Encyclopedia of Mississippi History Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Vol. II, Part 56

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 56

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When Seargent was an infant he was attacked by an almost fatal illness, followed by paralysis. This was mainly cured by massage and plunges in cold water, daily, for several years, by the devoted mother, but one limb she was unable to save from withering, and throughout life he was a cripple, requiring the help of a cane to walk about or stand before an audience. With this one exception he was physically perfect, though short of stature. The beauty of his face, the vigor of his body, enhanced the charm and power of his words. In speaking he lisped slightly, but this was not considered a defect.

Captain Prentiss was ruined by Jefferson's embargo and the war of 1812-15. He removed his family to the town of Gorham, and became a farmer. There the boy came under the influence of his mother's father, Maj. George Lewis, Hon. George Thacher, a cousin of the latter, and other old school Federalists, and im- bibed the intense national spirit and something of "lordliness" characteristic of that school of politics. Seargent was compelled to live in and about the house as a child, photographing in his wonderful mind nearly every word of the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress, books which are, to the unpoisoned spirit of a boy, full of the spirit of the noblest chivalry. On crutches, or drawn in a little cart or sled by an elder brother, he attended village school. He had a great passion for shooting and fishing, and loved to loiter along the brook and through the forests. Determining to go to college, he prepared at Gorham academy, and there read the Arabian Nights and Don Quixote. He was then twelve or thirteen years, fearless, impulsive and daring. He shirked the weekly declamation as long as possible, and then convulsed the master and school with a witty improvised poem. In the fall of 1824, at the age of fifteen years, he entered Bowdoin college, in the second year class. As a student he was brilliant ; he read om- niverously and rapidly, apparently not stopping to turn the leaves, and was constantly resorting to Walter Scott and Shakespeare. A year after he entered college his father died, and as soon as his college course was completed, Seargent began the study of law with Josiah Pierce, of Gorham.

It was very common in his day for young men of New England to go to the South and Southwest, though their first impulse was to the Ohio. "Searge," as his mother called him, started out to make his fortune in these new worlds in 1827, going to Buffalo, thence by boat to Sandusky, and by stage across Ohio to Cincin- nati. Bellamy Storer took him in charge and found him a place in the office of Judge Wright. He sought to open a school and support himself while he continued his reading of law, but being

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advised that he would find a more open field, and perhaps secure the more desirable situation of tutor at some great plantation, at the Natchez, he suddenly decided to go South. One of his new friends advanced him the necessary money, two gentlemen and their families, from Natchez, urged him to accompany them, and he went down the river with letters of introduction to the great people at the famous Mississippi port. He came with the inten- tion of returning North in a year or two, and for some time con- tinued in that intention. He reached Natchez November 2, 1827, was greeted cordially, and within two or three weeks was engaged as tutor of the five children of the widow of William B. Shields, in whose plantation home was one of the best law libraries of the State, which she put at his service. In July, 1828, he had paid his debts, and had $15 left, and sorrowfully left the Shields home to take charge of a school about eight miles from Natchez. But teaching disgusted him, he could not easily adapt himself to the conditions created by slavery, and was often on the verge of start- ing back to Maine. Yet the prospect of financial success was too alluring. He gave up his school in February, 1829, and, having money enough to support himself a few months, entered the law office of Robert J. Walker at Natchez, who promised to back him in this venture into a career as a lawyer. He was admitted to the bar at Monticello in June, and became the law partner of Gen. Felix Huston. Then his financial safety was assured. He began the practice and soon had opportunity to make speeches in the presence of brilliant lawyers, that they had never heard equalled in vigor of argument, brilliancy of expression and flowing humor. Though a young man he already showed that stoutness of build that was a characteristic, though his height was only five feet six. Stout as he was, his head was large for the body. His fore- head was wide, high and almost semi-circular in outline, as in the portraits of Shakespeare.

