued to reside until his death. It was not long before his command- ing talents indicated him as one of the foremost lawyers in the State.
In November, 1846, the legislature, in recognition of his splendid abilities, demanded his services for the State, and elected him judge of the eighth circuit. His abilities as a jurist soon became conspicuous, and marked him for promotion to the highest judicial tribunal at the first vacancy. In July, 1848, Governor Thomas S. Drew appointed him judge of the supreme court, to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Judge Oldham. When the legislature convened the following Novem- ber it ratified the act of the governor, and elected him to fill the remaining two years of Judge Oldham's term. These two years bore ripe judicial fruit and established him in the hearts of the people, and in November, 1850, he was unanimously elected to the supreme bench for the full period of eight years, an honor well deserved and well conferred. At the end of this term, in 1858, he was again unanimously elected, and the State honored itself no less than the distinguished jurist by continu- ing him on the highest seat known to the children of men - the judgment seat.
In the early days of January, 1859, the stage-coach of those
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days halted in front of his residence in Camden to take him on board as a passenger to Little Rock, whither he was going to resume his judicial duties on the bench. The wife and daughter of distinguished jurists, the affectionate mother of his little children, accompanied him. As he entered the coach he embraced and fondly kissed his little household idols a last farewell, little dreaming, little feeling, that he was entering upon his last journey this side of the dark valley ; but the summons of the Master was near at hand. He contracted acute pneu- monia in the cold stage, and died in the Anthony House, Little Rock, on the 19th day of January, 1859. In the language of his accomplished daughter, Mrs. A. A. Tufts : " He died sur- rounded by faithful friends ; soothed and comforted by the loving ministrations of a devoted wife, and upheld by the 'everlasting arms' of the Savior, in whom he implicitly trusted." He was long a useful, a working, an honored brother in the noble order of Masons. He died in the sublime faith of the true, practical Christian, with but one regret - he hated to leave his wife and little ones unprovided for. His heart kindly responded to the exalted love and sorrow of the weeping wife as he bade her farewell in the last moments of dissolution, and led the way to immortality. The senate and house of representatives, then in session, passed elaborate reso- lutions, and attended the funeral in a body.
Judge Scott was a terse and forcible reasoner, a graceful and fluent writer. His written opinions are models of smoothness and rythm, rarely equaled by the jurist. When uncramped and unfettered by previous adjudication and precedent in his own State, and left free to follow the dictates of his own un- clouded mind, he broke like the sun through the clouds, brushed aside the antiquated jargon and accumulated rubbish of ages, and led the mind, with unanswerable argument, to correct conclusions. His opinions in the leading case on tax- titles, and the application of the old English champerty laws to the spirit and genius of our institutions, are models of judi- cial eloquence and reason.
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HON. ELBERT H. ENGLISH.
Hon. Elbert H. English was born in Madison county, Ala- bama, March 6, 1816. English, Scotch, Irish and German blood unite in him. James English, his father, was born in Virginia but reared to man's estate in Kentucky, and was a soldier under General Jackson in the Indian wars and in the war of 1812-15. Young English was raised a plain farmer boy, and at intervals, when not engaged on the farm, attended the common schools of the vicinage, taught in log houses with puncheon floors and dirt chimneys. At the age of fourteen he entered an academy at Athens, Alabama, and completed the course in that institution. When the young man left school he seems to have had no well-settled purpose in life ; he taught school for a short period, became dissatisfied with that occupa- tion, and exchanged it for that of silversmith, and succeeded 'well in developing fine mechanical talent. He opened a shop in Athens and succeeded well at his trade for several years. No circumstance in the career of the young man in after life, when fame delighted to honor him, is mentioned with more relish and zest by the friends and comrades of his youth - yet the jurist was ashamed of the silversmith and never honored the good mechanic by introduction or recital of reminiscence connected with him- the weakness, the frailty of greatness.
