USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 44
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53
475
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
the shield of his country's honor, the ægis of a people's great- ness. Such a scene is morally and heroically the sublimest God has ever permitted man to gaze on in this world save the crucifixion.
Young Bunn joined Captain J. B. McCullock's company in south-western Arkansas, which, at Fayetteville, was incorpo- rated in the Fourth regiment of Arkansas Confederate troops commanded by Colonel McNair, Bunn being third lieutenant of his company when the regiment was organized. The regiment marched into Missouri, but did not reach there in time to par- ticipate in the battle of Oak Hill. The regiment was incorpo- rated in the brigade then commanded by General Van Dorn, and was first under serious fire at the battle of Elkhorn or Pea Ridge. In this battle Lieutenant Bunn was wounded and captured by the Federals. Being wounded, strict surveillance was not kept over him, and he made his escape and rejoined his command. In the fall of 1861 he was made adjutant of his regiment. In April, 1862, General Van Dorn's brigade was transferred to Corinth, and incorporated in the army of the Tennessee. At the reorganization of the regiment in April, 1862, he was elected lieutenant-colonel. He participated in the battle of Farmington. From Corinth his command was trans- ferred to Kirby Smith's command in east Tennessee. He was with his regiment in the battle of Richmond, Kentucky. In November, 1862, he became colonel of his regiment, and led it in the desperate two days' battles of Murfreesboro, on the 31st of December and 1st of January. Forty thousand men on each side were engaged in these desperate battles - the appal- . ling aggregate of twenty-five thousand men were lost - ten thousand Confederates and fifteen thousand Federals. Colonel Bunn gallantly led his men in all of the subsequent battles of the army of the Tennessee, excepting Hood's second disastrous campaign in Tennessee - he was not in this campaign because dangerously wounded in the battle of Atlanta, whilst at the head of his column ; he was shot through both thighs and his arm was broken.
The last time he fought the old heroic Fourth was in the bloody battle of Bentonville, North Carolina, on the 19th of March, 1865, where he was again wounded. Here, after
com aand TradesbyLE ofased
476
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox, his command was surrendered by General Johnston. The remnant of the old Fourth Arkansas that had achieved imperishable honor on so many fields were led back to south-west Arkansas by their young, gallant colonel, who had led them on so many battle-fields. .Then he only weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds, and was called the boy colonel of the army. He was admitted to the bar at Hampton, Calhoun county, in May, 1866, and shortly thereafter removed to Camden, where he has been constantly engaged in the practice of his profession ever since, except at short intervals when engaged in the service of the State. He was a member of the State senate from the nineteenth district in 1874, and was also a member of the constitutional convention of that year, in which position his fine abilities and ripe ex- perience enabled him to render valuable service. He has often acted as special judge of the circuit, and on several occa- sions of the supreme court. Colonel Bunn is an able lawyer, and one of the most genial and affable of men.
SAMUEL R. ALLEN, LITTLE ROCK.
Samuel R. Allen was born the 17th of February, 1840, in Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and is descended in both lines from hardy Pilgrim stock. Colonel Ethan Allen, of revolu- tionary fame, who captured Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and headed the "Green Mountain boys " at Vermont in the revolution, is one of the same line. This family was well rep- resented on the fighting side in the war for independence ; it furnished its heroes and gave its martyrs to liberty. His father was a farmer, and at different times lived in New Hampshire, New York and Illinois, in the common and graded schools of which the son was educated. Completing his academic course at the early age of sixteen, his father released him from all ob- ligation as a minor, and he at once began the study of law, and school-teaching to pay his way. In March, 1859, he was ex- amined by, and received a certificate of qualification from, the justices of the supreme court of Illinois, but the clerk refused to admit him to the roster because of his minority, but the question was not sprung on him in the circuit courts, and he immediately entered on his professional career, opening an
ENG, CON
ELECTRO LICHTE
SAMUEL R. ALI.EN.
