Memoirs of Georgia; containing historical accounts of the state's civil, military, industrial and professional interests, and personal sketches of many of its people. Vol. II, Part 4

Author:
Publication date: 1859
Publisher: Atlanta, Ga., The Southern historicl association
Number of Pages: 1166

USA > Georgia > Memoirs of Georgia; containing historical accounts of the state's civil, military, industrial and professional interests, and personal sketches of many of its people. Vol. II > Part 4

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Although a Methodist divine, Dr. Lipscomb never outgrew his early fondness for a literary career. During forty years he was a popular contributor to some of the leading magazines of the country. As a Shakspearean critic, the author of Studies in the Forty Days, Milton and several other poems he will never be for- gotten by a large circle of appreciating readers. He was a master of all the graces of style, and never allowed anything from his pen to appear in print until it had been carefully revised. But for his modesty he would have been a more conspicu- ous figure in the literary world. He shunned publicity, and when the Appletons wrote to him for some facts about his life and work he felt that it would not be proper for him to furnish a sketch or ask a friend to write it. So the doctor has only a very brief notice in the Cyclopedia, but he has left such a lasting impress upon the culture of his beloved south that he does not need the aid of outside biographers.

CHARLES COLCOCK JONES.

Charles Colcock Jones is descended from English ancestry, his forefathers having come from England to South Carolina nearly two centuries ago. During the revolutionary war his grandfather, John Jones, was killed while a major in the continental army, near Savannah, in 1779. His father, Rev. Charles C. Jones, D. D., was a distinguished minister and was pastor of the First Presbyterian church in Savannah, where Charles C. was born in October, 1831. He afterward retired to his plantation in Liberty county. He was a gentleman of liberal education, and an earnest minister and teacher. Charles C. Jones, Jr., spent his boyhood on the big plantations of his father in Liberty county, where he fished, hunted, sailed boats and enjoyed all sports and amusements engaged in by boys with indulgent parents. Thus he grew up with a strong constitution and a training which was of great value to him in his after life. His father supervised his early studies, with private tutors to aid him. South Caro- lina college at Columbia was then presided over by Hon. William C. Preston, and there young Jones spent his freshman and sophomore years, then going to Prince- ton, N. J., where he was graduated with distinction. He studied law in Phila- delphia, and received his degree of LL. B. in 1855. In addition to the law course he attended the lectures of Agassiz, Longfellow, Wyman, Lowell and Holmes. He returned home, and having spent a winter in the law office of Ward & Owens, became a member of the law firm of Ward, Jackson & Jones. Hon. Henry Jackson, one of the members, had been minister to Austria and Mr. Ward about this time was sent abroad as minister to China. Col. Jones was one

LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM.

of the earliest advocates of secession, and when it became necessary to organize in defense of the south, he became the senior first-lieutenant of the Chatham artillery. He was chief of artillery during the siege of Savannah. When the civil war was over Col. Jones moved to New York and began the practice of law. Here he mingled with literary characters which afforded him opportunities of study and research he could not have found then in the south. In 1877 he returned to Georgia and settled at Montrose in Summerville. In 1879 Col. Jones spent several months in travel, and while in England gained much information, which he used in his History of Georgia, a work pronounced by George Bancroft the finest state history ever published, and one that entitled its author to be called the Macauley of the south. He was a rapid worker, his Siege of Savannah being written in seven evenings, his two volumes of the History of Georgia in seven months and his Histories of Savannah and Augusta in two months. He was regarded after the appearance of his Antiquities of the Southern Indians as the highest authority upon that subject, and that book was the first to bring him into prominence with European scholars. Col. Jones was the most prolific writer Georgia ever produced and ranks first among southern historical and biograph- ical writers of the present generation. He was the eldest of his family, his brother, Prof. Joseph Jones, being a distinguished scholar and chemist. Col. Jones' son, Charles Edgeworth, is a writer of magazine articles and shows evidence of inherit- ing his father's talent. Col. Jones was twice married, the first wife being Ruth (Berrien) Whitehead, of Burke county, and his second, Eva (Berrien) Eve, of Augusta. Both wives were grand-nieces of Hon. John McPherson Berrien, attorney-general in President Jackson's cabinet. Col. Jones was a handsome man, six feet high, broad-shouldered, with a fine head and face. With a com- inanding presence and charming conversational powers he possessed an inter- esting personality. His death occurred near Augusta, Ga., in 1893. Col. Jones' published works are: Monumental Remains of Georgia; Historical Sketches of Tomo-chi-chi, Mico of the Yamacraws; Antiquities of the Southern Indians; The Siege of Savannah in December, 1864; The Dead Towns of Georgia; The Life and Services of Commodore Tatnall; Memorial History of Augusta; The Life, Literary Labors and Neglected Grave of Richard Henry Wilde; Historical Sketches of the Chatham Artillery; Last Days, Death and Burial of Gen. Henry Lee; A Roster of General Officers, Etc., in Confederate Service; The History of Georgia; Negro Myths from the Georgia Coasts; Memorial History of Savannah : Biographical Sketches of Maj. John Habersham, of Georgia.