In this republican country of ours, where organic laws de- nounce hereditary patents to nobility, most men indulge the vanity of pride at achievements so marked and great as those which lead and direct the mechanic from his shop to the chief justiceship of a great Commonwealth. The next vacillation of character developed in the young man was a desire to become a great collegiate professor, and this idea was abandoned in time to become a disciple of Esculapius. He applied himself energetically to the study of medicine for some time, but the desire and the effort were spasmodic, and he soon abandoned the idea of becoming a physician.
In 1837 the fluctuations in the mind of the youth led him into the law office of George H. Houston (afterward governor of Alabama and senator in congress), where he studiously read law for three years. He was admitted to the bar at Athens in 1839, and practiced law there until 1844, serving two terms
or omnif
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in the legislature of Alabama after his admission to the bar. Early in 1844 he removed to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he continued to reside until his death, excepting a short interval during the civil war. He opened his office in May, 1844, and was happy and singularly fortunate in the selection of a field which proved so fruitful. In those days most lawyers traveled on horseback all over the State twice a year attending court. Mr. English did this for ten years, and thus became extensively acquainted in every section of the State.
He had many peers, some possessed of more profound at- tainments than himself, but nature eminently qualified him to win the confidence and suffrages of a free people, a gift which he utilized and subordinated apparently without effort or design, and which led him to the front and maintained him there. The genial, affable mannerism of the man lent assurance to all coming in contact with him that English was his friend. A few months after he settled in Little Rock, the justices of the supreme court appointed him reporter of their deci- sions, a position which he held nine years, reporting eight vol- umnes. In the fall of 1846 he was elected by the legislature to codify and annotate the statute laws of the State, which he did to the satisfaction of bench and bar. In 1848 his first candidacy for a seat on the supreme court bench was defeated by Judge David Walker. In 1854 Chief Justice Watkins resigned his seat on the supreme bench, and Judge English succeeded to the unexpired term of six years.
In 1860 he was re-elected to the office of chief justice for a term of eight years. Although not an active participant in the civil war, he deeply sympathized with and adhered to the fortunes of the south. For this the dominant political power, in the disjointed times of reconstruction in 1868, deprived the jurist of his office. After being disfranchised under the revolu- tionary constitution of 1868, he resumed the practice of his pro- fession, and continued it until the fall of 1874, when he was, under the new constitution of that year, by the suffrages of a free people, again elected to the great office of chief justice for the term of eight years. At the expiration of his term of office in 1882, he was again, by the dominant democratic party, nomi- nated and elected the fourth time chief justice of the supreme
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court. During the summer vacation, this universally good citi- zen and pure and upright jurist died at Ashville, North Caro- lina, on the 1st day of September, 1884.
Judge English was eminently a conservative jurist; no tempta- tion, no argument, however plausible and logical, no considera- tion of policy or expediency ever tempted or led him to ignore and abandon the well-established field of precedent. Precedent was his polar star. He was patient and laborious in searching- for and tracing judicial currents, and when he found them, or satisfied himself that he had found the stronger tides, he was satisfied to so mould and conform his opinions and there cast anchor. He does not rank as a profound jurist, but he does 'rank high as an upright and safe judge.
HON. WILLIAM B. FLOYD, CLARKSVILLE.
