History of Crawford and Clark counties, Illinois, Part 36

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 826

USA > Illinois > Clark County > History of Crawford and Clark counties, Illinois > Part 36
USA > Illinois > Crawford County > History of Crawford and Clark counties, Illinois > Part 36

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up spontaneously to the lips from a heart full of grief and sadness; they came unstudied, and for this very reason they came with a naturalness, power and fascination that has seldom been equaled -- never surpassed. But by his intimate acquaintances he will proba- bly be the best remembered for his rare social gifts and conversational powers. He loved to talk and to hear others talk, and it mattered not with whom or in what circle he found himself, his talent of adaptation was never at fault. From the most ignorant and simple he could, by his natural gifts for cross- examining, extract both information and quiet amusement. If he found them too ignorant for anything else, they could tell him about their "sisters, their cousins, and their aunts," and the absorbing interest of the old judge in these at once became a comical study. And even thus he was storing away informa- tion about the people that he at some time, either in the practice of the law or in his political campaigns, could use to a great ad- vantage. The younger lawyers of the district will tell you that he can go into almost any county in the Wabash district, or in central or southern Illinois, and on opening court day, take his seat in the court room and as each one of the younger generation of men enters, if he does not recognize him, he will ask his young lawyer friend the name of the man, and when told it, he will most generally reply by saying, "Oh, yes; I know; the son of such and such a man, who settled on such a creek," and then proceed to tell his friend all about the man's family and relatives. It is said that in this way he knows more people, and more about them, than any other man in the State. He would gather from his uncouth friends often as much or more quiet amuse- ment than information. For instance, riding along the road one day he overtook a woman driving a team of oxen, hauling rails. He slowed up his horse and opened a conversa-

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tion. Eventually, among other things, he asked her how she liked Illinois. "Oh," re- plied the woman, "it 'pears all well enough for men and dogs, but its powerful tryin' on women and oxen." Thus his store of amus- ing incidents and anecdotes are unsurpassed probably by any man living. But his most valuable associate in life was doubtless U. F. Linder, one of the most wonderful men that Illinois has ever produced. Ficklin and Lin- der were near the same age; had commenced the practice of the law at the same time, and from 1837, the date of Ficklin's locating in Charleston, they were neighbors, associates, and friends; most generally arrayed on oppo- site sides in the court room, their legal battles were the marvel of the age. In their mental and general make-up they were in pretty much everything perfect opposites. Linder's genius was transcendent, brilliant, flashing, unstable, feverish, and diseased. He blazed up into the highest heavens like a flashing rocket, from where his unbalanced nature plunged into the dark mud like a blackened stick. Before a jury or upon the hustings his elo- quence and genius played like the ragged lightnings in sportive twists. When his elo- quent tongue wagged unmolested he swayed and moved an audience as with the combined force of mesmerism and electricity, and seemed to revel and riot in almost super- natural powers, and when the feverish thrill had passed he was left weak, puerile and childish, full of superstitious fears, dreading and dodging unseen dangers, vain as a sim- pleton, and particularly vain of those very things he did not possess, and of which almost any other man with a modicum of sense would have been heartily ashamed. He failed in every great purpose of his life, if he ever formed any great purpose, which is doubtful, because when success came to his hands, for which he had struggled apparently like the fabled gods, he threw it away and trampled

it in the mud and the mire. Judge Ficklin was essential, nay, absolutely necessary, to this wild child of genius as a prop and stay, and balance, to his very existence. The con- servative, strong nature of Ficklin was the only one thing in this world to stay and con- trol the gifted madness of Linder, and the truth of this is attested in the hard and griev- ous life that was his continuous existence after he moved away from Charleston and fixed his habitation in Chicago, where he died a few years ago. Linder was as fickle as he was brilliant, one moment loving his friends and pouring out upon them terms of endear- ment as intense and soft as a hysterical school-girl; the next moment raging at and abusing them like a fury, painting the moon with blood, or lashing them with that wonder- ful tongue that at times was as a whip of scorpions, then as causelessly as had been perhaps his first wrath, he would humble and humiliate himself in abject apologies. The companionship, the legal contests before courts and juries, the warm friendships, the tiffs (always only on Linder's part), the social communings, the political battles and discus- sions upon the stump, their traveling all over the wide circuit on horse-back together, dis- cussing everything from the size of their respective clients' ears to the simple and sublime sermon on the Mount. Could they be put down upon paper, with all their strange, wierd and amusing phrases, would make a page in the world's history that would stand alone in interest. It was, it is true, something like hitching up for a draft team the noble Percheron horse and the wild eagle of. the crags. The marvelous brilliancy of Linder's genius attracted Ficklin, while Lin- der went to Ficklin in all his real and his numerous imaginary troubles as the helpless, heart-broken child does to its strong loving father to pour out its griefs and have

