USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 45
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
This simple but comprehensive grasp of a great question threw a flood of light and justice over a shameful and crying evil, and prevented his court from becoming the instrument of gross injustice. This rule has saved the employés, laborers and other creditors of railroad corporations in Arkansas mil- lions of money. Every road in the State has been foreclosed in his court - some of them several times. The able and up- right judge said in this connection : " When the court assumes the operation of a railroad and becomes a common carrier, it is
486
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
brought into extensive relations with the public, enters into thousands of contracts daily, some of which are broken, prop- erty is damaged, and passengers injured and killed. When these liabilities are incurred why should the citizen be denied the right to establish the justice and amount of his demand by the verdict of a jury in the forum of his county where the cause of action arose and the witnesses reside. If the road was operated by its owners or creditors, the citizen would have this right. When run by the court, through its officer, why should the right be denied ? Why should the citizen, by a court of equity, be deprived of his constitutional right to trial by jury and subjected to inconvenience and loss, to make money for a railroad corporation and its bondholders ?"
This extract shows the grasp and trend of an enlightened and comprehensive mind devoted to the highest functions of the jurist. On the 3d of March, 1887, the principles embodied in these rules and the reasons in support of them were embodied in the statutes of the United States, and are now the uniform rule of all the Federal courts. This advance is very largely, if not wholly, due to Judge Caldwell. He never suffers a young, or inexperienced attorney to lose a meritorious cause for want of experience or ability to conduct the trial. On one occasion, some years ago, Judge Yonley, a gentleman of ability and local distinction, with much ingenuity was about to defeat a good cause represented by a young adversary at the bar; but the judge came to the stripling's relief and saved him from disas- ter. Judge Yonley left the court-room tearing his disheveled hair in a rage and swearing in vociferous oaths that he would rather have Rufus Choate, Reverdy Johnson, and William M. Evarts as opponents in the trial of a cause before Judge Cald- well, than one d-n fool stripling. When he went on the bench twenty-two years ago, the numerous questions of grave import growing out of the war, the confiscation and subsequent reconstruction, bankrupt and other Federal legislation, pre- sented a new and, in many respects, an untrodden field for the jurist, requiring great learning and ability to grasp them. The cases coming before him out of this new field are too numerous to catalogue in a work of this character, but it may safely be said that no jurist in the United States handled them with more
.
487
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
comprehensive scope and ability than Judge Caldwell, and with . fewer reversals - the author now only calls to mind one rever- sal, the Osborn case, in which Chief Justice Chase concurred with him, in a dissenting opinion. The sphere of his useful- ness is not limited to judicial functions; the impress of his mind is voiced in the legislation of the State. Many defects in our system have been pointed out by him and remedied by ap- propriate legislation ; among them may be mentioned the act to prevent the forfeiture of a married woman's property by fail- ing to schedule; the " Betterment Act ;" the act curing defect- ive acknowledgments; the very important act reforming the usury laws, giving to plaintiffs as well as defendants the right to invoke the aid of a court in declaring usurious contracts void, and recent improvements to the mortgage and homestead laws of our State.
He is broad and comprehensive in his views and treats all questions of public policy from the philosophic stand-point of a statesman, notably the worse than wretched mortgage laws of Arkansas, permitting property before it is in esse to be mortgaged ; the baneful influence of which exceeds the disasters entailed by the civil war. The usury laws and the creation of colossal corporations which are fast absorbing the landed and moneyed wealth of the country and aggregating it in the hands of a few who dwell in cities and toil not. And he touches with a master's hand on the baneful influences mon- opolies are exerting in the absorption of all the surplus agri- cultural products of the country, stripping the creators of all this vast aggregation of wealth, of their hard earnings.
In an address to an agricultural association in October, 1886, he said in the spirit of prophetic wisdom : "The sober intelli- gence, courage, virtue and patriotism that abides in the homes of independent and prosperous farmers are what every nation most rely on for its support in peace and defense in war. Neither liberty, nor prosperity, nor virtue, will long survive in a State where the husbandman is oppressed and impover- ished." These words are full of profound wisdom ; they voice the teachings of all history and point with index-finger to the fall of Jerusalem, the decay and dissolution of the Roman empire, and to the distressed tenantry of oppressed Ireland.