FATHER ABRAM J. RYAN ..

Father Abram J. Ryan, born in Virginia in 1834, and died in Kentucky in 1886, was at one time claimed as one of Georgia's poets. For several years after the war he was a resident of Augusta. He was born in Norfolk, Va., and his parents came from Limerick, Ireland. There being no priest at Norfolk the babe was taken to Hagerstown, Md., for baptism, and this incident has been the cause of much discussion as to Father Ryan's birth-place. Early training and example of a good, patient Christian mother contributed much to Father Ryan's noble life, and to that mother did the good man dedicate his poems, or as he ex- pressed it, "laid his simple rhymes as a garland of love" at her feet. Her piety did much in shaping his character, and he has said in speaking of his childhood davs:

"I felt That when I knelt To listen to my mother's prayer, God was w'th my mother there."

MEMOIRS OF GEORGIA.

When a lad of seven or eight years his parents moved to St. Louis, and there he attended the Brothers of the Christian school. He early showed mental activity and graces of character which endeared him to teachers and schoolmates. His reverence for sacred things and places led to the selection of the priesthood for his vocation. He soon entered the ecclesiastical seminary at Niagara, N. Y., and graduated with distinction and began at once the active duties of missionary life. On the outbreak of the war he joined the Confederate army as chaplain, and served until the close. A strict adherent to principle, and a man of deep conviction, he was slow to accept the results of the war, which he believed were fraught with disaster to the people of his section. He was a southerner of the strongest kind. "Their chariot-wheels had laid waste and desolated the land, and he for one could not bow and kiss the hands that had caused all this woe," and so he could make no concessions to the north. His was an open, manly character, and he was ever moved by kind impulses and influenced by charitable feelings, and so it was that when the yellow fever scourge devastated the southern land and the northern heart responded in sympathy to the affliction Father Ryan experienced a change and sung that glorious melody, "Reunited."

"The Northland, strong in love, and great, Forgot the stormy days of strife; Forgot that souls with dreams of hate Or unforgiveness e'er were rife, Forgotten were each thought and hushed; Save-she was generous and her foe was crushed."

"Thus it was the angel of affliction and the angel of charity joined hands together and pronounced the benediction over a restored Union and a reunited people."

When hostilities had ceased and he heard of Lee's surrender he wrote the poem, "Conquered Banner."

"Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary; Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary; Furl it, fold it, it is best; For there's not a man to wave it, And there's not a sword to save it, And there's not one left to lave it In the blood which heroes gave it; And its foes now scorn and brave it; Furl it, hide it-let it rest. -X * * "Furl that Banner, softly, slowly! Treat it gently-it is holy --- For it droops above the dead. Touch it not-unfold it never, Let it droop there, furled forever, For its people's hopes are dead!"

His poem, the well known "Sword of Robert Lee," was written about the same time. Father Ryan was always a great sympathizer with Ireland, and his feelings found vent in Erin's Flag:

"Lift it up! lift it up! the old banner of green! The blood of her sons has but brightened its sheen; What though the tyrant has trampled it down, Are its folds not emblazoned with deeds of renown? What though for ages it droops in the dust, Shall it droop thus forever? No, no! God is just."

LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM.

