THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO
SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
^ ^<^
n
.lA^lA^ulo
J. L. M. CURRY
a piograpfjp
BY
EDWIN ANDERSON ALDERMAN
AND
ARMISTEAD CHURCHILL GORDON
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1911
All righu reserved
Copyright, 1911, by
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1911,
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Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
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To THE Memory of
MARY THOMAS CURRY
A TRUE AND TENDER WIFE,
WHOSE UNFAILING SYMPATHY, DEVOTED CARE,
AND UNDERSTANDING MIND,
KEPT YOUNG AND STOUT THE HEART
5 OF THIS BRAVE
OPTIMIST AND ADVOCATE.
44328
o
"Let us live in the Present and for the Future, leav-
ing the dead Past to take care of itself, — dravnng only
profitable lessons from that and all history."
CURRY TO HIS SON.
CONTENTS
FAGB
Chronology
xi
Preface ........
. xix
CHAPTER
I— "The Dark Corner" ....
1
II — Alabama: "Here We Rest"
. 29
III — Athenian Days .....
. 45
IV — Harvard and New England Influences
. 61
V — Law and Legislation
. 82
VI — The Bone of Contention .
. 100
VII — "Bleeding Kansas " ....
. 114
VIII — A First and Last Allegiance
. 131
IX — The Dawn of War ....
. 141
X — A New Nation .....
. 153
XI — The Ebbing of the Tide
. 168
XII — Peace and Service ....
. 194
XIII — In the Old Dominion
. 211
XIV — Politics and Principles
. 234
XV — Peabody and His Trust
. 249
XVI — The Land of the Alhambra
. 288
XVII — The Peabody Fund Again .
. 320
XVIII — The Birthday of a King .
. 366
XIX — Last Days and End ....
. 372
XX — Friends and Associates
. 382
XXI — Educational Theories
. 411
XXII — Conclusion .....
. 430
Bibliogr.\phy .......
. 453
Membership in Societies ....
. 455
Legislatures Addressed .....
. 456
Index
. 459
IX
CHRONOLOGY
1823: January 5: William Curry marries Susan Winn.
1825: June 5: Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry born.
1826:
1827: Mother dies.
1828:
1829: September 4: father marries Mrs. Mary Remsen;
Jabez starts to school to Mr. Fleming.
1830: To school to Fleming; later, to Vaughn.
1831: Ditto.
1832: Ditto.
1833: At school in Lincolnton. y
1834: At Waddell's famous school at Willington, S. C.
1835: At home school, Double Branches; Mr. Finn,
teacher.
1836: Ditto.
1837: Ditto. Father visits Alabama and buys Kelly
Springs, Talladega Co.
1838: Moves with parents to Alabama; at school again to
Mr. Finn.
1839: August: Enters Franklin College, called later Uni-
versity of Georgia.
1840: At College.
1841: Ditto; in print first time.
1842: Junior orator: subject, "Andrew Jackson."
1843: August: Graduates from Franklin College; goes to
Harvard; enters Dane Law School, September 13.
1844: Hears Birney, Prentiss, et al., in Faneuil Hall.
1845: Graduates from Dane Law School; enters law office
of Samuel F. Rice, at Talladega.
1846: Joins Texas Rangers for Mexican War; admitted to
the Bar.
zi
xii CHRONOLOGY
1847: March 4: Marries Ann Alexander Bowie; elected
to Alabama Legislature in August.
1848: Making speeches in Presidential campaign for Cass.
1849: Represents the State as Solicitor in Tallapoosa
County.
1850: Turns farmer.
1851 : Address on death of Calhoun.
1852: Settles on his farm three miles east of Talladega,
where he lived till 1865.
1853: Re-elected to Alabama Legislature.
1854: February 3: Bill for Geological Survey; farming
and practicing law.
1855: Elected third time to State Legislature; defeats
Know-Nothing candidate; is called the "Ajax
Telamon of the Democracy."
1856: Elector on Democratic Presidential Ticket.
1857: December 7: Enters U. S. Congress as a State-
Rights Democrat.
y 1858: February 23: Maiden Speech on Kansas Question;
April 27, speech against Pension Bill.
1859: December 10: Speech on Progress of Anti-Slavery-
ism.
1860: Speech at Talladega on the "Perils and Duty of the
South"; Mission to the Governor of Maryland.
1861: January 21: Resigns from Congress with other
Alabama Representatives; in Confederate Con-
gress at Montgomery.
1862: In Confederate Congress at Richmond; lectures on
"Two Wants of the Confederacy."
1863: Speaker pro tem. in Confederate House; lectures on
"Social and Political Quicksands;" defeated in
August election; at Chickamauga with the
"Home Guards"; an unsuccessful candidate for
the Confederate Senate.
1864: Serves final term in Confederate Congress, and
writes the Address to the People of the Confed-
erate States; Commissioner under the Habeas
y'
CHRONOLOGY xiii
Corpus Act; Special Aid to Gen. Joe Johnston;
Special Aid to Gen. Joe Wheeler; Lt-Colonel,
commanding 5th Alabama Regiment.
1865: March 16: Assigned command in North Alabama; ^
April 8, wife dies; May 13, paroled; December 5,
accepts presidency of Howard College. -^
1866: January 28: Ordained to the Gospel Ministry;
preaching, teaching, and speaking on Education.
1867: June 25: Marries Mary Wortham Thomas; June
29, sails for Europe; July 10, LL.D. from Mercer;
October, appointed Professor in Richmond Col-
lege; Honorary Member of Phi Sigma Society of
University of Mississippi.
1868: April 21: Resigns presidency of Howard College;
April 29, leaves Marion for Richmond; May 6,
severe injury to Mrs. Curry at Baltimore.
1869: February 6, 7: Lectures at Washington and Lee;
August 27, introduced by Barnas Sears to George
Peabody, at White Sulphur Springs.
1870: April 20: Address at Brooklyn: "Conditions and
Prospects of Education in the South"; June 18,
report leading to the Baptist Italian Mission;
October 11, first lecture at Richmond College on
Constitutional Law; November 2 to 4, has Dr.
Sears for his guest; December, addresses Joint
Committee of Legislature in behalf of Richmond
College.
1871: February 18: Appointed a Visitor to the Medical
College of Virginia; D.D. from Rochester Univer-
sity.
1872: Elected a Trustee of Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary; President of General Baptist Associa-
tion.
1873: May 29: Address: "Triumphs and Struggles of
Virginia Baptists"; October 9, address before the
World's Evangelical Alliance, New York City.
1874: Address before the Virginia Agricultural Society;
/
/
xiv CHRONOLOGY
Elected President of the Foreign Mission Board
of the Southern Baptist Convention; spoken of
for United States Senator.
1875: January 3: Enters upon temporary pastorate of
First Baptist Church, Richmond; March 19,
stepmother dies; July 3, sails for Europe for a
year's absence.
1876: In Europe first half of the year; presented to Hum-
bert and Christina.
1877: March 2: Political disabilities removed; March 3,
offered a place in his Cabinet by President-elect
Hayes; March 7, awarded premium on tract: "A
Baptist Church Radically Different from Pedo-
Baptist Churches"; March 13, visits old home
at Talladega; July 31, August 1, visits Dr. Sears
at Staunton; October 30-November 1, aids in
entertaining President and Cabinet at Richmond.
1878: January 29: Famous speech in Mozart Hall, Rich-
mond, on "Laws and Morals"; many speeches
throughout the State on the pending issue of the
State Debt.
1879: Other speeches on the State Debt; Professor and
Religious and Social leader.
1880: March 23: Offered place as Visitor to West Point;
May 5, sails for Europe; September 24, resumes
duties at Richmond College; November 2, votes
for Gen. Hancock.
1881: January 7: Daughter, Susan Lamar Turpin, dies;
February 3, elected Peabody Agent; February 7,
resigns professorship at Richmond College ; June
23, elected a Trustee of Richmond College; given
medal as Professor of Philosophy; October 5,
first annual report to Peabody Trustees.
1882: Addresses Legislatures of South Carolina, West
Virginia, and Mississippi.
1883: May 8: Lectures on Gladstone at Waco, Texas; May
14, 700 public school pupils call on him at his
CHRONOLOGY xv
hotel in Fort Worth ; May and June, on a 9,000-
mile trip to Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Yo"
Semite Valley; December 18, calls on Matthew
Arnold in Richmond and hears him lecture; De-
cember 19, visits two colored schools with Mr.
Arnold.
1884: October 11: At the old home in Lincoln County,
Georgia, where he was born.
1885: March 27: Offered head of Bureau of Education;
September 23, accepted appointment as Minister
to Spain; October 1, resigns presidency of Board
of Trustees of Farmville Normal; October 9, calls
on J. R. Lowell; November 5, sails for Spain;
November 25, reaches Madrid. — Alfonso XII
dies at 9 a.m. the same day.
1886: May 17: "Assists" at the birth of the new King.
1887: July 13: LL.D. from the University of Georgia;
Armitage's History of the Baptists published, ^
with Introduction by Curry.
1888: April: "The Acquisition of Florida," published in ^
the American Magazine of History; August 6,
resigns as Minister; August 20, resignation ac-
cepted "with regret"; September 23, lands at
New York; October 3, after three years' suspen-
sion, re-elected Peabody Agent.
1889: "Constitutional Government in Spain"; "Estab-
lishment and Disestablishment."
1890: October 1, 2: Peabody Trustees hold annual Meet-
ing in New York City; October 16, the Currys
move to Washington City, and occupy their new
home; October 30, chosen Slater Agent.
1891 : October 7 : Unanimously elected an Honorary Trus-
tee on the Peabody Board ; October 8, meeting of
Educational Committee of the Slater Fund; pub-
Hshes volume, "William Ewart Gladstone."
1892: October 17: Arranges for renewing Peabody Nor-
mal College Scholarships to Florida and Missis-
/
xvi CHRONOLOGY
sippi. Made a Trustee of Columbian University,
Washington. (He held the position till his
death.)
1893: April 25: Resigns Farmville Trusteeship; May 19,
entertains the Infanta Eulalia et al. at Washing-
ton.
1894: October 4: Re-elected General Agent of the Peabody
Board; November 21, attends funeral of Robert
— V C. Winthrop; publishes "The Southern States of
the American Union."
1895 : January 1 1 : Meeting of Slater Trustees in Washing-
ton; January 19, sails for Europe; June 1, returns;
October 19-28, on Jury of Awards at the Atlanta
Exposition.
1896: October 6: Special Committee of Peabody Trustees
met to consider the expediency of terminating
the Trust in February, 1897 — Adverse decision;
October 7, Curry re-elected General Agent.
1897: October 10: Attends funeral of Mrs. Mary W.
Thomas, mother of Mrs. Curry; December 30,
elected second president of the Southern History
Association, to succeed Hon. William L. Wilson.
1898: April 21: Address on 30th anniversary of Hampton
Institute; July 4, address at the University of
Chicago, on the Principles, Acts, and Utterances
of John C. Calhoun; publishes "Sketch of George
Peabody and a History of the Peabody Educa-
tion Fund."
1899: June 22: Address before the Education Conference
at Capon Springs, West Virginia; December 21,
invited to be Editor-in-Chief of a series of 10
historical volumes, to be issued by B. F. John-
son & Company.
1900: June 12: Address at the University of Virginia;
June 27, address at Capon Springs; October 9,
address at Tulane University.
1901: Publishes a "Civil History of the Government of
/
/
CHRONOLOGY xvu
the Confederate States, with Some Personal
Reminiscences." On June 15, delivers the Cen-
tennial Commencement Address at the Univer-
sity of Georgia.
1902: January 27: Elected a member of the Phi Beta
Kappa Society of William and Mary; April 7, en-
titled "Ambassador Extraordinary" to Spain;
April 19, sails for Spain; May 13, reaches Madrid;
May 15, presents his Address to Alfonso; May
16, is decorated by the Royal Order of Charles
III; May 17, attends the Coronation; May 22,
leaves Madrid; August 2, lands at New York;
October 1, last meeting with the Peabody Board;
re-elected General Agent, and $2,000 salary au-
thorized for a Secretary; November 30 to Decem-
ber 2, last visit and address to the Peabody Nor-
mal College, at Nashville.
1903: February 12 — Thursday: Dies at Fernihurst, Ashe-
ville, N. C; February 15 — Sunday: Buried in
Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond.
/
PREFACE
The subject of this book left for the writer of his
biography "an embarrassment of riches" in the
voluminous mass of papers, journals and correspond-
ence that constitute his unpublished literary estate;
so that the difficulty of the present authors in deal-
ing with this material has arisen rather in selection
and co-ordination than from any other source.
Dr. Curry's mental attitude illustrated a singular
and remarkable combination of the vision of the
literary man, and the concrete activity of one who
does things. Thus it came about that he not only
achieved results, but he also found time to record
his achievements. That he was accumulating mate-
rial for the story of his well-spent life is not incon-
sistent with such a proper sense of modesty, as is
rightly adorned by a just self-esteem. Just as it
was clear to him at the time he began to keep these
records that his life, if it should be spared to him,
would be one of unusual opportunity and privilege,
so in his later years he was of one mind with his
venerable and distinguished associate in the Peabody
Trust, Mr, Robert C. Winthrop, that their work in
the administration of that trust was a conspicuously
great and enduring public service.
He kept seven note-books and scrap-books, apart
from the diary which he kept through many years;
and in addition to diary and note-books, he pre-
served four volumes of letters and newspaper clip-
xix
XX PEEFACE
pings, together with many loose sheets and vagrant
scraps of memoranda. His correspondence was ex-
tensive, and refutes the popular assertion that letter
writing has been long a lost art.
Out of all this mass of documentary resource the
writers of this biography have tried to select such
material as would, with proper arrangement in the
connecting narrative, furnish forth the environment,
and illustrate the life and character of the man they
sought to portray.
For invaluable assistance in this arduous and
difficult task of selection, and in the co-ordination
of the material so selected, their thanks are due and
are here expressed to Dr. John Walter Wayland of
the Woman's Normal School at Harrisonburg, Vir-
ginia. His service to the authors was one requiring
patient energy and scholarly good sense, and he
discharged that service with great accuracy and
discretion.
J. L. M. CURRY
A BIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
"the dark corner"
The vehement and freedom-loving personality of
John Wilkes so greatly appealed to the patriotic
Americans of the Revolutionary struggle that they
gave the name of the eccentric Englishman, who had
boldly espoused their cause, to three counties in the
United States. One of these, Wilkes County, in the
northeastern part of the State of Georgia, was sub-
divided in the year 1796, and one of its subdivisions
received the more recently illustrious name of Lin-
coln, in memory of Benjamin Lincoln, a prominent
general of the colonial forces in the war with the
mother country.
Along the northeastern border of Lincoln County,
and separating the county and state from the visible
counties of Edgefield and Abbeville lying to the east
of it, flows the Savannah River. Lincolnton, the
county seat, lies near the centre of the county, whose
southeastern extremity, wedged into the angle
formed by the confluent Savannah and Little Rivers,
came to be known in the early days of the country
as "The Dark Corner."
There is nothing in frontier history more charac-
teristic of the pioneer period than are many of the
names, bestowed upon their homes by the incoming
settlers. "The Dark Corner" was justified of its
title. The Indian was there for a period, with the
1
2 J. L. M. CUKRY, A BIOGRAPHY
antagonism of the conquered towards the conqueror.
In a wild and unsettled country, without laws, or
schools, or libraries, each man was a law unto him-
self. This general spirit of lawlessness, or lack of
law, with its attendant characteristic of reliance upon
physical strength and personal powers, affected the
social existence of the inhabitants of "The Dark
Corner " down into the earlier years of the nine-
teenth century; and in the first two decades of that
century Lincoln County may be said to have been
lacking both in the sobriety and the peacefulness of
its population; while, as is commonly the case, the
reputation, once acquired, long survived the facts
which created it.
"Georgia Scenes," Judge Longstreet's volume of
inimitable humor, written to illustrate and make
palpable the earlier years of the nineteenth century
in that state, has for its first chapter "The Lincoln
Rehearsal," a title suggested in all probabihty by
the county which held "The Dark Corner," where
characters abounded like Ransy Sniffle, "whom
nothing on earth so much delighted as a fight;" and
where far into a higher civilization the conventional
question, "a thousand times asked," was, "which is
the best man, Billy Stallions (Stallings) or Bob
Durham?" and was daily sought to be answered by
wager of fistic battle. But, as is generally the case
with simple people, free from the restraints of legal
or social compulsion, these citizens and denizens of
"The Dark Corner" had the virtues that accompany
their faults. They were frank and genial in their
hospitality, and generous in their dealings with
both friend and stranger. Their kinship to nature
was close; and, if their passions were elemental,
'' THE DARK CORNER " 3
their characters took on a certain aspect of nobility
in their truthfulness, their generosity, their courage,
and their hardihood. The heroic drama of our
national expansion was then just getting under way.
The conquest of the land of a virgin continent, now
ended, was then beginning. This region was the
West — a spiritual and idealistic as well as a geo-
graphical term, for wherever new peoples, new forces
and new ideals are modifying old conditions — that
land is the West.
Here, in the very heart of "The Dark Corner" —
"right in the center," he writes of it — ere the sun-
light of a later civilization had lifted the shadows —
was born on Sunday, June 5, 1825, Jabez Lamar
Monroe Curry.
Jabez was a name that ought never to have been
bestowed, save with a full sense of the responsibihty
incurred by the giver in its bestowal. It may have
been that it was conferred with some subtle and
indefinable prescience on the part of the giver that
the bearer of it was to witness and to help toward
the healings of the distress of his people; for Jabez
is, by interpretation of the Hebrew, "sorrow, or
trouble;" or else his parents, with some like un-
conscious anticipation, may have beheld the great-
ness of their son's future, and named him for him of
old, who "was more honourable than his brethren;
and his mother called him Jabez;" or, as is more
probable, his parents received their chief inspirations
and enthusiasms from religion and politics, and
poured a rather wholesale broadside of both upon
the helpless babe.
Of his entire name, which as originally bestowed
was even more than he himself could bear, he writes
4 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
in his "Diary," with a certain feeUng that is not
altogether destitute of impatience: —
The Jabez is an honored Bible name, and was borne by
Jabez Marshall, a popular Baptist preacher in Georgia;
and by Jabez Curry, who died in Perry County, Alabama,
in 1873 — a favorite nephew of my father. Lafayertte was
the nation's guest when I was born, and my father, in
token of gratitude to the friend of Washington, saddled
me with the name; but I threw it aside and substituted
Lamar. Monroe was President in 1825; so I had to take
that burden also. I know no good from my long name,
but not a httle inconvenience.
The sympathy of the reader must go out to the
writer of the above poignant paragraph; and a les-
son to pious or patriotic or thoughtless parents may
be found in the reflection that a far more befitting
name, for the great educational figure of his time,
would have been Lamar Curry.
The early boyhood of Jabez was made familiar
with many "Georgia Scenes" surpassing in eccen-
tricity and outlawry even those of which the story-
teller has made literature. He was a witness, as he
tells us in the desultory pages of a journal which he
kept in later years, of many hand-to-hand fights
and fierce personal encounters. The spirit of the
Revolution continued, long after its close, to dom-
inate the section where he was born, a hill country,
into which through the generations had fled those
who sought escape from bondage or crime, or who
desired a larger freedom of thought and action than
prevailed in the more civilized parts of the new
Republic; and "Tory" was, even in Curry's boy-
hood, a term of opprobrium, quiet submission to
which carried with it the stigma of cowardice. Out
''THE DARK CORNER '» 5
of ''The Dark Corner," and from other parts of the
county, the lad was wont to see gathered at stated
intervals its citizen soldiery to the militia musters —
a period while they lasted, of unrestrained festivity
rather than of military restriction; and thither, too,
on important occasions, when a representative in the
legislature or in the Federal Congress, or a governor
or other high state official was to be chosen, came
the freeholders to cast their votes viva voce in the
presence of the sheriff and the election officers, and
to be thanked by the candidate who received them.
No less in the infrequent sessions of the courts of
that earlier period was illustrated the primitive and
natural wildness of country and people. A striking
story is told in the autobiography of a prominent
man who flourished in an adjoining state, which
serves to emphasize the state of society then prev-
alent throughout that section.
" Pushmatahaw, a Choctaw chief," says the relator,
who when a very young man, and a new comer to the
county in which the incident occurred, had just been made
prosecuting attorney, " had killed one of his subjects. In
doing this, he acted under his tribal authority, and was so
far justifiable. But under our law, which had been ex-
tended over all the territory conveyed by the Indians to
the general government, the execution became murder.
Pushmatahaw exercised great control and influence over
his tribe.
"He had in some way incurred the hatred of the land
companies organized to purchase reservations. It was
important to them that he should be got out of the way;
and to this end they employed a number of able attorneys
to aid me in the prosecution. To avoid censure, it was de-
termined that there should be only one speaker.
"The grand jury of Kemper County reported a bill of
6 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
indictment, and all the requisite preliminaries were per-
formed by me preparatory to an early trial. I was noti-
fied that Mr. Samuel J. Gholson would aid me in the argu-
ment of the case before the jury.
''The defence had secured the services of some of the
ablest lawyers in the state from Vicksburg and Jackson.
A day for trial had been appointed, and witnesses sum-
moned. I had, soon after my arrival in DeKalb, the county
seat of Kemper, been introduced to a young Virginian,
who had lately come there to practise law, and who made
from the first a marked impression on me. This was
Joseph G. Baldwin, afterwards so widely known both as
a lawyer and a literary man. Two days before the trial he
came to me, and requested to be allowed to take part in
the argument, as it might lead to future success if he ap-
peared in a case of so much interest. This I consented to
do, and carried my point against great opposition from my
colleagues. The testimony was soon ended. All the facts
were against the defendant, and the corpus delicti was
clearly shown. It was necessary to put the defence en-
tirely upon tribal authority.
"The argument was opened for the State by Gholson in
a characteristic speech. When Mr. Joe Baldwin arose, he
was at first listened to with such slight curiosity and gen-
eral indifference as might be expected for a very young
man, entirely unknown to his audience. In a few mo-
ments this was changed to absorbing interest and atten-
tion. His speech was marked by the clearest and most
convincing logic, rising at times into vivid oratory. It
was evident that this modest young man, though yet to
fortune and to fame unknown, was destined to take no
obscure place in his day and generation.
"Other arguments were made, and the case was sub-
mitted to the jury. After short deliberation a verdict of
guilty was rendered. The defendant was informed of the
result, and that he would be hung. He was shocked at the
mode of death, and made pathetic appeals against such an
' ' THE DARK CORNER ' ' 7
indignity, claiming his right to die hke a warrior. The
court had no power to interfere, and sentence was pro-
nounced according to the prescribed forms of our law.
When this was done, Pushmatahaw rose to his full height,
and gave vent to a wild war-whoop, so full of rage and
despair that it was terrible to hear. As there were many
Indians present, there was for a time danger of attempted
rescue.
"Application for pardon was made to the governor, and
the chief had strong hope that it would be granted. A few
days before that appointed for the execution, he was in-
formed that the governor had refused the pardon, and that
he must die what he considered the death of a dog. This
communication was made to the unhappy chief in cold-
blooded and inhuman malice, and the result came near
proving fatal. Pushmatahaw broke a bottle which
chanced to be in his cell, and with a piece of the glass
severed an artery in his left arm. He would have died in a
short time from loss of blood, if the sheriff had not made
an accidental visit to the prisoner. A pardon was granted
and sent to the sheriff by an express, in time to save the
life of the Choctaw chief."
" It's a far cry to Lochaw," was the boast of the
Scotch Campbell, whose broad lands extended over
so large a space of the Highlands. It seems ''a far-
ther cry" in point of time from the year 1835, when
Jabez Curry was a boy ten years old in ''The Dark
Corner," and Reuben Davis, later judge of the High
Court of Appeals, colonel in the war with Mexico,
member of Congress, and Confederate brigadier gen-
eral, was prosecuting the Indian chief, Pushmatahaw,
with the assistance of the beardless Joe Baldwin,
later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Cali-
fornia, who was destined to leave a larger fame than
is left by the most eminent lawyers, in his "Flush
8 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
Times" and "Party Leaders," — down to the first
decade in the twentieth century, when Curry rep-
resented the government of the United States as its
special ambassador at the coronation of the present
King of Spain, in the administration of Theodore
Roosevelt.
The Currys were of Scotch origin; and in Scotland
the name seems to have had the earlier spelling of
Currie. In one of the will-books of Lincoln County
was recorded on March 2, 1827, the will of Thomas
Curry. By this testamentary instrument the maker
of it appointed two of his sons, James and William,
his executors; and to William he devised the old
home-place in "The Dark Corner," whereon was
located the family graveyard. William Curry was
the father of Jabez ; and his mother was Susan Winn,
whom William Curry married in Lincoln County on
January 5, 1823. These Winns are said to have
been of Welsh extraction; and in any event the
names both of Currie and Winn indicate a purely
British origin, and illustrate in conjunction with the
names, still surviving there, of the people of that
section, the theory of Prof. Nathaniel S. Shaler, in
his "Nature and Man in America," that nowhere in
the western world, down to the beginning of the War
between the States in 1861, did the unadulterated
strain of descent from the Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland so prevail as in a radius of three or four
hundred miles of the East Tennessee Mountains.
Both of these names are still to be found, as of great
antiquity, upon the pages of records that hold the
pedigrees of the county families of the United King-
dom. Curry records in one of his note books the
fact that a General Winn, after whom Winnsboro,
( (
THE DARK CORNER"
in South Carolina, was named, was an officer of con-
siderable local distinction in the Revolutionary
Army; and that later he was for many years a rep-
resentative in the United States Congress, where he
was a colleague of Mr. Calhoun, and voted for the
War of 1812. The Welsh Winns were connected
with the French Lamars, and the Scotch Currys with
the English Walkers; so that Curry might well say
of himself: ''I can hardly call myself an Anglo-
Saxon, as in my veins flow English blood, Scotch,
Welsh, and French." Yet, after all, he was, save
for the touch of Gallic infusion, a typical product of
the British races, which gave a character and dis-
tinctiveness to the earlier colonial settlers of the
Atlantic seaboard, that was transmitted untainted
to their descendants who later pressed forward into
the Southern and Southwestern States. Curry,
however, with the real democratic spirit, typical of
the men of the Revolutionary period, and of the two
generations which succeeded, laid no claim to an
aristocratic origin, however much he might have
found himself by research entitled to it. It was
sufficient to him always to know that he was an
American; and his Americanism was consistently
of so broad and catholic a type as to include within
its comprehension every section and every citizen
of his country.
Before Jabez Curry saw the light of day in "The
Dark Corner" of Lincoln County, another child had
been born to his parents. This was Jackson C.
Curry, who was a man of sterHng honesty and worth,
and who spent his maturer years at Newbern, in
North Carolina, where he was a deacon in the Baptist
Church. With the courage and the patriotism of
10 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
the youth of his generation, when war reddened the
horizon in 1861, Jackson Curry entered the Confed-
erate Army, and died in the service at DemopoHs,
Alabama, in 1863, having achieved the rank of
captain, and leaving to survive him two sons and
three daughters.
One of Jabez Curry's earHest recollections, as he
records it in his ''Journal," was a faint and faded
memory of his father's second marriage, which oc-
curred September 4, 1829, when the boy was a little
over four years old. His mother and an infant
brother had died in 1827. With a wistfulness, that
grows into pathos in its conclusion, he wrote of her,
fifty years later, this paragraph: —
Of course I do not remember ever to have seen her.
Very many persons have told me that she was exceedingly
beautiful. It has been a source of sincerest regret that I
was not trained in my youngest years by a loving mother.
Delicate and susceptible, my life might have been differ-
ent; but God knows best. I have a thousand times wished
for her likeness; but in her day there were no daguerreo-
types or photographs; and few persons had portraits
painted.
Though thus lamenting, with the retrospection
which took him back to earHest infancy, this depriva-
tion of maternal tenderness and sohcitude, — a loss
which the most callous heart must of necessity
regret, — he has not failed to record the kindliness
of his relations with his father's second wife, and his
sense of indebtedness to her.
"My stepmother was a real mother to me," he writes,
"and loved me as she did her own children. I gladly and
gratefully bear this testimony to her faithfulness, kind-
ness and love."
" THE DARK CORNER " 11
The second wife of William Curry was Mrs. Mary
Remsen, a widow, who was born Murray, and whose
father was a Revolutionary soldier. She was a
woman of social prominence in her community; and
her brother, the Honorable Thomas W. Murray, was
a figure of more than local distinction, in whose
honor one of the counties of the State was sub-
sequently named. Of her first marriage had been
born a son, David H. Remsen, who grew up in the
household of William Curry as one of his own family,
and was the playmate and associate, while he was
treated as the brother, of Jackson and Jabez Curry.
Of William Curry's second marriage were born Mark
Shipp Curry, Thomas Curry, Walker Ciu*ry, and
James A. Curry, of the latter of whom Dr. Curry
writes in his diary under date of July 3, 1894, *'My
half-brother, James A. Curry, died in Anniston,
Alabama." There seems to be no fm-ther record of
the subsequent career of Mark Shipp Curry, the
eldest of the half-brothers; but Thomas Cm-ry was
a soldier of the Confederacy, and became a captain
in the Fifty-third Alabama regiment, and Walker
Ciu-ry achieved eminence as a physician, and was a
practitioner of his profession in New York City;
while James A. Curry was a prominent man in the
development of the mineral resources of Alabama.
He was a pioneer in the iron business, and with
Samuel Clabaugh in 1863 erected and operated a
charcoal furnace in Talladega County. Prior to the
breaking out of the War between the States, James
A. Curry had been a merchant of large means in the
town of Talladega; and he owned the lands on Salt
Creek in that county on which his and Clabaugh's
charcoal pig-iron furnace was erected, which was
12 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
destroyed by the Federal troops a year or two later.
William Curry, the father, was of the generation
which succeeded that of the pioneers in Wilkes and
Lincoln Counties; and this second generation in-
herited the moral fibre of their pioneer progenitors.
Though the feud and the foray had not in his time
altogether passed away, and the original "char-
acter" still lent variety and the not infrequent spice
of excitement to the community in which he lived,
these men of the Lower South of that period were
not always, or even frequently, the whiskey-drinking,
swaggering rowdies of revolver and bowie-knife, that
caricature and libel have portrayed them.
"It is true," writes a competent chronicler of them and
of their times, "that many of them drank hard, swore
freely, and were utterly reckless of consequences when
their passions were aroused. But it is equally true that
the great body of them were sober, industrious men, who
met hardships and toil with patient courage, and whose
hands were as ready to extend help as they were to resist
violence and oppression. They took life jovially, and en-
joyed such pleasures as they could come by. Although a
God-fearing people, — for infidelity was unknown, — there
was nothing straight-laced about their religion. They at-
tended divine worship in a reverent spirit and endeavored
to do their duty to God and man, so far as they saw it.
Even the strictest of them made no scruple about a social
glass, or a lively dance, or a game of cards, or even of an
honest hand to hand fight under due provocation."
This naive depiction of a social existence in which
the writer personally figured, continues: —
Their creed was generally simple. A man ought to fear
God and mind his business. He should be respectful and
courteous to all women; he should love his friends and hate
'' THE DARK CORNER " 13
his enemies. He should eat when he was hungry, drink
when he was thirsty, dance when he was merry, vote for
the candidate he liked best, and knock down any man who
questioned his right to these privileges. He was almost
always an ardent politician, and a strong partisan on
whichever side he enlisted. But a man would have been
held in reprobation who should attempt to serve his party
by fraud and corruption. There was no ballot-box stuf-
fing.
If creed and custom were alike primitive, they
were nevertheless manly and not insufficient; and
their crudity emphasized an integrity that was the
backbone of their social life.
Here in Lincoln County, amid such surroundings,
and touched by such influences as have been nar-
rated, William Curry lived, and his son Jabez spent
his earlier years. History makes mention on its
lesser pages of many names of the time and vicin-
ity, — for the most part stout English and Scotch
and Welsh names, with a touch of the Gallic.
Among the first settlers of the county whose names
are thus preserved in the local annals were Thomas
Murray, the father of William Curry's second
wife, Robert Walton, John Lockhart, B. Lockhart,
Thomas Mitchell, Sterne Simmons, J. Stovall,
Captain John Lamar, Stephen Handspiker, M.
Henley, Robert Fleming, James Wallace and Peter
Lamar. The two most prominent men of the
county in William Curry's time appear to have
been his brother-in-law, Thomas W. Murray, and
Judge John M. Dooley, who like Murray also had
the honor of having a county of the State named
for him.
Of the Lamars, whose patronymic Curry sub-
14 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
stituted for that of La Fayette, which his father
had patriotically bestowed upon him, and whose
blood mingled with the other strains in his veins,
the story of the South contains no little. The two
most famous of the name and family, since their
Huguenot ancestor first settled in the western world,
was Mirabeau B. Lamar, orator, poet, soldier and
statesman, compatriot of Sam Houston, Secretary
of War of the Republic of Texas, the Commander-
in-chief of its armies, its Vice-President, and for
three years its President without opposition; and
his no less distinguished nephew, Lucius Quintus
Curtius Lamar, fitted out like his uncle and like
his kinsman, Jabez Curry, with extraordinary
names, after the apparent fashion of the times, who
as Congressman, author of the Mississippi Ordinance
of Secession, Lieutenant Colonel of the Nineteenth
Mississippi regiment. Minister to Russia from the
Confederate States, Secretary of the Interior and
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,
touched nothing that he did not adorn.
The religious influences of the period in Lincoln
County emanated from the ministers and members,
for the most part, of two denominations, — the
Methodists and Baptists, — whose missionaries have
been from the earliest times in the rugged forefront
of pioneer progress in America. The "hardshell"
or primitive Baptist of that period was a mighty
force in the development of young communities.
Religion and sestheticism had not joined hands in
that rough world. The preacher preached a simple,
fearful creed, compounded strangely of tenderness
and pitilessness, and lived an heroic unselfish life,
and his doctrines and practices made such an impres-
** THE DARK CORNER " 15
sion upon the family of William Curry that all the
culture and cosmopolitanism of the widest travel
and experience could not wean his distinguished son
from the faith of his early years.
When about four years old, Jabez Curry was sent
to an ''old field school" in "The Dark Corner,"
where reading, writing and arithmetic were taught
by one Joel Fleming, the master. The character
and regimen of the homes of the vicinity were more
or less primitive and simple. The furniture was
plain and serviceable. The floors were generally
bare of carpets or coverings. These primitive homes
contained a population that has been generally de-
scribed as having been "raised on pot-liquor, and
fortified from early youth on jowl and greens, and
buttermilk, and hog-meat smoked to the last turn,
to say nothing of cornpone with reasonable gravy."
The schools, school-houses and schoolmasters
matched the homes. The old field school-house,
which the little boy attended, was built of logs,
with the interstices daubed with clay. It was set
in a woods, and was roofed with puncheons. There
was but one door; and the shutter of the single
unglazed window swung on creaking wooden hinges.
The window itself was simply a hole in the wall,
opposite the huge fireplace, made by cutting out a
section of one of the logs. Alongside this narrow
opening was a wide plank, fastened against the wall,
which was used by the school-children as a writing
desk. The first-formed letters of Jabez Curry,
learned in the little log school-house in the Georgia
woods, were made with a goose-quill pen, which was
the exclusive instrument of writing, — the manufac-
ture of which, no less than its use, was sedulously
16 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
taught by all well-minded teachers in the old field-
schools. An accompaniment of the quill-pen was
the sand-box, whose contents took the place of the
more modern blotting-paper; and often master and
pupils manufactured also the ink that they wrote
with, — a writing fluid which must have been well-
made, for the public records that are its monument
are still clear and legible in a new century.
The "old field schools" were co-educational; and
boys and girls went to school together. In warm
weather, the larger boys were permitted to study
their lessons outside the school-house, beneath the
trees. There were no long vacations; but when a
holiday was desired for any special occasion, the
master was not over strenuous in resisting the request
of the children. Sometimes a mild compulsion was
resorted to by the children, when their holiday peti-
tion was rejected, and the master would be "barred
out." If the pedagogue resisted and made fight,
the youngsters met force with force; and Curry has
left among his papers a note in which he relates how,
on one occasion, young though he was, he partici-
pated in one of these "lock-outs" against Mr.
Fleming. The master seems to have been beloved
by the children, but as, at the time of this episode,
he proved recalcitrant when approached for a holi-
day, his affectionate pupils proceeded first to bar
him out; and later, the larger boys bore the strug-
gling pedagogue to the neighboring creek, and soused
him into its shallow depths, while even the little
Jabez waded into the stream, and with both small
hands flung water on his preceptor, while the big
boys held him down. It is recorded that the wise
and simple master had taken advantage of the op-
( (
THE DARK CORNER " 17
portunity, generously afforded him, prior to the
"ducking," to leave his tobacco-pouch on dry land;
and that in recognition of the kindliness of his ad-
versaries in this respect, he took his enforced plunge
with serene good humor. The holiday was gained;
and the pedagogic function in due season resumed,
with no apparent diminution or impairment of the
usual discipline, and no intimation of diminished
dignity.
It has been correctly said by an intelligent writer
on the subject of elementary education at the South
during this early period, that: —
The old academies of the South were many of them ex-
cellent schools, and in some respects have not yet been
surpassed. The "old field" school was often good; but
the whole arrangement was without adequate supervision,
was expensive and uncertain, and did not reach many of
our people. The percentage of illiteracy was high, and
was not decreasing.
In the later 'forties the spirit of the great common school
revival, which had been led by Horace Mann, began to
influence the South; and in the early 'fifties the messages
of the Southern governors contained many eloquent ap-
peals for a state system of schools for all the children, and
if war had not intervened, their appeals would have
quickly taken form in a progressive system of public edu-
cation.
Northern teachers were frequent in the Southern
States, and especially young college graduates from
New England, who migrated to the newly developing
section of the country, with the idea of advancing
their fortunes, sooner or later, in the professions of
law and medicine, or by taking advantage of the
many opportunities which the time and locality
18 J. L. M. CUKRY, A BIOGRAPHY
offered. So it happened that young Curry's next
teacher was a Mr. Vaughan, from Maine, who seems
not to have possessed the equable temper and for-
giving spirit of Mr. Fleming. He was a rigorous and
severe disciplinarian, but is supposed to have been
an excellent instructor.
"In 1833, the stars fell." This date of the great
meteoric shower, Curry, who was then in his eighth
year, recalled vividly in later life ; associating it with
what is always an occasion of vast importance in the
life of a lad, — his departure from home, to attend
school at a distance. He was sent from his father's
home, in "The Dark Corner," to Lincolnton, where
his grandmother lived; and, boarding with her, was
put to school with the Reverend Mr. McKerley, the
minister of what was then perhaps the sole Presby-
terian church, and with a scant congregation, in the
county. Mr. McKerley, if his name counts for
aught, was of Galloway Scotch stock ; and, after the
fashion of Presbyterian ministers of that day no less
than of the present, was a scholar. Under him
Jabez Curry began the study of Latin, — a language
whose acquisition stood him in good subsequent
stead in his later career as lawyer, politician, and
preacher; and which he doubtless ascertained to be
of incalculable value to him in his study of the
southern languages of Europe during his distin-
guished career as diplomat and Ambassador.
At Mr. McKerley's school, his cousin, Lafayette
Lamar, was his classmate and most intimate friend;
and the cordial and affectionate association between
the two young lads, formed at Lincolnton, was con-
tinued and cemented in their later association at
college.
'' THE DARK CORNER " 19
During the year young Lamar's sister was mar-
ried; and Curry records that the rows of iced
cakes, set in the sun to dry, ere they should "furnish
forth the marriage feast," were more wonderful to
his sense of interest and curiosity than had been
the falling stars. They were the first iced cakes of
his boyish experience. He had attended once before
the nuptials of a young woman cousin; but, for some
virtue of the bride, or yet other undisclosed reason,
there had been no iced cakes set out to harden in
the sun; and so he tells that the only thing he re-
membered in connection with that interesting event
was that he sat upon a fence, with some other boys,
and while peeling a turnip, cut his hand, making a
gash, the scar of which he carried through life.
On a Saturday, during his school days at Lincoln-
ton, in company with young Lamar and a companion
named Frayser, he went into the courthouse, and
with the reckless daring of youth, drew a series of
figures in charcoal on the whitewashed walls of the
temple of justice. His uncle, Peter Lamar, hap-
pened to come in and catch the boys in their vandal
act, and scolded them severely, threatening them
with confinement in jail and other condign punish-
ment. The threat was one that suggested humilia-
tion and terror; for Jabez had, on previous occasion,
been permitted to see the inside of the county jail at
Lincolnton.
