Makers and Romance of Alabama History Part 22

WILLIAM C. OATES

Altogether worthy of enrollment among the great men of Alabama, is the name of Governor William C. Oates. His service to the state for many years was varied and loyal. He was crowned with honors by his countrymen and was altogether worthy. Reared to manhood with only ordinary educational advantages, he was for many years recognized as one of the foremost citizens of the state. He was a man of solid qualities without the glint of the picturesque or the foil of the superficial. Honesty was his purpose in life, and in view of this quality, his faults were as transparent as were his merits. In no cause or issue was there a misapprehension of his position. If in some respects he was rugged, it was due to the fact that he did not propose to pose for that which he was not. He had his enemies, but they were no more cordial in their opposition than were his numerous and strong friends in their attachment and loyalty.

In the dawn of manhood he gave but little promise of success. Leaving home at the age of sixteen, he roved the far Southwest for a period of years, struck the hard sides of life, and returned to his home more matured in wisdom by his bitter experience, and came to realize the necessity of stability of plan and purpose in order to succeed. In the raw region of Henry County, as it then was, Oates taught a rural school for a period of months, later readdressed himself to study, and finished his course at a high school at Lawrenceville. At that time the bar opened the widest and most inviting gateway to eminence, and Oates aspired to be a lawyer.

In the office of Pugh, Bullock & Buford, at Eufaula, the rustic aspirant learned the principles of his chosen profession, and was admitted to the bar in 1858. Locating in the rural village of Abbeville, the seat of justice of Henry County, he rose to be the leading lawyer of southeast Alabama, and gradually came to be recognized as one of the best lawyers of the state. His matter-of-fact manner and st.u.r.dy honesty won him a wide circle of confidence, and men would ride on horseback long distances to engage his professional service.

The rural press was not so abundant at that early day as it has since become, and because of a lack of representation in that then inaccessible region, he edited a newspaper at Abbeville. He was engaged in the combined functions of editing a country journal and practicing law, when the storm of war broke over the land in 1861. Raising a company of volunteers, he became the captain, and was attached to the Fifteenth Alabama Regiment of Infantry. He led his command into twenty-seven battles and became conspicuous for his courage on the field. He received his commission as colonel in 1863, and received a wound at Brown's Ferry, on the Tennessee River, near the close of that year. At Fussell's Mills, near Petersburg, Va., he sustained the loss of his right arm, but after recovering from the wound, he resumed the command of his regiment, which command he retained until the close of the war.

Returning to Abbeville after his capitulation, Colonel Oates again took up his practice, and came to be esteemed one of the leading citizens of the state. With all important movements in the state he was connected, and his practice meanwhile became immense, so that Colonel Oates came to be regarded not only as one of the most successful and leading lawyers of the state, but one of the most prosperous. In many ways his name was prominently known throughout the state, and a number of times mentioned in connection with gubernatorial honors. This was notably true in the two conventions for the nomination of a governor in the years 1870 and 1872.

In 1870 he represented Henry County in the state legislature, where he became a distinguished leader. His service as a legislator brought him still more prominently before the public. He was a member of the const.i.tutional convention in 1875, and from 1881 to 1894 he served his district, the third Alabama, in the National Congress. His long and useful career in congress gave him an influence second to that of none other of the Alabama delegation. He was serving in congress when he was chosen governor of the state in 1895.

Shortly after this came the monetary slogan of the free coinage of silver at the sixteen-to-one ratio, of which William Jennings Bryan was the apostle, and Governor Oates was with the minority of eminent Alabamians who resisted the doctrine, in consequence of which he paid the penalty of defeat at the polls for the national senatorship in a subsequent election.

When the Spanish-American War began in 1898 Governor Oates was commissioned a brigadier general and served throughout the ninety-three days of that sharp and decisive contest.

He was again chosen a member of the convention which revised the state const.i.tution, in which body his services were of immense value to Alabama.

His closing years were spent in the city of Montgomery, where he continued to practice law till compelled by failure of vision to surrender it. He died at an advanced age.

