USA > Texas > Indian wars and pioneers of Texas, Vol. 2 > Part 59
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In the Twenty-first Legislature a strong effort was made to pass a bill providing for a commission to regulate and control the rates of railway traffic having its origin and destination within the State, but it failed of passage, mainly because a large number of members of that body considered such a law in conflict with the constitution. As a com- promise and to determine the popular will, the Twenty-first Legislature submitted, for adoption or rejection by the people, a constitutional amendment providing expressly for the creation of such a com- mission. Other important amendments were sub- mitted at the same time, but the one relating to rail- ways overshadowed in prominence all others, and it constituted the main issue of the gubernatorial campaign. While the passage of a commission bill through the Legislature had been attempted and its provisions, constitutionality and expediency were discussed in the debates attending the effort, yet a great majority of the people had no clear concep- tion of the fundamental principles involved, the extent of the evils to be remedied and the rights and powers of the State and roads in the premises, until Governor Hogg's great opening speech was delivered at Rusk. Before the campaign opened the public mind was in a state well-nigh bordering upon indifference. His speech at Rusk, April 19, 1890, however, was like the blast of a bugle in some enchanted hall filled with sleeping men at arms, who, at the martial sound, leap to their feet, clash their weapons and sally out in full array of battle, ready and eager for the fray. The Galveston-Dallas News published the speech in full
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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
next morning, introduced by the following comment of their reporter : --
" Attorney-General Hogg made his speech here to-day in his native place, the first he has made in the campaign. Many distinguished men were here from over the State, all told 3,000 people. Hogg clubs from Smith and Wood counties were here in good numbers. The Campbell Guards from Long -. view and brass bands of Jacksonville and Tyler were here in full uniform. Mr. Hogg spoke three hours and his effort is pronouneed a masterpiece and was well received by the people."
The paths of men make many turnings. Some move with an onward sweep, recrossing at no im- portant point, and the great events of life are like resting-places along a dusty roadside. This is not true of others. One mau finds himself, after many years, drawn by a combination of powerful circum- stances to a spot rendered sacred by some hour of sorrow and trial, through whose travail he came forth a truer, nobler man, or to which memory has often fondly turned from far distant lands; and another, while bearing the heat and burden of some great contest, on whose sueeessful issue depend his fortunes, gathers courage and inspiration from the spot that knew his childhood. So it was with Governor Hogg. His was not a childhood whose happy way lay through banks of flowers, but a child- hood that called for fortitude and toil. With his hon- ors, won as Attorney General of Texas, fresh upon him, and about to give the signal for a tremendous conflict, he selected his birthplace as the scene, and April 19, 1890, delivered an address whose every word reverberated throughout the confines of the State. In beginning that speech he said :-
" Fellow-Citizens - Acting on the invitation of a committee from Rusk, and in obedienee to nat- ural impulses, I am here, where I was born, at the playground of my childhood, to begin among my life-long friends and associates a formal canvass of the State as a candidate for Governor. Just after the war, when merely a boy, many of you will re- member that I left these familiar scenes and gener- ous people to cast my lot among strangers in another county. How they have trusted and treated me, ask them. Look among this vast concourse and you will see many of those good people, a hun- dred miles away from their homes, taking part in this demonstration. They have been drawn here by ties of affection that are too strong for dissolu- tion, too pure for others than friends to bear. To them I direct you for an account of myself in all the walks of life sinee I left you so many years ago.
As a day laborer and a penniless printer they re- ceived me to their firesides and cheered me on. In the journalistic field they gave me a generous, lib- eral support, and made my paper a success. They trusted me with positions of Road Overseer, Jus- tice of the Peace, and County Attorney; they joined with five other counties in making me their District Attorney, and afterward they generously contributed their full strength in electing me Attor- ney-General, the office I now hold."
This speech inaugurated a most remarkable and important campaign. The merits and demerits of a railway commission were exhaustively diseussed through the columns of the press and from the ros- trum. The opposition to Governor IIogg and the amendment was not slow to effect thorough organ- ization, and numbered in its ranks many men of great experience in politics and whose civic virtues commanded respect. J. W. Throckmorton, Gus- tave Cook, H. D. McDonald, T. B. Wheeler and R. M. Hall were respectively (although not in the order named) selected as standard-bearers by mem- bers of the party opposed to a commission. As the battle progressed and county after county instructed for Hogg, they one by one retired from the race, leaving Hon. T. B. Wheeler to alone go before the Democratic convention at San Antonio and contest with Gen. Hogg for the nomination. Not only was Gen. Hogg nominated for Governor on the first bal- lot, practically without opposition, but the amend- ment was also unqualifiedly indorsed. It was a famous victory.