Many famous names and incidents center about
that old courthouse in Lincolnton. The courthouse
of the frontier world, particularly in southern life,
was a combination of what the theatre was to the
Greeks, the forum to the Romans, the Cathedral to
the mediaeval world, the piazza or the market place
20 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
to the denizens of sunny lands, and the club to the
dwellers in modern cities. It centered in itself and
absorbed all secular interests. Excitements and
thrills were to be experienced there. Ambitions
were born there, ideals formed, and patriotism
warmed and directed. Here the great and the near-
great passed before the eyes of simple people seeking
their confidence and loyalty. The church alone was
strong enough to vie with the courthouse in human
interest. It was the chief architectural glory of
straggling villages, standing generally upon some
eminence and dominating a hollow square of lesser
structures devoted to trade. It is interesting and
significant to note that a more practical and far-
seeing generation is now substituting the schoolhouse
for the courthouse as the center and pivot of commu-
nity life. The transfer of interest from the one to
the other in the public mind denotes a profound
change in the popular conception of the meaning of
politics. Politics is now coming to mean a practical
program of growth and training, through which the
fittest and best of all the young life about can be
made ready for leadership. This attitude places the
emphasis on the child who may be made great, rather
than on the adult claimant of greatness, and marks
a distinct advance in social understanding.
Conspicuous among the great figures of young
Curry's Temple of Justice was the presiding judge
of the circuit of the period of his charcoal sketch,
William H. Crawford, later a man of national fame
and a candidate for the presidency in 1824; Garnett
Andrews, who had a local and state reputation as a
lawyer and jurist; Judge Joseph H. Lumpkin, after-
wards Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia,
" THE DARK CORNER '' 21
and in his day one of the most eminent and successful
lawyers at the Georgia bar; Andrew Miller, for many
years president of the State Senate, a lawyer and
politician of distinction; and Robert Toombs, then
a young man, and afterwards a figure of conspicuous
distinction in the history of the nation.
The next year young Curry was sent to school in
Willington, across the Savannah River, in Abbeville
County, South Carolina, whither his brother Jackson
and David Remsen had preceded him the year be-
fore. The school at Willington was famous in its
day. Founded in the first decade of the 19th century
by the Reverend Moses Waddell, it was among the
most noted of the earlier ante-bellum academies;
and Waddell himself was in the forefront of the
schoolmasters of his generation. It has been said
of the school at Willington that ''it was in the coun-
try, far from town; the life was simple and discipline
was strict; the hardest work was required of all
students." Among Dr. Waddell's pupils at various
times were his famous brother-in-law, John Caldwell
Calhoun; George McDuffie, "the orator of Nullifi-
cation;" Judge Longstreet, of ''Georgia Scenes"
fame; James Bowie, soldier and adventurer, who
invented the deadly knife of the southwestern coun-
try that is called after him, and who died with
Crockett and Travis and their fellows in the defense
of the Alamo; James Lewis Petigru, defender of the
Union in the days of South Carolina nullification,
attorney general of the state and codifier of its laws;
and of a number of others whose names are scarcely
less distinguished and well-remembered.
At the time of Curry's attendance on the school
at Willington, it was directed and taught by the sons
22 J. L. M, CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
of the elder Waddell, James P. and John N. Waddell.
There were about a hundred boys, many of whom
boarded at private houses in the tiny village, and
with the neighboring farmers. Young Curry's host
was a Dr. Harris, who gave his company biscuits
every Sunday morning, and cornbread in its various
shapes on other days and times. The pupils gath-
ered at Willington from many directions in the sur-
rounding districts of Georgia and South Carolina;
and among other contemporaries there of the two
young Currys were W. W. Boyce, who was later a
member of Congress from South Carolina; Gen.
Milledge L. Bonham, also a member of Congress,
and later Governor of South Carolina; and others
of more or less local or sectional distinction.
The WiUington Academy, which had been first
established by Dr. Waddell at Vienna, in Carolina, a
short distance from its subsequent site, has been
described by one who was famiUar with it, as having
become famous all over the South. Says this
writer :
After Dr. Waddell was forced from age and dis-
ability, to give up teaching, the school was revived by
his sons, James and John Waddell, but under the gen-
eral supervision of the old schoolmaster. No doubt his
sons followed their father's plan of teaching, and as I
was, when a boy, long an inmate of Moses Waddell's
family, and a pupil at the Willington Academy, it may
not be unentertaining to give a short account of the old
Willington schoolhouse, as we had it from tradition. The
boys boarded at farmhouses in the neighborhood or lived
in log huts in the woods near the Academy, furnishing
their own supplies. At sunrise Dr. Waddell was wont to
wind his horn, which was immediately answered by
" THE DARK CORNER '» 23
horns in all directions. At an early hour the pupils
made their appearance at the log cabin schoolhouse.
The Doctor, entering the cabin and depositing his hat,
would reappear at the door with this school horn in his
hand. He then would call out loud, "What boy feels
most flatulent this morning?"
After the horn had been sounded by some lucky
youth, the school-boys came in to listen to a short
set form of prayer.
After prayers the pupils, each with a chair bearing his
name sculped in the back of it, retired to the woods for
study, the classes being divided into squads according to
individual preference. In the spring and summer months
these squads scattered through the oak and hickory woods
in quest of shade; but in cold weather the first thing done
by them was to kindle log-heap fires. Whosoever im-
agines that the boys did not study as well as they would
have done under the immediate eye of the teacher is mis-
taken. I have been to many schools conducted according
to various systems of education, but nowhere have I seen
such assiduity in study, nowhere have I ever witnessed
such emulation to excel. It was a classical school. The
multiplicity of studies now advertised at fashionable acad-
emies was unknown in those early times. The debating
club on Friday afternoons was an important institution,
and regarded by the teacher as a very necessary part of his
scholastic system, for to converse and speak in public were
esteemed necessary accomplishments to Southern youths.
Of the famous schoolmaster, whose sons succeeded
him in the school where the methods of their father's
system were still continued in Curry's day at Willing-
ton, Mr. Calhoun long afterwards wrote as follows : —
In that character (as a teacher) he stands almost un-
rivaled. He may be justly considered as the father of
24 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
classical education in the upper country of South Carolina
and Georgia. His excellence in that character depended
not so much on extensive or profound learning as a felici-
tous combination of qualities for the government of boys
and communicating to them what he knew. He was par-
ticularly successful in exciting emulation amongst them,
and in obtaining the good will of all except the worthless.
The best evidence of his high qualities as a teacher is his
success. Among his pupils are to be found a large portion
of the eminent men in this state and Georgia. In this state
it is sufficient to name McDuffie, Legare, Petigru, and my
colleague, Butler. To these many others of distinction
might be added. His pupils in Georgia who have distin-
guished themselves are numerous. In the list are to be
found the names of William H. Crawford, Longstreet, etc.
It is in his character of a teacher, especially, that he will
long be remembered as a benefactor of the country.
During the year of Curry's stay at Willington an
event of great importance in the eyes of the pupils
was the visit to the school of the famous Siamese
twdns, Chang and Eng, who were then making their
first tour in America. He makes record among his
memoranda of seeing the twins at Willington. They
seemed, he says, to be about seventeen years old;
and cheerful and very agile.
"Cherry Hill," the home of George McDuffie, was
near the Willington Academy; and was a favorite
resort of the boys on Saturdays. McDuffie's dis-
tinguished career in the United States House of
Representatives ended during the year of Curry's
pupilage at Willington ; and in the same year he was
elected Governor of South Carolina. In 1842 he
was chosen to the Senate, and was in the forefront
of the forensic and political debates and contests of
the period in that body.
" THE DARK CORNER " 25
It remains to be added, in connection with Curry's
life at Willington, that both the sons of Moses
Waddell, James Pleasants Waddell and John Newton
Waddell, became eminent in their chosen profession
as educators, — the former filling with success and
distinction the chairs of Latin and Greek in the Uni-
versity of Georgia, where Curry records of him that
he treated his old pupil with a fatherly care and kind-
ness during the latter' s career as a student; while
John Newton Waddell became professor of Latin
and Greek in the University of Mississippi, and later
its Chancellor.
During the next succeeding year, and for the two
years following, from 1835 to 1838, young Curry
and his brothers were kept at home, and attended a
school nearby at ''Double Branches." The teacher,
Daniel W. Finn, was an Irishman, and a graduate of
Dublin University, where he had studied for the
Roman Catholic priesthood. With such educational
opportunities, Mr. Finn had made of himself a most
excellent scholar; and he was highly proficient and
accomplished, especially in the ancient languages.
He was moreover a very popular and successful
teacher; and it doubtless goes without saying that
Curry, who was fond of books and usually an apt
and industrious student, made satisfactory progress
under the Irishman in the branches of Latin, Greek,
Algebra and Geometry, in all of which the master
instructed his pupil.
"Double Branches," in the southern part of Lin-
coln County, was the site of a Baptist Church; and
it is eminently characteristic of what might be called
the "cosmopolitan" liberality of thought and
breadth of view of the population of the period, had
26 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
they known aught of cities, that they not only sent
their children to school to a Roman Catholic, but
that they permitted a mulatto preacher to fill oc-
casionally the pulpit of the '' Double Branches"
Baptist Church. This man's name was Adams;
and Curry records of him that he preached to the
satisfaction of all, both white and colored, and adds:
"For a colored man to preach to white congregations
was not an offence."
William Curry at this time was a farmer and coun-
try merchant. His store drew custom from a wide
circle; and both musters and elections were held in
its immediate vicinity. Politics ran high in those
days, in Lincoln County as elsewhere; and carried
inevitably in their train frequent excitement and ill-
feeling. But the Lincoln County folks took their
politics, as they did the other happenings of Ufe,
with a philosophic good humor which did not suffer
the sun to go down on their political wrath; and the
asperities of election day generally disappeared in
the emulation of the quarter-races, which almost
invariably succeeded the polling, the electors riding,
in competition, quick heats on the nags that had
brought them to the store for the purpose of voting.
In the country sports, common to boys and men,
young Jabez Curry took his hearty share. The
hunting of the opossum and the 'coon, an immemorial
pastime and delight with many generations of
Southern boys and their darkey friends and play-
mates, and embalmed in the melody and pathos of
more than one plantation song, was a favorite pur-
suit with Jabez. ''Very often," he says, "have I,
with other boys and some of my father's negroes,
hunted for half the night. It was a boyish ambition,
< i
THE DARK CORNER '» 27
too, to be out all night. The skill of the negroes in
finding their way in the woods by starlight used to
excite my boyish admiration."
It was such association as this with the young
people of the slave population that gave their white
owners so strong a hold upon the natural affections
of the negroes; and no one can fully realize and
appreciate the reciprocal feelings of kindliness and
regard that held the two races of that period so
strongly together, who has never been 'possum or
'coon hunting on a Southern plantation at night,
with a company of dusky negro playmates!
Hunting birds, too, in the brush heaps of the ''new
grounds," where the virgin forests had fallen before
the axe, and the logs had been piled up to be removed
or burnt, was also an exciting sport, with its ac-
companiment of flashing pine torches and whistling
dogwood branches; but the helplessness of the
victims, and their easy capture or destruction when
blinded by the torchlight, and stricken down by the
switches, gave it a cruel aspect to young Curry, who
preferred other and less easy pursuits. A rabbit-
hunt was a good thing, for bunny had a chance to
get away; and fishing with hook and line in river
and creek, or hauling the seine in the mill-ponds,
offered many opportunities of enjoyment to the
growing lad. "I well remember," he declared in
after years, with the vivid recollection in which
childhood often preserves its simplest memories —
"I well remember the first fish — a little minnow —
I ever caught; and Napoleon was not prouder of
one of his great victories than I was of my piscatory
success."
It is a characteristic of the negro race, familiar to
28 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
those who have associated with them in more than
one of the Southern States, that the farther south
they Hve, and the nearer to the equator, the more
amenable they appear to the impressions of super-
stition. Superstitious under the most favorable cir-
cumstances, the negro of the far south is voodooistic
and "conjur-man" to an extreme degree; and
James Whitcomb Riley's lines convey no inapt de-
scription of him amid his surroundings: —
Amid lush fens of rice,
I beheld the negro's eyes
Lit with that old superstition time itself cannot disguise;
And I saw the palm-tree nod
Like an oriental god.
And the cotton froth and bubble at the pod.
There were no palm trees nor rice in the part of
Georgia where Jabez Curry grew up as a child; but
the negro was there with his immemorial self-delu-
sions and gross beliefs. Curry has left a grave
record of the evil results which this strange quality
of the African mind made upon his own in early
childhood — an experience that was common to very
many of the sensitive and imaginative white children
of the South: —
"The negroes, a superstitious, gullible race," he writes,
"used to tell me most marvellous tales about ghosts,
witches, hobgoblins, and haunted places; and I had not a
shadow of doubt as to the truth of their statement. The
result on myself was so painful and mischievous, that I
made it an inflexible rule in training my children to deal
frankly with them, and under no circumstances to deceive
them."
CHAPTER II
ALABAMA: "hERE WE REST"
In the year 1837, Curry's father visited Alabama,
and bought a tract of land in Talladega County,
known as Kelly's Springs. It was the period of the
"Flush Times of Mississippi and Alabama," whose
history has been chronicled with the deft and illumi-
nating pen of Judge Joseph G. Baldwin. In the
public estimation, there were great fortunes to be
made from the acquisition of lands. "Fiat money"
of the irresponsible state banks, and the "shin-
plaster" currency of a wild economic period in the
history of the lower South, abounded everywhere;
and speculation was rife. WilUam Curry paid
thirty-nine dollars per acre for his Talladega farm;
and in spite of the later fading of the "Flush Times"
and the collapse of the "boom" in land values, he
presumably never had cause to regret his purchase.
In December of the same year, or in January of the
next, he sent his negroes, in charge of an overseer, to
Kelly's Springs, to prepare the ground and put out
a crop. He sold the old home place in "The Dark
Corner," and in May, 1838, set out with his family
for his new home in Alabama. Though thus parting
finally with the residence and family graveyard of
his people in Lincoln County, which passed thence-
forward into the hands of strangers, William Curry
29
30 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
appears to have retained considerable landed estate
in Georgia, for he owned not only a large body of
land in Lincoln County, but a number of other tracts
and lots in various parts of the state, — illustrating
in its acquisition and retention one of the most
marked characteristics, as philosophic historians re-
mind Us, of the genuine Anglo-Saxon, whether as an
individual, or in the aggregate as a race.
The starting to Alabama was delayed by the ex-
treme illness of young Curry's stepmother; and the
journey was made by Mrs. Curry in a carriage.
In 1802 Georgia, in emulation of the generous and
splendid act of Virginia in ceding to the United
States the great Northwest Territory, had ceded to
the general government the region which became in
1817 the territory of Alabama, and two years later
was admitted into the Union as a state. The act
by which this cession was made provided that the
terms and conditions of the Ordinance of 1787
governing the Northwest Territory should apply,
except the provision in the latter as to slavery. The
act of Congress, authorizing the people of Alabama
to form a state government, contained like provi-
sions, and specified that the constitution of the new
state should be in accordance with the Ordinance
save as to the slavery provision. It also contained
provision for certain land grants dedicated to educa-
tion and internal improvements.
It has been said of the Convention which met at
Huntsville, on July 5, 1819, and continued in session
until August 2, that it was an able body of men,
many of whom had gained political experience in
the older states; and that "it is possible to trace in
the document which they drew up the influence of
ALABAMA: " HEEE WE REST" 31
Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, North and South Car-
olina ideas; yet the document was not a slavish one.
It was a good, practical constitution, and it lasted
with several small amendments down to the War
of Secession."
Alabama became one of the states of the American
Union, December 14, 1819; so that its statehood
was but a little more than five years of age at the
date of Curry's birth in 1825. When he became its
citizen in 1838, both state and boy were young; and
thenceforward they grew up and developed together
until War arose on the horizon, and a new govern-
ment claimed and received the allegiance of both.
At the time of William Curry's migration with his
family from Lincoln County, Georgia, to Talladega,
Alabama, the new state was such a frontier country
as the Georgia of a preceding generation had been.
The historian, above quoted, says of it: —
The conquest of nature absorbed the inhabitants of the
new state so fully that they had little time for political
questions ; nor did these for some time press upon them for
solution. The new state began its career in the "Era of
Good Feeling," under President Monroe. The bitter Mis-
souri contest was contemporaneous with its admission,
and during the years of political quiet that followed, Ala-
bama knew no politics. The population was nearly half
slave; but the conditions were favorable to slavery, and
there was little difference of opinion about it. Laws were
passed to regulate the institution, to prevent cruelty on
the one hand and wholesale emancipation on the other, to
prescribe the status of free negroes, and to maintain order
among the slaves and the free. The question then passed
into the background, where it slumbered, with one or two
brief interruptions, until it was called forth by the great
discussions that immediately preceded the War.
32 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
The distance which was traversed by the Curry
family in going from ''The Dark Corner" to their
new home at Kelly's Springs was more than two
hundred miles. The way stretched entirely across
the State of Georgia and a third of the way across
the State of Alabama. It was no slight or trivial
journey, for the way was largely unbroken, and the
means of locomotion primitive. The cavalcade was
composed of the white family in vehicles or on
horseback, the carriage in which Mrs. Curry was
transported, various wagons and horses, the latter
hitched to the vehicles, or ridden under saddle, and
numerous negro household servants. A necessary
part of its equipment was a sufficient supply of tents,
for there was neither inn nor hostelry for the accom-
modation of man or beast. But the May weather
was mild and balmy; and camping-out under a
cloudless heaven, beneath the overhanging stars,
afforded the lad a new joy, the memory of which
lasted through his life. The wolves, attracted by
the camp-fires which the servants built at night, ap-
proached the camp, and protested against the in-
vasion of their territory with doleful howls; but the
fears which they aroused in the minds of the youthful
members of the party were accompanied by such a
sense of excitement and interest as to make them
not unwelcome. At a point where the little caval-
cade crossed the Georgia line into what is now
Cleburne County, Alabama, young Curry got his
first sight of the mountains. Though they were
neither lofty nor commanding, they presented to
his view a novel and unexperienced landscape; and
in traversing them he examined with keen interest
the grasses, shrubs and ferns with which they were
ALABAMA: ''HERE WE REST" 33
covered. A long familiarity in after years with the
mountains of his native country, and with the
Pyrenees, the Alps and the Apennines of the old
world, never obliterated from his memory that early
impression of the low mountains of the Georgian
border.
"It was a sad exodus," he wrote, more than half a cen-
tury later, in allusion to a visit some years before to the
old place in Lincoln County, "leaving the old homestead,
where grandparents and mother lay buried. Many years
afterwards I revisited my birthplace, but what a change!
When my father emigrated, he left a mansion, all needful
outhouses, a grove of beautiful oaks, a fertilized vegetable
garden, a yard glowing with roses and rare flowers, well-
bearing orchards of selected fruits, a plantation well-
fenced and intersected by roads, and everything that char-
acterized a well-to-do Southern home. • Forty-six years had
wrought a marvellous transformation. Nearly everything
on the surface had disappeared, except the dwelling-house,
and that was in a dilapidated condition. The cultivated
fields had been neglected and permitted to grow up in
broom sedge and sassafras and persimmon and pine.
Desolation reigned supreme. I came away sick at heart,
regretting that I had made the visit, for all the cherished
pictures of childhood's life were dispelled, and there only
remained the saddest impression of what neglect and pov-
erty and bad tillage had wrought."
The new home in Talladega County was reached
May 29, 1838, and the new life begun. The negroes,
who had come on before the family, had been in-
dustriously at work, and had done their work well.
The new lands had responded to the efforts of their
cultivators; the corn, that had been planted in the
early spring, was already waist-high; and nature's
34 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
lavish gifts were everywhere in evidence. The
woods were covered with verdant and luxuriant
foliage; grapes hung from the branches of trailing
vines, and wild flowers blossomed in wood and wold.
The water in the streams, flowing amid limestone
rocks, was clear as crystal; and the whole new
country seemed to the impressionable boy the most
beautiful he had ever imagined.
The newcomers found that the dwelling house was
not completed. It was a two-story building of
ample proportions, yet in its unfinished state it af-
forded only scanty shelter. But the season was
mild, and the tents that had been pitched by the
wayside were not without their uses at the goal.
The kindly welcome which the negro slaves gave the
newcomers made no little amends for many tem-
porary discomforts. They were at work in the fields
by the roadside as the cavalcade from Georgia ap-
proached; and throwing down their hoes, they
rushed to meet their master's family with the joyous
and noisy greeting of a careless race.
The nomenclature of places is often as interesting
and as significant as that of peoples and individuals;
and not infrequently establishes historical landmarks
that ought not to be changed or removed. Contact
with the Indians, of which the new state had up to
very recent times been full, had impressed the in-
coming white settlers with the frequent appositeness
and significance of the Indian names; and many of
them were retained for the places and localities to
which they had become attached. "Alabama" it-
self meant "Here we rest;" and was no inappropriate
appellation for the new region in the eyes of the in-
comers. "Talladega" meant "Border Town; " and
ALABAMA: "HERE WE REST" 35
the white settlers retained it. It was a fertile spot,
this Talladega Valley, constituting the eastern part
of the great Coosa Valley; and a land that lent itself
rather to the cultivation of the cereals than of cotton.
It had been the country of the Muscogee Indians,
later better known as Creeks. The Creek Indians
in the War of 1812, as the Five Nations in the North
during the Revolution, had espoused the cause of
the invading British against the local white man.
These Creeks had committed the atrocious massacre
at Fort Mims; and it was not until General Andrew
Jackson had vanquished them in the battle of the
Horseshoe Bend, and finally by treaty restricted
them to the Coosa Valley section, that they had
been under control. When William Curry's family
arrived at Kelly's Springs, in Talladega County, in
1838, the Indians had for the most part passed out
of Alabama, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws
going first; and the warlike Creeks only departing
at last, after a last stand and struggle at Pea Ridge
in the preceding year.
Though most of the Indians had long since de-
parted from Alabama, and had crossed over into the
country west of the Mississippi River, a few contin-
ued to stay in their old country, earning a precarious
subsistence by hunting, fishing and begging. Sev-
eral of them were at the new home at Kelly's Springs
when the Currys arrived ; and Curry records of them
that they were for a long time thereafter to be seen
at the place nearly every day. They were poor and
harmless and friendless; and he became quite fond
of them, and soon learned to speak their language
so as to converse with them in it. But he writes
regretfully that their general worthlessness soon dis-
36 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
illusioned him of the romance with which Cooper in
his "Leather Stocking Tales" had invested the figure
of the red man.
Yet in spite of their later degradation, these Ala-
bama Indians had not been without the marks of a
social and economic existence that seemed to lift
them above the status of simple barbarism. A
recent writer on the iron and coal industries of this
section of Alabama says: —
There is a tradition to the effect that a tribe of Indians
called the UUabees, corrupted by the whites into Hilla-
bees, occupied the mountainous district along Talladega
Creek, extending into the present County of Clay, and that
these Ullabees had iron arrow heads, and various rude im-
plements made of iron when the first settlers penetrated
the wilds, and traded with the Ullabee clan of the Musco-
gee Indians.
Much of the land in this Creek country belonged
to the United States government, and was now put
on the market. The Federal Land Office was at
Mardisville, near the centre of Talladega County.
The several government tracts had been surveyed
and laid off into sections of six hundred and forty
acres each, and these into subdivisions of forty acres
each. This "forty acres" subdivision is supposed
to have been the origin of the limitation upon the
expectancy of the Southern negro ex-slave in the
matter of land in the period immediately succeed-
ing the collapse of the Southern Confederacy. The
concomitant mule was a suggestion original to the
reconstruction period.
Under the Federal statutes, this public land was
subject to entry, with restrictions, on the payment
ALABAMA: "HERE WE REST" 37
of a fixed price, at the Mardisville Land Office. The
government, however, would accept no money in
payment but gold and silver. The paper money of
the period was without provision for redemption,
and was greatly depreciated. Much extortion was
practised by the money changers in the conversion
of ''shinplasters" into specie, since speculation in
lands had become long since in the southwest a
species of mania. The strange passion for town-
building under conditions known as ''boom," which
has characterized so many sections and localities of
the North American continent at various periods in
its history, had twenty years earlier seized upon the
then Territory of Alabama.
"Now that the heart of the river basin from the Ten-
nessee Valley to the Florida line was open to white settle-
ment," writes the historian, "immigration came by leaps
and bounds. The Whitney gin made cotton-raising the
money-making industry, and planters took up much of the
Black Belt. Town-making became the rage. Not only
was Blakely founded across the delta as a rival to Mobile,
and even St. Stephens had neighbors, but Wetumpka,
Montgomery, Selma, and Tuscaloosa were laid out, be-
sides others which were to live only on paper. The steam-
boat had come on the Mississippi. It was clear that in a
short time it must solve the transportation question, and
make of the river basin an agricultural commonwealth.
The old times when the port which looked abroad was the
only place of interest, had passed. Local centres were de-
veloped over the eastern half of Mississippi territory, and
the commerce through Mobile vastly increased.
"The western half, with Mississippi River as its promo-
ter, had increased even more rapidly, and in 1817 was
erected into the State of Mississippi. The counties left
outside became the territory of Alabama, whose legisla-
443282
38 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
ture met at St. Stephens as the first capitol; but, in two
years the sentiment steadily grew that this new territory
also was ripe for statehood."
The main public thoroughfare of the county of
Talladega passed in front of the door of the Curry
homestead at Kelly's Springs, which was situated
six miles east of Talladega, and eleven miles north-
east of Mardisville. ''Every hour in the day and
often through the night," writes Curry, ''a stream
of people would be passing to and from the land
office. All traveled on horseback, as the country
was new, very sparsely settled, and the roads were
few and very bad. Every traveler had his saddle-
bags for carrying 'the specie' as it was called. Hun-
dreds of these land-buyers stopped with my father.
There were no inns or public houses; and unpleasant
as it was to entertain them, it was a necessity. The
immigration for a few years to this part of Alabama
was very large. The settlers were mainly from
Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina, but not a
few were from North Carolina and Virginia, with a
'sprinkling' from New England."
The early settlers of Alabama came from many
directions. The valley of the Tennessee River, in
Northern Alabama, was settled for the most part by
Tennesseeans, and through Tennessee, by Virginians.
The Georgians came down the Coosa Valley, and back
of them the North and South Carolinians filled the
central section; while the southern part of the state
was populated by settlers from every direction.
From the Northern States came several thousand
New England business men.
One colony, consisting of French exiles, who had fol-
lowed the fortunes of Napoleon until his downfall, founded
ALABAMA: ''HERE WE REST" 39
on the Tombigbie River, a town which they called Demop-
olis, in what later became Marengo County.
This heterogeneous people had, as well might be
expected, the characteristic virtues and vices of
frontier settlers. They exercised a ready and gen-
erous hospitality, a neighborly kindness, and an
unfailing and invincible self-reliance. They en-
couraged the propagation of religion; and Baptists,
Methodists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians
established their churches and flourished in greater
or less degree from the beginning of the earlier settle-
ments. The eccentric Lorenzo Dow, whose intro-
duction of camp-meetings into England had resulted
in primitive Methodism there, and who is said to
have preached to more persons than any man of his
time, had been the first minister on the Tombigbie
River as far back as 1803. The Alabama settlers
brought with them, too, the knowledge and practice
of political and civil institutions; but withal, they
had the recklessness of the frontiersman, and were
quick to resort to weapons to avenge wrong or insult.
A recent historian has declared that
the Virginians were the least practical of the settlers and
the Georgians the most so, while the North Carolinians
were a happy medium. The Georgians were noted for
their stubborn persistence, and they usually succeeded
in whatever they undertook. The Virginians liked a
leisurely planter's life with abundant social pleasures.
The Tennesseeans and Kentuckians were hardly dis-
tinguishable from the Virginians and Carolinians, to
whom they were closely related. The northern profes-
sional and business men exercised an influence more than
commensurate with their numbers, being, in a way, picked
men. Neither the Georgians nor the Virginians were
40 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
assertive office-seekers, but the Carolinians liked to hold
office, and the politics of the state were moulded by the
South Carolinians and Georgians. All were naturally-
inclined to favor a weak federal administration and a
strong state government with much liberty of the indi-
vidual. The theories of Patrick Henry, Jefferson, and
Calhoun, not those of Washington and John Marshall,
formed the political creed of the Alabamians.
At the time of William Curry's settlement in
Talladega, cotton was the chief agricultural product.
The town of Wetumpka, seventy miles to the south
on the Coosa River, was the market town for the
cotton crops of the section. Wagons drawn by oxen
or mules or horses carried down the cotton over
rough roads, and fetched back sugar, salt, coffee,
iron, rope and bagging, or merchandise for the stores.
Curry, as a boy, used to go with his father's wagons
occasionally, and would sometimes be thus absent
from home for eight or ten days at a time. There
was so much hauling over them, that the few roads,
poor always at their best, would periodically become
almost impassable. Some wag is said to have posted
up, in these early days, a bulletin by the side of one
of the Alabama quagmire roads, to the following
efTect : —
This road is not passable, —
Not even jackassable.
So when you travel,
Take your own gravel.
The cost of transporting the cotton crop to market
interfered very largely with the profits of planting.
Sometimes boats were built, and, loaded with cotton,
were floated down the rivers in the freshets, as log-
gers in a lumber country float their logs down stream.
ALABAMA: *' HERE WE REST " 41
William Curry continued to conduct in Alabama,
as he had done in Georgia, a country store as an
adjunct to the raising of crops on the plantation.
In a country where the monetary circulating me-
dium, poor and depreciated as it was, was insufficient
in quantity, business was conducted largely upon
ledger credits. The country storekeeper sold his
neighbors and customers the supplies of various
kinds which his wagons brought up from Wetumpka
over the bottomless roads, and ''charged" them in
personal accounts upon his books. As an inevitable
consequence many of these accounts were never
paid; and William Curry's indulgence of his debtors,
during a long period of conducting the business of
a country merchant, resulted in the loss to him of
many thousands of dollars.
As was frequently the case, the United States
Post-office was located at the country store; and
young Jabez assisted his father, who was postmaster
at Kelly's Springs, in handling the mails, and in con-
ducting the business of the office with the Depart-
ment at Washington. The day of uniform postal
rates and postage stamps had not yet arrived.
Envelopes were little known. The writer of a letter
was taught, when a pupil at the ''old field school,"
the art of folding and sealing it so as to leave proper
outside space for the address, with the same assiduity
as that with which he was instructed in the art of
making the quill pen with which the epistle was in-
dited. The introduction of the now universally
used envelope, with its accompanying mucilage,
made adhesive by the moisture of the tongue, was
greatly deprecated by the letter writers of this
earlier period; and it is recorded of John Randolph
42 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
of Roanoke that, upon the receipt of a. letter in such
a covering, he inveighed bitterly against his corre-
spondent for "sending him his spittle." The period
of the post-office in the country store at Kelly's
Springs "was," writes Curry in later years, "before
the days of penny postage, and letters were charged
six and a quarter, twelve and a half, eighteen and
three quarters, twenty-five, and thirty-seven and a
half cents, according to weight or distance carried.
Prepajonent was not compulsory."
Preachers in Talladega in those days, records
Curry, "were not too numerous." There were only
three Presbyterian ministers in the county. These
were Messrs. Cater, Chapman, and McAlpine, names
unknown to fame, but all doubtless faithful servants
and laborers in a vineyard where the harvest must
have offered abundant opportunity of service and
accomplishment.
"Baptists and Methodists," says Curry, "as they usu-
ally do, performed all the pioneer missionary work. I re-
call such Baptist ministers as Chilton, Henderson, Welch,
Taliaferro, McCain, Archer, Pace, Collins, Wood. Camp-
meetings were held every year."
Mr. Finn, the Irish teacher at "Double Branches,"
back in Georgia, had been invited by the elder Curry
to adventure his fortunes in the new country; and
the invitation had been eagerly accepted by the
sprightly schoolmaster. Finn doubtless accom-
panied the family in their migration across country;
for it appears that on the day following the arrival of
the Currys at Kelly's Springs, the business of edu-
cating the younger members of the family was
promptly taken up. Mr. Finn opened his school,
ALABAMA: '' HEEE WE REST" 43
and the children renewed their studies, their number
being gradually augmented by the advent of the
children of the nearest neighbors. Jabez continued
his lessons in Latin, Greek, Algebra, and Geometry;
and stood well in his classes.
" The school was mixed," he writes, "composed of boys
and girls. All the schools I ever attended, except the one
at Willington, South Carolina, were such; and I here de-
sire to record my decided opinion and my emphatic testi-
mony in favor of the co-education of the sexes."
This outspoken opinion of Curry's was written in
the early part of the year 1876, after long consider-
ation and mature conclusion, in a life of which the
subject of education had even then filled no insig-
nificant part; and he never wavered in his faith.
His "Diary" for 1889 shows him still the champion
of co-education in the discussion among the Trustees
of the college in Virginia, of which he was one, in
the fall and winter of that year. It was a cause
whose advocacy was not always popular in southern
communities; but it was characteristic of the man's
courage, and of his fidelity to ideals once deliberately
established, that he was always outspoken in its
maintenance.
Although, as has been heretofore stated, the pop-
ulation of the young state was perhaps too raw, and
at all events too busy to care very much about
politics, there were offices to be filled and officials to
be voted for; and in 1838 and 1839 young Curry
heard for the first time the voice of the .political
candidate, literally, ''upon the stump;" for the
origin of the American phrase, synonymous with the
more formal and dignified but no less expressive
44 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
English term, " on the hustings," arose from the
custom of the frontier poHtician and orator address-
ing his audience from the convenient altitude of
the new-made stump, from which had just been
felled the majestic body of some great forest tree.
"Harvey W. Ellis and George W. Crabb were
candidates for Congress," Curry writes, in recalling
the occasion. Crabb was elected as a Whig, "and I
remember that in alluding to the subject of slavery,
the candidates did so with bated breath." Mere
human prescience could not well imagine an economic
order surviving under different labor conditions, with
the blacks free and unhindered to do as they would;
but the burden of ownership of human beings some-
how rested on the spirit of a society naturally very
kindly and devoted to freedom. It is a very dull
intelligence that does not perceive the impasse
into which these men had been led by the com-
mercialism and the compromises of other genera-
tions. No wonder the subject was mentioned with
bated breath, for tragedy or ruin seemed to guard
every gateway of solution; and they felt the tense-
ness of the situation in their nerves if they did not
dare to utter it with their tongues.
CHAPTER III
ATHENIAN DAYS
One of the earliest acts of the legislature of the
new State of Alabama was to establish, on Decem-
ber 18, 1820, a State University. The act of estab-
lishment donated to the purposes of the University
forty-six thousand acres of land, which had been ap-
propriated to educational purposes in the Federal
statute establishing the new government; and Tus-
caloosa having been selected as the site of the Uni-
versity in 1827, work was commenced upon the
buildings, and the institution was opened for the
admission of students in 1831.
It might naturally be supposed that William
Curry would have sent his sons for a college educa-
tion to the University of his adopted State; but,
though no college-bred man himself, his intellectual
associations had in a certain sense been with the
leading educational institution of the State of his old
home. He had known many of its graduates; and
his predilections were all in favor of Franklin Col-
lege, at Athens, Georgia. Thus it was that in Au-
gust, 1839, Jabez Curry, together with his brother
Jackson and their stepbrother, David H. Remsen,
entered Franklin College, an institution which had
had its origins in 1785 in a State charter, appropri-
ating certain lands, and authorizing a University,
which was located at Athens in 1801 as "Franklin
45
46 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
College"; and which grew later into the present
University of Georgia.
Of the reasons why this particular institution was
chosen for him, and of his matriculation there,
Curry, writing in after years, suggests the follow-
ing:—
It would have been much better for me to have gone to
the University of Alabama; but the institution had had
troubles, and my father cherished an attachment for his
native state. David and Jackson entered the Sophomore
class. I, because of my insufficient age, was put into the
Freshman class, and very properly; although on my ex-
amination I was declared capable of entering a higher
class. A great mistake had been made in my previous
education. Instead of studying English branches, and
learning Grammar, Arithmetic and Geography, I was at
an early age put to learning Latin and Greek, to the neglect
of more important and elementary studies.
The journey of the boys from Kelly's Springs to
Athens was made in a carriage, and occupied five
days. The route, which was followed thereafter in
later trips from college, home, and back again, tra-
versed the spot where has since grown up the great
and prosperous city of Atlanta.
"When I first passed there," says Curry, "there was
not a house, or the hope of a village. As the meeting-
point of the Georgia and Western Atlantic Railways, the
town had its origin in 1841, and was called Marthasville,
after a daughter of Wilson Lumpkin, the Governor.
. . . As I passed to and fro . . . the city sprang
up as by magic. During the War, while a soldier, I was
encamped where I had several times traveled when a col-
lege boy. I have been familiar, in peace and in war, with
its rapid growth."
ATHENIAN DAYS 47
His room at the University was No. 23 in the new
college, — a fact as worthy of commemoration on the
part of those who value and appreciate his great ser-
vices in the cause of Southern education, as is the
similar record by literature-lovers of the tiny college-
dwelling-place of a great American poet, in the Uni-
versity of Virginia, that is lettered in bronze over the
door: "Parva domus magni poetae.'^ Here, in No.
23, Curry lived and studied during three of his four
formative years at Athens. Together with David
Remsen, and his brother Jackson, he joined the Phi
Kappa Debating Society. There was another col-
lege society for the cultivation of debate among the
students; but the lads, with patriotic zeal, chose the
Phi Kappa, because it had been and was the custom
of most of the students from Alabama to belong to
it. He records "a, noble rivalry" between that soci-
ety and the Demosthenean. ''They met," he writes,
"in their respective halls on Saturday mornings, and
kept their proceedings entirely secret. The debates
were conducted with much spirit. Through my col-
lege course I gave much attention to my debating
society; and whatever success I have achieved as a
speaker is very largely attributable to my training
in this school." It is singular how the rise of new
interests in a more complex day and especially the
exaltation of athletic exercises have caused the
forensic habit to languish and dwindle.
There can be little doubt that Curry's facility of
expression as a speaker, and the power which he
illustrated at an early date in his public career of
holding the attention of his audiences, came from the
admirable and diligent practice of the arts of the
speaker in the debating society at Athens. He
48 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
writes at a later date than that of the foregoing ex-
tract from his journal a reiterated expression of his
belief in the great benefit which he derived from this
part of his college education.
Every student was a member of one or the other of these
organizations. The competition, the rivalry, was strong
but gentlemanly. Each met every Saturday morning, and
questions previously selected were debated with ardor and
profit, sometimes into the night. I must bear emphatic
testimony to the value of these exercises upon my subse-
quent career. The first Greek letter society was organized
while I was a student; but I must question whether these
select clubs have not had a harmful influence upon the
more useful literary societies.
It is interesting to observe the curriculum and
methods at that time prevailing at Franklin College.
"The curriculum," he writes, "was of the old-fashioned
kind; Latin, Greek and Mathematics predominating, with
very little science; and the teaching was chiefly of the
text-book order. Prof. C. F. McCoy, one of the best teach-
ers I ever knew, 'kicked out of the traces,' and strove with
some success to make his department of Mathematics and
Mechanical Philosophy to conform to what is now univer-
sally accepted as a necessity of liberal education. English
was ignored. Such text-books as Day's Mathematics,
Comstock's Geology, Say's Political Economy, Hedge's
Logic, Upham's Mental Science, and Paley's Moral Phi-
losophy were used. McCoy pubUshed for his class a Cal-
culus of his own; and a published lecture on 'Matter'
created a local sensation, being regarded for its exposition
of 'potency' as a long stride towards materialism. Look-
ing back from present surroundings and the great progress
of college education and all teaching (circa 1901) I am con-
strained to say, with undiminished loyalty for my Alma
Mater, that, McCoy excepted, the President and Profes-
ATHENIAN DAYS 49
sors in teaching power were not up to modern standards.
Nevertheless, the institution was of a solid character, the
relation between Faculty and students was most pleasant,
and the four years at college were among the most pleas-
ant and profitable of a long life."
A striking feature of Curry's various written
memoranda is his insistence on the value of instruc-
tion in English, whether in the elementary and sec-
ondary schools or in the college curriculum. To this
theory of his he gave vigorous and successful prac-
tical form in his early teaching days in Richmond.
"Dr. J. L. M. Curry, later Minister to Spain,"
writes Dr. John Bell Henneman of him in a paper on
''English Studies in the South," published after
Curry's death, "patron of letters, and lifelong dev-
otee of educational interests, opened a course in
English at Richmond College almost before the
smoke of battle about the Confederate capitol had
fairly cleared away." About the same time Prof.
Thomas R. Price inaugurated a similar work at
Randolph-Macon College; and Dr. Noah K. Davis
had established a chair of English at Bethel, Ken-
tucky, some months before that at Richmond. To
all three of these pioneers in one of the greatest
fields of college and university work, be accorded
praise and credit.
This work of English development in the southern
colleges, in the period immediately succeeding the
War between the States, was a notable one; and the
names of many other English teachers in the South
are worthy of being placed alongside those of Curry,
Price and Davis. But, after all is said, the distinc-
tion of having been the real pioneer in historical
English work, not only in the southern colleges, but
50 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
throughout America, belongs to the many-sided
genius of Thomas Jefferson.
