Biography of Andrew Scott, Arkansas *********************************************************** Submitted by: Joy Fisher < > Date: 16 Dec 2007 Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm *********************************************************** BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ARKANSAS. BY JOHN HALLUM. VOL. I. ALBANY: WEED, PARSON'S AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 1887. Entered according to act of Congress in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-seven, BY JOHN HALLUM, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. NOTE. [The following sketches of Robert Crittenden, Samuel Hall, John Taylor, the superior court, including judges Benjamin Johnson and Thomas J. Lacy, Edward Cross, David Walker, William Cummins, James W. Bates, Archibald Yell, Terrence Farrelly and Francis Hubbard, in the order named, were written by General Albert Pike, at the request of the author, for this work. Such an accomplished author needs no introduction to the American reader.] PREFATORY. What one may now be able to say with knowledge of the men who lived fifty years ago in Arkansas cannot be expected to be of interest to most of those who live in Arkansas to-day. The new Arkansas is not the same Arkansas as the old one, but another. There has been a conquest of the State, peaceful, indeed, by detachments of a great invading army of men from other States and lands - peaceful, but none the less as much a conquest as those of England by the Saxons and the Danes were, which almost obliterated from the memories of the Britons the names of their old heroes. It is for this that I have been reluctant to write down what I remember of those men whom I knew fifty-five years ago, or soon after, and whom I then esteemed worthy, or came to esteem so afterward, when the animosities and dislikes engendered by political differences had died out. There are so few now of the descendants of these men left, to whom such reminiscences can be grateful! There are so few now to whom it is of any importance or interest that the men of that remote day lived at all! One with difficulty brings himself to write of any thing, knowing that what he writes will be read with indifference or impatience, and, to the larger part of those now living in Arkansas, the names that I should have to mention will be as strange and unregarded as those upon the monuments of Assyria and Chaldaea. "The life of the dead," said Cicero, "is in the memory of the living;" and, if this be true, it is not in my power to bring to that life again those whom I knew in the early days. Neither is there in this any thing to be with reason complained of. For, also, to those of us who went to Arkansas no earlier than 1832 or 1836, the men who had lived and died there before us were but the mere shadows of names, in the history of whose lives we felt no interest. We put ourselves to no trouble to have the names kept in remembrance, but unconcernedly permitted them to glide away from us into oblivion, no record of their words or deeds remaining; and with what right can we complain, if we, too, the dead and living alike, are to the men of to-day only as those are who lived and died in other lands, when the world was not by a thousand years so old as it is now. Moreover, there is not much of adventure or action to be told of these men, that can make what may be written of them otherwise than wearisome to read. The things that chiefly interest us in our daily lives are of no interest afterward to any one, and if recited they seem tame and trivial. When one has but little to tell and that little is in regard to those for whom most of the living care nothing, it would be wiser to be silent; yet if what lie may write will give pleasure to one or two, here or there, to whom the holy Dead are of consequence, he ought not to let the general indifference prevent his writing. WASHINGTON, May 25, 1887. ALBERT PIKE. ROBERT CRITTENDEN. BY GENERAL ALBERT PIKE. The information that I am able to give in regard to this eminent man cannot be of any considerable interest or value. I first saw him in 1833, on Little Piney, then in Pope county, where I was teaching a small school. Abram G. Smith with whom I was boarding, went one day in the fall to Spadra, where the candidates for office were to speak, and on his return in the evening he brought Robert Crittenden with him to stay over night, and out under the trees near the house I talked with him until late bed-time. What I could tell him of the plains and buffalo, of New Mexico and its Indians and the Spaniards, interested him, and he was kind, indulgent and gracious; and as he was one, to know whom was an honor and to hear whom a pleasure, to meet him so was quite an event in my life. He thought well enough of me to advise Mr. Charles P. Bertrand of Little Rock to employ me as assistant editor of the Arkansas Advocate, and it thus came about that I went to Little Rock in October of that year, where I went into the Advocate office, and occasionally met Mr. Crittenden at his house, and elsewhere. He was a man of fine presence and handsome face, with clear bright eyes, and unmistakable intellect and genius, frank, genial, one to attach men warmly to himself, impulsive, generous, warm-hearted, an abler man, I think, than his brother John J. Crittenden. The passions and animosities of the leaders of the two parties in the territory had before then led to encounters, collisions and duels; but they had become less violent and bitter after the elections of 1833, and no collisions or duels of prominent men occurred afterward. Mr. Crittenden had, some time before, fought a duel with Mr. Conway, delegate to congress. I was told by one who knew, that Crittenden had no skill with the pistol, while Conway was a fine shot. Crittenden's friends insisted on his practicing, and he reluctantly consented; but, after firing three shots and each time missing a big tree, he threw the pistol on the ground, said he would not practice for the purpose of enabling himself to kill a man, and never shot again until the signal was given on the ground, when his first shot killed Conway, he himself being untouched. I never heard him make a political speech, or any speech except one to a jury, in defense of Stewart, a tall gambler, for assault with intent to kill. I was on the jury, for the first and only time in my life. He was a graceful, persuasive, impressive and eloquent speaker, one to take an assembly of men off their feet. But the case was too plain a one, and we fined Mr. Stewart $100. Mr. Crittenden's death at Vicksburg, in the fall of 1834, deprived the anti-Jackson party in the State of its leader; for no one was able to take his place, while too many wanted it. I remember him chiefly as a man whom it was a great pleasure to know and converse with, as a very gracious and agreeable host, and in every way a thoroughly well-bred Kentucky gentleman, a sagacious and well-informed man, who would have done honor to Arkansas, if, as was talked of before our admission as a State, the first two senators had, by common consent, been Sevier and Crittenden. But this could hardly have been brought about; and it may be that by an early death he escaped from the disappointments, mortification and embitterment which would have made miserable the life of an ambitious man, conscious of his own greatness, and condemned to struggle in a hopeless minority all his life against an invincible majority. NOTE. The following letter is from the widow of Robert Crittenden, and as it illustrates the difficulties under which the author has labored in a great number of cases, it is given with the writer's consent: FRANKFORT, KY., NOV. 16, 1886. JOHN HALLUM, Fort Smith, Ark.: DEAR SIR - I have deferred answering your letter of the 6th of Oct. in order to get a copy of the portrait of my husband, but the photographer here was unable to reproduce it, which I regret very much. Robert Crittenden, youngest son of John Crittenden, a major in the revolutionary war, was born near Versailles, Woodford county, Ky., January 1, 1797, and died in Vicksburg, Miss, (whither he had gone on business), December 18, 1834. He was married to Ann Innes Morris October 1, 1822, near Frankfort, Ky. He left four children, three daughters and one son, all born in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was educated by and read law with his brother, John J. Crittenden, in Russellville, Ky. His father died when he was twelve years of age, leaving a large family of children. I know that Mr. Crittenden as secretary, in the absence of Governor Miller, organized the territorial government of Arkansas. I suppose the records will disclose all further information required. Wishing you much success. Yours, most respectfully, ANN I. EDGAR. This letter was by the author submitted to the Hon. Jesse Turner, who is now taking steps to have the portrait of Robert Crittenden copied for preservation in our capitol.