While at Natchez, he continued unsettled in mind about where he should make his home, wavering between the opportunities of New Orleans and the memories that drew him back to Maine. But in January, 1832, he decided to remain for a time in Missis- sippi and to make his home in the town of Vicksburg, then a rap- idly growing place. He had already been there, in the midst of a small-pox epidemic, and by a two hours' argument secured the repeal of an oppressive quarantine regulation. This scourge was followed by the cholera and his first year's experience was under great difficulties. But he busied himself by a campaign against Jackson's reelection, and enjoyed a visit in November with Wash- ington Irving. Early in 1833 he was at Washington, D. C., to argue a case in the supreme court, and met Jackson, whom he considered "about as fit to be president of the United States as I am." (Letter to his sister.) He was too poor financially to make a visit home, and "could have sat down and cried about it." Re- turning to Natchez, he formed a partnership with John I. Guion, his life-long, and devoted friend.

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The temptations to which such a man as Prentiss was exposed, coming as he did, and whence he did, were like those experienced now by a visitor to the tropics. Not that the people he left were any better, but there was a great change of conditions, and power- ful restraints were withdrawn. Intoxication, gambling, duelling, frivolous skepticism of anything truer than "today we drink and tomorrow we die," were so prevalent as to obscure the solid ele- ments of society that were building the State. Prentiss yielded, very largely, to reckless habits, though he kept his purity of thought and expression, and throughout his life was religious in the highest sense.

October 5, 1833, he fought a duel with Henry S. Foote, on the Louisiana shore, at sunrise, at ten steps distance. Not long after- ward a second duel took place. In both Foote was slightly wounded. Bailie Peyton told the story that in the second duel, when Prentiss' pistol had snapped, and Foote's bullet had whistled over his head, the crowd being so dense that there was barely room for the passage of the balls, Prentiss called to a small boy climbing a sapling for a better view, "My son, you had better take care; General Foote is shooting rather wild." These two duels were his only ones in a land where duels were "as plenty as black- berries." Afterward, in his last visit to Cincinnati, a would-be friend alluded to Foote as a "dog," whereupon Prentiss instantly retorted: "If he is a dog, sir, he is our dog, and you shall not abuse him in my presence." In 1835 when he heard that Gen. Felix Huston was sick with small-pox, he went to him at once, and remained with him, despite the loathsome virulence of the disease, until the general was out of danger. A boyhood vaccina- tion saved him from anything worse than a slight attack.

At the beginning of the year 1834 he was in the full tide of success as a lawyer. He had little time now for those letters to his mother, sisters and brothers, in which his nature is revealed. He was confident in 1834 that he could make at least $3,000 a year, and he had been solicited to become a candidate for con- gress. In August he was chosen to deliver an oration at the State capitol in memory of Gen. Lafayette. In the summer of 1835, he sailed from New York with a party of Mississippians. On the voyage he was in his element, overwhelming his friends with eloquent observations and reciting poem after poem on every topic that came up, from the masters of English verse, whose words were printed in his memory. After a visit to his old home, he returned to Vicksburg, where in his absence, had occurred the famous uprising against the Blacklegs. He was a member of the legislature in December, 1835, and, with his Whig colleagues, endeavored to reelect Poindexter to the senate. With very dif- ferent weapons he fought the great prestige of Jackson as ear- nestly as Poindexter did. It was related by Judge Wilkinson that at one of Prentiss' meetings, a man invaded the audience bearing a banner inscribed "Hurrah for Jackson." Prentiss, without a pause in his indictment of Democracy, went on to say, "In short,

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fellow citizens, you have now before you the sum and substance of all the arguments of the party, 'Hurrah for Jackson.'"