"He acquired," says Dr. Henneman, "as a law-student,
an enthusiasm for the study of Anglo-Saxon, and contin-
ued its advocacy as a definite part of the college curricu-
lum, from 1779, when he was a member of the board for
William and Mary, until 1825, when the wishes of a life-
time were at last realized by the opening of his pet cre-
ation, the University of Virginia. Jefferson had actually
written out, seven years before; what is now a curious
synopsis of an Anglo-Saxon grammar with specimen ex-
tracts for his new institution ; and this was the first formal
incorporation of a course in historical English in an Ameri-
can University, however meagre and defective a course of
one or two hours a week in itself was."
Other influences than those of the curriculum and
of books were making their educative effect felt upon
the young college student at Athens in these signifi-
cant years. Lafayette Lamar, his cousin, a youth
of early poetic promise, cut down by death before
fruition when a soldier in the first year of the War
between the States, entered college the same day
with him; and during their college career they were
classmates and warm friends.
"Among my fellow-students," he wrote, after the lapse
of sixty years, "I recall James D. Pope, now Professor of
Law in South Carolina College; William Williams, Pro-
fessor in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; T.
R. R. Cobb, killed at Fredericksburg, the most talented
young man I ever knew; Sam Hall, Judge of the Supreme
Court; Bon Hill, distinguished as lawyer, statesman and
orator; Judges Pottle and Bartlett; Felton, Representa-
tive in Congress; Joseph LeConte, Linton H. Stephens,
and others well-known at the bar, in the pulpit and legisla-
ATHENIAN DAYS 51
tive councils. . . . LeConte became the most dis-
tinguished of all my fellow collegians as an author and a
scientist."
Of Benjamin Harvey Hill, orator and statesman,
whose political career is comparatively recent, it is
scarcely more than necessary to mention here the
facts that he served in the Senate of the Confederate
States, and after the War was a Congressman and
Senator from Georgia; and that he was one of the
most conspicuous of American orators and patriots.
Long after their boyish association at Athens,
Curry wrote to his old college-mate, LeConte, then
at the University of California, a letter to which the
following is the reply. The postscript of this com-
munication possesses a peculiar interest, in view of
the tremendous and fateful experience of San Fran-
cisco and other California cities, some twenty years
later.
University of California,
Berkeley, California, May 30, 1887.
Rev. J. L. M. Curry,
My dear Sir: — Your letter received this morning was a
great surprise and pleasure to me. I, too, have followed
your career and rejoice in your success. I remember with
pleasure Jabe Curry, the most boyish and yet one of the
brightest of my college-mates. I remember the very active
part you always took in the debates of the Phi Kappa So-
ciety, and how I envied your readiness, so strangely con-
trasted with my own painful shyness. I have, of course,
gotten over this in a great measure ; — only enough remains
to make me always careful to make thorough preparation
for even class lectures, — much more, public lectures.
My life has indeed been a happy one in all its relations.
I have enough to satisfy my simple wants. My activity is
in a field which is in the highest degree pleasant, and which
52 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
does not pall on the taste. My domestic life has been full
of love to wife and children and grandchildren. I have
had much to be thankful for, and I hope I am thankful.
If you have followed my writings, especially in the
Princeton Review, you are doubtless aware of my position
on the great questions of "Evolution and its relation to
rehgious thought." I really feel very deeply on this sub-
ject. I herewith send you a little pamphlet on the sub-
ject. Perhaps most of it you have seen before, but not all.
You must not draw any inference from the fact that it was
published by Unitarians. I am still a Presbyterian, but I
do a good deal of independent thinking of my own. I am
aware that some will think that my views tend toward
Pantheism; but I had no time to answer this implication.
I have just written a small book on this subject. It will
try to answer briefly three questions — 1. What is Evolu-
tion? 2. What are the evidences of its truth? 3. What
effect will it have on traditional views, and on religious
thought generally? In this book I will answer the Pan-
theistic objection. I hope Appleton will bring it out in the
autumn.
I shall be glad, very glad, to hear from you again, and to
hear more about your personal concerns. For I would
gladly revive my interest in one whom I admired even as a
boy.
Very sincerely yours,
Joseph LeConte.
P. S. — We have just received two or three first class
seismographs. Wanted, an earthquake to record. They
are rather scarce about here just now. If you have any to
spare, send them on.
Jos. LeConte.
Curry was in Spain when he received this letter;
and LeConte did not live to see the great Californian
earthquake, which equalled many of the most terrible
ATHENIAN DAYS 53
that have occurred in the history of the Spanish
Peninsula. LeConte, who was born in Liberty
County, Georgia, in 1823, died in the Yosemite Val-
ley in 1901, nearly two years before the death of
Curry. He was one of the greatest of American
scientists; and while his foremost work was in the
field of geology, he did much to popularize science
by his contributions to the literature of many of its
branches. He was a teacher and professor succes-
sively in Oglethorpe College; in his alma mater,
Franklin College, where he and Curry had been
classmates; in South Carolina College; and in the
University of California, where_he occupied the
chair of geology, botany and natural history from
its establishment in 1869, to the date of his death.
Linton Stephens, who became a prominent lawyer
and judge in Georgia, was another of Curry's college-
mates at Athens. He had been left an orphan at
the age of three; and it was at the cost and expense
of his brother, Alexander H. Stephens, that Linton
pursued his studies at Athens. After graduating,
he studied law at Harvard and in the University of
Virginia, and achieved distinction as a judge of the
Supreme Court of the State. He also served as a
colonel in the Confederate army, and died at Sparta,
Georgia, in 1872. His famous brother, Alexander
H. Stephens, later the Vice-President of the Con-
federate States, and one of the ablest vindicators of
that ill-starred government in his history entitled
''The War between the States," used to come oc-
casionally to Athens to see his younger brother and
protege, Linton; and it was on the occasion of one
of these visits that Curry first met him and made his
acquaintance. He had then been a practising law-
54 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
yer only about four years; but was already on the
high-tide of a great law practice. In 1834, he had
been admitted to the bar of his native State of
Georgia. It is said that in the first year of his
practice he lived on six dollars a week, and made
four hundred dollars from his cases that year. It
was not long, however, before he owned the old
family homestead at Crawfordsville, and had pur-
chased the estate which afterwards became widely
known in his possession as ''Liberty Hall." Curry
describes him at this period, as "a small, tallow-
faced, effeminate-looking man, apparently near the
grave." It was a physical appearance that charac-
terized him to the end. The body was frail and
weak, but the spirit that it encased was quenchless,
while life lasted. This mighty and commanding
spirit was illustrated in 1848 in a personal collision
which he had at Greensboro with Judge Cone, grow-
ing out of a political discussion of the Clayton com-
promise measure of that year. Cone cut Stephens
dangerously and desperately with a knife, saying:
''Now, damn you, retract, or I'll cut your throat!"
Covered with blood, and terribly wounded, Stephens
answered: "Never! cut!" grasping as he spoke the
keen blade of Cone's knife with a right hand that
was thenceforward maimed for life. He lived to a
green old age, serving his country with conspicuous
ability, and unexcelled patriotism; and until the
day of his death was Curry's sincere and faithful
friend.
Other interesting acquaintances and friends that
he made during the period of his life at Athens were
the political orators who came thither in the Pres-
idential campaign of 1840, between Martin Van
ATHENIAN DAYS 55
Buren and William Henry Harrison, to speak at the
Saturday evening meetings which were held in the
town hall at Athens. Among these he makes men-
tion of William L. Mitchell, Hopkins Halsey, Junius
Hillyer, Howell Cobb, Henry R. Jackson, and Judge
Charles Dougherty.
"I heard a speech," Curry writes, "impassioned and
violent, from Mr. Jackson, and Judge Dougherty pounded
him into mince-meat. Mr. Jackson was afterwards charge-
d' affaires at Vienna, a judge in Georgia, and a general in
the Confederate army. My father being a democrat, I
became one also, and began this year to read the news-
papers."
Jackson's fame rests not solely upon his career as
politician, judge and soldier. He was a poet of
unusual distinction and literary charm, and has left
behind him in ''the written word that remains," a
more enduring claim upon posterity than in any
other of his accomplishments. One of his most
beautiful lyrics, that has been not infrequently at-
tributed by ill-informed newspaper writers to "Stone-
wall" Jackson, whose knowledge or appreciation of
poetry was probably infinitesimal, is that entitled
"My Wife and Child," written when he was com-
manding the ''Irish Jasper Greens," in the only
regiment that went to the War with Mexico from
Georgia : —
The tattoo beats; the lights are gone;
The camp around in slumber lies;
The night with solemn pace moves on;
The shadows thicken o'er the skies,
But sleep my weary eyes hath flown,
And sad, uneasy thoughts arise.
56 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
About this time Curry first enjoyed the pleasure
of seeing himself in print. He makes record of the
fact that in December, 1841, doubtless inspired with
his perusal of the journals so recently begun to be
read by him, he contributed some slight anonymous
communication to one of the papers, which was duly
published.
"When it appeared in print," he records, with charm-
ing naivete, " I was as proud as Byron was when he awoke
and found himself famous. I read the article over and
over many times, and could hardly restrain my boisterous
exultation. I never had been as happy. What the thing
was about I don't know; but all subsequent successes have
never half so elated me."
There were other experiences of these college days
which kept them from being monotonous, and left
their vivid images upon the plastic mind of the young
student. Politics and political events were begin-
ning to assume definite shape in his thought; and re-
curring to the period after a lapse of thirty-five
years, he writes about Whiggery and Democracy:
General Harrison died a month after his inauguration,
and Vice-president Tyler succeeded him. Mr. Clay, the
great and arbitrary leader of the Whig party, tried to carry
out his policy of a National Bank, a Protective Tariff, Dis-
tribution of the Proceeds of the Public Lands, &c. Con-
gress twice passed bills establishing a Bank, and President
Tyler twice vetoed them. During study hours I went to
the Post-office, and learned that Tyler had sent in a second
veto. As I passed through the campus, I hurrahed for
Tyler; and Dr. Hall, one of the Professors, saw and heard
me, and fined me one dollar. I thought then he did it be-
cause he was a Whig, and was mortified at what Tyler had
done; but I see now he was clearly right.
ATHENIAN DAYS 57
Age brings with it conservatism and charity; and
Curry's final conclusion as to the real reason of this
fine does credit to his sense of kindliness. But the
politics of the period were bitter, and the Whigs'
wrath at what they were pleased to call the tergiver-
sation of Tyler was very great. For a student to
hurrah for any one during study hours upon the
campus was very culpable. That he should hurrah
for Tyler in the sight and hearing of a Whig profes-
sor was likewise very reprehensible. After the lapse
of time, and upon consideration of the immutability
of human nature throughout the years, who shall
say what it was that really produced the atoning
dollar from the pocket of the offending young col-
legian?
At this period of his life, too, began his acquaint-
ance with the gentler sex. Let him narrate it : —
During the three years I had been in college, I had
never visited a lady. I was the least boy in the College,
hardly weighing one hundred pounds, and I was excess-
ively modest and timid. I was "afraid" of female society.
I had had no sisters, grew up unfortunately among boys,
and lacked that ease and freedom and self-poise of manner
and ability to converse on ordinary topics,' which are such
a necessary part of a boy's education. My own painful
embarrassment, which has never left me, taught me a les-
son; and now I urge young men, for many reasons, to visit
the opposite sex. My cousin, Lafayette Lamar, and a
classmate, Thomas W. White, later a prominent lawyer in
Mississippi, begged me to accompany them in some of
their visits. I resolved to go, and for days before the time
arrived I thought about it, and it weighed on me like a
nightmare. It seems ludicrous now to recall my feelings;
but I have since gone into battle with far less tremor and
agitation than I experienced in anticipation of a visit.
58 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
The President of the College, Dr. Alonzo Church, had
some beautiful and accomplished daughters, who were
great favorites. I knew them very well by sight, — saw
them nearly every day, — and determined to begin with
them. The appointed night came. Urging my cousin not
to stay to a late hour, and to help me in the event of my
failing in conversation, I "crossed the Rubicon." The
ladies, quite skilled in drawing out young men, with a
kindness which I gratefully record now, so helped me that
an hour passed very agreeably, and I have never been
called upon to pass through just such an ordeal since.
The Rubicon once crossed, the ladies of the col-
lege town came to have the pleasure of his company
not infrequently; and in consequence he was able to
testify afterwards that 'Hhe last six months of my
college life were by far the most pleasant of my
whole four years."
In August, 1842, Jackson Curry graduated from
the college. Usually at commencement there were
two days for original speeches, one for juniors rising
senior, and one for the honor graduates. Eight or
ten of the juniors who had the best standing in their
classes were elected by the Faculty as junior orators.
On this occasion Jabez Curry was one of the chosen
number, and delivered a highly eulogistic address on
Andrew Jackson. When he returned to college after
the next winter vacation, which lasted from Novem-
ber 1st to January 15th, he took lodgings outside the
college, in town, so as to live more comfortably, and
at the same time to have a more complete control of
his time. From this period, until the close of his
college career at Athens, his industry and applica-
tion were very great. He studied with much per-
sistence and purpose, and averaged from twelve to
ATHENIAN DAYS 59
fourteen hours a day at his work. In consequence of
a deficiency in mathematics, he was fearful of not
being able to graduate, and it was to this branch of
learning that he especially applied himself during
these last college months. He was consumed with
the almost morbid feeling that to fail of graduation
after having filled the distinguished position of
junior orator involved a deep and abiding disgrace.
But, happily, the conclusion of the final examinations
demonstrated him to be abreast of the requirements;
and he received his diploma as a graduate in August,
1843. In the classics he had approved himself among
the first. In political economy, mental philosophy,
and other subjects which do not involve a serious
knowledge of mathematics, he had experienced no
difficulty. By intense application and judicious cul-
tivation, he had acquired a tenacious memory, which
enabled him upon occasion to recite as many as from
ten to fifteen pages of a book verbatim. This capac-
ity is not infrequently an accompaniment of the
linguistic talent; but it was not in that direction
alone that he prevailed, for he learned his mathe-
matics as those do not learn it who rely solely on
memory.
In the distribution of academic honors at the con-
clusion of his four years' term, the four leading dis-
tinctions fell, in order, to Linton Stephens, Thomas
White, Jabez Curry and Lafayette Lamar. Their
bestowal reversed the trite and long-standing aphor-
ism that a boy's college-career may not be taken as a
prognostic of what he will do later in life. All of
these four young men, save one who died with the
pathetic promise of youth unfulfilled, became dis-
tinguished men. The college lad who succeeds in
60 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
later years may sometimes fail of his college honors;
but the exception proves the rule that, in some one
way or other, he has made and left his mark upon
the student-body, or upon the college life.
Jabez was again elected orator. He chose for his
theme, the thought which very often gets close to
the consciousness of the boy who stands, at his grad-
uation, face to face with life's opening career; and is
illustrated in Byron's lines, which prefaced young
Curry's final oration:
No more, no more, oh, never more on me.
The freshness of the heart shall fall like dew.
"I do not remember a word of the speech," he wrote in
1876. "In delivering it, I was applauded, while speaking
and at the close. The former applause was exceptional."
CHAPTER IV
HARVARD AND NEW ENGLAND INFLUENCES
With his graduation from college Curry faced
the momentous question of what path he should
next pursue. Upon his return home, the problem
was discussed, during the month succeeding his de-
parture from Athens, by his family and friends in
Talladega, and was thoughtfully pondered and con-
sidered by himself.
"My father proposed to send me to Germany to con-
tinue my collegiate studies," he wrote many years later,
"but, in my unwisdom, I yielded to the persuasions of rela-
tives, and went in September, 1843, to Cambridge, Massa-
chusetts, and entered the Dane Law School of Harvard
College."
His father's proposition to send him to Germany
indicated not only the broad view of life which the
country planter and storekeeper entertained, and his
unerring recognition of his son's unusual talents,
but proves no less that planting and store-keeping
had been profitable employments in William Curry's
case; for in those days to educate a son in Europe
was no insignificant tax upon the financial means of
Southern Americans. The University of Virginia
had been in successful operation for eighteen years,
and thither Curry's fellow-graduate, Linton Ste-
phens, went to pursue his studies; but many people
61
62 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
regarded the discipline of the "honor system" at
Charlottesville as too lax for young men; and the
stream of Southern youths in the direction of Har-
vard and Yale and Princeton, that had antedated
the opening of Jefferson's seminary of learning, con-
tinued to flow North, in spite of political rancor
and the fiery gospel of anti-slavery, up to the very
outbreak of the War between the States.
Young Curry begun his journey northward in
September of the year of his graduation from Athens.
It was a memorable, and in many respects, a liberal-
izing journey. He went by private conveyance from
his father's house, over the familiar route to Athens;
and thence proceeded by rail to Augusta. It was
with no light heart that he undertook and pursued
his way northward. "I had no experience as a trav-
eller," he writes, "and in those days travelling was
not as easy and common as now."
It was still a period of stage coaches, and corduroy
roads, and primitive wayside inns, with now and
then a typical specimen of the early "snakehead rail-
road." Curry has left an entertaining account of
these means and methods of the locomotion of that
day, in an article written by him in 1901, and pub-
lished by the Southern History Association, under
the title of "The South in Olden Times."
In my boyish days, railways were few and short. In
Alabama, in 1843, there were only two, one around Muscle
Shoals, and the other between Montgomery and Franklin;
and it was put down on string-pieces with flat iron bars,
which torn up by wheels occasionally projected into the
cars, impaling passengers on what were termed "snake-
heads." In 1843, en route to Harvard, I travelled from
Augusta to Charleston by rail, built nearly all the way on
HARVARD AND N. E. INFLUENCES 63
trestle-work, and by steamer from Charleston to Wilming-
ton. Much travel in those days was on horseback, or in
hacks, or picturesque stage-coaches, which signalled their
arrival in towns and villages, and notified the taverns of
the number of their passengers by long tin horns, or by
making more ambitious music on bugles. The stage-
drivers knew every body on the road, carried packages and
messages, and were sometimes the confidants of country
lasses and bashful beaux. The bonifaces are often drawn
in character-sketches; but the stage-driver of the olden
time, a typical class, has escaped portraiture by pen and
pencil. Romances of the road are unused material.
He stopped on his way North for a few hours in
Augusta, Georgia, where he had once visited before
he left Lincoln County.
"Being a mere lad," he records of this visit, "I remem-
bered only two things, — a big candy store, and a steam-
boat that plied on the Savannah River between Augusta
and Savannah. From Augusta I had to go to Charles-
ton. The railroad was built entirely on trestle work, and
not by excavation and embankment, as now. At Aiken, a
little town which has since become noted as a resort for
invalids, there was an inclined plane; and an engine, going
down a parallel track, by means of very large ropes drew
the train to the summit of the hill. The country west of
Charleston was dreary enough. The swamps and cypress-
trees and alligators were quite novel. At Charleston I took
a steamboat for Wilmington, reaching there just at sunrise.
I was not seasick. Before the lines of railroad were com-
pleted, all the travel from Alabama and Georgia to the
North had to be done on this route between the cities by
water. I travelled by rail from Wilmington to Weldon,
and thence to Portsmouth in Virginia. The long white
pines in North Carolina, and the tar, pitch and turpen-
tine, made an impression on me. From Portsmouth I was
64 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
carried up the Chesapeake Bay by steamer to Baltimore,
thence by rail to New York, stopping at a hotel on
Broadway, where, to my surprise, the guests were all
furnished at dinner with ice-cream! The Astor House
was, I think, not then built; and where the Fifth
Avenue now is, was out of town. I went through
Long Island Sound by steamer to some point in Rhode
Island, where I took a railroad and was carried to Bos-
ton. From Boston I went to Cambridge in an omni-
bus that plied regularly between the towns, and was
driven by one Moss, whom the Boston Post proposed,
on account of his thirty years' faithful services, to honor
with the title of D.D. — Doctor of Drivers. At Cambridge
I found my cousin, William Curry, of Perry County, Ala-
bama, a student of law."
A very short time after his arrival, he matricu-
lated as a student in the famous Dane Law School,
which has been in its career as distinguished for the
eminence of its professors as for the greatness
achieved by so many of its students. It had been
founded in 1829, and named for its founder, accord-
ing to whose stipulation Joseph Story was elected
its first professor. The year before there had been
only one law student in Harvard College. In 1829,
under Story, the attendance in the Dane Law School
was thirty; and thenceforward its numbers steadily
increased. When Curry entered it in 1843, there
were about one hundred and fifty law students.
Story, then a Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, still continued a professor in the
school ; and his illustrious associate was Simon Green-
leaf, author of the ''Law of Evidence." Curry makes
mention of Story's genial humor and cordiality,
which contributed scarcely less than his great abil-
HARVARD AND N. E. INFLUENCES 65
ity to his wonderful success as a teacher of law.
Story, on one occasion, introduced his colleague to
an audience with an inimitable wit: ''Ladies and gen-
tlemen, Mr. Professor Greenleaf: The best evidence
of his law is his Law of Evidence." It is related of
him, too, that at some public function, he toasted
Mr. Edward Everett as follows : —
Eloquence flows
Where Ever-ett goes;
to which the latter promptly replied: —
However high one may climb in the legal profession in
this Commonwealth, he will always find one Story higher.
A writer in the Green Bag, a Boston publication
of the lighter sort for lawyers, who was a con-
temporary of Curry's in the Law School at Harvard,
writes of Story as a teacher of law :
I had not enjoyed a sight of him until, as a law student,
I confronted him at his professional desk. I lost attention
to that first lecture in contemplating the great jurist, and
in musing upon my knowledge of what he had achieved.
When he presided at the moot-courts which he had estab-
lished for the nisi prius practice of the students, or for
their views upon a stated controversy, generally patterned
from some case in his circuit, Professor Story was the em-
bodiment of geniality, and seemed as pleased with the pro-
ceedings as would be a child at blindman's buff. His
constant tenet to students was "the nobility and attract-
iveness of the legal profession."
Of his two law-teachers in the Dane School, Curry
has left this interesting minute : —
Judge Story was a genial, cheerful, cordial man, full of
humor and anecdote, very fond of the boys, and told us in
66 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
his lectures charming incidents about such lawyers as
Webster and Mason and William Pinkney, and Sargeant
and Binney, Simon Greenleaf, a native of Maine, was
chosen professor on recommendation of Judge Story.
Without the affluence of learning or ornate diction of
Judge Story, he was a more painstaking and accurate
lawyer, with keener analysis and more logical power. He
was quite popular, but stricter than his colleague, to whom
he was deeply attached.
The scene, the intellectual atmosphere, the asso-
ciations of instructors and companions, were all alike
inspiring to the eager and impressionable mind of the
young Southerner. It was the beginning of that
characteristic Americanism, which grew and devel-
oped in him thenceforward as long as he lived; and
which made him, while clinging tenaciously to the
political concepts of the Calhoun theory of the Con-
stitution, even after the real destruction of that
theory by the event of war, as loyal to the government
that had come to be based on other and adverse prin-
ciples, as he had ever been to that which sought to
perpetuate the Calhoun interpretation and failed.
Josiah Quincy was then President of Harvard Col-
lege. Story and Greenleaf were illuminating the
minds of their pupils with the splendor of their in-
tellects and the richness of their knowledge. Anson
Burlingame, Rutherford B. Hayes, Thomas J.
Semmes, and many other men of subsequent dis-
tinction were among his classmates; while the New
England air was vibrant with the stirring politics,
the intellectual thought, and the unconventional
religious ideas which characterized the Massachu-
setts of the period. Curry devoted himself with
great industry to his law studies, and did a very
HARVARD AND N. E. INFLUENCES 67
considerable amount of miscellaneous reading. The
libraries teemed with all sorts of books, and to them
the students of the college had general access.
Macaulay stirred him as with a trumpet-note: —
"Macaulay's Miscellanies, as they were then called," he
writes, "were published in cheap form; and I read and re-
read them with increasing profit and admiration. Few
books have more affected my style and thought."
But books and lectures and law-studies were in-
sufficient, in that keen air, to fill the measure of the
young man's developing and eager thought. He
went to hear the professors in the academic schools.
Longfellow had just finished "The Spanish Student,"
and was discharging the duties of his professor-
ship. Lowell was editing the Pioneer magazine in
Boston, with Poe, Hawthorne, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Whittier and William Wetmore Story
among its contributors; Jared Sparks was teaching
history in Harvard, and Curry sat at his feet as at
the feet of Gamaliel; while Wendell Phillips and
William Lloyd Garrison and ''The Liberator" were
making history throughout America. In the na-
tional capitol at Washington, John Quincy Adams
was pouring into the hopper of legislation the ever
disappearing, but none the less fatal, ''abolition
petitions." John C. Calhoun, with logical exactness
and prophetic foresight, was philosophizing upon
the construction of the Federal Constitution, and
foretelling the doom to come. Macready and For-
rest and Charlotte Cushman and the elder Booth
were playing to cultivated and intellectual audiences
in the theatres of Boston; and Theodore Parker and
Dr. Kirk and Dr. Walker were preaching in the
68 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
churches the word of God according to the gospel
of Boston. It was a period and an atmosphere
worthy of the beginnings of the mental and spiritual
life of a young man of such talents and ambitions as
Curry's. Hawthorne, whose artist's soul was dis-
pleased by the strident clamor and obtrusive senti-
mentalism of the time, said that every other man
one met had in his vest pocket a scheme for the
reformation of the universe. It was indeed a time
when New England was swept by a passion of
humanitarianism and social sympathy.
Curry attended the theatres when he could, and
witnessed the great reproductions of classic plays
by actors and actresses, whose fame remains un-
eclipsed by that of any of their successors. He
listened in the churches on Sundays to fervid
ecclesiastical rhetoric, and to the promulgation of
new and transcendental religious doctrines, with
the prescient eagerness of one who was himself in
later years destined to shine as a pulpit orator. He
attended occasional meetings of the then despised
and abhorred abolitionists, with little thought of
the part that he should be called upon by his larger
Americanism to play in a later attempted emancipa-
tion of the negro race from the bondage of credulity
and ignorance. His career as a student in the Law
School at Harvard was filled to overflowing with the
awakening experiences of the place and times.
"The abolitionists," he writes of them in that day,
"were a noisy and fanatical faction, with more strength in
Massachusetts than in any other part of the Union, but
were despised there as half-crazy and fanatical.
"Wendell Phillips, Tappan, Bowen, Garrison, and some
women were the leaders," he continues. "I attended at
HARVARD AND N. E. INFLUENCES 69
Concord an abolition meeting, — hired a buggy, and drove
that distance to attend an anti-slavery meeting. It was
held in a church, and very few were present. In 1844 the
abolition sentiment took form and organization under the
name of the 'Liberty Party,' and I heard James G.Birney,
the candidate of the party for the Presidency, deliver
an address to not more than two hundred people in
Faneuil Hall. Verily, times have changed since I was a
student!"
The year 1844 was one of violent and tremendous
political excitement. The abolitionists meant to
destroy slavery, though its destruction should mean
the destruction of the Union. They were the first
secessionists. "Mark!" wrote Garrison in the Lib-
erator. ''How stands Massachusetts at this hour in
reference to the Union? Just where she ought to
be — in an attitude of open hostility."
"Let the Union be accursed," said the Liberator'
"Look at the awful compromises of the Constitution by
which that instrument is saturated with the blood of the
slave!"
"So much for entering into a covenant with death, and
an agreement with hell!" pubhshed the Liberator, concern-
ing the Federal Constitution, twelve years after Curry had
departed from Harvard. "We confess that we intend to
trample under foot the Constitution of this country," said
Mr. Wendell Philhps at a later date; and Mr. Garrison de-
manded, in 1855, "a Northern Confederacy, with no
Union with slave-holders."
Of Calhoun, whose devotion to the Union under
the Constitution Curry had already come clearly to
comprehend, and whose philosophical and logical
interpretation of that instrument he never ceased,
through a long life of service to his country, to ap-
70 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
prove, Von Hoist, a hostile and antagonistic biog-
rapher has written: —
The charge was wholly unfounded that he was endeavor-
ing intentionally to incense the North and the South
against each other, in order to promote the purpose of his
party. He spoke the simple truth, when he asserted in his
speech of March 9, 1836, that "however caluminated and
slandered," he had "ever been devotedly attached to the
Union and the institution of the country," and that he was
"anxious to perpetuate them to the latest generation."
He acted under the firm conviction of an imperious duty
towards the South and towards the Union, and his asser-
tion was but too well founded that these petitions for the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia were blows
on the wedge, which would ultimately break the Union
asunder.
So it remains, in vindication of the truth of history,
that however really the War between the States, from
1861 to 1865, was waged by the North to preserve
the Union, the men in the North who desired to
abolish slavery at all hazards were the first internal
foes of the Union; and the Southern men, who
wished to preserve the Union, in accordance with
their interpretation of the Federal Constitution, plac-
ing local self government above the idea of Union,
were none the less patriotic and well-based in their
belief that they possessed the constitutional right
to secede.
The great political storm was every^vhere gather-
ing head. The annexation of Texas, over which
shone like a star the heroic and splendid story of the
Alamo; the great question of slavery, — an institu-
tion which the civilized world had come at last to
condemn; the tariff question, which had agitated
HARVARD AND N. E. INFLUENCES 71
the Nation and the States since the States had made
the Nation; the Oregon boundary Hne, a burning
phase of the slavery question — these were the things
that fevered the States, and that stirred Massachu-
setts, and that stirred, too. Harvard College and its
intellectual youth.
Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive.
But to be young was heaven.
The Whigs nominated Clay and Frelinghuysen.
The acclaim rang throughout the Union: —
Hurrah, boys! The country's risin'!
Henry Clay and Frelinghuysen!
But the country did not rise that way. "Polk,
Dallas and Texas," was the antiphonal war-cry of
the Democrats; and the Democrats won. But in
the meantime, with persistent and unwavering and
almost unnoted obstinacy, the abolitionists of the
Liberator type, under the leadership of Birney, and
Phillips and Garrison, were gathering strength and
momentum.
"Prior to the Whig nominations," writes Curry of the
times, "T heard Sergeant S. Prentiss of Mississippi, one of
the most eloquent men in America, make a speech to a
packed audience in Faneuil Hall. It was one of the most
thrilling specimens of platform oratory I ever listened to;
and he carried his audience at pleasure. In the same hall I
heard Vice-President Richard M. Johnson, a weak but
honest old man, whose claim to popular support seemed to
be based on a red-jacket, and the fact (of doubtful histori-
cal authenticity), that he killed Tecumseh. Being fond of
politics I used to attend many political meetings of all the
parties. Among Democrats, I heard Senator Levi Wood-
bury, afterwards a Judge of the Supreme Court; Charles
72 J. L. M. CUBEY, A BIOGRAPHY
G. Greene, editor of the Boston Post; George Bancroft, the
historian; Orestes A. Brownson, since quite famous as edi-
tor of Brownson's Review. ... I heard Daniel Web-
ster several times. In appearance he was the most marked
man I ever saw. In speaking, whether in Faneuil Hall or
on Boston Common, before immense and enthusiastic as-
semblages, he was unimpassioned and calm. It was more
than suspected that he did not regard the nomination of
Mr. Clay with favor. I heard also John M. Berrien of
Georgia, Miller of New Jersey, and Morse of Maine. The
leading managing democrat was B. F. Hallett. Benjamin
F. Butler, so famous since as 'Beast Butler,' was an active
democrat. Charles Sumner was then a literary lawyer, a
favorite of Judge Story; but not actively connected with
politics."
In 1894, in a letter to Mr. Winthrop, he gave a
further account of his recollections of Mr. Webster: —
Washington, D. C, 1736 M Street,
1 Jan., 1894.
Dear Mr. Winthrop: — Yesterday your welcome letter
of the 28th came, and I procured Scribner, which is not on
our not too long list of periodicals, in order to read your ar-
ticle on Webster. It is very interesting and instructive,
and the reception you speak of is cumulative in enforce-
ment of the suggestion so frequently pressed upon you, to
call in a stenographer, and give autobiographical mem-
oranda, in more connected form than is found in numerous
publications, for the delight of your wide circle of friends
in Europe and America. A little article on your student
life in Mr. Webster's office would be a valuable contribu-
tion to a magazine.
The reply to Hayne, for vigorous English, for felicity of
illustration, for impassioned eloquence, is unsurpassed in
American oratory. Of course I am not expected to concur
in the general and unchangeable popular verdict in refer-
HAEVAED AND N. E. INFLUENCES 73
ence to constitutional interpretation, or logical conclusive-
ness.
In 1844 I had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Webster
twice, once in Faneuil Hall, when he addressed a meeting
held to ratify Mr. Clay's nomination for the Presidency;
and a second time, when he presided over an immense
meeting, held on Boston Common. I was a mere boy, not
unfamiliar with Prentiss, Hillard, Bowden, Yancey; but I
could not help wondering at the great fame of Mr. W., as
an orator. The closing sentences of the Scrihner article,
taken from your Central Park address, express my esti-
mate of and admiration for the man; but, judging from the
two occasions when I heard him, his was not the eloquence
that moved assemblies. Slow of utterance, deliberate in
manner, measuring his words, strong and almost faultless
in diction, profound in his reasoning, his influence, it
seemed to me, was from matter rather than manner, from
weight of thought rather than capacity to arouse emotion.
His presence was more majestic, more commanding, than
that of any man I ever saw, and the epithet "godlike"
was better adapted. It seemed to me, an inexperienced
youth, when I stood near the platform on Boston Com-
mon, that any child of ten years of age would not have hesi-
tated instantaneously to select him from the thirty thou-
sand as incomparably the greatest intellect. Mr. Everett
I never saw nor heard. Mr. Choate I heard frequently;
John Quincy Adams once, and Bancroft, Brownson,
Woodbury several times.
Among other orators of the period and vicinage
to whom he listened in his student days at Harvard
were Dr. Edward Amasa Park, then professor of
sacred rhetoric in Andover Seminary, an "exponent
of the doctrines that are embodied in the Andover
Creed and called the New England system of theol-
ogy"; George Stillman Hillard, lawyer, author and
74 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
orator; Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd
Garrison, the negro and the white abolitionist
agitators; and Robert Rantoul, Jr., whose contem-
porary fame throughout the country as an orator of
unusual and powerful eloquence, as an able and per-
sistent antagonist of protection and centralization
in the Federal government, and as an advocate of
educational reforms, has in the lapse of time, save
in his own section, long since become only a memory
and a name.
It may be well imagined that Curry's time was
full. Law studies, politics, pulpit orators, great
actors, and new and inspiring associations in many
directions gave him much to think of and to do.
Yet with it all, he found the leisure which an in-
dustrious and busy man can always find for some
other yet desirable work; and nearly every week he
wrote for publication over the signature of ''Ion,"
and sent to a paper in Tuscaloosa, letters on various
subjects, but dealing largely with the subject of con-
temporary politics, and the actors in the great
political drama, whose earlier scenes were then begin-
ning to be first presented upon the stage of history.
Not the least among the broadening forces that
were thus entering the young man's life, and shaping
his character and career, was one which came finally
to dominate his very being and to consecrate his
highest energies. Horace Mann, and his work for
education, enlisted at this time Curry's attention
and interest, and thenceforward exercised upon him
a strong and vital influence.
It is illustrative of Curry's breadth of view, and
tolerance of adverse opinion on the part of others,
that although he was even then modelling his politi-
HARVARD AND N. E. INFLUENCES 75
cal thought after that of Calhoun; and although
Horace Mann was conspicuous among the anti-slav-
ery agitators in politics, the young Harvard student
did not permit the prejudice of partisanship to
obscure his vision of Mann's great educational
ideas.
"Under a full sense of my responsibility — to my coun-
try and my God," said Mann on the floor of Congress some
years later, "I deliberately say, better disunion — better a
civil or a servile war, — better anything that God in his
providence shall send, — than an extension of the bounds
of slavery."
War came; and Curry bore arms in defence of the
principles upon which he conceived the Union to
have been founded, involving among others the
principle of local self-government on the part of
the States with reference to African slavery. Near
the close of a long life, and after a generation and
more spent in the service of education in the South,
he paid the tribute of his faith and admiration to the
elder educator of the North: —
When I was in Cambridge there occurred the cele-
brated controversy, since historic, between Horace Mann
and the thirty-one Boston teachers. Mann's glowing
periods, earnest enthusiasm and democratic ideas fired
my young mind and heart; and since that time I have
been an enthusiastic and consistent advocate of universal
education.
The value of a great man lies in his power to
raise up imitators and disciples.
Henry Bernard in the East and Curry in the
South almost share with Mann the honor of having
led the movement for popular education and peda-
76 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
gogic reform in this country in the nineteenth
century.
"In 1847, after my return to Alabama, as a candidate for
and a member of the Legislature, I spoke for free schools
and voted for every proposition looking to the endowment
of the State University. In 1853 and 1855 I was again a
representative from Talladega County, and as a member
of the Committee on Education sustained Judge Meek's
bill, which became the first law on the statute book estab-
lishing public schools."
Meek's name, which is better remembered among
lawyers as that of an eminent and cultivated jurist,
and in the literary world as the author of "Red
Eagle," an epic poem which embodies the romantic
story of Weatherford, the Indian chief, is deserving
of commemoration for his origination of the system
of public education in Alabama in 1853, long before
it had come in many other Southern States of the
American Union.
Among Curry's fellows in the Dane Law School
has already been mentioned Rutherford B. Hayes,
who succeeded to the Presidency of the United States
in 1877 under circumstances that threatened repub-
lican institutions in their consideration and solution.
Of Mr. Hayes' relation and attitude towards the
contest for the Presidency, and the famous Electoral
Commission, he has himself made a record in his let-
ter to Senator Sherman, dated Columbus, Ohio, 27
November, 1876: —
You feel, I am sure, as I do about this whole business,
A fair election would have given us about forty electoral
votes at the South, — at least that many. But we are not to
allow our friends to defeat one outrage and fraud by an-
HARVARD AND N. E. INFLUENCES 77
other. There must be nothing crooked on our part. Let
Mr. Tilden have the place by violence, intimidation, and
fraud, rather than undertake to prevent it by means that
will not bear the closest scrutiny.
Curry, in the year of the Hayes-Tilden election,
wrote of Mr. Hayes : —
Hayes, three or four years my senior, boarded in the
same home with myself, and we were quite intimate. He
was a "good fellow," studious and upright, but not spe-
cially promising. To human appearance then my prospect
for the Presidency was equal to his.
The following rather naive entry in his diary,
reminiscent of the days at Harvard, is characteris-
tic of the man of later years, who always recognized
the value of personal appearance and demeanor; and
who exemplified in his own person the attractiveness
of dress, and the polish of the best social life :
I did not visit any ladies while I was at the Law School;
but for a time I attended a dancing-school, and became
quite fond of the amusement.
The sacrifice of not visiting the ladies, which had
finally given him such pleasure when at Athens, is
easily attributable to the seriousness of his purpose
at Harvard; and it may very well be imagined of him
that even from attendance upon the dancing-school
ambition was not altogether absent.
He had matriculated in the Dane Law School,
September 13, 1843. In February, 1845, he received
his degree of Bachelor of Laws; and set his face
homeward in the same month. He stopped at vari-
ous places on his journey back to Alabama; and has
recorded, in connection with these pauses by the way,
an occasional interesting incident.
78 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
Dixon H. Lewis, who Curry says was 'Hhe heavi-
est man he ever saw," was then in Washington as a
Senator from Alabama. He was a friend of William
Curry's, and learning of young Curry's journey
homeward, wrote him a letter inviting him to visit
the national capitol. In response to this agreeable
invitation, Curry spent a week in Washington on his
way home, as the guest of Senator Lewis, and there-
fore under most agreeable and advantageous aus-
pices.
"The annexation of Texas was under discussion in the
Senate," he records of this visit, "and I heard a number of
speeches. I remember to have heard Hannigan of In-
diana, and Allen, the present (1876) Governor of Ohio.
Mr. Lewis took me to see John C. Calhoun, who was then
Secretary of State. A number of persons were in his room,
among them 'Mike Walsh,' a 'subterranean' politician
from New York, who would now be called a boss, a leader
of the working men, who was afterwards elected to Con-
gress. Mr. Calhoun was a brilliant talker, rapid, sugges-
tive, profound. He was then in his sixty-second year. His
burning eyes, prophetic face and lofty mien gave him the
look of a chieftain around whom men would gladly rally.
He received me very kindly, as he was very fond of the
company of young men. He was giving a sketch of Mr.
Van Buren, as an adroit politician, a manipulator of con-
ventions, and unsound on the tariff question. This was
my only interview with Mr. Calhoun, and I prize the recol-
lection of it. In all my political career I was an adherent
of the Calhoun school of politics. I was very familiar with
his writings, and I now regard him as no whit inferior to
Aristotle, Burke, Bismarck, Cavour, Gladstone, or any
statesman or publicist that ever lived."
