Encyclopedia of Mississippi History Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Vol. II, Part 2

Author: Dunbar Rowland
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Madison, Wis. : S.A. Brant
Number of Pages: 1020

USA > Mississippi > Encyclopedia of Mississippi History Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Vol. II > Part 2

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ing the growth of the Bell party. Upon the election of Lincoln Mr. Lamar wrote to Judge Longstreet: "If South Carolina will only have the courage to go out, all will be well. We will have a South- ern republic, or an amended constitution that will place our institutions beyond all attack in the future." He was a partici- pant in the council that advised the governor preparatory to the secession convention, and opposed precipitancy, but on the next day, at Brandon, as reported in the newspapers, urged the South- ern people to rouse from their lethargy and "arm for resisting Black Republican domination," and submitted a plan for concerted secession. In December he sent to P. F. Liddell, of Carrollton, a plan of secession, including a draft of an ordinance to be adopted by the Mississippi convention, repealing the State ordinance by which the State "consented to become a member of the Federal union," and inviting fourteen other States (slaveholding) to unite with her in a federal union, "under the name and style of the United States of America." He proposed to continue the national constitution and laws without the dotting of an i or the crossing of a t. Returning from congress, he was a member of the consti- tutional convention, in January, 1861, and framed the ordinance that was adopted, which was in some important respects a depart- ure from his original plan. (See Mayes' Lamar. Appendix 5,) Subsequently he aided Gen. Mott in raising a regiment, the first one raised in Mississippi for the full period of the war. It was numbered the 19th, and Mott was elected colonel, Lamar lieuten- ant-colonel. June 1st he made an enthusiastic address, following President Davis and Governor Wise, at Richmond. While there he had the first attack of vertigo, which ever afterward oppressed his life. He was at home through the summer, his left leg para- lyzed. But he was in the battle of Williamsburg, in May, 1862, and succeeded to the command of the regiment when his friend, Col. Mott, fell. His disease returned a few days later, he was com- pelled to return home, and in October, to resign, giving place to Col. N. H. Harris. In November, he was appointed special com- missioner to Russia, whither he started by way of Texas. His letters from London, in 1863, show his appreciation of the impor- tance to the North of the friendship of the great English labor leader, John Bright, and the industrial classes in Germany. The Confederate senate refused to confirm his appointment, for diplo- matic reasons, based on the hostility of Napoleon III, to Russia. After visiting Paris, he returned by way of Halifax, and Bermuda, and by blockade runner to Wilmington, narrowly escaping capture. In March, 1864, he made eloquent speeches in Georgia defending the suspension of the habeas corpus, meeting the opposition of Governor Brown and A. H. Stephens. His brother, Col. Thomp- son B. Lamar, of the 5th Florida regiment, was killed in Virginia in this year. In December he returned to Richmond, during the remaining few months of the war was judge advocate for A. P. Hill's corps, with the rank of colonel of cavalry, and was with the army at Appomattox. On his journey home he began the friend-