Judge Floyd was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the 9th of May, 1810, and is descended from a family prominent in our history. In 1760 two brothers, John and William Floyd, came from Wales to America, and settled in the colonies - William in New York and John in Virginia. William was one of the four delegates from New York who signed the Declaration of Independence. John became governor of Virginia and represen- tative in congress. His distinguished son, Jolin B. Floyd, was secretary of war under Buchanan's administration, and a briga- dier in the Confederate service. Two sons of William Floyd, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, became famous, and represented their districts in congress. Judge Floyd is descended from the Virginia line. His father does not appear to have indulged any ambition for political distinction, but contented himself with the occupation of a carpenter. He learned his son habits of industry and frugality which enabled him through life to estimate a dollar at its full purchasing value. His mother was a German woman, from whom he also in- herited an eye to business and thrift. In 1841 he moved to Clarksville, Arkansas, where he practiced his profession forty- three years. He was examined and admitted to the bar by Hon. Jesse Turner. In 1844 he was elected to the legislature from Johnson. In November, 1846, he was elected judge of the seventh circuit by the legislature, and served one term of
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four years, declining to succeed himself. In 1852 he was again elected to the legislature. In 1856 he was elected to the State senate and served his constituents four years. In 1859 many counties in the "north-west " favored his nomination for gov- ernor, but the Hon. Henry M. Rector carried off the prize. In 1860 he was elector for the State at large on the democratic ticket without instructions as to whether he should support Douglass or Breckenridge, and gave adhesion and powerful support to the latter. His distinguished kinsman, John B. Floyd, then secretary of war, honored him with a commission as one of the examiners of West Point in 1860. Jefferson Davis had previously extended the same courtesy to him when he was secretary of war. He was a secessionist, and as such was elected to the secession convention of 1861, and offered the first ordinance to consummate the divorce from the national government. This ordinance was defeated by four votes at the February session, but the adjourned session in May adopted it unanimously, save one vote, that of Isaac Murphy, who after- ward became famous as governor by Federal promotion. He twice refused the office of register of the land office at Clarks- ville, once from President Buchanan when the rebellion was in its incipient stages, and once from the Confederate authorities. His foresight in avoiding pecuniary complications led him to view the office as no flattering prize at that juncture. As cir- cuit judge he gave general satisfaction, and the bar favored his re-election. He was a fine business man, a warm friend to the cause of temperance and religion.
HON. THEODORE F. SORRELLS, PINE BLUFF.
Judge Sorrells was born in Bedford county, Tennessee, De- cember 18, 1821, and is descended from English stock in both lines. His great grandfather in the paternal line fought in the battle of King's Mountain, and his great uncle under Jackson at New Orleans. In 1836 his father moved to Marshall county, Mississippi, where the son grew to man's estate, laboring on a farm until he attained his majority. He is a self-made man; his wages as a farm-hand were hoarded until sufficient to de- fray the expenses of a polite and academic education, which he acquired at Memphis, Tennessee, in 1841, '42 and '43. After
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two years' private study of legal text-books he was admitted to the bar in 1846, in Mississippi, and immediately immigrated to Texas with a view to practice his profession, but the war fever seized him and he enlisted in the celebrated Jack Hays' first Texas mounted regiment, in which he served during the Mexi- can war, participating in the battle of Monterey. In the fall of 1847 he came to Arkansas, and in January, 1848, opened an office in Princeton, Dallas county. He soon became popu- lar, and in February, 1849, and again in 1854, was elected prosecuting attorney of his judicial circuit. In August, 1858, he was elected circuit judge for four years. In 1860 he was elector for the State at large on the Breckenridge and Lane ticket. He was a non-combatant during the war between the States, but aided and abetted the southern cause in sympathy and prayer for success. In 1866 he represented Bradley county in the legislature. When the State was freed from carpet-bag rule in 1874, he was elected judge of the tenth circuit, and in 1878 was re-elected, serving on the bench twelve years in the aggregate. A life-long Methodist and democrat, with strong prohibition tendencies grafted on these vigorous original stalks, indicate an uncompromising combination of creeds. He is what the world calls eccentric, with little danger of the verdict being reversed. An industrious and laborious life has pre- vented the social drafts of society from being honored to much extent. Constant employment and the stored resources of his own nature furnish all the diversion his iron organism requires. In these, as in all other things, he is quite self-sustaining. Necessity, in early life, admonished him of the sin of prodi- gality, and taught him the value of thrift and wisdom of economy, and these in turn made him rich and independent.