This is high praise of Calhoun coming from a man
of Curry's breadth of view and large-mindedness, es-
HARVARD AND N. E. INFLUENCES 79
pecially in the light of events through which he sub-
sequently passed that shattered most of Calhoun's
political ideals. But it was a deliberate judgment
and an interesting testimony to the commanding in-
fluence exerted by Calhoun in this epoch of Ameri-
can life.
Among other noted men whom Curry met during
his week's sojourn with Mr. Lewis in Congress, were
George McDuffie of South Carolina, William Henry
Haywood of North Carolina, and Thomas H. Benton
of Missouri, all three of whom were then Senators
from their respective States. He witnessed the in-
auguration of James K. Polk, the democrat who had
been elected in an exciting campaign over his Whig
competitor, Henry Clay, and the induction into
office of the vice-president, George M. Dallas. He
disposes of Dallas with the remark, ''He wore long
silvery hair and was a graceful elocutionist." The
new President, a native of North Carolina and a citi-
zen of Tennessee, in his inaugural address arrested
the young man's attention with his tribute to the
Constitution and the Union.
To perpetuate them, it is our sacred duty to preserve
the Union. Who shall assign limits to the achievements of
free minds and free hands under the protection of this
glorious Union? No treason to mankind since the organiza-
tion of society, would be equal in atrocity to that of him
who would lift his hand to destroy it. He would over-
throw the noblest structure of human wisdom which pro-
tects himself and his fellow men. He would stop the prog-
ress of free government and involve his country either in
anarchy or in despotism.
This was sound doctrine to this twenty-year-old
boy over whom Calhoun's compelling presence and
80 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
great fame had cast their spell, and it found lodgment
not alone in his mind, but went to his heart, and be-
came a part of his life.
Travelling home from Washington with Senator
W. T. Colquitt and two of his daughters as compan-
ions, the party went by rail to Covington, Georgia,
and there took a stage. At Franklin, Alabama,
Curry again took up his journey alone by rail to
Montgomery, whence he travelled in a two-horse
hack to Talladega. The young Alabamian reached
home in an exalted state of mind, for he had travelled
much and seen much of men and cities. He had
touched hands with his political heroes at the na-
tional capitol, and had heard presidents speak and
hobnobbed with Senators and felt the impulse of the
time at the very center of things. His year and one-
half at Harvard and in New England had been,
indeed, a vivid and crucial year, and doubtless had
developed habits of mind and points of view which
unconsciously moulded much of his after life. It is
not far-fetched to fancy that from this tutelage came
no little of his subsequent aptitude for interpretation,
instinct for cosmopolitanism, contempt for intel-
lectual violence and respect for the other man, even
if he rejected the other man's opinion as he had
rejected most of the current New England dogmas.
Curry's nature was fiery and assertive, until suffer-
ing tempered his spirit, but he managed, under the
most adverse conditions, to escape the blight of
provincialism and to hold a place as a citizen of the
world. New England, itself, at this time, was
boundlessly and aggressively provincial, but the
experience of trying to understand other conditions
and to do justice to other temperaments — something
HARVARD AND N. E. INFLUENCES 81
perhaps of the high-mindedness and detachment in
the "quiet and still air" about the ancient seminary
of learning, helped to free his mobile brain and ready
sympathy from the shackles of crude thinking and
rough obstinacy. It would have been helpful to
the larger good if some of the young Sumners and
Boutwells of the period in New England could have
come South for a part of their education, and thus
gained first-hand knowledge and perhaps intelligent
sympathy with a people whose destinies they were
to affect profoundly, but about whom they knew
very little, and — most tragic of all ignorances — did
not know that they did not know.
CHAPTER V
LAW AND LEGISLATION
The years 1845 and 1846 were swift fateful years
in the life of the virile young republic. It was just
entering upon its first aggressive and foreign war.
The empire of Texas was received without precedent
directly into statehood without a preliminary and
preparatory period in territorial status. Sinister
motives were attributed in this annex to the friends
of slavery; and the swift enactment of statutes, pass-
ing of resolutions in Congress, and movement of
armies in the field, showed how tense the matter
was and how bound up with the supreme question
of public policy vexing the allied states. Annexa-
tion would unquestionably strengthen the slave
power, but the spirit of expansion was abroad as it
was in 1898 when the explosion of a powder magazine
in a warship in Cuban waters set a nation irresistibly
toward war. Men rejoiced in the ability of the
United States to "lick all creation," and a certain
youthful boasting and indulgence in superlatives
ruled in common talk throughout the land.
For young Curry, down in Alabama, the years
were fallow, preparatory years, during which the
gifted, well born, well educated young man was get-
ting ready for participation in great affairs. Accord-
ing to the custom of the day, he was reading law in
the office of a local lawyer, Mr. Samuel W. Rice.
82
LAW AND LEGISLATION 83
"At Talladega, I boarded," he writes, ''with Mr.
Rice; and William W. Knox and I used to go home
only six miles nearly every Saturday night. While
reading law, I wrote editorials for the 'Watchtower,'
visited the ladies, attended a debating society and
made many friends and acquaintances in the coun-
try." These were useful but innocuous occupations
which could, by no chance, do him any harm, and
which assure us that the much travelled collegian
was not out of touch with other normal stay-at-home
young men in that southwestern country. In 1846
he tendered his services to the government as a
soldier in the war with Mexico, but his attempt at
soldiering proved abortive.
With his eye on politics, he saw two questions,
both settled affirmatively, as the principal issues
of the state election; "biennial sessions of the
legislature and the removal of the capitol from
Tuscaloosa." Hon. Frankhn W. Bowdon, after-
wards a representative in Congress from the district,
was a representative from Talladega County, and
a leader in the legislature in carrying the two meas-
ures. The capitol was removed to Montgomery,
the city and county furnishing the building free of
cost.
Early in 1846 it became apparent that the adjustment
of the boundary line between Texas and Mexico would
lead to war. A fierce controversy arose between the Whig
and Democratic parties as to the responsibility for the
war. The act of Congress for raising troops said that war
existed by act of Mexico. . . . The war was popular,
and volunteers were numerous and enthusiastic. In May,
1846, a company of infantry was raised in Talladega
County. Jacob D. Shelley was captain. I was appointed
84 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
second sergeant. Several meetings were held, and I made
a number of speeches, in one of which I warned the people
against the folly of believing that Mexico could be con-
quered in a few months, as the Spaniards were proverbi-
ally obstinate and resolute.
We marched from Talladega to Wetumpka, where we
embarked on a boat for Mobile. At various points recep-
tions were given, and I had to make speeches. We went
into camp at Mobile. After annoying delays, we were,
with other companies, organized into a regiment, and
mustered in for six months. Then the War Department
refused to accept us for that period of service, and we were
discharged.
The bulk of the company re-enlisted for twelve months.
It being uncertain when the troops would be ordered to
the scene of war, five of us, Andrew W. Bowie, James
Montgomery, William P. Bowden, Dr. C. G. Cunningham
and myself, in a most foolhardy spirit, resolved to go to
the army on our own charges. A small schooner, the
Duane (a former revenue cutter, discharged for unsea-
worthiness) was in the port of Mobile, loading with sup-
plies. . . . We engaged passage and shipped for Point
Isabel, against the advice and protest of friends. To us it
seemed a dashing, gallant thing, and we enjoyed by antici-
pation, the frolic. The second day out I became sick, and
so continued for twelve days. My weight then was not
more than one hundred and twelve pounds. Two days we
were becalmed, and under a hot vertical sun we fished and
read and played cards, and indulged in day dreams. Then
came a terrific storm, the worst I ever saw, and our frail
barque seemed every moment as if it would sink. The
captain was skillful. When we reached the bar at Point
Isabel, the vessel leaked rapidly, and the pumps were used
incessantly. By means of a pilotboat, to get into which we
ran a narrow risk of being drowned, we were, with our
luggage, transported to shore. We bade a ready adieu to
the Duane, which two days afterwards sank in the harbor.
LAW AND LEGISLATION 85
The day after landing we made our way to a regiment of
Texas Rangers, Jack Hays, colonel; Ben McCulloch, lieu-
tenant-colonel; Chevallier, major; and attached ourselves
to a company commanded by Captain Acklere. We were
not formally mustered into service.
On the fourth of July there was a celebration. Ashbel
Smith, who had been minister from Texas to France, made
a speech; and so did I.
We remained in camp a week or more, when Dr. Cun-
ningham became dangerously ill, and was ordered to be
sent home. An attendant being required, as I was the
least, the youngest, and very feeble, I was selected; and
unwillingly I became the companion of the sick, hoping,
however, to return to Mexico.
It was a command, whose officers and men alike
saw gallant and conspicuous service in the Mexican
War; being genuine soldiers and fighting folks. Es-
pecially picturesque was the figure of Ben McCul-
loch, the lieutenant-colonel, who had just missed
joining Crockett by the merest accident, when the
latter had set out on the journey that closed with his
life at the ill-fated Alamo; who had handled a gun
under Sam Houston in the battle of San Jacinto;
and who had served in the Congress of the young
republic of Texas ; and had been shot in the arm in a
duel with Reuben Davis of Mississippi. McCulloch
rendered courageous service in the Mexican War,
and after its close went with the 'Forty-Niners to
California, where he illustrated for a while in his
person as sheriff of Sacramento County the glowing
verity of Bret Harte's later ''Tales of the Argonauts."
He came back to the East in 1853, and was killed in
battle as a brigadier-general in the service of the
Confederacy.
86 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
When Curry reached Talladega Dr. Cunningham
was much improved; but the psychological moment
for a return to the Mexican War did not recur, and he
resumed his reading of law in Mr. Rice's office.
"During the year," he says, "after a long and severe
examination by Hon. George W. Stone, a circuit judge, I
was admitted to the bar, with all the privileges and duties
of a lawyer."
In 1847 he was busy with pohtics. During 1848
and 1849 he practiced his profession with assiduity
and apparent success; for in the latter year he was
sohcitor of Tallapoosa County and had, among
others, one or two murder cases. But the routine of
law-practice did not appeal to him; and, indeed, it is
more than probable that he had intended its prac-
tice from the beginning, as did so many of the young
disciples of Coke in the South of the earlier half of the
nineteenth century, as a mere means of entrance to
the more alluring and larger field of politics. In 1850
he abandoned the practice of law, and settled upon a
plantation on Salt Creek in Talladega County, that
had been given him by his father.
"Although brought up on a farm," he says of himself at
this time, "I knew little practically of agriculture; and
while fond of the country, my tastes did not lie in the di-
rection of making corn and cotton. My farming, being
entrusted largely to negroes, was not profitable. I was
economical and never went into debt. I preferred books
to overseeing negroes."
This little bit of self-analysis displays quite clearly
Curry's real tendencies and ambitions. The drudg-
ery and hard dry exactions of that jealous mistress
the law certainly did not appeal to him. Tilling the
LAW AND LEGISLATION 87
soil was clearly obnoxious to his tastes. Even at
that early date the real man stood revealed. The
strongest impulses of his nature were oratorical and
didactic. He not only felt the capacity and the
genius to move his fellows by speech, but he had a
vehement longing to get up and convince everybody
in sight to his way of thinking. As Walter Bagehot
observed of Gladstone, he had a nature towards his
audience. He was sure that if they only knew what
he knew they would feel as he felt and believe as he
believed. If the cause were moral his enthusiasms
increased tenfold, and to the oratorical and didactic
impulses were added immediately the dramatic and
contentious impulses. Politics attracted him in the
mid-century period because the issues of the time
were moral and deeply based on principles and en-
thusiasms and deep loyalties. The pulpit attracted
him in the sad days of reconstruction when character
and integrity and spiritual steadfastness seemed the
only stable things in a tumbled-down world; and the
platform attracted him later on when the sun broke
through the clouds of the dreary time and he caught
the hopeful vision of a land made over in the strength
of a new generation trained to new duties and new
occasions.
In the meantime, in July, 1847, he became a can-
didate for the office of representative in the Alabama
Legislature. He was now well launched upon a po-
litical career, which was congenial to his tastes, and
not antagonistic to his studies and his habits of
mind, and in which he was destined to become dis-
tinguished. In the spring of this year he had served
as secretary of the State Democratic Convention at
Montgomery, which nominated Reuben Chapman
88 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
for governor. His services had already come to be in
great demand as a public speaker and the eyes of the
democratic leaders of the State were fixed upon him.
In regard to his skill and success as a speaker, he
modestly writes of himself at this time :
My small size and youthful appearance and the popu-
larity of my father gave me advantages over my competi-
tors. We had appointments at various places, and made
public speeches. I had some fluency and success as a
speaker.
The burning political question of the day was that
of slavery in the Territories; and especially with re-
gard to the Wilmot proviso, a measure that had been
introduced into the United States House of Repre-
sentatives by Mr. Wilmot of Pennsylvania, on be-
half of many northern Democrats, applying to the
territory proposed to be acquired from Mexico in the
settlement of the war by negotiation, the provision
of the Ordinance of 1787, which later came to be
the language of the Thirteenth Amendment, that
''neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall
ever exist in any part of said territory except for
crime, whereof the party shall first be duly con-
victed." The Whigs and the northern Democrats
united in favor of the Wilmot proviso in the Na-
tional House of Representatives, and it had passed
the House in the preceding year, but went to the
Senate too late to be acted upon.
The introduction and discussion of the Wilmot
proviso aroused a crisis of passions upon the slav-
ery question; and the spectre, which the prophetic
imagination of Mr. Jefferson had long before con-
jured up, upon the passage of the Missouri Compro-
LAW AND LEGISLATION 89
mise Act, of a division of the country upon sectional
lines, — a vision that ''alarmed him like a firebell in
the night," — now presented itself, not as the unsub-
stantial pageant of a dream, but as a terrible reality.
Upon this imminent question Curry took no un-
certain stand. A letter written by him in that year,
on the threshold of his political career, attests from its
age-yellowed pages the sincerity of his convictions,
and the lofty courage of his purpose : —
Mr. James H. Joiner,
Dear Sir: — A report, prejudicial to my success, has been
in circulation in the lower end of the county, that I am
in favor of a property qualification for voters. It is
false.
My position in reference to General Taylor is misunder-
stood. The perilous exigency of the times demands a
president who will resist all interference by the general
government with our domestic institutions. This dis-
crimination, recognized and adopted in the Wilmot Pro-
viso, is degrading to the South, and all freemen must feel
that "death is preferable to acknowledged inferiority."
To resist the effort which will be made to prohibit slavery
in the territory to be acquired from Mexico (as just in-
demnity for the expenses of this war, the spoliations of our
commerce, and injuries done to our citizens, which would
have justified a declaration of war many years ago), it
becomes our duty to take "firm, united and concerted
action."
The South can never support any man for President
who is not sound on this paramount and controlling ques-
tion. Their support of any man would be idle, except as
necessary to his success. Then some man must be selected
who has popularity, — upon whom all parties at the South
can unite. General Taylor, I think, is that man. The
West is not quite thoroughly corrupted on the slavery
90 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
question; and enough of them might go with us to secure
his election.
General Taylor, I have no doubt, is a freetrade man.
If he runs as a rabid, partisan Whig, determined to ad-
vance Whig measures, without testing the measures, the
success of which under Mr. Polk's administration has made
his name illustrious and immortal, I would hesitate long.
The real issue should be decisively and determinately
made up, before I could give him my humble support.
I am not wedded to General Taylor. President Polk,
Calhoun, Stevenson, Butler, Walker, Lewis, could get my
support as soon or more so, if there were a reasonable
probability of success. The South should take her posi-
tion. The question has to be met. It ought not to
be shuffled off or evaded longer. To unite on any one
man would be an evidence of our concert, our union, our
strength. The emergency requires it. The Constitution
requires it. Truth, justice, patriotism, and our interest
require of us something more than empty bravado. Ac-
tion, action, action is not more necessary in oratory than
in times of danger.
Yours respectfully,
July 19th. 1847. J. L. M. Curry.
This was a remarkable letter to have been written
by a youth of twenty-two, who had scarcely finished
his law studies. With the understanding of the
patriot, no less than with the keen discernment of
the politician, he recognized the political dangers
that confronted the country, and the possible solu-
tion of those dangers in the election of some safe,
conservative man as President. The North and the
South were facing each other with hostile and defiant
fronts on the great issue, which according to the
theory of the former involved the cause of humanity
itself, and according to that of the latter carried
LAW AND LEGISLATION 91
with it a continuance, or a destruction, as the re-
sult might prove, of the civilization and social
existence of the South. Over against the fiery
denunciations of slavery by Garrison and Wen-
dell Phillips and Owen Lovejoy and Frothingham,
Calhoun set the logic of his conclusions in the
expression : —
To destroy the existing relations would be to destroy
this prosperity (of the Southern States), and to place the
two races in a state of conflict which must end in the ex-
pulsion or extirpation of one or the other. No other can be
substituted compatible with their peace or security. The
difficulty is in the diversity of the races. So strongly
drawn is the line between the two in consequence, and so
strengthened by the force of habit and education that it
is impossible for them to exist together in the community
where their numbers are so nearly equal as in the slave-
holding States, under any other relation than that which
now exists. Social and political equality between them is
impossible. No power on earth can overcome the difficulty.
The causes lie too deep in the principles of our nature to
be surmounted. But, without such equality, to change the
present condition of the African race, were it possible,
would be but to change the form of slavery.
This is a lucid, powerful statement and read in
the light of the present, after fifty years of freedom
and education and social experimentation, makes it
very clear how honest and sincere were the men of
the Calhoun type throughout the country, and how
well grounded their fears. Men who felt in this way
stood on higher ground than greed or inhumanity.
Surely no mere oligarchy of wealth could feel and
speak after this fashion.
Curry, with the recognition that soldiers are rarely
92 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
politicians, and even more rarely partisans, saw in
General Taylor, Whig though he acclaimed himself,
a figure before which the stormy passions of the polit-
ical period might subside; and in this patriotic con-
templation of the situation many other older and
wiser men of his day shared. Yet with all his eager-
ness to save the country from its impending peril,
he fearlessly proclaimed his principles of devotion
to the Federal Constitution, as construed by the
school of democracy to which he professed allegiance.
On the first Monday in August, 1847, the legis-
lative election was held; and among all the can-
didates for the Alabama House of Representatives in
his county, Curry received the highest number of
votes. The legislative sessions had been made
biennial; and in the first biennial session which
assembled in the new capitol of the State, at Mont-
gomery, later destined to witness the birth, and for
a brief time to be the home, of the ill-fated Con-
federacy, he took the oath of office as a legislator.
The session was distinguished among other things of
a different character by the election of a United
States Senator. The body was overwhelmingly
democratic; and the strict-construction candidate
was Curry's friend and recent host. Senator Dixon M.
Lewis, whom he had named in his letter to Joiner,
as worthy of the Presidential nomination, along with
General Taylor, the conquering hero of the Mexican
War; President Polk, under whose administration
that war had been successfully waged; the great
triumvir, John C. Calhoun; Andrew Stevenson of
Virginia; General William Orlando Butler of Ken-
tucky, who for his gallantry at Monterey had re-
ceived two swords of honor, and Leroy Pope Walker,
LAW AND LEGISLATION 93
speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives,
and later Confederate Secretary of War.
Lewis belonged to the Calhoun school of democ-
racy. He was a strict constructionist, and an ultra
State rights democrat. William R. King, his demo-
cratic competitor, who had served the State as
senator, and who had the year before returned from
Paris, whither he had gone as minister to France in
1844, by appointment of President Tyler, was a
follower of Van Buren; and went down in defeat
before the NuUifier and Secessionist, Lewis.
Lewis was a man of great stature, and weighed
considerably more than four hundred pounds. It
is said that furniture had to be constructed for his
especial use, and that he always engaged two seats
in a stage coach or railway car. He was a man of
fine ability and noble feelings; and the story is told
of him that upon the occasion of the shipwreck of
a steamer on which he was a passenger, he refused
to enter the boat that was let down to take off the
other passengers, until they were all safely landed,
for fear of imperilling their safety; and was in im-
minent danger in the meantime until his final rescue.
"Upon reaching Montgomery," writes Curry of his
new experience in the legislature, "I went to the 'Hall,*
the leading hotel. The large reception-room was crowded.
Mr. King was in one part, surrounded by his friends; Mr.
Lewis in another, alike surrounded. My preference for
Mr, Lewis being known, I was led to him, and he seated
me upon his knee. I was apparently a boy, beardless and
slender; Mr. Lewis was the largest man I ever saw. Mr.
W. L. Yancey, afterwards so famous, was present, and an
ardent supporter of Mr. Lewis, who at the election by the
Legislature, was chosen on the eighteenth ballot."
94 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
William Lowndes Yancey, whom Curry mentions
in the foregoing paragraph, was at that time a mem-
ber of Congress. It was in this year of 1846 that,
as has been said of him, "his mission began." He
had been an antagonist of Nullification in South
Carolina, where he edited a newspaper that attacked
Calhoun and Hayne. Later he moved to Alabama,
and formulated that expression of political faith
among Southern democrats, that came to be known
as ''the Alabama platform"; and which in 1860, in
the Democratic Convention at Charleston, under
the influence of his flaming eloquence, was made the
Southern program, and caused the division of the
democracy of the Union. Possessed of an unsur-
passed and compelling gift of oratory, he was a
man of great personal modesty and self-effacement;
and he was as much beloved by his friends and
political followers as he was feared and hated by
his political antagonists. The fame of Yancey's
wonderful eloquence, continuing long since the de-
parture of his generation, is still cherished by the
descendants of the men who heard it, both gentle
and simple, in the Southern States; where
They'll speak of him for years to come
In cottage-chronicle and tale.
When for aught else renown is dumb,
His legend shall prevail.
Upon its organization, the Alabama House of
Representatives elected Leroy Pope Walker its
speaker. In appointing his committees, Mr. Walker
gave Curry an immediate, though not undeserved
prominence, by making him chairman of the ex-
tremely important committee on Privileges and
LAW AND LEGISLATION 95
Elections; and he also gave him a position on the
Judiciary Committee.
The only bill of serious importance introduced by
Curry during the session was one ''to reform the
evils of local legislation by transferring to county
and to court jurisdiction many matters which had
burdened the legislature." It was a bill in favor of
Curry's favorite democratic doctrine of the right of
local self-government, — a doctrine that Mr. Burke
has accurately and strikingly described: —
To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little pla-
toon we belong to in society, is the first principle, — the
germ, as it were, — of public affections. It is the first link
in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our
country, and to mankind.
To its author's satisfaction the bill became a law.
Bills to fund the University debt and for the in-
crease of taxes were the subject of frequent and
animated discussion in the legislature. Curry sup-
ported both; and he spoke in favor of free public
schools, and voted for every proposition looking
toward the endowment of the State University.
"I always voted for measures in favor of educa-
tion," he records of this period of his earliest legis-
lative experience.
During this session of the legislature, the body
gave a reception to Generals John A. Quitman and
James Shields, both of whom had distinguished
themselves in the War with Mexico; and who, like
other heroes of that recent struggle, were in high
public favor, wherever they went.
During this session, too, Asa Whitney, the origi-
nator of the scheme of a transcontinental railroad,
96 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY •
and through whose efforts appropriations were
first secured in 1853 for the first surveys covering
the northern, southern, and central routes, delivered
an address before the legislature in advocacy of his
scheme, and sought its endorsation by resolution.
Curry, in recaUing this speech in 1876, did not re-
member that Mr. Whitney's efforts in endeavoring
to obtain resolutions in behalf of his Pacific railroad
were successful.
Another legislative visitor of the period was Miss
Dorothea Dix, whose name is famous in America for
her efforts in behalf of State legislation for the estab-
lishment of insane hospitals and asylums through-
out the country. In her beneficent work for the
amelioration of the condition of prisoners, paupers
and lunatics, she is said to have appeared before the
respective legislatures of every state east of the Rocky
Mountains, and to have been largely instrumental
in procuring legislative action in a number of these
states for the establishment of state hospitals for the
insane. This was her mission in visiting Montgom-
ery : but it does not appear that she was on this oc-
casion successful.
In 1848 occurred the Presidential election and
the birth at Buffalo, New York, on August 9th
of a new political party, the Free Soilers, which
adopted a platform containing the declaration that
Congress had no more power to make a slave
than to make a king. This platform further de-
clared that there should be no more slave states
and no more slave territories; and nominated Mar-
tin Van Buren for President and Charles Francis
Adams for Vice-president. The Democracy earlier in
the year had in their convention at Baltimore nomi-
LAW AND LEGISLATION 97
nated Lewis Cass of Michigan and William Orlando
Butler of Kentucky for President and Vice-presi-
dent, and had renewed the strict-construction plat-
forms of 1840 and 1844; — but with a significance as
ominous as that with which Mr. Jefferson had
viewed the adoption of the Missouri Compromise.
It had voted down by an overwhelming majority a
resolution that Congress had no power to interfere
with slavery, either in the territories or the states.
The Whig Convention, following that of the Democ-
racy, had wisely recognized the influence of war
upon the popular mind; and had done what Curry
in his letter to Joiner had intimated a desire to see
the Democrats do. It had met at Philadelphia in
June, and nominated General Zachary Taylor for
President, and Millard Fillmore of New York for
Vice-president, without a platform or other declara-
tion of party principles. Taylor was a slave-holder;
and many Democrats in the South, ''preferred a
slave-holding candidate without a platform to a non-
slave-holding candidate, on a platform in which sup-
port of slavery had been voted down." Taylor and
Fillmore were elected by a majority of both free and
slave states. The Northern Democrats believed that
the Southern democracy had betrayed the Cass
ticket : and when Congress met in December, nearly
all of the Free State Democrats voted in the House
for a bill to organize the territories of California and
New Mexico, with the Wilmot Proviso attached.
The belief entertained by the Northern democracy
that the Southern Democrats had not been loyal to
Cass was certainly not true in Curry's case.
Though, with a wisdom beyond his years and experi-
ence, he had put General Taylor forward as his fore-
98 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
most candidate, after his party had made its plat-
form and its nominations he zealously supported
both.
''I made a number of speeches in favor of General
Cass," he writes in his record; "but the military
fame of General Taylor gave him an early success."
Prior to his election to the legislature in August,
1847, an event had occurred in Curry's life of para-
mount importance above politics or any experience
of office-holding or political campaigning. On the
4th of March, 1847, he married Ann Alexander
Bowie, whose father. Judge Alexander Bowie, was
born in Abbeville district. South Carolina, and died
December 30, 1866, in Talladega. He was a gradu-
ate of the South Carolina College, a member of the
legislature of that state, and at the Nullification Con-
vention, a popular lawyer, and a very eloquent
speaker. He moved to Talladega County, Alabama,
in 1836; and was a trustee of the State University
and chancellor of the Northern Division of the State.
His son-in-law has left of him the memorial that *'he
was a fine conversationist, a graceful writer, and a
scholarly. Christian gentleman." Mrs. Curry's
mother was Susan Jack, a member of a prominent
South Carolina family; and Mrs. Curry herself was
born near Abbeville, prior to the father's removal to
Talladega.
The issue of this marriage was four children,
Susan Lamar, William Alexander, Manly Bowie,
and Jackson Thomas. Of these, only two arrived at
adult age. William Alexander Curry was born in
1854 and died in the following year; and Jackson
Thomas Curry, who was born in 1860, also died in
the year succeeding his birth. The oldest child,
LAW AND LEGISLATION 99
Susan Lamar Curry, who was born September 2,
1850, married November 13, 1873, Reverend John
B. Turpin, and died January 7, 1881. The son who
grew to manhood was Manly Bowie Curry, who was
born April 23, 1857. He was educated at the Uni-
versity of Virginia, and was a captain in the United
States Army in the Philippines, after the Spanish-
American War. He was killed in an automobile acci-
dent at Atlanta, Georgia, December 18, 1907. At
the time of his death he was a major in the United
States Army, and Paymaster of the Department of
the Gulf. He left a widow and three small children
to survive him.
CHAPTER VI
THE BONE OF CONTENTION
Curry writes in his record, long after the stormy
passions engendered by the poUtics of the slavery
period had passed away: —
1850 was a year of much political excitement. Ques-
tions growing out of the acquisition of territory from
Mexico deeply agitated the Southern mind. In Congress
what was called the "Wilmot Proviso," prohibiting the
introduction of African slavery into the territories lately
acquired by expenditure of common blood and treasure,
had divided political parties, and exasperated the North
and the South. Since the close of the Mexican War,
slavery as affecting the territories was the "bone of con-
tention." A large party at the North demanded that the
territories should be kept free from the "curse." The
South felt that to exclude their peculiar property from
common territory was a flagrant injustice, an insulting
discrimination, and a violation of the Constitution. The
two sections began to grow apart, and to feel alienation
and animosity. Bills were numerous, during these years,
in Congress, to adjust the dispute. Debates were able.
Calhoun and Webster were then living; and they repre-
sented the two sides of the question.
David Wilmot, a democratic member of Congress
from Pennsylvania, had introduced his famous ''Pro-
viso" in 1846. It consisted, as has been heretofore
partially stated, of an amendment to the pending bill
100
THE BONE OF CONTENTION 101
for appropriating two millions of dollars for the pur-
chase of a part of Mexico, and the amendment pro-
vided that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
except for crime should ever exist in said territory.
The amendment passed the House of Representa-
tives and failed of passage in the Senate; but it gave
rise to the ''Free-Soil" movement, and split the
Northern and Southern democracy like a wedge.
The Wilmot Proviso and the Missouri Compromise
constitute the two crucial measures in the history of
slavery legislation. Mr. Jefferson, in a sort of de-
spair, called the Compromise ''the Knell of the
Union." To the Northern men of the 'forties the
Proviso seemed the tocsin of the armed conflict nec-
essary to preserve its life.
"The coincidence of a marked principle, moral and
political, with a geographical line," said Jefferson, with
pregnant prescience, of the Missouri Compromise, "once
conceived, I feared would never more be obliterated from
the mind; that it would be recurring on every occasion,
and renewing irritations, until it would kindle such mutual
and mortal hatred as to render separation preferable to
eternal discord."
The object of the Missouri Compromise Act of
1820, as that of the Wilmot Proviso, was to deUmit
the extension of slavery : the former prohibiting slav-
ery thenceforward north of the line of 36° 30'; and
the latter, as stated, prohibiting it in the newly ac-
quired Mexican territory. In 1846, the time of the
Proviso, the great issue had come to be too exciting
to admit of the picturesque and vituperative phrase-
ology which men like John Randolph had bestowed
upon the earlier measure.
102 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
The forces of North and South were beginning to
align themselves for the titanic struggle which was
to follow in less than two decades.
"In 1849-50 certain laws were passed, called 'Com-
promise Measures,'" continues Curry, "The spirit and
general tenor of this legislation, it was thought by many
persons, especially in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama
and Mississippi, were very hostile to the rights and
equality of the South in the Union. In this year, 1850,
and in 1851, an attempt was made to organize a party
favorable to secession. I favored it, but the movement
was unwise, premature and unpopular."
The Compromise Measures of 1850 were a series of
acts dealing, for the most part, with the slavery
question and the rights of the Northern and Southern
States under the Constitution. Henry A. Wise of
Virginia spoke of these measures as ''an awful paci-
fication"; but the stringent Fugitive Slave Law,
written into the Compromise Acts by James Murray
Mason of Virginia, served to make them the instru-
ment of delaying the "irrepressible conflict" for an-
other decade. In the meantime, the "attempt to
organize a party favorable to secession" took place
in the calling of a convention of Southern States to
meet in June, 1850, at Nashville, Tennessee.
"The great object of a Southern Convention," wrote
Mr. Calhoun on July 9, 1849, to Mr. Collin S. Tarpley
of Mississippi, "should be to put forth in a solemn man-
ner the causes of our grievances in an address to the
other states, and to admonish them, in a solemn manner,
as to the consequences which must follow, if they should
not be redressed, and to take measures preparatory to
it, in case they should not be. The call should be ad-
dressed to all those who are desirous to save the Union
THE BONE OF CONTENTION 103
and our institutions, and who, in the alternative, should
it be forced on us, would prefer the latter."
The Southern Convention met at Nashville in
June, 1850. Five Southern States were represented.
A preamble and resolutions were adopted, which set
forth with great vividness and effect the grounds of
difference between the people of the South and those
of the North in relation to the construction of the
Federal Constitution and Slavery. In the preamble
occurred these words: ''We make no aggressive
move. We stand upon the defensive. We invoke
the spirit of the Constitution, and claim its guaran-
tees. Our rights, our independence, the peace and
existence of our families, depend upon the issue."
Among the resolutions was one expressing ''cordial
attachment to the Constitutional Union of the
States," but another declaring that Union to be one
of "equal and independent sovereignties," possess-
ing the right to resume the powers delegated to the
Federal Government, whenever they deemed it
"proper and necessary." There was also a resolu-
tion recommending to the Southern States that they
meet in a Congress for the purpose of securing the
restoration of their Constitutional rights, if possible,
or else of providing for "their future safety and inde-
pendence."
Pending the Compromise Measures in Congress,
the Nashville Southern Convention adjourned to
reconvene in the following November. Upon its re-
assembly in Nashville, its numbers were larger, and
seven states were now found to be represented. But
in the meantime the compromise bills had become
laws: and the Southern Convention adjourned, after
the adoption of a series of resolutions, that were as
104 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
extraordinary in their detail of the principles animat-
ing the men who made them, as they were futile.
"In the public meetings in Talladega County," con-
tinues Curry in his narrative of the political events of
the period, "I took an active part, and made several
speeches.
"Mr. Calhoun died this year, and at a public meeting
at the Court House to take proper notice of the great
loss, I was on the Committee on Resolutions, and made
an address."
During the years of 1851 and 1852 Curry lived
quietly on his farm, making an occasional speech at
a farmers' meeting, or a Fourth of July oration at a
country barbecue. Of an address of the latter kind
he takes occasion to record that it "was thoroughly
prepared and memorized, without my writing a
word." Jackson Curry about this time bought a
plantation in Marengo County, and moved thither;
whereupon Jabez bought his brother Jackson's farm,
which lay only three miles distant from Talladega,
and more convenient to his law-office than his own.
Settling on this place, he resumed the active practice
of the law in Talladega, living there until 1865, when
he moved to Marion. '
"During these years," he writes, "there was scarcely a
night that there were not one or more persons at my
house — preachers, relatives, and friends were always
welcome."
Of this overflowing and unassuming hospitality,
characteristic of the people and country, he makes
further mention: —
In the absence of a sufficient supply of preachers,
Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians held "camp-
THE BONE OF CONTENTION 105
meetings." An arbor was built, surrounded by tents
rudely constructed of planks. The tent-holders furnished
food and lodging, gratuitously and bounteously to all
visitors. At the stand or arbor, preaching and other
religious services were held during the day and at night.
Immense congregations attended. The Baptists held a
camp-meeting at Cold Water, a large clear stream of
limestone water, on the boundary between Talladega and
Calhoun Counties. My father had the largest tent on
the ground, and entertained a large number of persons.
I attended these meetings every year, and enjoyed them.
Distinguished preachers were usually present. While
liable to degenerate into physical excitement, the meet-
ings on the whole were productive of good.
In 1852, Curry acted as agent for the Alabama
and Tennessee River Railroad Company; and in
this capacity traversed the counties of Talladega, Cal-
houn and Randolph, making speeches, and obtaining
rights of way and subscriptions for the road, which
was being built from Selma to Rome, via Monticello,
Talladega and Jacksonville.
In 1853, he was again a candidate for the State
legislature from Talladega County, and was again
elected at the head of the poll. The speaker of the
House, the Honorable William Garrett, appointed
him to the chairmanship of the committee on In-
ternal Improvements. He was also made a member
of the committee on Education, and chairman of
the House division of a joint committee to examine
the accounts of the commissioner and trustee who
had been previously designated to "wind up" the
State bank and its branches.
A school law, heretofore referred to in an earlier
chapter, introduced and championed by Judge Meek,
106 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
that was designed to institute and organize a system
of public schools for the State, was enacted. Of its
distinguished author, Curry has left the following
memorial, written in 1895 : —
Alexander B, Meek, then of Mobile, a brilliant speaker,
of large culture, rich, poetic fancy, progressiveness of aim
and thought, had the patriotic purpose to develop the
minds of Alabama youth. In due time, from his com-
mittee on Education, he submitted an able report, ac-
companied by an elaborate bill, providing for the estab-
lishment and maintenance of a system of public schools.
After an interesting debate, the bill became a law, and
William F. Perry of Talladega was elected Superinten-
dent.
But by far the most interesting and exciting ques-
tion before the legislature was that of "State aid."
Of this Curry writes: —
Mji- committee reported bills, granting endorsement of
railroad bonds, on certain well-defined conditions; and
the Governor, John A. Winston, vetoed them. In the
controversy, I defended the bills and the principle of
well-guarded assistance to internal improvements.
Winston's opposition to State aid for railroads
and the reissue of State banknotes as a loan to rail-
road companies won for him the soubriquet of "the
Veto Governor." Curry's influence in the legis-
lature, or other undisclosed causes, served to pass
the State aid bills over the Governor's vetoes; but
the latter triumphed in the end. The attorney-
general of the State stood by the executive in the
struggle, and gave an opinion that the acts were
unconstitutional; and the treasurer of the State was
instructed to make no disbursements under them.
THE BONE OF CONTENTION 107
Winston's attitude was vindicated by his re-election
as governor in 1855, and the approbration of his
course with reference to ''State aid" by the legis-
lature of that year.
For some years the question of a geological survey
of Alabama had been agitated, and the relation of
geology to agriculture had been discussed. The
monumental work of William Barton Rogers, who
had organized a survey of Virginia, and of his hardly
less distinguished brother, Henry D. Rogers, who
had made similar surveys of New Jersey and of
Pennsylvania, had for the past two decades attracted
attention to the historical geology of the great
Appalachian chain; and farseeing men in Alabama
beheld with the eyes of prophecy the future that
State was destined to have when a full knowledge of
her subterranean possessions should be unfolded and
disclosed. In 1850, the committee on Education in
the State Senate had submitted a bill for a geological
survey; but no action was taken upon it. During
the session of 1853-54, Curry offered a similar bill in
the house, and it was referred to his committee on
Internal Improvements. He reported it to the house
from the committee, with a written argument in its
behalf that was published separately. After con-
siderable opposition the bill became a law. It
authorized, among other things, the appointment by
the Governor, of a State geologist at a salary of $2,500,
whose duty it should be to make a thorough survey,
''so as to determine accurately the quality and char-
acteristics of the soil and adaptation to agricultural
purposes; the mineral resources, their location, and
the best means for their development; the water
power and capacities, and generally everything re-
108 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
lating to the geological and agricultural character of
the State." It was the modest beginning of a tre-
mendous movement, and contained in it the germ
which fructified and bore abundant harvest later in
the mines of Alabama, and the furnace fires of
Birmingham and her sister cities of a later industrial
epoch.
, The year 1854 seems by the record to have been
a quiet and uneventful one in Curry's personal his-
tory. In 1876 he wrote concerning it: "I can now
recall nothing of special interest. My farm and pro-
fession occupied my time."
In May, 1855, William Curry, his father died; and
in his death his son suffered a great loss. Mr. Curry
was a man of no inconsiderable wealth, and large
popularity. He was liberal and hospitable to a
fault; and he was a conscientious and devoted
Christian. At the time of his death he was a director
of the Alabama and Tennessee River Railway Com-
pany; and, in filial affection, his son Jabez preserved
among his papers to the day of his death, a copy of
the resolutions of respect passed by William Curry's
colleagues on the board of directors. May 24, 1855.
In proportion as the preceding year had seemed
to him dull and uneventful, Curry found that of
1855 crowded to the brim with action and excite-
ment. Writing of the time more than a generation
later, he says: —
The years 1854-1855 will be long remembered for the
origin, unparalleled growth and complete overthrow of
the American or Know-Nothing Party. It was a secret
political organization, with degrees or orders of member-
ship, and a ritual of initiation. Strong oaths were ad-
ministered to persons admitted. The party suddenly
THE BONE OF CONTENTION 109
became very popular. Lodges were organized, in nearly
every neighborhood, village, town and city in the
United States. So strong was the organization, it be-
came presumptuous and intolerant of opposition. The
leading object was to cultivate an intense Americanism,
and exclude aliens from suffrage, and Roman Catholics
from office. Nearly all the Whigs and many Democrats
were beguiled into the party, which encountered its first
and most serious opposition in Virginia, where Henry
A. Wise, the democratic candidate for governor, made
one of the most brilliant and effective campaigns ever
made in the United States. In many other States the
excitement was high; in none, more than in Alabama.