Governor Ilogg's message, sent to the Legislature the day following his inauguration, was a state paper that fully met the just expectations of his friends. Every question of publie policy was ex- haustively discussed and proper legislation recom- mended. No stronger document has ever eman- ated from the Governor's office in this State.
Governor J. S. Hogg is a very tall and large man, measuring six feet and two inches in height and weighing 285 pounds. His success in life is to be attributed to his own unaided efforts, a faith- fulness to duty, and unshakable steadiness of pur- pose.
He served as Governor a second term, having been renominated at Houston in 1892. In this campaign the Democracy of Texas divided in the famous Ilogg-Clark contest. Governor Hogg made a most remarkable canvass and beat the Clark fol- lowing and the most able and popular Populist candidate for Governor Texas ever had (Judge T. L. Nugent) by nearly 60,000 plurality.
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R. M. SWEARINGEN.
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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
747
R. M. SWEARINGEN,
AUSTIN.
Dr. Richard M. Swearingen was born in Noxubu County, Miss., on the 26th day of September, 1838. He is the lineal descendant of Garrett Van Swear- ingen, who emigrated from Holland to Maryland in 1645, and the son of Dr. R. J. Swearingen and Margaret M. Swearingen, who settled in Washington County, Texas, in 1848.
His father was a pioneer in the cause of educa- tion, and was the projector of the splendid schools that, in ante-bellum days, made Chappel Hill famous throughout the State. His mother was the daughter of Maj. Boley Conner, of Irish descent, who was an officer under Jackson in the War of 1812. She was a lady of gentle manners, marked individuality and deep piety. In the new town, made by their efforts and a few congenial friends a center of wealth, culture and refinement, their children, Sarah Frances, Patrick Henry, Helen Marr, Richard Montgomery, John Thomas, and Mary Gertrude, werc raised and educated.
R. M. Swearingen was growing into manhood when the political excitement of 1860-61 began to shake the foundation of the government. Fiery denunciation of Northern aggression and stormy oratory was the order of the day. Reason gave way to passion, and men seemed driven by inexorable forces on to an inevitable destiny.
The voice of Sam Houston rang through the land like an inspired prophet, but was drowned in the whirlwind that heralded the impending war.
The subject of this sketch, nearly thirty years after the guns of Fort Sumpter sounded the death knell of peace, with satisfaction records the fact that he was one among the few who stood with the immortal Houston in opposing and voting against the ordinance of secession. When, however, his State, by an overwhelming majority, went out of the Union, he felt in duty bound to give his allegiance to her, and responded to the first call ever made for troops.
On the 28th day of February, 1861, he embarked at Galveston, under Gen. McLeod's command, for the lower Rio Grande. After a six months' cam- paign in the regiment of that well-known and gal- lant old frontiersman, Col. Jolin S. Ford, the young soldier returned to his home in Chappel Hill. After resting a few days, information having been re- ceived that his younger brother, J. T. Swearingen,
was sick at Cumberland Gap, Tenn., he started for . that place.
J. T. Swearingen had left the State some months before, with troops bound for Virginia, but having been refused enrollment on account of extreme youth, left them at Knoxville, Tenn., and volun- teered in Brazelton's battalion of Tennessee cav- alry. The brave boy had served under the ill-fated Zollicoffer, in Kentucky, and had won the admira- tion of his comrades, but the rough campaign had too severely taxed his physical powers, and rest wasimperatively demanded. The ordinary methods to secure his discharge having failed, the older brother took his place in the ranks, and for the second time donned the uniform of a Confederate soldier.
The new company joined was commanded by Capt. A. M. Gofarth, who, a few months later, was promoted Major of the regiment, and who fell at its head, sword in hand, leading a desperate charge.