Stern and austere as the relentless hills of North Carolina, on which his ancestors grew, his resolve and determination ad- mit of no limitation short of success. The inspiration of that soil imparts wisdom as ripe with financial sagacity as Adam Smith was when he unbosomed himself in his " Wealth of Nations." Orthodox Methodism, one of his polar stars, stimu- lated his conscience from an early age, and guarded his rigid system of economy from the seduction of questionable methods in the acquisition of wealth. Quaint, honest, sincere, religious,
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he makes no compromise with vice. If he had the power he would convert and utilize the tremendous energies of the wine- bowl, deploy its victims and place them in the line of apostolic succession and perpetuity. His popularity does not spring from the guild, but outside and independent of it.
GENERAL CHARLES W. ADAMS, HELENA-MEMPHIS.
Henry VIII was on the throne of England when Luther raised the standard of revolt in central Europe against the dogmas of the Romish Church. This revolution soon crossed the channel and embraced the British isles, where the revolt was headed by the crown. Leo X was then on the papal throne, and was concentrating all the waning power and ener- gies of the Vatican to crush the heresy against absolute power. Henry had well calculated the chances of success before he threw off the papal yoke. He saw that the tremendous revo- lutionary momentum gathered in central Europe would prove an impassable barrier against the thunders of the Vatican. He is sometimes credited by theologians and historians as fore- seeing and designing to compass the ultimate results of the Reformation, but he is entitled to no such consideration ; he was a moral monstrosity and was altogether too selfish to have any object in view other than his own aggrandizement in the addition of power centered in the crown as the head of the church.
The Reformation struck the shackles of despotism from the human mind, and led it untrammeled through the realms of truth free from the enslaving dogmas of arbitrary creeds. The Church of England succeeded the Romish Church as the es- tablished religion, and the monarch succeeded to the offices of the pontiff. But strange to say it did not, any more than the Romish Church under the reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth and James I, embrace the spirit of toleration. To the Puritan and the Pilgrim who denied allegiance to either system of re- ligion, the change from the Romish to the English Church was but a change of masters. The Calvinistic faith of the Puritan was as hostile to the one as to the other. These dissenters from the orthodox faith were regarded by the sovereigns named as enemies to the State, and were persecuted in the name of re- ligion ; many fled from persecution and sought asylums in
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Holland, Germany and the Swiss cantons. The flight of these austere Calvinists from place to place, to avoid persecution, drew to them the name of Pilgrim - a name holy and high in the American Pantheon. In the name of the religion and liberty they loved, their Pilgrim-feet pressed the deck of the little Mayflower, that bore them on the crest of the stormy wave to New England, where they aided in planting and es- tablishing the grandest possibilities yet achieved by man. In this Pilgrim tide came the ancestors of General Adams, and the high, heroic spirit which in coming years furnished the music of the cannon roar at Bunker Hill and Yorktown. General Charles W. Adams was born on the 16th of August, 1817, in Boston, Massachusetts, a soil sacred to the memory of grand historic events in the history of his family. IIe belongs to that historic family of New England which acted so con- spicuous a part in the memorable events preceding the revolu- tion of 1776, and which gave two presidents to the United States - a lineage transcendentally greater and higher than all the adventitious creations of monarchies. The history of this old colonial family is now the heritage of the nation.
