USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 47
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All the duties imposed by these numerous and varied relations have always been well and faithfully discharged.
In 1870 the electors of his county returned him to the legis. lature, but the dominant republican party arbitrarily excluded him. In November, 1872, he was again, by an almost unani- mous vote, returned to the legislature, and in the session of 1873 became famous as an obstructionist to radical legislation. In 1876 the democracy of his senatorial district nominated him for the State senate, but he declined on the ground that his professional engagements demanded his entire attention. In 1880 he was nominated and elected to the general assembly and that body elected him speaker of the house on first ballot, a high but well-earned and deserved compliment. In 1884 his well-pleased constituency of old Lawrence again sent him to the capitol to represent them in the halls of legislation, and his abilities and efficiency were recognized by the speaker, who made him chairman of the judiciary committee, an important position in all legislative bodies. Those who know him best pronounce him a good lawyer, citizen, adviser and Christian gentleman, but the circumstances of his life and the positions of honor and trust which he has filled and discharged without just criticism or censure pronounce his best eulogy. At this writing he is prominently spoken of as a candidate for governor.
HON. STIRLING R. COCKRILL, LITTLE ROCK.
This young jurist was born September 26, 1847, in Nash- ville, Tennessee. He combines the best lineage and historic blood of his native State, a fusion of the Cockrill, Robertson and Harding blood - pioneers who came in the vanguard of civiliza- tion in her march across the Alleghanies into the dangerous and pathless wilds of the west. James Robertson, one of the number, commanded and led these " bold spirits of the border" into the wilderness. Edmund Kirk, in his " Rear Guard of the Revolution," describes him " as a man of great ability, pos- sessed of transcendent genius to command." Great, not in that sense which distinguished Greece in the Attic era of her classic greatness, but great in iron will and noble antagonism to every element which impeded the march of civilization from the historic James to the Pacific ocean. These men rode the
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HON. STIRLING R. COCKRILL.
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storm and braved the whirlwind - they are splendid types of that robust manhood who have written the history of our civili- zation in the best blood of our race. These pioneers pitched their tents on the banks of the beautiful Cumberland, where Nashville now stands, and began the heroic work of founding a mighty State. The author was born hard by on the ground hallowed and consecrated by these pioneers and his own ances- tors, who came in the same tide. On the mother's side Judge - Cockrill is descended in a direct line from Robert Bruce, the hero of Bannockburn, who won and maintained Scotland's crown, by vanquishing Edward II and Edward III in suc- cession. This descent comes down through Sir Thomas Moore, the first great lawyer who held the great seal of England. From him it reaches Brevard Moore, the common ancestor of Judge Cockrill's mother and General Robert E. Lee of imper- ishable memory. It is not generally known that our chief jus- tice is a lineal descendant from one of the lord high chancellors of England. In democratic America we feel proud of all that is great and good, if we do repudiate the divine right of kings and artificial orders of nobility.
Scientists, following the laws of reproduction, have very plausibly suggested that the military genius of General Lee comes from the hero of Bannockburn, who conquered Edward II in the early years of the fourteenth century. The same laws invite the same speculation and suggest that the judicial talents of our chief justice hail from Sir Thomas of the Wool- sack. But whether the theory or speculation is Utopian, or founded in profound philosophy, we have in corroboration of the presumption able generals and able jurists-striking proto- types, a prima facie case, and there we are willing to rest without extending our research farther for fear we might stumble on a cobbler or disturb the ashes of many humble members of the same line who do not swing so high on the genealogical tree. But these things do not disturb the eqna- tion of our speculative science, and need not be discussed, they are common to all mankind.
Judge Cockrill attended the common schools of Nashville until the non-combatant members of the family were banished the Federal lines in 1863. After leaving Nashville the young
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man attended the military school at Marietta, Georgia, and followed up his military education by joining the Confederate army when a beardless youth of sixteen. He was in the battle in front of Atlanta, and was wounded by a spent minie ball. The boy followed the waning fortunes of the Confederate army under the command of Joseph E. Johnston, without ever leaving his command a day. He was loved by his command for his soldierly bearing, and was made a sergeant of artillery. At Salsbury, North Carolina, his battery was charged by a Federal squadron under the command of General Stoneman, now (1886) governor of California, and the boy-gunner dis- charged two charges of canister at the gallant general before he was rode down and captured by the cavalry. The youthful gunner could not handle a cannon as he could smaller arms, and General Stoneman owes his life to that circumstance. To the honor of the jurist he expresses great gratification that his canister did nothing more than cover the general and his gray charger with dust and dirt.
