USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 40
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ELECTRO LIGHT ENG.
MAJOR-GENERAL PATRICK R. CLEBURNE.
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HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
that no friend of Rice interfered to the prejudice of Hindman. At this instant Jamison Rice, brother to Dorsey, shot Cleburne clear through the body, unobserved by the latter. Cleburne wheeled in the direction from whence the ball came, without knowing who shot him, and saw James Marriott, Dorsey's brother-in-law, standing, pistol in hand, and shot Marriott dead, supposing him to be his assailant. A moment later Cleburne fell from exhaustion, and was carried home by his friends, where he lingered between life and death a long time, but finally re- covered. In 1859 General Cleburne became associated with Judge Mangam in the practice of law.
As a lawyer he commanded respect and a good practice, but was not at the bar long enough to make and impress a lasting record in that widely-extended and difficult field. He had much of the milk of human kindness in his nature, and he felt that he was brother to every sufferer. He remained at his post in Helena during the terrible yellow fever scourge of 1855, and nursed the sick and buried the dead, after all who could had fled. Moral and upright, he despised a mean act, and acknowl- edged no guide, but his honor and conscience. Proud and sensitive, he demanded respect, and always accorded it to others when deserved. He lived much to and within himself, and often sought in soltitude the wild-wood charms of forest and glen, often contemplating the inner, rather than the outer world. He appeared morose and taciturn, and for this reason had but few devoted friends and confidants. He loved his fellow- men and deeply sympathized with their distress and misfortunes, but for himself there was a well-spring of inner consciousness to which he ever turned for consolation, silent, glorious and grand, and like the waters of the deep sea, hidden from the sight and intrusion of man. An Episcopalian in religious faith, he was for years a vestryman in St. John's Church, Helena. He read men with remarkable quickness and accuracy and always accorded due consideration to the deserving, whether the pos- sessor stood in a private's or general's uniform. He had a sad, a sacred love, which death denied fruition on earth. He attended General Hardee's wedding at Selma, Alabama, as groomsman, with Miss Sue Tarleton of Mobile, bridesmaid, early in 1864. Manliness wedded to a hero's fame won the hand and
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heart of the beautiful and intelligent belle of Mobile, and they were trothed as devoted lovers. But he fell asleep whilst lead- ing the charge " on fame's eternal camping ground " that fatal 30th of November, 1864, in the awful battle of Franklin, where so much chivalry was needlessly sacrificed to incompetent gene- ralship. The letters he wrote his betrothed from the tented field were elevated in sentiment, full of pathos and exquisite in ten- derness. Both have passed the dark river and entered on the fruition of love immortal.
When the civil war commenced Cleburne stepped to the front immediately as captain of the Yell Rifles first, then as colonel of the first Arkansas regiment to enter the Confederate service, composed of the flower of the land ; promoted by election - soon a brigadier's commission came, to be quickly followed by a major-general's commission. From the opening to the close of his career in the army his record is a series of triumphs. Physically he was six feet in height, broad of shoulders and slender build, and rather ungainly in appearance. After the battle his body was found ; boots, sword, belt, pocket-book and diary were gone. His remains were deposited in Ashland, the private burying-ground of the Polk family, six miles south of Columbia, Tennessee, Bishop Quintard officiating. The Ladies' Memorial Association of Phillips county, Arkansas, with Mrs. Judge John T. Jones at its head, modeled and arranged a fine cemetery at Helena, for the Confederate dead, and thither the remains of General Cleburne were brought and deposited in 1869.
JUDGE B. B. BATTLE, LITTLE ROCK.
Judge Battle was born on his father's plantation in Hinds - county, Mississippi, the 24th of July, 1838, but came with his parents to Lafayette county, Arkansas, in 1844, and there grew up to man's estate. His father, Judge Joseph J. Battle, was born near Raleigh, North Carolina, and is descended from an honorable and ancien colonial family, whose sons fought for independence on many fields in the revolution. It was a mat- ter of just and noble pride with the old man (now deceased) that his lineage run back through blood that had nurtured and contributed to the liberties of his country.