In spite of many friendly warnings as to my self-inflicted
political immolation, I was, from the beginning to the
end, inflexibly opposed to the secret party and its prin-
ciples. The death of my father and the settlement of
his estate made it proper for me to decline candidacy
for any office; but on July 3, 1855, I was by a county
convention unanimously nominated for the legislative
house of representatives. The convention was preceded
by a large and tumultuous and sanguine assemblage of
the opposition; and the leading speaker, in anticipation
of my nomination, congratulated his party on the glory
it would have in defeating "the Ajax Telamon of the
Democracy." Having apparently no option, I accepted
the nomination; and from that day until the election
on the first Monday in August I traveled and spoke
every day, except Sundays. The Know-Nothings never
doubted of success; and I had to meet in debate Lewis
E. Parsons, a knightly antagonist, one of the ablest law-
yers in the State, a thorough gentleman, afterwards gov-
ernor by presidential appointment, and Hon. Thomas B.
Woodward, who had been a member of the Nullification
Convention in South Carolina, and was the brother of
Joseph A. Woodward, a leading member of Congress
from South Carolina, and who participated with others
no J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
in the canvass. The crowds were large, and the debates
warm and excited. Several times I spoke in face of
threats of personal violence. Having obtained one of
the little "yellow books" (which I now possess) contain-
ing the oaths and ritual, I used them unsparingly. I rode
on horseback to our various appointments, and never
more enjoyed intellectual encounters. My whole ticket
was elected, I leading the poll, receiving a majority of
2,550. I was on the day of the election thirty miles from
the Court House, and rode that night on horseback,
reaching the Square about 2 a.m., to be received by as
glad and enthusiastic an assemblage as ever rejoiced over
an election. Letters came from prominent men, in vari-
ous parts of the State, warmly congratulating me, as
Talladega from the ability of the Know-Nothing candi-
dates was one of the chief battle fields in the State.
The Know-Nothing party was, as stated by Curry,
a secret organization, the chief plank of whose plat-
form was "America for Americans." It masque-
raded behind mystic symbolism, and the parapher-
nalia of ritual ceremony. It had supreme lodges
and subordinate lodges, and degrees, and grips and
passwords. It had appeared first in 1852; when,
as is often the case with embryo political organiza-
tions, it contented itself with interrogating the can-
didates of other parties. Its secret name at first
was "The Sons of 76, or the Order of the Star-
Spangled Banner." Later it became "The National
Council of the United States of North America."
Its derisive nickname by those who vainly inter-
rogated its members as to its program and signifi-
cance, only to receive the reply, "I don't know,"
was that of "Know-Nothings." It largely sup-
planted the Whig party in the South and Southwest.
After an overwhelming and crushing defeat at the
THE BONE OF CONTENTION 111
hands of the Vu-ginia democracy, under the leader-
ship of Wise in the gubernatorial campaign of 1855,
its power began to wane, and its members deserted
it, as rats leave a sinking ship. In spite of its loudly
vaunted Americanism, it was distinctly un-American
in its proscription for religious principle, and in its
organization as a political party upon a basis of
secrecy. Its members, abandoning both of these
un-American dogmas, finally merged in the Con-
stitutional Union party, which nominated and sup-
ported Bell and Everett in the portentous presiden-
tial election of 1860.
Curry's innate spirit of hostility to any political
proscription chimed in with his established princi-
ples of democracy in this contest; and his triumphant
campaign, which culminated in his enthusiastic re-
ception in the late hours of election night by his ex-
cited and elated supporters, had been won with an
energy and an eloquence that had been as effective
as they were sincere.
The legislature met in the State House at Mont-
gomery in December, 1855. The Speaker, Richard
W. Walker, was not only a political but a personal
friend of Curry's; and he again became chairman of
the Committee on Internal Improvements, and also
retained his place on the committee on Education,
and on the joint committee to examine and audit
the accounts of the Bank Commissioner. During
this session he made speeches on subjects of internal
improvement, on the proper disposition of the bills
of the State bank, and on the American party. The
last was in reply to the Honorable C. C. Langdon
of Mobile; and created so unusual and distinct an
impression for ability and eloquence upon its hearers.
112 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
that its publication was requested by every demo-
cratic member of the house. Its author, however,
with characteristic modesty, declined the proffered
request; and the speech, hke many other unusual
and unreported specimens of human eloquence,
passed into the limbo of forgetfulness.
The geological bill, which in the preceding session
had become a law, continued an object of interest
and improvement with him; and a report upon it
and its operations, from his committee on Internal
Improvements, written and presented by him, and
of which a thousand copies were printed and cir-
culated in the State, emphasized its importance, and
added vitality and effect to its provisions.
He had been a delegate from his county to the
State democratic conventions of 1847 and 1852; and
he was again elected to that of' 1856, whose function
it was, among others, to choose delegates to the
National Democratic Convention, which met in
Cincinnati, June 2 of that year, and nominated
Buchanan and Breckinridge on a strict-construction
platform, which included a condemnation of Know-
Nothingism, an approval of the Kansas-Nebraska
bill, and the substitution of what its adversaries
called ''Squatter Sovereignty" in place of the pro-
visions of the Missouri Compromise.
All these doctrines were highly acceptable to
Curry, who belonged to the school of Calhoun de-
mocracy, the members of which dominated the con-
vention. He was made a presidential elector on the
State democratic ticket of that year.
"I canvassed the district thoroughly," he writes of his
own part in the campaign, "and spoke also in Selma and
Marion. I received the highest vote of any of the elec-
THE BONE OF CONTENTION 113
tors; and went to Montgomery to meet the Electoral
College and cast the vote of the State for Mr. Buchanan."
His personal and political popularity, extending
from his county, in which, in three successive legis-
lative campaigns, he had led the poll as a candidate,
was now illustrated in the State at large in the fact
which he so modestly states, that he ''received the
highest vote of any of the electors." This popu-
larity, when first evidenced, was attributed by him
to his "small size, his youthful appearance, and the
popularity of his father." As a matter of fact, it
was undoubtedly due to his powers as a popular
orator, and to his equipment as a well-informed
politician of pleasing address, of profound convic-
tions, of frank expression, and of great energy and
enterprise. Of himself at this period he writes: —
Nominally practising law, I attended to my farm and
read much of politics and miscellaneous literature. I
desired to prepare myself to be a statesman, and my
reading was largely in that line.
Besides his other work, already noticed, he wrote
at this time a great deal for the newspapers. His
close connection with the Talladega Watchtower,
which had begun soon after his return from Harvard,
continued; and in 1856, nearly all of the Watchtower
editorials were from his pen. He says: —
"I wrote much for the above paper, and became a
tolerable printer, and an expert proof-reader. Reading
proof I consider a valuable part of my education."
CHAPTER VII
"bleeding Kansas"
In the fall of 1856 occurred the Presidential elec-
tion, with the extension or restoration of slavery in
the Territories, the burning question of the hour.
Buchanan and Breckinridge, the democratic can-
didates, were elected over the opposing Know-
Nothing and Republican tickets, whose nominees
were respectively Millard Fillmore and Andrew
Jackson Donelson on the former, and John C. Fre-
mont and William L. Dayton on the latter. The
democratic ticket received 174 electoral votes; that
of the Republican party 1 14, and the Know-Nothing
candidates 8. Buchanan and Breckinridge were in-
augurated March 4, 1857; and the Supreme Court
of the United States rendered its opinion in the
Dred Scott case two days later. It is significant of
the inflamed condition of the public mind on the
question of slavery, that although this case had been
decided in 1856, the great tribunal which had deter-
mined it thought it best to withhold its opinion
until the excitement of the Presidential election
should have subsided.
In May, 1857, a democratic convention for the
Congressional district in Alabama, which included
Talladega, met in that town, and nominated Curry
for Congress, his competitor, Colonel Griffin, retiring
after hearing two of Curry's speeches in the canvass.
114
" BLEEDING KANSAS " 115
The democratic candidate made political addresses
in every county in his district, although without op-
position, in the effort as he states "to instruct the
people on grave political issues and the character of
the government."
After the election in November, Curry, with his
family, consisting of his wife, two children, and a
servant, went to Washington, and took rooms at
the Ebbitt House, where his kinsman, L. Q. C.
Lamar, then a member from Mississippi, and several
colleagues from Alabama, were established. Ala-
bama in this session was represented in the lower
house by James A. Stallworth, Eli S. Slater, James
F. Dowdell, Sydenham Moore, George S. Houston,
Williamson R. W. Cobb, and J. L. M. Curry. The
Senators were Clement C. Clay, Jr., and Benjamin
Fitzpatrick.
Congress met on the 7th of December, with a sub-
stantial democratic majority in both houses, al-
though in the preceding Presidential election there
had been no popular majority for any one of the
three tickets in the field; and Fremont would have
been elected if Pennsylvania and Illinois had voted
Republican. But the breach had not yet come in
the democracy between the Douglas democrats, and
those who upheld the doctrines of Calhoun under the
leadership of Breckinridge and Yancey and Toombs
and Davis, — a breach that divided the great political
organization and lit the fires of civil war four years
later in the ascendancy of the young Republican
party. In the Senate there were 39 Democrats, 20
Republicans and 5 Know-Nothings. In the House
the Democratic membership numbered 131, the
Republican 92, and the Know-Nothings 14. James
116 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
L. Orr of South Carolina was elected Speaker; and
Curry was assigned to the unimportant committee
on Revolutionary claims, whose membership never-
theless included three other important personages in
Owen Lovejoy, of Illinois, Henry L. Dawes, of
Massachusetts, and Samuel S. Cox, of Ohio, later of
New York. Lovejoy, the fanatic and fiery aboli-
tionist, had been moved twenty years before by the
murder of his brother, Elijah P. Lovejoy, at the
hands of a mob in Alton, Illinois, to espouse the anti-
slavery cause, which he advocated thenceforth with
an energy, an eloquence, and a relentlessness that
made him conspicuous among its restless and resist-
less protagonists. Dawes, like Curry, was serving
his first term. He succeeded Charles Sumner as
Senator from Massachusetts, and held conspicuous
position in the affairs of the country for a period long
subsequent to the close of the War between the
States. Cox had been a newspaper editor, in which
position he had achieved the soubriquet of ''Sunset"
from a glowing and iridescent quality of his editor-
ials, combined with the initials of his name. He
was a voluminous writer and an effective and humor-
ous speaker.
Curry makes record of the fact that his Revolu-
tionary Claims Committee had little work to do.
Nevertheless, he sought and found other opportu-
nities for work; and on the 10th of February, 1858,
he made his first appearance on the floor in the pres-
entation of a memorial of the General Assembly of
Alabama in favor of the establishment of an armory
in Shelby County, which was referred to the Com-
mittee on Military Affairs, and ordered to be printed.
In the light of later events, it seems a significant and
'' BLEEDING KANSAS " 117
a most ominous act; but there is nothing to show
that Curry, in presenting the wishes of his State in
the premises, had any anticipation of the early sub-
sequent need of armories in the South.
Two weeks later, on the 23rd of February, he made
his first set speech in the House. It was in the course
of the Kansas debate and upon the Kansas question.
It was such a speech as one would expect from a
young Alabamian of that day, fervid, intense, defiant
and thrilling with the conviction that abolition
meant economic and social ruin to the people of his
section. He was speaking from the heart when he
shouted in this maiden speech: —
With a like spirit, in total disregard of human suffering,
John Quincy Adams, with all the fervor of hate and
fanaticism, on the floor of the House, in 1844, gave utter-
ance to the sentiment: "Let the abolition of slavery come;
by whatever means — by blood or otherwise — let it come."
If it did come, commerce would languish, factories would
stop, banks would suspend, credit would expire, and
universal woe would brood over this land. The fearful
panic now upon us has impaired confidence, produced
ruin and distress, bankrupted individuals and corporations,
diminished trade, and inflicted losses from which twenty
years will not recover us; and yet these consequences are
trivial and insignificant compared with the sudden de-
struction of two thousand millions of property, the up-
rooting of social institutions, and the perishing of a nation.
The sirocco's blast, the tornado's sweep, the earthquake's
heavings, the ravages of the pestilence, faintly foreshadow
the appalling desolation which would ensue upon such a
catastrophe.
The story of what came to be known in the politi-
cal parlance of the period as ''Bleeding Kansas" is
118 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
as full of bitterness and woe as a Greek tragedy.
The very name reeks with the evil memories of bor-
der ruffianism, of intolerance, of the ferocity of
human hate growing out of a quasi-moral political
question, of Lecompton constitutions and Topeka
conventions, while above all looms the fanatical and
sinister figure of ''Ossawatomie" Brown.
Kansas for a number of years had been the battle-
ground between the extension and the restriction of
slavery. As the territory had advanced towards a
condition which entitled it to statehood, the contest
had increased in violence. The opponents of either
side were constantly up and doing. The abolition-
ists of New England poured into the Territory their
hordes of subsidized colonists. The slave-holding
Missourians sent bands of pro-slavery settlers with
guns in their hands. With an eagerness that epit-
omized the rapidly crystallizing sentiment of the two
diverging sections of the Republic, the two sides
sought to possess themselves of the coming state.
Curry writes of the situation: —
Douglas of Illinois and the Democrats, to get rid of
what was called the "Wilmot Proviso," sought to flank
the question by leaving it to the people to regulate their
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to
the Constitution of the United States. Another question
afterwards arose, whether the "inhabitants of a terri-
tory while in territorial pupilage could abohsh slavery,"
or must that question be determined by the "people"
assembled in convention to frame a constitution, their
organic law.
Both parties in Kansas had framed constitutions,
the anti-slavery men at Topeka, in October, 1855,
and the pro-slavery men in October, 1857; and both
" BLEEDING KANSAS " 119
parties were seeking the admission of Kansas as a
state of the Union, each under its respective con-
stitution. Curry favored its admission as a state
''with or without slavery, as the constitution may
require," but in no uncertain attitude as to which
constitution he preferred.
"The rejection of Kansas, with the Lecompton Con-
stitution," he said, "speaks the dissolution of, or sec-
tionalizes the Democratic party, which is the strongest
ligament that binds the Union together. It will be the
unmistakable annunciation that no more slave States are
to be admitted into this Union; that the South is to be
degraded and reduced to inferiority; that there is to be
no extension of her limits, no enlargement of her boun-
daries; that slavery shall be restricted with constantly
narrowing confines; that for her, within this Union,
there is to be no future but bleak, gloomy, hopeless
despair."
He dwelt upon "the lamentable results" of aboli-
tion, as it was sought to be effected; and he expressed
his profound ''conviction of the importance of the
question, and the magnitude of the interests in-
volved." He declared that he but echoed the senti-
ment of his State, as authoritatively expressed by
her General Assembly, and proclaimed his deter-
mination to follow her lead.
"I will not anticipate her course," he continued; "but
recognizing to its fullest extent the right of secession,
and owing to her my allegiance and fealty, when she
calls I will respond; where she goes I will go; her people
shall be my people, and her destiny my destiny."
Thus, in the simple eloquence of scriptural
phraseology, he voiced the political creed of the
120 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
democrats of the school of strict construction from
Mr. Jefferson and Randolph of Roanoke and George
Mason, down through Calhoun and Tyler to Breck-
inridge and Jefferson Davis, with a clearness and a
courage characteristic alike of the man and of the
times. The battle call of the abolitionists for three
decades had been "secession," not on account of
the Constitution, but of slavery. Wendell Philhps
of Massachusetts had said at a meeting in Boston,
in May, 1849, "We confess that we intend to trample
under foot the constitution of this country." And
later he declared: —
"There is merit in the Republican party. It is this:
It is the first sectional party ever organized in this country.
* * * It is not national; it is sectional. It is the
North arrayed against the South. * * * The first
crack in the iceberg is visible; you will yet hear it go with
a crack through the centre. "
William Lloyd Garrison had demanded in his pa-
per, The Liberator, in September, 1855, "a Northern
Confederacy, with no Union with slave-holders";
and in the same paper of June 20, 1856, had de-
nounced the United States Constitution as "a
covenant with death and a league with hell." Rev.
0. B. Frothingham, in the May of the preceding
year, had said: "He believed that this Union ef-
fectually prevented them from advancing in the
least degree the work of the slave's redemption. . . .
As to the word 'Union,' they all knew it was a politi-
cal catchword."
Curry, to whom the compact theory of our gov-
ernment seemed irrefutable, was ready for secession
because of a violated constitution, whose violation
" BLEEDING KANSAS " 121
concluded its pact, and because he believed that
that constitution itself, in reserving to the State
the powers not expressly delegated to the Union,
reserved to it the right, when it saw fit, to end its
connection with the Union, in the exercise of its un-
questionable sovereignty. That slavery itself was
a thing to be gotten rid of, he doubtless held then, as
many other southern Democrats held, who yet sup-
ported it as a social institution that had become so
inextricably interwoven with the fabric of the body
politic, as to be incapable of release save by the
fatal operation called Caesarian. Though in his later
years his views of slavery became, in the light of
time and experience greatly modified, and he found
himself ''glad that it is gone," and wondered "that
I and others should have ever sanctioned and de-
fended it," no subsequent event ever abated one
jot or tittle of his faith in the strict construction of
the Constitution, and in the doctrine of the rights
of the States, with which the tremendously difficult
question of slavery was so intimately and apparently
inextricably involved. State sovereignty and the
right of secession were boldly proclaimed and ably
championed in this first speech of his in the halls of
Congress. He came at last, as most others of his
day and creed came, to accept the judgment of arms
upon the question of secession; but his belief in the
strict construction of the Constitution and the
reserved rights of the States, as has been said, abode
with him as part of his political creed, and he re-
mained a Jeffersonian Democrat unto the last.
"In the light of subsequent experience, quite apart
from constitutional questions," he wrote in his common-
place book forty years afterwards with a significant
122 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
maintenance of the integrity of his political thinking,
"I put here on record my gratitude that Kansas was not
cursed with the institution of African slavery."
This sentiment was a reasonable expression of the
feeling that had animated Mr. Jefferson when he
sought to incorporate into the Declaration of Inde-
pendence a protest against the continuance of the
slave trade, and to write into the ''Ordinance of
'Eighty-seven" the prohibition of slavery in the
Northwest Territory; that had made John Marshall
the first President of the Colonization Society of
Virginia; that had caused George Mason, in the
Virginia Convention of 1788, having under consider-
ation the adoption of the Federal Constitution, to
denounce that clause of it which permitted the im-
portation of slaves for twenty years; and that in-
duced General Robert E. Lee and a host of other
Southerners to manumit their slaves. The right of
secession, advocated by the thoughtful southern
ante-bellum Democrat, was advocated for the sake
of constitutional liberty; and not, as in the case, at
least, of the more violent northern abolitionist, on
account of slavery.
Curry's speech in the Kansas debate was listened
to with marked interest and attention by his Con-
gressional auditors, and it was widely circulated in
printed form throughout the South. Greeley, in the
Tribune, recognized its ability, and pronouncing it
"a strong speech," said of its author: "He is cer-
tainly a powerful addition to the pro-slavery side
of the House."
Curry's habits of life at this time were character-
istic of the man, and go far toward explaining his
success in Congress as well as in his subsequent
'' BLEEDING KANSAS " 123
career. He was a regular attendant at the E Street
Baptist Church, whose pastor was Dr. Samson,
President of Columbian College. An acquaintance
thus began between the two men, which ripened
through succeeding years into a valuable friendship.
Through the influence of President Samson, Curry-
was invited to address the students of the College.
The audience assembled in the Smithsonian build-
ing; and he had the gratification of seeing among his
auditors the President of the United States, Mr.
Buchanan; General Lewis Cass, who had been a
nominee of the national democratic party for the
Presidential office; and Professor Joseph Henry,
whose work as a physicist has left him a greater
fame than that of more than one President of the
Union; and whose splendid biography is epitomized
in that of a later great physicist no less famous, who
said of Henry that "he never engaged in an investi-
gation or an enterprise which was to put a dollar into
his own pocket, but aimed only at the general good
of the world."
Curry's devotion during this session of Congress
to the duties of his office was diligent and conscien-
tious. He was punctual in attendance, and alert
and painstaking in his attention to the public matters
which came before the House. In addition, he
makes record that ''business before the departments
was plentiful; and correspondence was heavy; but
by preventing accumulation of work, I was never
behind, and rarely pressed. In those days members
of Congress had no clerks."
During this session a bill was introduced granting
pensions to the soldiers of the War of 1812. Curry,
with the well-grounded principles of the strict con-
124 J. L. M. CUREY, A BIOGRAPHY
struction Democrat of the day, opposed it with
vigor and abiUty.
"No measure," he said later, "so satisfied me of the
general want of moral courage on the part of Represen-
tatives. . . . Congress now yields readily to any
pension claim, whether supported or not by valid proof.
Then the House in Committee of the Whole, always
defeated the measure ; but when the Yeas and Nays were
called, the vote was different. Elihu Washburn, John
Sherman, and Winter Davis among the Republicans, had
the courage of their convictions, and recorded themselves
in the negative."
Convinced of the inexpediency and fundamental
wrong of a system, which has since that time fastened
itself with resistless and appalling power upon the
Government, he opposed the Pension Bill in an
elaborate speech on the floor of the House of Rep-
resentatives. In this speech, which was made on
April 27, 1858, he pointed out the extravagant pro-
visions of the bill, and demonstrated the social, politi-
cal and economic evils that may be expected to flow
from the establishment and continuance of a sys-
tem of pensions in a democratic government. The
speech demonstrates the results of an extended in-
vestigation and study of the subject, both in an
historical and political-economic direction; and
Curry himself subsequently regarded it as one of the
best he ever made. '' Some whispers of discontent,"
he says, "were heard in my district; but my con-
stituents had the good sense to approve."
As an incident of this period of his life, he mentions
with interest the fact of hearing Adelina Patti sing.
She was then but little more than a child, being
scarcely seventeen; but she had aheady long been
" BLEEDING KANSAS " 125
a familiar object of admiration and delight to the
music-loving public of two hemispheres, that she
had charmed with her beauty, grace and artistic
skill. Curry, in making mention of the incident
some twenty years later, says: *'She was a young girl,
but gave abundant prophecy of her present fame."
The session of Congress continued until June 1,
1858 ; and Curry and his family went home to spend
the vacation, which lasted until the reassembling
on December 6, 1858. Again the Pension Bill came
to the front; and though apparently of almost in-
significant consequence in comparison with the
mighty subjects of which men's minds and hearts
were full, afforded in itself a theme for the expres-
sion of that constitutional interpretation about
which the larger questions of slavery and abolition
revolved. He was promulgating sound doctrine
from the democratic standpoint, and that, so just,
that political adversaries like Henry Winter Davis
could take occasion to commend his position, when
he said in further debate on the bill: —
It is said by gentlemen upon this floor that no argu-
ment as to the expense is an argument as to the merits
of the bill. I take a different position. Sir, when you
propose to tax the people of this country for the purpose
of conferring a gratuity upon men who are not disabled,
not needy, not objects of charity, — for this bill does not
discriminate between the wealthy and the necessitous —
then I contend that it is a legitimate line of argument
to inquire into the expense under this bill, and to hold
up to public view and observation the enormous amount
which will be required to execute it.
His legislative efforts as a Congressman were all
in the direction of seeking to administer the govern-
126 J. L. M. CUREY, A BIOGRAPHY
ment economically, prudently, and with due regard
to constitutional restriction. On January 13, 1859,
he offered a resolution, which was agreed to, requir-
ing the Secretary of the Navy to furnish detailed
information concerning the Navy Chaplains ap-
pointed since 1813. The act seemed to be to ascer-
tain whether any attempt was being made to subject
non-Episcopal Chaplains to Episcopal forms; or
whether in the religious practices of the American
Navy there might be any suggestion of a violation
of the spirit of constitutional freedom, which had
found its great inception in the United States in
Jefferson's immortal statute.
Toward the latter part of the month of January,
1859, he participated in the then pending Consular
and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill, asserting an
economical and democratic attitude against the
sinecures and pretensions of ministers to unim-
portant foreign courts, and proposing to reduce ex-
pense and curtail patronage by reducing the number
of foreign ministers.
"My opposition to some, not all, of these measures,"
he declared, "grows out of the fact of their unnecessary
expense and their conceded uselessness."
It is believed that no vote of his can be found re-
corded that did not favor, as opportunity occurred,
a reduction in the number of offices, and a cutting
down of appropriations. On February 2, 1859,
when the Legislation Appropriation Bill was under
discussion, he came to the front with a proposition
to reduce expenses by putting an end to the publica-
tion of the Congressional Debates. Undismayed by
memories of the reports of the legislative discussions
i i
BLEEDING KANSAS " 127
which had for so many years engaged the talents of
Seaton and Gales, and to the abridgment of which
Thomas H. Benton had not disdained to apply his
great industry and ability, Curry attacked the bill
by moving to strike out an item of $49,333.32 for
printing the Congressional Globe, and for binding
the same; and the further item of $18,046, "for
reporting proceedings." He admitted that he had
very little hope of the motion being adopted, but
said he made it in entirely good faith. He regarded
the publication of the debates of the House as use-
less and costly; they crowded the mails, and were
never read.
"I believe there is no expenditure of this Government
so useless and worthless," he declared, "as that for the
publication of the Congressional Globe. ... I do
not propose to object to paying for what has already
been done, but I propose to put a stop to future expenses
of this kind."
On the next day he made another speech against
the system of printing and distributing the speeches
of the House. "The truth is," he asserted, 'Hhat
with few exceptions, they are made that they may
be printed and not that they may be read."
A few days later, Mr. Francis P. Blair of Missouri
moved the purchase of one hundred copies of Ben-
ton's Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, for
the use of the Congressional Library and the libraries
of the two houses. Mr. Garnett of Virginia opposed
the resolution, because he thought it "wrong in
principle," and later he found and expressed other
reasons of opposition. Others took part in the dis-
cussion; and Curry moved to amend Mr. Blair's
128 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
resolution by adding, "one hundred copies of Ap-
pleton's edition of Calhoun's Works."
Mr. Phelps of Missouri rose to a point of order:
''I submit," said he, "that the amendment of the
gentleman from Alabama is out of order." The
point of order was overruled; and Curry said: —
I have not examined Benton's abridgment of the
debates sufficiently to test their fidelity and accuracy.
I have, however, purchased a copy for my own library.
But, sir, I have to say that if it is as full of prejudice,
and I had almost said of malignity, as his "Thirty Years
in the Senate," I think it ought to be burned by the
common hangman. However that may be, if Congress
intends by this special piece of favoritism to purchase
Benton's Abridgment, I think they ought to purchase,
at least by way of antidote, Calhoun's Works.
To this Mr. Clark of Missouri rephed:^
I am opposed to the amendment of the gentleman from
Alabama. It is with great regret, indeed, that I have
heard the gentleman allow himself to pronounce upon
this great work of the country as he has done. Sir,
Colonel Benton's Abridgment of the Debates of Congress
is a great national work. Most gentlemen present have
examined it, and will bear me witness that it is marked
with the strictest fidelity and accuracy. I admit that
Mr. Benton had his partialities, but they were not
stronger than those of the favorite of the gentleman
from Alabama, Mr. Calhoun. They were rivals, and
have had their day. Both were great men of the coun-
try; but their works are widely different.
Mr. Cochrane of New York thereupon injected
into the merry war of books and words this query: —
I desire to ask the gentleman from Alabama whether
( (
BLEEDING KANSAS " 129
Mr. Calhoun's Works are not already in the library of
Congress?
Curry replied: "They are, and I hope gentlemen will
read them and improve their politics"; to which Mr.
McQueen of South Carolina added: "I will say to the
gentleman that Mr. Benton's work is also there."
Curry's amendment was lost; and the incident,
trivial in itself, is related merely for the sake of il-
lustrating and emphasizing that dominant and sig-
nificant characteristic, which lasted him through
life, of losing no opportunity, however small, of
seeking to impress his convictions concerning politi-
cal or moral righteousness and truth upon the minds
of those with whom he came in contact.
On February 24, 1859, he made an extended
speech on expenditures and the tariff, advocating
the democratic doctrine of "retrenchment and
economy," and inveighing against "onerous taxes,"
and the injustice and unconstitutionality of a "pro-
tective" tariff. The closing sentence of this speech
is worthy of quotation, as an epitome of the political
doctrines of the State-rights democracy of the
period : —
Sir, there is virtue, power, victory, invincibility yet in
Democratic principles; but to secure and merit success
there must be a self-lustration and a speedy return to
the rigid State-rights and free-trade principles of John
Taylor, and Jefferson, of Polk and Pierce, of Calhoun
and Woodbury. On such alone can the Government be
safely administered, and on such alone depend our
security and prosperity.
It was the voice of one, invoking in the wilderness,
among others more distinguished, the now almost
130 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
forgotten names and obsolete political philosophy
of John Taylor of Caroline, the Virginian, and of
Levi Woodbury, the great defender of the Inde-
pendent Treasury System, and ''the rock of New
England democracy."
CHAPTER VIII
A FIRST AND LAST ALLEGIANCE
"When Congress met in December, 1859," Curry-
makes record at a later period, "the two parties, Demo-
cratic and Republican, were nearly balanced, a handful
of 'Americans' holding the control. John Sherman and
Thomas S. Bocock were the Republican and Democratic
candidates for Speaker, and neither could get the re-
quired majority. During the autumn John Brown had
made his incendiary raid into Virginia, and had been
arrested, tried and hung. The North generally sympa-
thized with the fanatical felon. One Richard Rowan
Helper of North Carolina had published a pamphlet on
Slavery, unjust to the South, which Republican members
had endorsed and circulated. Passions were much in-
flamed. Sectional issues were assuming shape, and sec-
tionalizing parties. The elements were brewing for a
gigantic and bloody contest. During the ballotings while
the Clerk presided, many inflammatory speeches were
made; and there were very nearly several times, personal
collisions. On December 10th, I spoke on the Progress
of Anti-slaveryism, trying to present a calm and philo-
sophical view of the subject. My speech, temperate in
language but firm and argumentative, was widely copied,
and I received many letters asking for copies."
The times were out of joint, and temperance of
thought and speech were ceasing to dominate men's
minds. Slavery, which had agitated the country
for more than two decades, as the subject of political
discussion, and around which as an object revolved
131
132 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
great questions of constitutional construction and
interpretation, was now not only a burning but a
flaming issue. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had
written, and her publishers had printed and cir-
culated in America more than half a million copies
of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the most ingenious and
powerful political pamphlet in its effect ever com-
posed in the western hemisphere. Judge Taney and
a majority of the Supreme Court had decided the
Dred Scott case in favor of the pursuing master and
against the recalcitrant slave in the free-state, and
Benjamin R. Curtis, one of the ablest of the many
able jurisprudents of New England, had delivered
a dissenting opinion in the same great case, which
had given pause to the purpose and daunted the
intellectual courage of many of the most thoughtful
pro-slavery advocates; Hinton R. Helper, a non-
slave holding Southerner, had stirred the passions
and inflamed the hearts of the North with a mighty
exposition of the wrongs experienced by the poor
white man of the South by reason of negro-slavery,
in his "Impending Crisis," a complementary and
more bitter indictment of slavery even than Mrs.
Stowe's book; "Bleeding Kansas" had held the
centre of the political stage in a passionate and
ferocious struggle over two constitutions; and out
of it John Brown had emerged in the darkness
of abolition secrecy, with his murderous pikes of
"freedom" in the hands of his fugitive slave-fol-
lowers; and had been captured in his assault upon
the United States Government Arsenal at Harper's
Ferry by Federal troops, and hung for treason and
inciting insurrection, by the authorities of the Com-
monwealth of Virginia. The quasi-moral question
A FIRST AND LAST ALLEGIANCE 133
of slavery, injected into the political body of the
times had served, as such questions in politics in-
variably serve, to stir the fiercest and most elemental
passions of men. Against the abolition slogan, that
because of slavery the Federal Constitution was ''a
league with death and a covenant with hell," the
strict construction South continued to chant its
bold appeal to the Constitution itself. "After all,
it is not the Union — the Union alone upon which
the reflecting man of this country bases his hopes
and rests his affections. With him the Union is
secondary in importance to the principles it was de-
signed to perpetuate and establish," was the thought
of the Cotton States democrat, as voiced a short
time before by a representative from Curry's own
State. The "irrepressible conflict" loomed porten-
tous and dreadful in the almost immediate future.
In Curry's speech, above referred to, made on the
floor of the House five days after its meeting on
December 5th, 1859, he enlarged upon the desperate
temper of the times, the tremendous growth of
abolition sentiment, and the logical and inevitable
results to flow from existing conditions: —
"If I may be allowed to make a personal allusion," he
said, "in 1844 I myself stood in Faneuil Hall, and heard
a speech of James G. Birney, the Liberty-party candidate
for the Presidency, when there was hardly a baker's
dozen present to share with him his liberty-loving senti-
ments; and some of those who were there were, like
myself, attracted from curiosity to hear a speech upon
such a subject from a candidate for such a position. It
is thus that anti-slaveryism has swelled, enlarged, and
grown, until at the last presidential election, a mere
political adventurer, unknown to the multitude, without
134 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
political antecedents, received one million four hundred
thousand votes in Northern States. And yet you tell
us, the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Corwin)
told us, that we need not have any apprehension or feel
any special alarm."
Curry's characterization of John C. Fremont is
scarcely consistent with his boast of the temperance
to be found in the language of this speech. Fremont
was already a distinguished man, even though an
"adventurer" in the lofty sense of the word, when
the young Republican party of the country had made
him its standard-bearer in 1856; and had, inde-
pendent of his "adventures," by that strange magic
that often moves the minds of democracies, outside
of political principles, won the hearts of many of
the old Jacksonian Democrats by winning the hand
of Jessie Benton, the daughter of the stout Mis-
sourian who had, independent and alone, in the
earlier days of the century carried his "expunging
resolutions" in the United States Senate, and wiped
from the august record of that body the condemna-
tion of his great chieftain, Andrew Jackson. Yet,
after all is said, under the influence of those com-
pelling days the one million four hundred thousand
votes for Fremont in the Northern States in 1856
would have been given for a graven unage, standing
for what he stood for.
"Damn you, sir," said John Randolph of Roanoke,
in response to the proffered thanks from the hustings
of one of his neighbors for whom as a party candidate
he had just voted, and to whom he had declined
to speak for twenty years, "I am not voting for you,
but for the Democratic party."
Curry's prognosis was correct, however intem-
A FIRST AND LAST ALLEGIANCE 135
perate his description of Fremont; and it was all in
vain to his prophetic soul that Corwin and his com-
peers proclaimed "Peace! peace!" when there was
no peace. He saw with the clearness of vision, that
was not given to all who thought as he thought, to
see, that ''the vitalizing, animating principle of the
Republican party is opposition to slavery." But
with this clarity of foresight, he perceived none the
less the other side, — the grave alternative, — equally
clearly; and portrayed that perception, and his al-
legiance to its consequences, with the high courage
that he never failed, when needful, to exhibit.
"Every separate community," he continued, "must be
able to protect itself. Power must be met by power.
If the majority can control this government, interpreting
the Constitution at its will, then this government is a
despotism. Whether wise or unwise, whether merciful or
cruel, it is a despotism still.
"Mr. Clerk, this power of self-protection, according to
my judgment and my theory of politics, resides in each
State. Each has the right of secession, the right of
interposition, for the arrest of evils within its limits.
• • «
" Mr. Clerk, if our . . . friends . . . (in Con-
gress) ... be not able to interpose for the security
of the South, and for the preservation of the Constitution,
I, for one, shall counsel immediate and effective resistance,
and shall urge the people to fling themselves upon the
reserved rights and the inalienable sovereignty of the
State to which I owe my first and last allegiance." (Ap-
plause.)
The tension of the times was indicated in the
fierce and protracted struggle over the Speakership
of the House, which continued for eight weeks before
136 J L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
a Speaker was finally chosen. The Republicans
had a plurality over the Democrats, but the Know-
Nothings held the balance of power. John Sherman
of Ohio, the Republican candidate for Speaker, and
Thomas S. Bocock of Virginia, the Democratic can-
didate, were appropriate and fit representatives of
their respective parties on the great issue; and the
debates, that at times grew from anger to ferocity,
circled about the John Brown raid and Helper's
abolitionist "Impending Crisis." Sherman came at
one time within three votes of election; but both
he and Bocock failed in the conclusion, and William
Pennington, of New Jersey, a moderate Republican,
was elected to the Speakership. Sherman became
later one of the most distinguished leaders of his
party; while Bocock was, in 1861, elected a member
of the first Congress of the Confederate States, and
upon its permanent organization became its Speaker.
A short time before his death in 1903, Curry, in
allusion to what he calls "a, pleasant correspondence
and interview with Mr. Edwards Pierrepont, our
Minister to England," growing out of his speech
above referred to, and doubtless in extenuation of
its note of certainty, says: —
In after years, the decade having passed, I sent him
(Mr. Pierrepont) a speech made before the Georgia
legislature, in which I said that the man or woman,
who assumed to understand and provide an adequate
remedy for the negro problem was a fanatic or a fool.
In reply he asked leave to amend by striking out "or"
and inserting "and."
"Southern members," wrote Curry, in 1876, concern-
ing these stirring events, "were generally too violent
and personally denunciatory. Some attained a cheap
A FIRST AND LAST ALLEGIANCE 137
newspaper notoriety by attacks on Northern representa-
tives; and, I doubt not, enhanced the cruelties of the
war, as many of those representatives remembered the
bitter words, and thirsted for revenge."
He concludes his account of the struggle over the
Speakership, in which as a democratic teller, he
kept the tally-sheet of the votes, with the statement
that Governor Pennington, the successful candidate,
was "a weak old man," and ''had no qualifications
for the position."
In the appointment of committees, Curry was put
on that of Naval Affairs, the chairman of which was
Mr. Schuyler Colfax of Indiana; "and was thus,"
he says, "thrown into pleasant relations with such
officers as Buchanan, Dahlgren, Magruder, etc."
Curry's fame as a debater on the floor of the House
became well established during this time; and when
a resolution of censure against the President was
introduced in that body, growing out of the sale of
Fort Snelling, Mr. Buchanan sent for Curry and de-
sired him to undertake his defense against the ac-
cusation contained in the resolution. This Curry
made ready to do; and the notes for his speech pre-
pared for the occasion, but never used, because the
matter was not pressed, were found among his papers
after his death.
On February 16, 1860, he submitted a resolution,
that was unanimously agreed to, instructing the
Committee on Accounts to inquire into the expedi-
ency of some additional legislation securing greater
accountability and economy in the disbursement of
the contingent fund. With a high sense of his
representative responsibility, he remained a "watch-
dog of the Treasury" during his whole stay in Con-
138 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
gress. He was ever eager in seeking the enforce-
ment of an economic administration of the govern-
ment, so long as he remained in it and of it, which
he nevertheless showed himself ready to abandon,
and if necessary to destroy, for the sake of a funda-
mental principle.
On March 14, following, he addressed the House
on the Constitutional Rights of the States in the
Territories, discussing Slavery, State Sovereignty, the
powers of Congress in the Territories, "Squatter Sov-
ereignty," and all the host of incidental matters that
garnish the history of that tremendous epoch.
"African slavery," he said, "is now a great fact — a
political, social, industrial, humanitarian fact. Its chief
product is 'King,' and freights northern vessels, drives
northern machinery, feeds northern laborers, and clothes
the entire population. Northern no less than Southern
capital and labor are dependent in great degree upon it;
and these results were wholly unanticipated by the good
men who are so industriously persuaded as clouds of
witnesses against the institution."
He spoke of it, and thought of it, and maintained
it, and fortified it as an "institution," with the logic
and the eloquence of profound and patriotic con-
viction; deeming it as Mr. Calhoun described it:
"What is called slavery is, in reality, a political in-
stitution, essential to the peace, safety and prosperity
of those States of the Union in which it exists."
Before he was ten years older Curry utterly aban-
doned this theory of slavery and came to regard it
as an economic curse from which Southern society
was happily relieved.
In his speech of March 14 he exhibited an unusual
power of eloquence and ability; and at the end of
A FIRST AND LAST ALLEGIANCE 139
his hour, his time was extended by unanimous con-
sent, in order that he might go on. He continued
for some while longer, with an address of ever grow-
ing vigor and force, which found its peroration in a
stu-ring allusion to the refusal of the Republican
party to admit Kansas into the Union under the
Lecompton constitution.
This speech attracted especial attention to him
as one of the ablest of the Southern representatives
in Congress; and was so disturbing in its effects
upon the Douglas, or ''Anti-Lecompton" Demo-
crats, of whom there were then the ill-boding number
of thirteen in the House, that the Mobile Register,
the leading Douglas newspaper in the South, edited
by the Honorable John Forsythe, devoted eight or
ten successive articles to an elaborate reply.
A slight incident in a man's career will often serve
to illustrate his character more than many of his
most ambitious acts. On June 4, 1860, Curry op-
posed the payment to the grandchildren of a certain
Revolutionary officer of a sum of money that had
been voted him by Congress, but not paid. He
said: "I have examined a great many of these
Revolutionary claims, and I have never found a just
one yet." His idea seemed to be that of the Texas
judge, who replied, to the plea of the young lawyer
defending the criminal, to the effect that it was
better for ninety-nine guilty men to escape than for
one innocent person to suffer, with the sententious
observation that the ninety-nine guilty ones had
''already escaped." Curry thought that the right-
eous Revolutionary claims had long since been paid.