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ship with Gen. Walthall that exerted a great influence upon his life. In September, 1865, he formed a partnership with Gen. Walthall for the practice of law at Coffeeville, Miss. For some years after this, Col. Lamar was not at all hopeful. He considered himself "discredited as a public leader." He made no effort, as others did, to be relieved of the civil disabilities de- clared to exist because of his support of the Confederate govern- ment. In his oration at the University in 1866, "he did not think that there was even the shadow of the doctrine of State Rights left, and he deemed it cruel to delude the people with false views as to our present status, and with false hopes as to the future. He could see no liberty when a political line is drawn with right on the one side and on the other power. He was of the opinion that all that is left for the South is the moral and intellectual cul- ture of her people." (Mayes' Lamar, 157.) In 1870 he wrote that "for five or six years past I have deemed every duty to which man is subject-duty to himself, duty to his family, duty to his coun- try-to dictate to such men silence; and by this I mean not to censure those whose convictions and acts are different from mine." But he took a keen interest in the fate of Mr. Davis, and quietly exerted his influence. He went to work on his plantation, and in September, 1866, began the duties of professor of ethics and meta- physics at the University, also acting as professor of governmental science and law, which was his exclusive function in 1867-70. "The love and affection which he aroused in the hearts of young men was wonderful," wrote C. E. Hooker. Of his attitude during the crisis of 1868-69, United States Marshal Pierce wrote, "It was mainly due to his efforts and personal influence that a riot was averted at Oxford, at an election held during November, 1869, and I knew him to be conservative, law-abiding and considerate of the views of other men." After the establishment of a negro majority at the polls, and the inauguration, in 1870, of Gov. Alcorn, whose election he had strongly opposed. Lamar resigned his pro- fessorship, and for a time thought of transferring his law school to Macon, Ga .; but he decided to remain at Oxford, and declined a professorship at Emory college. In the years 1865 to 1872 he passed through many days of brooding over the great calamities of his people. The effect was not injurious, though his fiery nature sometimes spurred him to revolt. A friend wrote to him that sorrow had "softened, rounded and made sympa- thetic" his nature. His meditations went to the heart of things. He wrote to a friend in Ohio that he no longer looked to political par- ties as a means of improving public affairs. "I have not merely lost confidence in them; they fatigue my contempt." But in 1872, the year of the Greeley campaign, he decided to accept nomina- tion for congress, though his disabilities had not been removed. Gov. Powers and the Federal and State officers joined in a peti- tion for his relief. He was elected by a majority of about 5,000, his main opponent being Col. R. W. Flournoy, Republican. His election was so fair, that when he appeared at Washington. the

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only Democratic representative elect, from Mississippi, Congress was almost unanimous in removing his disabilities, though he was remembered as a "fire-eater." Realizing his great responsibility he felt about anxiously for a solid foundation upon which to build a policy for the welfare of his people. "The course of political history after the war had caused between the masses of the North and those of the South a mutual distrust deeper, and a hostility apparently greater, than existed when the Confederacy fell. The rivalry of arms which, although baptized in blood, was yet gener- ous, had given place on the one side to suspicions, and on the other to sullen or fierce resentments, which augured but ill for the happiness, the tranquillity, and the glory of the republic. It was given to Mr. Lamar, with a noble self-forgetfulness, to dare the perilous task of throwing himself, like another Curtius, into the widening chasm and bidding it to close. With sympathetic hand he touched the freezing hearts of North and South, unlock- ing their latent stores of kindly and generous feeling, and kindling anew in them the fast-failing fires of love." (Mayes.) The coun- try needed "one true man," as he observed in 1860, and now he was to be the man. He waited for an opportunity-such an effort could not be forced upon an unwilling audience-waited two years for a time worthy of the cause, and it came in an invitation from Massachusetts to second the motion of Mr. Hoar to devote the 27th day of April, 1874, to the memory of Charles Sumner. On this theme Lamar was heard at first with amazement, then with tears, and at the close the vast auditory united in generous ap- plause. He laid before his hearers the ripe fruit of his years of meditation. He understood Sumner better than his old friends did. "Let us hope," he said, "that future generations, when they remember the deeds of heroism and devotion done on both sides, will speak not of Northern prowess and Southern courage, but of the heroism, fortitude, and courage of Americans in a war of ideas; a war in which each section signalized its consecration to the principles, as each understood them, of American liberty and of the constitution received from their fathers." He had in con- gress watched with anxious scrutiny the sentiments of his North- ern colleagues; he knew the feelings of his Southern brothers, "and I see on both sides only the seeming of a constraint, which each apparently hesitates to dismiss. The South-prostrate, ex- hausted, drained of her life blood, as well as of her material resources, yet still honorable and true-accepts the bitter award of the bloody arbitrament without reservation, resolutely deter- mined to abide the result with chivalrous fidelity ; yet, as if struck dumb by the magnitude of her reverses, she suffers on in silence. The North, exultant in her triumph, and elated by success, still cherishes, as we are assured, a heart full of magnanimous emo- tions toward her disarmed and discomfited antagonist; and yet, as if mastered by some mysterious spell, silencing her better im- pulses, her words and acts are the words and acts of suspicion and distrust. Would that the spirit of the illustrious dead whom

