USA > Texas > Governors who have been, and other public men of Texas > Part 8
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said: "My dear young lady, don't be distressed. You are not to blame, and he is not hurt. If a man had been in your place and the same accident had occurred, my friend might have got angry, but you might scald him with hot coffee from his head to his feet, and he would swear the sensation was rapturously delightful."
I assured the distressed young woman that the Major spoke the truth, and she was so amused by his gallant remarks that she smiled through her tears.
Somebody who is kind enough to read these rambling and dis- connected sketches, may think I have allowed the bias of per- sonal friendship to betray me into giving too much space to a man who was neither Governor, Senator, Congressman, Supreme Judge or General, but my purpose is to make record of those Texans who most worthily lived and most worthily served their state. Rank and reputation never were the hallmark of real worth. They are man-made, but God makes men, and Hannibal Boone was a man in the highest sense of that term. He was as true a friend as ever loved his fellow man. He was a lawyer of the very first order of ability. I know, because he practiced before me for nearly seven years. He was honor incarnate, and he was as gallant and as game a soldier as ever flashed a falchion or faced a foe.
The law of heredity has in the case of his posterity operated unerringly. His eldest son at 29 years of age was elected Judge of the 12th Judicial District, and filled the position with ability and efficiency, and is now Mayor of the city of Corpus Christi. An- other son is now Judge of the 79th District of Texas. The widow of Major Boone still lives to cherish his memory, and rejoice in the character and achievements of her sons and his.
I recall that during the convention in Galveston it was sug- gested in certain quarters that Governor Coke should be called upon to announce that he would not be a candidate for or accept the position of United States Senator-at least such was the rumor which drifted about the hotels and the convention hall, but no such announcement came.
When the Legislature met he was elected United States Senator and began his service in that position March 4, 1877, and re- tained his seat for eighteen years, without, so far as I recall, even a suggestion of opposition. I heard some year or two after he entered the Senate, a very interesting, indeed amusing conversa- tion in Galveston between a Republican named McCormick and the very well known, indeed famous, Major Thomas Peck Ochil- tree.
I chanced to be taking dinner at the same hotel table with the two men, and the Major was sitting at one end of the table and Mr. McCormick on his right. Something was said about Senator Coke, and McCormick at once launched out into a criticism of his
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appearance, and dress, and style of speaking, dwelling specially on his broad-brimmed hat and big walking-stick. The criticism was very similar to that indulged in several years later by the man who offended the old Judge who had been Senator Coke's fellow soldier, an incident I have already related. The Major turned up towards McComick, the eye in which there was a de- cided cast, and as he continued to eat rapidly, said very abruptly : "You are a d-d fool. You don't know what you are talking about ?" McCormick, somewhat taken back by the suddenness and bluntness of the remark, said: "I'd like to know why." "Be- cause," Major Ochiltree said, "Dick Coke dresses that way down here among his own people, but don't you know that in Wash- ington he wears tailor-made suits, and ruffled shirts, with diamond studs and a three-story silk hat, and wears kid gloves and carries a gold-headed cane," all of which was purely imaginative descrip- tion, of course. Continuing, Major Ochiltree said: "You wait until 1882 comes around and he will come down here and get into that long-tailed coat, and put on that old flop hat, and get out his old hickory walking-stick, and bellow on the stump like a prairie bull, and spit on his shirt front, and sweep the decks like a hurri- cane."
McCormick was not convinced by the unique prediction, and insisted, "Old Coke," as he termed him, "could never be elected again." I heard and saw the famous Major's prediction fulfilled literally. I was in Austin the day the Senatorial election came off in the legislature which sat in the temporary capitol in 1883. There was no other candidate but Senator Coke, and every vote in the Senate had been cast for him, and I chanced to be in the House when the roll was called.
Beginning at "A" on down through the alphabet, the roll of members was called, and the unbroken line of responses was "Coke." The last name on the roll was Wyatt, and the owner of that name was a negro as black as a lump of charcoal. When his name was called, he answered "Coke," so, as Major Ochiltree had predicted, nearly five years before, "Dick" Coke swept the decks like a "hurricane."