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its wounds made whole. A story finely illus- trative, both of the times and of these two men, is told somewhat as follows: In 1844, they each aspired to be candidates for con- gress-one a Whig, the other a Democrat. Early in the year they started out traveling from county to county, holding nearly every night joint discussions. They joined issue upon the then great question of the annexa- tion of Texas. They took sides, it seems, by lot, and Linder as a Whig, was warmly for get- ting Texas, and Mexico too, for that matter, while Ficklin, as a Democrat, hotly opposed the whole scheme of blood and robbery. As these nightly battles grew and magnified, the people became deeply interested and many traveled from county to county to hear their favorites discuss these great questions. They had about got over half the districts, and their appointments were out for the remaining counties, when the slow word found its way to this wild country at last, that the National Democratic Convention had nominated Polk and Dallas, and upon the strongest kind of a Texas annexation platform. The word came like a thunder-clap to these young statesmen. What were they to do? They were to debate the next day in the adjoining county, and they cut the Gordian knot as they rode to the place, by changing sides, and then at it they went, hip and thigh, over the remainder of the district. This swapping sides was the life and joy of Linder, for it was his nature to stick at nothing very long. He joined pretty much every craze that came along, and al- ways for the nonce out-Heroded Herod. If a church revival happened along when he was in one of his frequent moods of depression, he would join, and his enthusiasm was bound- less and uncontrollable, and, of course, would soon blaze and burn itself out, when back he would go to his revelries and first loves. But always when he safely passed the prayer and shouting gauge, he would hie himself and

hunt up Ficklin and beg and plead with him to come and go along and be saved. He would attack every one he met, in the high- ways and by-ways, and invite them to the marriage feasts, and, if they hesitated at all, he would open upon them his powerful po- lemical batteries, which discussions soon grew so heated that Linder would be more eager to fight it out, rough and tumble, give and take, than he had a few minutes before been anxious to save their imperiled souls. Thus every ism, society and church, that chance forced upon him, he tried in turns, not even slighting the Adventists with their ascension robes and a burning world. Ficklin reports him unusually serious upon this last-named religious experiment. Although it was in the dead of winter when the craze struck the vil- lage of Charleston and captured nearly all the people, as well as Linder, yet the colder the weather got the hotter Linder felt, and it so happened that on the day for the vast confla- gration there were two " sun-dogs " rose up with the red sun. The people rushed into the streets and believed the red suns were the world's fire and that in the language of Fick- lin, the fire had about reached the Embarras River and as soon as it could get across the river it would devour Charleston. At the head of these was Linder, praying and shout- ing like mad, and exhorting the people that the day of judgment and the wrath of God was at hand, but the day passed and the world rolled on as cold and icy the next morn- ing as ever. Linder hunted up Ficklin and told him he had again got religion, that he was certain the world was coming to an end, that he firmly believed it had already passed its allotted time by twenty-four hours; that he was sincere in his religion and much wished his brother Ficklin would go along with him, etc. "But, brother Ficklin," said Linder, "I never intend my religion again to make a damn fool of me."

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S. S. Whitehead, of Marshall, tells of the first political speech he ever listened to. It was made by Judge Ficklin to an audience of the great " unwashed," the barefoot democ- racy in their hunting shirts. An issue of that day was, much as we have it now, the ab- struse problem in political economy, of a high protective tariff. The speaker finally came to this question, when he explained it with the simple proposition that "protective tariff is a Sunday-go-to-meeting word, and means high taxes upon you farmers and everybody else." We have no hesitation in saying, that for the crowd, the occasion and all the surrounding circumstances, this was the best speech ever made on that vexed question.