He favored locating the New Orleans & Nashville road east of Pearl river, and showed an interest in the development of the whole State that was not agreeable to some of his friends at Vicks- burg. Another great Whig, A. L. Bingaman, suffered for the same reason at Natchez. Prentiss was tired of lawmaking at the close of the session, also of law, and asked his younger brother to come on and succeed him in the practice. He was then 28 years of age. In the spring of 1836 he visited Cincinnati and various Kentucky points. In the same year he joined with others in the purchase of an interest in the "Commons" of Vicksburg, lending his legal ability to the effort to dispossess the city. He expected to become wealthy from the speculation. It was a time of the wildest speculation all over the United States and Vicksburg was a focus of greatest intensity. In the following year the collapse came. A general panic and failure of credit pervaded the coun- try and laid its hand on the markets in Europe. Mississippi cot- ton that sold for 19 cents in December, 1836, brought only 91/2 in the following April. In the legislature of 1837 he denounced the spirit of the argument of Adam L. Bingaman, on the question of seating the alleged representatives from new counties. "It is a fearful monster, which has, for the last two or three years, trav- ersed the United States with the stride of a drunken and in- furiated giant, trampling down constitutions and laws and setting governments at defiance. In the city of Baltimore, in its frantic mood, it demolished the edifices of the citizens. In Charleston, a convent fell a prey to its wayward humor. It is no stranger within our own State-and maddened by a southern sun, its foot- steps have been marked with blood. It is the principle of moboc- racy, the incarnate fiend of anarchy." In this speech he fearlessly challenged the Whig leadership of Bingaman. The speech, of three hours, established his reputation throughout the State. De- spite his declaration that the course he opposed would "infuse into the legislation of the State a poison which no medicine can cure," his opposition was ineffectual. On the refusal of the senate to recognize the house after this, the legislature adjourned, and Pren- tiss resigned. In the following summer, while on another visit to Maine, he was nominated for congress by the Whigs of Mis- sissippi, and he returned and went into a campaign declaring for the reorganization of a United States bank. This campaign made him "the pride, the delight, and the chosen standard bearer of his party in the State."

No one attempted to meet him but McNutt, who dared to allude to Prentiss' dissipated habits. Prentiss retorted that the gover- nor could not make any sober accusation against him, for he had been drunk ten years, not upon the rich wines of the Rhine, the Rhone, the Saone or the Guadalquiver : not with his friends around the genial and generous board, but in the secret seclusion of a dirty little backroom and on corn whiskey. "Why, fellow citi-

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zens, as the governor of the State, he refused to sign the gallon law until he had tested, by experiment, that a gallon would do him all day." He continued in a brilliant, rollicking tirade of ridicule that drove his opponent from the stand. There were two elections in 1837, in the last of which, supposed to be for the regu- lar term, he was elected. The seat was contested on the claim that congress had recognized the first election as for the full term.

His contest was the contest of two great national parties for control. In defense of his title he spoke for two days and part of a third, in the presence of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Dan- iel Webster, Preston, White, and Crittenden, and when the young orator noted the mystic signs of approval passing between such hearers he was intoxicated with delight, and at the sime time as- tonished; for the greatest charm of this speech, as of all his great efforts, was his unfeigned sincerity and absolute surrender to the effort to convince. Webster said "Nobody could equal it." George Winchester wrote from Natchez, "I feel a glow of triumph; it runs warm through my veins and animates and enlivens me like a shout of victory." Only a skeleton of this great effort is pre- served; the professional reporters could not follow it. He made a second speech on the same subject, replying to the courtly Legaré, of South Carolina. This effort surpassed the first and had an audience even more brilliant. Hardly a vestige of it is pre- served. The final vote of the house, for partisan reasons, was a tie, and Speaker Polk cast his vote against Prentiss. Henry Clay laughingly pointed his finger at the latter, saying, "Now go home, d-n you, where you ought to be," a jest that was afterward dis- torted into an insult to the Speaker. Before he went home Pren- tiss was entertained at dinner by Webster, Clay and other Whigs in congress, at which the godlike Webster, late at night, was in- spired to the most wonderful utterances ever heard by his friends.