Reviewing a sketch so brief and imperfect, and one altogether unworthy of his long career of usefulness, we are enabled to glean sufficient to learn that for a full half century Governor Oates was engaged in contributing to the growth and development of the state. The stations filled by him with ability so signal, and extending through so many years, attest his usefulness as a valuable citizen of Alabama. As a lawyer of distinction, a soldier as courageous as any son of Alabama, a delegate in molding the fundamental law of the commonwealth, a statesman whose qualities were signally demonstrated in the halls of congress, and in the gubernatorial chair, there is due him the worthiest praise. Solid rather than brilliant, rugged rather than polished, useful rather than ornate, and substantial without the alloy of artificiality, there were embodied in Governor Oates elements of genuine greatness. In nothing mediocre, he rendered a permanent service to Alabama and went to his grave as one of the state's most distinguished public servants.

JONATHAN HARALSON

Judge Jonathan Haralson was an eminent type of that generation of southern gentlemen who were a connecting link between the old and the new South. He had just reached the threshold of cultured manhood when the crash of war came. He was of the finished mold of the young southerners of that period.

He descended from a n.o.ble stock that was pre-eminent in southern society and in the affairs of his native section. His father belonged to that wealthy cla.s.s of typical planters that gave prestige to the South on two continents. His uncle, General Hugh A. Haralson, was one of the most distinguished congressmen from Georgia, and for many years together was one of the most learned jurists of that state.

Graduating from the University of Alabama in 1851, Judge Jonathan Haralson studied law and was admitted to the bar a year later, but in order to equip himself thoroughly he went to the law school of the University of Louisiana, where he spent a year and obtained his degree of LL.B. He immediately entered on the practice in Selma, where he became eminent as a citizen, barrister, and an active Christian.

When, in 1876, the legislature of Alabama organized the city court of Selma, a court of common law with civil, criminal and equity jurisdiction, the bar of Dallas County recommended Judge Haralson to Governor Houston for the judgeship of this court. For sixteen years he presided over the court with signal ability. At the end of that time he was elected to the supreme bench of the state, where he served for twelve years.

One of the distinctions conspicuous among others possessed by Judge Haralson is worthy of special mention. His unusual culture, affableness of disposition, cheerfulness, varied ability, and prominence in Christian work found for him unsought niches of high honor in Christian work. Purely in recognition of his worth, he was chosen the president of the Baptist State Convention of Alabama in 1874, which position he held for eighteen years, and was the most distinguished layman in the denomination of the state during that time. In 1888 he was chosen the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which embraces the largest Baptist const.i.tuency in the world, and for ten successive years presided over that great body. He was a model parliamentarian, and came to rank as one of the foremost laymen of his denomination in the union. His retirement from that position was voluntary, for no one ever enjoyed more universal confidence and popularity than he.

Other honors still were his. He was for many years a member of the board of trustees of the Polytechnic Inst.i.tute at Auburn, chairman of the board of trustees of Howard College, and a member of the American Baptist Education Society. An index to the character of Judge Haralson is afforded in the remark which he has been heard to make that he suffered nothing to interfere with his religious obligations. His conception of life throughout was ideal. Himself a model of genuine manliness, he sought to stimulate it in others. In all things his method was that of exactness.

There was a scrupulous care in his bearing, his speech, his conduct toward others, and to the close of his life, the little amenities that make up so much of life, were not lacking in his character. While his high sense of manliness begot firmness, it was of that type which always bore the stamp of gentleness.

His suavity won him friends by the mult.i.tude, and his character and ability gained for him unlimited confidence. Presiding over bodies sometimes rent by agitation, where skill and firmness were put to the severest test, such was his personal influence, and such the confidence reposed in him, that no appeals from his decision as a parliamentary officer were ever taken.

Judge Haralson has but recently pa.s.sed away, leaving behind him a record of public life of more than fifty years, with not a dent in his shield or a tarnish on his armor. He labored as long as he was able, and under the weight of years voluntarily retired from public life. His death occurred in his eighty-second year. In the quietude of his own home circle in Montgomery, after his retirement from the supreme bench, he serenely awaited the call of death.

Among the public men produced by Alabama, none ever excelled Judge Jonathan Haralson in loftiness of character, incorruptibleness of life, gentleness of disposition, and fidelity to duty. He was never the least ostentatious. His manner was quiet and cordial, and never the least reserved. While his conclusions were always positive and firm, they were so tempered by gentleness as to leave never a shadow behind. He was as cautious of the feelings of others as he was for those of his own.