Upon learning that the children of the officer were
dead, he asserted: "Then his grandchildren, in this
140 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
claim are speculating on the patriotism of their
ancestor."
But in the same month, in kindly and striking
contrast with this stern attitude of mind, we find
him, in his last utterance of the session, saying: —
Mr. Speaker, the other day I objected to a bill reported
by the gentleman from New Hampshire from the Com-
mittee of Claims, because the report stated no facts. On
examination of the Senate report, I find that the facts
are fully stated; and as I did injustice to a very worthy
old man, as I think, I would like very much, if the House
will indulge me, to repair the wrong I have done him.
The House adjourned June 18th, 1860, with
''bleeding Kansas "still a territory, and Slave State
and Free State confronting each the other, in fierce
hostility. Curry, travelling homeward through Ten-
nessee, reached Talladega on June 27th, the day
before the withdrawing delegates from the Demo-
cratic Charleston Convention gathered in Baltimore,
and nominated Breckinridge and Lane as the can-
didates of the states rights and slavery cotton states
Democracy.
CHAPTER IX
THE DAWN OF WAR
Madame De Remusat has recorded the striking
saying of the great French Emperor, that "poHtical
hatred is Uke a pair of spectacles, — one sees every-
body, every opinion or every sentiment, only through
the glass of one's passions." To such a pitch had
political excitement risen in 1860, that Napoleon's
cynicism had become an expression of commonplace
truth.
Nearly two months before the adjournment of
Congress, the Democratic National Convention had
met in Charleston, South Carolina. The division
of the country into the sections which Mr. Jefferson
had anticipated from the passage of the Missouri
Compromise, now found its reproduction in the
council chamber of Democracy itself. The two fac-
tions in the party, re-affirming each the strict con-
struction doctrines of many previous Democratic
platforms, aligned themselves sectionally by North
and South upon the questions of Douglas' "Popular
Sovereignty," the Dred Scott case, and the right of
Congress or of Territorial legislatures to prohibit
slavery in the Territories. After a bitter and mo-
mentous struggle, in which the few Northern anti-
Douglas delegates out-heroded Herod in their op-
position to ''Squatter Sovereignty," the Convention
adopted the Douglas platform, and after a prolonged
session and an adjournment to Baltimore, nominated
141
142 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
a
the Little Giant" of Illinois as the party's can-
didate for President, with Herschel V. Johnson of
Georgia as his running mate; while with vociferous
insistence Benjamin F. Butler and Caleb Gushing of
Massachusetts continued to cast their votes for
President for Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.
The Breckinridge wing of the party, ten days
later, met also in Baltimore, and nominated Breck-
inridge and Lane. The Constitutional Union party,
the remnant of the former American or "Know-
Nothing" organization, still staggering under the
deadly blow dealt it in Virginia, in 1855, by Henry
A. Wise, had in the preceding month met, also in
Baltimore, and with what seems in the retrospect
almost such a sense of humor as was possessed by
the jester who defined a political platform as "some-
thing to get on by," had nominated Bell and Everett,
on the glittering and general proposition that the
decrepit party stood for "The Constitution of the
Country, the Union of the States, and the enforce-
ment of the laws."
In Massachusetts "The Battle Hymn of the
Republic" was taking form in an abolitionist
woman's brain; while in Louisiana a young school-
teacher was dreaming of the " Marsellaise " of the
Confederacy. Within a year after the Whig-Know-
Nothing-Constitutional Party sought to still ele-
mental passions with phrases, Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe had written the greatest political lyric of
America : —
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of
the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where his grapes
of wrath are stored,
THE DAWN OF WAR 143
He has loosed the fateful lightnings of his ter-
rible swift sword —
His truth is marching on;
and James Ryder Randall had put into words, and
the Virginian Gary girls had put into music, the
soul of war; and a new-born and short-lived nation
was chanting in the South: —
The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland, my Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland, my Maryland!
For the young and aggressive party of anti-
slavery, and of loose construction, Mr. Lincoln had
set the pace in a series of tremendous debates for
the Senatorship in Hlinois, two years before, in
which he had nevertheless gone down in temporary
defeat before the arguments and eloquence of
Douglas. But the logic of Lincoln's reiterated as-
sertion in that great debate, that the country could
not continue "half-slave and half -free," was now
mingling with the mighty passions that had sprung
out of the John Brown episode. There was no
evasion nor dissension in the vigorous enunciation
of political principles, written into the Republican
platform of 1860, when its convention assembled in
May, at Chicago, and nominated as its candidates
Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. This doc-
ument proclaimed in the confident notes of an un-
mistakable purpose, a loose construction of the
Federal Constitution. It appealed to the Declara-
tion of Independence itself in defence of the freedom
and equality of all men; with a brave indifference
to the memories of the Hartford Convention, and
144 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
of the outspoken disloyalty of the earlier abolition-
ists, it charged the Democracy with advocating and
threatening disunion; and it pronounced for the
freedom of all men in the Territories, and adopted
the Federalist doctrines of Protection and of In-
ternal Improvements.
Out of the ruck and turmoil of it all emerged
darkly the swart face and ominous figure of the negro
slave. The platform of the Union party evaded the
vision, and ignored its imminent presence. The
Douglas democracy, with an illogical and unmain-
tainable platform, left the negro question like
Mahomet's coffin, swung midway between heaven
and earth, while it laid the responsibility which in-
volved the decision of the negro's fate upon the
people in the Territories, or upon the people of the
States indifferently, — or anywhere, indeed, except
where the Cotton States democrats reasonably
placed it in their platform, — upon the Constitution
and the Democratic party.
Opposed to these three divisions of the voters into
political parties, stood with unwavering front and
indomitable courage the young Republicans, upon
a platform which declared its set and relentless pur-
pose of prohibiting slavery in the Territories at all
hazards, and at whatever stake; and whose rank
and file were stirred to high passion by the flaming
spirit of abolitionism.
When the election came in November, every Free
State, save one, chose Republican electors; while
most of the Southern States voted for Breckinridge.
It was the logical and inevitable conclusion. There
was no time or place for the midway business of Doug-
lasism, or for the evasions of the ''Know-Nothings."
THE DAWN OF WAK 145
Curry, naturally, with his firmly fixed political
principles and consistent antecedents, went with the
Breckinridge democracy. He was not of Judge
Douglas' political stripe; and he hardly admired
him as a man.
"He was an able debater," Curry writes of him, "with
strong native powers, but without wide culture. In his
tastes and associations he was social and democratic;
and, as a hon vivant, his intemperance led his associates
astray."
In Alabama, ''as in duty bound and from con-
viction" Curry entered actively into the Presidential
canvass. He spoke not only in his own district,
but in Greensboro, Marion, Selma, and other places.
In November, following the date of the popular
election, he addressed the people in the Methodist
church at Talladega on "The Perils and Duty of the
South." In this address, he advised and counselled
the secession of the State, as the only logical and
sufficient remedy under the Constitution for existing
evils. The next day he set out for Washington, in
order to be present at the opening of Congress.
"Little else was thought or talked about," he writes
of this period, "than the threatened secession of the
slave-holding states. The debates in Congress were
excited and inflammatory, — menacing, not pacific; parti-
san, not statesmanlike. Few realized the criticalness of
the situation, or seemed to forecast the consequences.
Few at the North credited the intense earnestness of the
South. When the telegram was received that South
Carolina had seceded, it met with derisive laughter from
the Republican side. Oxenstiern's advice to his son, to
travel and see with how little wisdom the world was
governed, had a painful verification."
146 J. L. M. CUREY, A BIOGRAPHY
On December 13th, Curry objected to the intro-
duction of a resolution by Morris of lUinois on "the
Perpetuity of the Union." His objection was to the
peril that stood in the imminent breach. Five days
later, he objected to the introduction of a bill grant-
ing pensions to soldiers of the War of 1812. This
objection harked back to first principles. He was
ever seeking to uphold, both in great things and in
small, the constitutions of his country, as he con-
strued them.
But the perpetuity of the Union was about to be
called into tremendous question : and other pensions
than those of the War of 1812 lay in the near shadow
of coming events. Standing at the parting of the
ways, he could look back at his career in the National
House of Representatives with a sense of having
kept the faith. His period of service in Congress
extended from December 7, 1857, to January 31,
1861. During that period the eager young Ala-
bamian had stood in his high representative office
for the continuance of slavery as an "institution"
under the constitution, into which it had been
written; for State Rights according to his strict
interpretation of the instrument; for open terri-
tories, for economy in appropriations and expen-
ditures, for a reduction of the number of sinecures;
and for the barring of opportunities to what a later
American political vernacular has given the sinister
name of "graft." He had stood too for a strict inter-
pretation of the Constitution at all points; and he
had opposed protectionism, and advocated a tariff
fairly adjusted to support a national government,
honestly and economically administered.
"Sunset" Cox in his "Three Decades of Federal
THE DAWN OF WAR 147
Legislation," seeking to depict his Congressional
fellow-members, each with a few light lines, has
dealt with him and Pugh, one of his colleagues from
Alabama, together, in the succinct paragraph:
"For subtle ratiocination of the Calhoun pattern,
there was Pugh of Alabama, who had all the pith
without the artistic polish of his colleague, Curry";
and a later commentator in the Macon, Georgia,
Telegraph, has said of him: —
At a period just preceding the War he was justly con-
sidered the leader of his party in the House of Represen-
tatives. The records of Congress glow with his brilliant
and patriotic appeals in behalf of Southern rights and
institutions.
On December 20, 1860, to the "derisive laugh-
ter" of the Repubhcan members of the House, South
CaroHna, with grim memories of "Nullification" and
of "the Bloody Proclamation," seceded from the
Union under what she had always conceived to be
her constitutional and unsurrendered right. On the
28th of that month, Curry went to Annapohs as the
accredited representative of Alabama, to present his
credentials to the Governor of that State, and to
consult with him concerning the cooperation of the
two States with respect to their future welfare.
The Governor of Maryland was absent from the
capital at the time of Curry's visit; and the latter
left a communication in writing, to which his excel-
lency replied through the newspapers, without giving
the public an opportunity to read Curry's letter with
the reply. Nothing came of the little adventure;
but the story of the episode is preserved in the corre-
spondence and in Curry's report of his visit to the
148 J. L. M. CUBRY, A BIOGRAPHY
capital of Maryland, all of which are published in
the ''Debates" of the Alabama Secession Con-
vention.
On January 1, 1861, Curry left Washington, en
route for Montgomery, to be present at the sessions
of the Alabama Convention; and at various places
on the way he made speeches and received ovations
at the hands of multitudes. On January 7th, the
Convention assembled, and was opened with prayer
by the Reverend Basil Manly. Curry was invited
to a seat on the platform; and three days later he
and his colleague, Mr. Pugh, in response to a resolu-
tion of the Convention, submitted to the body a
communication stating the purposes of the new
Republican government of Washington as antici-
pated by the writers. On the following day, January
11, 1861, the Convention adopted an ordinance of
secession by a vote of 61 to 39.
''The intense earnestness of the people" over this
grave and momentous action of their representatives,
unappreciated, as Curry states, at the North, was
illustrated in the capital city of Alabama and
throughout the State, by the reception which was
given to the withdrawal of the State from the Union.
The excitement was intense, and vented itself in the
roaring of cannon and the ringing of bells; while
the Convention hall, whose doors were flung open
upon the announcement of the event, was thronged
with an enthusiastic and cheering multitude. At
night the city was brilliantly illuminated, and the
streets were thronged with a concourse of men,
women and children. A mass-meeting was held in
front of Montgomery Hall, and Curry and John B.
Gordon addressed the multitude. It was the first
THE DAWN OF WAR 149
time that the later educator had met the later soldier,
whose similar patriotism in subsequent years was
to aid in reconciling and re-uniting the then divided
people of a common country.
On January 13th, Curry went to Selma, Alabama,
and on the next day to Talladega. On the 19th, the
Convention, still in session, elected him a delegate —
''deputy," he calls it — to the Convention of Seceding
States, which was to meet at Montgomery, on Feb-
ruary 4th following, for the purpose of organizing a
provisional government. It was on the way to this
Convention, — as he pauses in the swift narrative of
events, made in his later years, to record, — that he
made another notable acquaintance in the person of
the distinguished lady, who has left the mark of her
literary talent upon the story of Southern letters in
her novels; and a yet more grateful memory in the
hearts of many, whose lives survive the stormy
scenes sought to be herein depicted, by her attention
to the sick and wounded in the Confederate Camps
of 1861-1865.
On February 3rd, en route to Montgomery, to attend
the Congress, on the boat above Selma, I was introduced
to Miss Augusta Evans, an ardent Confederate, the
authoress of "Inez," "Beulah," "Macaria," etc., and
then began a delightful friendship with a pure and noble
and gifted woman.
Long years afterward this friend of the river trip
to Montgomery, writing to him of his special mis-
sion to Spain, says :
Mobile, Jan. 1, 1902.
My dear Mr. Curry:
"Forty-one years ago I listened to the speech you de-
livered in the "Confederacy Congress" at Montgomery
150 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
when presenting to Howell Cobb an inkstand of Talladega
marble. How many, who heard you then, survive to-day
to congratulate you on this latest laurel wreath earned
by your successful service? Hoping that 1902 comes
freighted with blessings for you and your wife, and
soliciting your generous indulgence for this ugly scrawl,
believe me — as of yore.
Your sincere, unreconstructed rebel friend,
Augusta Evans Wilson."
In the meantime, while Curry was in the South,
the dramatic events which prefaced the crisis were
taking place in Washington. As the ordinances of
secession were passed one after another by the
Southern States, the Senators and Representatives
from the South were withdrawing from the two
Houses of the National Congress.
"The onlookers," says a historian of the period, writ-
ing from the Northern viewpoint of these tragic circum-
stances, "thought of Webster and his prayer, that his
dying eyes as they sought the sun, might not behold it
shining upon a torn and rent land, and they cursed the
hour in which they themselves were witnessing the dis-
solution of the Union."
It was not merely men that were leaving the
familiar halls. ''The States were going out!" The
Senators in person, and the Representatives for the
most part by written addresses, took their leave.
One of the former, who became in time the central
figure of this tremendous political tragedy, said on
the 21st day of January, 1861, in a farewell address
to the assembled Senate, the final word announcing
the attitude of the seceding States: —
"A great man who now reposes with his fathers," said
Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, "and who has
THE DAWN OF WAR 151
often been arraigned for a want of fealty to the Union,
advocated the doctrine of Nullification because it pre-
served the Union. It was because of his deep-seated
attachment to the Union, — his determination to find
some remedy for existing ills, short of a severance of the
ties which bound South Carolina to the other States, —
that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of Nullifica-
tion, which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within
the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but
only to be a means of bringing the agent before the tri-
bunal of the States for their judgment.
"Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It
is to be justified upon the basis that the States are sov-
ereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope
the time may come again when a better comprehension
of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable
rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one
from denying that each State is a sovereign, and thus
may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent
whomsoever."
Second in the Senate, and among the first three
or four of the delegations from the South, the men
from Alabama answered the call of their sovereign
States. On January 12th, 1861, L. Q. C. Lamar,
and the other Mississippi representatives, bade adieu
to the House in a formal note of fourteen lines; and
on the day of Mr. Davis' farewell address to the
Senate, Curry and his colleagues presented to
Speaker Pennington their communication of with-
drawal : —
Washington City,
January 21, 1861.
Sir: — Having received information that the State of
Alabama, through a convention representing her sover-
eignty, has adopted and ratified an ordinance, by which
152 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
she withdraws from the Union of the United States of
America, and resumes the powers heretofore delegated to
the Federal Government, it is proper that we should
communicate the same to you, and through you to the
House of Representatives, over which you preside, and
announce our withdrawal from the further deliberations
of that body.
The causes which, in the judgment of our State, ren-
dered such action necessary, we need not relate. It is
sufficient to say, that duty requires obedience to her
sovereign will, and that we shall return to our homes,
sustain her action, and share the fortunes of her people.
We have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obe-
dient servants,
George S. Houston,
Sydenham Moore,
David Clopton,
James L. Pugh,
J. L. M. Curry,
James A. Stallworth.
Hon. William Pennington,
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Of the men who signed this paper, informed with
a spirit of duty, dignified in its expression, and carry-
ing between the lines an unconcealed pathos, it may
be here written that their subsequent careers vin-
dicated their pure patriotism and lofty purpose.
Houston became a post-bellum Governor of his State.
Sydenham Moore, an intimate friend of Curry's, fell
at Seven Pines with a mortal wound, and died from
its effects a short time afterwards in Richmond.
Clopton and Stallworth were honored by the people
of their State ; and James L. Pugh lived to represent
Alabama in the Senate of a restored and indissoluble
Union, I' ..
CHAPTER X
A NEW NATION
Of the popular vote in the Presidential election of
November, 1860, the Republican ticket had received
1,866,352; the Constitutional Union ticket 589,581;
and the two democratic tickets together, 2,220,920,
of which 1,375,157 votes had been cast for the ticket
headed by Douglas, and 845,763 for that headed by
Breckinridge. A loose-construction party, to use
the political phraseology of the time, for the first
time in the history of the Union, had gained control
of the government, though by a popular minority;
and when Mr. Lincoln took the oath of office as
President of the United States on March 4th, 1861,
seven of the Southern States had already left the
Union, and others were preparing to follow. Vir-
ginia had called a convention, which met in Rich-
mond on the 13th day of February, 1861, a majority
of whose members were Union men, and opposed to
the secession of the Commonwealth. On April 14th,
while the Convention was in session. Fort Sumter,
after a bombardment of thirty hours by the military
forces of the seceded States, surrendered; and the
President of the United States on April 15th issued
a call for 75,000 volunteers to coerce the States which
had withdrawn from the Union. On April 17th, in
consequence of the call for volunteers, Virginia
153
154 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
enacted an ordinance of secession, and communi-
cated its decision to the provisional government of
the Confederate States at Montgomery, Alabama.
In the meantime, Curry, as a deputy of his State,
had been present when the convention of the Seced-
ing States met at Montgomery, February 4, 1861.
The body assembled in the Senate Chamber of the
Capitol. Howell Cobb of Georgia was elected pres-
ident of the body. Others among the ablest and
most distinguished members who participated in its
deliberations were Alexander H. Stephens, Thomas
Reade Rootes Cobb, Benjamin Hill, Robert Toombs,
T. J. Withers, Robert W. Barnwell, Charles G.
Meminger, R. H. Smith, Robert W. Walker, Lewis
T. Wigfall, and John Hemphill.
Curry's colleagues, in addition to Messrs. Walker
and Smith, already mentioned, were Colin J. Mc-
Crae, John Gill Shorter, William P. Chilton, Stephen
F. Hale, David P. Lewis, and Thomas Fearn.
The immediate and most urgent business of the
Convention was to prepare and adopt a provisional
constitution, and to organize the government of the
new nation. A constitution was framed and adopted,
which in its provisions carefully and explicitly
guarded by express language all those issues which
had been the subjects of controversy and conten-
tion between the loose constructionists and the
strict constructionists of the old Union.
Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Alexander H.
Stephens of Georgia were respectively elected Pres-
ident and Vice-president of the Confederate States
of America; and in the presence of a great multitude
the President took the oath of office, standing on the
steps of the portico of the historic building, looking
A NEW NATION 155
from its eminence upon the city. The spot where
Davis stood is still marked by a star, let into the
pavement of the step, to point to the visitor of later
generations the birthplace of one of the most tragic
political Commonwealths in history.
"Mr. Davis reached Montgomery on the 17th of Feb-
ruary," writes Curry in his memoranda, "and was
inaugurated on the following day. He stood on the steps
of the capitol looking west, as he read his Inaugural, and
when the oath of office was administered, with great
solemnity and reverence he bowed and kissed a large
open Bible, which lay before him. The induction of the
President of the Confederate States was most fitting.
Then sounded the cannon. The first gun was fired by
a grand-daughter of President Tyler. She was a pretty
little girl about twelve years old."
Doubtless the heart of the Southern President in
this supreme moment was as sad and anxious as was
that of the newly elected head of a rent and disor-
ganized Union beyond the Potomac; but upon it
lay no burden of doubt as to the justice and right-
eousness of the cause.
"We have changed," said Mr. Davis, toward the close
of his inaugural address, "the constituent parts, but not
the system of our government. The Constitution formed
by our fathers is that of these Confederate States, in their
exposition of it; and, in the judicial construction it has
received, we have a light which reveals its true meaning."
He concluded his address in a lofty strain: —
"It is joyous," he said, "in the midst of perilous times,
to look around upon a people united in heart; where one
purpose of high resolve animates and actuates the whole,
— where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed in the
156 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
balance against honor, and right and hberty and equality.
Obstacles may retard, — they cannot long prevent, — the
progress of a movement sanctioned by its justice, and
sustained by a virtuous people. Reverently let us invoke
the God of our fathers to guide and protect us in our
efforts to perpetuate the principles, which by this bless-
ing they were able to vindicate, establish, and transmit
to their posterity, and with a continuance of this favor
ever gratefully acknowledged we may hopefully look
forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity."
Until Fort Sumter fell, there were many in the
North, even of those who had been original aboli-
tionists, who, while bitterly lamenting the occasion,
were willing to see the Union dissolved. Horace
Greeley's famous ''Let our erring sisters go in peace,"
expressed the sentiments of a large number of the
commercial and academic classes.
"By March," writes Curry, "a permanent Constitu-
tion was adopted, and submitted to the separate Con-
federate States for their ratification. The Congress
adhered with almost literal fidelity to the Constitution
of the United States, as not the provisions of that in-
strument, but the violations, were the gravamen of our
complaints. The New York Herald, in April, published
the full text of our Constitution, and advised the North
to adopt it as a settlement of the difficulties.
"Very little difference of opinion was developed in the
Congress. The most patriotic harmony prevailed, and
some of the most sagacious members thought there would
be no war. All deprecated such an event, and hoped, as
no interference with the United States was proposed,
that a peaceful adjustment might be secured. The
troubles, growing out of the garrisoning of forts in
Charleston harbor, brought on a collision, which occa-
sioned the four years' bloody tragedy." ,
A NEW NATION 157
After the election of Mr. Lincoln, Curry received
a letter from Major James Longstreet, then at
Albuquerque, New Mexico, authorizing him to ten-
der Longstreet's services to Alabama in the event
of her secession; and later his services were offered
to the Confederacy through Curry, who carried the
letter to Mr. Davis. They were accepted by the
President, who at once appointed Longstreet a
Colonel, from which office he rose to be one of the
great Major Generals of the Confederacy. Raphael
Semmes, of later ''Alabama" fame, wrote to Curry
about the situation; and after resigning his commis-
sion in the United States Navy, and his position on
the Light House Board, telegraphed that he was in a
condition to serve the South.
Army and navy officers of the United States mili-
tary and naval organizations, all about the world,
who were Southerners by^birth or residence, and not
a few who were neither, but believed that the cause
of the South was a just cause, hastened to tender
their swords and services to the Confederacy.
It is worthy of record here, even at the risk
of wearisome iteration, that these men did not en-
gage in this service for the sake of perpetuating
slavery; but that they were animated by the same
patriotic sentiment of loyalty to constitutional free-
dom and to the sovereignty of the individual States
that impelled the political leaders of the mighty
movement. Robert E. Lee owned no slaves at the
time of the War. Fitzhugh Lee never owned a slave.
J. E. B. Stuart, the great cavalry leader of the Con-
federacy, owned no slave at the time of the war.
Joseph E. Johnston never owned a slave. And what
is true of these men is true of many others, who hav-
158 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
ing held commissions in the army of the United
States, had no hesitation as to the direction in
which lay their paramount allegiance.
In the month of May, 1861, the Confederate Con-
gress adjourned, after having first resolved to re-
assemble in its next session at Richmond, Virginia.
Curry states that this change was made as an imag-
ined military necessity; but that in his opinion the
measure was of very doubtful wisdom. Whatever
its wisdom or unwisdom, it had the practical effect
of making Virginia the battleground of the sangui-
nary struggle that followed, and of visiting upon the
ancient Commonwealth a physical devastation that
was suffered in the same measure by no other one
of the Confederate States.
On July 20, 1861, the Confederate Congress met
in Richmond; and on the same day Curry left
Talladega for the new capital of the Confederacy,
and arrived in Richmond the following morning.
Upon his arrival, he learned of the near approach of
collision between the troops of the two governments.
"Hearing that a battle was imminent at Manassas,"
he writes, "I took the train ... to hasten to the
scene of the conflict. The cars were so crowded that the
whole day hardly sufficed to enable us to reach Manassas.
The battle had been fought; the victory won; and the
Federal soldiers, in complete rout, had fled to Washing-
ton. I rode over the battlefield and along the line of
retreat, and to me the carnage seemed dreadful. It was
my first sight of dead men killed in battle. One thing
impressed me powerfully: the utter disorganization and
want of discipline in our army. Victory had demoralized
our troops as much as defeat had the enemy. To my
inexperienced eye it seemed as if a well-appointed brigade
A NEW NATION 159
could have captured our whole army. Everything was in
confusion, and men and officers seemed to be straggling
at will."
On the occasion of his visit to the battlefield of
Manassas, he made his first acquaintance with
Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beaure-
gard. No other opportunity or occasion occurred to
him to come in contact with the military organiza-
tions of the Confederacy until the following Septem-
ber, when upon the adjournment of Congress he
again visited the army, and went as far as Mason's
and Munson's Hills, from which he could see the flag
of the Union floating over the Capitol at Washington.
He mingled with the men of several Alabama regi-
ments, who paid him the compliment of more than
one serenade; and he renewed his acquaintance with
General Longstreet, with whom he dined by invita-
tion at Fairfax Court House in a distinguished group
of officers, including General Johnston.
On the day following his visit to Manassas, Curry
returned to Richmond. The provisional Congress
of the Confederacy had assembled in the capitol of
the Commonwealth, a beautiful structure of classi-
cal proportions, designed by Mr. Jefferson upon the
model of the Maison Carree at Nismes, in France,
and which had witnessed already the presence of
many great men of Virginia and the nation, and had
been the scene of many momentous and historical
events. Among the new members of Congress was
a venerable ex-President of the United States, John
Tyler, during whose administration Texas had been
admitted to the Union, and whose singular devotion
to the Union over which he had once presided was
only equalled by his patriotic loyalty, as a State-
160 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
rights, strict-constructionist, to the sovereign Com-
monwealth of Virginia.
Among the matters of business claiming the at-
tention of the Congress was the consideration of bills
that were introduced providing for the admission
into the Confederacy of the States of Missouri and
Kentucky. The admission of these States was
favored in speeches that were made by Tyler,
Toombs, Wigfall, and other members of prominence,
and the measures were enacted into law. But
Curry, with a keen and philosophic discrimination
which postponed utility to principle, opposed their
passage with a logic which was as inexorable as it
might have proved efficient under other and less
exigent conditions. In his opposition, he vindicated
the accuracy and exactness of Mr. Calhoun's political
philosophy; and when some true history of the great
South Carolina statesman's life and career shall
come to be written, it may well contain the record
that of all his disciples there was none who followed
more exactly and comprehendingly in the path of
his political footsteps than did J. L. M. Curry.
"I opposed them ineffectually," he writes, "and
almost alone," he adds in another place, "on the ground
that their admission would be in utter contravention of
all the principles underlying our secession and the forma-
tion of the Confederacy; — that a majority of the people
of Kentucky and Missouri were not in sympathy with
us, and that the representatives would have no constit-
uents. My predictions were too faithfully verified. The
States were soon in the complete control of the Federal
army: and those who sat as representatives of those
States owed their pretence of an election to the votes
cast by soldiers in our army from those States. With
A NEW NATION 161
some honorable exceptions, the representatives were
worse than useless."
It was during his sojourn in Richmond as a member
of the Confederate Congress that he first met the
young woman, who two years after the war became
his second wife, and whose association with him, in
that affectionate and intimate relation, exercised a
noble influence upon his later more distinguished
career.
"I soon went to board," he writes, "with A. H. Sands,
esquire, between First and Foushee, on Grace Street, and
remained with him during my service in Congress. From
him and his family I received the kindest and most cor-
dial attentions, for which I shall ever be truly grateful.
Before going to Mr. Sands', I had boarded fourteen days
at the Spotswood Hotel. During August, in company
with Judge Chilton, my colleague, I called at Mr. James
Thomas, Jr.'s, corner of Second and Grace. The family
were so gentle, so hospitable, so cordial, that my heart
was won; and during my service in Congress a week
seldom passed that I did not take tea with the family.
Separated from my own family, I as eagerly longed for
the repetition of my visits to this welcome home, as
school-girl ever looked forward to vacation and reunion
with parents."
During the period of his attendance on Congress,
Curry made a number of speeches at different
churches in behalf of colportage among the soldiers
of the army. He also delivered several lectures,
one of which was on "The Wants of the Confed-
eracy." This was delivered on the 13th of Feb-
ruary, 1862; and even then was a spacious subject,
embracing an almost illimitable field. Among those
who pleased his natural sense of self-esteem by
162 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
asking for its publication, he mentions the Hon.
WilUam C. Rives, the Reverend Moses D. Hoge,
General Winder, Dr. Brown, and the Hon. John
Randolph Tucker. But with a wise caution, for a
public speaker of frequent occasion, he declined the
flattering request.
On the 22nd day of February, 1862 (Washing-
ton's Birthday), the provisional government of the
Confederate States, established in the preceding
year at Montgomery, Alabama, had ceased to exist;
and on that day Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and
Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, having been
unanimously chosen President and Vice-president,
respectively, by the votes of the convention of every
Southern State, were duly inaugurated for a consti-
tutional term of six years. The oath of office was
administered to the President by the Hon. J. D.
Halyburton, and to Alexander H. Stephens by the
President of the Confederate States. On the next
day President Davis sent to the Senate for confir-
mation a list of Cabinet appointments, as follows:
Secretary of State, Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana;
Secretary of War, George Wythe Randolph of Vir-
ginia; Secretary of the Navy, Stephen R. Mallory
of Florida; Secretary of the Treasury, C. G. Mem-
minger of South Carolina; Postmaster General, Mr.
Henry of Kentucky; Attorney General, Herschel V.
Johnson of Georgia.
The Congress adjourned on April 18th, 1862.
Curry went home, for a short stay, returning to
Richmond and his duties on the 17th of August.
There was little which was eventful in Curry's
political service or in the political annals of this
period. The drama of war held the stage and pub-
A NEW NATION 163
lie interest centred in the operations of the forces
in the field. The Seven Days' Battles about Rich-
mond took place during the summer of 1862; and
the stout hearted city held her own against mighty
odds.
On the 6th of October Curry left Richmond for
Talladega, and reached home on the 12th. During
his attendance upon the sessions of Congress in
Richmond, Mrs. Curry had remained in Alabama,
taking an active part in various patriotic charities.
She was at the head of a sewing circle, which was
accustomed to meet at the old Curry homestead at
Kelly's Springs, for the purpose of making clothes
for the soldiers. Although Mrs. Cm-ry was a frail
and delicate woman, she was possessed of an in-
domitable energy and perseverance, and of great
prudence and tact in the management of others.
By her industry and liberality she had already ac-
complished a large amount of work of this kind,
for which she had been accorded great praise
throughout the country. In many instances the
private soldier at the front left no bread-winner at
home to care for the family; and the majority of
the men in the Confederate armies were not slave-
owners. So it happened that it was not uncommon
for the soldiers' families to find themselves in desti-
tution and want, even in the earlier days of the War,
although contributions for their relief were frequent
and liberal. Those who had gave willingly, how-
ever, to those who had not; and at one time Curry
himself turned over to the Probate Court of Talla-
dega County, without thought of compensation, for
the aid of soldiers' families, one thousand bushels
of corn. It was a large and generous gift; and yet
164 J. L. M. CUREY, A BIOGRAPHY
so general were donations of this character from
those who were able to make them, that this large
contribution attracted no special attention; and,
Curry adds in recording it, it may be '4ess grati-
tude."
Returning to Richmond, he writes of the Congress
then in session: —
The legislation amounted to very little. Mr. Davis
gave to Congress very little information beyond what
was published in the newspapers. We were apparently
expected to put into statutes what he deemed best for
the interests of the Confederacy. Possibly, probably,
it was best not to communicate military secrets to Con-
gress, for very little occurred in either House that did
not promptly find its way into the newspapers.
We had some excellent men in the House. Mr. Wil-
liam C. Rives was a ripe scholar, an experienced states-
man, a high-toned gentleman. Garnett of Virginia was
a man of abundant possibilities. He died, and I made
one of the addresses on the occasion. Staples and Pres-
ton were eloquent men. Henry S. Foote of Tennessee
was sui generis, — whether partially demented, or merely
disaffected to the South, it was difficult to decide.
The impossibility of appreciating our currency was
every day more clearly demonstrated, and the rapid
depreciation made increased issue necessary; and the
two counter-currents were running violently. A propo-
sition to make our notes a legal tender had strong and
zealous advocates. I opposed this in an elaborate speech,
which was much praised, and which I think had the effect
of killing the measure. I made two speeches on different
aspects of the currency question.
Frequently I presided in the House, and when the
Speaker, Mr. Bocock, was absent, I was elected Speaker
pro tern. If I had been a member of the next Congress, I
should probably have been chosen to preside, as very
A NEW NATION 165
many of the members had very decidedly expressed their
preference in that direction.
Contemporary and later testimony acclaims
Curry's merits and abilities as a presiding officer.
He was a student of parliamentary law, and pos-
sessed the qualities of alert perception, keen intelli-
gence, disinterested honesty, and swift and firm
decision. All these had been sharpened and inten-
sified by his large experience in both religious and
political bodies and assemblages; and if the proba-
bility which he suggests had ever become a reality,
there can be no reason to doubt that he would have
so discharged the duties of Speaker of the House of
Representatives as to add another laurel to those
that he had already won, or to those which he later
wore.
Curry's memorabilia are strangely silent on de-
tails, impressions and personal touches concerning
the Confederate Congress which we would be very
grateful for in building up a picture of that unique
governmental body. The Constitution of the Con-
federacy seemed to him an instrument of great wis-
dom, and an everlasting refutation of the charges
which have been brought against the framers, as
conspirators erecting a great slavery oligarchy. Its
tenure of oflace provisions, its initiation, in a modi-
fied form, of the British custom of allowing the
President representation on the floor of the two
houses through his constitutional advisers, espe-
cially appealed to him. In speaking of the Con-
federate instrument he later declared: —
Every possible infringement upon popular liberty, or
upon State rights, every oppressive or sectional use of
166 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
the taxing power, was carefully guarded against, and
civil service reform was made easy and practicable.
Stubborn and corrupting controversies about tariffs, post-
office, improvement of rivers and harbors, subsidies,
extra pay, were avoided. The taxing power was placed
under salutary restrictions. Responsibility was more
clearly fixed. Money in the treasury was protected
against purchasable majorities and wicked combinations.
Adequate powers for a frugal and just administration
were granted to the General Government. The States
maintained their autonomy, and were not reduced to
petty corporations, or counties, or dependencies.
The study of the Confederate Constitution would be
useful at present, as there never was a time when the
need of restrictions and guarantees against irresponsible
power was more urgent. The public mind has been
schooled against any assertion of State rights or of con-
stitutional limitations, and taught to look with aversion
and ridicule upon any serious attempt to set up the
ancient landmarks. The abeyance of State authority,
reliance in actions and opinions upon Federal protection
and aid, the vast accumulation of power and influence at
Washington, the supposed necessary supremacy of the
Central Government, have caused a wide departure from
the theory and principles of the fathers.
He was constant in praise of the learning, the
ability and the legislative wisdom of the individuals
composing the Congress operating under this admi-
rable constitution. And yet his records suggest a
dullness in its proceedings, a certain futility in its
debates, a certain lack of a proper forum for pure
civic ability. The inference is very clear that
though the Confederate Congress was nobly organ-
ized to carry on a settled and placid government,
the knowledge that success in war could alone guar-
A NEW NATION 167
antee its existence tended inevitably to give it
second place in the public consideration, and to
rob its proceedings of that lofty dignity that belongs
of right to parliaments of established nations. The
soul and spirit of a brave, struggling people hovered
over the field of battle, and not over the chamber of
debate and mere intellectual combat.
CHAPTER XI
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE
On May 4, 1863, Curry reached home on his re-
turn from Richmond, and announced himself a
candidate for re-election to the Confederate Con-
gress. His district comprised the four counties of
Calhoun, Randolph, Talladega and Shelby. For a
while after his announcement he had no opposition.
Then a candidate appeared in the person of Marcus
Cruikshanks, whom Curry speaks of as "a very
worthy man." Curry addressed to him a communi-
cation, suggesting that they canvass the district
together, — a proposition which Mr. Cruikshanks
declined. The latter's supporters adopted the dan-
gerous and effective policy of a modern ''still hunt."
They engaged in no open arguments, and con-
ducted their political program with a secrecy which
proved to be invincible. "Silence is the true elo-
quence of power," said a great French statesman,
"because it admits of no reply." Curry was unable
to answer the insidious attacks of his political
enemies, or to withstand the logic of events which
were now proving potent arguments against the
doctrines of secession and of State rights. At the
election in August, 1863, Curry was defeated, his
opponent carrying three out of the four counties of
the district, and leaving him only a small majority
in the county of Calhoun.
The arguments of word and of event, which had
proved so overwhelming in their results, were not
168
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 169
very far to seek when the smoke of the political
battle cleared away.
The district, as constituted, had been originally
opposed to secession. At the time of the election
Vicksbm-g had fallen before the victorious forces of
Grant; and the reverses to the Confederate arms
in Pennsylvania and in Tennessee had alike served
to dispirit a people who had not been sanguine of
success from the beginning. A secret peace organi-
zation had sprung up in the district. Deserters
from the army were multiplying in numbers, and
sowing the seeds of discontent among those with
whom they came in contact. The volunteers had
long since gone to the front, many of them never to
return; and a conscription, which had already
begun, of dire necessity, to take the old men and
the young alike, ''robbing both the cradle and the
grave," was now arousing a spirit of ill-concealed
hostility. "General Hard Times" had assumed
command in the Confederacy. The currency be-
came every day of less value. A Confederate paper
dollar, that had been worth a dollar and ten cents
in the August of two years before, had now depre-
ciated to such an extent that it took from twelve
to thirteen such dollars in August, 1863, to equal
in value a dollar of gold. Taxes were high, and the
tax-gatherer of the government was establishing
granaries, in which were stored the government's
exacted fractions and tithes of the meagre crops
raised by the old men, and women and children,
and the negro slaves. A barrel of flour in March,
1863, cost in the Confederacy twenty-five Confed-
erate dollars. In February of that year, the money
value of a day's rations for one hundred soldiers,
170 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
which in the first year of the war had been nine
dollars, was at market prices one hundred and
twenty-three. Salt, which had advanced in the
first year of the struggle from ten to eighteen dol-
lars a sack, was still going up in price with a steadi-
ness which the salt "licks" and springs of Tennes-
see, the Indian Territory and Southwest Virginia,
seemed powerless to counteract. A cordon of block-
ading Federal vessels shut out the markets of the
world from the great staple, which so short a time
before had been endowed with a royal appellation,
and "King Cotton" was dethroned. The blockade-
runners, from Nassau in the Bahamas to Wilming-
ton in North Carolina, brought in, under the stress
of darkness and ever imminent danger, scanty sup-
plies of medicines and surgical necessaries; but
there was little help from the outside world for the
environed South.
Out of this pressure of poverty and distress were
generated the demagogue and the malcontent, who
availed themselves, with sinister purpose and suc-
cessful accomplishment, of the depressing circum-
stances that existed to inflame the prejudices of the
weak-hearted and the poverty-stricken against se-
cession and secessionists.
Curry's whole political career, his open and con-
sistent advocacy of political doctrines, which were
now denounced as the causes and origin of the
war, afforded a shining target for attack. He had
been an arch-secessionist; and he was still in favor
of a vigorous prosecution of the struggle. It was
not alone upon the ignorant and the credulously
disaffected that delusive promises of an early peace
had their telling and depressing effect.
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 171
His defeat for re-election brought him many ex-
pressions of sorrow and regret from all parts of the
Confederacy; and the news was received with down-
cast hearts, and with universal sympathy throughout
the South, among those whom he denominates ''the
true and faithful." It was no time for idleness or re-
pining, and Curry immediately turned from statesman-
ship, in which he delighted, to war, which he abhorred.
On the 22nd of September, 1863, he went out with
a company of ''Home Guards," to aid in an impend-
ing battle; but the great fight at Chickamauga had
occurred before they reached the army.