Prentiss issued an address to the people and made another cam- paign. His first address was at Vicksburg, the meeting presided over by William L. Sharkey; next at Natchez. He declared, "All is lost save honor," denied that the coming election was valid, promised that if reelected he would take his seat under the pre- vious election, a promise that was kept. This campaign was the most dramatic event of his career. Old Democrats heard him, with tears running down their cheeks. Many who had never bolted their ticket voted for him, and Prentiss and Word were triumph- antly elected. In congress he did not find much opportunity for distinction except in helping defeat the sub-treasury measure of the administration. After adjournment in 1838, he went to Port- land, Me., and was invited to speak at Faneuil Hall, Boston, at a reception to Daniel Webster. He followed Edward Everett, Dan- iel Webster, and several others, and spoke late in the night. Ever- ett wrote-"He took possession of the audience from the first sentence and carried them along with unabated interest, I think for above an hour. Sitting by Mr. Webster, I asked him if he ever heard anything like it; he answered, 'Never, except from

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Mr. Prentiss himself.'" He responded to the toast, "Mississippi and her distinguished representative in Congress." During the first part of his speech he had difficulty in finding moments of silence in which to proceed, until the audience realized that it must be quiet to hear, after which the nervous strain was so intense as to be painful. At one part of this speech he said:

"Though politicians actuated solely by a selfish and parricidal ambition, seek to rend asunder what God has himself joined in everlasting bonds, there is a hand that will arrest the impious de- sign; a hand they despise, but which they will find too strong for them. I mean the hand of the mechanical laborer. (Great cheer- ing.) Yes, sir, that mighty hand-and long may it be mighty in this free and equal land-that mighty hand will link these States together with hooks of steel. The laboring population of this country mean to live together as one people, and who shall dis- annul their purpose? See how they are conquering both time and space! See the thousand steamboats that traverse our lakes and rivers; aye, and that, leviathan-like, begin to make the ocean itself to boil like a pot! Look at their railroad cars, glancing like fiery meteors from one end of the land to the other, blazing centaurs with untiring nerves, with unwasting strength, and who seem to go, too, on the grand temperance principle, laboring all day on water alone. (Laughter and loud cheers.) Think you the Amer- ican people will suffer their cars to stop, their railroads to be broken in twain, and their majestic rivers severed or changed in their courses, because politicians choose to draw a dividing line between a Northern and a Southern empire? Never, sir, never ! Proceeding on those great national principles of Union, which have been so luminously expounded and so nobly vindicated by your illustrious Guest (cheers) they will teach these politicians who is master. Let us but hang together for fifty years longer, and we may defy the world even to separate us. (Shouts and repeated cheers.) We are one people, for weal or for woe. When I cannot come from Mississippi, and call the men of Boston my fellow-citizens, my kindred, my brethren, I desire no longer to be a citizen of the Republic. (Cheers, long and loud.) Yes, we are embarked on one bottom; and whether we sink or swim, we will swim or we will sink together. (Here the hall rang with tumultu- ous uproar, handkerchiefs waved, and the band of music joined in the applause.)" It must be recalled that the speaker was a young man of twenty-nine years. He was dissatisfied with his effort, saying, "I was so awed and overwhelmed by the Spirit of the Place, that I could not speak." He was compelled to decline a public dinner at New York, but addressed a tremendous rally in Masonic Hall, at that city, whence he took boat for New Orleans, seeking to avoid further adulation. At New Orleans he was re- ceived with the national salute of twenty-one guns, and compelled to make another speech, after which he was escorted to his Vicks- burg boat by an escort of horsemen and an immense procession of citizens.

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He perceived, when he was again in close touch with his Mis- sissippi environment, that his enemies had successfully used against him the political cry of "abolitionist." At the public din- ner tendered him, he said: "I have been most bitterly abused for responding to these courtesies; for daring to break bread and eat salt with our Northern brethren; and especially for so far violating Southern policy as to have wickedly visited the cradle of liberty, and most sacrilegiously entered Old Faneuil Hall. I could pity these foolish men, whose patriotism consists in hating everything beyond the limited horizon of their own narrow minds; but contempt and scorn will not allow of the more amiable senti- ment. I do not accuse those who differ with me of a de- sire to dissolve the Union . but I do most seriously be- lieve that the Union cannot long survive such kind of argument and feeling, as that to which I have alluded. .

. As a private citizen, I trust ever to retain your confidence and regard, though as a public man, I shall never again seek them. . For the short remainder of the present congress I shall continue to per- form my duty as your representative, but decline being consid- ered a candidate for reelection."

