Biography of John Taylor, Arkansas

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        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.]


JOHN TAYLOR.

  The eloquence of a master and polished logic of a profound reasoner were united in this
eccentric, brilliant genius-exalted, heroic crank - who seemed only to desire temporary
friends among his professional brothers, that they might the easier be brought within
range of his "Parthian arrows" as material for the most brilliant phillipics.

  Of his birth and early history but little is known by those who knew his career in
Arkansas, but from known facts he could not have been born later than 1789, as he was a
candidate for the United States senate in 1819, and not eligible to that office under
thirty years of age.

  He was quite poor early in life, but from sources not now known in the west, he became
an accomplished scholar. When he attained to years of majority, he was admitted to the
bar in Alabama, and about the same time married a celebrated beauty who, tradition says,
soon tired of, and deserted him for another. He was an ordained minister in the Methodist
church, but at what period in life he assumed ecclesiastical functions is not known to
the author.

  Alabama was admitted into the Union in 1819. In October, of that year there was an
exciting contest for the United States senate between John Taylor and William R. King,
who finally defeated Taylor by a majority of only two votes.

  King had been defeated for the same office in his native State, North Carolina, and
left there for more promising political fields and settled in the territory of Alabama.
With Taylor, irony and sarcasm were terrible weapons. With these agencies he inflicted
wounds that never healed. These wounds arrested his ambition and prevented the infliction
of an improved edition of John Randolph on the United States senate. He became, ever
after this burial of his high hopes and aspirations, a confirmed cynic, an Ishmaelite,
and about 1837 abandoned Alabama and sought asylum in Arkansas, settling in Little Rock,
in the fall of that year.

  On first acquaintance he was affable and courteous to all members of the bar, and made
a very flattering impression, completely secreting that biting irony and withering
criticism which, on the first opportunity, he would hurl like the thunderbolts of Jove.

  He was six feet high, very slender, straight as an arrow, eyes gray, with the piercing
flash of an eagle's, sharp features, rendered sharper by a long, sharp-pointed nose,
small feet, long, bony fingers, blonde hair, combed back and resting on his shoulders,
cap under arm, with spurs on.

  This photo is given by Judge William Walker, who knew him well, and is drawn as he
appeared in the court-house at Norristown, in Pope county, opposite Dardanelle, in the
winter of 1842, when taking position before court and jury in an old log court-house.

  Not long after his arrival at Little Rock an opportunity to display his splendid
abilities was presented, and he embraced and subordinated it to the full measure of his
fame.

  The speech was not preserved, but tradition yet hands down his oratory in Ciceronean
splendor, with ripest thoughts and powers of the logician, a combination of faculties
very rare, but when united in one man, they point to fame and the Pantheon.

  About 1842 he defended a client at JSrorristown charged with murdering his wife. The
trial was lengthy and resulted in conviction. A very careful and lengthy bill of
exceptions was preserved during the progress of the trial by him.

  John J. Clendenin, afterward judge, but then a young man, was prosecuting attorney and
ex-officio attorney-general for the State, for some unexplained cause tore into shreds a
vital part of the bill of exceptions, embracing the testimony of two important witnesses,
without the knowledge or consent of Taylor. A few days after when he called on the clerk
for the record, he for the first time discovered the terrible void in it; and when Judge
William Walker, who was then deputy clerk, told him of the unauthorized disposition of
the record made by Clendenin, he became livid with rage.

  The mutilated pieces of the record had fallen through the puncheon floor, which Taylor
tore up and gathered up the scraps, and after many hours ingenious labor succeeded in
restoring the evidence and had the clerk insert it in the record.

  Judge Walker, who made out the record on which a human life depended, says it presented
a remarkable appearance.

  Taylor carefully preserved it as the text and foundation for a terrible phillipic
against the author of its destruction, and produced the original as restored on the
argument of the case in the supreme court, and in one of the fiercest phillipics ever
uttered held up the mutilated skeleton in Clendenin's face and in thundering tones of
eloquent indignation asked if it did not look like a departed ghost rising up in judgment
against the stealthy, cowardly assassin.

