Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 66

Author: Speer, William S
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Nashville, A. B. Tavel
Number of Pages: 1278

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GEORGE W. JONES.

FAYETTEVILLE.

G' BORGE W. JONES was born in King and J Queen county, Virginia, on the banks of the Mattipony river, March 15, 1807. In March, 1816, his father moved to Giles county, Tennessee, where he died, May 20, 1820. His father was a captain of militia in the war of 1812. and held the office of sheriff in Vir- ginia. A year after the death of his father, Mr. Jones was apprenticed by his guardian to learn the trade of saddlery. He served his term at Fayetteville and worked at that business for several years afterward Il is young manhood was sober, discreet and well onthe red,

and his after life justifies the proverb that the boy is father to the man. Though of a highly social nature, he was never married, but in the absence of family ties the circle of his friends was the circle of his acquaintance, and those who knew him best were warm and devoted.

In 1832, under the administration of Gov. Carroll, he was appointed by the Legislature, as the constitution of 1796 prescribed, a justice of the peace for Lincoln county. This position he filled until January 1, 1835, and was one of the three justices composing the court of common pleas and quarter cesions, having jurisdic-

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tion of all causes except felonies and ejectments. Ile was then elected clerk of that court, and filled that office until the abolishment of the court, under the op eration of the constitution of 1831.

The public career of George W. Jones may be said to have commenced with the adoption of the constitu. tion of 1834, in the State of Tennessee, its ratification by the people taking place in March, 1835, and his clee tion to the house of representatives of the General Assembly in August of that year. The cardinal features of that instrument, as contrasted with that of 1796, were distinctively democratic, in that it framed a govern- ment more immediately responsible to the people through popular elections. This was in entire accord with the ruling principle of Mr. Jones' political faith, viz., that the people are fully capable of self-govern- ment, and are the rightful source of all political power, and that the honest mistakes of which they may occa- sionally be guilty are more tolerable and of less harm to the cause of good government than the view which assumes the people to be ignorant, and would permit them but a remote and indirect control over their laws and the functionaries appointed to administer them. Ile was a firm believer in the doctrine that everybody is wiser than anybody. The chief duty of the Legisla- ture of 1835 was to organize the State government under the new constitution, and harmonize its laws with the principles therein set forth. Mr. Jones participated actively in that work.

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His service was acceptable to his constituency, and in 1837, he was returned to the popular branch of the General Assembly. One of the important measures of that year was the project for the establishment of the Bank of Tennessee, and it was zealously opposed by Mr. Jones, though ineffectually. He had been an opponent of the Bank of the United States, and was antagonistic to govermental banking institutions on principle, and as promotive of favoritism and corruption, and, despite of the fiscal advantages claimed for them, prone to become political agencies and of detriment to the public good.

In August, 1839, Mr. Jones was sent to the State senate from the district of Lincoln and Giles. In the meantime. the Bank of Tennessee had been organized, its capital being the State school fund, the Federal surplus revenue deposited under the act of Congress of 1836 with the State, and the proceeds of two and a half' million of State bonds issued for the purpose. The re- port of its president to the Legislature showed that one million of these bonds were still held by the bank, and Mr. Jones promptly introduced a bill directing their return to the secretary of State, and that they should be cancelled by the governor of the State. At this ses- sion, he opposed a recommendation of the message of Gov. Polk, that bonds of the State should be payable in sterling money, and in the city of London, and con- tributed to the defeat of the proposition in the General Assembly.

Among the most signal of his acts while serving in the State Legislature, was his earnest support of a bill abolishing imprisonment for debt, and there is none which he recalled with a fonder satisfaction than the part he bore in obliterating from the statute book that odions heritage from the days when the personal liberty of free citizens was sordidly set in the seales of dollars and cents, and mistake and misfortune were made as infamous as crime.

In 1810, while a candidate for presidential elector on the Democratic ticket, a vacancy occurred in the office of county court clerk of Lincoln county, and the county court, in August of that year, elected Mr. Jones to till the unexpired term, to March, 1842, when he was elected by the people for a full term of four years. This office he resigned, however, at the July term of the court, in 1843, and at the State election in the month following, was elected the representative of his Congressional dis- triet in the house of representatives of the United States, and took his seat in the December following, as a member of the Twenty-eighth Congress.