About two months after the brothers had changed places, the company was reorganized, and the gen- erous Tennesseeans elected the only Texian in the company their First Lieutenant, and in less than six months promoted him to the Captaincy. For nearly three years he commanded this noted com- pany ; noted, not only for faithful and arduous services rendered during the war, but for the brill- iant successes made by some of its members after the war had closed. Pryor Gammon, of Waxa- hachie, Texas, was First Lieutenant ; George Moore. Louisiana, was second; and Sam. M. Inman, of Atlanta, Ga., was third. Mr. D. C. Williams, of Collinsville, Ala., and James Swann, of the firm of Inman, Swann & Co., of New York, and Sam. Dick, of the firm of S. M. Inman & Co., were Ser- geants. John II. Inman, of New York, now one of the railway kings of this continent, was a member of the company. The firms of Inman, Swann & Co., and S. M. Inman & Co., rank high among the great business houses of the world, and he who commanded the men who made those houses great, through per- haps the stormiest periods of their lives, gives to history this testimony. "that fame and fortune, for once, found men worthy of their richest offer- ings."
During the occupation of Cumberland Gap, while
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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
on a scout in the mountains of East Tennessee, Private Swearingen was prostrated with pneumonia, and left in Sneedville, at the house of Mr. Lee Jessee. This trifling episode would not be worthy of record, but for the fact that Mr. Jessee had an accomplished daughter, named Jennie, who was very kind to hir while sick, and who won his life- long gratitude and affection. During the subsequent years of the war, neither distance nor danger de- terred him from seeing that genial, happy family, whenever it was possible to do so. On the 12th day of September, after a rough and perilous journey over the mountains from Sneedville (then within the enemy's lines) to Jonesville, Va., Miss Jennie Jessee, in the presence of her brave, sweet sister, Sallie, was married to Richard M. Swearin- gen.
Ten days after the marriage, upon a dark night, Capt. Swearingen ventured into Sneedville, to tell his wife and the family good-bye, but before the words were spoken, the house was surrounded by a company of mountain bushmen, and he was forced to surrender. For two weeks he was in the hands of these hard men, suffering all kinds of cruelties and indignities. Once he was tied, apparently for prompt execution, and would cer- tainly have been killed, but for the interference of one Joab Buttry, who had once been the recipient of some kindness from Mr. Jessec, his wife's father. Buttry was the chief of the band, and his hands were stained by the blood of many Confed- erates. He had seen his own brother shot down in . cold blood by a scouting party of Confederate soldiers, and the bold mountaineer, then a quiet citizen, hoisted a black flag and enlisted for the war.
During the days of imprisonment, the young wife and her friends were not idle. A written proposi- tion from Gen. John C. Breckenridge, commanding the department, " that he would give the bushmen any three men that they might name, then in Con- federate prisons, in exchange for their prisoner," was accepted. That same day the chief of the band, alone, took his captive to the north bank of Clinch river, and released him, with expressions of good will.
Joab Buttry seemed made of iron, but through the dark metal would shine the gold of a noble manhood, that desperate deeds and a desperate life had not altogether obliterated.
After his fortunate escape, Capt. Swearingen started on a long hunt in search of his lost com- pany, and found it not a great distance south of Raleigh, N. C. The space allotted him in this vol- nine of biographies will not permit even a casual
notice of the incidents and experiences of those eventful years. The company participated in many engagements; was with Bragg in Tennessee, Kirby Smith in Kentucky, Joseph E. Johnston in the retreat through Georgia, with John H. Morgan when he was killed, with Hood at Atlanta, and again with Joseph E. Johnston in South and North Carolina. To enable the reader to form some esti- mate of the hardships of the Confederate service, the statement is here made that this company, the last year of the war, did not possess a tent or wagon, or anything in the shape of a cooking vessel. Their rations of meat were broiled upon coals of fire, and the cornmeal cooked in the same primitive fashion. Notwithstanding these depriva- tions, the men, as a rule, were happy, buoyant, capable of great physical endurance, and they wept like children when, among the tall pines of Carolina, their flag went down forever. In obedi- ience to the cartel of surrender, Capt. Swearingen marched the company back to Tennessee, before disbanding it.
That last roll-call and parting scene on the banks of the French Broad river is one of those clearly defined memory-pictures that possibly live with our souls in higher forms of existence.
