Makers and Romance of Alabama History Part 9

Alabama's historian, Albert J. Pickett, was a native of North Carolina, and removed to Alabama about one year before it was made a state. In his early years he mingled much with the Indians, learned their character and disposition, and became profoundly interested in their destiny.

The first purpose in life of Mr. Pickett was to fit himself for the bar, and he entered the office of an elder brother, William D. Pickett, to fit himself for that profession, but on discovering that he had no apt.i.tude for the law he gave it up and entered on planting, to which he devoted his life.

His interest in the Indians led him into an investigation of their history, and this, in turn, to the events which had occurred in connection with the invasion of their primitive domains by the whites. The investigation proved a fascination and led to his preparation of the "History of Alabama and incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi from the earliest period."

Considering the paucity of material and the difficulty of obtaining it, the undertaking was a colossal one, but Mr. Pickett gave himself to it with a zeal worthy the enterprise, traveled much, wrote many letters, and spent a large sum of money in the interest of the preparation of the history. For years together, he was patiently and a.s.siduously engaged in the acc.u.mulation of data, the sifting of facts, and the preparation of the two volumes. The most painstaking care was exercised with respect to accuracy of statement, and this made the undertaking a most plodding one.

But in 1851 the author was enabled to issue the two volumes in neat and attractive form.

So comprehensive was the work, so minute in detail, and so careful were the citations that on its appearance it was greeted with great favor not alone in Alabama, but elsewhere. Had the conditions of authorship been as favorable as they now are, the work would doubtless have been more happily arranged, but as it is, it is a monument of labor, skill, industry and fidelity. It was an unusual occurrence that the history should have been favorably mentioned in a message to the legislature by Governor Collier and with such favor.

The style of the book is simple and easy, the statement of fact clear and devoid of ornament or speculation, and throughout it is entirely free of bias. The obvious intention of the author was to state fact as he saw it, nor was a statement made by him that was not supported by undisputed fact.

No book was ever more scrupulously written as is shown by the care with which each statement is made.

While in the light of subsequent events the unity of the work is somewhat impaired and disjointed, still taken altogether, and the conditions attending its preparation, it is a marvelous accomplishment. Pickett provided a mine of fact into which all future historians of Alabama can dig, certainly with respect to the history antedating the occupation of Alabama by the whites.

The history extends no further than to the period of the attainment of statehood of Alabama, and yet the author was able to bring it up to the close of the middle of the nineteenth century. It is unfortunate that this was not done, but he was averse to deal with the political aspects presented by the different periods of the state's history. But in doing that which he accomplished he has furnished a basis for all future historians. That Mr. Pickett should have done so much, and done it so well, makes him worthy of the perpetual grat.i.tude of the people of Alabama.

A gentleman of wide and varied information, his mind was a compendium of valuable stores of knowledge. He was an animated converser, fluent and entertaining, and a most exemplary citizen. His popularity, greatly enhanced by his valuable history, his universally recognized integrity of character, and his unquestioned ability, led to the mention of his name in 1853 for the governorship of Alabama.

But when the matter was brought with some degree of seriousness to his attention, he frankly declined to be considered for this exalted station, saying that he was engaged in the preparation of another work of greater comprehensiveness than that of the History of Alabama, which he indicated as the History of the Southwest. Unfortunately he died before the completion of the proposed work and it was never published. Alabama sustained a great loss when Colonel Pickett died at the early age of forty-eight. Besides his history, he wrote much for the press and always with entertainment and profit.

In 1859 General C. M. Jackson wrote a biographical sketch of Colonel Albert J. Pickett, which sketch was embodied in pamphlet form. In one place General Jackson says of him: "He outlived his entire family--father, mother, brother and sister--and his offspring now const.i.tutes a new generation, without a single living link to connect it with a former one.

He left a devoted wife, several affectionate children, and many friends to deplore his untimely death; besides the proper appreciation by the public of what may be deemed a great calamity--that of the loss of one who had so largely contributed to the general welfare. His remains were followed by a large concourse of relatives and friends and interred in the burial ground at the old family residence in Autauga County, which Colonel Pickett had inherited--where are also the graves of father, mother and other members of this family."

Unselfishly he lived and labored, and peacefully he died--one of the most useful and distinguished citizens of the state.

HENRY TUTWILER

Of an entirely different mold from any of those already noted in these sketches was Henry Tutwiler, LL.D., Alabama's first great and distinguished educator. Reared in Virginia, Dr. Tutwiler was among the first great graduates of the famous university of that state, bearing away the highest degree which could be conferred by that eminent inst.i.tution, that of Master of Arts. Possessing a readily receptive and capacious mind, Dr. Tutwiler was the peer in point of scholarship of any man in the South when he issued from the university of Virginia. He was the first to receive the degree of Master of Arts from that eminent school.

