A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume II, Part 16

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1006

USA > Indiana > A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume II > Part 16

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should be overwhelmed with work. He chose his assistants carefully, and was so sure of his choice being right that he gave them his full confidence and an un- ending profusion of praise from the start. If he had been less sure of himself he would have been less sure of them, and kept some of his abounding confidence to sour a little with suspicion or censure at times. But that was not Mr. Smith's nature. Thoroughly in ear- nest himself, he accepted the good faith of every body else without question, and no little of his success was due to the energy which this complete sympathy be- tween him and his subordinates infused into them. In the year or so following the grant of the charter of the Indianapolis and Bellefontaine Railroad, enough stock had been subscribed to warrant the commencement of work on the road, and the contracts were let in the fall

of 1849; and in the spring of 1850 track laying was begun, and completed to Pendleton, twenty-eight miles, in December of that year. This was an amazing ex- hibition of Mr. Smith's energy and force of will. His charter was not more than two years old, but in those two years he had got the stock subscribed, made the organization, graded the road-bed, and bought and laid the iron of twenty-eight miles of road. In just one year more the whole line was done, and the cars run- ning to Union City, where the connection with the Ohio portion of the road was made. Less than a year and a half was required, under the impulse of his energy and tireless supervision, to do the whole work, from the first spadeful of the grade to the last spike of the track, eighty-four miles long, at a cost of twenty- one thousand five hundred and fifty dollars a mile. And less than three years were needed to create the company, as well as its work. They were both as nearly exclusively his as any public work can possibly be the achievement of any one man. It was his in conception, plan, process, and completion. How per- fectly his grand anticipations have been realized, every one who will read the weekly reports of the freight cars handled at Indianapolis can see. Shortly after. the completion of the Bellefontaine road, Mr. Smith began stirring the subject of a continuation of it southward, by an air-line road, to the Ohio River at Evansville. That was the full fruition of his lake and Ohio and seaboard scheme of connections. He pushed it with character- istic energy, aided effectively by his son-in-law, General John Love, an accomplished engineer and man of busi- ness, and was joined by Mr. Willard Carpenter, of Evansville, at that time considered one of the wealthiest men in the state, and there was every prospect of a success equal to that of the northern division. But a panic broke down many of the state free banks, dis- ordered the currency, and embarrassed business, and brought the "air-line" project to a halt, which the breaking out of the war continued, and enabled another

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road to improve to its own advantage. Still even now the advantages of a direct road to Evansville are so evident as to create no little faith in the success of Mr. Smith's scheme if it were revived. It may yet be com- pleted, and, if it is, the whole line will be a monument to the memory of the man whose amazing sagacity, energy, and force of character, laid the foundation of it all, and completed so much of it. As great and con- spicuous as Mr. Smith's services were as a legislator, state and national, and as high as he stood in his pro- fession, it is as a leader of public improvements that he will be best known to posterity. Only those who re- member how deeply he impressed the great improve- ment conventions at Memphis and St. Louis, and the meetings he addressed at Philadelphia on the impor- tance to the East of Western railroads, can understand fully how much of the success of our Western railroad system is due to him. While he worked for his own line with gigantic energy, he lent his powers freely to develop and strengthen the interests of the whole West. Utterly incapable of being idle while he had strength enough to hold a pen, the interruption of his railroad work, and his partial withdrawal from legal business, left Mr. Smith to devise some new occupation to fill his time and keep his tireless intellect employed. Thus it came that in the last two years of his life he struck out an entirely new pursuit-authorship-and at- tained a very flattering degree of success in it. During all his professional career he had been noted for the humor and point of his stories, and his powers as an anecdotist ; and his students and the young members of the bar could find no more enjoyable an entertainment than to get Mr. Smith in a vacant hour to tell some of his reminiscences of the early bar and courts of the state, and of the incidents connected with them. In many of these were embodied sketches of the modes of life, fashions, tastes, dialect, and material condition of the backwoods, and they were even still more valuable as material for some future Hoosier Macaulay or Thack- eray than amusing as rare specimens of his genius as a " raconteur." He was often solicited to write out some of these stories and publish them, and early in July, 1857, having, to some extent, withdrawn from the practice of the law, and his railroad en- terprise being obstructed for the time, he began the publication of a series of what he afterwards called " Early Indiana Trials and Sketches." They were pub- lished in the daily Journal, then and for some years be- fore and after edited by B. R. Sulgrove, Esq., who had been a law student with Mr. Smith and his partner, Mr. Yandes. The first (July 30, 1857) was a sketch of the con- dition of the state when he first began practicing law, of - the free and easy manners of the bench and bar, and of the architectural style of the primitive court-houses. Fol- lowing were descriptions of trials and court incidents,