This Congress witnessed the advent on the theater of national affairs of quire a number of men who were destined to attain distinction and exert a wide influence in subsequent years-among them Andrew Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas, Robert Toombs and Alexander II. Stephens. Of the subject of this sketch it may be said, that while not rivaling these and others of his Con- gressional contemporaries in brilliancy of attainments and oratorical gifts, no man preceding him in the popu- lar branch of Congress, or then or since entering it, surpassed him in efficient usefulness as a legislator, and none of those named, and but one or two in the history of the government, ever, for so long a. term of service in that body, and so implicitly, held the confidence of an immediate constituency and that of the country at large. Ile was continued in membership by successive elec- tions for sixteen years, or until 1859, in the most of the elections the opposition being nominal and his ma- jorities always overwhelming. It is doubtful if there is another instance in the history of Congress-unless it be that of John Quincy Adams and his constituency

in which the relationship between the representative and the represented was more thorough and cordial. The most important national question, during the first Congress of his service, was the annexation of Texas, of which he was a staunch advocate, and gave support, both to the resolution of the house of representatives on the subject, and the alternative bill from the senate, for a commission to negotiate the matter. when the two prop- ositions were conjoined. In the Twenty-ninth Congress -the first of the Polk administration he advocated, by speech and vote, the act declaring a state of war with Mexico, and in that and the succeeding Congress, ar- dently supported all measures for its vigorous proseen- tion. He voted for the act organizing the territory of Oregon, in which the Missouri compromise line was

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incorporated, on the ground, that it lay north of the line. He supported the ad valorem tariff act of 1816, which contained no feature of protective, duties for protection's sake, but which was a tariff for revenue. yielding, as such a tariff must inevitably do, some de- gree of incidental protection to domestic industries. That act was an efficient one for revenue. in spite of the prediction of advocates of high tariff duties that it would fail in producing an amount sufficient for gov- ermment necessities. The revenue, indeed, increased and sufficed, not only for the ordinary needs of the na- tion, but for the extraordinary expenditures of the Mexican war, and under it, domestic manufacturing industries did not languish for lack of due protection. His view of the whole question of the tariff then was neither those of the free trade or protection duty doc- trinaire, holding the former to be impracticable, as the revenues must be collected by impost taxes, and the latter wrong in principle, tending, under certain condi- tious and circumstances, to defeat its own object. as well as to decrease revenue, and, under others, to create and foster monopolies, He held the primary object of a tariff to be revenue, and the protection given by its rates, within that limit, to be secondary and incidental, and that, with the increasing need of revenue, the manufacturing and productive interests of the country would always receive legitimate protection. During this period he opposed the recharter of local banks in the District of Columbia, and, as he had done in his own State, favored the act abolishing imprisonment for debt in the district.

In the fierce agitation of the slavery issue which en- sued upon the acquisition of territory from Mexico, and during the stormy period of 1819 and 1850, Mr. Jones was eminently conservative. The representative of a southern State, and firmly loyal to all the interests of her people, he was never betrayed into extremism. He was impressed with the delicate and embarrassing na ture of the question and recognized the necessity of compromise, and judging that his section lost none of its substantial rights in the compromise measures of 1850, he yielded the several features of that series of bills his carnest support. He voted for the admission of California as a State with a constitution interdicting slavery, because it was the will of the people who framed it, taking the broad ground that he would force no do- mestic institution or system of laws on any people who did not desire them, and he as strenuously opposed the right of any community to interfere with the domestic institutions as they existed by the will of the people of other States or communities.

Mr. Jones at that time, and up to the culmination of the slavery contest in the civil war, never gave his ad- hesion to the extreme constitutional doctrines main- tained in regard to slavery aud State's rights, of which Mr. Calhoun was the arch apostle. He believed neither in the right of nullification or secession. He' was a

Democrat of the strictest seet, but it was of the school of Jefferson, Jackson and Benton. He recognized two sets of agitators among the ambitious politicians of the country --- those in the North. using anti-slavery senti- ment for the foundation of a sectional political organi- zation, in order to aggrandize themselves in offici d station, and those in the South, championing the tech- uical and abstract rights of slave-holders, for the pur- pose of' " firing the southern heart" and precipitating disunion, and erceting a separate government in which they would rule as chiefs. He deprecated the disrup- tion of the Democratic convention at Charleston, . in . 1860, and in the contest of that year, gave his support to Stephen A. Douglas, as the representative candidate of the conservative and national Democratic party.