His equipment of scholarship would have fitted him for any chair in any American school of learning, but he conceived the idea of founding a model school of his own where he might put into execution his ideas of education. This was not done at once on graduation, but toward this he was moving in the consummation of his plans.

Dr. Tutwiler became to Alabama that which Dr. Arnold of the famous Rugby school was to England. He was not only a typical gentleman of the old school of the South, but a ripe scholar, a teacher of rare ability, and a model of manhood to youth. Simple and unpretentious in manner and in life, he was a pattern in character to the young men who came under his instruction. His culture was unsurpa.s.sed, his scholarship profound and comprehensive, and his character throughout life vastly above reproach.

Few men have left a profounder impression on his students than Dr. Henry Tutwiler. There was in his bearing the utter absence of the consciousness of his greatness, while there was always the demonstration of the gentleman of a pure democracy. Simple and easy of manner, affable, gentle and readily communicative, he was easily adjustable to all circles without the slightest hint of constraint, and by a contagious touch, indefinable but effectual, he made all others at ease in his presence.

After his graduation from the University of Virginia he remained for two years at the inst.i.tution in the pursuit of special studies, after which he established a high school in the neighborhood of Charlottesville, where he taught for a time. He was induced to remove to Alabama by being offered the chair of ancient languages in the university of the state on the establishment of that inst.i.tution in 1831. This position he occupied for six years. He was induced from this position to accept the chair of mathematics and philosophy in Marion college in Perry County, and two years later went to the chair of mathematics and chemistry in LaGrange college, where he taught for eight years more.

But a subordinate position was ill suited to one of capabilities so varied, and in 1847 he left LaGrange and founded a private school at Green Springs in this state, where he could put into execution a long cherished desire to fit young men for the rough encounters of the world, not only by training the mind, but by molding and directing the character.

No one was better fitted for a position like this than Dr. Tutwiler.

Himself a ripe scholar and a gentleman of superior culture, backed by a natural impressiveness, his sway of influence was both salutary and elevating. In a quiet retreat, far from the madding crowd and the din and tumult of a busy world, with nothing to detract and all to concentrate and stimulate, he was a character-builder as well as a developer of the brain.

The experience of former years as a teacher brought to his work on this independent scale served Dr. Tutwiler admirably. He had learned the defectiveness of a system in which the raw youth with total unpreparedness would often stride over much that was fundamental and leave behind him breaches never to be filled, possibly, in his eager outreach for a diploma which when gotten could not be read by the possessor. Every observant educator is impressed by the divers irregularities with which most young men enter college. Symmetry and uniformity are lacking, and often the defects in fundamental work are too far pa.s.sed to be overcome and corrected in the higher departments for which the youth has been unwisely persuaded that he is prepared. Happily for these later times, this has been corrected by an admirable public school system with its trained instructors, but this was not true in the early days when Dr. Tutwiler opened his school at Green Springs.

To establish a school of logical graduation with every department under his direct supervision, in which school the student would be thoroughly grounded from the elementary upward, so as to have a more solid basis for building, and an idea of correctness and symmetry in all affairs, was the aim of this skilled educator. Schools of this particular character had dotted the South ever since the years of recuperation following the Revolution, and fortunately for the country that this was so.

In 1850 there were in eleven of the southern states at least 2,000 academies of varying grades, with more than 3,200 instructors, and more than 70,000 pupils. On the highest level of these valuable schools of learning were the Concord academy and the Hanover academy in Virginia; Caldwell's and Bingham's schools in North Carolina; Mount Zion and Waddell's school in South Carolina; the academy of Richmond County and Sunbury academy in Georgia; Green Springs school in Alabama, and Elizabeth academy in Mississippi. All these had become noted in the educational system of the South by the middle of the nineteenth century. Among them none was more famous than the one presided over by Dr. Tutwiler.

A certificate from a school like this and from so skilled an expert, meant much to a youth as he entered a school of more advanced learning to prosecute his final studies. The a.s.surance of a firm footing and familiarity with subjects which led logically to more advanced studies, gave to a student the thoroughness of equipment which would save him from the haphazard to which he would be otherwise exposed.

From the walls of the Green Springs school went forth young men by the hundreds with initial equipment which not only made the mastery of a college course more easy and pleasant, but which served to lift them into future prominence. Pa.s.sing from under the tutelage of Dr. Tutwiler and bearing a certificate with his name on it, was a guarantee worth the having by any young man. From this rural retreat this skilled man of letters sent into the swelling ranks of usefulness in this and adjoining states, hundreds of young men who have helped to make their commonwealths resplendent. It was not a demonstrative work, in the sense of showiness, but it was demonstrative as it found expression in richness of result and in exalted citizenship. Thus labored for many years this sage teacher and mellow scholar, and far more than can be computed is Alabama indebted to Henry Tutwiler.