some comical, some pathetic, but all interesting, and all redolent of the backwoods and early days. These were continued, sometimes every day for a few days together, sometimes every other day, till the last of September. Interspersed with these were occasional sketches of the prominent men and political events as- sociated with his own public and professional life. He had determined in the course of the first month of those publications to reproduce them in book form, and on the 6th of August, 1857, he took out his copyright. Early in 1858 they were published by Moore, Wilstach & Keyes, of Cincinnati, in a handsome octavo volume of six hundred and forty pages. A steel-engraved por- trait fronts the title-page, with a fac-simile of his auto- graph, both as nearly perfect as the engraver's art can make them. The papers published in the Journal would have made a small volume, and, partly to get in a wealth of reminiscences and sketches of character with which his memory was filled, he added brief biographies of very many prominent men of the state and nation with whom he had been associated in one way or an- other, and reproduced some of their most characteristic productions. Thus he resurrected Thomas Corwin's inimitable picture of a "militia general of the peace establishment," at a militia parade, in which the great Ohio humorist so demolished the Michigan Gen- eral Crary that John Quincy Adams alluded to the latter as "the late General Crary." He also preserved that delightful description of a Hoosier home in the woods, once so well known, now nearly forgotten, called the " Hoosier's Nest," by John Finley, of Richmond, Indiana; also his " Bachelor's Hall," more than once attributed to Tom Moore; and poems by John B. Dillon, Mrs. Bolton, and Mrs. Julia Dumont. Some of his sketches of political or legal contemporaries are very brief, and appear to have been written more to make up the requisite bulk of the volume than to unload his mind of matter that interested him, but in the main they present the strong points of the character depicted clearly, and in many cases give us the best delineation we are ever likely to get of men who have passed away, but who once held the greatest interests of the country in their hands. But the chief value of the book is in its traits of primitive Hoosier life, revealed constantly in the sketches of trials and other incidents. It will not be long before the historian of the West will find these little glimpses of the early days of Indiana indispensa- ble to the truth of his work. And it is not at all in- probable that Mr. Smith will be better known fifty years hence by his book than by all his public life, better even than by his railroad achievement, for with that, durable as it may be, his name may not be asso- ciated, but from this account of the early days of the West his name can never be dissevered. The style, both of these sketches and of his speeches, was clear,

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strong, and compact. It was sometimes loose and care- less, but never confused or obscure. He knew exactly what he wanted to say before he tried to say it, and the definiteness of his own conception made his expression of it clear to every body else. When greatly excited in his forensic speeches his style frequently became terse and condensed in an unusual degree. He studied no beauties of rhetoric, no mere decorations of trope and metaphor, but gave his powers wholly to bring out as forcibly as possible the thought in his mind. And his best efforts often reminded a cultivated hearer of the old "Cyclopean Walls," the blocks carelessly dressed or left undressed, but so huge in size and so weighty that they were impregnable to any assault of logic or eloquence. Yet he could be graceful or elegant when the occasion allowed it, as in his reply to Matthew Hale Smith in the divorce case before alluded to. Usually, however, there was more strength than grace in his speeches and writings. In 1844 Mr. Smith attached himself to the Second Presbyterian Church of Indian- apolis, then under the charge of the celebrated Henry Ward Beecher, even then very widely known for his eloquence and versatile genius. He continued in this communion during his life. Though never an obtru- sively religious man, and thoroughly despising Phar- isaism, he was a sincere Christian, and few men have lived more closely to the injunctions of religion than he. He never in his life gambled, drank, or indulged in any of the vices that are sometimes lightly dismissed as " sowing wild oats." He never had any seed of that crop of future mischief to sow. He was all his life a hard worker, and there is no such safeguard of moral purity as religious conviction, reinforced by systematic industry. He never used tobacco, or frequented places of amusement, or so little as to leave no impress upon his character. Rigidly moral himself, he was yet no bigot. Forms of faith troubled him very little. He held, with the poet, that "his faith could not be wrong whose life was right." He was always carefully well dressed, but without the slightest suggestion of personal interest in his apparel. He had a wholesome regard for appearances, though he would sacrifice neither time nor care to them alone. He rather prided himself, and with justice, on the neatness of his handwriting. His signature was quite a picture, and perfectly unique ; and his chirog- raphy always, when not hurried, remarkably clear and legible and uniform. He frequently lectured his stu- dents on the value of a good hand, and once adminis- tered a rebuke as witty as it was apt to a student whose writing was unusually bad. Said he: " You have got the notion that, because great men sometimes write bad hands, it is the mark of a great man to write badly, but it is a mistake." "Well," retorted the student, "I suppose it does not make any difference in the correct-