488
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
They ought to be photographed on the brain of every American legislator, and written in letters of light on the archway to every American capitol. Goldsmith, the wandering minstrel from the Emerald Isle, never touched a truer key than when he swept his harp and sang of the prop and stay and fall of States.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay. Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade, A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
Our country to-day has more to fear from the aggregation of capital in the hands of a few than from all other sources. Philip Armour controls the pork product of the United States, and inflates or depresses the market at will, and his millions of capital is the tribute of the farmer and the consumer. So with every product of the soil and every article of consumption. The farmers of America are now the vassals of monopolists and the victims of conspiracies to rob them under the forms of law. These questions are fraught with momentous issues. They deeply involve the perpetuity of our free institutions.
When Judge Dillon resigned as judge of the eighth circuit a great number of able lawyers favored the promotion of Judge Caldwell to the vacancy, because of his unquestioned ability to discharge the high trusts imposed by that office; but he has been with us and of us for nearly a quarter of a century, and has no inclination to leave a people who learned to respect and admire as they learned to know him. In politics he is a repub- lican, but belongs to the better type of that party.
WILLIAM LEAKE TERRY, LITTLE ROCK.
W. L. Terry was born near Wadesboro, Anson county, North Carolina, September 27, 1850. His parents moved to Missis- sippi in 1859, and to Pulaski county, Arkansas, in 1861. He is nearly related to Shelton Leake, once a prominent member of congress from Virginia ; to Colonel Frank P. Leake, a prominent citizen of Mississippi ; to Colonel Walter Steele, ex-member of congress from North Carolina, and to Judge
-
HON. DANIEL W. JONES.
489
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
David Terry of California, one of the carly justices of the supreme court of that State, who killed Broderick in a duel whilst the latter was a senator in congress. Mr. Terry is a protege of his near relative General Francis A. Terry, deceased, who educated him; first sending him to Bingham's Military Insti- tute in North Carolina, then to Trinity College in that State, where he was graduated in June, 1872. He read law with Dodge & Johnson of Little Rock, and was admitted to the bar in 1873. He was elected to the State senate from the Little Rock district in 1878, and at the close of the session of 1879 was elected president of that body. He was a member of the city council of Little Rock two years, from 1877 to 1879.
He was city attorney for the city of Little Rock from 1879 to 1885 inclusive. In 1886 he made a very vigorous race for the democratic nomination for congress in the fourth district, against the popular incumbent, Judge John H. Rogers. The extraordinary vigor and energy with which he prosecuted the canvass made a deep impression on the electors of the district, and if he lives to make the race again in 1888, he will be a formidable rival. Mr. Terry is a man of very marked and decided character, and he brings all the energies of a well- developed mind to the successful accomplishment of every undertaking. He is a lawyer of decided and acknowledged ability. As a politician he has the art of creating and sustain- ing a strong following, often suddenly developing strong resources where the superficial observer imagines none to exist. This power springs from an intimate knowledge of human nature in all of its gradations and complications, and the skillful touching of responsive chords. Those opponents, in any field, who underestimate his ability will in the end regret the mis- take, when it is too late to retrieve the disaster.
HON. DANIEL W. JONES, WASHINGTON, HEMPSTEAD COUNTY.
Colonel Daniel W. Jones was born in Bowie county, Texas, December 15, 1839. His paternal grandfather, Daniel Jones, emigrated from Scotland and settled in North Carolina, and was a revolutionary soldier in the continental line, under Gen- eral Washington. Doctor Isaac N. Jones, his father, was a graduate of that once famous institution of learning, Chapel 62
490
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
Hill College, North Carolina; he immigrated to Texas at an early day, and became a member of the congress of that repub- lic. The colonel's parents moved from Texas to Washington, in Hempstead county, Arkansas, when the boy was quite young ; he was well educated at home in Washington Academy, under Professor Borden, an eminent educator. Early in life the young man determined to study and practice law as a profes- sion, and in January, 1860, commenced studying under the Hon. John R. Eakin, now deceased, one of the most scholarly, and certainly one of the ripest jurists who ever sat on the supreme bench in Arkansas. But civil war soon interrupted the pur- suits of peace and modified every calculation based on it. The young man in April, 1861, exchanged his law books for sabre and musket, and was elected captain of company A, Third regi- ment of Arkansas State troops, commanded by Colonel John R. Gratiot, and fought his first battle August 10, 1861, at Oak Hill. After this battle Captain Jones recruited, enlisted and organized company A, Twentieth Arkansas regiment, and was . again elected captain. After the Confederate conscript law went into operation, he was again elected captain, and in July, 1862, was promoted major of the regiment. He was an active par- ticipant in the battles fought in and around Corinth on the 3d and 4th of October, 1862, and on the latter day when charg- ing the enemy's breast-works, at the head of the column, was shot through the body just below the heart, and was left on the field as dead, but was captured by the enemy and recovered, and was exchanged and rejoined his regiment in the field, and was promoted colonel for gallantry on the field, at Corinth, when less than twenty-three years old. He commanded his regiment at the siege of Vicksburgh.