"I went over the battle-field," he writes, "before the
Federal dead were buried, and then visited the army
occupying Missionary Ridge, Lookout Mountain, and the
Valley between. From Lookout Mountain one of the
grandest views in the world is presented. The two
armies, — the Federals were in Chattanooga, — lay at the
beholder's feet."
On October 10, 1863, he reached home from the
seat of war. In the early part of November he
visited Perry county, and shortly thereafter spent
a few days at Montgomery, where the legislature of
the State was in session. Although he makes no
mention of it in his memorahilia, his friends and ad-
mirers appear at this time to have planned his elec-
tion to the Confederate States Senate, as is indicated
by a letter found among his papers.
Talladega, Ala.,
Nov. 13, 1863.
Hon. Thomas B. Cooper,
My dear Sir: — In the first place excuse (you would
have done that without the asking, if paper is as scarce
in your office as in mine,) this blank-book paper. In the
172 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
second place, you will excuse an old friend, for venturing
to intercede with you for help, if he needs it, for one
whom he ardently desires to be promoted by the Legis-
lature. I mean the Hon. J. L. M. Curry, who is a can-
didate for the Confederate States Senate. I know not
your predilections on that subject; nor do I know who
are the most prominent competitors of Mr. Curry. I
know this much, however, that I have nothing to say
in disparagement of any of them. But I feel very anx-
ious to have Mr. Curry in the Senate, because I know
him well, and know him to be a pure man, as well as a
man of brilliant talents and extraordinary working qual-
ities. I know of no man in the State or Confederacy of
more promising qualities for usefulness in Congress; and
there is none of purer morals, or more unbending integ-
rity. Besides, I think the time has come when West
Alabama should be known to the country. Heretofore
the idea has been, that no man, however talented, — how-
ever sound in political sentiment, — however pure in
character, — could have his claims to represent the State
in the National Senate considered, unless he could have
the geographical recommendation of a residence in North
Alabama or South Alabama. East and West Alabama
have been ignored. But at the extra session you took
from West Alabama her patriotic Jemison. If you will
now secure for East Alabama her just but long-deferred
claims to a name and a place in the State by electing our
young and gifted Curry, I think the work of reform, in
this respect, will be in the right direction and at the
right time.
■ •••••
I shall regard it as a personal favor, and what is more,
a public good, if you will throw your influence in favor
of Mr. Curry.
We are all well.
Your friend truly,
Geo. S. Waldon.
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 173
But the efforts of Curry's advocates were un-
availing. Whether his ''geographical residence," so
earnestly urged by his friend, Waldon, as a ground
of his election, put him at a disadvantage; whether
the same potent causes which had compassed his
defeat for the House of Representatives at the hands
of a popular constituency four months before, were
again at work among the members of the legislature;
whether his claims were not vigorously and aggres-
sively pressed; or whether his failure was the result
of a combination of these causes, is now beyond
determination. A stronger probability than any of
these is that the competition of some of the ablest
and very foremost men of the State and of the South
was too great to be overcome; for the man chosen
by the Alabama legislature for Confederate States
Senator at this juncture was Richard W. Walker,
who was one of the most conspicuous statesmen and
leaders of the young republic.
On November 30, 1863, Curry set out for Rich-
mond to serve out the unexpired period of his final
term in the House of Representatives. He was
nearly a week in reaching the Capitol. Of his sub-
sequent service in this session he has preserved the
following record: —
During the session I presided much, and made two
speeches, — one in favor of negotiating, even with Benja-
min F. Butler, for the exchange of prisoners; and the
other on offering commercial privileges to some Euro-
pean nation to recognize us, and intervene with arms.
In the early part of February (1864), a joint committee
headed by Semmes of the Senate and Clapp of the
House, was appointed to prepare an address to the peo-
ple of the Confederate States. Senator Semmes was to
174 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
draft so much of the address as related to Congressional
legislation; but he failed to perform the task. To my-
self the remainder was assigned. The Committee ap-
proved my address. I read it to the House amid much
applause; and so enthusiastic was the approbation, that
every member of both Houses signed it. Several thou-
sand copies were ordered to be published, for circulation
among the people and in the army. When I joined the
army a few months afterwards, the officers, knowing my
authorship of the address, gave me most cordial and
flattering receptions.
Before Congress adjourned, I purchased cavalry equip-
ments, intending to join the 53rd Alabama Cavalry
regiment, in which my brother Thomas was a captain.
Gen. J. E. B. Stuart had previously written a letter to
President Davis, asking my appointment as Judge of the
military court for his corps. Gen. Longstreet also ten-
dered me a position on his staff.
Congress adjourned, and Curry's term of service
expired on February 18, 1864, with the clouds thick-
ening about the doomed Confederacy. He went
South to complete his arrangements for entering the
army, moved by an eager spirit of aiding the cause
to which he had devoted himself in whatever way
his service might prove available. He reached
Talladega on the 24th; and on the 15th of March,
at the invitation of General Leonidas Polk, the
Bishop-soldier of the Confederacy, he went to De-
mopolis, in the western part of the State, where at
a grand review of the ragged army of the South, he
had the pleasure of addressing several acres of
soldiers.
Before the expiration of the sixty days' furlough
which he had obtained UDon the adjournment of
Congress, he received an unsolicited appointment
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 175
from President Davis to the position of Commissioner
under the Habeas Corpus Act, to serve with General
Joseph E. Johnston's army, but not under him.
"My duties were judicial," he states, " — to investigate
charges of disloyalty and treason preferred against civil-
ians; and hence, by some persons, I am called 'Judge.'
"I went to Dalton, Georgia, in April, 1864; and hav-
ing little to do in connection with my office, I spent the
most of my time in visiting the various camps, and
familiarizing myself with military movements. Many
brigades were addressed by me; and mj'- services in this
line were much sought after. Gen. Johnston had a grand
review, to infuse fresh confidence into his men. The
display of banners and muskets and mimic warfare was
very magnificent.
"A gracious revival pervaded the army, while in camp.
Meetings were held every night. Chaplains and other
preachers held religious services. I heard Gen. M. P.
Lowry, a Baptist minister, in command of a Mississippi
brigade, and an officer much trusted by Gen. Johnston,
quite often. Hundreds of soldiers would gather in the
open air to hear the simple gospel; and the converts were
very numerous.
"The Georgia Baptist Convention met this spring in
Atlanta; and I attended and made an address on army
colportage. Here I saw for the first time Governor
Joseph E. Brown, who was a member of the Convention."
Curry was not yet an ordained minister; but his
notes are full of references to religious matters. He
has left an account of religion in the Southern army
among the soldiers, in his ''Civil History of the Con-
federate States"; and no one can read the frequent
entries which he has made in his journals and mem-
orahilia without a deep sense of his piety and of his
lofty spiritual character. The religious spirit seems
176 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
from the beginning to have dominated his Ufe; and,
over and above the figure of the pohtician, states-
man, orator, and educator, shines about him with
an ever increasing lustre the halo of an humble serv-
ant of Christ.
When in May, 1864, General Johnston began his
retreat towards Atlanta, he requested Curry to serve
on his staff as special aide. Inasmuch as the latter's
regular official duties were suspended by the stress
and exigency of military operations, he consented to
accept this office; and thus became attached to
General Johnston's staff, of which he remained a
member until his detail elsewhere in the following
July.
/ Curry's associations with General Johnston be-
came close and intimate; and he came, from obser-
vation and study, to form a very high estimate of
the character and ability of the great Confederate
general, who as a tactician, disciplinarian, and a
master of logistics by the impartial testimony of
military criticism, was without a superior in the
armies of the Confederacy.
"Gen. Johnston," he writes of the retreat before Sher-
man, "conducted this campaign with unsurpassed skill
and strategy, thwarting the enemy's plans and designs,
inflicting heavy losses upon him, losing not over five
thousand of his own men, whose enthusiastic confi-
dence he preserved to the end. In this retreat, such
was the forethought of the commander, that while
preserving and improving the morale of his men, the
Commissary was managed with consummate energy and
ability. . . .
"At Cartersville a battle-order was read, proper dis-
position of troops was made for attacking the enemy, —
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 177
and with shouts and strong hopes our boys reversed
their march. Hood, on the right, was to attack, and to
be supported by Polk in the centre and Hardee on the
left. By some fatal misinformation. Hood, instead of
attacking, fell back to his lines of the morning, reporting
that he was flanked. His blunder and error defeated the
plan. Johnston was excited and mad at the frustration
of a plan devised and prepared for some days before.
Still he arranged his men for meeting the enemy on the
next day. In the morning, his purpose was to attack
Sherman's army in detail, knowing they were divided
and separated by travelling on two roads. At night-fall
Gen. Johnston, with several of us, rode along the line;
and Gen. Johnston remarked on the rapidity and tact
with which our boys had thrown up temporary breast-
works. As we returned to headquarters, the General
told us to get a good rest, as we should have plenty of
work on to-morrow. An hour or so after retiring (Col.
E. J. Harvie, an Inspector-general and myself tented
together), we were summoned to Gen. Johnston's tent.
At a council, Hood said that he could not hold his posi-
tion; Polk was doubtful; Hardee wanted to jBght. Gen.
Johnston reluctantly, and ever since regretfully, yielded
to two of his corps commanders, and gave orders to fall
back across the river. I was sent to Gen. Wheeler's
camp, some distance on the right, to summon him to
Gen. Johnston, to receive instructions about protecting
our rear with his cavalry."
Curry's estimate of Johnston has value as afford-
ing an intimate view of a man who did not wear his
heart on his sleeve:
"Frequently I rode with General Johnston at night,
and he would, when in a talking mood, tell me of Marl-
borough's and Wellington's and Napoleon's campaigns,
which seemed as familiar to him as the alphabet. When
178 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
he had travelled as far as he intended, he would dis-
mount, wrap himself in a blanket, and be asleep in five
minutes. He was singularly reticent in reference to his
plans, — kept his own counsels, but had marvellous facil-
ity in finding out the movements and plans of the enemy.
The cavalry was utilized and made to subserve its legiti-
mate office of acting as eyes and ears for the infantry
and artillery."
After the war was ended, and the events of that
momentous struggle had become matters of history,
General Johnston, in a conversation with Curry,
said to him that he would not have asked any-
thing better of Sherman than what he attempted
with Hood. But Hood failed him in the ultimate
issue; and the event, which Johnston planned
and wished, was not to be. Johnston and Sher-
man, as great military tacticians, were antago-
nists worthy each of the other. They were pitted
against each other in many indecisive contests, where
some extraneous circumstance, beyond the control
of either, frustrated their respective plans; and it
seems that Death, the great conqueror, at the very
end, preserved the impartial balance between them.
''By an irony of fate," writes Curry in his later years,
"Gen. Johnston, as pall-bearer at the funeral of
Gen. Sherman, on a wet and cold day, contracted a
cold which resulted in his death."
On the 9th of July, 1864, Johnston reached his
fortifications at Atlanta in safety. During the prog-
ress of the ensuing siege, Curry went across the
country on horseback to Talladega. On the 17th
of July, during his absence, Johnston was relieved
of the command of the army of the defense, and
Hood was put in his place. Soon after Curry
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 179
reached Atlanta, upon his return from Talladega,
his office as Commissioner under the Habeas Corpus
Act expired by limitation; and at the request of
General Joseph Wheeler, he joined that officer as
special aide, in an expedition to travel in the rear of
Sherman's army, and to cut his communications.
It was a congenial duty to the diminutive Confed-
erate General, whose soul was bigger than his body,
and who will be remembered in history, not only for
his heroic devotion to the cause of the Confederacy,
but no less for his loyalty to a reunited country,
which made him one of the most picturesque figures
in the Spanish-American emeute of 1898.
Curry writes of this episode with Wheeler: —
We first struck the road at Dalton, and captured the
place after a brisk little engagement, taking about 100
prisoners. . . . Moving up the railroad, and tearing
up rails, we encountered some colored troops, the first I
had seen. We marched to Cleveland, hoping to cross
the Tennessee River; but the late heavy rains had
swelled it, so as to be not fordable. We passed through
Athens, and some stores were " gutted." On this expedi-
tion we were forbidden to encumber horses with any
surplus clothing; and we ate just what we "picked up,"
en route. For a portion of the time our principal food
was green corn. Gen. Wheeler was compelled to make a
wide detour to cross the swollen river, which he finally
accomplished, with a little resistance east of Knoxville.
While tearing up the railroad at McMillan's Depot, we
had a little fight and dispersed the enemy. As the rail-
road between Chattanooga and Nashville was the line
of communication to be cut, the General struck across
the country.
He requested me to cross the Clinch River at Clinton,
to the right of his line of march, and get what informa-
180 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
tion I could. With a few men I hurried on, and came
to a country mill, with a large "overshot" wheel, situa-
ted on a beautiful stream of water, and embowered in a
dense forest. Two Federal soldiers were captured, and a
middle-aged woman, bare-footed, in homespun frock,
apparently the owner of the mill, came to the door and
accosted me. The door was about ten feet from the
ground, and a broad slab was the only means of entrance
and exit. Being of Union sympathies, and furious be-
cause of the capture of the men, she poured upon my
head, vehemently and volubly, a torrent of oaths, the
most vulgar, blasphemous and horrid that I ever heard
fall from human lips. Threatening me with vengeance
from a brigade of soldiers, which she affirmed was
nearby, she began to descend the pathway from the
mill, without ceasing her vocabulary of opprobrious and
disgusting epithets. Riding my horse across the slab, I
informed her that she must remain where she was. This
infuriated her afresh, and drew upon me another volley,
not less offensive and wicked than she had given previ-
ously, of her abundant imprecations. Persisting in the
avowal of her purpose, I ordered one of my men to tie
her, and put her on one of the captured horses, and carry
her to headquarters. Quieted and convinced by my
calm purpose, she withdrew to the mill, and we pursued
our journey. . . .
By the way, the rural population of East Tennessee
was unrefined, ignorant, vicious and disloyal to the
Confederacy.
Curry, continuing his account of his military ex-
periences of this period, writes: —
We crossed the railroad south of Nashville; but our
circuitous journeying and long delay had defeated the
project of breaking up communications. Tearing up the
road a little, we marched towards Franklin, where we
THE EBBING OP THE TIDE 181
had quite a severe engagement, and General Kelly, an
accomplished young officer, was mortally wounded. I
was in a few paces of him when he was shot. Under a
flag of truce General Wheeler requested the kind atten-
tions of Colonel Brownlow, in command of the opposing
troops, to his friend and comrade, and it is a proper
tribute to Colonel Brownlow to say that the Confederate
officer, during his few remaining days, received the kind-
ness that a chivalrous adversary delights to render.
At a little town south of Franklin, we had another
engagement; and there I saw women on the streets, in
the midst of the fray, cheering our men. The tyranny of
Federal occupation drove them nearly to despair. Trav-
elling south, the corps forded the Tennessee River, a
dangerous enterprise, below Decatur, Alabama; and while
General Wheeler halted to rest his command and await
orders and information from Gen. Hood, who had been
''flanked" out of Atlanta, and whipped, I made a "flying
trip" to Talladega.
On the 6th of October, 1864, Curry started for
North Alabama to discharge his duties as Judge
Advocate with a military court, composed of Gen-
eral Leroy Pope Walker of Alabama, Colonel Dowd
of Mississippi, Colonel House of Tennessee, and
another officer.
"We reached Courtland, General Roddy's headquar-
ters," he writes, "on the 17th. Reporting to General
Roddy, who greatly desired my presence and assistance,
on account of the disturbed state of affairs in North
Alabama, I was appointed his aide pro tempore. There
was much disloyalty in that portion of the State, and the
facility of intercourse with the Federal army made cau-
tious dealing very necessary."
On October 30 Generals Hood and Beauregard
reached Courtland, en route for Nashville. On
182 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
November 2 General Roddy and his staff arrived
at Tuscumbia, where Hood was then encamped, and
was slowly getting ready for his proposed invasion
of Tennessee. General Beauregard had already
departed. Curry continues: —
The difference betwixt his (Hood's) and General John-
ston's handhng of troops was most manifest. General
Hood seemed to be at a loss what to do; and his equip-
ments and appointments, for which no blame attaches
to him, were most inadequate.
General Roddy, with his brigade of cavalry, was
ordered west, to make observations and to prevent
any movement from Memphis. By means of a
pontoon bridge. General Hood and his army crossed
the Tennessee River to Florence; and on Sunday,
November 21, started northwards for Tennessee.
Meanwhile Roddy's brigade, to which Curry was
attached, remained at luka and Corinth. About
this time Colonel Josiah Patterson, commanding the
Fifth Alabama regiment, was assigned to other
duties; and Curry was transferred to the command
of the regiment with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
The circumstances of this promotion of one, who
was scarcely more than a civilian in experience, were
recalled in a letter written in 1897, by Colonel Pat-
terson : —
Memphis, Tenn., Oct. 22, 1897.
Dr. J. L. M. Curry,
My dear Sir: Soon after your retirement from the
Congress of the Confederate States I met you at General
Wheeler's headquarters, when you told me you had
entered the army. About that time the Lt. Colonel of
my Regiment, the 5th Alabama Cavalry, was appointed
Colonel of the 10th Alabama Cavalry, thereby making a
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 183
vacancy in my Regiment. The officers of my Regiment,
without exception, waived right to promotion, and you
were, by the unanimous request of the officers of the
Regiment, promoted to the rank of Lt. Colonel. Subse-
quently I, with the rank of Colonel, commanded the
brigade to which the 5th Alabama Cavalry was attached;
and you, with the rank of Lt. Colonel, commanded that
Regiment to the close of the war.
Very truly yours,
JosiAH Patterson.
Curry assumed the duties of his new office at
Corinth on the 29th; and at dress-parade he made
the regiment an address, which was received wdth
the applause that was the usual accompaniment of
his oratory and his personal popularity. That his
rapid advancement as a soldier was not due to
political or other influence than that commanded
by his military worth, was later attested by high
authority. In a speech on the floor of the House
of Representatives of the United States, March 9,
1898, General Joseph Wheeler asserted that Curry
had earned his rank by bravery in battle.
With the zeal and industry and adaptability which
characterized him in every station in life, he set him-
self to work at once to become proficient in the art
of war.
"I soon mastered Wheeler's Tactics," he writes, "and
drilled the Regiment every day, Sundays excepted, when
not engaged in active service. The Regiment was un-
disciplined and badly armed, and not homogeneous.
While my relations wath the Regiment were pleasant,
and I had the entire confidence of officers and men, it
was a sore trial to put and keep in 'fighting trim'
men who were generally not well officered, and who were
184 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
partially demoralized by serving in the immediate vicin-
ity of their homes and families. It is simple justice,
however, to say that I never saw more gallantry and
courage than were frequently displayed by some of the
officers and men.
"In this connection, I can do no better than stop and
pay a just tribute to General Roddy. He has been much
misrepresented, and since the war his conduct has not
been free from censure. I never witnessed in him any
other than a jealous and watchful purpose to serve his
country to the best of his ability. He had a difficult
command, requiring much tact and patience to manage,
and a wide extent of territory to guard; and of his per-
sonal courage there can be no question."
On December 24 Curry and his command
reached Rogersville in Northern Alabama, near
the Tennessee line. Here he was ordered back by
General Hood, who had only a few days before
fought the disastrous battles of Franklin and Nash-
ville. Curry accordingly fell back on the 25th,
moving in a southwestward direction to Florence.
It was a cold, wet day; and there was scarcely a
mouthful of food for either men or horses. "I have
no pleasant associations," he declares, ''of that
Christmas." Thousands of soldiers were retreating
from Tennessee in confusion and disorder; and the
roads were so cut up by wagons and artillery as to
be almost impassable.
On December 29th, 1864, Curry's regiment
marched to Pond Spring, east of Courtland; and
on the next day, with about one hundred men, he
fought a regiment of Federal cavalry, and was
driven back to Courtland.
"Infantry and cavalry," he states, "were completely
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 185
demoralized, regarding our defeat as accomplished and
resistance as hopeless. With such men as I could or-
ganize I had several skirmishes with Yankees, — very
nearly escaping capture, as the enemy charged within a
few paces and fired in very uncomfortable proximity.
I should have surrendered, but that I dreaded the im-
prisonment and the separation from my family."
From the first to the tenth of January, 1865,
Curry and the enemy played at hide and seek in
Northern Alabama, through Franklin, Lawrence
and Morgan counties. One night he enjoyed the
luxury of a bed in Newburg, at the house of Mr.
McCaughey, the father of his adjutant. About the
twelfth of the month Colonel Patterson rejoined
the regiment, near Sim's Mill in Morgan County;
and Curry's labors and anxieties as commanding
officer were relieved.
On the 20th of the month Curry learned of the
extreme illness of his wife, and started home, in
company with two gentlemen of the name of Orr,
who lived near Danville, Alabama. He reached
home on the 23rd, where he remained till the 31st.
On that date, with a sense of duty impelling him to
return to the front, he left, and never saw his wife
again. Reaching the camp at Sim's Mill on Feb-
ruary 3, he was once more put in command of his
regiment, a portion of which was employed in
guarding a long stretch of the river.
On March 16, 1865, he was assigned command
in North Alabama, having under him the Fifth
Alabama Cavalry and Stewart's Battalion. At that
time a cavalry corps, under the Federal General
Wilson, was preparing for a raid through Alabama.
By courier-line Curry reported nearly every day to
186 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
General Wirt Adams, at Montevallo. On the 25th,
in obedience to orders, he moved southwards. At
Elyton, on the afternoon of the 28th, the Federals
came into the town just as Curry's force had passed.
A half hour later he would have been intercepted.
On the 30th Colonel Patterson resumed command;
and Curry, asking for and obtaining a detail, con-
cealed himself near the road, in order to get infor-
mation concerning the strength of the enemy. He
counted nearly four thousand, and reported to
General Forrest, who was advancing to meet the
foe. Wilson's whole command numbered nearly
ten thousand men. Curry, being cut off by the
delay in counting, had to make a wide detour, and
was unable to join the main body of the Confed-
erates for two days. Overtaking General Forrest's
command, and rejoining his own on April 1, he was
ordered to protect the rear of the Confederate column.
"Deploying what men I had," he writes, "I skirmished
with the enemy through Plantersville, slowly falling back
to give the wagons time to get out of the way. While
resisting the attack, a ball, with a heavy thump, struck
and entered my haversack, perforating my coat, breaking
a hair-brush, and making sixty holes in a New York
Tribune, which I had been carrying for two weeks with-
out an opportunity to open and read. This paper, now
in the Confederate Museum at Richmond, undoubtedly
saved my life. When Greeley was a candidate for the
Presidency, I sent him by a friend a jocular message,
that if elected he could not take the oath of office, as he
had certainly given 'aid and comfort' to his country's
enemy."
On Sunday, April 2, 1865, Curry was the last
man to enter the breastworks at Selma, where he
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 187
found General Forrest's troops posted, awaiting the
Federal attack. In a few minutes the enemy ap-
peared in front ; and, after reconnoissance, attacked
in force, quite to Curry's left, where Armstrong's
brigade was stationed. The firing was very heavy
for twenty or thirty minutes; then the Federals
charged the breastworks, and driving the Confed-
erates pell-mell, followed the fugitives into Selma,
killing and capturing the larger part of them. The
Confederate command, hemmed in by the Alabama
and Cahawba Rivers, was in desperate straits, from
which it might escape only with great difficulty.
Curry, who makes record of the episode as includ-
ing "the most terrible night of his life," says: —
I held my position, not violently assailed, until the
enemy had gotten betwixt me and the town. Seeing
everything in confusion, and our army routed, my men
became uncontrollable, and sought safety. With a squad
adhering to me, I crossed the fortifications, as to go into
Selma was capture or death. Avoiding the road, on
which were Federal troops, I soon found myself in the
woods, and in a swamp. May I be spared from such
another night ! The Federals fired the government build-
ings, the foundries and naval works and magazines,
which amid the awful explosions ignited and consumed
the business portion of the city. The din was fearful.
The rattle of musketry, the music of brass bands, the
explosion of shells, the shrieks of women, made a second
Tophet. The burning town made an illumination which
extended for several miles. Amid the hurrahing of vic-
tors, and the tramping of pursuers and pursued, I walked
nearly the whole night. The next day, avoiding the
scouts of the cavalry, I found my way to Mr. Mims', and
spent the night.
The next day, with two men, I lay in the woods. At
188 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
night, as the country was full of cavalry, we travelled;
and just at day I paid a negro five dollars in Confederate
money, — all of any kind I had, — to put us across Ca-
hawba River in a canoe. A young horse, which Mr.
Mims loaned me, swam by the boat. On the west bank
of the river we were safe. My two companions soon left
me, and I rode to Marion. On the street I met Judge
Porter King, who invited me to his house, and fed myself
and horse. I found in the town General Forrest, who
had effected his escape from Selma; and I promptly re-
ported to him for duty.
Curry spent a period of several days, extending
from the 8th to the 14th of April, at Greensboro,
Alabama, in collecting what remained of his scat-
tered command. On the 14th he received orders to
muster his forces in the vicinity of Montevallo or
Elyton, and to guard the prairie country against
any approach of the enemy from the direction of
the Tennessee River. The orders were from For-
rest, and were characteristic; for they contained
the further instruction that Curry was to report to
General Dick Taylor at Meridian, to General Adams
at Montgomery, or to Forrest himself at Gaines-
ville, or wherever he might establish his headquar-
ters. Colonel Stewart was to report to Curry; and
Curry, in addition to ''guarding the prairie-country"
with his scanty and disorganized troops, was to
establish a courier-line from Greensboro to Talla-
dega, — a distance of over a hundred miles.
Everything was in great confusion and turmoil;
but in the midst of it, officers and soldiers alike
were in happy ignorance that General Lee had
already surrendered at Appomattox on the 9th of
the month, to an overwhelming enemy, what was
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 189
left of the Army of Northern Virginia, — a ragged
and starved and footsore remnant of ''that incom-
parable array of bright bayonets and tattered
uniforms," whose fidelity and courage continued
unfailing to the end.
On the morning of April 17, while trying to get
his wagons and men across the flush and flooded
Cahawba River at Centreville, Curry received by
private messenger the intelligence that his wife had
died on April 8, nine days before; and that her
death had been hastened by a current and appar-
ently authentic report that her husband had been
killed at the battle of Selma. It was a tragic end-
ing to a union that had been a very happy one.
"She was a pure, noble Christian woman, and a de-
voted wife," is the tribute which he pays to her memory.
"For eighteen years our lives had run peacefully and
happily together. No woman sympathized more heartily
with the Confederacy, or labored more self-denyingly for
the soldiers and their families. My wife was a member
of the Presbyterian Church."
Stricken sorely in his affections, and with the
cause, that he held close at heart, in apparently
desperate emergency, and in reality already lost,
he started homeward on a journey that enabled his
official duty to coincide with his desire to be with
his family.
"Turning over my little command to Colonel Stewart,"
he writes, "I proceeded to reconnoitre and locate the
proposed line of couriers, and to look after my motherless
children, — Susie Lamar and Manly Bowie. I reached
Talladega and my home on the 18th, the day of Johnston's
surrender to Sherman. As I neared my honie, my slaves
190 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
ran up the road to greet me, with sympathy at my loss
and gladness at my return."
On April 21 a brigade of Federal cavalry passed
through Talladega.
"Gathering a few soldiers," says Curry, "I counted
them, and then watched their movements, to report.
While in a lane, I captured a Federal soldier, and took
his mule and arms. As I was protecting my prisoner
from the thoughtless insults of the men who were with
me, I was very near being shot. Unnoticed, another
Federal soldier had approached within thirty yards of
me. When I discovered him he was taking deliberate
aim at me. Gathering my bridle and spurring my horse,
I charged upon him, and fired my pistol. He fled and I
was only too glad of an opportunity to escape, as several
of his companions were in sight."
A Federal garrison, under General Crysler of
New York, occupied Talladega on May 13th. To
this command, Curry, having learned of Lee's sur-
render at Appomattox and of Johnston's in North
Carolina, and realizing that the great struggle
was at an end, reported and surrendered; and
was paroled. By order of General Canby, he was
arrested on the 30th of the same month; but was
again discharged on his personal parole the same
day.
"The arrest," he states, "grew out of a 'cock and bull
story' in the New York Tribune, that I had favored the
assassination of Lincoln and the cruel treatment of
Federal prisoners. General Crysler treated me uniformly
with consideration and kindness; but he was accused,
and probably not wrongfully, of levying 'blackmail' on
citizens, and taking cotton for his own use. His quarter-
master took corn and forage and meat from me without
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 191
the slightest compensation, and a Michigan regiment
robbed me of three mules in open daylight. Of course
the rascals charged 'Uncle Sam' for these purchases."
Talladega County was now under martial law;
and the people were so crushed that even a corporal
could commit almost any depredation upon persons
or property with entire impunity. "The Freed-
man's Bureau was instituted," says Curry, ''and
some of the fanatical or corrupt agents sought to
make masters support their former slaves, or divide
with them their property. Generally, the negroes
behaved well. Mine, with one exception, remained
on the place as usual. I stayed at home quietly on
my farm with my two children."
In September, 1865, a bill of information was
filed against Curry in the Federal District Court at
Montgomery, for the confiscation of his property,
on the grounds that he had been engaged in armed
rebellion against the United States; that he had
subscribed largely to the Confederate Cotton Loan;
that he had furnished money, provisions, clothing,
and other materials for the use of persons engaged
in the ''rebellion," and that he had used and circu-
lated the paper currency and bonds of the State of
Alabama and of the Confederacy, said notes and
bonds having been issued for the purpose of waging
war against the United States Government.
"This information from the District Attorney," says
Curry, "was never served on me by the Marshal, but
was returned as executed; and I was thus at the mercy
of as despicable and unprincipled a set of adventurers
and robbers as ever, under official sanction, plundered a
helpless people. I employed Judge William R. Chilton
to look after my interests; and he compromised with the
192 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
ofRcials, 'hungry as dogs and merciless as wolves/ by
the payment of $250, the receipt for which lying before
me, is the evidence of the robbery."
In October, Curry went to Washington to obtain
a pardon, travelling by way of Chattanooga, Nash-
ville, Louisville and Cincinnati. East Tennessee
was not considered even at that time altogether
safe for persons who had been in active sympathy
with the Confederate cause; and hence Curry's
wide detour to reach the capitol.
"On the 22nd," he writes, "I arrived at the capitol
city, Congress being in session. On the 23rd, unattended
by any person, I saw the Attorney General and President
Johnson. The latter received me courteously and kindly.
To my application for pardon, he made no immediate
reply; but talked freely about the condition of the coun-
try and the state of feeling at the South.
"On my rising to leave, he expressed a wish for a fur-
ther conversation, and told me to call next morning at
the State Department, and the pardon would be ready
for me. In Congress I had had a pleasant but not inti-
mate acquaintance with the President, when he was a
Senator from Tennessee. I was, of course, prompt in
calling on the 24th at the State Department, then in the
upper portion of the Treasury Building; and after mak-
ing and signing the required oath, the pardon, with the
signatures of the President and of 'W. Hunter, acting
Secretary of State,' attested by the Great Seal, was
handed to me."
As pertinent to his subsequent relations with the
Federal Government, in whose service he later occu-
pied a distinguished position, it may be stated here
that it was not until February 27, 1877, that the
United States Senate passed the bill under which
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 193
Curry's political disabilities were removed. The
signing of this bill on March 2 was one of the last
official acts of President Grant.
On the same day that he received his pardon, he
started South for Richmond; and travelHng thence
he reached his home in Talladega on the last day of
the month.
CHAPTER XII
PEACE AND SERVICE
Before the War between the States politics had
absorbed the time and attention of most thoughtful
men in Alabama and the lower South, but it was
politics of a high kind. The war-smitten people of
that region were now to grapple for their very social
existence with another and inconceivably degraded
form of politics. For six years, during the fateful
period of Reconstruction, fuller of bitterness and
suffering and degradation than the fewer years of
battle and defeat, they experienced poverty and
detraction and woe under the vicious rule of the
carpet-bagger, the ''scalawag" and the newly-
enfranchised negro. Of the evil domination of
the State by the creatures of the Freedman's Bureau,
and of its looting by legislatures composed of negroes
and their more offensive and reckless white allies,
space in this narrative does not admit the telling.
The awful mistake of the reconstruction theory,
now universally admitted, and the eternal infamy
of the reconstruction period are written in indelible
letters upon the life of the South. Its influences
must be inferred rather than discussed in these pages.
In November of 1865, Curry, with his heart set
upon the cause of religion as the one eternal thing to
which a man of soul could repair amid the overthrow
of all old standards, attended the Baptist State Con-
194
PEACE AND SERVICE 195
vention at Marion, Alabama, and was elected its
presiding officer. During the session of the con-
vention, the trustees of Howard College, then located
at Marion, a small college set up by the Baptist
people, elected him President of that institution.
At this time, as may naturally be supposed, the
finances of the school were at a low ebb and on an
uncertain basis. But there were those who realized,
as defeated peoples have done in many ages, that
the resuscitation of their impoverished and prostrate
country lay in the hope of educating the unvan-
quished boys and girls, with a new world awaiting
their activities. Out of the abundance of their poverty
these people subscribed with generous unselfishness
to the guarantee of the President's salary, which was
fixed at $5,000 in currency, or $3,500 in gold.
Curry accepted the Presidency of the college, and
removed in December, 1865, to Marion, taking with
him his son. Manly, then a boy eight or nine years
of age, whose sister, Susie, a young girl of fifteen,
had in the preceding October been entered as a pupil
in the Judson Female Institute, in the same town.
Curry writes of his work in connection with the
college : —
Most of my time, after a little teaching in moral and
mental science, and political economy, was given to travel
through the States, and public addresses in behalf of the
college and general education. . . . During the year
I visited Selma, Montgomery, Tuskegee, Jacksonville,
Talladega, Mobile, Gainesville, and Mississippi.
On the 28th of January, 1866, he was ordained to
the gospel ministry; and, as a fitting accompaniment
to the statement of so serious and important an
196 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGEAPHY
event in his life, his own account of his rehgious
history and experience may be here appropriately
set down: —
"In early life," he writes, "my parents were not Chris-
tians, although moral, upright and regular attendants on
religious worship. The only denominations in the lower
part of Lincoln County were Methodists and Baptists.
I remember to have heard George F. Pierce, the Bishop,
when he was a young man. The first missionary sermon
I ever heard was at Double Branch meeting-house, by
Dr. C. Mallory. It was in the week, drew a large audi-
ence, and produced a profound impression. The Baptist
preachers I remember were Adams, a colored man, who
preached acceptably to white people, Taylor, Juriah
Harris, and John L. West. The last was often at my
father's. My father's house was always a welcome and
hospitable home for all preachers.
"There were no Sunday Schools near me when I was
young. In fact, I never was a member of a Sunday
school until I was married. In early youth I had no
distinctive religious impressions or convictions. My sen-
sibilities and emotions were sometimes awakened, but
were physical excitements and had no religious basis.
All my life I was outwardly moral. I never uttered an
oath, and never gambled, although I learned to play
cards when I was eight or nine years old. When at
college, I attended church, more because it was a college
regulation and to see the girls than for any other pur-
pose. I used to hear Dr. Hoyt, Drs. Curry (now — 1877 —
of New York), Means, Smith, Longstreet, Chambliss,
Albert Williams, Branham, &c. Of the Bible, I was
stupidly ignorant. During college, I had, as most boys
have at some period of their lives, skeptical notions;
but I was afraid of them, and deliberately burned, with-
out reading, Paine's 'Age of Reason,' which a class-mate
gave to me.
PEACE AND SERVICE 197
"When at the Law School, I heard Theodore Parker,
Dr. Walker, Dr. Kirk, and Baron Stow; but had no
convictions of sin, nor desire for salvation.
"After my return from the Mexican War, there was a
protracted meeting at Kelly's Springs, and my father was
baptized. His baptism made a deep impression on me.
During the meeting I was admitted into the church, and
was baptized by Elder Samuel Henderson. ... I
have never had any rapturous experiences, any overpow-
ering views of my sinfulness of forgiveness; and to this
day, with humiliation I record it, I have never had any
special satisfaction in partaking of the Lord's Supper.
I know the depravity of my heart, the need of regenera-
tion, my utter inability to change my own heart and
character. I believe the Bible, the atonement of Christ,
its all sufficiency, and rely simply on Christ's work and
grace for salvation. I find most contentment in working
for my Master, although I am sure there is no merito-
riousness, as procuring salvation, in any human right-
eousness. I have often wished and prayed for the expe-
riences that some Christians have; but they have been
denied me, or possibly, by unbelief I have denied them
to myself.
"In 1847, I attended the Alabama Baptist State Con-
vention at Greensboro, Alabama, and was on the Com-
mittee on Education. In 1848, and for several successive
years, I was a delegate to Coosa River Association, and was
the Clerk of the body, writing many of the reports, four of
which bear my name. In 1856 I was elected Moderator
and so continued when present. In 1856 the East Ala-
bama Baptist Convention was organized, and I was
elected President for two or three sessions. In 1865,
and for a few sessions thereafter, I was elected President
of the Alabama Baptist State Convention.
"During these various years, I taught in Sunday
Schools, made missionary and other religious addresses,
conducted prayer-meetings, and sometimes delivered
198 J. L. M. CUREY, A BIOGRAPHY
what are called exhortations. I may have been called
an active lay-member. Once, by my Church, I was
chosen deacon and declined. During the war, when in
command of my regiment, I sometimes, in the absence of
the chaplain, or in default of one, addressed my men on
practical religion.
"In the summer of 1865, at Refuge Church, in Talla-
dega County, Rev. William McCain, the pastor, induced
me to preach my first regular sermon. In August and
September I aided J. J. D. Renfroe, my pastor, and Dr.
Spalding, in a meeting in Talladega town. A spectacle,
novel and interesting, was that of a Confederate soldier
and a Federal soldier, who walked into the water, hand
in hand. In September, I aided the same brethren and
Brother O. Welch, the pastor, in a meeting at Talladega
(now Alpine) church. In December, I assisted Dr. W.
H. Mcintosh in a meeting at Marion, Alabama. All these
meetings were highly successful.
"I have been invited (I write this on 22 March, 1877)
to pastorates in Selma, Montgomery, Mobile, Atlanta,
Augusta, Wilmington, Raleigh, New Orleans, Memphis,
St. Louis, San Francisco, Louisville, Norfolk, Richmond,
Baltimore, New York, Boston and Brooklyn; but I have
had no inclination or conviction that it was my duty to
become exclusively a preacher. At times I love to preach,
and I am profoundly convinced that sacerdotal ideas
connected with the ministry, or preaching, have been
productive of untold evil."
The intimacy, simplicity and candor of this state-
ment not only reveal the pre-occupation of serious
minded men of that age in religious matters, but
constitute of themselves a sufficient warranty that
Curry's discharge of the duties of his most high and
sacred office was conscientious and earnest. Al-
though he declined invitation after invitation of the
PEACE AND SERVICE 199
most flattering character to accept a regular pastor-
ate, he continued nevertheless to do a great deal of
preaching. One hundred and nineteen sermons were
delivered by him during the first year of his ministry,
— an extraordinary intellectual feat, apart from the
devotion which it illustrates; while, in addition, he
made numerous addresses at prayer-meetings, Sun-
day Schools, associations, conventions and mass-
meetings. He visited Richmond, Baltimore and
Washington, and spoke on education and missions.
He had beaten the sword of the soldier into the
reaping-hook of a spiritual harvest, wherein he
labored with an industry and persistence which vin-
dicated his assertion that he ''loved to preach."
The influence of the preacher upon the life of the
South is a story not yet adequately told. It may
be doubted if the world has quite appreciated the
singular religious quality of the Southern people and
their leaders both in their military struggle and in
the period of grim endurance after the conflict.
Great revivals frequently swept the armies and
preachers turned caissons into pulpits. From the
ministry such oflScers as Pendleton, Lowry, Evans,
Capers, Mell, Shoup, Dabney, Harrison, Willis,
Peterkin, Polk, Smith, and Chapman entered the
army and attained great distinction, and great
preachers like Early, Quintard, Marvin, Pierce,
Doggett, Palmer, the Hoges, Jeter, Burrows, the
Rylands, Broadus, Minnegerode, Duncan, Father
Ryan, shared with the military leaders the admira-
tion and esteem of the soldiers in the ranks. The
spectacle of Jackson and Gordon holding torches,
in order that the Chaplain might read the Scrip-
tures to the fierce veterans of the eastern armies,
200 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
recalls Cromwell and his Ironsides in another age of
deep feeling and high purpose. Near the beginning
of the year 1866 Curry was invited to become
a co-secretary of the American Baptist Home
Mission Society, — one of the most distinguished
and important offices of his church; in the fol-
lowing June he was asked to assume the pastorate
of the Selma Baptist Church at a salary of S4,000;
and at other times during the year he received calls
from the Coliseum Baptist Church, in New Orleans,
the Second Baptist Church in Richmond, and the
Franklin Square Baptist Church in Baltimore. In
November, at the Alabama Baptist State Conven-
tion, he was re-elected President of that body.
