Makers and Romance of Alabama History Part 6

He returned to Mobile in 1853, entered the lumber business, was burnt out, and entered again the field of journalism by purchasing the Mobile Register. In 1856 he was appointed by President Pierce minister to Mexico, in which capacity he served for two years.

Colonel Forsyth's mission to Mexico was attended by much labor and perplexity, as the duty was imposed on him of adjusting varied and numerous claims against the Mexican government, which claims originated in the nature of the war waged by the Mexicans. There were claims for imprisonments, murders, confiscation, and others, and while Colonel Forsyth labored without abatement, he had but timorous support from the Buchanan administration.

As a matter of fact, President Buchanan was gravely absorbed in the rush of events which tended toward the approaching Civil War, which broke like a storm over the country in 1861, and his foreign policy was one of conciliation. The reason of this presidential policy concerning Mexico is now obvious. In view of the pending conflict in the American states, the hostility of Mexico, for any reason, would be serious.

As an earnest advocate of the rights of the citizens of the American states at the Mexican capital, Colonel Forsyth was gravely embarra.s.sed by the feeble support lent by his government, and this led to the severance of his relations with the diplomatic service. Having resigned, he returned to Mobile and resumed his editorial work.

With qualifications so varied, he was frequently called into active service by the people. While his pen was actively employed, he was summoned to such important posts as that of mayor of Mobile, legislator, alderman in his adopted city, and other stations of public interest.

In March, 1861, Colonel Forsyth was sent, together with Messrs. Crawford of Georgia, and Roman of Louisiana, on a peace commission to Washington.

There was but slight hope of accomplishing anything, and it is doubtful if there was any more serious intention involved in the mission than that of gaining time for a more efficient equipment of the South for the pending struggle. It was a time for tactics, and a play for advantage. The mission was a bootless one, and in due time the war burst on the country.

During the Civil War, Colonel Forsyth served for a time on the staff of General Braxton Bragg, meanwhile retaining his connection with his paper, for, after all, the pen was the most potent instrument in the hand of Colonel Forsyth. After the close of the war he proved to be one of the most masterly spirits in steering the state through the storm of reconstruction. The pen of no one in the South was more powerful during that chaotic period. Statesman, jurist and journalist, he was equipped for guidance in an emergency like this, and with the zeal of a patriot he responded to every occasion that arose. His excessive labor made sad inroads on his const.i.tution, his health was broken, but despite this he was persistent in labor. He was of that type of public servants who sought not applause for its own sake, but was impelled by an unquestioned patriotism which yielded to demands of whatever kind, high or low, in order that he might serve the public.

Much as Colonel Forsyth did in the exercise of his superior versatility, all else was incidental to the wield of his prolific pen. He became the South's most brilliant journalist. The compa.s.s of his vision was that of a statesman, and during the troublous times which followed the Civil War, the counsel of one like him was needed, and that counsel found most profitable expression through the nib of his powerful pen.

Day after day, for a long period of years, the columns of the Mobile Register glittered with thought that moved on the highest level and that found expression in polished and incisive diction. It was brightened by the loftiest tone of rhetoric, sustained throughout by the best strain of scholarship, never lapsing, either in tone or expression, into the commonplace. There was a fastidious touch in his style, a cla.s.sical mold to his thought, which, while they pleased the most scholarly of readers, equally charmed the common people.

Under the sway of his forceful and trenchant pen the Mobile Register became one of the most dominant factors in southern thought. That journal found readers in all the states, and more than any other in the South at that time, it won the attention of the metropolitan press. In no editorial sanctum has he been surpa.s.sed in rareness of diction, nor in power of expression.

GEORGE GOLDTHWAITE

There was a possibility at one time of Judge George Goldthwaite becoming a military man. After spending his younger years in Boston, where he had as school fellows such men as Charles Sumner and R. C. Winthrop, Goldthwaite became a cadet at the military academy at West Point. Among his cla.s.smates at the academy was General (Bishop) Polk, while in more advanced cla.s.ses were R. E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston and Jefferson Davis. Goldthwaite was within one year of the completion of his course when he became involved in a hazing fracas and quietly left the inst.i.tution, as he knew what the consequences would be. At that time, 1826, Alabama was in the infancy of statehood, and he a youth of seventeen. His brother was at that time a rising young lawyer at Montgomery and the younger brother entered on the study of law under his elder brother.

