USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 34
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ELECTRO-LICAY
HON. J. R. PETTIGREW.
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had gone to meet the deceased and the venerable Major Rea- gan. A funeral cortege took the place of the anticipated happy meeting. Such are the disappointments which rise up in our pathway all along the line of life's uncertain tenure.
HON. HULBERT FELLOWS FAIRCHILD, BATESVILLE.
Judge Fairchild was born in New Lisbon, New York, Oc- tober 25, 1817. His academic course was completed at Oxford in his native State, and in 1835, he entered the sophomore class at Williams College, Massachusetts, where he remained two years, advancing to the senior class in 1837, and then leaving, without laying his collegiate foundations any deeper. Of his ancestry and the origin of his family we are not advised. Our primitive democracy in many respects is a curious institu- tion. In the early days of the republic it laid deep the founda- tions of national aversion to the heraldry of nobility and the adventitious foundations of presumptive greatness, under the supporting shadows of a monarchy. In this direction it often invites the offices of obscurity and the asylum of oblivion. These dogmas had their origin in the persecutions and suffer- ings of the Pilgrims, out of which grew an intense hatred to the institutions which fostered the power that drove them from home and made them wanderers in distant regions of the globe. The latitude of New England gave these feelings their strongest support, in colonial times. Farther south, in the old aristocratic colony on the James, where the portion- less and heirless scions of the English nobility settled, it did not obtain until long after the revolutionary period. Stripped as they were of the natural rights of inheritance by the ancient graft of Norman feudalism, they loved and idolized mon- archy, until its abuses drove them to revolt and revolution, and for half a century afterward they maintained the laws of primogeniture and property qualifications to vote, and their descendants yet love to trace their blood back, as near as possi- ble, to the royal fount. The same institutions sometimes lead to the other extreme of the arc described by the democratic pendulum and tear down the walls of oblivion, invade the privacy of obscurity, and lead her children captives in the chariot of fame.
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The rail-splitter in the wilderness, the Greenville tailor, the New England cobbler, the Galena tanner, and the surveyor in the wilderness, now resting in the embrace of a glorious immor- tality, are all types of the latter class. American democracy, while it mocks at monarchy, derides artificial greatness, and tears down hereditary assumptions. and the violent presump- tions necessary to the support of royalty, is not a common lev- eler, but it tears down all obstruction to the expansion of greatness, and invites competition from every source in the field of fame. In this field of competition for achievement and honors in the higher walks of man, our republic places all of her children on the roll of promotion. Impenetrable demo- cratic obscurity cuts us off from following Chancellor Fair- child's ascending ancestral line beyond the parental stem at New Lisbon, where his mother and father Reuben lived hon- ored and blameless lives. In 1838 the future first chancellor of Arkansas immigrated to Louisville, Kentucky, and became a law student in the office of Pirtle & Sneed, and in 1841 they graduated him and had him enrolled on the roster of his pro- fession. In December, 1841, he located in Pocahontas, Ar- kansas, where he practiced four years prior to his removal to Batesville. He rapidly advanced to a high standard in his pro- fession, and was better fitted for the thoughtful and accurate discharge of the duties of the jurist than the nisi prius con- tests of the lawyer and the advocate. To the impulsive pas- sions which light up the soul and sway auditories at the com- mand of the orator, he was as immobile as Parian marble ; but his well-organized mind led him into a higher field of in- tellectual dominion where his powers of abstraction, induction and logical analysis gave him empire over mind rather than heart. He looked upon the laws' design as the consummation of man's wisdom ; as a practical science of vast import, com- passing the whole range of human action and embracing a phi- losophy deep, broad and expansive as the field of human mo- tives, interests and impulses. To him, as to all of the noble guild of true lawyers, the charlatan and worthless pretender, who never penetrate beyond the vestibule of the science, are parasites, to be shunned as objects of contamination.