One of the most fortunate eras in his life is embraced in a sojourn of three years in a secluded village of Virginia, imme- """ately succeeding the war, with his transcendently great rela- tive, General Robert E. Lee, who at Washington College, under the most careful training, imparted a classical education to the young man which is now bearing rich fruit and leaving its last- ing impress on the State of his adoption. The degree of bachelor of arts was conferred by the faculty. After leaving this seat of learning, he entered the law department of Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tennessee, where he was graduated in 1870. In October, 1870, he came to Little Rock, where he had neither friend, acquaintance or prestige from any source to advance the professional career upon which he immediately en- tered. Talent, energy and good habits were his sole capital and reliance. The aathor then resident in Little Rock was one of the first callers at his office and was much prepossessed with him -asked him ont to dine with his family, and said to his wife that evening, "a young man of fine promise and attain- ments will dine with us on the morrow." I was not alone in the enjoyment of this opinion. I have always loved gifted and worthy young men. This feeling has impelled me to
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notice many such in this volume whom others would have omitted. Gifted young men are the nation's jewels ; in them her hopes are centered, on them her verpetuation and glory depend.
Judge Cockrill's first year of probation at the bar was at- tended with some hardship and privation, but it was not long before his talent asserted itself and burst through the clouds and opened the way to the splendid possibilities afterward achieved. In May, 1872, when his star, with ascending node, began its transit across the plane of obscurity, he took unto himself a wife in the person of the accomplished Mary Ashley Freeman, granddaughter of Bishop Freeman, of the Epis- copal church, and the great Chester Ashley. Following closely on this event, fortune threw another pearl in the pathway of the future chief justice in the business copartnership and inti- mate personal relations between him and the Hon. A. H. Gar- land, whom Arkansas has so often and so long delighted to honor. This relation continued until public duties called Gov- ernor Garland from professional pursuits. This partnership was a great stepping-stone to the junior. It lifted him to the attitude of State fame, and he had the genius to support the flight and sustain it after the dissolution of the partnership. William Cummins had performed the same kind offices for Governor Garland in his youthful days when Hempstead county was the circumference of his budding fame. The chief justice yet remembers the author's advice to him in the fall of 1870, before he had received his first retainer, "keep your office and it will keep you." In a letter to the author after his elevation, he says: "Your advice stuck in my memory and many times gave me hope; I had acquired industrious habits and knew how to study ; I always kept your advice and 'kept my office,' business or no business, and made familiar friends with the law writers. It is the only true road to suc- cess."
In 1884 his fame as a lawyer had compassed the State, and the democratic convention of that year nominated and elected him to the office of chief justice, made vacant by the death of the lamented English. He attained to that high office at the remark- able age of thirty-seven, and is the eleventh chief justice in
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the order of succession. He is a graceful and fluent writer, and is master of the purest English. His abilities are conceded by the bar and he is fast laying the foundation of a well-earned and an enviable fame as a jurist. On the bench, as at the bar, he is affable and courteous, with winning and engaging manners, never obtrusive, and never shrinking from duty or avoiding just responsibility. Some of his pioneer ancestors were great hunters, and he inherits a keen relish for the sport the gun affords as a means of pleasure and recreation.
HON. JOHN CARROLL, EUREKA SPRINGS.