During Mr. Jones's long service in the national house of representatives, he was a member at various times of the most important committees of the body, and pune- tual and laborious in the discharge of duty. He served on the committee on the District of Columbia ; on that of territories with Stephen A. Douglas; on that of post- offices and post-roads with Abraham Lincoln; on that of rules of the house, of which he was chairman in the Thirty-second and Thirty-third Congresses, and on that of ways and means. In 1851, the speaker of the house, Lynn Boyd, of Kentucky, named Mr. Jones for the chairmanship of the ways and means committee, with Mr. George S. Houston, of Alabama, as second on the committee. With characteristic modesty, Mr. Jones declined this eminent position, and requested of the speaker a transposition of names in the formation of the committee with Mr. Houston. This was done, and he remained in that position for four years. He also did service on various select committees; and on confer- ence committees on disagreeing votes with the senate, and as one of the tellers in the count of electoral presi- dential votes in February, 1857. In 1853, William R. King, of Alabama, who had been elected vice-president of the United States, was in ill health, and absent from the country, on the island of Cuba. Under an act of Congress, the United States consul at Havana was ap- pointed to administer the oath of office to Mr. King, and Mr. Jones was designated to bear a copy of the law and instructions thereunder to the consul, and was the official witness to Mr. King's subscription to the oath of office.

The leading feature in Mr. Jones's congressional ser- vice, and in his character as a public man, was his devotion to the idea that it is not in a splendid and ex- travagant government, giving support, and in turn sup- ported by, powerful monopolies and aristocratie estab- lishments, that the people find the best security for their liberties, or means for the promotion of individual prosperity and happiness. He held that this govern- ment was formed by the people distinctly to attain these ends, and in its administration he followed simplicity, economy and honesty as cardinal precepts, and was the

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consistent and outspoken opponent of every species of legislation that fostered the wealth of the few and facili- tated the growth of private fortunes out of the common wealth of the republic. He opposed the creation of useless and unnecessary offices, and the payment of salaries beyond the limit of just and adequate compen- sation. In regard to all forms of government expendi- ture he was economie, but never narrow-minded or niggard. He held that the burden of taxation should fall as lightly as possible on every man's purse, that he might be enabled, under just and equal laws, to develop the enterprise and industry of which he might be capable, and elevate himself as best he might in fortune and social rank. . He was a strict constructionist of constitutional grants and limitations of power, and did not believe that the " general welfare " clause of the constitution conferred sovereign power on Congress to do anything and everything, whether prohibited or per- mitted, expressedly or impliedly, with the public purse or the public lands. He opposed a bank of the United States, and held that gold and silver only were money, and that paper of any kind claiming to be such should be representative of, and convertible into it, on demand. Ile did not favor institutions like the United States Naval and Military Academies.

He opposed service pensions for soldiery, and civil pensions of all sorts. He opposed a large standing army, and a large naval establishment, and especially the creating of public debts, State or national, and be- lieved firmly in John Randolph's philosopher's stone -" pay as you go," as the better rule for States as well as individuals. While he advocated the policy of taking as little from the public wealth as was possible for gov- ernmental use, he scrutinized with serupulous care every channel through which it was sought to disburse it, and his name as a public servant was synonymous with faithful and vigilant guardianship of the public treasury. And this he did without fear, favor, affection or offensiveness.