No man, saint or sinner, ever held his temper in better sub-
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jection ; it was never known to get the better of his cool and passionless judgment. He was a whig in politics, but non- partisan and passive, simply voting more to discharge the duty he owed society than to promote or gratify party interests. These qualities commended him to Governor Elias N. Conway, who appointed him chancellor in 1855, when he was engaged in earnest effort to crush the abuses growing out of the old Real Estate Bank and its corrupt management. He discharged the duties pertaining to this high station, with honor to him- self and great profit to the State, until 1860, when he was elected associate justice of the supreme court by the legisla- ture. The war absorbed all the energies and resources of the State during its continuance, and left but little business for the supreme court, hence the opportunity to build a judicial fame was wanting during that period ; but enough is known to warrant the statement that he would have become one of our ablest jurists had he remained on the bench until more auspi- cious times. His freedom from excitement, and non-partisan nature, emancipated him from inclination to war, and he kept out of its whirlwind, but adhered loyally to the south, and re- frained from criticising the errors and blunders of her leaders. All sects and creeds, religious and political, justly held him in high esteem. He was appointed to the high station of chan- cellor by a democratic governor, and was elected to the su- preme court by a democratic legislature. Judge Fairchild re- signed his commission in 1864 and moved to St. Louis, and there attempted to practice his profession, but encountered the odious ostracism of the Drake constitution, and was prohibited.
Thus driven from his profession, he combined business with pleasure in 1865, and made the tour of England and the con- tinent. He returned late in the year and selected Memphis, Tennessee, as his future home, there to begin again, in the meridian of his intellectual powers, the battle of life. In Janu- ary, 1866, he left Memphis on a business trip to his old home at Batesville, but at Jacksonport on White river, on the third of February, the old man with the scythe served his final injunction and gave his noble spirit a passport to God. He met the inevitable hour in the true and exalted spirit of Chris- tianity he had so long cultivated in the Presbyterian church.
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He loved communion with the best authors, and did not suffer law, although a stern and jealous science, to dwarf his attainments in the higher fields of literature and science. The lights in his library were seldom extinguished before two in the morning. In these late and thoughtful hours intemperance found its only indulgence with him. He was passionately fond of fine horses and out-door exercise, and indulged these tastes as a means of rest and recreation from the fatiguing laboratory of the brain. He was eminently social and democratic in his nature, and his relations to the bar, society and his family were all typical of his kind heart and nature. All of his children - three sons and one daughter - preceded him to the grave. These afflictions weighed heavily on his heart, but he bore up against them with stern, submissive, Socratic philosophy, which astonished his friends. His widow resides in Cleveland, Ohio.
MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS C. HINDMAN, HELENA.
What is man and the mission assigned him by the Creator in the economy of a universe so vast as to defy the utmost scope of his conceptions to comprehend ? Aided by the splendid flight of the telescope, his vision penetrates the outward vast where Neptune travels the circuit of outer guard to our solar system, which is but a decimal of that system of suns and systems, which, unitied, we call the stellar universe; an aggregation of millions of worlds, some new, some old, some forming, others perishing with age. Led by science in this sweep of vision to distances, a projectile moving at the velocity of a cannon ball would not reach in a million of years ; we read from the book of nature, unfolded along the solar and stellar high ways the same laws of production, combination and decay we see around us every hour on the decimal we inhabit. The river we beheld yesterday has swept on to the sea, and is not the river we see to-day ; the world that knew us yesterday is not the world we know to-day. The sun and the moon and every unit in the stellar and solar systems are as much pervaded with the primal law of change as the man who comes into the world to-day and passes out to morrow. All that comes and goes on earth is sooner or later invaded by oblivion. The mightiest colossus fame ever builded stays the ravages of time but a moment in
ELECTRO-LIGHT ENG CONY.
MAJOR-GENERAL THOMAS C. HINDMAN.
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the aggregation of cycles, measured in the circuit of duration. What do we read in all this? Ever-giving vitality which con- verts death into new life, and banishes it from the economy of God. His law permits nothing to perish. Unceasing changes to accommodate new combinations are primal factors on which the universe is founded ; but death is an allegory, a legend, springing from, and existing alone in man's contracted vision. When we cross the boundary, oblivion soon appropriates the places that will know us no more forever, and we pass to the rear to join the innumerable throng that swells the roll of the forgotten.