ness of the pleading whether the handwriting is bad or not." "No," said Mr. Smith, "and it would not make any difference in the force of your argument to a jury if you spoke in your shirt-tail, but it would not look as well." Though not as methodical as many in his busi- ness habits and duties, he rarely neglected or forgot any thing, and was never taken by surprise or unprepared by the more astute antagonist. He mastered the case he was engaged with fully at the outset, or as nearly as possible, and he never overlooked any thing necessary to its effective treatment. His partner, Mr. Yandes, says he spent less time in research than might have been ex- pected, but his memory was tenacious and contained a vast repository of precedents, that made it less neces- sary to him than most lawyers to hunt through reports for the material for arguments. A very sanguine dis- position, and a constant cheerfulness and buoyancy of temperament, aided largely to carry him through his labors and make a success where less hopefulness might have yielded too far to take any serious trouble at all. His uniform high spirits were as striking a feat- ure of his character as his sound habits, purity of life, and force of will. He died on the evening of Satur- day, March 19, 1859, after a long and painful illness. On the 21st a meeting of the bar of Indianapolis was held in the court-house to give expression to the feel- ings of the members on the sad occasion, and, after some appropriate and touching remarks by Mr. Yandes, his partner, a committee, consisting of Abram A. Ham- mond, then Lieutenant-governor of the state, Hugh O'Neal, and Jonathan W. Gordon, leading lawyers, re- ported a series of resolutions of "admiration and fond remembrance of the professional courtesy, talents, and exalted merits of our deceased brother, and of emulation of his virtues as the best tribute to his memory ;" also, condoling with his friends, and declaring a period of thirty days to wear the usual badge of mourning. Eulo- gistic speeches were made by John L. Ketcham, J. W. Gordon, ex-Governor Wallace, and Judge McDonald. On the 29th of March the resolutions of the bar were, on motion of ex-Governor Wallace, spread upon the records of the Circuit Court, and Mr. Yandes followed with a short biographical sketch and eulogy. Similar proceedings were afterwards held in the State Supreme Court, and in the Circuit and District Courts of the United States.

MITH, REV. BENJAMIN WILSON, A. M., of Indianapolis, was born in Harrison County, West Virginia, January 30, 1830. Abel Timothy Smith, his father, came from a long line of Smiths, dating back to the earliest settlements in this country, and the records remain of many English generations still be- yond. His mother, Deborah Spencer Wilson, was the