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we lament today could speak from the grave to both parties to this deplorable discord in tones which should reach each and every heart throughout this broad territory: 'My countrymen! know one another, and you will love one another!'" Lamar was a mas- ter of metaphor and simile; in this speech he "talked straight on," but, in his own words to his wife, "the rhetorical triumph was as prodigious as it was unexpected." He became famous at once above all other living American orators. "From one end of the Union to the other," said the Memphis Appeal, "the press teems with praises of the brilliant Mississippian." But there were not a few papers, Southern papers, that fiercely criticised him. He wrote to his wife: "My eulogy has given me a reputation that I have never had before. The whole world is my audience. No one here thinks I lowered the Southern flag, but the Southern press is down on me. That is unfortunate, for what they say will be copied by the radical press of the North as evidence that the South still cherishes schemes of secession and slavery. It is time for a public man to try to serve the South, and not to subserve her irritated feelings, natural and just as those feelings are. I shall serve no other interests than hers, and will calmly and silently retire to private life if her people do not approve me. Back of all this, incidentally, the speech was a tribute to the great- est enemy of President Grant, whom Lamar distrusted, and it contributed powerfully to the Democratic victory in the elections of 1874, which hastened the downfall of negro domination in Mis- sissippi. An effort designed solely for these purposes, which might have been called personal and partisan, could not have found more effective expression. The success gave Lamar a footing which he at once improved by a great speech on "Misrule in the Southern States." In this speech he again asserted that secession and slav- ery were dead beyond resuscitation, and that the people of the South "regard the new amendments to the constitution, which secure to the black race freedom, citizenship and suffrage, to be not less sacred and inviolable than the original charter as it came from the hands of the fathers. They owe allegiance to the latter ; they have pledged their parole of honor to keep the former, and it is the parole of honor of a soldier race." He defended these two speeches before his constituents in the campaign of 1874. During the revival of rancor on account of the acute disturbances in Louisiana he was patiently quiet, writing to a friend that it would be ruin for him to attack President Grant or Gen. Sheridan as tyrants and despots. The Northern people wanted to see the South prosper; but they loved Grant and Sheridan. Their quiet resentment of military interference would in time bring all the South asked. He firmly, with great moderation of speech, pro- tested against the proposed Civil Rights bill, and by personal appeal to Speaker Blaine received from that distinguished Repub- lican a hint that was used to secure the delay necessary to kill the bill. (Mayes' Lamar. p. 215.) In the spring of 1875 he and Gor- don, of Georgia, made Democratic speeches in New Hampshire,

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and in Boston also he appealed for just treatment of his people. This was the year of political revolution in Mississippi. At the outset Lamar had moments of hopelessness. He wrote to his wife in February: "I think the future of Mississippi is very dark. Ames has it dead. There can be no escape from his rule. His negro regiments are nothing. He will get them killed up, and then Grant will take possession for him. May God help us." In May Albert G. Brown recanted his criticism of Lamar's congres- sional speeches and called on every citizen to recognize him as the leader of the people. "Be he Democrat, Conservative, Repub- lican, if the ends he aims at be his country's, God's and truth's, then let him cast prejudice aside and follow the lead of a man who has already thrown prejudice to the winds, and in the great- ness of his soul, standing amid the ruins of his State, has said : 'My countrymen ! let us know one another, and we will love one another.'" Answering the popular call, Lamar canvassed the State, denouncing the Ames administration and its corruption and usurpations, but exerting his influence against "the formation of parties founded upon differences of race or color." When he was unanimously renominated for congress, the platform "cordially invoked the union of good citizens of every race and color" to de- feat the State administration. In his speech before the Demo- cratic State convention in 1875, he said that any impairment of the constitutional amendments would be a violation of the duty of citizens. "They confer upon the newly enfranchised race the sacred rights of freemen, and their rights are your duties. Any effort looking to the abridgement of their rights is fraught with disaster and burdens and ruin to this people. The color line was talked of. He declared that it would be ruinous to the victors, if victory could be won that way. It is tyranny unmixed, and is fraught with disaster. Woe be unto you if you find your- selves, confronted, on such a suicidal policy, by the powers of a vindictive government brought upon your defenceless heads." (Mayes' Lamar, 252.) A few weeks later he wrote to a Northern friend: "I have just emerged from a struggle to keep our people from a race conflict. I am not sure that we are yet safe, for the black line is still maintained by the agents of the Federal govern- ment. The negro race, which has no idea of a principle of gov- ernment or, of society, beyond that of obedience to the mandate of a master, sees in these agents the only embodiment of authority (mastership) in the country, and their obedience to them is not a whit less slavish than it was formerly to their masters. We could. by forming the 'color line,' and bringing to bear those agencies which intellect, pluck and will, always give, overcome the stolid, inert and illiterate majority ; but such a victory will bring about conflicts and race passions and collisions with Federal power. Our only deliverance is in a change of Federal policy toward us.". George was the organizer and general of the revolu- tion of 1875: Lamar the statesman who inspired patriotism at home and friendship abroad. Wiley P. Harris wrote of his part