After the close of the war he resumed the study of law at Washington, Arkansas, and opened an office there. After the decade of reconstruction had spent its force, and the better element of the southern people became per force of organic laws enfranchised, merit again asserted itself. In October, 1874, the citizens of the ninth judicial circuit elected Colonel Jones prosecuting attorney, which office he filled with honor and credit to himself and the State, but declined a re-election when the nomination was tendered him. In 1876 he was an elector on
.
491
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
the democratic ticket, and canvassed every county in his con- gressional district. In 1880 he was a democratic elector for the State at large, and in that campaign canvassed the entire State. In 1884 he was nominated by the democracy for the high office of attorney-general for the State, and was with all the ticket elected by an overwhelming majority. In 1886 he was, with- out opposition, and by acclamation, renominated and re-elected to the same high office. These facts speak more potently than mere words of encomium ; they attest the popularity and pro- fessional ability of the man. Colonel Jones is a forcible, plausible and eloquent speaker, whether in the forensic arena or on the stump before the people. "Dan" is his pet name, wherever personally known.
HON. JAMES E. GATEWOOD, DES ARC.
James E. Gatewood was born on his father's farm in Hen- derson county, Tennessee, in May, 1832. When three years old his father moved to what is now known as Marshall county, Mississippi, long before the Indians vacated the country; and for many years the Indians were the only neighbors and the Indian boys the only playmates for young Gatewood. When fifteen years old he was much better master of the Indian than his own dialect. Captain Gatewood (that is his army title, acquired by service and command in the field) during long association with the Indians, became a veritable and renowned Nimrod, and one of the most proficient disciples old " Izaak " Walton ever had in this country. The author never took a back seat, nor yielded precedence to any one as an expert in the accomplished science of angling for game fish, except to Captain Gatewood, and this under unfavorable and extraordi- nary circumstances. We were sitting around a fireside at a country inn, and the author was enthusiastically relating the royal sport he had recently enjoyed on one of the beautiful sheets of water in the White River valley, in landing nine-pound specimens of black bass, but was confiding and foolish enough to finish and give Captain Gatewood the last speech, a position he always utilizes to his adversary's great disadvantage. He took the floor, and with the solemnity of a bishop on a funeral occasion, bore testimony that he had, in the same lake, captured many bass weighing fifteen pounds.
492
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
Captain Gatewood to this day does not know that the author ever suspicioned he had forgotten one of the command- ments. This is partially accounted for from the fact that he never saw a school-house until after he was fifteen years old. After the Indians evacuated the country it rapidly filled up, and with population school facilities came which were utilized by the young man in the rapid acquisition of a good common- school education. In 1849 he entered the University of Mis- sissippi, from which he was graduated in 1853. From the uni- versity he went to the law office of Clapp & Strickland, at Holly Springs, Mississippi, where he was admitted to the bar, in 1854. In the fall of that year he located at Des Arc on White river, where he still resides. In choosing this location he was governed no less by its promising outlook in a legal aspect than by the unusual facilities it afforded the lover of the wildwood chase and enthusiastic angler. Hunting and fishing for a while was the prime, law the secondary, considera- tion. White River valley was then the sportsman's paradise, and Captain Gatewood reveled in the elysian indulgence of his passion for one year before opening a law office.