The social and fashionable atmosphere of Washington was in no wise congenial to Senator Coke. He had no taste for such frivolity, and I heard his colleague, that courtly gentleman, Sena- tor Sanı Bell Maxey, once tell a very amusing joke on Senator Coke.
He said: "One day Coke came to me in apparently great per- plexity and distress and said: 'Maxey, I have received an invita- tion from President Arthur to dine at the White House, and I haven't got any kid gloves, and I don't want to wear any, and I don't know what to do.' I said, I am going to dine with the President this evening and I will talk to him about it. During
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the evening I told President Arthur of the dilemma he had placed my colleague in, and the President laughed heartily and said: 'Oh, tell Coke to come along and never mind about kid gloves.'" I will interject into the story at this point that the President made quite a concession to the Senator from Texas because he was very scrupulous in the observance of all the conventionalities. He was said to have been more thoroughly au fait in all matters of social usages and customs as they prevailed in high society than any President ever in the White House. He was essentially a gentleman, cultured, courteous, kind, and considerate, and of most elegant manners, and did not intend that the Texas Senator should be barred from the White House on account of any con- vention concerning his garb. If he did not care to come in costume de riguer, he should come anyway.
Continuing, Senator Maxey said: "I didn't have the opportunity to talk with Coke again until after the day of the dining had passed. When the opportunity presented, I said: 'Coke, did you ever find a pair of gloves?' He said: 'I did, but came mighty near not doing so. I went down Pennsylvania Avenue on one side and back up on the other, and could not find a pair big enough. After so long a time I went into a little hole in the wall on a side street and found a pair that I could get on, and when I did get 'em on, my hands looked like a pair of canvassed hams, but I wore 'em, but the gloves weren't the worst of my troubles. It was the trails of the women's dresses.
" 'I saw a powerful fine looking woman bowing to me, and I bowed, and she bowed, and I bowed again. I didn't know who she was, but thought maybe she desired to see me, so I started towards her. When I moved, she moved off, with her back to me. Now do you know what was the matter? I was standing on the trail of her dress, and I'll swear I wern't in fifteen feet of her.' I said: 'Did you get your gloves off safely?' 'H-1,' he said, 'I tore 'em off.' "
When Governor Coke became a Senator, March 4, 1877, of course, automatically, Governor Hubbard became his constitu- tional successor. He was an interesting man, and possessed in no small degree the gift of eloquence. He was well born and well educated. When only 23 years old, he was appointed United States District Attorney, and afterwards served his county in the Legislature.
He commanded a regiment in the Confederate Army, and in 1873 and in 1876 was nominated for Lieutenant Governor, and of course, elected. He was temporary chairman of the convention which nominated Grover Cleveland in 1884, and canvassed sev- eral middle western states during the ensuing campaign.
It will be remembered that the Republicans dug up and used an incident in the past private life of Mr. Cleveland as campaign
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material. The charge was unquestionably true, and the facts soon became public property. It was that Mr. Cleveland who, at the time of his nomination (and election) was a bachelor, was the father of two children, the name of whose mother was Maria Halpin. It was said at the time the matter was brought up that Mr. Cleveland was preparing to issue an explanatory statement, but during that campaign Arthur Pue Gorman, Senator from Maryland, and one of the most astute politicians in the United States, was chairman of the National Democratic Executive Com- mittee, and it was said he wired Mr. Cleveland the laconic advice: "Tell the truth," and that message became a campaign slogan. 1 recall the incident, not for the purpose of reviving anything de- rogatory to Mr. Cleveland, but because it became the medium through which "Dick" (as he was commonly called) Hubbard effectually squelched a man who interrupted him in one of the audiences he spoke to during the campaign.