For three years those men had shared each other's dangers, and under the shadow of a com- mou sorrow, the humiliation of a hopeless defeat, they were to look for the last time upon each other. The commanding officer, whose route at that point diverged from the one to be taken by the company, fronted them into line and tried to call the roll, but failed to do so. He then moved around by the roadside and they filed by, one at a time, and shook his hand. There was a profound silence; no one attempted to speak a word, and every eye was filled with tears, as the curtain rolled slowly down upon the saddest act in that long and well-played drama of war.
Capt. Swearingen, a few weeks later, assisted by his wife, was teaching a country school at the foot of the Cumberland Mountains in Lee County.
In the autumn of 1865, information having reached him of a requisition from Governor Brown- low, of Tennessee, upon Governor Pierrepont, of Virginia, for his arrest and return to Sneedville, the newly-installed teacher abruptly closed his prosperous school.
Capt. Swearingen was confronted with an indict- ment for some unknown offense, and the trial of Confederates in East Tennessee, at that time, was on the style of drumhead courtmartials, with ver- diets prepared in advance. To remain there, only twenty miles from Sneedville, was not to be thought
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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
of; to go elsewhere for safety, and leave his wife without a protector and without money, was another dilemma equally as painful as the first. About 10 o'elock, the first night after closing the school, while the husband and wife were discuss- ing the situation, a rap upon the door, and an unforgotten voice, announeed the arrival of the young brother, who four years before had been found at Cumberland Gap, only a few miles from the place of their second meeting. J. T. Swear- ingen had heard of his brother's dangerous sur- roundings, and, selling about all of his earthly pos- sessions to get funds for the trip, went to his relief.
The next morning R. M. Swearingen left his wife in safe hands and started for Texas. At Huntsville, Ala., he awaited (as had been previously planned) the arrival of those left in Virginia, and with bright faces they journeyed on to Alta Vista, where the best of all good sisters, Mrs. Helen M. Kirby, received them with open arms.
The State was then going through the agonies of reconstruction, and the machinery of the govern- ment was virtually in the hands of military rulers and reckless adventurers. Old customs and sys- tems, and ties, and hopes, and fortunes, were lost forever, but the old South, crushed to earth, with vandals on her prostrate form, and bayonets at her breast, bravely staggered to her feet and faced a glorious future. The courts were closed, or only opened to make a burlesque of justice and a mockery of law.
In such a reign of anarchy, the profession of medicine was the only one of the learned professions that offered any promise of immediate success, and Capt. Swearingen selected it for his life work. He at once commenced the study, and graduated in the school of medicine, New Orleans, March, 1867, de- livering the valedictory, and located in Chappell Hill. The friends of his parents, and the friends of his youth, received him with great kindness, and when the yellow fever epidemic of that year deso- lated the town, he was conspicuous as a tireless worker among all classes, and was rewarded with a patronage bothi gratifying and remunerative. His wife, as courageous as when tried in the furnace of war, would not leave her husband, although urged by him to do so, rendered faithful services to the sick, and survived the epidemic, but her only child, beautiful little Helen, was taken from her.
In 1875 Dr. Swearingen removed to Austin, where he still resides, and where a clientelle has been secured that satisfied his ambition, and enabled him to provide comfortably for those dependent on him. His family consists of wife, one daughter (Bird), now happily married to E. B. Robinson,
their baby ( winsome Jennie), and his wife's nieee, Miss Lulu Bewley. When the yellow fever epi- demic of 1878 made such fearful ravages in the Mississippi Valley, he responded to an appeal for medieal assistance made by the relief committee of Memphis, Tenn., and with his friend, Dr. T. D. Manning, reached that city the 3d day of Septem- ber. From there they were transferred by the relief committee to Holly Springs, Miss., where they organized a hospital service that did effective work until the close of the pestilence.
The good accomplished, however, viewed through the dim lights of human understanding, seemed dearly bought, for in less than two weeks after they had entered that valley of death, a thousand hearts were sorrowing for the young, gifted and dauntless Manning. The great loss of life, and the destruc- tion of property. caused by that wide-spread epi- demic, induced the Congress of the United States to enact a law, authorizing the President to appoint a board of experts upon contagious diseases, con- sisting of nine men, and directed them to prepare a report upon the causes of epidemics, and also to suggest some plan of defense against subsequent invasions, for the consideration of that honorable body. Dr. Swearingen was a member of that board, and the bill ereating the National Board of Health was drawn in accordance with the plan presented to Congress by that board of experts.
