Biography of Thomas Lacy, Arkansas

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Submitted by: Joy Fisher < >
        Date: 16 Dec 2007
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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.

  [Before receiving the last twelve sketches by General Albert Pike, the author had
prepared short biographies of some of the same men, to-wit, John Taylor, Thomas J. Lacy,
Edward Cross, David Walker, William Cummins, Archibald Yell and Terrence Farrelly, hence
these characters appear in duplicate; not, however, with the unwarranted assumption that
they will lend any thing to what the greatest of American scholars has written, any
further than to fill in the details omitted by that great man.]


JUDGE EDWARD CROSS.

  This venerable old Roman was born in Virginia on the 11th of November, 1798, of Welsh
extraction from both ancestral lines. His grandfather, Edward Cross, being a cripple, was
unable to enter the military service of the colonies in the war of the revolution, but he
sent his son Robert, the father of the subject of this sketch.

  When the child was six months old, his father moved to Cumberland county, Kentucky,
where he was carefully reared and educated. At the age of twenty-one, Judge Cross moved
to Overton county, Tennessee, and there read law two years under the celebrated Adam
Huntsman, the political opponent of Davy Crockett, and finally his successful competitor
for a seat in congress.

  In 1822 he opened a law office in the town of Monroe, Overton county, Tennessee, and
practised there three years, being a hard student, all the time laying deep the
foundations which supported his fame in after years. But he was born on the border,
reared in her wild and restless lap, and loved the forests and streams and wild-wood
glens of simple, unadorned nature more than all the allurements and enchanting scenes of
refined civilization; and this hereditary spirit led 1dm in 1826 to seek its indulgence
in the wilds of the territory of Arkansas. He towers amongst us the representative of two
past generations and of the last century, like a solitary oak reft of its branches - in
the broadest sense a grand old man of whom General Albert Pike says in his autobiography,
"a man whom Arkansas ought to delight in honoring;" a well-earned and deserved compliment
from a truly great man, worth more than all the plaudits of unthinking thousands. He
began the practice of law in Washington, Hempstead county, in copartnership with the late
Chief Justice Daniel Ringo. In 1828 he was on the staff of Governor George Izard, and
actively aided in organizing the militia of the territory. In 1832 President Jackson
commissioned him as one of the justices of the superior court of the territory, and the
commission was afterward renewed by President Van Buren. He continued to fill this office
until Arkansas was admitted into the Union, June 16, 1836, and the office became vacant,
extinct. In 1836 he was appointed surveyor-general of the public lands and held the
office two years. In 1838 he was elected to congress and served the State in that
capacity for three consecutive terms. In 1852 he was by Governor Drew appointed special
judge of the supreme court of the State. He took an active part in organizing the Iron
Mountain railroad and was its president from 1855 to 1862. In 1852 he was chosen a member
of the electoral college and voted for Franklin Pierce. He was a member of the national
democratic convention held at Baltimore in 1844, and in that convention disregarded the
instructions of his constituents to vote for Martin Van Buren, because after being so
instructed, Van Buren addressed the celebrated letter to Silas Wright, declaring himself
opposed to the annexation of Texas. Polk was nominated, and the judge's constituency
approved his action in the convention. He was brother-in-law to Chester Ashley who died
while serving Arkansas as a senator in congress; they married sisters. His good morals
and integrity are of the highest type, and the old patriarch is universally esteemed.
Since the above was written he died (May, 1887) at Little Rock.