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in the campaign: "I doubt whether there was a man in the State who made more speeches. There was certainly no man who made abler ones. But the incomparable service which he rendered was before the canvass and outside of the State. He has done more than any living man-and Horace Greeley alone is excepted among the dead-to produce that state of popular feeling at the North which made Ulysses Grant afraid to lay his hands upon us during the late election. It was that sentiment that enabled us to win. To Lamar, more than to any other one man, was this feeling due. Without it, we could not have succeeded."

Henry Grady, of Atlanta, described him in 1875: "Mr. Lamar has all the physical characteristics of his knightly and illustrious family ; that peculiarly swarthy complexion, pale but clear; the splendid gray eyes; the high cheek bones; the dark-brown hair ; the firm and fixed mouth; the face thoroughly haughty and re- served when in repose, and yet full of snap and fire and magnetism when in action."

When Congress met in December, 1875, the Democratic ma- jority made him permanent chairman of the caucus in the house. In his speech of acceptance he declared the grandest aspiration of his party was to make the constitution "the protector of every section and of every State in the Union, and of every human being of every race, color and condition in the land." Of his own people he said "We want a government that we can love and revere, and serve from the motive of reverence and love. We hunger for a patriotism which shall knit all the people together in a generous and loving brotherhood, and which shall be as broad as the terri- tory over which the national flag floats." In comment the Mem- phis Appeal said, "He has contributed more than any one man in all this broad Union toward securing the present Democratic ma- jority in the house of representatives, and there is a universal desire among Democrats outside of Mississippi to see the great talents, statesmanship and patriotism of L. Q. C. Lamar transferred to the United States senate." Despite some opposition, partly by those disposed to keep up a protest against constitutional amend- ments, partly on account of his value in the lower house, he was chosen unanimously by the legislative caucus, but in his accept- ance he found it advisable to again explain the Sumner speech. His explanation was that he meant every word he said. "Charles Sumner imagined that he was acting in the cause of humanity and freedom when he advocated universal suffrage." When he re- turned to Washington he found his cause endangered by the "chapter of blunders" known as the "Amnesty bill" debate. A Northern newspaper correspondent had written of Lamar: "He is ever courteous, never insulting and abusive, never announcing himself personally responsible, as used to be too common in Con- gress, and which bad specimens of bad breeding, bad manners and bad feeling seem again coming into vogue." In this debate Blaine, for partisan reasons, purposely provoked some Southern members to passionate outbursts, tending to create distrust and revive mem-

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ories of ante-bellum conditions. Lamar found fault with no one, but immediately took advantage of debate on the Centennial bill, to put himself heartily in support of that great enterprise and assert with masterly logic and unapproachable eloquence "the majestic sovereignty of our nationality." A correspondent said he "poured out an exposition of nationalism and constitutionalism which equalled in effect one of Webster's masterpieces." His opponents bowed at once to his masterly strategy and manly sin- cerity. The bold defiance of old prejudices won the praise of those who had been his opponents at home. The Belknap impeachment followed, in which Blaine again attempted the same tactics, but this time Lamar answered him, with perfect coolness and gentle- ness, and humiliated his antagonist by an exposure of his weak point, ignorance of constitutional law. Later in the year he made a great speech on the general Southern question, explaining rea- sonably the instances of riot, and insisting that the only cure was tolerance by the nation of local self-government. In 1877 he sup- ported the bill for an electoral commission, as the only hope for the success of Mr. Tilden, refusing to consider the talk of an ap- peal to arms, because Northern Democrats would not have gone into it, and such a move by Southern Democrats would have fin- ally and irretrievably ended the hopes of the party. Besides, "I know what civil war means, and you know it," he said to his con- stituents. He opposed filibustering and quietly acepted the result. The wisdom of his course is now unquestioned, but he was fiercely criticised at home. Th result crowned the work of Lamar's two terms in Congress. When there was delay in withdrawing the troops from Louisiana and South Carolina after the inauguration of Mr. Hayes, Mr. Lamar wrote him a strong letter of appeal, March 22. Next day the president began to move visibly in the matter, and within two weeks the troops were withdrawn from support of the Chamberlain and Packard governments.