Colonel John Carroll was born in Wythe county, Virginia, August 30, 1828, and is a descendant of John Carroll of Car- rollton, of independence fame. When the boy was three years old, his father moved to, and settled in, the Cherokee nation, then embraced in the limits of Tennessee, and includ- ing the area now embraced in Hamilton, Meigs and other counties not then laid off. Educational facilities were exceed- ingly limited, and all the schooling young Carroll ever received was acquired by attending school a few months with Indian children ; but it was enough to excite and stimulate his thirst for knowledge, and he became his own efficient educator; not classically, but useful and practical. In the latter part of 1837, and early part of 1838, the Cherokee Indians were re- moved from their reservation in Tennessee, and the father of young Carroll followed their fortunes, and in February, 1838, settled in the Indian territory near Fort Gibson, on the Ar- kansas river. The boy grew to man's estate in company with, and the associate of Indians, and in 1851 married an edu- cated, full-blooded Cherokee lady. In 1953 he moved to Mc- Donough county, Missouri, and settled down to farming. When the civil war commenced in 1861, he raised a splendid cavalry company and joined Price's forces at Pineville, Mis- souri, and was assigned to duty as captain in Colonel Tolbert's regiment of cavalry. He participated in the battles of Oak Hill, Lexington, Dugg Springs, Elkhorn, Prairie Grove, and a great number of skirmishes and battles of less note, and never received the slightest wound ; but his father and three brothers (all Confederate soldiers) were killed in battle in less than
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HON. JOHN CARROLL.
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THOMAS MARCUM.
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eighteen months from the beginning of the war. In 1862 the Missouri State troops were disbanded and reorganized as Con- federate States troops, and Captain Carroll was elected captain in an infantry regiment, and served under General Parsons for about two years, at the end of which time he was commissioned colonc! and detached on recruiting service, and raised and equipped four hundred cavalry, but the war ended before the latter were brought into action.
After the war Colonel Carroll settled in Madison county, Arkansas, and read law for several years before obtaining license. In 1866 he was elected to the legislature as a dem- ocrat. In 1874 the same constituency elected him to the constitutional convention, both of which positions he filled to the satisfaction of his constituents. After 1874 he retired from politics, and settled down to the practice of his profes- sion at Eureka Springs. In October, 1885, President Cleve- land appointed him United States marshal for the western district of Arkansas, which position he now holds. He is nearly related to Governor Carroll of Tennessee, and very strikingly resembles that branch of the family.
THOMAS MARCUM, FORT SMITH.
Thomas Marcum was born September 13, 1843, in Breathitt county, Kentucky, in a stately mansion on his father's farm overlooking the Kentucky river. His paternal ancestors emi- grated from England long prior to the Revolutionary war, and settled in Pennsylvania, and from thence some of them moved to the colony of Virginia. Many of them became soldiers in the Virginia Continental line in the war of independence, and achieved honorable distinction. His grandfather, Thomas Mar- cum, was the friend and companion of that noted explorer and pioneer Daniel Boone, with whom he crossed the mountains and settled in the fertile wilds of eastern Kentucky, where Alfred Marcum, the father of the subject of this sketch, was born in a block-house, amidst the exciting and stirring scenes of Indian warfare. His great-grandfather married a Cherokee lady of three-fourths Indian blood. His father was a self-made, self-educated man, and attained local eminence as a mathema- tician, physical giant and esteemed citizen.
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Mr. Marcum claims to have made a good hand on the farm until nineteen years old, but the assumption is uncorroborated, and without additional testimony I do not feel justified in embracing his conclusion on this point, on general principles- such a rara avis is likely to be better at any thing else than gen- eral farm work ; in fact, and in the nature and fitness of things, it is almost certain that he was a conspicuous failure as a farm- boy. In 1862, when he was eighteen years old, and six feet high, with a plug hat balanced on his head at an angle of thirty degrees from perpendicular, his father sent him on one of his finest horses in a hurry to a neighboring village on an errand, and never saw either him or horse any more until the war was over. He fell in with a recruiting officer for the Fed- eral army, listened to the animating music of drum and fife until he was electrified, and he at once became a Federal soldier, and a good one, and was made first field sergeant because of his conspicuous height. The boy had plenty of the soldier's courage, and at the battle of Perryville was pro- moted to the office of orderly sergeant for gallantry. In 1865 Governor Bramlett appointed him colonel of the Eighteenth Kentucky militia. After the war he attended the common schools of the vicinage, taught school awhile and educated him- self, and is, in every sense of the term, a self-made man. He studied law two years, part of the time under the supervision of John H. Riddell, whose sister Kitty he afterward married. He was admitted to the bar at Jackson, Kentucky, in the fall of 1867, and was very soon afterward appointed circuit court clerk of Owsley county, to fill an unexpired term of two years. In 1869 he moved to Hempstead county, Arkansas, and for one year acted as prosecuting attorney pro tem. of the ninth circuit. In 1871 he moved to Fort Smith, where he has continued to reside, being chiefly engaged in the criminal practice in the Federal court. Mr. Marcum has never been an office seeker, but is an energtic, effective and untiring worker for his brother democrats whenever his services are needed in the field or on the rostrum. When he is piloting a lawsuit through the legal breakers, no matter how desperate his cause may appear, his adversary may well be on the alert for a cyclone. To illustrate : The following episode occurred in the Federal court at Fort
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Smith in the fall of 1885, during the progress of an interesting trial.