After the election of Mr. Lincoln, in November, IS60, Mr. Jones, having supported Mr. Douglas for the presidency, continued to counsel a prudent and con- servative course to the people of the southern States. When the conflict of arms was precipitated in 1861, he deemed it the wise alternative to espouse the southern side, on the ground that unanimity of the southern peo- ple would tend to temper the character of the strife and probably shorten it. In November, 1861, he was elected to the house of representatives of the Confederate States, and assumed his seat in February, 1862. At the end of this service, in 1864, he declined a re-election, and, his home being within the lines of the Union mili- tary forces, he accepted the hospitality of a friend in North Carolina, where he remained until the cessation of hostilities. Repairing shortly thereafter to the seat of government, he was cordially received by his friend and former colleague, Andrew Johnson, the president,

and promptly pardoned and relieved of political disa- bility.

Until 1869, Mr. Jones was in private life, when he was elected a delegate to the convention to revise and amend the constitution of Tennessee. The body assembled in January, 1870, and he participated in its deliberations until a few days before its final adjourmment. . A clause had been inserted in the instrument empowering the Legislature to impose a poll tax as a preliminary requi site to the exercise of the franchise privilege. This feature was repugnant to the principles uniformdy advo- cated by him, and regarding it as a most objectionable form of property qualification, and restrictive of polit- ical rights, he refused his assent, and declining to affix his signature to the proposed constitution, withdrew from the convention. and afterward voted against the ratification of the instrument.

In 1871, he was appointed by Gov. John C. Brown a trustee of the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane, was reappointed by Gov. James D. Porter in 1877, and by Gov. A. S. Marks in 1879, and occupied that position at the time of his death, the duties of which he discharged with the zeal and fidelity that marked his course in other places of trust and responsibility ..

In 1878. at the request of the family and immediate friends of the late ex-President Andrew Johnson he delivered the oration at the unveiling of the monument erected to his memory at Greeneville, Tennessee. His intimate personal relations and political affiliations with that distinguished man eminently qualified him to re. view his remarkable career and analyze his public char- acter and vindicate his place in history, and the task was performed in a manner befitting the theme and the occasion.

Though it had been several years since Mr. Jones passed the Psalmist's allotted period of three score and ten years, his physical vigor was remarkably preserved, and his mental faculties were unimpaired to the hour of his death. He maintained a proper interest in public affairs in his latter years, but resolutely refused to listen to all solicitations to be recalled into active polit- ical life. Several occasions since his retirement caused his name to be considered with reference to high posi- tions in the State and Federal governments, but with positiveness and the utmost sincerity, he declined to listen to the appeals of his friends. The retrospect which he was able to cast over his public service, ex- tending to nearly fifty years, was in the highest degree satisfactory to him. An acute and sagacious observer -- the late John C. Rives, of the Washington Globe- once remarked of him to the writer, that the public character of Mr. Jones might well be envied by any man who had ever served the government. His uniform reply to suggestions of his re-entry upon public life was, that no man should presume to think himself capable of being useful to two generations in a political trust, and that one he had some reason to believe re

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garded his service as worthy, had passed away. And therein was expressed the wisdom of a sage.

George W. Jones most resembled, in the qualities which for so long a time attracted the public confidence and esteem, an eminent character in the early days of the republic -- Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina. Simple in tastes, courteous to all, modest in apprecia- tion of self. exact in methods, well informed on subjects

requiring an opinion, of sterling good sense, of compre- hensive knowledge of men, of unbending integrity, and of elevated devotion to the cause of popular govern- ment, the useful and blameless records of both of them signally illustrate the truth, that the best type of public officials is not always found in association with brilliant intellectual gifts and acquirements, but rather in lucid judgment, honest conviction and unostentatious courage.

JAMES RODGERS, M. D.

KNOXVILLE.

D R. RODGERS is descended from Scotch-Irish parentage. His great-grandfather was a Penn- sylvanian. His grandfather, James Rodgers, was a na- tive of Pennsylvania, went to Rockbridge county, Virginia, and from there to Washington county, East Tennessee, when a young man. in the first settlement of the country, and married Rhoda Alexander, daughter of Francis Alexander, one of the pioneer settlers of Washington county, a native of Virginia. He moved to Knox county about the year 1800, and engaged in farming, being at the same time a blacksmith. He (the grandfather) was in the war of 1812, and died about 1836, at the age of some seventy-five years, a stanch old Presbyterian, and an old Clay Whig. The grandmother died at an advanced age, leaving six children, one of whom, Samuel R. Rodgers, was chancellor at Knoxville since the war, under appointment from Gov. Browulow. Two of her sons, William and Alexander Rodgers, were physicians; the former died in Knox county, the latter in Mississippi. 'Her two daughters, Lavinia and Lu- cinda, died ummarried, in Knox county.