JUSTIN HARLAN .- Judge Harlan was a native of Ohio, born in Warren County, De- cember, 1800, and died while on a visit to a daughter in Kentucky, March 12, 1879. He had received an academic education and studied law in the office of Judge McLean, and afterward with Judge Callett, and came to Darwin in May, 1825. In the year 1832 he was married to Lucinda Hoge, and resided in Darwin until the year 1840, when he took up his abode in Marshall. Ile had nine children, eight of whom are still living; one died in infancy; three of these, namely, How- ard, Cyrus and Edwin, were born in Darwin, and the others in Marshall. Mrs. Harlan, who survives him, was born in Knox County, In- diana, in the year 1812. When Judge Har- lan first came to Illinois he located in Pales- tine, and after a few years residence there re- moved to Darwin. His first office was justice of the peace in the last named village. He was a soldier in the war of 1832, and served out his term as orderly sergeant of his com- pany with credit and distinction. In the year 1835 he was elected circuit judge by the State Legislature, which honorable posi- tion he filled for eighteen consecutive years, the longest continuous period of any man who

has yet held the office. So ably and well did he discharge his high duties of judge that after his first term he was re-elected without opposition. He was a member of the consti- tutional convention of 1848, and here his strong character,his familiarity with the funda- mental laws, and his polished scholarship made him a conspicuous and leading member of that body. He was appointed by President Lincoln Indian agent ot the Cherokee Na- tion, in which position he served until Lin- coln died, when he resigned and returned to his home in Marshall. He was one of the few Indian agents that brought no disgrace to the government, and when retiring from his post of usefulness was a loss to both the govern- ment and the Indians. After his return home, although he was not in accord politically with the majority of his county, he was elected county judge, which position he filled until within a short time of his death.

This is the record dated of a long, a useful and a great life. No shadow ever fell upon his name or fame. Strength of mind and purity of purpose were his leading traits. In his profession of the law these made him a great chancery lawyer, no doubt the ablest that ever presided in a chancery court in the Wabash district, or practiced before the courts in Clark County. In that branch of the law practice that sometimes requires scheming and cunning diplomacy, he was neither great nor very successful. A proof that his nature was faithful and just, and that his pre-emi- nent integrity of mind was better adapted to the equity courts. When he had laid aside his cares of office and active life he gave up his time mingling among his troops of friends, where he moved like a great eentral figure marked by the love, respect and admiration of all. But his delight and keenest joys of old age was in the association of little, inno- cent children. He loved them all most de- votedly, and to make them happy to listen to

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the rippling laughter that bubbled up from their guileless hearts, watch their gambols and share in their boisterous and hearty fun and fro'ie, was his almost constant pastime. His house, in bad weather, and the shady sward, in good weather, was the resort for troops of these prattling innocents where they came to the joyous old man like genial sunbeams- a sweet picture in the gloaming of a great, pure and noble life-a fitting crown. Let it be Judge Harlan's imperishable monument beneath which may he sweetly sleep forever.

In 1835, at the October term of the Circuit Court, Judge Alexander F. Grant presided during the term as the judge pro tem.

Among the early lawyers in Darwin was Eldridge S. Jenny, and a little later came a man of conside able ability in his profession, Mr. Shelledey. And then began to come Hon. Aaron Shaw of Lawrenceville, the present member of Congress, from this dis- trict. Josiah McRoberts, Kirby Benedict, of Paris, A. C. French, of Palestine, Charles Em- merson, of Macon County, Wickliffe Kitch- ell, and afterward his two sons, Alfred and Edward, from Palestine. Wickliffe Kitchell is remembered by the bar as a close student of the law, a faithful and conscientious attor- hey, but inclined to be a little prolix and sometimes prosy. In a race for Congress Kitchell, Linder and Ficklin were the three " starters." Linder, of course, was in his glory, which could only have been increased by an increase in the number of his competi- tors. He would open his campaign speeches by saying that he was a candidate for Con- gress; that he was running against Fick- lin, and that his wife was running against Kitchell, and with this flippant allusion he would dismiss the further consideration of Kitchell and then turn his batteries upon the Democrats. To these merciless flagellations Ficklin would bravely respond, and then trot out Polk as " the little bob-tailed roached-