477
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
office in Rock Island. In 1861 he volunteered in the Union army, and participated in the bloody battles at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, and being disabled in the latter battle, was. dis- charged and returned to Illinois, locating in Port Byron, where he discharged the duties of provost marshal until the war ter- minated. In 1872 he was actively engaged in the national campaign as a republican, and in that capacity came to Arkansas in the interest of his party. After the conflict was over he concluded to remain with us, and located at the capital, where he has actively pursued his profession ever since. Colonel Allen is a liberal, a conservative republican, and is respected by all parties. He has never counseled nor engaged in any of the questionable work and methods of his party. In 1873 Gover- nor Baxter commissioned him as colonel on his staff. In the Brooks-Baxter war of 1874 he was an active participant in the interest of what he believed to be the lawful government, headed by Governor Baxter, and in that relation performed important service to the State. Colonel Allen was supervisor of his county in Illinois, and is now serving his second term as corporation attorney for the city of Little Rock. He belongs to that class of thinking and conservative northern gentlemen who always find a hearty welcome and a pleasant home among our southern people. Although an unswerving republican in a community overwhelmingly democratic, his straightforward and upright course, based on the sincerity of his convictions, commands the respect of all.
HON. CHARLES BEATTY MOORE, LITTLE ROCK.
- C. B. Moore was born in Little Rock, March 31, 1836. He is the son of the Reverend Jamnes W. Moore, celebrated in the early history of Arkansas for his eminent piety, learning and moral worth. He came from Pennsylvania as the advance guard of the Old School Presbyterian Church, and established the first church of that denomination in Little Rock and the territory as early as 1828. His immediate paternal progenitor was a learned Irish Presbyterian divine, who emigrated from Ireland and settled in the colony of Pennsylvania during the revolutionary period. . He was of Scotch-Irish lineage, that hardy cross of Celt with Celt which has given to the world so
478
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
much intellectual power. His lineage in the ascending line of the mother takes in the blood of Charles Beatty, one of the public-spirited founders of that fine seat of learning, Nassau Hall or Princeton College, New Jersey, where her husband and her son Beatty, the subject of this sketch, were educated. And the same patriotic stream of maternal lineage embraces in the direct line that sterling old patriot, General James Clinton, of revolutionary fame, and his son, the great states- man, De Witt Clinton, governor of New York, senator in con- gress, and founder of the canal and internal improvement sys- tem of the Empire State, before the advent of railroads, and once a candidate for president of the United States, receiving eighty-nine, as against President Madison's one hundred and twenty-eight votes of the electoral colleges in 1812. The same lineage embraces George Clinton, nephew of General, and cousin to De Witt Clinton, and vice-president of the United States under Jefferson's second administration. The Clintons were English stock; they intermarried with the De Witts, an old Knickerbocker family.
Beatty Moore (his pet name) by which we all know him best, and call him most, was prepared for college at Sylvania Academy, in Lonoke county, Arkansas, then a prosperous seat of learning, founded by his father, who was an eminent educator. From Sylvania he went to Princeton College, New Jersey (founded by his ancestors in the maternal line), from which he was graduated in 1857. Returning home in 1857 he immedi- ately entered the law office of Judge John T. Jones, at Helena, and was admitted to the bar by the supreme court in the fall of 1858, and immediately entered on the practice of his pro- fession in the city of his birth. At the commencement of the late civil war he entered the Confederate army, and attached himself to the regiment commanded by Colonel Churchill. He served on the respective staffs of Generals Mc Rea, Church- ill, Tappan, Fagan, Sterling, Price and J. B. McGruder, with the rank of major, and was surrendered, with the last remnant of the trans-Mississippi army, at Shreveport, Louisiana, in June, 1865. After the war ended he returned to his office in Little Rock, and has there remained without letting any thing allure him from the even tenor of his way, save a desire for official pro-
.
ELECTRO-LIGHT ENG. CO NY
JACOB B. ERB.
479
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
motion in the line of his profession. This led him to step aside four years to serve the State in the high and honorable office of attorney-general from 1880 to 1884. This he did with honor to himself and the State. Brother Moore, as a lawyer, is pos- sessed of fine attainments, and in his intercourse with his fel- low man is one of the most affable, polished and courteous gentlemen, in fact, a natural Chesterfield. All who know him entertain great respect for him.