DANIEL PRATT

Genuine worth is frequently overlooked because it does not appear in the glare and rush of demonstration, and because it may modestly shrink from the spectacular. The solid distinction reached by many is due to conditions which lie out of sight and without which many who reach positions of prominence would not have been heard of beyond their native horizons.

Impelled by ambition, many see and seize the opportune moment presented, fall into the current created by others, and are borne to eminence. Lying back of that which the world esteems greatness are causes created of which many avail themselves to ride to popular spectacularity, and yet these may be only the superficial and surface effects.

In what are usually esteemed the humbler walks of life are oftentimes giants who set in motion the tides of influence which make great communities and even states, and yet whose worthy claims are never heralded to the world as are the deeds of those who reach the popular heights toward which the eyes of the public are accustomed to turn.

To this worthy cla.s.s in the quieter walks of life belong numbers of the best men of every generation whose vocations are such as to hide them from the popular view, and yet without whom the greatness and the prosperity of a commonwealth could not be.

Belonging to this cla.s.s was Daniel Pratt, a native of New Hampshire, a carpenter by trade, and a man in whose capacious brain were great enterprises. Utterly without pretention, he was at first a common laborer, working at his trade in different cities in Georgia for a period of about fifteen years, in the early part of the century.

At that time the question of cotton as a staple had a.s.sumed new proportions in view of the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney about fifty years previously, and in view of the capabilities of the soils of the South to produce the staple. The struggles of Whitney to maintain his rights as the inventor of the gin had been prolonged through a protracted period of years, leaving him barren honor alone, but his suggestion had found its way to the inventive genius and mechanical apt.i.tude of others, among whom was Daniel Pratt. He removed to Montgomery in 1833, for the purpose of establishing a gin factory in that town. At that time the manufacture of cotton gins was quite limited, but the sagacious carpenter saw in the future the possibility of a means of vast commerce in the manufacture of machines that would reduce the indispensable staple to marketable conditions, and while conditions in Alabama were at that time still new, Pratt discerned an opportunity both for the gin and the production of cotton.

Lands were of fabulous fertility; population was pouring southward; the advocacy of slavery had been hushed by the prospective productiveness of southern lands, and Alabama was destined to become the center of an expansive region for the production of cotton.

At that time capital was not so abundant, cotton was not so pregnant a factor in commerce, and the manufacture of gins was rather a novelty among the industries. But this st.u.r.dy, quiet man of business was controlled by the conditions then prevailing as he was by the possibilities of the future. Being a pioneer in an important branch of industry meant much, and he had the pluck and faith to venture. Pratt believed in himself and no man succeeds who does not; he believed in the future of the country, and was resolved to begin the manufacture of gins.

He was not encouraged to locate at Montgomery, as he would have been glad to do, and most fortunate for that city would it have been, could he have done so. Mr. Pratt went to Autauga County, and on the plantation of General Elmore manufactured a few gins. This was only a tentative venture and one preparatory for greater things toward which he was gradually moving.

On Autauga Creek, near McNeil's mill, there was abundant water power with which to operate his primitive machinery, and leasing the use of this power for a nominal sum, he was enabled finally to begin the manufacture of gins. Both faith and grit were needed to meet the demand of the occasion, but these Mr. Pratt had. Guided by the same sagacity which had led him thus far, he was finally in condition to purchase land farther up on Autauga Creek, where he built his first factory and founded a town which he named Prattville.

The manufacture of gins in the South and the production of cotton acted and reacted on each other with wonderful effect. Mr. Pratt was compelled to enlarge his facilities for the manufacture of gins, so that by 1860 he was building not less than 1,500 each year. The Pratt gin became famous throughout the South, and to the beginning of the Civil War the sales continued to grow. From that little industrial center in the woods of Autauga were going forth the means of energy and stimulation which were gradually transforming the agricultural conditions of the entire South.

Through the years this quiet but enterprising genius was prosecuting his work unseen and largely unknown for a long time, save by means of his gin, and yet his quiet retreat was a center from which there was emanating motive power for the promotion of prosperity.

Mr. Pratt was Alabama's first great captain of industry. He was not a dreamer, but a seer. He projected his plans into the future, wisely measured their scope, and carefully moved to their execution. He had a mission and wisely fulfilled it. He probed the future with the eye of an industrial prophet, and his interests expanding with the growth of demand, he himself was being made while he was making. Action always reacts. While the man makes the fortune, the fortune makes the man. While through more than a generation others through the flare of publicity enjoyed the plaudits of the mult.i.tude and of the press, Daniel Pratt pursued the even tenor of his way, building substantially, lastingly. While others were in the current he was on the outer edge creating a current of his own.

On Autauga Creek he has built his own monument in a mighty industry and in a little city which is now sought by the world's current of commerce.

MICHAEL TUOMEY

Alabama's original state geologist was Professor Michael Tuomey, whose service was invaluable, and therefore deserves permanent recognition.

Professor Tuomey was a native of Cork, Ireland, where he was born on St.

Michael's day, 1805.