A Cherokee Indian defended by him was on trial, charged with the larceny of a very large fat pork hog. A large num- ber of witnesses, of both sexes, were in attendance, and were about equally divided, for and against the prisoner. The par- ties were all from the neighborhood of Lightning Creek, in Going Snake district, Cherokee nation, and in general make- up and personnel appeared to be far above the average Indian. When the government concluded the evidence in chief the proof appeared to be overwhelmingly against the prisoner, and Judge Clayton, then district attorney, twirled his fob-chain and with a confident and complacent smile, said : "The government rests." At this juncture several attorneys, including the author, called Mr. Marcum aside, and very patronizingly advised him to withdraw the plea of not guilty, and throw his client on the mercy of the court. "B-d-m-d if I do," was the charac- teristic reply, "this is a case of mistaken hog-identity." At this intimation we knew something racy was in reserve, and hung up our coats and laid down our papers, and telephoned the judge of the State court, then in waiting for us, that we were unexpectedly detained for several hours at the Federal court, and to pass our cases until we could get there. Mr. Mar- cum's mouth very much resembles Henry Clay's, but is somewhat larger than the noted vocal organ the distinguished Kentuckian carried through life. It is an important and accom- modating factor, and readily responds in the affirmative when called to embrace either ear, and when truth and logic and law fail, this celebrated mouth often leads the forlorn hope and snatches victory from the over-confident adversary. Five good- looking witnesses for the defense testified in Creek, through the medium of an interpreter, that the hog in question was twenty years old; that they had known him from the day he was pigged on Lightning Creek; that he was lean and lank, and was of that almost extinct species known as shad-bellies and razor-backs, with proboscis long, keen and sharp, so much so that he was often seen to poke it in the neck of a quart bot- tle and drink buttermilk therefrom ; that the defendant killed the hog, not to eat or appropriate, but to rid himself of a long- standing nuisance.
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The auditory was large, and, from the grave and dignified judge to the humblest Indian in the room, was convulsed with laughter. After silence was partially restored, Mr. Marcum gave his facial ornament a double shuffle, leaned over the table and said patronizingly to Judge Clayton : "The defense rests, judge ; have you any thing in rebuttal from Lightning Creek or Going Snake district ?" Judge Clayton tried to stem the roaring tide which had so unexpectedly set in against and overwhelmed him, but his effort was as futile as a whisper would have been to stay the tide of Niagara. Marcum's re- ply was the crystallization of satire, though he tried not to transcend the limits of serio-comic criticism. Verdict, not guilty. Every juror who sat in that case will admit to-day that he did not believe one word of "Marcum's testimony," as they put it, and will roar with laughter at the mere mention of the case.
On another occasion in the State court he assisted the State's . attorney in the prosecution of a Choctaw Indian charged with the commission of a felony, the crime depending (under the peculiar phraseology of the statute) on the Indian's knowledge and ability to understand and speak the English language. The author defended the Indian. Every detail going to make out the of- fense was clearly proved, except the Indian's knowledge of our language ; that point was entirely overlooked by the prosecution.