The thoroughness of mental drill to which he had been subjected in the Boston schools, as well as at the military academy, made his headway in law comparatively easy, and at the end of the year, when he was but eighteen, he was admitted to practice and opened an independent office at Monticello, Pike County. The youthful lawyer did not lack for clients and he remained in this rural village for a period of several years, after which he returned to Montgomery, where his ability became widely recognized.

In 1843 he offered for the judgeship of the circuit court against the inc.u.mbent of the bench, Judge Abraham Martin, and was elected. In 1850 he was opposed by Jefferson Jackson, a gentleman of prominence at the bar, and was again elected. In 1852 Judge Goldthwaite was chosen a justice on the supreme bench, and four years later, when Judge Chilton resigned, Judge Goldthwaite became chief justice, but after serving in this capacity just thirteen days he suddenly resigned and resumed the practice of the law.

For three years after the beginning of the Civil War Judge Goldthwaite served as adjutant general of the state under the appointment of Governor Moore. Just after the close of the war he was elected again to the position of circuit judge, but in 1866, under the reconstruction acts of congress, he was removed.

In 1870 he was elected to the United States senate from Alabama. This brief and cursory survey of an eventful life affords but a bare hint of the marvelous activity and usefulness with which the career of Judge Goldthwaite was crowned.

Like most men of deeply studious habits, there was wanting in the bearing of Judge Goldthwaite a spirit of cordiality. His peculiar sphere was the court room or the law office. He had a fondness for the discussion of the profound principles of law and reveled in its study. An indefatigable student of the law, he was one of the ablest attorneys and jurists the state ever had. The statement of a proposition by him was as clear as a Syrian atmosphere and in its elucidation before a jury his diction was terse, crisp and simple, so that the veriest rustic could understand it.

Quiet in manner and with unadorned English he would unravel a knotty proposition so that every thread was straightened, and everyone who knew the meaning of the simplest diction could readily grasp his meaning. He was a master of simple diction.

On the bench, Judge Goldthwaite was profound, but always clear and simple.

Every word seemed to fall into its appropriate place, and not a flaw was left in the statement of a fact or principle. In the social circle his conversation partook of the same lucid diction, revealing a fund of information and a versatility of learning quite exceptional.

Of a stocky build, he was not prepossessing in personal appearance, but when he began to speak his diction glowed with the heat of a quiet earnestness, and all else was forgotten but the charm of his incomparable speech.

Judge Goldthwaite achieved but slight distinction as a national senator, because it was a time when the voice of a senator from the South booted but little. The wounds of the Civil War were still fresh and smarting, and the calmness of his temperament and the aversion to hostile excitement forbade his flaring in empty speech, as would have been true of many another. As a matter of fact, his sphere was not the forum, and he had no taste for the dull routine of congressional proceeding.

Judge Goldthwaite's mind was distinctively judicial. He served in the senate as a matter of patriotic duty, and not as a matter of choice. There was a peculiar condition which required his continued presence there, and to this demand he responded. It was a time that called for calmness and conservatism, and no one was better prepared to ill.u.s.trate these virtues than Judge Goldthwaite.

His deportment in the National Senate challenged the admiration of all. A former cla.s.smate of Charles Sumner, as has already been said, he was the poles asunder from the New England statesman in the views entertained by Mr. Sumner, and often hotly expressed by him on the floor of the senate.

Judge Goldthwaite preserved a long and honorable career in Alabama, and left behind him a record of fame. He was far above the petty affairs of life, and lived and thought on an elevated plane high above most men. He was a student, a statesman, a jurist and a philosopher--all. He was an ornament to the state and easily one of its foremost citizens in all that pertained to its weal. He was without foil either in conduct or in character. His example was stimulating, and his influence elevating and inspiring. Any state would have been honored by the possession of a citizen so eminent.

ALEXANDER TRAVIS

The name of Travis is immortally linked with the tragedy of the Alamo, where the gallant Colonel William Travis was ma.s.sacred with his devoted band in that historic fortress at San Antonio. The Rev. Alexander Travis was an uncle of the hero of the Alamo. Colonel William Travis was a resident of Alabama before he removed to Texas, and practiced law in Clarke County. Thence he removed to Texas, where he became one of the most prominent sharers in the struggle for independence.

One of the dominant traits of the Travis stock was that of cool courage.