Yesterday " Tom Hindman " was moulding, leading, crystal- lizing public opinion in Arkansas, and triumphantly marching to the goal of his ambition over powerful opposition - the next day he was commanding armies and leading victorious legions on the bloodiest fields of modern times. He is dead, and no one to-day can tell where he was born or educated, or any thing connected with his early life; and it is a matter of conjecture as to which of three States is entitled to the honor of his birth. Six months' correspondence leaves it in doubt. His worthy son - Professor Biscoe Hindman - was too small to know any thing about such things when his parents died, and no one more than he regrets the loss of his father's early history.
Hugh L. McClung, clerk of the Federal court at Knoxville, Tennessee, under date of February 23, 1887, writes : " Thomas C. Hindman, Sr., the father of General Hindman, lived ten miles east of Knoxville, on the Governor Roane farm, and I think the general was born there, but am not certain. From there his father moved to Alabama or Mississippi. I think he was a Yale graduate, but I did not know him until 1857, when I met him at Helena, Arkansas, where he then lived." W. C. Falkner of Ripley, Mississippi, writes, under date of February 10, 1887, to the general's son, Biscoe : "Your grandfather Hindman owned a large plantation and a large number of slaves two miles west of Ripley. He was killed by the fly- wheel of a gin. He came here from Alabama, I believe from Talladega. I first knew your father in 1845; he was not then grown. In 1846 he and I went into the Mexican war. He was second lieutenant in the company commanded by Captain Am.
47
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Jackson, in the Second Mississippi regiment, commanded by Colonel Charles Clark, and served the entire war. On his return, in 1848, he read law, and I heard his maiden speech, which gave him high rank as an orator for one so young. In 1851 he canvassed north Mississippi against ex-Governor Henry S. Foote, at that time the most famous stump orator in the State. He sustained himself well in that memorable canvass. He was twice elected to the legislature from this county, defeating the ablest men of the day." General W. H. Govan, under date of February 28, 1887, writes : "I know nothing scarcely of his early life ; my impression is he did not receive a collegiate edu- cation. He read law in Ripley, Mississippi, where he was ad- mitted to the bar. He was a born politician, however, and went early into politics, and was elected to the legislature in 1851 or 1852. He was quite prominent in the canvass of 1851, when the question of secession was before the people. A warm friend of Jefferson Davis, the leader of the State rights democ- racy, he advocated the right of secession. The State went largely for the Union ticket, led by Henry S. Foote. I first met General Hindman during this campaign and heard him speak. Although a very young man, he made quite a reputa- tion as a forcible and fluent speaker. About 1852 or 1853 he emigrated to Arkansas and settled in Helena and became asso- ciated in the practice of law with Major John C. Palmer. In 1855 he took an active interest in politics and canvassed the district against know-nothingism, in which he added much to his reputation as an able speaker.
He was twice elected to congress, but his greatest civic tri- umph was in the election of Henry M. Rector as governor, in 1859 .. Dick Johnson of Little Rock had been nominated by the democratic State convention, which was considered equiva- lent to an election. General Hindman repudiated the action of the convention, and with a few friends held another convention, and nominated Henry M. Rector. He took the field for Rec- tor, canvassed the State, and made the most brilliant canvass of his life, and Rector was elected by a handsome majority, al- though nearly all of the prominent men of the State were cpposed to him. He early espoused the cause of the Confed- eracy, left his seat, and came home from Washington, early in
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1861, and raised a regiment for the war. His command was increased to a legion, by the addition of a battalion and battery of artillery. We were ordered to Pittman's Ferry, Arkansas, where we remained until after the battles of Bull Run and Manassas, when we were moved to Cave City, Kentucky, where we remained until after the fall of Donaldson, when our command was moved to Corinth, Mississippi, a short time be- fore the battle of Shiloh. Before we left Kentucky he was commissioned brigadier-general. We reached Corinth the latter part of March, where we were soon to experience the stern realities of war, and to lose upon the bloody field of Shiloh some of our best men. About the 2d or 3d of April, 1862, we moved out from Corinth, to attack the enemy before all of his forces concentrated, General Hindman commanding a di- vision, receiving his commission as major-general the morning before the battle of Shiloh. Our division formed a part of Hardee's corps, and occupied a central position in our army. Our troops drove every thing steadily before them, carrying every thing by storm. Some time during the day, after the battle was nearly won, he was badly hurt by a singular fall from his horse, which occurred in this way : During a hotly- contested fight our Arkansas troops were charging a battery which was pouring a destructive fire into our ranks. During the progress of this charge General Hindman halted for a mo- ment in an open field, to consult with Colonel J. G. Shaver, in command of the Second Arkansas. Lieutenant Patterson, adjutant of the regiment, rode up. Whilst in this position a shell from the enemy's guns came whizzing along, passed through each of the three horses, and threw the riders high in the air. In the fall General Hindman's thigh was broken, and, not being able to mount a horse, he was carried to the rear, and back to Corinth. A few days after the battle of Shiloh General Beauregard appointed him to the command of the department of the Mississippi, with head-quarters at Little Rock. Arkansas was then stripped of troops; all of her soldiers had been sent east to Bragg and Lee. General HIind- man proceeded immediately to organize an army. New energy and life was infused in our people, and soldiers rapidly flocked to his standard.
