Part 16

Alert to the movements of the federals, who were intent on gaining a solid footing in north Alabama, Roddy encountered still another raid at Barton's, and a second time saved that quarter of the state from invasion. The enemy was forced back, Roddy capturing a part of his artillery and inflicting on him severe loss in killed and wounded.

He was now master of the Tennessee valley, and as opportunity would afford, he would cross the river in a rapid raid, make valuable captures, and replenish his stores. At one time he dashed into the federal camp at Athens, taking the enemy completely by surprise, burned a quantity of stores and was off again, the enemy knew not where. Still later, Roddy fell suddenly on Corinth and secured as a trophy of victory six hundred horses and mules, and when pursued by Colonel Cornyn to Iuka, he turned on the enemy and forced him back.

General Roddy became "the swamp fox" of the Tennessee Valley and from unconjectured quarters would pounce on the enemy, inflict severe blows and reap trophies. When Colonel Streight entered on his daring raid through north Alabama, with a force picked for that perilous undertaking and splendidly equipped, and while he was being pursued by General Forrest with a force much inferior, the federal General Dodge entered the valley to cover the movements of General Streight. Acting in conjunction with Forrest, who was in hot pursuit of Streight, and whose command he eventually captured, Roddy, with an inferior force, checked Dodge and contested every inch of advance through Colbert County, thus enabling Forrest to overtake and bag Streight. By this indirect agency General Roddy was a sharer in the brilliant victory of Forrest.

The splendid qualities of General Roddy now attracted the attention of the Confederate government, and, though the theater of his exploits was contracted, he was thought of in connection with John H. Morgan and Mosby. General Forrest had great confidence in his ability as a commander, as was shown on more than one occasion.

For two years Roddy had so stubbornly resisted the movements of the enemy in the effort to broaden the basis of his occupancy in North Alabama, that the skillful commander had restricted him to the two points of Huntsville on the north and Corinth on the south. But Roddy was needed at Dalton for a season, in connection with the general movements of the army, and thence with his command he was ordered. This left the Tennessee Valley open to the enemy, and he entered it and strongly fortified himself at Decatur. When, later, General Roddy returned to the former scene of his operations he was unable to dislodge the federals from Decatur, but the rest of the territory he steadfastly held. When General Hood succeeded General Johnston in command of the western army, one of his chief reliances was Roddy, to keep open his communications.

Later in the war, Roddy came into more intimate and vital touch with Forrest, who was very fond of him, and co-operated with the great commander in many of his movements, and shared with him in some of his most brilliant victories. A brief sketch like this affords but an inkling of the power of generalship developed by General Roddy. He was a military genius. He was born to command. He was ever alert and active, and had a fondness for the dash of the field. He loved hard service, and rarely failed in an enterprise, for, with all his dash and daring, he was invariably cautious.

No commander in the Confederate army enjoyed more completely the confidence and devotion of his men. After the close of the war he removed to New York, embarked in the commission business, and there died.

W. H. FORNEY

The heroic services and patriotic devotion of General William Henry Forney entitle him to recognition on the roster of Alabama worthies. The contribution of service made by General Forney to the erection of the greatness of the commonwealth of Alabama is deserving of perpetual recognition.

General Forney descended from a family eminent in North Carolina, his grandfather being General Peter Forney of that state, and a granduncle being a distinguished member of congress from the same state. Himself a native of North Carolina, General William H. Forney came to Alabama with his father's family in 1835, when he was a mere boy of twelve years. Reared in Calhoun County, he was educated at the state university, from which he was graduated in 1844, after which he entered on the study of the law.

When the Mexican War broke out, young Forney enlisted in the First Regiment of Alabama Volunteers, commanded by Colonel Coffey, in which command he became a lieutenant, serving as such at the siege of Vera Cruz. Returning home after the expiration of the term for which he enlisted, which was one year, he entered again on the study of his law books. Licensed to practice in 1848, he was the next year chosen a representative from Calhoun County to the legislature. With this single interruption he was devoted to his profession till the declaration of hostilities between the northern and southern states. He entered the army as a captain in the Tenth Alabama Regiment which was destined to suffer from unusual casualties from the first conflict in which it was engaged to the close of the war. The regiment of which he was a member was doing some detached duty at Drainville, Va., when it became engaged with the enemy, and among the seriously wounded was Captain Forney, who was shot in the leg, but within sixty days he was again in command of his company at the front. Meanwhile he had become the major of his regiment, with which he was engaged in the battle of Yorktown. At Williamsburg he was again shot, receiving a very serious wound in the shoulder which disabled his right arm. Removed to the buildings of William and Mary College, which were temporarily improvised as a hospital, Major Forney fell into the hands of the enemy and was detained as a prisoner for four months.