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daughter of Colonel Benjamin Wilson, of Revolutionary life and fame, who was the first clerk of Harrison County, Virginia. His parents were much interested in the education of their children, inspiring them with noble aspirations, teaching them honesty and true great- ness by the Christian character they maintained, and always laying before them a worthy motive. His course of reading was as extensive as his circumstances would allow-one little public library, in which his father was a stockholder, and the limited supply of books of his friends, were all to which he had access. Often would he walk many miles to borrow a single book, and that, too, perhaps, after a hard day's work. All forgetful of weariness, he would read late into the night, till the imperious mandate of father or mother sent him to bed. Many thousands of pages were read by fire-light, and many hours spent lying on his back, holding up the book to catch the full glare of the feeble light. " My desire for knowledge," says he, "was a quenchless thirst." At the age of sixteen liis education was only that afforded by the common schools. His parents now moved to the wilds of Indiana, where, away from teach- ers and libraries, away from the refinement of liberal education, in the labors of the field and forest, abundant opportunities were given for reflection on the subjects considered in school, and remembered from his previous course of history. The day that Indiana cast her vote for Zachary Taylor for President, Mr. Smith engaged in teaching school. It was a subscription, or "rate bill," school. He was to receive all the public money, which, at the end of thirteen weeks, was to be reck- oned as so much paid by the patrons. It was an old log-house in Princeton Township, White County. He received ten dollars from the public fund, while, by dint of collecting closely, he succeeded in getting five more. His next place was in the old frame court-house in Rensselaer, Jasper County. The edifice served the triple purpose of school-house, church, and temple of justice. He subsequently taught in Medina Township, Warren County, but was previously examined by Colonel J. R. M. Bryant, of that county, who is really the author of the Indiana school law of 1852. After a term in Fountain County, in the autumn of that year he en- tered college. By hard study he alone prepared him- self in natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, alge- bra, geometry, and Latin. A six years' course met him at the threshold, which he completed with an attend- ance of but three and one-half years; and so hard pressed was he for means that he labored for wages, kept bachelor's hall in college, taught a year and a half during his course, and even then was often compelled to borrow money with which to get his letters from the post-office. Though his home was distant eighty-five miles, he made two round trips on foot. He speaks 'of his college life as an exquisite dream, and his teach-

ers are remembered with great respect. The classics opened afresh the fountain of history, poetry, and art; the sciences, the field of experimental philosophy; the literary societies, the arena of forensic effort. On the nineteenth day of July, 1855, he was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Three years later his Alma Mater conferred upon him his Master's degree. The conflict which led to the war was just opening. Mr. Smith had voted for General Scott in 1852; he was a Whig of the straitest sort, but, upon the organization of the "People's Party," in 1854, on the basis of prohibition, and the freedom of the terri- tories, he stood with them, early taking sides with a few gallant men who became the founders of the Re- publican party. He has ever since held to the doc- trines of that party. On graduating, he found many places open to him. He accepted the chair of ancient languages in the Iowa Conference Seminary, now Cor- nell College, and, at the organization of the institution, was chosen professor of natural sciences. After two years, he returned to Indiana, assuming charge of the Manchester Collegiate Institute, subsequently, for two years, superintending the public schools at Aurora. While there he felt it his duty to serve the Church more closely; he entered the conference and took Monticello and Valparaiso stations in order, at the latter of which his health failed ; and, after a few months' rest, he was elected to the chair of ancient languages in Valparaiso Male and Female College, in two years succeeding to the presidency. During this period he was for four years trustee of the public schools of Valparaiso, and two years superintendent (examiner) of the schools of that county. Three years of the war were now gone. Never, during his connection with this institution, did he allow a soldier's child or widow to leave school be- cause of straitened circumstances; he appropriated not less than one thousand dollars to assist in their edu- cation. Having resigned the presidency of this college, Bishop Janes at that year's conference appointed him to the Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, at Terre Haute. This was an important charge, and so success- ful was Mr. Smith that in his two years' pastorate the membership increased to over two hundred, and this Church, though young, stood at the front in the con- ference. But again disease laid its heavy hand upon him, and he was compelled to superannuate. With- drawing from the ranks of his professions, he began traveling, studying the school systems of several states in all their minor details of structure and peculiarity. In 1872 he was nominated for the office of superintend- ent of public instruction on the first ballot, over several distinguished competitors, though he had been a candi- date but a few weeks. The contest was a close one. Mr. Smith's opponent, the incumbent, was a very pop- ular man, and by a combination of circumstances he