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HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
The eminent jurist, William Battle of the supreme court of North Carolina, was cousin to the father of Judge B. B. Bat- tle. In their early days they were intimate friends and asso- ciates. Unfortunately it has been the strong tendency of our semi-democratic institutions, to lessen our estimate of the dig- nity and importance of family history, and to care little for its preservation. This grows out of prejudice to monarchial and aristocratic institutions, but it is a false pride, and is some- times noxious and baneful in its influences on our literature. All admit and believe in the laws of reproduction in their ap- plication to plants, race-horses and the lower order of animals, but many, through false pride, deny their application to the highest order of animate creation. These impediments too often loom up in the pathway of the historian, and darken it, when trying to follow up important facts, and to trace philosophic causes to logical results. I believe in blood; I believe in the laws of reproduction; they come to us under the signet of the Creator, and not from the bastard mill of aristo- cratic institutions. But like all other laws, they have their ex- ceptions. The author is led to these reflections, not from any thing peculiar to the history of Judge Battle, but because of the generally accepted false ideas about family history, and the false modesty growing out of the error, which has given over so much valuable history to oblivion. Judge Battle, under the fostering care of his kind and honored father, acquired a very liberal education, and was graduated at Fayetteville by Arkan- sas College on the 4th of July, 1856.
After leaving college his father sent him to the law depart- ment of Cumberland University, at Lebanon, Tennessee, where he was, under the direction of those able professors, Judges Abe Caruthers, Nathan Green, Sr., and Nathan Green, Jr., thoroughly grounded in the elementary principles of law, graduating in June, 1858. At the commencement of the late civil war his colonial blood asserted itself and came to the sur- face. His choice led him to the artillery arm of the Confeder- ate service. The flying battery to which he was attached as a private during the war formed a part of General Frank Cheatham's division the first two years of the war. The re- mainder of the war it was attached to General Pat. Cleburne's 55
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division. The heroic ages have produced no better soldier than young Battle. No signal for battle in the army of the Tennessee, from Tunnel Hill to Jonesboro, Georgia, ever found him ab- sent from his gun on the field of battle, save that in front of Nashville, when he was on active detached service. He served his gun and served it well on the bloody fields of Perryville, Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and all the other battles fought by the army of the Tennessee, with the exception mentioned. He never had a furlough when a battle was at hand, nor was he ever sick or wounded during his connection with the army. The young soldier brought this honorable record back to the State that sent him to the field. He was licensed to practice law by the supreme court of Ten- nessee in 1858, and in the fall of that year by the courts of Arkansas.
In the fall of 1858 he opened an office at Lewisville, in La- fayette county, Arkansas. After the termination of the war, he resumed and continued the practice at the same place, until 1869, when he moved to Washington, Hempstead county. He was returned to the legislature in 1871, without being con- sulted as to his inclinations in that respect. Judge Battle has never had any ambition than that directly connected with his profession ; in that, his ambition is laudable and looks to high achievement. He has been three times elevated to the supreme bench of the State; first, by appointment from the governor, then by election to fill the unexpired term of the lamented Eakin, in 1885, and in 1886, by election, for the full term of eight years. He possesses many of the elements necessary to advance him to the rank of an eminent jurist. He is learned, discriminating, pains-taking, laborious in research, and his mind is remarkably free from prejudice and excitement of any char- acter. But his proverbial caution and fear of being misled by counsel sometimes leads him to overlook the application of im- portant principles. When he achieves emancipation from these misgivings his field of usefulness as a jurist will be corres- pondingly enlarged. A little more experience will enable him to accomplish this.
ELECTRO LIGHT
THOMAS BOLES.
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HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
JUDGE THOMAS BOLES, FORT SMITH.