On his return to his command after his imprisonment, he found himself at the head of his regiment by reason of logical promotion. He had the misfortune to receive another wound at the battle of Salem Church, though the injury was not of a serious nature. While leading his regiment at Gettysburg, he was again most seriously wounded, the arm wounded at Williamsburg, and even disabled, being now shattered. He fell on the field from the terrible shock, and while prostrate, he received another wound by a ball carrying away part of his heel bone. In this precarious condition, he fell into the hands of the enemy, and was retained a prisoner of war more than a year. While confined as a prisoner at Fort Delaware, he was among the fifty officers chosen to be exposed to the Confederate guns on Morris Island, and was taken near the scene ready for such exposure as a matter of retaliation, but humane and timely intervention checked the atrocious design, and in due time Colonel Forney was exchanged. Still a cripple and hobbling on crutches, he returned to his command in 1864, and was commissioned a brigadier general. Though seriously hampered by his maimed condition, he stolidly and heroically bore his misfortune, and led his brigade in the battles of Hatcher's Run, High Bridge, and Farmville. He steadfastly and doggedly clung to his command, rendering valiant and efficient service throughout the entire struggle, and was with his tattered veterans at Appomattox when General Lee surrendered.

Broken in health and disfigured as the result of the casualties of the war, he turned his face homeward, and in his permanently disabled condition reopened his law office for such business as could be found under the widespread demoralization incident to the close of the Civil War. The people honored him with a seat in the state senate, but under the military rule of the period it was denied him. He closed his career at Jacksonville, Ala.

The state has never had a more loyal citizen, as was illustrated by his unselfish devotion to its interest, and the army of the Confederacy no braver soldier. To General Forney patriotism was a passion, as was abundantly shown by the philosophic fortitude with which he bore his misfortunes and sufferings. Others may have been more brilliant and dashing than he, but he was an illustration of the hero who did what he could, and by dint of actual merit, he rose to prominence in the army and to equal prominence as a civilian.

EDMUND W. PETTUS

Long and notable was the career of Edmund Winston Pettus. Born two years after the admission of Alabama into the Union, he was practically identified with all the great periods which came into the history of the state. Entering life early, he shared in all the epochs from the early stages of statehood till his death at an advanced age.

In many respects, the career of General Pettus was a remarkable one. Left an orphan by the death of his father while yet an infant, General Pettus was reared by a careful and devoted mother. The best possible scholastic advantages then extant were given him, and he was able to lay the basis of a long and eventful career. His scholastic course was taken at Clinton College, Tennessee.

General Pettus was a man of solid qualities, both mentally and physically. He was six feet high, well proportioned, with broad, massive shoulders, a large head and a commanding presence. He began the practice of the law at twenty-eight, and, excepting the interregnum of his career as a soldier of the Confederacy, continued in the profession until he was elected to the National Senate from Alabama. In that capacity he was serving when he died, at the advanced age of eighty-four.

His career as a lawyer began at Gainesville, Sumter County, where he was first associated with Honorable Turner Reavis. His ability was promptly recognized, and soon after beginning to practice, he was elected district solicitor, and re-elected after the expiration of his term, but resigned in 1851, and removed to Carrollton, Pickens County, where he resumed private practice.

In 1853 Mr. Pettus was appointed by Governor Collier to fill a vacancy in the district solicitorship. Characteristically fair and just, he won great favor and popularity throughout west Alabama, so that when he offered for the judgeship of the circuit, in 1855, he was easily elected. This position he surrendered in 1858, in order to remove to Cahaba, then a thriving center of wealth and intelligence, where he practiced law till the opening of the war. During the early part of the year 1861, troops were rapidly raised and organized into regiments, and as rapidly as possible, sent to the front. In co-operation with Colonel Garratt of Perry County, Pettus raised a regiment of infantry, which became the Twentieth Alabama, of which regiment he became the major, and somewhat later was made the lieutenant colonel of the command.

Assigned to duty in the western army, the regiment did not long remain inactive. Colonel Pettus won laurels by leading the army of General E. Kirby Smith in driving the enemy into Covington and Cincinnati. His regiment was afterward ordered to Mississippi and Colonel Pettus was engaged in the battles of Port Gibson and Baker's Creek. He was captured at Port Gibson, but succeeded in effecting his escape and in rejoining his command. On the occasion of the promotion of Colonel Garratt at Vicksburg Pettus became the colonel of the regiment.