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was elected by a few hundred votes. It can not be doubted that had Mr. Smith been elected he would have done honor to himself and to the state, for it was conceded that his liberal scholarship, thorough acquaint- ance with the public schools and the law, his knowl- edge of the history of the system and of the detail work of the office, would have placed him in the fore- most ranks of those most worthy to fill the place. His health, which was almost broken by the labor of the campaign of 1872, being now greatly impaired, forced him to decline many offers of honorable posi- tions, notably the superintendency of the Crawfordsville city schools, and professorships in several prominent educational institutions. The care of Churches and schools, with prostrated health, prevented his taking any part in the late war, but no more active and earnest Union man was there to be found than Mr. Smith. Though attending to his pastorate at the breaking out of the war, he took a zealous part in raising troops; and, on behalf of the ladies of Monticello, presented a flag to the first company leaving there for the camp. The address made upon that occasion will long be remem- bered. One sentence had a thrilling effect:

" Brave defenders of a nation's life, in which are shrined the safety of hearth and home, take this banner, wrought by loving hands. In the storm and smoke of battle, these stars and stripes waving over you shall be a harbinger of victory; and to him who falls, its glorious folds shall be a royal shroud and winding sheet."

When offered the chaplaincy of the 9th Indiana Regiment, his physician advised that he should not go, as he would scarcely live three weeks in the service, and hence it was reluctantly declined. Mr. Smith is a Knight Templar in the Masonic Fraternity, and a mem- ber of the Encampment in the Independent Order of Odd-fellows. He is a member of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, Arminian in creed, and a firm believer in the Bible as a divine revelation. He accepts religion as a supernatural growth in the heart. All these were taught him in his youth, while the most careful study and conscientious thought have only confirmed his early teaching. November 27, 1855, he married Miss Ruth Ann Rankin, of Greencastle, Indiana. She is of clas- sical education, and of fine native and acquired musical ability. Of this union is a large family of children of intelligence and refinement. Their home is one of cul- ture and happiness. Mr. Smith is, perhaps, above the average in size; has fair complexion, blue eyes, brown hair; his head is massive, and, as a result of reading by fire-light in his youth, is stooped. He is fluent of speech, and has a memory of most remarkable tenacity, quick perception, and rapid analytical powers. Skilled in polemics, he grasps the salient points of a question at once, and, either in conversation or debate, his copious memory pours its unceasing stream of facts and figures

out before him. In college he was known among the boys as the Historical Cyclopedia. He does not stop to enter into technicalities, but not infrequently aston- ishes by his citation of the volume and page of works with which he could hardly be supposed to be familiar. With politicians he is at home, for all the contests in the country are familiar to him. He can quote the majorities in the various counties and districts for half a score of campaigns back. With ministers, he dis- cusses all the subtleties of the polemics of the Church- men, and among educators is an authority on all ques- tions to be met in their varied calling. His long experience as teacher led him into all the departments of a college curriculum. The power of adaptability to every circumstance is a happy faculty ; in him it is re- markable. Having traveled extensively, and by all mod- ern methods, taking as well the fare of the cabin as that of the palace hotel, every-where he was alike at home. His sermon to the negro in the day of his bondage was full of encouragement and consolation, of sympathy and hope. During the darkest hours of the Rebellion he never lost hope, but said, "The cause is just, and, since God rules, justice will be done, though the heavens fall." As an example of his executive ability, his powers of application and endurance: In 1877, in order that he might take a little rest, he moved to Brookston, Indiana. It was his former home, and he took charge of the academy there as superintendent and principal. Many of his old friends came to him, re- questing that he take the pastorate of their Church, which he did, but, unexpectedly to him, two other ap- pointments were coupled with it. So that for an entire year he devoted six hours each day to his school, preached three times every Sabbath, had charge of a Sabbath-school, teaching a class in it all the time, and, in addition, completed and published a full series of official books for township officers and teachers, which are pronounced by the highest authority to be the best works of the kind ever offered to the public. They are known as the " Indiana Series of Official Books and Blanks." He is now engaged in the preparation of still another important work, and, should his life be prolonged yet a few years, his dream will be consum- mated in a history of "Western Pioneers."

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A biographical history of eminent and self-made men of the state of Indiana : with many portrait-illustrations on steel, engraved expressly for this work, Volume II, Part 16

Author: Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1006

Author:
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Cincinnati, Ohio : Western Biographical Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1006