He lived once in Nashville, Tenn., and then moved to Clarksville, Tenn., and later still to Augusta, Ga. He edited the "Banner of the South" for five years, but this work was too exacting for him and he resigned from the paper. From 1870 to 1883 he was with St. Mary's church in Mobile, Ala. While lecturing in its behalf his health failed and he entered a Franciscan monastery to rest. While there he started his Life of Christ, but before it was finished the angel of death called him home. When the smallpox was raging in 1862 in the Gratiot state prison, the chaplain, alarmed, sought safety in flight. No other was found who was willing to risk his life by ministering to the sick and dying. One day a dying. man asked for a minister and Father Ryan was sent for. He responded imme- diately and remained there for months attending to the sick and suffering. At the close of the war he lived near Beauvoir, Miss., and became an intimate friend of the Davis family. He was fond of music and would for hours play at the piano. Then the spirit would seize him and he would write his sweetest lines. It has been written of him: "He was a charming poet-one who could rekindle the smoldering embers in the heart, and make them burn with a fiercer flame than those which burned on vestal altars. He combined in one nature the inipils- iveness of the Celt and the warm-heartedness of the southerner, and when he died he was mourned by all, irrespective of creed. A Roman Catholic, he was honored by Protestants; an Irishman, he was loved and admired by native Americans. Outside of race and creed, he was respected for his true manhood."

He had already won distinction as an orator, a lecturer, an essayist and a poet. "The leading merits of his poems are the simple sublimity of his verses; the rare and chaste beauty of his conceptions; the richness and grandeur of his thoughts; and their easy natural flow; the refined elegance and captivating force of the terms he employs as the medium through which he communicates those thoughts, and the weird fancy which throws around them charms peculiarly their own; these and other merits will win for their author enduring fame." Among his works were the following: Poems (Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous), Song of the Mystic, The Sword of Robert Lee, The Prayer of the South, The Conquered Banner, Gather the Sacred Dust, - Their Story Runneth Thus, Erin's Flag, A Crown for Our Queen (prose).

ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS.

Alexander Hamilton Stephens, who died during his gubernatorial term in 1883 at the age of seventy-one, was generally recognized as one of the foremost of American statesmen. He began life a poor orphan, and was indebted to the kindness of a wealthy friend for his education at the university of Georgia. Pres- ident Moses Waddell was at that time the president of the college, and under the supervision of that great educator young Stephens made rapid progress. He ranked high as a scholar and a debater, and his record was very gratifying to his benefactor, and the lady who had become interested in his case, and who aided in defraying his expenses. It was thought that he would enter the ministry, but he changed his mind, paid back the money advanced for him, and managed to get through by his own efforts. For some time after graduating he taught school, and while teaching he was admitted to the bar after reading law only two months. Then began a severe struggle. During the first year he lived on six dollars a month and saved $400. He was quite successful in his profession and in 1836 was elected a member of the legislature. He was in congress several years before the war, and was vice-president of the Confederacy; a member of congress for several terms after the war, and in 1882 he was elected governor. II-3

MEMOIRS OF GEORGIA.

While an indefatigable student and writer he did not make his appearance as an author until 1867, when his War Between the States was published. This large work in two volumes was sold by subscription, and found its way into thousands of libraries. His school and pictorial History of the United States had a large sale, and won favor with the public. As an author Mr. Stephens was noted for his painstaking accuracy, reliability and impartiality. Although he opposed secession until the very last, and then followed the fortunes of the south, even to the extent of accepting the second office in the Confederacy, he always main- tained the right of each state to withdraw from the Union, and his books are remarkable for the strong array of authorities and the arguments advanced to support his views on this subject. At the close of the war he was arrested and imprisoned five months in Fort Warren. He was then paroled, and his wise coun- sels materially aided in the restoration of law and order and good government in Georgia. Mr. Stephens was an invalid all his life, but he managed to get through with an immense amount of work. He was a favorite with all classes and all political parties and no man could supplant him in the affections of the people. It was generally admitted by his friends and opponents that he was an absolutely pure man, controlled by the highest and most patriotic motives. His life was one of work and pain, and his best energies were consecrated to the service of his people. His law practice and his books brought him a large income, but he spent every dollar of it in helping others. He was instrumental in educating nearly 100 young men, and many of them were entirely supported by him while they were at college. His charity manifested itself in many other ways, and at the time of his death his estate consisted only of his home place at Crawfordville and his library. The princely fortune accumulated by his labors had been spent in advancing the welfare of others. His speeches and writings will find readers for generations to come. They are not characterized by any extraordinary graces of style, but they convey much useful political and historical information, and if his sentences sometimes halt they are nevertheless clear and forcible, with the stamp of scholarship and profound thought. Unlike many public men, he was a lover of the best literature, and he was never happier than when he was at work in his library at "Liberty Hall," as his home was called. It is to be regretted that he did not find time to give still more work from his hand to the public.