In the fall of 1855 he got down to his work, and thereafter only indulged his passion for the woods and streams and lakes as a relaxation and recreation from the toils of his profession, like General Albert Pike. Arkansas was then on a boom, the brightest rainbow of promise fringed her horizon and spanned her zenith - the portentous calm which precedes the mightiest storm was then as quiescent and deceptive to the superficial observer as the sleeping volcanic energies of Ætna. Brother · Gatewood, in the full confidence of all of his fellow citizens, en- tered on a prosperous career as a lawyer, but this was soon to be exchanged for the bloody drama of war, and all of its attendant horrors. The decade preceding the war between the States was the golden era of Arkansas. Then ninety-nine men out of every hundred possessed an educated pride to pay his honest debts, regardless of the relations he sustained to finance, and he had credit with his merchant, who then knew nothing of that accursed creation of 1875, called a chattel or anaconda mort- gage, which reaches into futurity and disembowels prosperity. The accursed gift of Jupiter to Pandora was not fraught with
493
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
more or greater evil to man. The sun in its transit around the world does not shine on a country that can be prosperous where a majority of her farming citizens mortgage their property for supplies in advance of production. No statute has ever gone so far in educating both merchant and patron in shameless ras- cality. The cut-throat mortgage system excites the cupidity and avarice of the merchant, and places the helpless in his power, until he is educated and hardened in the school of ex- tortion. On the other hand, the helpless victim, who, after mortgaging, is forced to pay two prices for all he gets, to the cormorant, who has taken advantage of his necessities to get him in his power, feels that he is violating no moral or divine law to " beat" the merchant, and escape the deathly grasp of legalized robbery. The State which fosters such consequences to the great body of its citizens is indeed unfortunate. The advocates of the system apologize for its imperfections by re- minding us of " the good intentions of those who make the law." Innocent imbecility is no excuse for extending or perpetuating an evil. "Hell itself is paved with good intentions." There was not the semblance of excuse for the passage of this mort- gage law, which ignores wisdom, philosophy, statesmanship and common sense. The war closed ten years before the deathly siren song of the mortgage swept our halls of legislation. Reconstruction, on a southern democratic basis, had just been inaugurated in the State, and reform was the slogan of the hour. The fearful reign of republican imposition had been re- legated and sent into exile. But I must return to Brother Gatewood, who is in no way responsible for the mortgage law, or any result growing out of it.
Captain Gatewood was mayor of Des Arc in 1859, 1860 and 1861, when it contained a population of near two thousand. In the winter of 1861-2 he joined the Confederate forces in Arkansas, and, at the head of one hundred select men, was on scout duty a part of the time - then, as necessity required, he was in charge of the commissary and quarter-master department. He was in all the important engagements in Arkansas and Mis- souri during the last three years of the war. Added to the accumulated horrors of war, was the loss of his wife and two children during the first years of the war (his entire family).
-
1
494
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
At the close of the war he resumed the practice of his pro- fession at Des Arc, and is yet at his post in that capacity. In 1878 he was elected to the State senate from the twelfth dis- trict, and served his fellow citizens four years in that capacity. He has often served as special judge of the circuit court, and is at this writing acting as special judge of the supreme court. Brother Gatewood is an affable, courteous and pleas- ant gentleman ; his mind is well stored with a vast variety and aggregation of useful and general information, and in all the relations of life he is reliable, except on the bass fisheries of Arkansas; on that isolated question I know of one gentleman whose authority I prefer to his. He is a good lawyer, a good citizen, an upright and conscientious man.
HON. JOSEPH W. MARTIN, LITTLE ROCK.
Judge Martin was born June 6, 1836, in Greene county, Alabama, of Scotch-Irish extraction, the son of Rev. James Martin, a graduate of Chapel Hill College, North Carolina, and an eminent educator ; he imparted many great and last- ing advantages to the son, both intellectually and morally, which has molded and shaped his destiny through life. His father moved to Mississippi when the boy. was quite young ; in 1848 he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and from thence, in 1850, to Prairie county, Arkansas. After thorough prepara- tion in the junior branches of the classics and mathematics, young Martin, at the age of seventeen, matriculated at Prince- ton College, New Jersey, and graduated with distinction in that institution in the class of 1855. After leaving college he returned to his father's in Arkansas, and assiduously studied law under himself one year, at the end of which he went to Memphis, Tennessee, and entered the banking-house of I. B. Kirtland in the capacity of an employé, but four months' ser- vice in this institution satisfied the young man that banking was not his forte. From Memphis he went to Brownville, west Tennessee, and engaged in teaching school there; gave this up at the end of six months, and then entered the law office of Colonel Ed. Reed, an attorney of capacity and local note, at Brownsville, Tennessee, and was there licensed to practice law on the 1st of July, 1857. In the fall of 1857 he
.