This was ill.u.s.trated as much in the life of the heroic missionary in the woods of southern Alabama as it was shown by his nephew in the ill-fated fortress of the Alamo. Alexander Travis removed to Conecuh County in 1817, and was one of the pioneer settlers of that region. He was a man of peace, but this did not obscure the heroic impulses of his nature, for in grappling with the stern conditions of pioneer life, in seeking to bring them into due subordination to organized social conditions, unusual pluck was needed, not alone, but wisdom and prudence, as well.

While sharing fully in the hardships of the early colonizers of south Alabama, Mr. Travis, as a minister of the gospel, led in all movements in the emergence of that region from chaotic conditions to the higher plane of advanced society. Himself denied the advantages of an education, he was the foremost in all movements to provide for general instruction. He was the founder of the town of Evergreen, now a bustling little center on the Louisville and Nashville Railway, between Montgomery and Mobile. He founded the academy at that point, which school has given place in later years to one of the state agricultural schools.

There was a pathetic touch in the life of a man who would labor on his little farm, cleared by his own hands, in the wilds of south Alabama, and who, at night, when the labor of the day was over, would sprawl himself in his little yard before his blazing pine-knot fire, and study his plain English Bible--the only book in his library. Leaving his hut in the woods, each week, in time to reach distant settlements to preach on Sunday, he would throw his little wallet of cotton cloth across his shoulders, and set out on foot to trudge the distance, sometimes of forty miles, for the privilege of preaching to some distant community. He came to know every foot of the wide Indian trails that wound through the forests over a vast area, and knew every log on which he could cross the large streams in those bridgeless days of the long ago. Nothing foiled him in the excursions of good, for when the rains would swell the streams, he would strip himself, cram his apparel within his wallet, and, being an expert swimmer, he would hold his bag above his head with one hand, while with the other he would swim to the opposite side, redress, and onward plod his way.

Among the elements of abounding romance in our history, nothing exceeds in interest the intrepidity of this pioneer hero in contributing to the moral and spiritual side of the early days of our history. His punctuality in meeting his appointments, and his devotion to the gospel and to the people, won for him a confidence supreme. In those days when courts were not, and yet where conflicting litigants were, cases for final adjudication would be held in abeyance "till the preacher comes." Causes were submitted, but he would never consent to a consideration of them till the contending parties would agree to abide amicably his decision. Such was the clearness and saneness of his judgment, the fairness of his spirit, and his profound sense of right, that every litigant would promptly accept this condition. He was jury, advocate, and judge, all in one, and for many years, in that interior pioneer region, he acted in this threefold capacity, while he rendered unrequited service as a missionary.

His was a strange, strong, romantic life, spent for the good of others to the neglect of his own personal comfort. That cla.s.s has dwindled to a list so small and rare that today, when similar devotion is shown, the world knows no higher designation for such a man than that of "crank," yet it is the crank that turns things.

In later years and under better conditions, Mr. Travis came to ride the wide regions through on horseback, with his leathern saddle-bags beneath him. Under the tall pines which then grew in those southern parts, he would frequently stretch himself at night, on the green gra.s.s, tired and sleepy, with his head pillowed on his saddle-bags, and beneath the stars, he would be wooed to sleep by the moaning pines above him. His faithful horse was tethered close by to browse the wire gra.s.s and the native peavines, while the missionary would sleep and await the coming of the dawn. Without a cent of compensation, Alexander Travis labored through many eventful years, creating the means with his own hands with which to sustain his work, and uncheered by aught else than the consciousness of duty to humanity and to G.o.d.

With the expansion of population, and with the growth of prosperity, Mr.

Travis came in the second half of his life to possess a measurable degree of wealth, but from a steady purpose of doing good, he never wavered. He was a man of commanding appearance, of natural dignity of port, and possessed of the natural a.s.sertion which these give; yet he was modest, and commanded esteem by his unquestioned qualities of leadership. There was no element of flabbiness in his character, no cant and drivel in his utterances, but in all that pertained to him he was a n.o.bleman by nature.

His judgment was incisive and discriminative, his poise collected, and while without the least exhibition of violence, he was courageous in his entertainment of views, and p.r.o.nounced in their expression. In nothing did his courage so manifest itself as in his stoutness of spirit in the face of difficulty. Nothing that he regarded as possible baffled him, and while never stern, he was immovable from that which he conceived to be right, whether reinforced by others or not. He was a benediction to the state while living, and, being dead, he yet speaks.