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The president of the Confederacy, however, saw fit to super- sede him, by placing General Holmes over him, which frus- trated all of his plans. General Holmes sent him to take charge of the forces then being collected at Fort Smith. The Federals, under command of General Blount, invaded north-western Arkansas, and General Hindman moved out to meet him. A sanguinary battle was fought at Prairie Grove, without decisive result, both parties claiming the victory. The Confederates, being poorly supplied with arms and munitions of war, were compelled to fall back to their base at Fort Smith, and from thence to Little Rock. After his return to Little Rock, Gen- eral Hindman, at his own request, was ordered to report to General Bragg, which he did at Chattanooga, about the 1st of September, 1863, and was immediately assigned to the com- mand of a division composed of General Bate's brigade of Ten- nessee troops, General Day's brigade of Alabama troops, and General Walthall's Mississippi troops. He commanded this division in the battle of Chickamauga, and no troops in the army of Tennessee behaved with more gallantry. He had a falling out with General Bragg a short time before, and was relieved of his command soon after the battle of Chickamauga, and took no active part in the war afterward."
The following letter is from President Davis
BEAUVOIR, MISS., 3d January, 1887. Hon. M. T. SANDERS :
MY DEAR SIR - I was for many years personally acquainted with the late General T. C. Hindman; he was the son of a ยท gallant officer in the war of 1812, and, I believe, was born in Mississippi. Without entering into a question of heredity, General Hindman was certainly endowed with high military attributes. Both in his civil and military career he displayed zeal and energy, marked by unswerving fidelity. Daring, with- out being rash; and looking beyond the event of the moment to the future result to be achieved, he possessed the instincts of a soldier, withont which no amount of education can make a general. Bound to General Hindman by close ties of friend- ship, I am warned of the propriety of being guarded in my expressions in regard to him, lest it should be considered a
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tribute of friendship, rather than to the merit of the deceased. Very respectfully,
JEFFERSON DAVIS.
Since the manuscript thus far was prepared the author received the following letter from John Ingram, Esq., of Lit- tle Rock, a native of Arkansas, and an enthusiastic admirer of General Hindman, which, with information from other sources, . satisfies the author that General Hindman was born in Missis- sippi.
LITTLE ROCK, June 17, 1887.
JOHN HALLUM, Lonoke, Ark. :
DEAR SIR - Your expressions of anxiety to learn the birth- place of the late General Thomas C. Hindman enables me to give it to you as he gave it to the public, in the noted cam- paign of 1859. The large stock of campaign thunder hurled at him, that year of his triumph, embraced the silly charge that it was not known where he was born. In reply to this charge, in his speech at Van Buren, he said that he was born in Tippah county, Mississippi, a statement, I presume, embracing absolute verity. Yours truly,
JOHN INGRAM.