HON. JOSEPH W. MARTIN.
495
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
opened a law office in Des Arc, Prairie county, Arkansas, and practiced there successfully until the summer of 1860, when he moved to Little Rock and opened an office there. In June, 1861, he left Little Rock as a private soldier in the Sixth Arkansas regiment of Confederate troops, and experi- enced hard service in seven of the Confederated States - Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama, and participated in the bloody battles of Perry- ville, Murfreesboro and Chickamauga, and at the latter was severely wounded and disabled, but, after recovering, served on post duty until the surrender.
He was promoted from private by appointment to sergeant- major, and afterward elected captain of company K, in which capacity his career as a soldier was closed. He returned to Little Rock after the surrender in 1865, and in August of that year again opened his law office. In 1874 the odious days of intolerance, proscription, disfranchisement and carpet-bag rule culminated in a revival of the liberties of the people, and Cap- tain Martin was nominated and elected by the democratic party to the office of prosecuting attorney for the sixth judicial district, and served the people ably in that capacity for two years. In 1876 Hon. John J. Clendenin, then judge of the sixth circuit, died, and Captain Martin was nominated and elected to fill the two years unexpired term to which Judge Clendenin had been elected. In 1878 he was nominated and elected to succeed himself as judge of the sixth, the most important circuit in the State, and served the people with learning, ability and distinction in that high office for four years more. The author was engaged in practice before him during the whole period of his first six years' service on the bench, and " without injustice to the pretensions of the living, or memory of the dead," can truly say that no more pleas- ant, courteous and affable judge ever presided at nisi prius, yet bis authority was firm and unchallenged or disputed in any quarter - nothing could be more foreign to the nature of the judge and citizen than the petty exhibition of power in his court - he was universally respected and esteemed in his cir- cuit. He retired at the expiration of his term in 1SS2, and was not a candidate for re-election, since which time (until
496
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
now, 1886) he has been engaged in the prosecution of his profession. In 1886 the democratic party of his district, without opposition from any quarter in the party, unani- mously tendered him the nomination for circuit judge in the sixth, his old circuit, a position unsought by him, and he was triumphantly elected and is now serving the people the third time as judge. He is a fine lawyer, fluent speaker, terse reasoner, and an able and upright, painstaking judge.
HON. JORDAN E. CRAVENS, CLARKSVILLE.
Colonel Cravens was born the 7th of November, 1830, in Madison county, Missouri, but when four months old his pa- rents settled in Johnson county, Arkansas, and he has proved his good staying qualities by remaining there. He was raised on a farın, and an earnest effort was made by an indulgent father to learn him practical agriculture, but Jordan could never be coaxed into enthusiasm for the noble science, and his father abandoned the effort after several years' trial, to await the slow development of some useful endowment in some other direction. There were a few wild oats and some visionary tares mixed up with some undeveloped good qualities in his nature, requiring some anxious years to locate. He was a leader in the sports of the wildwood chase, and the royal amusement of angling for game fish in the mountain streams; and could easily master a task in books, when the weather was sufficiently persuasive and rough to keep him indoors; but he always feared manual labor on the farm would prove derogatory to a robust constitution. After some years' trial, a solemn parental convention was held in the old homestead, to devise some constitutional restraint over the organic waywardness of the promising boy, which resulted in a transfer of parental jurisdiction to the best peda- gogue of the times, who soon inaugurated a successful revo- lution by converting anarchy into domestic monarchy, and a wild boy into a fine scholar and good congressional timber. Ile was not a willful, bad boy, in the sense of to-day, nor was he one of those goody boys of the extinct period, that type has been non est inventus since the boyhood of Washington, who left no survivors to perpetuate the rare species.
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.