Judge Boles was born a farmer's son in Johnson county, Ar- kansas, July 16, 1837, and is of Norman-English extraction. A zealous biographer and enthusiastic genealogist of the family traces their advent into England as conquerors under William the Norman. The barons of Scampton and the lords of Swineshead in the county of Lincoln for seventeen generations figure conspicuously, dating back in this bailiwick to the reign of Henry III, and the biographer assures us that from another branch of the Boles family descended the Duke of Marlborough, John Boles, bishop of Rochester, William Boles, a naturalist, and Sir George Boles, lieutenant-general, who commanded a division under Wellington at Waterloo. The youth of Judge Boles was but a duplicate of that of the ordinary farm- boy ; he attended the old-fashioned log school-house at inter- vals when he could best be spared from the field, and in this way he aggregated twelve months' primitive schooling by the time he attained his twentieth year. But he had aspirations, a taste for books and literature, and became his own zealous educator at night after his day's work on the farm was over. In this way he qualified himself to teach the rudimentary branches of an English education, and for two years taught school, and read law during his leisure hours, and was admitted to the bar in 1839, at Danville, in Yell county, and located there. He served one year as deputy sheriff, and near two years as deputy clerk ; was a Douglass democrat preceding Mr. Lincoln's election, but was a warm and zealous Unionist during the late civil war, and became captain in the Third Regiment of Arkansas Federal cavalry, and figured conspicuously in the local troubles and contests at the time. After the war, in politics he became a republican and an active supporter of Governor Clayton's administration. In 1865 he was elected judge of the fifth judicial circuit of the State, with but little experience as a lawyer and none as a judge, but it is due to him to say that he did not seek the office in those troubled and disjointed times ; that he only consented to fill the office after urgent so- licitation ; and that he was pleasant, courteous and affable on the bench, and filled the office with becoming credit and respect.
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In 1868 he was elected to the fortieth congress as a republi- can, and was successively elected to the forty-first and forty- second congress, and was an active supporter of his party dur- ing that stormy period. Arkansas, by reason of her relation to the rebellion, had been excluded from the benefits of an act of congress granting to the States lands to endow agricultural colleges. Judge Boles introduced and secured the passage of a bill in congress removing this restriction, and securing to Arkan- sas her proportion of the endowment college scrip. At the close of his congressional career he resumed the practice of his pro- fession, and located at Dardanelle, and in 1878 was appointed, by President Hayes, receiver of the United States land office at Dardanelle. Governor Baxter tendered him the office of circuit judge of the fifth circuit, but he declined it. In 1882 President Arthur appointed him United States marshal for the western district of Arkansas, which position he held five years, disbursing for the government $300,000 annually. Since retir- ing from the marshal's office he has permanently settled in Fort Smith.
JUDGE SAMUEL N. ELLIOTT, BENTONVILLE.
Judge Elliott was born in Rutherford county, Tennessee, December 22, 1823. He was thoroughly prepared at the com- mon and academic schools of the county for a collegiate course, and at the age of sixteen matriculated at Transylvania Univer- sity, where, at the expiration of three years' thorough training, he was graduated with distinguished honors. He read law and was admitted to the bar in his native county in 1845. In 1848 he moved to Texas and entered upon a successful professional career. For some years prior to the late civil war he resided at Seguin, Texas, and was the law partner of that distinguished citizen of Texas, Governor John Ireland.
Governor Ireland was a secessionist per se. Judge Elliott was a whig, a Union man, and was opposed to secession as a remedy for existing political evils, but would not oppose the south, or remain neutral after she had embraced the extremity of war. Governor Ireland, under the confiscation laws of the Confeder- ate States, was appointed receiver, an office of great responsi- bility, but its administration was civic in all of its details, and
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HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
entirely free from the personal perils of war. Judge Elliott at times indulges in caustic, but polished irony and sarcasm. Shortly after his partner was commissioned as receiver, a large mass meeting was held at Seguin in the interest of war. Up to this time it was not known what course Judge Elliott would adopt in reference to the war, and the public was anxious to know. Governor Ireland made one of his strong, characteristic speeches, urging all who were able-bodied to join the army, and after he concluded, Judge Elliott was loudly and earnestly called. He responded in an eloquent and able address, clearly defining his position, and defending it as an original Union man, but concluded by saying he would follow the fortunes of the south, right or wrong, through storm and through sunshine, and that as soon as prominent secessionists per se gave up the race for office and the loaves and fishes he would shake hands with them and shoulder a musket. The effect was electrical. The enthusiasm of the vast auditory rose like the waves of a storm-beaten sea, and overwhelmed and drowned the effect of all Governor Ireland had said in relation to Union men and doubt- ful patriots. John Ireland felt the thrust of the polished sabre, and walked to the rostrum and energized the act as he threw down and resigned his commission as receiver, and ex- claimed : " Muskets it is, and to the tented field we go." Judge Elliott became judge-advocate of the army of Texas, and par- ticipated in the battles of Corpus Christi, Padre Island, Fort Esperanza, Galveston and many other engagements of less note. He moved to Benton county, Arkansas, in 1869, and served the people as county and probate judge from 1876 to 1882. He is liberal and anti-sectarian in his theological views and is a free, educated thinker on all questions. He would go to hear a saint, Ingersoll or the devil lecture or preach, and be governed by his own enlightened convictions. Nothing is so revolting to him in the intellectual field as an effort to dog- matize and chain the mind to arrogant creeds. Not long since an estimable lady, professing the doctrine of Universalism, died in Bentonville, and the local orthodox ministry denied the body Christian funeral in a Christian land.