THOMAS R. R. COBB.

Thomas R. R. Cobb, born in Athens in 1823, and killed on the battlefield in Virginia in 1862, was a lawyer, statesman and soldier whose gifts as a writer gave early promise of distinction. After a brilliant career at the state university he leaped to the front of the legal profession, while still a mere youth. He was the author of The Law of Slavery, a work which received the highest tributes of praise from the ablest lawyers of the Union. His Digest of the Laws of Georgia also ranks high. At the time of his death he was a brigadier-general, and one of the ablest and most daring of the southern generals. In Georgia he will long be remembered as the devoted friend of education. He built an academy at his own expense, and was the chief mover in establishing the Lucy Cobb institute at. Athens, which was named in honor of one of his daughters. He was happily married to an intellectual woman, Miss Marion Lumpkin, the daughter of Chief Justice Lumpkin. His widow and several children survive him, and his youngest daughter is the wife of the Hon. Hoke Smith, secretary of the interior. Of his famous Digests Judge Richard H. Clark said: "This code was born during the war, hence its failure to create the sensation in the legal and literary world

LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM.

it would otherwise have created. The 'legal lights' are just now waking to the fact that it is the only code in the United States where the common law and the principles of equity have been reduced to a series of separate and distinct propo- sitions, having the form and force of statutory laws. The credit of its distinguish- ing feature belongs entirely to Mr. Cobb." He was cut down by a shell at Fred- ericksburg, when only thirty-nine years old; had he lived he would have been one of the greatest leaders of the new south.

HENRY R. JACKSON.

Henry R. Jackson, born at Athens in 1820, has been a commanding figure in public life and at the bar for more than fifty years. Most of his life has been spent in Savannah, where he still resides. His father was the younger brother of Gov. James Jackson, and his mother was a daughter of Thomas Reade Rootes, esquire, of Fredericksburg, Va. Their son, Henry R. Jackson, graduated at Yale, and in a short time became one of the most successful lawyers in the south; he fought gallantly as a colonel in the Mexican war and as a general in the Confederate army. He was also minister to Austria before the war and minister to Mexico under Mr. Cleveland's first administration. Gen. Jackson early devel- oped decided poetic gifts and many of his poems have never been preserved. In a volume styled Tallulah and Other Poems, published in 1850, many of his poems appear. The ones that attracted the most attention were My Father, My Wife and Child, and Old Red Hills of Georgia. The poem My Wife and Child was written at Camargo, Mexico, while the Mexican war was in progress. Every Georgian appreciated The Red Hills of Georgia:

"The red old hills of Georgia! My heart is on them now; Where, fed from golden streamlets, Oconee's waters flow! I love them with devotion, The walks so bleak and bare. How can my spirit e'er forget The warm hearts dwelling there?

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"And where upon their surface Is heart to feeling dead ?- And when has needy stranger Gone from those hills unfed? Their bravery and kindness For aye go hand in hand, Upon your washed and naked hills, My own, my native land!"

SIDNEY LANIER.

Sidney Lanier was born at Macon, Ga., where his father, Robert S. Lanier, was a practicing lawyer. His mother was Mary Anderson, of Scotch descent, a native of Virginia, and gifted in poetry and music. When a child he taught himself to play upon the banjo, guitar, piano, violin and flute. He afterward became the finest flute player in the world. At the age of fourteen be entered Oglethorpe college near Midway, Ga., and was graduated, taking class honors. He excelled in mathematics, and during his whole college life it is said that he never shirked a duty or a responsibility. After graduation he remained in the school as tutor until the breaking out of the war. He and a younger brother, Clifford,

MEMOIRS OF GEORGIA.