maned Tennessee pony that was going to beat the great spavined Kaintuck hoss, and that the Whigs were a case of blacklegs and preachers all put in the same bed, etc., ete. These are given as mere specimens of the tart and relish that were so well calculated to hold the interested attention of the crowds that listened to the discussions.

JUDGE URI MANLY .- He was one of the : presiding judges of the Circuit Court of Clark County. He had read law with Judge Harlan's father in Kentucky. Judge Manly was a well-read lawyer, with a quick, bright mind. Ilis mental cultivation had been ex- tensive, and his reading of a wider range than the average lawyer and politician of his day. He was much more remarkable for ready shrewdness than for great profundity of thought. He was succeeded in office by Judge Stephen Archer, who belonged to one of the oldest and best families that came in the early times to Clark County. He dis- charged the duties of cireuit judge with great fairness and more than average ability.

Joshua P. Cooper came to Clark County as early as 1825. He located in Martinsville, where he married Marian, the daughter of Abner Stark. He died in 1866 in Edgar County, to which place he had removed some years before, and where he had been elected County Judge. He was one of the most elo- quent men of his day. In early life he had been badly crippled by the " white-swelling." He was a member of the Legislature in 1848, and in the senatorial contest between Breeze and Shields he warmly espoused the cause of Judge Breeze. He stood for a re-nomination to the Legislature and was defeated by James C. Robinson, one of the most remarkable of all the eminemt men given to the State by the Wabash Country. A splendid specimen of frontier developement whose eventful life is full of romance and instruction. Born of humble parents in a new wild country, where

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all were generally poor and rich alike-the intensity of the pinch and struggle for life usually dependent upon the numbers of young children that had to be provided for, and sur- rounded by very little of the blessings of society and civilization, the very poorest school facilities, where the sum and substance of life was a constant battle with the ele- ments, hunger, the wild varments, and the beasts of prey, were the general surroundings of the childhood of "Jim Robinson," as his old friends still persist in calling him. The children of poor farmers in that day were put to work at a very tender age. In all these respects his earliest surroundings came at him rough end foremost. It may have been these very circumstances that whetted the child's natural shrewdness and cunning. At all events, it is told of him that at the earliest age he gave evidences that he had not been born with the gift of industry in tending swine very largely developed, and that his talent for shirking work off upon his older brothers was very marked indeed. In fact so masterly was his laziness, so utterly reckless was he of the health and comforts of both the domestic animals and the crops upon the farm, his tend- er-heartedness toward weeds as he saw them rise up in their might to choke the young corn in its efforts to make the family bread, that his family and friends despaired of his ever being of any account, and were willing to give him over to utter reprobacy. But as for playing marbles, " keeps," " shinny," mumble-peg, swimming, foot-racing, stealing out the old jaded plow horses of moonlight nights, or of Sundays when the older ones were at church, and running races for pin fish- hooks, whip crackers, or white alleys, he went forth conquering and to conquer. When more than half grown he was a lazy, lubberly, unkempt, unprepossessing bare-foot boy, reckless, rolicking and indifferent as to where the next feed was to come from as a cub-