General Hindman and his old political adversary, ex-Gover- nor Henry S. Foote, late in the fall of 1860, addressed a very large auditory in Memphis, on the political issues of the day, then crystallizing with revolutionary momentum in the two great sections of the Union. Governor Foote, in one of the most polished and chaste efforts of his life, was trying to stay the revolutionary tide, then setting in so strong for war. With "Tom Hindman " (a pet name in Arkansas) the day for con- cession and conciliation had passed ; he viewed war as the ulti- mate and inevitable arbiter. He was then ascending to the political zenith, as a star of the first magnitude in the State of his adoption, had been twice elected to congress over powerful and compact organizations, had inaugurated and led a success- ful rebellion against an organization supported by all the old party leaders, who looked on him as Bourbons looked on the Corsican after he had won Austerlitz and Marengo, and
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became the dictator of France and Europe. No party leader of a revolt was ever hated so cordially as "Tom Hindman." No man ever dealt defiance to the opposition with cooler and more emphasized disdain. There was not a negative, passive element in his nature ; every element of it was grouped and de- veloped under positive aspects. No man ever had more confi- dence in his own native resources, nor utilized them more readily. To hate and denounce what he conceived wrong and oppressive grew into one of the strongest passions of his mature manhood. His mind was cast in this mold in the memorable canvass of 1851, when he espoused the anti-Union sentiments of Jefferson Davis, and succeeding years and maturity of judg- ment confirmed them. The discussion alluded to between him and Foote presented a field peculiarly adapted to the daring energies and bold sweep of his own genius, which led him, like an eagle cleaving the clouds and sweeping the Alps to denounce northern invasion of constitutional guaranties, with the fiery energies of Cicero denouncing Cataline. The author knew both speakers personally, and was an attentive auditor; each was a foeman worthy the lance of his adversary. General Hindman knew he had the popular heart, and he played on its nervous keys with the skill of a master. He was murdered by a stealthy assassin, in the bosom of his family, soon after the war ended, the assassin firing through a window, near which the general sat in converse with his family. The murderer has never been discovered. He married the daughter of. Henry L. Biscoe, a very prominent man in our early history. His per- son was small, features finely cut, hair light, eyes gray and piercing, and flashing with nervous energy. A good portrait adorns the capitol building at Little Rock, from which the por- trait here presented was taken.
GOVERNOR SIMON P. HUGHES, LITTLE ROCK.
Governor Hughes was born in Smith county, Tennessee, August 14, 1830, the son of Simon P. Hughes, a native of Prince Edward county, Virginia, and Mary P. Hubbard, sister to Peter Hubbard, a scholar, and the greatest teacher of his day. The father was a man of strongly-marked individual- ity, great popularity and force of character; was sheriff of his
GOV. SIMON P. HUGHES.
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county and a member of the legislature. A prosperous farmer, his sons were educated in all the branches and mysteries of agriculture, going to the primitive schools of the period during the fall and winter, when they could best be spared from the farm. In 1844 young Simon accompanied some relatives to Pulaski county, Arkansas, and worked with them on a farm two years for wages. In 1846-7 he attended school at Sylvan Academy in Sumner county, Tennessee, taught by Peter Hub- bard, his maternal uncle. In 1848-9 he was a student at Clin- ton College in his native county. In the fall of 1849 he moved to Monroe county, Arkansas, and there labored on a farm several years for wages. His friend and patron was sheriff of the county, and became strongly attached to the young man, because of the many good traits of character developed in his business and social relations. In 1854 he retired from office, and suggested to his young friend the idea of becoming his successor. This wholly unexpected manifestation of high trust and confidence astonished the young man, and he said : " I am comparatively a stranger in the county, am only known to a few as a hard-working farmer, am poor, and it would be impos- sible for me to give the large bond required, if I could secure the election. I would not ask any gentleman to assume such onerous responsibilities for me. I thank you for the kind feel- ing manifested in the suggestion, but the prize is altogether beyond my reach." His kind friend, in response, said : " Never mind, young man, about the bond. That difficulty claimed my attention before I spoke to you. I will make the bond. You and I can pull through the election. The people will soon see you have nerve and energy. I will assure them you have ca- pacity and integrity, and they will not doubt that."
This was the estimate of the man who knew him better than any other man in the county. These assurances overcame the boy's hesitation and misgivings, and he became the opponent of a bully for the office of sheriff. The campaign was an exciting one ; public speaking and barbecues were the order of the day ; the people assembled in large masses, and many thought the youth would soon be driven from the field by his overbearing opponent, and but few knew his courage would be equal to the strain brought to bear on it. At the first appointment his
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