The fellow tried to heckle the speaker by asking: "What about Maria Halpin ?" As quick as a flash, "Dick" Hubbard gave the heckler the quietus he needed. None who remember him have forgotten his immense rotundity, or his big eyes and his deep, sonorous voice, and the habit he had of emphasizing his best points by shaking his head vigorously from side to side. Pointing his finger at the man who had asked the question, he said in tones that could have been heard half a mile: "Never you mind about Maria Halpin. She has nothing to do with this campaign, and let me tell you, young man, that the Democratic party has in the course of her history been guilty of many d-d fool acts, but she never yet put a gelding in the race for President." The crowd howled its approval.
A change of 555 votes in New York would have elected Mr. Blaine, so it is within the range of possibility that the ready retort of the Texas Ex-Governor brought about a Democratic administra- tion and gave the nation one of its great Presidents.
I say it was possible because the retort of "Dick" Hubbard was flashed over the whole counry. It may be that I have not given his reply verbatim et literatim, but have given the witty and truth- ful meaning.
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CHAPTER XII.
The question of pardons and commutations gave Governor Hub- bard much trouble and worry, and his sympathies were often wrought upon distressingly. There was no Board of Pardon Ad- visers at that time to serve, so to speak, as a breakwater against the flood of tears he had to encounter.
Major H. H. Boone was Attorney General during his adminis- tration, and he told me that one very hot day he went to the Governor's office to see him on business, and just as he arrived at the office the Governor entered. He had walked over from the Mansion, and as he was about five feet nine inches in height and weighed over, or about, 300 pounds, he was sweltering and sweat- ing. He opened his shirt front and siezing a big palmetto fan, stirred the air vigorously, saying as he did so: "Major, I have just had an awful time. I went home to dinner (the new fangled designation "lunch" for the midday meal had not at the time reached Texas), and when I got there the mother of- (naming a man in Southwest Texas, who was under sentence of death) was there, and his wife was there, both pleading for the son and husband. The mother cried, and the wife cried, and Mrs. Hub- bard cried, and d-n it, I cried. Oh, it was a fearful time, but I can't pardon the man who committed such a crime," and he did not pardon him. The sentence of the law was carried out.
I was riding with him once on a train shortly after his return from Japan, to which country he was appointed Minister in 1885 and served four years. I asked him what the state of morals was in the society of Japan. He opened his eyes wide and lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his broad shoulders, and said: "Oh, pretty much like it is everywhere, but they have some pretty sen- sible regulations there. A man can have his concubine, but before he enters into that kind of relation, he must with money, or stocks, or bonds, or other property, insure the comfort of his legitimate family, and that is very just. Then again they have a regulation that he must not keep the concubine in the part of the city where his family lives, but away over in some other part of the city," and then he made one of his indescribable grimaces, while his eyes twinkled, and he punched me in the ribs with his thumb and said: "And let me tell you, that is a first-class, sensible kind of an arrangement, sure as you are born."
The fight against him for the nomination was led by some able men and was very bitter, while the friends of Governor Throck- morton were, as was always the case with them, enthusiastic, faithful and devoted. As I recall, the candidates themselves in- dulged in no charges or recriminations. Both were gentlemen. Those opposed to Governor Hubbard brought up a charge once made that he had borrowed money in some way that associated
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the transaction with persons who had dealings with the State, and it was intimated that his action was an infraction of the proprie- ties, if not forbidden by law.