enlisted as privates in the Confederate army with the Macon volunteers of the Second Georgia battalion. Several times Sidney was offered promotion, but he always refused it, because it would have separated him from his much beloved brother. The first year in the camp was pleasant without many hardships, and Sidney spent his time in learning French, German and Spanish, and in playing his flute. Later on he was in the battles of Seven Pines, Drury's Bluff, and the seven days' fighting around Richmond. After the fight at Malvern Hill the brothers were transferred to the signal service and stationed for a short time at Petersburg. He saw service in Virginia and North Carolina, and toward the last of the war the brothers were separated, each being put in charge of a vessel to run the blockade. Sidney's vessel was captured and he was confined for five months at Point Lookout prison. He had concealed his flute in his sleeve and this now became his dearest treasure. Near the close of the war he was exchanged and with his flute and a twenty dollar gold piece which he had when captured, he started for his Georgia home on foot in February, 1865. In March he reached home, exhausted from his tramp, and six weeks of illness followed, during which time his mother died of consumption. The two years following he was employed as a clerk in Montgomery, Ala. The second year he went north to see about the publication of his novel, Tiger Lilies. Of this book, describing his life during the war, Dr. Ward has written: "It is a luxuriant, unpruned work, written in haste for the press within the space of three weeks, but one which gives rich promise of the poet." Returning south he became principal of a school at Prattville and in the same year, 1867, married Miss Mary Day, daughter of Charles Day, of Macon. She had the utmost faith in her husband's abilities, and of this belief in him Mr. Lanier has written most gratefully. In My Springs he writes of her thus:

"O Love, O wife, thine eyes are they My Springs from out whose shining gray Issue the sweet celestial streams That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams.

"Oval and large and passion-pure And gray and wise and honor-sure, Soft as a dying violet breath, Yet calmly unafraid of death.

"Dear eyes, dear eyes! and rare complete, Being heavenly sure and earthly sweet, I marvel that God made you mine, For when he frowns 'tis then you shine."

About a year after his marriage a severe hemorrhage of the lungs alarmed his friends and wife, and caused him to resign his principalship. He then began to practice law with his father, and for five years proceeded, all the time struggling against consumption. By the advice of physicians he went to Texas for a change of climate. This did not bring the desired improvement, and knowing at best his life would not be long, and conscious of his genius, he determined to devote his remaining days to music and poetry. "With his flute and pen as sword and staff he turned his path northward, where an author had better opportunities for study and observation than in the struggling south, in which pretty much the whole of life had been merely not dying." In Baltimore, where he had made his home. he was engaged as first flute in the Peabody symphony concerts. Asger Hamerik, his director for six years in the Peabody symphony orchestra, thus speaks of him: "I will never forget the impression he made on me when he played the flute concerto of Emil Hartman at a Peabody symphony concert in 1878,-his tall,

LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM.

handsome, manly presence; his flute breathing noble sorrows, noble joys; the orchestra softly responding. The audience was spell-bound. Such distinction, stich refinement! He stood the master, the genius."

During this time he was carrying on a course of study in the Anglo-Saxon and the early English texts. For months at a time he would have to give up all work and seek a change of air. Having contracted a fresh cold in November, 1876, he was obliged to go to Florida, and returning home, spent a while with friends in Georgia and Tennessee. For three winters following he played in the Peabody concerts in Baltimore. A course of Shakespearean lectures he delivered severely taxed his waning strength, but was the means of getting him the chair of English literature at Johns Hopkins. This brought him a regular salary and stimulated him to give utterance to his songs. Prominent among these were the Song of the Chattahoochee, A Song of Love, The Revenge of Hamish. He then was forced to go to Rockingham Springs, Va., where he lay exhausted by hem- orrhages. Still his indomitable energy led him to do the work of a strong man. Besides many poems, he wrote here and sent to the press his Science of English Verse, the only one in existence, giving a scientific basis of poetry. Rallying himself he went to Baltimore in September, and the amount of work the dying man now accomplished was marvelous. He opened lecture schools, attended constant rehearsals, lectured at the university, besides writing poems. In Jan- uary he was again ill, and continued failing until July, when he went to West Chester, Pa. As the weather grew cooler he returned to Baltimore and attended his lectures in a carriage, always sitting as he lectured. Such a force of will was wonderful. He wrote Sunrise when he couldn't feed himself. As a last resort he was taken to Asheville, N. C., and Mrs. Lanier, with her youngest child, came on to nurse him. As there was no improvement in his condition he made another effort, and the husband and wife took carriage across the mountain to Lynn, Polk Co. The father and brother were summoned here by telegram to the dying man, but they arrived too late to see him alive. The body was taken to Baltimore. In 1888 a marble bust was erected to his memory in that city.

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Memoirs of Georgia; containing historical accounts of the state's civil, military, industrial and professional interests, and personal sketches of many of its people. Vol. II, Part 4

Author: Publication date: 1859 Publisher: Atlanta, Ga., The Southern historicl association Number of Pages: 1166

Author:
Publication date: 1859
Publisher: Atlanta, Ga., The Southern historicl association
Number of Pages: 1166