A notable incident in connection with the siege of Vicksburg gave to Colonel Pettus fame for leadership, and for unquestioned courage throughout the army. At an important point in the works the enemy had captured a valuable redoubt, and General Stephen D. Lee was anxious to have it retaken. The undertaking was full of peril, and the success of the undertaking was doubtful. To perform the perilous undertaking, Colonel Pettus volunteered to the commanding officer his services. Neither his own regiment nor any of the others were willing to be led into so perilous an undertaking, but Waul's Texas Legion volunteered in a body to make the hazardous attack. So formidable was the redoubt that the enemy supposed himself secure from attack. Taking advantage of this condition, Colonel Pettus, at the head of the brave Texans, dashed unawares on the enemy, threw the forces into utter confusion, and retook the redoubt, together with one hundred prisoners and three flags. Thirty big guns were at once trained on the point, but Colonel Pettus bore away his spoils without the loss of a man.

At Vicksburg he was again conspicuous throughout the siege, was captured when the city fell, but soon exchanged, after which he was made a brigadier general. His command was engaged in the battle of Missionary Ridge, and was with Johnston in the series of conflicts which extended from Dalton to Atlanta and Jonesboro. When Hood was appointed to succeed Johnston, the brigade of General Pettus was with the army throughout that disastrous campaign, and no command of the army was more hotly engaged than was his brigade. It was he who forced the passage of Duck River, forming his men in squads in the face of a galling fire from the rifle pits of the enemy, and succeeded in driving him from his entrenchments with the bayonet.

On the retreat of Hood from Nashville the duty of protecting the rear of the army was imposed on the brigade of General Pettus. With intrepid and dogged courage, he held the enemy in check at many points, and perhaps more than any other, saved the army of Hood from utter destruction. His last service was in North Carolina, where his command was engaged in the battles of Kingston and Bentonville, General Pettus being severely wounded in the latter.

The war being over, General Pettus entered again into the practice of law in Selma. He shared in the struggles incident to the era of reconstruction, during the entire period of which he rendered the most faithful service at great personal sacrifice, declining meanwhile any public recognition of his services by official position. His long experience and native skill placed him in the first rank of practice in the Alabama courts, and often his patience was taxed in the courts presided over by the incompetent judges who occupied the bench during the dark period of reconstruction. Among the judges of that time was the notorious J. Q. Smith, as conspicuous for his lack of knowledge of the law as he was for his impudence and presumption. On one occasion there was a ruling of this incompetent official which was so foreign and far-fetched as to evoke from General Pettus the daring remark that in a practice of many years, and as a presiding judge himself at one time, he had never heard of such a ruling. With a complacent and self-satisfactory air the ignorant man on the bench moved himself with greatly assumed composure and replied: "Ah! General Pettus, you have a great many things to learn yet!"

Sharing in all the momentous movements in the political history of the state in the period of rehabilitation following the reconstruction, General Pettus would not consent to accept public office till 1897, when he was chosen a United States senator from Alabama. In this capacity he served till his death, in 1905, he and Senator Morgan dying within a few months of each other, leaving vacant senatorial representation for Alabama in the highest branch of congress.

ALPHEUS BAKER

The mention of the name of General Alpheus Baker to those who knew him, revives the memory of flashing wit, inimitable mimicry of which he was a master, fascinating conversation, captivating manners and a cavalier bearing, all of which were characteristic of this gallant soldier. The educational advantages of General Baker, while not scant, were those afforded only beneath the parental roof. The father of General Baker was a native of Massachusetts, removed to the South in the early years of the nineteenth century and settled in South Carolina. The father was eminent for his ripeness of scholarship, and his proficiency as a teacher of youth was of the first order. Schooled under the tutelage of a parent like this, young Baker was himself fitted to teach by the time he was sixteen years old. His teaching served to make more compact his education, for, after all, with the real teacher, the question is which learns the more, the teacher or pupil?

While still a young man Alpheus Baker had won distinction as an instructor in the cultured circles of Abbeville Court House, then one of the most elegant little centers in the South. He enjoyed a similar distinction at Lumpkin, Ga., whence he came as a teacher across the Chattahoochee River to Eufaula, in 1848. He was connected with the military school at Glennville, in Barbour County, then one of the most noted military schools of that grade in the entire South. Meanwhile he was engaged in the private study of the law, for the practice of which he applied for license at Eufaula in 1849, when he had just attained his majority. He brought to his profession a fund of ripened wisdom supported by a thorough education and, for one so young, a seasoned experience in the ways of the world. Young in years, he was in experience old. Bright, vivacious and exceedingly genial in disposition and bearing, he was not lacking in a sense of self-assertion and manliness, an indispensable adjunct to success. His manner was popular and he soon became a favorite in the cultured circles of the little city of his adoption.

Long given to close and exacting study and the mastery of principles, Mr. Baker made rapid strides in the profession of his choice. His habits of promptness, diligence of application, and painstaking care in the management of cases entrusted to him, won him much general and favorable comment not only, but procured for him multitudes of clients and a lucrative practice. In the sixth year of his professional life at the bar, he returned at one term of the circuit court as many as one hundred and five cases.