The Christian spirit of Judge Elliott, although he belongs to no church, revolted at the denial, in the blazing noon-tide
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of the nineteenth century after the advent of Christ, and in the benignity of his own cultured head and heart he took charge of the funeral ceremonies, and preached one of the most eloquent and effective orations, to a large concourse of people, ever heard in a Christian land. Madame Roland passed a statue of liberty on the way to execution, and exclaimed : "Oh, liberty ! what crimes are committed in thy name ! " He is of the old school, honest to the core, brave, generous, independent and courage- ous in all the walks and relations of life.
HON. JOSHUA WALLACE TOOMER, DARDANELLE.
Joshua W. Toomer was born in Itawamba county, Missis- sippi, August 26, 1846, of Scotch-Irish descent, intermixed with English blood from the paternal line. His mother was a native of Scotland. Both parents were possessed of strong native ability, and finely cultured minds. He inherited a love for literature and learning from both ancestral lines, and at a very tender age developed remarkable aptitude in the acquisi- tion of knowledge. At ten years of age he had exhausted the major resources of the common neighborhood schools, and at that early age had compassed the field of ancient history, and whenever he found an auditor willing to listen, delighted in detailing and discussing every thing in the scope and range of his youthful acquirements. He was descended from, and named after, Wallace, Scotland's idolized hero, and when the war commenced, although but fifteen years of age, felt all the noble inspiration of Caledonia's bard when he tuned old Scotia's lyre and sang in immortal song :
" O, thou who pour'd the patriotic tide That streamed through Wallace's undaunted heart."
And the strongest impulse of his nature was to join the Con- federate army, and give practical expression to his patriotismn on the battle-field. This he did, and participated with the Arkansas troops in the early battle of Wilson's creek, by the side of his elder brother John, whose death enriched the sacri- fice on that bloody field and taught the youthful survivor the solemn realities and awful demands of war. He was never heard to indulge a regret or to complain at the hardships of
ELECTRO LIGHT ENG, CONNY
HON. JOSHUA W. TOOMER.
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HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
war, but followed the changing fortunes and vicissitudes of Price's army, on both sides of the Mississippi river, until it was reorganized, when he was discharged, against his solemn pro- test, because of his youth. After his discharge he went home to see his father and mother, but unsatisfied with his war ex- perience and determined, at the first opportunity, to re-enter the Confederate service. He was well grown to his age, his size did not betray him, and he determined to practice a pious fraud by assuming to be twenty-one when again questioned, and he was registered as twenty-one in Hill's regiment, Cabell's brigade, trans-Mississippi department, in which he served until the south was conquered, participating in many conflicts, and escaping without injury.
Unlike most young men, he was not demoralized by his army experience, and, after the conclusion of the war, commenced the pursuits of peace with an ardor and resolution rarely equaled. He entered Shiloh Academy, Lamar county, Texas, and con- tinued at that institution two years, and was conceded to be the most brilliant pupil at that seat of learning in mathematics and every department which claimed his attention. His pecuniary resources being exhausted, he left the institution before gradu- ating, and at once entered on the study of law under Judge Kimbal at Paris, Texas, and was there admitted to the bar in the fall of 1868. In 1869 he commenced practicing law at Dardanelle, Yell county, Arkansas, under exceptionally favor- able circumstances, which indicated a useful and brilliant career. He rode the fifth circuit, and had a clientage throughout that, jurisdiction, and a great number of warm friends and hearty supporters. In 1874, when the long disfranchised element be- came enfranchised again, the democracy of the senatorial dis- trict, composed of the counties of Yell and Logan, nominated and elected Joshua W. Toomer to a seat in the State senate when the brilliant young man was but twenty-eight years of age. He had fine command of language and spoke the purest Eng- lish, and always held and delighted his audience from the open- ing to the concluding sentence, either in court or on the hust- ings, and was pleasant and very popular with his fellow men ; added to this, his attainments in his profession and literature were sufficient to have enabled him to build a Doric fame if
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wine had not clipped his wings and cut off his flight to the summit. He died on the 25th of December, 1880, before enter- ing the meridian of manhood, and we will " know him no more forever" in the walks of men.