J. B. ERB, LITTLE ROCK.
J. B. Erb was born in the city of Syracuse, New York, July 2, 1855, of Jewish parents. The family moved to Eudora, Kan- sas, in 1859, before the advent of railroads in that section of the Union. Here the boy enjoyed his first educational facilities in a primitive log-house, located in a grove at the outskirts of the town. When eight years of age the young lad was sent to an academy, at Leavenworth, Kansas, where he progressed with remarkable rapidity for one so young. This early, precocious development determined his father to give him the benefit of a thorough classical education, under the supervision of ripe scholars, and with that end in view, he removed to St. Louis, where, under the tutorship of a learned Rabbi, a classical edu- cation was attained. After quitting school he entered the law office of Lee & Adams, St. Louis, rather than the law depart- ment of Washington University, believing that practical knowl- edge there to be acquired would in the end be of more service than learned lectures from law professors. Ile remained in this office two years, studying not only text authorities, but the prac- tical details, and all the legal machinery necessary or incident to a lawsuit. He was admitted to the bar in St. Louis, in 1877, and, shortly thereafter, located in Little Rock, where he has met with success commensurate with his talent and enterprise. He is skilled in marshaling all the facts and resources of a law- suit to the best advantage, is laborious and untiring in prepara- tion, and is always a dangerous adversary in the forum.
HON. WILLIAM F. HICKS, LONOKE.
Colonel Hicks was born May 17, 1824, in a block-house, owned by his maternal grandfather, in Anderson county, east
480
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
Tennessee. On the mother's side he is descended from Irish stock with Saxon fusions ; on the father's side from English stock with Celtic fusions. Ilis ancestry in both lines were hardy pioneers, and were engaged in the countless Indian wars on the frontier for a century. His father was a soldier in the Indian wars under General Jackson, and fought at the battle of the Horseshoe, Emnucfau, Talladega and other places. His blood, in the ascending maternal line, runs back through a local celebrity named Jack Walker, an Indian fighter, whose family were all murdered in the Hiwassee valley by the Cherokees, after which he swore vengeance against the tribe, became a soldier hermit, and lived in the caves of the mountains, from which he issued with his deathly rifle to stealthily war on Indians. He killed many with unseen hand, and became known to them as "the Jibinanisee " or evil spirit.
Colonel Hicks' educational opportunities in early life were very limited, and in that respect he may be said to be " the architect of his own fortune." In 1835 his father moved to Arkansas, and in 1836 he commenced working at the printer's trade in Little Rock, on the Times and Advocate, with Pike and Reed, and finished his apprenticeship to the trade with Wm. E. Woodruff on the Gazette in 1843. In 1846 he joined Captain Albert Pike's cavalry company, and followed its for- tunes in the Mexican war. He was in the battle of Buena Vista, where his colonel, Governor Yell, was killed. In 1854, after alternately farming and merchandising, he went to Cali- fornia, where he engaged in publishing a daily paper called the Daily California Express, from 1854 to 1865.
In the fall of 1865 he came home to Arkansas and again en- gaged in merchandising for several years. He has been post- master several times, and mayor of Lonoke. In his forty- eighth year he was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of his profession. He read law with the celebrated Ebe- nezer Cummins in early life, but did not then engage in the practice. Colonel Hicks was a member of the constitutional convention of 1868, being one of ten democrats in that body. He says of that instrument : "I refused to sign that infamous constitution." In 1874 he was elected to the State senate from the twelfth district, and filled the office four years to the satis-
.
HON. HENRY C. CALDWELL.
481
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
faction of his constituents. In 1882 he was again elected to the State senate from the same district and served the full term of four years. In 1886 he was elected to the lower branch of the State legislature. In 1880 he was supervisor of the census for the seventeen counties composing his congressional district. Colonel Hicks is a man of sterling worth and integ- rity, and brings great industry and application to all he under- takes. His clients always have the benefit of thorough re- search and investigation.
HON. HENRY C. CALDWELL, LITTLE ROCK.