JOHN A. WINSTON

John A. Winston enjoyed the distinction of being the first native born governor of the state. He was a native of Madison County, where he was born in 1812, and received his collegiate training at LaGrange College and the University of Nashville. His grandfather was an officer in the army of the Revolution from Virginia. The family name of Anthony was preserved in that given the governor.

Governor John Anthony Winston first devoted his attention to planting. He removed from the mountain region to west Alabama in 1834, and bought a fine plantation in Sumter County, one of the counties of the famous black belt. Six years after his settlement in Sumter County he was chosen its representative to the legislature. To this office he was re-elected and then chosen for the state senate, which position he continued to hold for ten consecutive years, becoming the presiding officer of that body in 1847.

The ability of Governor Winston became more generally recognized in 1848, when he went to Baltimore as a delegate to the national convention which nominated General Ca.s.s for the presidency. Mr. Winston made a speech before that body in the vindication of the national Democracy, which attracted widespread attention and brought him into prominence before the entire country.

During his senatorial career he entered into the cotton commission business in Mobile, which commercial relation he continued till the close of his life. While not engaged in official duty his attention was divided between his planting interest and his business in Mobile, where he spent much of his time. The sterling worth of Mr. Winston, his clearness of judgment, range of comprehension, force of character and exact practicalness, together with his undoubted leadership of men and statesmanship, served to win for him an augmented public confidence, and in 1853 he became the candidate for governor of the state, and was elected without opposition. Two years later, at the expiration of his first gubernatorial term, he was opposed by Honorable George D. Shortridge. The campaign was one of unusual energy and even of bitterness. The state was agitated throughout, both candidates appearing before large and excited audiences in every part. Governor Winston was the democratic candidate, while Mr. Shortridge espoused the cause of the Know-Nothing or American party. Mr. Winston defeated his opponent by a majority of about twelve thousand.

Conditions had now conspired to make the farmer-governor the great leader of the Democratic hosts in the state. No man who has lived in Alabama ever had a completer grasp on a party organization than that had by Governor Winston at this time. Happily for the state, it was a power wisely used with disinterested patriotism. The direction of affairs was as devoid of the alloy of personal aggrandizement as was possible, and this was duly recognized by the public. Governor Winston went as a delegate-at-large to the Charleston convention in 1860, and after the nomination of Mr. Douglas he led the electoral ticket in the state. On the outbreak of the war he became the colonel of the Eighth Alabama Regiment, and as such served for twelve months, when he was forced to retire from the service by an attack of rheumatism which physically disabled him. His career as a soldier in the army of Virginia was in harmony with his general reputation as a civilian. His regiment was fiercely engaged at Seven Pines, because, being at the front, it was brought into sharp contact with the enemy. The fight was hand to hand, with odds in numbers against the gallant Eighth Alabama.

Colonel Winston was at the head of his regiment, and, placing his bridle reins in his teeth, he led his force with a large pistol in each hand.

When commanded to surrender his reply was that he had not joined the army to surrender and that was not his business. On his return home he devoted his attention to planting, and with unabated patriotism aided in every way possible the fortunes of the Confederacy.

In 1865 Governor Winston was sent as a delegate from Sumter County to the const.i.tutional convention of Alabama, and was afterward chosen for a seat in the National Senate, but his seat was denied him, and he was afterward disfranchised by the radical forces then in control of the government.

This closed his career of public service. He never recovered from the rheumatism contracted while in the service in Virginia, and died in Mobile on December 21, 1871, at the age of fifty-nine.

The combination of qualities entering into the character of Governor Winston was more than ordinary, all of which characteristics were based on a clear, solid foundation of remarkably good sense in all that he did and said, privately and officially. He was altogether devoid of pretense or of a.s.sumption. He moved on a straight line of impartiality and of unbiased thought. He did his own thinking and reached his own conclusions. When a conclusion was reached it was evident that he had gone over all the ground, had weighed and measured every possible consideration, after which was done it was futile to seek to dislodge him. His scrupulous firmness sometimes bore the aspect of sternness, and in the absence of a diplomacy to soften it a decision would sometimes offend the sensitive; but in view of duty, none of these things moved him. He was not without the element of gentleness and of profound sympathy, but above these rose his conscience, the dictates of which he would not disregard.