In the year 1836, when the question of slavery had become a fierce one, and when Kansas, struggling to statehood, became a battle-ground between the pro-slavery and the anti-slavery forces of the country, Major Buford of Eufaula, insisted that by swelling the forces in favor of slavery in the territory now aspiring to statehood, thus making Kansas a slave state, would avert bloodshed. Acting on this suggestion, Major Buford removed to Kansas, and Mr. Baker accompanied him. As is well known, the effort failed, and the Eufaulians returned to await the consummation of "the irrepressible conflict." In 1861 Mr. Baker was chosen one of the Barbour County delegates to the state constitutional convention, in which capacity he was serving when Governor Moore accepted the Eufaula Rifles as a part of the quota of volunteers called for to resist the encroachments of the enemy on Pensacola.

Baker was chosen the captain of this company, and, resigning his seat in the convention, he proceeded with his command to Pensacola, which at that time promised to be the opening scene of the war. The dashing young officer had as privates in the ranks of his company such men as James L. Pugh, E. C. Bullock, S. H. Dent, Sr., Thomas J. Judge, Prof. William Parker of the University of Alabama, and Prof. Thornton of Howard College, at Marion.

In the following fall of 1861, Captain Baker became the colonel of a regiment composed of Alabamians, Mississippians and Tennesseans, and was ordered to Fort Pillow, which was destined later to become a scene of one of the tragedies of the Civil War. Early in 1862 the regiment was captured at Island Number Ten. He remained in prison for a period of five months, when, on being exchanged, he was made the colonel of the Fifty-fourth Regiment of Alabama Volunteers and shared in a number of battles, among which was that at Fort Pemberton and Baker's Creek, in which last named conflict Colonel Baker received a severe wound. In March, 1864, he was made a brigadier general, and participated in the series of battles extending from the northern part of Georgia to Atlanta. His brigade rendered splendid service in the Carolinas during the declining days of the war. The war being over, General Baker returned to Eufaula, where he resided till his death.

He was a man of rare parts. Jovial in disposition, he was a universal social favorite. A scholar, he found congenial companionship among the learned. A painter and musician, he was at home with the lovers of art. But he is chiefly remembered as an orator. On the stump before a popular audience, in the court room, and on commencement occasions, General Baker was perfectly at home. Diversified, as we have seen, in his gifts, he was equally diversified in his oratory. By the witchery of his oratory he could entertain, amuse, arouse and charm an assemblage. His gift of elocution was superb, and the play of his imagination in speaking, rhapsodical. He was a master of assemblies. He would sway the multitude as does the wind a field of grain. The flash of wit, the power of captivating imagery, the rouse of passion--all these were his to a pre-eminent degree. Back of these lay a pleasing presence and charming manner. The people heard him gladly.

GEORGE P. HARRISON

In a recent work, the title of which, "Social Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century," is presented the history of the original families of repute which emigrated from England to the Old Dominion, among the names of which appears that of Harrison. From this family have come two Presidents of the United States, as well as other distinguished citizens in different states of the Union. General George Paul Harrison of Opelika is a descendant of that original Virginia stock which was so conspicuous in laying the foundation stones of the state on the shores of which landed the first English colony. The name of Harrison is found mentioned in many of the southern and western states.

General George Paul Harrison, the subject of the present sketch, was born on the "Montieth Plantation," near Savannah, Ga., March 19, 1841, and bears his father's name in full. The father was for many years prominent in Georgia politics, serving many sessions in the legislature of that state from Chatham County, and during the late war between the states, commanding a brigade of state troops. After the war, the elder Harrison was chosen a member of the constitutional convention of Georgia, aiding materially in framing a constitution adjusted to the new order incident to the close of the war.

Our present distinguished citizen, General George P. Harrison, was classically trained in the famous academies for which Savannah was noted before the period of hostilities, the chief of which schools were the Monteith and Effingham academies. From those advanced studies in his native city, he went to the Georgia Military Institute at Marietta, from which he was graduated in 1861 with the degrees of A.B. and C. E. as the first honor man of his class. He was scarcely twenty at the outbreak of the war, and in January, 1861, he shared in the seizure by the state of Georgia, of Fort Pulaski, which was taken possession of on January 3, 1861. With his course at Marietta still uncompleted, Mr. Harrison enrolled in the service of the state and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the First Regiment of Georgia Regulars. In the spring of that eventful year, while yet war was undeclared, he was detailed by Governor Joseph E. Brown, Georgia's "war governor," as commandant of the Marietta Military Institute, where he was enabled to prosecute his course to completion.