No man was freer of self-seeking. It was purely in recognition of his worth that he was called forth by others to the varied functions which he performed. His companionableness bound to him the best of men who loved him because of the loftiness of his life.

He lived throughout, the life of a typical southern gentleman--easy and quiet of manner, pleasing always in his address, unstilted, yet possessed of all the graces of the highest expression of culture. He was never profuse of praise or of compliment, but indulged in a sort of pleasing raillery and jest in which was couched an estimate which he entertained, and which meant immensely more from him than would the extravagance of many another. In a circle of friends he was invariably charming. His appreciation of a joke was delightful, and in this he indulged to the close. Jocular without yielding to unseemly levity, easy without undue freedom or familiarity, sometimes slightly stinging in his jovial criticisms of those for whom he had the highest regard, he always recognized the boundary of propriety, and never suffered himself to be betrayed beyond. There was no a.s.sumption either in his speech or manner.

He was simple, while at the same time great in very many respects, invariably respectful, and dutiful to every trust, as a friend and as an official--these were the dominant traits in the character and life of Judge Jonathan Haralson.

W. J. SAMFORD

Readers of that sterling Democratic journal, the New York Daybook, published in the metropolis in the years before the war, recall the articles of a spicy correspondent from "The Oaks," in Alabama. That writer was the father of Gov. William James Samford. As one might judge from the conversation and from the speeches of Governor Samford, he was reared in an atmosphere of literature. To him, like to thousands of other southern youth, the war was untimely, as it interposed to cut short all prospects of a finished education, for as a stripling of seventeen he entered the service of the Confederacy. He had previously enjoyed all the facilities afforded in a country school near Auburn, and was in the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s at the University of Georgia, when the call to arms reached him. Youthful as the boy soldier was, he soon became a lieutenant in the Forty-sixth Alabama Infantry, which distinction he won by gallantry on the field.

Conditions were such that he was oftenest in command of the company.

Captured at Baker's Creek, he was taken to Johnson's Island. When his command was surrounded at Baker's Creek, with no chance of escape, he drew his sword and behind a log drove it into the ground to the hilt to prevent its falling into the hands of the enemy. After his exchange, Governor Samford rejoined his command and was with Lee's remnant when it surrendered.

Returning home when he was just twenty-one, Governor Samford went bravely to work on a farm to help save the growing crop of the spring of 1865.

During the following fall he was married to Miss Drake, and settled on a small farm which he largely tilled with his own hands for several years.

Possessed of an unusual intellect, as all who knew him recognized, Governor Samford was not content with turning the glebe, and procuring the elementary books of law, he would study at night after laboring through the day. He was fortunate in the companionship of an intelligent and sympathetic wife, to whom he would from time to time recite, as he would wade through the successive volumes of law.

In 1871 he removed to Opelika, was admitted to practice, and applied himself with energy. His thorough knowledge of the principles of law, resulting from his rigid application from the time of his entrance on its study, was superinduced by the labor which he bestowed on each case. A diligent, attentive, and intelligent lawyer is rarely without clients, and this admits of peculiar application to Governor Samford.

A striking and command physique, a genial manner, a mastery of his cases, and an eloquence which was natural, won him a practice that rapidly extended, not only, but a rank at the bar of which any one might justly feel proud. It is a notable fact that in the long career of the practice of Governor Stamford, he was never caught on any point unawares. He had gone over the entire ground in advance, had consulted the authorities with minute care, and entered the court fully equipped. Never presuming, as some lawyers do, that his opponents would overlook certain points involved in a given case, he strongly fortified each one, especially the weaker, so that he was ready for battle when the case was called.

This habit, well known in connection with the practice of Governor Samford, won for him a widening fame, so that his practice was considerable and prominent throughout East Alabama, and in other parts of the state, and even beyond. A client once defeated in an important criminal case, by the scientific knowledge of Governor Samford, remarked that a man who knew as much as Samford, should not be allowed to practice!

Instances occurred when the opposition and even the court itself, was taken by surprise by his exactness of knowledge of the scientific points involved in given cases. Governor Samford had read every available scientific work bearing on the case at issue, and was a match for the most expert witness that could be pitted against him.

