Part 21

That one so great and noble should come to a death so novel and untimely is a mystery. He fell a victim to a pistol fired by a beardless youth in a Mississippi tavern, in 1883. For all the future his monument will stand, Alabama's greatest city.

H. F. DeBARDELEBEN

In the year 1851 there might have been seen working in a grocery store, in Montgomery, a sprightly lad of ten, whose father had just died, and whose mother had removed to the Capital City. This boy was Henry DeBardeleben, destined to become prominent not alone in the development of the resources of the state of Alabama, but a picturesque figure in the coal and iron industry of the South.

Friendships of other days had united the Pratts and the DeBardelebens, which led to the guardianship of the lad by Alabama's pioneer manufacturer, Daniel Pratt, under whom Mr. DeBardeleben was directly and fortunately fitted for life. His academic course over, the young man was placed as superintendent over the famous gin factory at Prattville. Mr. DeBardeleben found in business a more congenial air than he found in books. The harness of work in the supervision of a manufactory was more easily adjusted to the young man than was that of the schoolroom, and the young man shed the one and gladly donned the other, for, from the outset, he cared but little for books, only as they could be used as tools to bring something to pass.

In the new sphere in which he now was, young DeBardeleben was of just the cast of temperament to seize the principles of business, work them into habit, and translate them into life. He learned those under the tutelage of Daniel Pratt, and in later years often alluded to them by the power of association with conditions encountered in future life. For instance, Mr. Pratt would never allow a piece of timber the least defective to be used in the manufacture of gins. It must be thoroughly seasoned, and be sound in every respect. Then, too, no defect must be sought to be concealed by an oversmear of paint, but solid merit must be in every splinter, screw and nail. Besides, no promise must be made that was not to be literally kept, if possible, and all bills must be promptly met to the day. In addition still, there must be no lounging or lolling during working hours, for idleness was akin to criminality in the mind of Daniel Pratt, and things must move while they were working.

Easily susceptible, the young man grasped these as cardinal principles of life, and they became to him abiding oracles for which he cherished the highest regard. Becoming the son-in-law of Mr. Pratt, marrying his only daughter, and, indeed, his only child, Mr. DeBardeleben necessarily became the more intimate with the proprietor and father-in-law.

One of the first interests enlisting the attention of Mr. DeBardeleben was that of a central system of railway through the heart of Alabama. A railroad from the Gulf reached the base of the mountains of north Alabama, but there it stopped. From the opposite direction another descended from Nashville into Alabama, and likewise stopped on the opposite side of the mountains. To see this missing link supplied by the knitting together of the two ends was a matter of deep concern to Mr. DeBardeleben, and he rested not till it was done. That accomplished, the opening of the resources embedded in the mountains and hills of north Alabama enlisted him. As he came to learn more of these abounding deposits his enthusiasm was enlisted as never before, and visions of accomplishment rose before him to lure him to fresher endeavor. It is not possible within the narrow compass of a slight sketch even to name the enterprises to which he set his hand, and only the barest outline of the man and of his achievements is possible.

The combination of elements in his character was exceedingly rare. He was a great and perpetual dreamer, but his dreaming was of the solid and constructive sort. No day dreams nor woven rainbows were his, merely for entertainment of lazy hours. He pictured possibilities, not visionary vacuities. He had poetry in his being, but it was the poetry that was practical. He was a great poet and a great business prince combined. He was not unmindful of the formidableness of difficulty, but it inspired rather than deterred him. Underneath the ardor of the man was a solid substratum of calculation, and a calculation that took into account herculean effort. His penetration was sharp, quick and decisive.

In this sweeping delineation the fact is not overlooked that Mr. DeBardeleben was forced to succumb to the inevitable when Birmingham fell a victim to the cholera scourge, and equally to the prostration occasioned by the memorable Black Friday in Wall street, the effects of which event fell with crashing weight on every interest throughout the Union. Furnaces grew cold, the pick in the mine lay idle, eager laborers sat holding their hands in idleness, and a nightmare fell on the nation throughout. To have known Birmingham in those days would have been to know a forlorn town, straggling and gloomy, while the environing districts were silent and smokeless.

But the darkness gradually wore back to light.

With the return of dawn, men were open-eyed for advantage in the great mineral domains of Alabama. Mr. DeBardeleben returned to Birmingham in 1877 with an immense fortune at his command, for he was the successor of Daniel Pratt. Now he became united with Colonel Sloss and Mr. T. H. Aldrich, names forever inseparable from the history of the mineral development of north Alabama, and an invincible trio it was.

In the immense enterprises now entered on by the three, there was sufficient in the colossal proportions of the undertakings for the adjustment and adaptation of the peculiar gifts of all. Mr. DeBardeleben was the chief planner and sagacious seer of the group, and daring he was in all the enterprises proposed, but he was willing not alone to see, but to do. The expansive fields of ore constantly challenged his highest forces of enthusiasm and energy, and he chafed under his own limitations, as a man, to meet the challenge forthwith. Dreaming in the solid way already indicated, planning by day and night, and meanwhile always doing, Mr. DeBardeleben was a prodigious factor of development in this marvelous district.

It was the dawn of a great era in the history of the Birmingham district when Henry Fairchild DeBardeleben combined his immense energy and equally immense fortune in its development. He took the refluent tide of prosperity at its fountain, and, directing it into new channels, rehabilitated the district, and in the transformation made others forgetful of the preceding gloom. Indifferent to fame, he was intent on gratifying his unceasing enterprise and energy by seeing the strides of development made.

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 sturdy 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 constitutional 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 constitution, 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 noble stock that was pre-eminent in southern society and in the affairs of his native section. His father belonged to that wealthy class 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 constituency 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 Institute 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 multitude, 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 passed 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 assumption 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 sophomore class 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 passion. 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.