January, 1881, Governor O. M. Roberts ap- pointed Dr. Swearingen "State Health Officer," and in 1883 Governor John Ireland reappointed him to the same position. Under the guidance of those two distinguished executives, he controlled the health department of the State for six consecu- tive years. He has always been a zealous friend of public schools, and has been a member of the board of trustees of Austin City schools since the free school system was inaugurated. He is a member of the American Public Health Association, and the president of the State Medical Association, num- bering more thau 500 active, progressive physicians. In January, 1891, Governor James S. Hogg ten- dered Dr. Swearingen the office of State Health Officer, and that gentleman accepted the honor and entered upon the duties of the position.
By his friends he is classed among conservatives, but is positive in his convictions, and was never a neutral upon any great moral or political ques- tion.
He has made some reputation as a speaker, but has no aspirations in that line. His last effort, un- dertaken at the earnest solicitation of old Confed- erate soldiers, was made in the House of Repre- sentatives, December 11, 1889, to an audience of
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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
1
two thousand people. The occasion was the mem- orial service in honor of Jefferson Davis.
It is Dr. Swearingen's wish to have the address appended to his biography, not on account of any special merit claimed for it, but to perpetuate, and, if possible, to make imperishable some evidence of his love and admiration for a pure, a good and great man.
"MEMORIAL ADDRESS." .
" MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN - The unsuccessful leaders of great revolutions loom up along the shores of time as do lighthouses upon stormy coasts, all of them brilliant and shining afar off like stars ! But few of these men have left be- hind them substantial evidences of their greatness, or monuments of their works. Their names are not often wreathed in the marble flowers that glisten upon splendid mausoleums. Tradition tells no story of loving hands having planted above them the myrtle and the rose, and of manly eyes paying to their memories the tribute of tears. History can now write another chapter. Last Friday, when the wires flashed the news to the uttermost borders of civilization that the ex-President of the Confed- erate States was dead, a wave of sorrow swept over the fairest portion of the earth. The soldiers of the dead Confederacy were bowed down in grief, and men and women, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, talked in low, tremulous tones of their old chief, and the glorious record he had made.
"This occasion will not permit even of a brief re- view of his illustrious life, nor an analysis of the ' why' he formed a new republic, nor the 'how' that young republic, after a colossal struggle, went down beneath the tread of a million men.
"Jefferson Davis was the ideal Southerner - the highest type of American manhood.
"For four consecutive years he was the central figure in the stormiest era in the world's history. Around him gathered the hopes of a nation, and upon his shoulders rested her destinies. At his word legions sprang to arms, and his name was shouted by dying lips upon every field of battle.
"Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the last shell exploded over the contending armies.
Green forests have grown up in the riffe pits and in the trenches. An universal charity has thrown a white mantle of forgiveness over the men who fought beneath the stars and stripes, and over tha} gallant few who followed to the death the waning fortunes of that ' bonnie blue flag ' we loved so well.
" Through all these years the dark-robed reaper has been busy at his work, striking with impartial hand the fearless hearts that formed the lines, and the lofty plumes that led the van.
" Lincoln, Grant, Sheridan, Thomas, Albert Sid- ney Johnston, Lee, Jackson and Bragg have long since passed to the other shore, and to-day the mar- tial form of Jefferson Davis, clothed in the uniform of gray, is consigned to mother earth.
"Death never gathered to her cold embrace a purer Christian; the cradle of childhood never rocked to sleep a gentler heart ; the fires of martyr- dom never blazed around a more heroic soul; the Roman cagles, the lilies of France nor the Lion of St. George never waved above a braver, truer sol- dier.
"On the field of Monterey, wounded and almost dying, he bore through fire and smoke the victor's wreath! In the counsels of State he wore the in- signia of a leader, and when his official light went out forever, he won the glory of a martyr. Crushed down by defeat, cast into the dungeons of Fortress Monroe, unawed by manacles, unterrified by a fel- on's death that seemed inevitable, this ideal South- erner, this leader of the lost cause, was still true to his people, and rosc above the gloom of his sur- roundings, tall, majestic and eternal as the pyra- mids that look down upon Sahara. As bold Sir Belvidere said of kingly Arthur, 'The like of him will never more be seen on earth.'
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