bear; a bundle of growing vitality, and ex- uberant animal spirits with no restraints or guides in the world except his own volitions and impulses. If his most partial friends ever supposed he possessed hidden possibili- ties of future usefulness and value, it must have struck them as a case of the jewel in the toad's head. Yet before he was grown, he had picked up in some unaccountable way enough education to be able to read and write, and had good books then fallen in his way he no doubt would have shown his friends for what purpose he was made, but they were not to be had and he therefore bloomed into a most expert jockey in the county. He passionately loved horses and especially horse-racing. The evidence that he admired women is well attested in the living fact that he is only eighteen years older than his oldest son. Thus at the early age of eighteen he was the head of a family, a renter, a wretched farmer, and with no other earthly possessions, or visi- ble means of support, but he was as happy, contented and lazy as the day was long. The family of the young Benedict increased with a constant regularity, and he soon grew to be a leader in the county in all games and sports, and a prominent figure on exciting election days, and all kinds of hurrah gather- ings. At the first call for soldiers in the Mexican war he volunteered as a soldier and served his country until the end of the war and the disbandment of the army. This circumstance was no doubt the turning point in his career of life. Soldiering, and travel- ing, as well as mixing somewhat with men of some culture, had educated him up to the knowledge of his real vocation in life. Upon his return home he borrowed a law book (some say it was a copy of the Illinois statu- tes) and commenced the study of the law. That summer he raised a meager crop of corn and read law in the shade, and at the fall term of the court obtained his license as an attorney.

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Hle quit the farm at once and opened a law office in Marshall, and his fortune was made. His indolence, and all former roystering, in- difference to the eares of life were gone, and by the sheer force of intellect and extraordi- mary talents, he took his position at the head of the bar as a jury lawyer in his county-a position that he now holds in the bar of the great State of Illinois. In a short time he was elected to congress, and was re-elected a number of times-in faet until he moved out of the distriet and located in Springfield, with a view of devoting his time exclusively to the practice of the law. When he took up his abode in Springfield that congressional dis- trict was and had been for a long time strong- ly republiean in politics. A nomination, by the democracy, was forced upon his unwilling acceptance, and he canvassed the district, and wrested vietory from the ja ws of defeat, and from that day to the present the distriet has sent only Democrats to Washington. He was the nominee of the Democracy for Governor during the war times, when there was prac- tieally no living Democratic party in the State, and, of course, he was defeated, but he made an able and memorable eanvass.

These, in the fewest words, are the promi- nent facts of his political life. In the mean- time while this rather large and active polit- ical life was going on, his knowledge and fame in the profession of the law was growing and rapidly extending. Not only is this true, but his education and growth in knowledge kept pace with his wonderful advances in the respects above mentioned, until to-day, at the noon merely of his intellectual manhood, this misjudged, never understood farmer boy, with scarcely a single adventitious circumstanee to mold and develop his mind in his youth and young manhood, has trod alone, sword in hand, and eleaved out his road to fame and fortune, and become not only a ripe literary scholar, the ablest of jury lawyers, the great-

est popular orator of his day, but a statesman as well as a lawyer of national reputation. His powers as a conversationalist are as won- derful as his triuniphs in other intellectual paths, and have unquestionably contributed not a little to his successful life.

This is the instructive story-only by far to briefly told, and too much suppressed-of what a boy can do, not only without the schools, but without wealth, and with a family on his hands at the rather premature age of eighteen years! If rightly read by the youths of our country, it would prove the most val- uable lesson of their lives.

HON. CHARLES H. CONSTABLE .- This gen- tleman was born in Chestertown, Maryland, July 6, 1817, and died in the city of Effingham October 9, 1865. He had been educated in early life with great care and was a thorough and elegant scholar. He attended school at Belle Air Academy, a fine scientific and classi- cal school, and prepared himself to enter col- lege and then became a student of the Uni- versity of Virginia, where he graduated with the first honor in 1838. Here he pursued, among other branches, the study of the law, when this department of the school was in the care of men of national reputation, and to their invaluable instruction he added his own patient and unremitting studies, and laid the foundation for that judicial knowledge which he in subsequent life displayed as an advo- eate and judge. Immediately after his grad- uation he came to Illinois, and located in Mt. Carmel, and here, on the 23d day of April, 1840, was married to Martha, daughter of Reverend Thomas Hines, of that place. Here he soon won the honorable position of ranking among the ablest among the members of a bar, which, at that day, was justly estimated as the ablest of the West. And such were the strength and solidity of his abilities that this reputation soon extended all over the State. In 1846 he was elected a member of the State

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History of Crawford and Clark counties, Illinois, Part 36

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co. Number of Pages: 826

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892?
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 826