His determination was warmly opposed by the Whigs, but he persisted in it. In the next session of congress he made a scath- ing attack upon the conditions of the public service, the defalca- tions of Swartwout and others, and accused the president and his secretary of the treasury of knowledge and tolerance of corruption.

Returning from Washington, by way of Kentucky, he took part in the defence of his friend, Judge Wilkinson, on the charge of murder. In his great speech, on this occasion, he had to defend Mississippi gentlemen in general, from the imputation of contempt for craftsmen and laborers. He won the case. After this he expected to confine his work to his profession, but in the summer of that year, 1839, there was a Whig movement for his candidacy for the United States senate, that could not be resisted. He accepted, and made a canvass of the State, but his party failed to secure the leg- islature. Mr. Prentiss went counter to the predominant sentiment regarding the banks. He urged a national banking system and pleaded that banks were necessary, and must not be denounced as an evil because some of them were bad. In the midst of the canvass he wrote to his sister Abby that he had a good chance to be beaten, and though he would do his best, he would be grati- fied by defeat. He was "disgusted with politics and annoyed by notoriety."

Then came the year 1840, first of the great presidential campaigns such as have been familiar to Americans since that time. It was a year of unprecedented enthusiasm, a campaign of education. Prentiss was emplored to speak in every State of the Union. He responded with earnest efforts in all the chief cities of the United States, from St. Louis and Chicago east, impressing the most competent observers with the depth and wisdom of his views, as well as entrancing the multitude. Throughout he was confident

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of the success that followed. He was chosen by Mississippi as one of the Harrison electors.

Early in 1841 he fell in love. He wrote his sister: "I laugh at those who look upon the uncertain, slight and changeable regards of the multitude, as worthy even of comparisons with the true af- fection of one warm heart; and I would sacrifice more, do more and dare more, to win the love of a woman whom I loved than I would to wield the sceptre of Napoleon." But he was in the darkest depths of despair. Yellow fever broke out in Vicksburg, and he spent two months caring for his friends, hoping he might take the fever and die. His sister Anna came to his help. After she departed for the east, he wrote to thank her for the "priceless jewel of sweet Mary's love." He was married March 2, 1842, to Mary, daughter of James C. Williams, of Natchez. From their wedding trip to the east they returned hastily, for ruin had laid its hand upon Mississippi. He had been rich; it was now impossible to say how poor he was. There was no money for the payment of debts, no money to collect. Property had no salable value, all were poor alike. But he im- proved and refitted a home at Vicksburg, known as "Belmont." Here he entertained Henry Clay in 1843. Here "little Jeanie" was born, and as he traveled through the State he turned from the law to write love letters to his wife and child.

In 1840-43 he made a gallant fight against repudiation of the State bonds, hand in hand with Adam L. Bingaman, George Poin- dexter, and William L. Sharkey.

During the excitement about the Choctaw land frauds he was accused in a newspaper publication of complicity, on the authority of a member of the government commission. Accompanied by Peyton and Forrester he went to Hillsboro, in the Indian country, where the commission sat, and exposed the author of the calumny, making a terrific indictment of the man. His colleagues on the commission voted to expel the member and refused to longer sit with him. (See Claiborne J. F. H.)

On Washington's birthday, 1844, he addressed a great Whig meeting at New Orleans. He had suffered much from the great strain of his life, financial misfortune, and the exhaustive efforts he had made in politics ; but yet he had something of the resilience of a Damascus blade, and appeared the picture of buoyant health. He took a conspicuous part in the campaign for Clay that year, throughout the East and in the South, fighting always the poison of "repudiation," which was manifested by Dorr's rebellion in Rhode Island as well as in other quarters. He particularly urged that no people possessed such sovereignty as to disregard justice and the obligations of constitutions and contracts; that freedom was limited by self-restraint, and liberty did not tend to equality but the greatest possible inequality : in brief. his theme was unity and independence of all classes and communities in the nation. He declined many invitations from various States in order to make one great effort at the Nashville convention in 1844, to which he was invited by a committee of five hundred ladies as well as by the

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Encyclopedia of Mississippi History Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Vol. II, Part 56

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