He was an ornament to, and the life of the social circle - was devoid of guile, innocent of all questionable methods by which designs are accomplished, ends attained. He was rarely moved to entertain or give expression to ill-will, but, when so moved, it was because he had a strong, broad basis for it. He had a keen appreciation and relish for refined wit, and irony and sar- casm when provoked or justified - he loved his friends, defied his enemies. He did not belong to that negative, passive char- acter of men who will worm and edge their way through life without jostling up against any of its rough edges - such men are incapable of coping with the great emergencies of life. Ile was an honest, unfortunate man, and the moral of his life, if studied and heeded by the young and the old, will be of greater benefit to mankind than if he had been without fault and had reached "fame's eternal camping-ground," because, like the light-house on the ocean it points, where vessels go down.
HON. JOHN S. LITTLE, GREENWOOD.
Hon. John S. Little, the son of Jesse Little, an old pioneer, was born on his father's farm in Sebastian county, Arkansas, March 15, 1851. The life and history of this young man is phenomenal. When he was old enough to go to school, the war was in progress, and the common schools of the vicinage were closed, thus closing the door and striking off all educa- tional facilities until he was seventeen years old. Up to this period of life he was actively engaged in the discharge of the numerous and constantly-recurring demands on the farm-boy, and scarcely knew a letter in the alphabet. But he was ambi- tious, and when an opportunity for mental culture did present itself, he utilized it to his utmost capacity, and advanced rapidly in the log-cabin school; quitting that, he went one session to a higher graded school at Cane Hill, Arkansas, the sum total of educational acquirements being limited to a com- mon-school education.
Quitting school thus early, he borrowed some law books, re-
ELECTRO NIGHT ENG. COM.
JOHN S. LITTLE.
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HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
tired to his father's farm and began preparation for a remarkable career. He was admitted to the bar in 1873, and in the fall of 1874 moved to Paris, Logan county, and commenced his pro- fessional career, and was, the same fall, elected prosecuting attorney for the twelfth judicial circuit, and was for three suc- cessive terms elected to that office, being an incumbent alto- gether eight years. To say that he was successful and dis- charged the duties imposed by the office satisfactorily would be leaving half unsaid, and to say that he was the ablest occupant of that office in the twelfth circuit would likewise be leaving half unsaid. He was eminently successful ; his great forte lies, not in brilliant sallies of wit and flashes of oratory, or the dis- play of great learning, but in an intimate knowledge of human nature, as developed in the average man, and in his wonderful capacity to utilize and apply it to every phase of a nisi prius trial. He is sui generis. I have never met a parallel, or any man who approached it. His learning is not from books, but from the great world of nature, and the versatility of genius displayed in its application is wonderful, and at times startling. His similes, his comparisons, his illustrations are all taken from the humble walks of life, and are adpated to the capacity of the simplest minds. He never goes beyond the capacity, the circumference of the average juror's powers of comprehension, and herein, before a jury he is strong and great and powerful, and when he takes his seat, all that he has said and done seems but the crystallization of simplicity, where the great and the small mind can meet, without discord or dissent, on common ground. But I dispair in the effort to photograph him with the pen ; none but a master can do that. He voluntarily gave up the office of prosecuting attorney in 1884 to accept the dem- ocratic nomination for the legislature, and was, by a large majority, elected from Sebastian county. For the last two years he has been largely engaged in criminal practice in the twelfth circuit, during which time he has defended twenty mur- der cases, and sixty to eighty other felony cases, and has an unbroken record of acquittal.
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