There was, I am sure, no foundation for any allegation im- peaching his integrity, and now since he and the friend who came to his relief have both passed beyond the reach of human praise or blame, it gives me pleasure to set down what was told me. A well known man in comfortable financial circumstances, was a very close friend of a much older man than I, with whom I was associated in the practice of law, when Governor Hubbard was Governor. That gentleman dropped into my office one day and the matter of borrowing the money by Governor Hubbard came up in the conversation, and the visitor said: "All the talk about Dick Hubbard getting money by improper methods is the veriest rot, and does him gross injustice. I will give you all the facts, and they are few: I have known Dick Hubbard for a long time and always go to see him when in Austin. One day I called and he was evidently much disturbed in mind and said to me: 'Henry (his given name), did you ever owe a whole lot of petty debts about which you were being bedeviled every day and not have the money to pay them? If you have, you know the fix I am in, and how I feel.' I said: Dick, how much do you owe? How much will it take to clean you up? He said: 'About $3500, and I could get it from a well known firm in Galveston (which firm was said to have made the loan), but those people have contracts or dealings with the State, and I cannot go to them.' I said: I tell you what you do, Dick, make your note for $3500 for such time as will suit you and I will- endorse it. He made the note. I en- dorsed it. He got the money, and I paid the note, as I expected to have to do, and that is all there is to the talk about Dick Hubbard borrowing money improperly." I believe the story was true, be- cause the man who told it to me was amply able to wait for his money, and he had no contracts with the State nor any business relations with the State or the Governor, and he could have had no motive to invent a false story. If Governor Hubbard did not pay the note his friend endorsed when it was due, it was not because he did not recognize his legal and moral obligation to do so, but because of sheer inability. He was not gifted with the capacity to either make or save money, and the number of his kind is legion.
The ability to make money is a special endowment-a distinct gift of nature. Men who can plan largely, and forecast in a practical way material results for others, cannot so contrive by honest methods as to transmit their conception into cash.
As I recollect, Governor Hubbard was the moving spirit-the procuring cause, to use a legal phrase, in the building of the Cotton Belt Railway. He desired to promote the prosperity and
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development of the section of the State in which he lived, but he did not so plan as to make money for himself, as many a man with less intelligence, and less principle, would have done.
Many public men who understood and discussed with intelli- gence great financial questions of national importance were al- ways in debt, indeed bankrupt. They belonged to a class, as did Governor Hubbard, in the eyes of which the only potential value a dollar had was what it would buy for immediate use. Its value for what it would make, or its productive capacity, had for them no existence. No man discussed more ably great financial questions than did the late Daniel W. Voosheer of Indiana, who was a great lawyer and an almost matchless orator. I stood one day two hours under an autumn sun and listened to him without tiring or being bored-on the contrary, was held spellbound. He appeared successfully for the defense in some of the most noted murder cases ever tried in the United States, and must have earned large fees. He was for more than thirty years in Con- gress, first in the House and later in the Senate, yet at the time of his death, twenty-three years ago, it was being arranged with President Mckinley, who was very fond of him, to give him some appointment for which his ability fitted him in order to provide relief of his financial condition, brought about by his utter indif- ference to the value of money, and to its accumulation or the saving of it.
No great financial question or any other great national question ever came up in the United States Senate that the great mind of Daniel Webster did not illuminate it, and he was, besides, one of the great lawyers of America, yet his friends and admirers in Boston took up regular collections to prevent his being absolutely without money. Then again, even if a man in public life be not devoid of the ability to make money, if he gives to the people that measure of service which he owes then, he has no time to make money.
To plan for proper legislation and meet the ever-changing and never-ceasing demands of the public welfare leaves no time to plan for speculations, and if they did, the order of mind and line of thought required for the latter is wholly different from that re- quired for the former. The real statesmen and the practical financier is rarely combined in one man. No Governor or legis- lator in Texas who does his full duty can make any money out of the office, if he is honest. Governor Hogg, after he left the Governor's chair, demonstrated the possession of the ability not only to lay practical financial plans, but to successfully execute them, yet I have heard that he said that when he left the Gov- ernor's office in January, 1895, he only had $50 in money. He left public station with clean hands, a clear conscience, and a practically empty pocket.
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It is eloquent testimony to the character of the men who have filled the gubernatorial and other executive offices of Texas and the numerous judicial positions, that despite the fact that they have at all times been paid inadequate salaries, yet in seventy- five years there has been but one instance in which a public servant of Texas has proved faithless to his trust, and he was driven from office.