Judge Caldwell was born in Marshall county, West Virginia, on the 4th day of September, 1832. His blood comes of that vigorous cross between the Irish Celt in the mother's, and the English cavalier in the father's line, a combination which has written many of the best chapters in our history. James Moffet, grandfather in the maternal line, was an educated, brainy Irishman of Methodist persuasion; he volunteered in the war of 1812, and gave his life on the field of battle to his adopted country. Van Caldwell, his father, was a splendid type of the chivalrous pride and hospitable bearing of the old Virginia stock of cavalier descendants, full of the brains and pride which made Virginia "the mother of States and states- men." He was one of the first settlers in the Ohio valley. Susan Moffet, his mother, inherited the vigorous mind of her father, and the son bears the impress of both lines in a marked degree.
His parents moved to Van Buren county, Iowa, in 1836, where he was educated in the common and private schools of the day. At the early age of seventeen he began the study of his profession, with a very distinguished firm of attorneys, Wright & Knapp of Keosauqua, Iowa, and was admitted to fellowship in the noble guild of lawyers in his twentieth year ; his abilities were so prominent, his age was unchallenged. Soon afterward he was admitted to partnership with his pre- ceptors. The IIon. George G. Wright, one of them, was dis- tinguished in the judicial and political history of Iowa, being on the supreme bench twelve years, and a senator in congress six years. In 1854 the junior member of the firm married Miss Harriet Benton, a niece of Judge Wright. The Hon. 61
482
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
J. C. Knapp, the other partner, was unfortunately a democrat and a distinguished leader of that great minority in Iowa. This speaks well for the courage of his convictions, and is the brightest legend on his political tomb, which he found in a charge on the republican batteries, in a contest for governor. We are not advised as to whether Judge Caldwell had any share in this slaughter or not, but there is no neutrality in his nature, from which we indulge the opinion that he took a hand in the fight, and that he was not a pall-bearer at Knapp's po- litical funeral, however much he loved and admired him as a jurist and lawyer. He too was on the bench. In 1856 Judge Caldwell was elected prosecuting attorney for his district. In 1858 he was elected to the legislature, and for two sessions was chairman of the judiciary committee, a very distinguished posi- tion for one so young, to be achieved as it was by his command- ing talents. In 1861 he was commissioned major in the Third Iowa volunteer cavalry, and was promoted successively to lieu- tenant-colonel and colonel of the regiment, which he com- manded at the capture of Little Rock on the 10th of September, 1863, Brigadier-General Davidson being in command of the cavalry division on that occasion. General Davidson in his official report on that occasion says : " Lieutenant-Colonel Cald- well, whose untiring devotion and energy never fags during night or day, deserves, for his gallantry and varied accomplish- ments as a cavalry officer, promotion to the rank of a general officer." In June, 1864, whilst serving with his regiment in Tennessee, he was much surprised when advised that President Lincoln had commissioned him as district judge of the United States for the district of Arkansas. He never sought the posi- tion, knew nothing of the efforts being made by his friends to secure it, and was satisfied with his honorable position as a soldier. But he laid down the heroic for the civic walks of life, and came with his family among us in the fall of 1864.
The young soldier-jurist, fresh from the victorious northern army, at that excited period when the intense prejudices engen- dered by the civil war were still at fever-heat, did not inspire the confidence of the southern people, who then knew nothing of his qualification or antecedents. The confiscation and other stringent Federal laws were to be administered by a soldier,
--- -------
..
