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. THOMAS J. LACY. BY GENERAL ALBERT PIKE. The other territorial courts that I attended were held by Judge Thomas J. Lacy of the superior court, at Columbia, in Chicot county, and Helena, in Phillips county. The judge was a Kentuckian, a man of liberal education, not a remarkably well-read lawyer, but well imbued with the principles of equity, a good writer, gifted with a vivid imagination, eloquent, a courteous gentleman, and conversed well on many subjects. He was rather tall, of spare habit and delicate constitution, often afflicted with a painful ailment, apparently consumption, yet always cheerful and even gay, a very charming and lovable man, and a very honorable and just one, devoid of the sense of fear. Townsend Dickinson was a fairly good lawyer, a native of New York, a shrewd, sharp man, no great scholar, but quick and apt to comprehend a case, to understand an argument, and to reach conclusions, which he expressed in opinions invariably concise. The chief justice, Ringo, had had his legal training as clerk of the circuit court in Clark county, had studied Chitty and traveled with it in his saddle-bags, it being currently known as the "bacon-ham Chitty," because of the stains contracted by its leathern covers by consociation with the slices of ham which its owner carried with him to solace his appetite withal on the road. He was a careful, narrow-minded, pains-taking judge, to whom special pleading was the most excellent part of the law, and he knew almost nothing of the law of the court of equity. Technicality was for him the life of the law, and he filled the reports with decisions which had no other merit than technicality. Yet, on the whole, the members of the court worked pretty well together, the plodding habit and narrow legal vision of Ringo tempering and restraining the effervescence and elan of Lacy; and the knowledge of the principles of law and equity of Lacy, and his broad and enlightened views neutralizing the literalism and stunted verbal interpretations of Ringo, and giving breadth and fullness to the conclusions of Dickinson. When, in 1842, the directors of the Real Estate Bank made a deed of assignment to trustees, which I drafted, upon instructions formulated by Carey A. Harris, the cashier, it created a great commotion; and William Cummins, my former partner, who was a stockholder and debtor, with General Thomas T. Williamson and others in like condition, associating with themselves Chester Ashley, engaged in a bitter warfare against the deed, bringing a suit in chancery to have it annulled. I was the attorney of the trustees; and we first argued the case before the chancellor, John Joseph Clendenin, who (it is my recollection) held the deed valid. It then went into the supreme court, where it was argued at great length, upon all the authorities. The majority of the court, Judges Lacy and Dickinson, gave its opinion that the deed was valid. The chief justice dissented. The decision caused great excitement and discussion, and created personal enmities. Judge Lacy was savagely denounced as corrupt. The opinion of the majority was hooted at by such lawyers as Williamson S. Oldham and Thomas B. Hanly, who had been elected members of the coming legislature. I was denounced without stint; and every thing that could be done was done to prejudice the people of the State against the deed and against the majority of the court. Preparations were made to impeach Judge Lacy, who looked calmly and impassively upon the storm that had been raised. When the legislature met, the matter of impeaching him was largely talked of, and the agitators thought that they were to have, and it seemed to every one that they would have, their own way. But the next morning the scheme for impeachment collapsed, and the lawyers who had staked their professional reputations upon the issue, loudly pronouncing the deed null and void, met with signal and complete discomfiture. Without consulting any one, or even informing any one of my intention, I had in due time sent printed copies of the deed, and of the opinions of the majority and minority of the court, to the great Chancellor, JAMES KENT, of New York, and Judge STORY of the supreme court of the United States, author of the most approved and authoritative commentaries upon equity jurisprudence, requesting each of them to give his opinion in regard to the validity or invalidity of the deed of trust. Their opinions were received in time, Chancellor Kent charging $50 for his, and Judge Story nothing. I had these opinions printed, and copies of them were laid, that morning, on the desk of each member of the general assembly. They sustained the deed at all points. No rout of a force flushed with anticipation of victory was ever more complete. The majority of the court was vindicated, the opinion of the minority consigned to merited contempt, and the trusts of the deed were carried out. After he ceased to be a member of the supreme court, Judge Lacy removed to New Orleans, and engaged there in the practice of the law, where, after a little while, he died. He made his mark upon the jurisprudence of Arkansas, and few, if any, of his decisions have ever been overruled. They were generally founded upon the immutable principles that do not change with the changing times and seasons, and have, therefore, stood well the test of time. He was a man to be loved with all one's heart, and worthy to be remembered by the people of the State. I retained his warm friendship until the end of his life. He licensed me to practice law in 1835, when I had read but a part of Blackstone, saying that I could not, as an ignorant doctor might, become the cause of the death of any one. He encouraged me in my struggles to rise at the bar, aided me in my studies and was glad when I achieved success, and I have always honored and revered his memory. Honeste factis, Veritas sufficit