  The effect on court and auditory was electric, magnetic, convincing, overwhelming, and
left an impression on all who heard it as durable as life.

  The case was reversed but the second trial resulted in conviction and hanging.

  But in this connection I must say, for fear a wrong impression might otherwise be
indulged, that Judge Clendenin was a high-toned, honorable gentleman, and incapable of
intentional wrong, but this was one of those unguarded and unfortunate accidents which
called down on his head a terrific thunderbolt.

  On another memorable occasion at Clarksville about 1841,Taylor represented the
plaintiff in an ordinary civil suit and was opposed by John Linton, a character as
remarkable as that of his own.

  When these two celebrities were opposed it was Greek meeting Greek - the battle of the
giants.

  Linton was an able lawyer and as careless and indifferent as Taylor in playing with
lightning, but was devoid of that grace, polish, and elegance of diction which
distinguished Taylor.

  William Cummins, Samuel Evans, Bennett H. Martin, Frederick W. Trapnall, Charles P.
Bertrand, Samuel H. Hempstead, and many other celebrities of the "old bar of Arkansas,"
were in attendance on the court, and all of them very naturally enjoyed the luxury of an
intellectual combat between those giants, and all, excepting Hempstead, it is said,
entered into a conspiracy to whet the remorseless appetites of these adversaries for each
other, neither one of whom "would kneel to Jove for his thunder, nor bow to Neptune for
his trident." Linton knew nothing of the conspiracy, but had imbibed all the venom
necessary to the prompting of a terrible phillipic against Taylor.

  But the latter had discovered the artful conspiracy to set Linton on him, and to avenge
himself on all gave royal rein to his unrivaled genius for that character of contest, and
he took, first, the conspirators up, one by one, reserving Linton for his peroration.

  Judge Caldwell, who presided, and Samuel H. Hempstead were the only persons who escaped
the devastation wrought by that forensic cyclone.

  Hempstead was the only auditor who knew that Taylor would, with the fearless wing of an
eagle, sweep down on all the bar but himself, and that his exemption was alone due to the
fact that he had not joined the coalition.

  Hempstead improvised a special seat for the occasion high up in the corner of the old
log court-house, and no auditor in the Areopagus of ancient Greece ever enjoyed
intellectual combat more than he did this.

  Linton opened in an address to court and jury of great length and power, allegorically
describing Taylor as his aunt, graphically depicting the emotional sensations of her
corrupt and abandoned heart, her pale, thin, quivering lips, tall, slender form, long,
bony fingers, as she invoked the offices of an angel to cover up the darkest deeds of
hell.

  He then paused, as if gathering renewed strength to hurl indignation at his adversary,
and described her as she moved through the desecrated temple of justice in the robes and
with the tongue of an arch-angel, a despised object of corruption, pollution and
contamination, and then denounced her profession of religion as the consummation of all
that is vile and odious and revolting to hell itself. [Taylor was a praying, professed
Christian.]

  During the delivery of this speech the conspirators were all greatly delighted and
entertained, and up to this period did not have the remotest idea that they would be
taken up one by one before the curtain closed on the scene.

  Taylor sat quiet under the excoriating affliction and as immobile as a marble statue,
conscious in the plenitude of intellectual power to take care of himself.

  He rose to reply, and commenced in slow, measured phrase, with all the dignity of a
Roman addressing his peers in the senate, and with cairn complacency alluded to all the
indignities and insults which had escaped the lips of that puppet and moral monstrosity,
who for some mysterious purpose had been created as a caricature on all that is elevated
and noble in man -and then gently turning the leaves of the Bible on the table before
him, he unfolded the conspiracy which had culminated in this unwarranted attack on him,
and pointed out and named all the lawyers and others, with an emphasis and richness and
rythm of language which cannot be communicated to paper and said: "They are not content
with this effort to revile and destroy me, but like the scoffer and mocker when Christ
was crucified on Calvary as an atonement for the sins of mankind, they have mocked and
reviled the religion I profess."