March 5, 1877, Mr. Lamar presented his credentials to the sen- ate. There had been an investigation designed to impeach the fairness of the election of the legislature in 1875, and he was not certain that the majority would permit him to take a seat. Kel- logg was at hand with credentials as senator from the Packard government in Louisiana. Morton, the radical leader in the sen- ate, proposed to make Lamar wait until Kellogg was seated on his prima facie title, investigation to follow. Again Mr. Blaine came to the aid of Lamar, who was sworn in without delay. In the following August Senator Lamar appeared before the State con- vention of his party and was received with tremendous applause. He had reached the culmination of his work of "reconstruction," and advised his friends to turn their attention to questions of na- tional policy. The first of these questions that demanded an utter- ance from him in the session of 1877-78 was the proposition that the United States bonds were rightfully payable in silver dollars. He opposed this, denying the validity of the "free silver" argu- ments, and asserting that the proposed step tended to contract the

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currency and impair the financial standing of the nation. As the "free silver" policy was favored by the Democratic party gener- ally, Mr. Lamar's speech and votes produced what Senator Wal- thall called "the temporary jar, the only one that ever occurred, between the people of Mississippi, or some of them, and Mr. Lamar." The lower house of the Mississippi legislature passed a resolution declaring that the "Hon. Blanche K. Bruce, senator of the United States from this State" had, in voting in favor of the silver proposition, "reflected the sentiment and will of his constituents." Both houses instructed the senators to vote for the remonetization of silver. Senator Lamar had the resolution read in the senate, and declared that he had always tried to teach the young men of Mississippi that "truth was better than false- hood, honesty better than policy, courage better than cowardice." He must now manifest his loyalty to his honest convictions. "I will vote against this bill." He knew, he said, "that the time is not far distant when they will recognize my action today as wise and just." Walthall's comment on reading this speech, was, "He has done it, but grander even than I thought; and now his claim to greatness is permanent and fixed." The New York Nation said that the speech, "for manliness, dignity and pathos, has never been surpassed in Congress." But the attitude of the majority in his own State more deeply concerned Lamar. He wrote his wife: "Can it be true the South has not the intelligence and public vir- tue needed to meet the emergencies upon her ? Have the

spirit of her fathers, the sagacity of Jefferson, the patriotism of Washington, the virtue of Clay, departed from her? And is she to be the victim of the demagogue-blind leaders of the blind to their common destruction?" His own defense of his policy may be epitomized by those words in which he recalled a favorite ex- pression. The South stood in Congress, he said, "on her parole of honor." And what is that parole? he asked. "The validity of the public debt shall not be questioned." During the year 1878 some of the Mississippi newspapers continued to antagonize him, and about the time when he was meeting Blaine in debate on the accu- sation of suppression of the colored vote and illegitimate repre- sentation in congress, a letter from Jefferson Davis was published, citing the precedents of Greece and Rome, reviving the formulas of State sovereignty, and declaring that it had been the practice of Democrats "either to obey instructions or to resign." This sur- prised and pained the senator, as Mr. Davis had never given him a sign of disapprobation before putting this letter in the hands of his most active newspaper critic, Ethelbert Barksdale, and he hated to see "anything trashy" come from Mr. Davis. A few days later he made a dramatic defense of Mr. Davis from aspersion in the United States senate, and Mr. Davis sent him a letter of thanks. It was in June, 1879, that Mr. Lamar had the famous verbal encounter with Senator Roscoe Conkling, of New York. Conkling, a lordly and overbearing man, deliberately charged him with bad faith in regard to the conduct of proceedings, relating

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Encyclopedia of Mississippi History Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Vol. II, Part 2

Author: Dunbar Rowland Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Madison, Wis. : S.A. Brant Number of Pages: 1020

Author: Dunbar Rowland
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Madison, Wis. : S.A. Brant
Number of Pages: 1020