In 1819, the general's parents moved to the then frontier town of New Albany, Indiana, where educational facilities were of the most primitive character, an obstacle finally overcome by patient toil, stimulated and supported by energy and reso- lution, which made failure impossible. From his thirteenth to his eighteenth year he served an apprenticeship in a mercantile house at New Albany. In 1835 he immigrated to the territory of Arkansas, and located at Helena, where he entered the ser- vice of a large mercantile house, and soon became cashier. The old Real Estate Bank of Arkansas was organized and commenced business carly in 1837. The fine business quali- fications of young Adams, and the splendid shield of integrity he had earned for a spotless name singled him out as the cashier for the IIelena branch of this bank. He accepted the post of high trust and great responsibility at the early age of twenty, and discharged every duty imposed by that relation to the entire satisfaction of the bank. During all these years he assiduously studied at night and at all times when not actively engaged in the service of his employers, and became not only
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a good English, but a classical scholar also. Then he took up law and mastered it in the same way, and when ripe for the bar, stepped out of the bank into his law office, receiving his license from that accomplished gentleman and jurist, Thomas J. Lacy, in 1839. His talent and integrity were widely known and well recognized before he came to the bar; hence he did not serve the ordinary probation incident to young men just entering on a professional career. In 1840-1-2-3 the un- fortunate, ill-conceived and cumbrous mass of the old Real Es- tate Bank fell to pieces and went into liquidation, and General Adams was, because of his intimate knowledge of the affairs of the bank and his ability as a lawyer, elected attorney by the trustees for the Helena branch. Whilst occupying this re- lation to the bank and to the State, he became the law part- ner of the amiable and talented William K. Sebastian, who, in 1848, became a senator in congress. In 1852 he was elected judge of the first circuit, and he presided on the bench two years with distinguished ability, after which he resigned and resumed the practice of his profession. The celebrated Martha Washington cases were tried before him at Helena, in 1854 (the year the author was admitted to the bar), and at- tracted much attention throughout the United States. Martha Washington was the name of a Mississippi steamer, and it was alleged that the owners loaded her with dummy freight and burned her, within the jurisdiction of the circuit court of Phillips county, to defraud the insurance companies. Several lives were lost on board the burning steamer. Captain Cum- mins and four alleged confederates were indicted and ex- tradited from Ohio and New York, charged with murder. The defendants were admitted to bail. The captain was first upon trial. The question of jurisdiction and the proba- tive facts connected with the burning of the steamer were ex- haustively argued by eminent counsel, including the late E. M. Yerger of Memphis, and General Palmer of Helena, for the defense. The rulings of Judge Adams were delivered in the enlightened spirit of the able jurist. The flashy and beauti- ful wife of Captain Cummins is said to have exerted a power- ful influence on the flexible jury, and her husband was acquit- ted, 'twas said for want of that high degree of evidence in
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delinquencies of that grade. But moral conviction of guilt was firmly lodged in the public mind. Two of the defendants were convicted of the indiscretion of forging in New York, and were boarding at the reformatory at Sing Sing, when their cases were called in the Phillips circuit court, and only re- sponded by proxy. The other two fled to the Pacific coast before civilization had lighted up that region, to escape the burning indignation of an outraged people. But it was or- dained in the beginning and written in the records of creation that there should be no asylum from crime on this earth. A few months since a solitary traveler from the land of the "Golden Gate " stepped into the clerk's office at Helena and called for the records of the Martha Washington cases to be carried under the seal of the court to California, there to rise up like " Banquo's ghost" against the fleeing criminals, who had vainly fled to escape the burning wreck behind. In poli- ties General Adams was a whig, and no better evidence of his conservatism and great moral worth could be given, than the fact that the important offices conferred upon him in each in- stance came from democratic constituencies, without his ever departing or swerving a line from his creed. In 1860 he was a candidate for the electoral college on the Bell and Everett ticket, and did yeoman service in the interests of his party. He be- lieved the south had great grievances, which ought to be recog- nized and adjusted within, and not without the Union, if possi- ble. His lineage and blood came in the flood-tide of a glorious inheritance, linked and interwoven with all that is dear and sacred to the best government the world has yet known. Ile was an ADAMS, and his name and fame and race were all bap- tized in the perils and enshrined in the glories which made revolution against monarchy a success, and the name of Adams immortal. But powerful as these feelings were interwoven in his nature, they had their legitimate, their constitutional limi- tations, beyond which a spiritless submission, an odious servil- ity would dwarf all that is noble and elevating in man. Pa- triotism, like every other principle relating to government, in profound exigencies, like those which produced the civil war, has its qualifications and limitations. The same spirit which encouraged in him a vehement love for the Union made him
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