٠
483
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
who was supposed to be full of the pride and prejudice of the conqueror, with the tremendous machinery of a powerful goverment to sustain him. The old order of things had per- ished in the ruins of the revolution and a new regime was springing into power and crystallizing under the supreme dictation of the conqueror, whose limitation was controlled by nothing but his own sense of propriety. The ignorant freedmen of the conquered States floated to the surface of this revolution and suddenly became potent factors control- ling the political status - State and Federal - of the revolted States, whilst the former educated dominant, race were disfran- chised and relegated to the condition of political serfs. The whirl of this revolution, supported and molded by the dominant party of the north with the unrestrained force of a cyclone, made vicious ignorance dominant. Under these circumstances it would have required more than frail humanity can support to have looked on the soldier-judge without many apprehen- sions and painful misgivings. To remove all these doubts and misgivings, inspire confidence and profound respect, administer the laws with a firm, yet just and kind spirit, was an arduous labor that none but a master could execnte. A mere knowl- edge of law, however profound, was but one element of quali- fication ; standing alone it would have proved disastrously inadequate. Great tact, keen discrimination, deep insight into human nature, love of justice, and sympathy with the weak and oppressed were all requisite to the accomplishment of the end. Even with these rare qualifications it required time and patient forbearance to develop and mature the rich · fruit to be grown on such a soil. The keen, impartial observer (then rare) could have seen all these qualifications, firmly, slowly, surely coming to the front, from the first session of the dreaded Federal court when Henry C. Caldwell presided first in 1865. Up to that time the rigid technicalities of the common law, which often gave stronger expression to technical harshness than to justice between suitors obtained in Arkansas in all of its antique, unique vigor and jargon. To the amaze- ment of the old lawyers who had grown gray and rich in the practice of this mediaval literature, Judge Caldwell began by tearing down these obstructions to legal administration, with-
484
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
out appointing pall bearers to attend the funeral of the late lamented.
This calls to mind an amusing episode which occurred at the first session of the Federal court. The late Judge Watkins, then one of our honored legal luminaries, had a large practice in that court, and had prepared a large number of pleadings embodying these harassing obstructions, but he watched the indications closely to catch the practice before filing them. Finally his name was reached in alphabetical order on the roll, and he was politely asked by the court if he had any favors to ask. He rose slowly, and. with dignified composure, said he had a bag full of pleas in abatement and demurrers prepared to file, but would graciously decline to do so - not desiring to promote and advance the cause of his adversaries. Judge Cald- well was largely instrumental in procuring the abolition of the common-law practice, and substituting the code system in Ar- kansas. In this connection we condense from an editorial in the Central Law Journal, edited by Hon. Seymour D. Thompson, which appeared in 1876 : " During the three weeks session of the circuit court of the United States for the eastern district of Missouri, just held by Hon. Henry C. Caldwell, a large amount of business has been transacted, and it is not too much to say the learned judge made himself a great favorite with the St. Louis bar. He came unwillingly, announced that fact, and told the bar that during his short stay he would not undertake to learn Missouri practice, but would dispatch busi- ness under Arkansas practice the best he could. That practice is certainly a very satisfactory system. It places the judge on . reasonable terms of familiarity with the bar, and at once abolishes the dreaded distinction of up here and down there. At the same time it permits no pettyfogging or undue familiarity. Every respectable member of the bar is addressed as brother, and thus put on good behavior, and delicately reminded that judges and lawyers alike belong to a great pro- fession, whose highest honor is to tell the truth, and noblest mission the upright administration of justice. What is to be most admired in 'Arkansas practice,' is the ready tact with which idle verbiage is cut off, business dispatched, and substan- tial results reached, without prejudicing the rights of parties,
485
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
or offending the bar. The secret seems to consist in the pos- session of a rare temper, and importation of an unusual share of practical common sense into judicial proceedings."
His whole judicial career is marked with a strong fusion of common sense, a manifest desire to thwart fraud and to do jus. tice, as far as possible, between litigants. Love of equity is one of the ruling passions of his life. The conditions upon which railroad receivers are appointed and the principles and rules laid down for their guidance in his court aptly illustrate this trait in his character. The scope, design and effect of these rules is to prevent these corporations from taking advan- tage of their creditors, and to compel them to discharge their just obligations. One of his first departures from the old stereotyped path was to spread on the records of his court a general order permitting receivers to be sued when the suit did not interfere with the custody of the property. The corpora- tions protested against this order as an inconvenient and expen- sive innovation on their ancient rights. One argument to bolster the protest was that it compelled them to submit to jury trials and to dance attendance on any court where they might be sued. To which the judge replied, that license to sue was given because the right of the citizen to sue in the local State courts along the line of road should be interfered with as little as possible; that it was doubtless a saving and convenient protection to the mortgage bondholder of a long line of railway to have all the litigation growing out of the operation of the road centered on the equity side of the court. But that, in proportion as the road and its bond-holders profit, the citizen suffers by such an arrangement and is deprived of the forum and the right of trial by jury ..
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.