Dr. Rodgers' father. Thomas Rodgers, was born in 1791, in Virginia, came to Washington county in early life, and from there to Knoxville, when eighteen years old (1812), married in Knox county, and carried on the blacksmithing business at Knoxville until about 1810. He then purchased a farm within two miles of Knoxville and removed to it, lived a farmer, and died December 22, 1870. He held the office of magistrate fifteen or twenty years. In politics, Hugh L. White and Henry Clay were his idols, and he remained a Whig all his life. He joined the Presbyterian church in early life, was ordained an elder October 24, 1829, and was an acting elder in the Second Presbyterian church at Knoxville till his death. He was a very quiet man, attending to his own business and nobody else's.

Dr. Rodgers' 'mother, Annie Patton, was born in Knox county, daughter of Robert Patton. She died in 1820, a Presbyterian, leaving three children : (1). Mary, married a Mr. Bryant, moved to Middle Tennes see, and died there. (2). James, subject of this sketch.

(3): Elizabeth, married James Randles, from Sevier county, moved to. Texas and died, leaving several chil- dren.

Dr. James Rodgers was born in Knoxville, July 2, 1818. and has lived in that town ever since. He was raised to work until he entered Knoxville College, in which he studied some three or four years under Pres- ident Joseph Estabrook. Leaving college, he clerked in a drug store six years, during which time he studied medicine under Dr. James Morrow. He took lectures in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1812-43. under Dr. Ben Dudley, and has been practicing medicine ever since. In 1870, the faculty of the University of Nashville conferred the degree of M. D. apon him, on account of his age and experience. The names attached to his diploma are a sufficient guarantee of the merit of its recipient, to-wit : Professors W. T. Briggs, T. L. Madden, Paul F. Eve, W. L. Nichol, Van S. Lindsley, John IL. Callender. W. K. Bowling, C. K. Winston and J. Berrien Lindsley.

Both professionally and financially, Dr. Rodgers has been a success. He began life on nothing, and after paying fifteen thousand dollars security money, is now in independent circumstances. He is a member of the County and State Medical Societies, of the American Medical Association, and of the National Board of Health, and has been president of the East Tennessee Medical Society, and of the Knox county Medical So- ciety. It is nobler mention to say that he stood by his people through every epidemic that has visited the town; of cholera in 1854, and of small-pox during the war.

In politics, Dr. Rodgers was first a Whig, but has been a Republican ever since the disintegration of the Whig party. He was postmaster at Knoxville four years under appointment from President Grant, in 1869. He was appointed by Gov. Brownlow State director of the Knoxville and Kentucky railroad, and served three years. He was examining surgeon of the United States pension department from 1870 to 1883. He is a Royal Arch Mason, and has held all the offices in the Inde-

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pendent Order of Odd Fellows, including that of Grand Master of the State. In religion, he is a Presbyterian, was ordained elder June 16, 1872, is clerk of the ses- sion; has frequently been delegate to the synods, and was delegate to the General Assembly at its session in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1880. Dr. Rodgers married at Knoxville, in November, 1813, Miss Rosanna MeMul- lin, who was born in that town, July 20, 1820, daughter of Daniel McMullin, a native Irishman. Her mother was a MeCaughan, also a native of Ireland, where she married her husband. She died young, leaving three children : (1). Rosanna, wife of Dr. Rodgers. (2). Thomas, a merchant at Waco, Texas. (3), Isabella, who died at Knoxville, wife of David Solomon. leaving three children, William, a printer ; James, now in Kan- sas City, Missouri, and Fannie, unmarried.

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Sketches of prominent Tennesseans. Containing biographies and records of many of the families who have attained prominence in Tennessee, Part 66

Author: Speer, William S Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Nashville, A. B. Tavel Number of Pages: 1278

Author: Speer, William S
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Nashville, A. B. Tavel
Number of Pages: 1278