Governor Roberts was succeeded as Governor by John Ireland of Seguin, Guadalupe County. John Ireland was in some respects, a most remarkable man. He was much misunderstood by those who were thrown in personal contact with him. He appeared to be stern and cold. Such an estimate was, in my judgment, most erroneous. He came to Texas at an early day and achieved suc- cess under many adverse conditions. He was a member of the House of the 13th Legislature, which met while E. J. Davis was Governor. He belonged to the minority, and a man of his character and ability in such a body was like a rare jewel cast into a pile of pebbles. At the next election he was sent to the Senate from the Seguin District, and there fought all the extreme legislation proposed by the Republican administration.
He opposed with earnestness and ability the I. & G. N. subsidy bill which, though it passed, Governor Coke slew it with a veto. He was one of the district judges elected in 1866 who was re- moved a year later by military edict. He had no aptitude for electioneering. He was not a good "mixer." There was nothing of hail-fellow, hand-shaking, back-slapping politician in his make- up; yet, as I recall, he had no opposition for the nomination for Governor in 1882 and of course had none in 1884.
His competitor in both races before the people was one worthy of the steel of any foeman-Colonel G. W. Jones, commonly known as "Wash" Jones. He was elected to Congress in, I believe it was, 1880, by 274 majority over the brilliant, popular, and able Seth Shepard of Washington County, who died only a year or two since in Washington City where, for twenty-five years, he was a mem- ber of the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. Colonel Joncs was a far more effective public speaker than was Gov- ernor Ireland-indeed, was a power on the stump, both because he was able, eloquent, and logical, and because he was honest in his convictions. I do not recall that I ever saw him but once in niy life, but if my memory serves me correctly, he was elected Lieutenant Governor at the time J. W. Throckmorton was elected Governor. I have no data before me on that point, but such is my recollection. It is doubtful if any other man in Texas could have polled 102,501 votes to 150,809 cast for Governor Ireland.
While Governor Ireland was in office he was ex-officio a mem- ber of the Capitol Board, one of the duties and responsibilities
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resting upon which was to select the kind of material out of which the State Capitol should be built.
I was riding with him on one occasion on the train, and that subject came up, and he referred to it in these words in sub- stance: "The other two members of the Board were of the opin- ion that in view of the difficulty of getting sufficient limestone in Texas, it would be advisable to resort to Indiana limestone, and they favored that course, or were so inclined." He evi- dently had no thought in his mind that his associates on the Board were influenced by any purpose, save and except, to do what appeared to be right and best. Continuing, he said: "I said: 'Gentlemen, you and I comprise the Capitol Board, but if you will examine the law carefully you will see that while that is true, yet the Governor is made the final arbiter in the matter of choice of material, and I'll be d-d if the Capitol is not going to be built out of Texas material,'" and it was, and is a monument to the wisdom and state pride of John Ireland.
At the next election his vote increased over 60,000 while that of Governor Jones decreased over 14,000.
From some time in 1875 until the third Tuesday in April, 1876, Governor Ireland was a member of the Supreme Court. He wrote the opinion in the case of Lewis vs. Aylott, 45 Texas, which is to be found on page 190 of the report, which is before me as I write. It laid down the law to be that real estate cannot be devised by nuncupative will in Texas, and the holding has never been departed from. I consider the opinion a very able one.
The paragraph of the opinion which is third on page 202, is full of words of warning and wisdom.
I remember well when the case was brought. The attorneys for the losing side had only moved to Galveston a short time before. I went there a green, inexperienced country youth, and became associated with a much older man than I, and his office was in the same building into which counsel for the appellant estab- lished their office a short while after I reached Galveston. They were Hon. Richard S. Walker and his son, John C. Walker. The son and I were about the same age-possibly I was a year or two his junior. Judge Walker, the father, was a very able lawyer and a most charming gentleman. If I am not mistaken, he had lived and reared his family in East Texas, making his home at Nacogdoches. The brief for the appellant in Lewis vs. Aylott reveals his thorough learning in the ancient law relating to real estate and its transfer by will. Andrew P. McCormick, after- wards United States District Attorney and United States District Judge, who died only a few years since at a very advanced age, while Judge of the United States Court of Civil Appeals for the 5th District, was trial judge, and a most excellent one he was. He was a native Texan, born in Brazoria County in the early
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