  He indulged this pathetic strain until tears came to jury and auditor, and then after
so artfully commanding and mastering the sympathy of his auditory turned with terrific
force and resistless energy on the lawyers who had encouraged Linton's attack.

  When he came to "Little Billy Cummins" he seemed to be reaching the climax of
denunciation, and pointing to a singular white spot of hair on his head said: "That is
not indicative of honorable age, but like the mark that branded Cain is indicative of
phenomenal crime."

  Cummins could not contain himself any longer and sprang at him with the resolute venom
and impetuosity of a tiger.

  But Judge Caldwell, knowing that the lawyers who had been so unmercifully handled would
probably not interpose, sprung from his seat on the bench, and with powerful grasp seized
Cummins by the collar and commanded him to stop, and said with resolute emphasis: "You
commenced it, you shall not interfere now," and order was restored.

  During this episode Taylor folded his arms, with scornful curl of the lip and defiant
menace, plainly indicating dauntless courage. He then proceeded, and, after finishing his
indictment against Cummins, turned to Linton, and pointing his index finger at him,
enumerated the concentrated slanders which had fallen from his "polluted lips," and
shaking his finger in his face said: "The derision you cast at my religion is the last
and most venomous arrow of the cowardly Parthian, prepared by the defeated instrument of
vice and hurled by the palsied hand of corruption;" and then, with increased emphasis and
a withering scowl of disdain, cried out: "Behold that huge mass of moral degradation!"

  For one hour this strain of invective was kept up against Linton, whose tongue
frequently sought an embrace with the lower end of his sharp chin, indicating the mental
torture raging within, but he did not interrupt his adversary.

  Judge William Walker, who heard this remarkable contest, tells me that he heard that
great judge and profound scholar, General Albert Pike, years afterward, say: "It is a
great misfortune Taylor's phillipics are not preserved for literature and posterity."

  The Hon. Jesse Turner (that grand old Roman who is yet spared to us) tells me that
Taylor was a great lawyer and splendid orator; that after first acquaintance he did not
manifest any further interest in you; that he was a cynic and denounced his brother
lawyers and said they wanted to poison him. [Evidently a melancholy vein of insanity
which ought to have protected him against malice.]

  That in common with other lawyers he rode the circuit on horseback all over the State
twice each year, but departed from the usual custom in carrying a large bundle of books
on his horse in front of his saddle for hundreds of miles. When the weather admitted, he
would go to some secluded retreat in the dense forest and camp out by himself, and when
inclement weather drove him at night for shelter to the habitations of men, he demanded a
bed to himself, and when not accorded this, but compelled to share his bed with another,
he would wrap or tie himself up securely in a blanket to prevent contact with his
bed-fellow.

  He left Arkansas about 1844 or 1845, and went to Texas and practised his profession
there, and here we lose trace of him for several years, except occasional glances through
the brilliant description of A. W. Arlington, another celebrated orator.

  The next connection made is through my friend Hon. S. W. Williams, who tells me of a
strange, sad scene which came under his observation in the supreme court-room in 1855.
Twelve or fifteen years after he left the State he came back riding on horseback many
hundreds of miles to indulge a desire to visit the scenes of other days. The old,
gray-headed man was laboring under the weight of accumulated years, but was still
vigorous in mind and body, and looked defiant, but cold and passionless as marble.

  He went alone to the supreme court-room, whilst the court was in session, to look on
the familiar scenes and faces which had witnessed his great intellectual combats once
more before that tribunal should "know him no more forever." Many of the " old bar" had
died, some had moved away, new judges presided on the bench, but many of the "old guard"
were present, Watkins, Fowler, Bertrand, Clendenin, Hempstead, with whom he had measured
lances in earlier days, and many young men who had come on since his departure.

  As he entered the temple all met the cold glance of his eagle eye, and the elders
recognized him, but no word or other recognition passed.

  "Old John Taylor" never forgave a man he had once hated; to hate once meant always; and
all who knew him knew his unrepentant, unforgiving nature.

  Here was a scene worthy the brush of Raphael. Angry Jove towering among the silent
gods.

  The pen, the genius, the inspiration of Scott or Hugo could baptize it in a world-wide
fame.