Autobiography of John Hallum, Arkansas *********************************************************** Submitted by: Joy fisher < > Date: 14 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. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. JOHN HALLUM. The Hallums are descended from ancestors in the middle classes of England, the family there embracing the historian and the poet; here Governor Helm of Kentucky, Secretary Bristow of President Grant's Cabinet, President Polk, and a long roster on both sides of the water who have never broken through the veil of honest obscurity. Hallam is the proper way to spell the name; the substitution of the u in place of the a in the last syllable is a corruption growing out of the freedom incident to back-woods life and republican simplicity where heraldry is lost in a common level. Helm is an abbreviation and corruption of the original name, springing from the same sources. This innocent invasion of ancient orthography is an inheritance which has given rise to many regrets, too late to obviate at this distance in the line of departure without injustice to others. About 1770, two younger brothers, William and Henry Hallam, cut off from ancestral inheritance by the laws of entail and primogeniture, sought to lay foundations by their own enterprise in a field of more promise and a wider range than England extended to the portionless scions of her gentry and nobility. Imbued with the broadest spirit of religious freedom and toleration, so deeply rooted in the institutions of Maryland, they first located at Hagerstown in that colony. Both married and became the heads of large families. Henry settled in Virginia; William in South Carolina, and there became one of the largest planters of his day. From the latter the author's wife is descended, from the former the author, the relationship being in the fourth degree. Both adhered to the fortunes of the colonies and became revolutionary soldiers. William was captured at the battle of Germantown on the 4th of October, 1777. The British officer to whom he was delivered after capture insulted him, and slapped him in the face with his sword, and paid the penalty of his temerity with his life. The brave cavalier shot him dead instantly, made good his escape and settled in South Carolina after peace was declared. General Van Rensselaer of revolutionary fame was his warm personal friend, and honored him with several visits at his palmetto plantation after the revolution. He was a cultured gentleman of the old school. His will is before me, broad, enlightened and liberal; he cuts through the laws of primogeniture and divides equally all his possessions between a large family of sons and daughters. In that tide of immigration which came pouring its westward flood across the Alleghanies after the revolution, came William, Henry, John and Andrew Hallum to the frontier settlements in Tennessee in 1795, and settled on the historic Cumberland, in what is now designated as Smith county, Tennessee, all sons of Henry, the revolutionary sire; and with them came Rachel, daughter of "William, the soldier, and wife of her cousin William, the pioneer. Henry is the grandfather of the author; William is the grandsire of his wife. All were men of courage and marked individuality of character, and all were staunch friends and supporters of General Jackson. I was born on an eminence overlooking Cumberland river in Sumner county, Tennessee, on the 16th of January, 1833, the son of Bluford Hallum and Minerva Davis, my mother being descended from one of the first pioneer settlers in the Cumberland valley, an emigrant from North Carolina. My father (now in his eightieth year) was always passionately fond of letters, and his range of knowledge and research embraces a wide field of literature and the sciences. If not inherited, his inclinations in this direction, to some extent, were imparted to his son, whom he taught from his lap to read well by the time he attained his sixth year. Tennessee had no public-school system worthy of the name in those days, and I was sent to the rather indifferent old field schools of the period from my sixth to my fourteenth year, from four to six months in each year, the remainder of the time being devoted to agricultural husbandry. When fifteen years old my father set me free and gave me my board as long as I would accept it. He then lived within a few furlongs of Wirt College, then a flourishing seat of learning in Sumner county, Tennessee, founded on private enterprise, since defunct. I was poor, and had, a few months before, refused to accept a college endowment at Cumberland University, founded on the private subscription of warm-hearted friends, whose memories will always be dear. Vanity and false pride, perhaps, led me to reject the boon; my mind then revolted at the idea of being educated on charitable foundations, and inspired the idea of ability to educate myself. But my false pride was delicately and artfully overcome in a way I did not suspect at the time. W. K. Patterson, then president of the college, and William Ralston, a merchant in the vicinity, came to my father's, and after consultation with him, called me in as the fourth member. The president was universally beloved, and one of the most magnetic characters I ever met. He opened up a plan for the acquisition of an education and the payment of all expenses attending it with the most winning plausibility. He would furnish the books and tuition, and the merchant my clothing until they could qualify me for a teacher, and thus enable me to pay them with interest. My father, who was in the Christian conspiracy, gave me board and advised acceptance of the offer. My boyish ambition climbed to the summit, and on commencement day I matriculated, remaining, however, only two years, at the end of which time I felt the embarrassment of a mountain of debt, and the strongest desire to remove it, without its having been intimated that my noble creditors wanted or expected pay at that time. To relieve myself of this embarrassment I taught school eight months at profitable remuneration, and paid off every dollar I owed in the world. At this period I made the mistake of my life in not returning to college and completing the classical education there commenced. Ambition to enter the professional arena at an early age overpowered my better judgment, and I hugged law books to my bosom and taught school two years, whilst reading under my own direction. I was admitted to the bar at Memphis, Tennessee, in May, 1854, since which time I have been enrolled in the supreme and Federal courts of Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Colorado, and the supreme court of the United States. I did not believe in the doctrine of secession as a remedy for real and imaginary evils, but repudiated that sublime doctrine of patriotism which required me to take up arms and strike down in blood my fellow citizens of the seceding States because they honestly differed with me in the interpretation of constitutional sanctions and guaranties. Loyalty to my native State, under all the circumstances leading to the war between the States, was paramount to that I owed the dominant majority of the States professedly warring on constitutional sanctions designed to protect the slaveholding States. I believed, with General Lee, that patriotism has its qualifications and limitations, and that if I must take sides in a civil war I would go with my people whether they survived or perished.