While Governor Samford was fearless in the prosecution or defense of any cause, civil or criminal, entrusted to his care, there was always a stately suavity that characterized his bearing, even in the rough and tumble of the courtroom, as his native gentleness of heart forbade the slightest harshness, or any warmth of pa.s.sion. He was willing to acknowledge a lack of firmness on his part, about which he would speak to friends, but he would at the same time acknowledge that it was due to his indisposition to be unkind to any one.

The creation of the present board of pardon in this state was due to his energy, as he did not believe that so much of that which is sacred should be lodged in the hands of a single man, but that there should be deliberation derived from a number of sources in the settlement of grave questions. No one was more distrustful of his own firmness than was he when confronted by an issue involving much happiness. There was this womanly element in his great nature which would sway him in spite of himself. Whatever may be said of Governor Samford, his most obstinate opponent could never deny the existence of this trait of gentleness and kindness. Yet when confronted by a principle which demanded decision, he could be firm, and was, as was abundantly shown by the exercise of the veto power when it needed to be invoked.

Governor Samford's service to the state was manifold. Beginning as a soldier boy at seventeen, his career was marked throughout by services of a varied nature. While serving as a representative in the lower house, from Lee County, he was the recognized leader of that body. As senator, his merits were recognized by his being chosen the president of that body.

As a delegate to the const.i.tutional convention, his services were invaluable. As a representative in congress, he made a reputation for himself and for the state. Honored at last as governor, he brought to the functions of that high office his learning, ability, and experience in public life, all of which were valuable.

Only hints of the force of this profound lawyer, skilled statesman, cultured citizen, eloquent barrister, and Christian governor can be given in a sketch so circ.u.mscribed as this, but even such glimpses afford sufficient insight to enable one to judge of his rank of superiority.

Always bright and cheerful, his sense and appreciation of humor did not forsake him on his last bed of illness. Yet there was profound devotion to G.o.d which he cherished and cultivated to the end. Cut down in the prime of life, Governor Samford died while serving as governor of the state.

W. W. SCREWS

For solid and substantial service and for disinterested devotion to the cause of Democracy, the duration of all which stretches through a period of about a half century, none excels the veteran editor, William Wallace Screws, of Montgomery. From the early dawn of manhood to ripened age, Major Screws has been identified with the fortunes of his native state. It is doubtful that another has impressed the thought of the state so uninterruptedly for so long a time as he. There has never been the slightest waver in his fidelity and downright labor for a long period of years. Certainly he has sufficiently won the approval of the people of the state as to be worthy of a place among the men who have constructed the commonwealth to its present stage of advancement. No flash nor picturesqueness, no sensation nor sudden innovation has at any time attached to that which he has done--it has been service rendered as in a treadmill, patiently, persistently, and perseveringly. He has gone down into the depths with his people, has suffered as they have, and has risen along with them through the varying fortunes which have been theirs in the years of the immediate past.

Major Screws' native region is Barbour County. His academic training and all indeed he ever had, was at Glennville, a village noted in other days for its educational advantages. He entered life early, for he was admitted to the bar at twenty, after having studied in the law office of Watts, Judge & Jackson, at Montgomery. At the end of a two years' practice, he entered the Confederate service, being among the first to enlist. Like many others, Major Screws was not a secessionist, but he was a patriot, and subordinating his personal views to the expressed judgment of the people of Alabama, he shouldered his musket and went with the first troops that were concentrated at Pensacola. He joined in the capture of the navy yard and of Fort Barancas, and later became a lieutenant in Company H, Fifty-ninth Alabama regiment, and served under General Bragg in Tennessee and Kentucky, partic.i.p.ating in the battles of Chickamauga and Knoxville.

The last year of the war found Major Screws under Lee in Virginia. During that stressful and distressful period he was an active sharer, and was with the remnant of that brave army that surrendered at Appomattox. It was during his campaigning with the two armies that Major Screws developed his popular ability as a writer. A vigorous and versatile correspondent from the front, he enlivened the columns of the Montgomery Advertiser, then presided over by that brilliant editor, Samuel G. Reid. The keen insight of Major Screws into the situation led him at one time to forecast some of the contemplated movements of Bragg's army, the publication of which led to his arrest by General Bragg, but this was a merely meaningless episode, and only served to develop the fact that the sagacious correspondent had too keen an insight for the comfort of the commanding general.