Mr. Marcum opened the argument by stating that he was embarrassed, greatly embarrassed, to divine or think of any de- fense whatever on which his hardy and robust friend could base a defense; that every fact was admitted, and nothing in extenuation or mitigation had been offered by the defense, and he facetiously said, "but there are exceptions and departures from all general rules, and it has been wisely said that . fools step in where angels fear to tread.' I have offered to submit this case without argument; the offer was declined ; no ar- gument can be made, when, as in this case, law and fact are undisputed. If the gentleman does, or can, offer any thing worthy of consideration or reply, the prosecuting attorney will attend to it," and down he sat. Such an admixture of humor, spicy wit, bold and derogatory assumption was enough to stir up ridicule and sarcasm. And the author, in reply and defense,
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said : Burke never uttered a more profound aphorism than when he said " he who too hastily criticises the follies and frailties of mankind blasphemes his God," and the squirrel-headed gentle- man from the black-jack flats and whip-poor-will ridges of Ken- tucky shall have the benefit of the admonition ; and I am content to say that, at least on this occasion, he seems richly endowed in that unquestioned bliss which breeds and dwells in profound ignorance. I admit the force of the gentleman's quotation, and that it has been wisely said that " fools step in where an- gels fear to tread," but insist the jury shall make the appli- cation. I then read the statute, the peculiar phraseology of which had entirely escaped the gentleman's attention, and dwelt on the fact that the proof of the Choctaw's knowledge of the English language was conspicuously absent. This fell on my friend like a cyclone in a hay-field, and but for the frailty of juries and the versatility of his mind, he never could have recovered ; he was much agitated, and offered the prose- cuting attorney $50 for his place in making the closing argument, which was granted, without reward. Then the au- thor knew he would receive " a Roland for his Oliver."
Mr. Marcum commenced his reply by saying, " my big-bellied friend from the penneroyal regions of Tennessee has gone scalping through the black-jack flats of Kentucky where I was raised and has whooped me up very lively, he imagines. Now, gentlemen, you are honest, fair-minded men, and want nothing but what is right. Listen to me ; I will put him to flight in two words ; " at this he pulled out a one hundred dollar bill, and offered it to the author if he would upon honor state whether - the Choctaw could speak the English language, and thus open up the proof for the benefit of the closing argument on a point fatal to the prosecution if the jury regarded the evidence. The proposition was declined ex necessetate rei; and the jury found from this circumstance that the Choctaw could speak English. Mr. Marcum is a very fine criminal lawyer, and when necessary in discussing either law or fact he is a close, logical and forcible reasoner, and he never tires his audience. But if the author were to say he knows nothing about civil law, simply because he never devoted his attention to that branch of law, he would resent and controvert the imputation, and for
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this reason we decline to discuss him in that light. He is brother-in-law to B. F. Rice, ex-United States senator from Arkansas, also to M. W. Benjamin, a prominent lawyer at Little Rock. All of these gentlemen married sisters - Misses Riddells of Kentucky.
JOHN LOAGUE, MEMPHIS.
As my caustic friend Loague has a lively interest in Arkan- sas, representing many shekels, which possibly may continue for a long cycle of years, I give a synoptical glance at his life. He was born in Londonderry, Ireland, April 1, 1829, and is a living refutation of the ancient superstition connected with births on that day.
He acquired a fine education at Gwynne's Institute on Creghan Hill, in his native city, and came to America in 1848. After surveying the greater portion of North America, he finally cast permanent anchor at Memphis, Tennessee, in 1860, where he yet resides. Politically an agnostic, he came to swim, and never embraced any party until his political sagacity con- vinced him that it could return the favor handsomely. He was a non-combatant during the war, and succeeded in maintaining a satisfactory neutrality. His political sagacity is wonderful - it has never deceived or misled him. He has held many offices of honor, profit and great trust, as indicated by the following tabular showing :
1. Clerk to the assessors of Memphis.
2. Four years member of the school board.
3. Six years tax collector of privileges.
. 4. Member of the constitutional convention of Tennessee in 1865, and secretary to the west Tennessee delegation in that body. Here, to his everlasting honor be it said, he voted to strike down Brownlow's disfranchising laws.
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