This is the record of a busy man, honorably, use-
fully and hopefully employed, and of a tough and
vital nature, steeped in moral purpose, that could
thus turn without complaint or cynicism from the
excitements and ambitions of war and statesman-
ship to quieter and humbler, but essentially greater,
projects of rebuilding and social service. No morbid
despair of life, no idle regret for lost and now un-
availing causes, no surrender to the adversities and
calamities which had befallen him, almost before
his prime, possessed the soul of Curry. Undaunted
and undismayed, he buckled on the whole armor of
faith, and in his works honored God and aided his
fellow-man with a will that defeat could not check
nor humiliation daunt. Nor were his energies and
efforts confined to the assistance and amelioration
of those who with himself had been cast down in
the wreck of a great struggle. He turned himself
in helpful sympathy to the ignorant and humble
race, out of whose seeming triumph came to be
PEACE AND SERVICE 201
wrought an Ilium of woes; and whose new-found
friends had laid upon unprepared shoulders a double
burden of freedom and of enfranchisement. With
the tenderness and affection for the black man which
the typical Southern slaveholder preserved to the
end, and which the typical Southern slave rewarded
with a fidelity and devotion that" is unparalleled in
the history of the world, — a tenderness which the
alien will never comprehend, and a devotion which
will never cease to astonish the outsider, — Curry
was, from the moment of the fall of the Confederacy,
occupied in mind and heart with the probable future
of these people. On May 15th, 1866, he held a con-
ference at Marion with Messrs. Mcintosh and
Raymond, the pastors of the local Baptist and
Presbyterian Churches, with reference to the educa-
tion of the freedmen of the town. They agreed
upon a town-meeting, to be held on the 17th of the
month; and on that day a preliminary gathering
took place, whose object was to devise ways and
means towards this desired end. ' Shortly afterwards,
another meeting was held, at which Curry, supported
by the two ministers already mentioned, and by
ex-Governor Andrew B. Moore, prepared and intro-
duced resolutions favoring the education of the
colored people by the white people of the South. It
was a wise and prescient act upon his part; and in
dealing with the proposition he took an advanced
position beyond that of most of his Southern con-
temporaries, many of whom were paralyzed with
fear and wonder at the sudden injection of a great
mass of ignorance ''into the belly of the constitu-
tion." But Curry met the exigency of the situation
with the judgment, the courage, the faith and the
202 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
energy that had characterized his earUer career;
and for it, in the end, he received his rich reward.
In this year of 1866, he began to keep regularly
a record or diary; and the little leather-bound
pocket-books contain many entries that bring the
past days of a notable but disjointed and despairing
period and a noble career vividly before the reader's
eyes. Among many other details of this critical
year after the war, when despair and hope alter-
nately swayed the Southern balances, we find him
writing cheerfully and without repining. Not a few
of these entries are quite insignificant, alone and
in themselves; but they go together to show the
equal temper of his heart and mind, his quick in-
terest in the life about him, his zest for work, and
may thus serve to illustrate his character and con-
duct: —
Saturday, February 3 (Entry made at Meridian, Miss.)
Carpet-sack taken from me by mistake, with clothes and
all my sermons. Left for Mobile at 5 p. m.
Tuesday, February 6. Called on Miss Augusta Evans.
Saturday, February 10. Called with Miss Augusta Evans
on Mrs. Chandron, who translated Joseph II, — a most
accomplished and pleasant woman.
Monday, February 12. Spent Monday night at Mr.
Evans', — the father of Miss Augusta J. Evans, author of
Inez, Beulah, Macaria and St. Elmo.
Saturday, March 31. Took tea at General Lawler's
with General Willis Bocock and Prof. A. J. Battle.
Tuesday, April 3. At 3.30 p. m. delivered a "little"
lecture to the students of Howard.
Wednesday, April 11. (Entry made at Tuskegee, Ala.)
Dined with Mr. McDonald. Met Mrs. Covington {nee
Miss Bussy), who knew my father and mother before
marriage, and my grandfather and mother, and great-
PEACE AND SERVICE 203
grandmother, who would never ride, but was a great
pedestrian. My mother, when a girl, was cheerful and
lively.
Monday, May 14. Informed of a contemplated duel,
and mediation requested.
Wednesday, May 16. Officiated for the first time in
marrying a couple, Marion M. Burch of Kentucky and
Ella L. Curry. Spent the night at Jabez Curry's.
Monday, May 21. Left Marion at 6 a. m. Reached
Selma at 9.20 a. m. Preached at night and baptized two
young boys. This was my first administration of the
ordinance.
Friday, June 1. Duel between M. P. Kennon and
Capt. Frank Lumpkin. Two shots. No damage. Ad-
justment.
Friday, August 31. Invitation to Presidency of Rich-
mond College.
Wednesday, September 12. Reached Montgomery at
9 A. M. Called with Judge Chilton, at 12 m., on Governor
Patton, just returned from Chicago, — the "inauguration"
of the Douglas monument. The Governor hopeful as to
political affairs; Chief Justice Walker despondent.
Tuesday, October 9. Commenced teaching in College.
Recitations in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and
Rhetoric.
Sunday, November 18. (Entry made in Richmond.)
Preached at Second Baptist Church at 11 a. m.
Assisted in communion service at First Baptist Church
at 4 p. M., and talked to converts.
Dr. Steel and Messrs. Farrer, Courtney and Ellyson, a
committee of the Second Baptist Church, waited on me
with a request to accept pastorate.
Preached at night in First Baptist Church to a large
congregation. Drs. Stiles, Ryland and Burrows on the
stand.
A busy day, surely!
204 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
More than ten years later Curry wrote again,
under date of that same full day, in one of the little
brown leather-backed diaries: —
On the 18th of November, happy day, I was accepted
by Mary W. Thomas. I have had occasion, every day
since, to thank God for this great goodness. I can recall
the very spot where my proposal was acceded to.
On Tuesday, January 8, 1867, he made the follow-
ing entry in his diary : —
Weighed to-day 157 pounds; — more than I ever weighed
before.
On 28th February, 1867, in his official capacity of
President of Howard College, he entered into cor-
respondence with Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, with
reference to the Peabody donation, a gift of three
millions of dollars by which Mr. George Peabody of
Massachusetts established what became known as
the Peabody Education Fund. This correspondence
was the beginning of a later very close personal and
official relationship between the two men, the details
of which are to be found in subsequent chapters of
this narrative.
In March of this year he was instructed by the
trustees of his college, who armed him at the same
time with a resolution of their confidence, to visit
Virginia and Baltimore, for the purpose of securing
some part, if possible, of the Peabody Fund for
their own institution. Accordingly he set out for
Richmond about the middle of the month, spending
some days on the way, and remaining in Virginia
only a short time. He appears to have been sick
during a portion of this trip; and he did not reach
PEACE AND SERVICE 205
Baltimore as he had contemplated. At the end of
the first week in April he was again at Marion; and
there is no record in his journals and notes of any
fruitful results of the journey.
On June 17, 1867, he set out for another trip to
Virginia, which had in view a different object than
procuring aid for Howard College from the Peabody
Fund. He travelled tranquilly, as one with a serene
and untroubled mind, who having earned some days
of leisure, proposed to enjoy them. He stopped at
various places on his way northward. Among others,
he was at Charlottesville on the 21st.
"I visited the University in the afternoon," he
wrote in his diary; in which he always alludes to
Jefferson's great educational institution at Char-
lottesville as ''the University," apparently taking
it for granted, as did most Southerners, and all Vir-
ginians, that there could be no difficulty in recog-
nizing its identity. While in Charlottesville he
visited the grave of Jefferson, in the graveyard on
the mountain side; and Monticello, where the ''sen-
tinel over the rights of men" had spent his last
years in his home upon the summit of the Little
Mountain.
On the next day after his visit to Jefferson's
house and burial-place, he reached Richmond.
The entries in the little brown-backed books had
during the preceding months contained frequent
mention of "M. W. T.", and of a correspondence in
which the owner of those initials was a participant;
and on the 18th of the preceding November, —
"happy day!" — it showed the record of his engage-
ment. So that the reader, who has followed these
pages, may reasonably have surmised ere this, that
206 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
Curry was visiting Richmond to be present at his
own wedding.
On June 25, 1867, he and Miss Mary W.
Thomas were married. She was the daughter of
Mr. James Thomas, a prominent business man of
Richmond, whom Curry, when a Confederate Con-
gressman, had met, as he records, with her parents
and numerous sisters, under a tree on the lawn of
Mr. Thomas' residence, upon a certain summer's
day, when she was "a, sweet, beautiful girl of seven-
teen." The marriage ceremony was performed at
8.30 P.M., as he punctiliously relates, in the First
Baptist Church, with Rev. William D. Thomas and
Dr. J. L. Burrows officiating. A large and brilliant
assemblage witnessed the solemn ceremony; and
the bridegroom writes that besides the officiating
ministers, there were present on the platform, as
interested spectators, Doctors Jeter, Ryland, T. G.
Jones and Shaver, and Reverend Messrs. Grimsby,
Hume, and Morgan of England.
"From that day," says Curry in 1877, "our lives have
flowed happily together, like two streams whose waters
are indissolubly blended. Not a harsh word has ever
passed the lips of either, nor an unkind thought been
harbored for a moment in either heart. Now, after ten
years of union, I can bless God for such a gift, and truly
say that earth contains not a wiser, purer, nobler, better
woman."
Surely no wife ever won a finer tribute than that!
An hour or two after their marriage Curry and his
wife left Richmond for New York; and thence, on
Saturday, June 29, they set sail for Europe. In the
party were William D. Thomas, Dr. J. M. Williams
of Baltimore, Professor Huntingdon, Rev. Thomas
PEACE AND SERVICE 207
Hume, Jr., of Portsmouth, Dr. G. W. Samson and
his family, and Messrs. Wheeler, Johnson and Farn-
ham, all of whom appear to have been friends or
acquaintances of Curry's, and whose presence he
notes in his diary.
Their trip abroad, which was not so common an
experience as it is to-day, covered a period of four
months, and included England, Scotland, Belgium,
Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France.
On July 13, runs the diary, they were at "West-
minster Palace, Westminster Abbey, and the British
Museum ; on the next day, Sunday, they heard with
interest a sermon from Spurgeon. In Italy, on the
24th, they visited Pompeii, and climbed Vesuvius;
at Florence, on August 1, they traversed the galleries
of the Uffizi and Pitti palaces, and dwelt with unac-
customed eyes upon the glories of an ancient and
unexcelled art; and there they visited the American
sculptor, Hiram Powers, in his studio. On August
23, still following the now beaten track of the later
tourist, they returned to Paris, where they remained
until October 5, in attendance upon the Exposition
and visiting the various places in its vicinity of his-
torical or artistic interest. Here, in Paris, after a
lapse of years, Curry makes record that he heard
Patti sing again, with a charm that had lost nothing
of its delight since he had heard her, ten years ear-
lier, in Washington. Setting their faces homeward,
by way of England, the Currys once more heard
Spurgeon in his great London Tabernacle; and had
the pleasure of making his personal acquaintance.
The travellers reached New York October 28,
whence they went straight to Richmond, where they
tarried only a few days, and arrived at Marion early
208 J. L. M. CURKY, A BIOGRAPHY
in November, The next month he attended the
State Baptist Convention at Mobile, and was again
and for the third time elected its President.
His ''love of preaching" meanwhile continued a
potent influence with him. Indeed, " love of preach-
ing" but mildly expresses the deepest impulse of
the man's nature, which was to teach and move his
fellows. During 1867, in spite of his wanderings and
various distractions, he preached forty sermons, — one
of which was in Paris, and another in Edinburgh;
and delivered forty-two addresses and lectures.
On July 10, while he was off the coast of Ireland,
in his trip abroad, he was honored with the degree
of Doctor of Laws by Mercer University, Georgia,
of which he made record in his notes, with many
exclamation points. ,
Mercer University, Georgia, conferred on me, to-day,
the Degree of Doctor of Laws!!!!
The later months of 1867 and the earUer ones of
1868 were busily occupied by Curry, who in addi-
tion to the duties of his collegiate office, was engaged
in travelling here and there, and preaching and
making addresses before religious and educational
gatherings. At Talladega, on January 13, yielding
to the earnest persuasion of his old friends and for-
mer constituents, he made a speech in opposition to
the adoption of the Reconstruction State Constitu-
tion. The constitution was legally defeated by the
terms of the Congressional enabling act, which
required that a majority of the registered vote
should be cast; but the Congress, with ruthless
disregard of its own act, admitted Alabama into
the Union under an unadopted reconstruction con-
PEACE AND SERVICE 209
stitution; and with it, put in authority a State
government, of whom the Lieutenant-Governor,
Applegate of Ohio, the Secretary of State, Miller
of Maine, the Auditor, Reynolds of Maine, and the
Commissioner of Revenue, Keiffer of Ohio, were all
officials of the Freedman's Bureau. In the county,
in which the State capitol was located, the Recon-
structionists nominated a ticket, which was a fair
example of others in counties where the Freedman's
Bureau most flourished. Their candidates for the
legislature were a citizen of Ohio, an Austrian, and
three negroes; and those for the county offices of
Probate Judge, Clerk of the Circuit Court and
Sheriff were all Northerners.
Curry wrote of his speech against the Black and
Tan Constitution of Alabama, in 1877, that it was
'Hhe only political speech he had made since the
War"; but he had made up his mind to get away
from the ocean of political degradation and misrule
that surrounded hun, whose current of iniquity he
was powerless to stem. On April 21, 1868, within
three months after the election, Curry resigned the
Presidency of Howard College. On the 27th, at the
urgent request of several of his friends, he withdrew
his resignation, provisionally; but, in fact, he never
acted in an official capacity for the institution after-
wards. An unusual sense of profound dishearten-
ment seems to have come upon him in the contem-
plation of his surroundings. For once his buoyant
spirit lacked resiliency. ''The country was too
bankrupt," he wrote, ''and the political outlook too
discouraging, to make a continuance of efforts for
endowment desirable."
Long after his State had resumed her position of
210 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
honor and dignity in the galaxy of Commonwealths
under the rule of her own people, and when her coal
and iron had made her a center of interest to the
industrial world, Curry made final record in 1901 of
his reasons for leaving Alabama: —
No. man ever had truer or more devoted friends than
honored me with their confidence in Alabama, and it was
with deep reluctance that I turned my face away from
the State of my boyhood and manhood, which still holds
my paramount affection. It seemed unwise to keep my
wife and children under radical misrule, and to remain
where a generation or more would be needed to recover
from the disastrous consequences of the War and hostile
legislation.
It is manifest that a sharp conflict arose in his
mind between his duty to his region, which he had
served so faithfully and which had trusted him so
completely, and his duty to his young wife who had
joined her fortunes to his.
The claims of wife and children prevailed.
CHAPTER XIII
IN THE OLD DOMINION
It will be recalled that in 1866 Curry had been
offered the presidency of Richmond College, — an
honor which was declined at the time of its tender.
But, when upon his return from Europe in October,
1867, he was notified of his appointment to the chair
of History and English Literature in the same insti-
tution, he appears to have regarded the proposi-
tion with a more favorable consideration. Yet it is
scarcely probable that this invitation was in any
large sense a determining factor in his removal from
Alabama, where he had resided for thirty years.
The social and political conditions of reconstruc-
tion, which Virginia had so far escaped, and family
considerations were the compelling motives, as he
has himself recorded, which finally induced his de-
termination to leave his former home.
With his family, he reached Richmond, which
thenceforward became his residence, on the 3rd of
May, 1868; and leaving his son and daughter there
at the house of his father-in-law, Mr. Thomas, he
went with Mrs. Curry to Baltimore, to attend the
Southern Baptist Convention, which was to meet
in that city on the 7th. According to previous
arrangement he was to preach the introductory
sermon before the Convention; but this plan was
prevented by a singular accident. As they were
211
212 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
approaching Baltimore, at a point six miles from
the city, between it and the Relay House, Mrs.
Curry, who was seated by her husband's side in
the carriage, was struck on the head by a stone,
weighing some four pounds, which was hurled at
the occupants of the vehicle by some undiscovered
ruffian; and her skull was fractured.
"At first," writes Curry, "I thought that she had been
shot with a pistol; and did not learn the extent of the
injury until, on arriving at the Eutaw House, Dr. R. N.
Smith, the eminent surgeon, came out and informed me.
She did not recover consciousness until the 9th. We had
the sympathy and proffers of service from hosts of
friends."
No clue to the perpetrator of this outrage, nor
motive for its commission was ever discovered; but
it had the effect of disarranging all of Curry's plans;
and it was not until the 9th of the month, two days
after the Convention had assembled, that he ap-
peared before it, and made an address in behalf of
the Greenville Theological Seminary. His recent
experiences in Alabama had profoundly impressed
him with the need of providing religious instruction
for the newly-emancipated slaves; and we find him
soon after his visit to Baltimore, and the accident
to Mrs. Curry, addressing a mass-meeting of Bap-
tists in Richmond, and urging upon his auditors the
importance of the Southern people putting forth
more vigorous efforts for giving the negroes a proper
religious education. In the meantime he was still
''preaching," — filling, as opportunity offered or occa-
sion demanded, the various pulpits of Drs. Fuller,
Williams, and Hatcher. The astounding readiness
with which, without technical preparation, he was
' IN THE OLD DOMINION 213
able to "preach" to the delight of great critical
audiences in the big cities proves again the conten-
tion that the man's overmastering impulse was
didactic. He had to preach — from some sort of
rostrum.
His summer of this year was more or less unevent-
ful. In June he was in New York City, preaching in
the Madison Avenue Church, and receiving and con-
sidering certain tentative propositions, looking to his
acceptance of its pastorate, as the successor of Dr.
H. G. Weston, who had been called to the Presidency
of Crozer Theological Seminary. Later he attended
sundry association meetings; and on the 13th of July,
1868, he signified at last his formal acceptance of a
professorship in Richmond College.
For a number of successive summers after the
close of the War between the States, the Greenbrier
Wnite Sulphur Springs was the rendezvous of many
men and women who had been conspicuous for their
devotion and services to the Confederacy; and, in the
simple surroundings of the place, the most refined
and gracious and intelligent society of what was left
of the old South, was accustomed to gather for a
brief and unostentatious annual recreation. Thither
Curry went in the latter part of August, and spent a
week; and among his former associates, acquaint-
ances and friends, found there Commodore Matthew
F. Maury, General Robert E. Lee, General P. G. T.
Beauregard, General John Echols, Governor Pickens
of South Carolina, Governor Letcher of Virginia, Sen-
ator Allen T. Caperton, Mr. Alexander H. H. Stuart,
and Mr. Alexander H. Stephens. With the tremen-
dous tragedy of the War immediately behind them,
it may be well imagined that these illustrious partici-
214 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
pants in its tremendous endeavors and failures,
found much to recall of the past, and no less to hope
and plan for in the future. One wishes that such a
vivid talker and keen observer as Curry had handed
down to us some transcript of the talk of this unusual
company. They had been actors in a great tragic
enterprise and had failed, but they were not broken
soldiers of fortune or disappointed adventurers. In-
deed they came nearer to being martyrs than adven-
turers — martyrs to idealism and to love of home and
locality; or else unworldly champions of an idea
which seemed to them finer than life. Millions of
silent, proud people still loved and trusted them.
They were beginning life over again with erect heads,
and most of them, as poorly paid public servants in
the fields of education or industry.
The great dining hall of the famous hotel was filled
one evening when a gentleman in gray clothes entered
with a friend and was proceeding modestly to a seat.
Suddenly some one silently rose as he passed, and, as
if by magic, the whole company rose without noisy
acclaim, for they had recognized the face and figure
of Lee, and spontaneously their hearts had taught
them to act as loyal subjects do when the king passes
by. That pure and lofty face was known to them all.
Some had seen it in the glare of battle. Women and
children knew it as a symbol of the highest for which
they had suffered. It was such a scene as could only
happen to people who had known great sorrow but
had kept unsullied a standard of human virtue, and
thus touchingly did homage to goodness worn so
simply and yet so fair to behold in the noble presence
of their great leader.
During the month of September, 1868, with his
IN THE OLD DOMINION 215
daughter, Susie, and several friends, he made an
extensive trip through the West, going as far as Fort
Hayes, where they were stopped in their further
journey by the depredations and incursions of hos-
tile Indians. The return journey to Richmond was
made in time to permit Curry to begin his new duties
as a Professor of Richmond College on Thursday,
October 1. Into this work he entered with his accus-
tomed energy, and the enthusiasm without which
men do not accomplish the great things of life; and
here for ten years he labored with the assiduity, the
intelligence and the well-directed effort, which justi-
fied a later verdict from the public of noble and fruit-
ful accomplishment. Of this experience he wrote at
a subsequent day: —
I have since acted as Associate Professor of Law, and
am now filling the Chair of Philosophy. My association
with the College has been very pleasant. I am much
attached to the students, and they apparently to me.
My rule is to treat them as gentlemen, and to have them
regard me not as a hard taskmaster, but as a sympathiz-
ing friend.
In the meantime the ''calls" and invitations that
came up to him from many places and directions to
pastorships which he persistently decHned, attest his
continued popularity and esteem among the people
of his denomination; while his professional duties did
not prevent a frequent indulgence by him in the ex-
ercise of his oratorical gifts in the pulpit and upon
secular occasions. He records that during this year
he preached sixty sermons, delivered seventy public
addresses, and wrote a chapter of "Recollections"
for Mr. Samuel Boy kin's biography of Governor
Howell Cobb.
216 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
During December, 1868, the final act of a notable
drama, growing out of the War between the States,
was witnessed by Curry. In May, 1866, an indict-
ment had been found against Mr. Davis, the Presi-
dent of the Confederate States, then a prisoner at
Fortress Monroe, by the grand jury of the Circuit
Court of the United States for the District of Vir-
ginia, and Charles 0' Conor had written a letter to
the distinguished prisoner, proffering his professional
services in his defence, which offer had been accepted.
At the May term, 1867, after repeated and unavailing
efforts on the part of Mr. Davis' counsel, consisting
of Messrs. Charles O'Conor, the acknowledged leader
of the bar in the United States, William B. Peed of
Philadelphia and John Randolph Tucker of Virginia,
George Shea of New York, Robert Ould and James
Lyons of Virginia, to obtain a trial or bail for the
prisoner, the case was called for hearing on a writ of
habeas corpus before Judge Underwood. Attorney
General Evarts, and District Attorney Chandler ap-
peared for the government; and Mr. Davis was re-
leased upon a bail bond of One Hundred Thousand
Dollars, with Horace Greeley of New York the first
surety thereon.
On the 26th of March, 1868, a new indictment had
been found against the former President of the Con-
federacy, charging him in a number of counts, and
in the involved phraseology of the law, with various
acts of treason, notable among which was that of
''conspiring with Robert E. Lee, J. P. Benjamin,
John C. Breckinridge, William Mahone, H. A. Wise,
John Letcher, William Smith, Jubal A. Early, James
Longstreet, Wilham H. Payne, D. H. Hill, A. P. Hill,
P. G. T. Beauregard, W. H. C. Whiting, Ed. Sparrow,
IN THE OLD DOMINION 217
Samuel Cooper, Joseph E. Johnston, J. B. Gordon,
C. F. Jackson, F. 0. Moore, and with other persons
whose names are to the grand jury unknown," "to
make war against the United States," and with doing
various other things, all of which things were al-
leged to have been done ''traitorously, unlawfully,
mahciously and wickedly."
On the finding of this indictment, the trial was
continued from time to time until the fourth Monday
in November, when it was arranged that Chief
Justice Chase should be present. This date was
later changed to December 3, 1868; and on that
day the Chief Justice sat with Judge Underwood to
hear a motion to quash the indictment. On this
occasion, Messrs. 0' Conor, Ould, Read and Lyons
of Mr. Davis' counsel appeared; and the govern-
ment was represented by the newly appointed dis-
trict attorney, Mr. Beach, and by Mr. Richard H.
Dana, Jr., of Boston, and Mr. H. H. Wells, the for-
mer military Governor of Virginia, when it was
''District Number One." Mr. Ould opened for the
defense on the motion to quash, and Messrs. Beach,
Wells and Dana replied. Mr. 0' Conor concluded
the case for Mr. Davis on the 4th; and the Chief
Justice and Judge Underwood disagreed, and the
case was continued until May, 1869. On the 15th
day of February, 1869, the following order was
entered in the Federal Circuit Court at Richmond : —
Monday, February 15, 1869.
United States
vs. Upon Indictment for Treason.
Thomas P. Turner, William Smith, Wade Hampton, Ben-
jamin Huger, Henry A. Wise, Samuel Cooper, G. W. C.
Lee, W. H. F. Lee, Charles Mallory, William Mahone,
218 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
O. F. Baxter, Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, William
E. Taylor, Fitzhugh Lee, George W. Alexander, Robert
H. Booker, John DeBree, M. D. Corse, Eppa Hunton,
Roger A. Pryor, D. B. Bridgford, Jubal A. Early, R. S.
Ewell, William S. Winder, George Booker, Cornelius
Bayles, William H. Payne, R. S. Andrews, C. J. Faulkner,
and R. H. Dulaney, W. N. McVeigh, H. B. Taylor, James
A. Seddon, W. B. Richards, Jr., J. C. Breckinridge and
Jefferson Davis.
(Two cases.)
The District Attorney, by leave of the Court, saith
that he will not prosecute further on behalf of the United
States against the above named parties upon separate
indictments for treason. It is, therefore, ordered by the
Court that the prosecutions aforesaid be dismissed.
The motion to quash having failed in the dis-
agreement of the Chief Justice and of Judge Under-
wood, the fact of the disagreement was certified to
the Supreme Court of the United States, where the
case was never called; and thus concluded the pros-
ecution for treason, against Mr. Davis and his as-
sociates.
Curry makes record of the historic event and of
the argument of this motion on the 4th of December,
1868:—
At the Circuit Court of the United States, Chase, Chief
Justice, presiding, a motion to quash the indictment
against Jefferson Davis was argued. I heard an able
argument from Charles O' Conor, one of Mr. Davis'
counsel. Hon. Wm. B. Reed of Philadelphia was asso-
ciate counsel. I called to see him, and had a pleasant
interview. He was a brother of Henry Reed, the author,
and himself was a graceful and scholarly writer. Our
acquaintance began by a letter he wrote to me, compli-
menting a speech in 1859 on the Speaker's election.
IN THE OLD DOMINION 219
This cold and almost colorless allusion to an event
which deeply moved the hearts of the Southern
people, written by one of the most ardent advocates
of the right of Secession and of State sovereignty,
the recognition or condemnation of which doctrines
at the hands of the law lay in the determination of
this case, serves to illustrate the cool temper of
Curry's mind and how quickly he had begun to
put into practice his precept to his son: "Let us
live in the present and for the future, leaving the
dead past to take care of itself." Though there is
nowhere in his voluminous writings to be found any
recantation of the settled and fixed convictions and
principles of his political philosophy, when the arbitra-
ment of the sword had once made final disposition of
secession and of the Calhoun idea, he did not continue
to dwell upon his ancient and unsurrendered faith;
but turned his face steadily to those newer and more
hopeful aspects, which the later dispensation prom-
ised. In this respect it may be noted here, that he
followed the illustrious example, in act and precept,
of his great commander. General Lee, whose post-
helium career was characterized by no repining or
bitterness, and by such cheerful acceptance of con-
ditions as his courage and faith might afford.
During the year 1869, Curry continued to keep
busy with his collegiate duties, his lectures and his
sermons, delivering among others two lectures in
Washington College, at Lexington, Virginia, on
''Language and Character," before cultured and
appreciative audiences that included in their number
the great president of the institution, General Robert
E. Lee.
During this session the Trustees of Richmond
220 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
College determined to abandon the governmental
system of the college, which included a President,
in favor of the more democratic scheme of making
the professors of the various schools under the title
of chairmen administrative heads of the college.
In this change they pursued the plan of govern-
ment that had been devised by Mr. Jefferson for
the University of Virginia, where it had been fol-
lowed with success since the foundation of that in-
stitution. Of the two great features of the higher
education in collegiate and university administration
and instruction, both of which Jefferson emphasized
in his foundation of his University, that of the elect-
ive system of studies has since his time steadily
grown and prevailed, in more or less modified form,
until it has become a conspicuous and accustomed
feature of university and college life in America;
while the other, namely, of choosing a Chairman of
the Faculty from the professors in rotation as the
temporary head of the institution, has been tried in
various southern institutions, as Curry records its
trial in 1869 at Richmond College, only to be ulti-
mately abandoned, as it was abandoned there, and
has since been abandoned at the University of Vir-
ginia itself, as inadequate and insufficient under
existing conditions. It is to be observed, however,
that Curry makes no comment upon its effectiveness
or lack of it, as it came under his observation at that
time.
At this time the little brown books are full of notes
of a more or less domestic and personal nature, which
record the graduation of his daughter at the Rich-
mond Female College in the schools of English,
French and Moral Science; the inception of Mrs.
IN THE OLD DOMINION 221
Curry's work as a teacher of the infant class in the
Sunday School of the First Baptist Church, of which
she made a great success, raising this class in numbers
from thirty, when she first took charge of it, to two
hundred and twenty-five, when she gave it up ten
years later, on account of ill-health; and of various
other incidents and occurrences of temporary per-
sonal interest.
The invitations to pastorates still continued to
be made and declined.
On his return from St. Louis, in obedience to such
a call, he heard Beecher preach in the Brooklyn
Tabernacle; and this year, too, the American
Baptist Publication Society published his tract,
''Protestantism: How far a Failure" — a discussion
showing the development of his mind in the direc-
tion of technical theological investigation.
But perhaps the most notable event of the year
1869, in its bearing upon his later career, was his
meeting with Mr. George Peabody. The Peabody
Fund had, at that time, just been established; and
Dr. Barnas Sears, an able and scholarly citizen of
Massachusetts, had been made its Agent, and had
come south, and taken up his residence at Staunton,
in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
''In 1869," writes Curry of this episode, "at the White
Sulphur Springs, I had the honor of being introduced by
Dr. Sears to Mr. Peabody. This was the first and only
time I ever saw him. The interview was pleasant, and
I was agreeably impressed by his benevolent countenance,
the dignity and ease with which he received visitors, and
his earnest, patriotic desire that the impoverished South
should be benefitted by his benefaction."
Curry has left in his "History of the Peabody
222 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
Education Fund " a more extended account of both
Mr. Peabody and Dr. Sears, the latter of whom he
visited some years afterwards at his home in Staunton.
The year 1870 brought to him many occasions for
wide and varied service in the causes of education
and rehgion. He attended a National Baptist Con-
vention in Brooklyn, in April of that year, which
was held under the auspices of the Brooklyn Social
Union, — in many respects a remarkable assemblage,
which gave a great impulse to the educational move-
ment of the time. Curry delivered an address before
the Convention on the '^ Condition and Prospects of
Education in the South," as affecting both races,
with especial reference to the duties of Baptists in
relation thereto.
In June, 1870, his almost abnormal activity took
form in a Report to the Board of Foreign Missions
of his Church, in which he recommended the estab-
lishment of a mission in Europe. ''From this," he
modestly writes in 1877, ''came the present success-
ful Italian Mission."
Recurring to his diaries, we note the genesis and
beginning of the Richmond College Law School, in
these simple entries: —
December 10, 1868. — Trustees of Richmond College de-
termined to establish a Law School.
October 11, 1870. — Delivered my first lecture to Law
Class on Constitutional Law.
And about 1877:—
In October, 1870, began the Law School of Richmond
College, with Mr. William Green, Judge Halyburton and
myself as Professors, I taking the chair of Constitutional
and International Law.
IN THE OLD DOMINION 223
It was a remarkable faculty with which the young
law school opened its doors. Curry, himself, was a
man of unusual distinction, wide experience, and
strong ability; Judge Halyburton had occupied con-
spicuous position in the public eye in ante-bellum
years, and in the era of the Confederacy; and Mr.
William Green was, by the testimony of his brethren
of the bar, one of the most learned lawyers then
living in America. But Halyburton and Green were
both comparatively aged men, with "eyes grown
old with gazing on the pilot-stars"; and neither
continued long in their new chairs. So that the
burden of the new law school fell upon Curry, — a
burden which he bore with his characteristic energy
and ability for several years.
On October 12, of this year (1870), General Robert
E. Lee died at Lexington; and the next month an
historic meeting of Confederate soldiers was held in
Richmond to inaugurate a movement for building
a monument to the great leader of the Southern
armies. This meeting convened in the Second
Presbyterian Church; and, amid much enthusiasm,
speeches were made by ex-President Davis, Generals
Gordon, Preston, and Henry A. Wise; and Colonels
Marshall, Johnson, Withers, and others. The move-
ment resulted in the noble equestrian monument of
Lee that is now one of the chief ornaments of Monu-
ment Avenue in the former Confederate Capital.
At this time, Dr. Barnas Sears, the General Agent
of the Peabody Fund, was present in Richmond;
and on November 2 he was Curry's guest. The
same day a meeting was held in the Capitol with
the object of advancing the cause of the Common
School System, provided by the new Constitution
224 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
of the State, and already inaugurated by Virginians
under the restored government of the Common-
wealth. The deliberations of this conference were
participated in by Governor Gilbert C. Walker, Dr.
Sears, W. W. Walker of Westmoreland, and Curry,
all of whom delivered addresses.
In December, 1870, the joint committee of the
two houses of the Virginia Legislature, then in ses-
sion, to which had been referred the question of the
disposal of the Government Land Script, held public
sessions in the Capitol; and various representatives
of the colleges and higher educational institutions
presented the claims of their respective institutions
to the endowment. Curry in two able and earnest
speeches before this Committee urged the claims of
Richmond College; but, as the issue developed,
without success.
In July, 1871, the Trustees of Richmond College
combined the schools of English and Moral Science,
and elected Curry to the chair. He accepted the
appointment, resigning the professorship of Law in
order to give his complete official time to this work,
which was more congenial to his tastes than that of a
law teacher. Again his diary is a dry record of the
addresses that he delivered in 1871, and of the
pastorates and professorships that he declined. He
caps the climax of this distinguished, if uninteresting
period, by the recital of his declination of three Col-
lege presidencies within the twelve months, namely,
of Georgetown College, Kentucky, of Mercer Uni-
versity, Georgia, and of the University of Alabama;
and notes during the same year his refusal of a pro-
fessorship in the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary. Many more were to follow from all parts
IN THE OLD DOMINION 225
of the country, among them that of the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, whose record of
educational distinction might well have proved an
allurement to his ambition.
The criterion for the choice of a professor in those
days was not exact scholarship and published re-
search, but personality, impressive human qualities
and teaching ability. This shifting about from law
to English and from philosophy to theology strikes
our modern notions queerly, but poverty and the
emphasis on teaching ability made it possible.
Curry could teach anything attractively, and his
energy kept his attainments always in advance of his
pupils.
The year 1872 was, in his own words, "active and
memorable"; but more from his personal point of
view, than from that of the general reader; for its
record embraces solely the details of energetic work
done by him in behalf of his church and of the
educational institution with which he was officially
connected. Such civic, religious and educational
honors continued to be showered upon him as are
usually conferred upon few men; and if his notation
of them is exact almost to monotonousness, it is none
the less free from any expression which indicates
that they brought with them elation or undue self-
appreciation.
It was at a great meeting of the association of his
church that a Memorial Campaign was organized
that aroused much of his enthusiasm, and to whose
work he contributed no little of his energies and
efforts. It was determined to celebrate the fiftieth
anniversary of the body; "and," he states, "ap-
propriately to testify our gratitude, it was resolved
226 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
unanimously by the Association to raise Three
Hundred Thousand Dollars for the endowment of
Richmond College. Resolutions were adopted look-
ing to a grand meeting at Richmond the ensuing
year. A Memorial Committee, of which I was a
member, was appointed to carry out the project of
the Memorial Fund; and Dr. J. L. Burrows was
chosen as the Financial Secretary."
"Thus began," he continues, "our grand Memorial
Campaign, when the Baptist Churches were visited, ad-
dressed and thoroughly aroused. Great excitement was
produced. Many Baptist preachers and laymen became
voluntary agents to help on the good work. We com-
bined with the Semi-Centennial celebration a remem-
brance of what the Baptists of Virginia had done for the
great work of Religious Liberty in the United States.
This involved necessarily a recital of the legislation of
the Colony and a discussion of the principle of an Estab-
lishment. Collaterally, Presbyterians and Methodists
were brought into the discussion; but the Episcopalians
were especially sore at the production of their unenviable
record. Carefully I abstained from all attacks upon, or
criticism of the Church, and confined myself to a discus-
sion of the Establishment."
In 1873 the Baptist Memorial Campaign was ac-
tively and energetically conducted ; and to it he gave
effective and enthusiastic assistance. During the
latter days of May and the earlier days of June of
that year the Semi-centennial meeting, which the
raising of the Memorial Fund was designed to com-
memorate, was held in Richmond. Delegates were
present from many States of the Union in the North,
the South and the West. Curry writes of it that it
was the largest religious convention that ever assem-
IN THE OLD DOMINION 227
bled in Virginia; and certainly it was conspicuous
among religious gatherings of a similar character for
the enthusiasm of its participants. The Association
met in the Second Baptist Church, and he was re-
elected its President. The building itself was inade-
quate to hold the great numbers in attendance; and
the largest audiences were accommodated under a
huge tent which was erected upon the Richmond
College grounds. A number of the Church's most
distinguished leaders and divines were present,
among whom were Dr. J. A. Broadus, conspicuous as
a great pulpit orator of his generation, and for his
unusual gift of eloquence; Dr. J. B. Jeter, a former
President of the College, and noted as an able preacher
and strong controversialist, and who was widely
known as the editor of the Religious Herald, and as
the author of a number of published works; Dr.
Sears, the General Agent of the Peabody Fund, and
one of the most eminent scholars; and Dr. S. S. Cut-
ting, the first Secretary of the American Baptist
Educational Commission, and himself a writer and
theologian of national distinction. On the second
day of the session Curry delivered to a large and
deeply interested audience an address on the subject
of "The Struggles and Triumphs of Virginia Bap-
tists," a notable historical contribution to the story
of the struggle for Religious Freedom in Virginia,
which was pubhshed by the American Baptist Pub-
lication Society, and reached a wide circulation.
The Montgomery White Sulphur Springs at this
period vied with the old Greenbrier White in the
distinction and eminence of its guests and habitues;
and in the late summer of 1873 Curry attended a
meeting there of the members of the Southern His-
228 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
torical Society, which was presided over by ''Honest
John" Letcher, the War Governor of the Common-
wealth, and addressed by General Jubal A. Early.
The object of the Society, which has down to the
present time continued to maintain a successful and
highly important existence, was "to collect and pre-
serve materials for an authentic history " of the South ;
and among others who were present at this meeting,
and interested with Curry and their other associates
in the work of the Society, were Generals Beaure-
gard, Wilcox, Fitzhugh Lee, Dabney H. Maury and
Humes, and Commander Raphael Semmes, of the
Confederate ship, the "Alabama." Curry records a
later meeting of the Society in October of the same
year, that was held in Richmond, the , partici-
pants in which were scarcely less famous. Among
them he mentions General Early, who presided clad
in a suit of Confederate gray, such as he wore to the
day of his death; Dr. Hoge, the eminent and eloquent
Presbyterian divine, whose oration at the unveiling
of the statue of "Stonewall" Jackson, presented by
English gentlemen to the State of Virginia, suggested,
in its lofty dignity, the eloquence of Bossuet; Gen-
eral Wade Hampton, later Governor of South Caro-
lina, and Senator from that State, and Major Robert
Stiles, whose subsequently pubHshed "Four Years
with Marse Robert " ranks with the best stories of
the great tragedy of the War between the States.
It is pleasant and inspiriting to behold these men, un-
broken in spirit, taking counsel together how they
might preserve and increase the spiritual and intel-
lectual integrity of a society whose outlook then
seemed almost hopeless.
Nothing, however, appears to have served in any
IN THE OLD DOMINION 229
degree to deflect him from the two things with which
his mind and heart during this period were overflow-
ing. His first and foremost thought and effort ahke
were in behalf of the causes of reUgion and of educa-
tion; and he continued, whenever his professional
duties permitted, the self-imposed work of speaking
and preaching in many places. Of all of these
speeches and sermons he makes systematic record;
and among the memoranda of this year occurs the
following quaint entry of an experience in Southwest
Virginia : —
Made a Sunday School talk and preached at a Luth-
eran Church in the country. Collection taken up for
Professor of Theology at Roanoke College, sixty cents.
Hard crowd.
Sometime in October of this year he attended the
World's Evangelical Alliance in New York City,
where he met with severe criticism on account of
the frankness of his arguments against the alliance
of Church and State in England. He attacked the
establishment of the Church in that country with
an earnestness and vigor that were more character-
istic than discreet, in view of the presence in which
he spoke; and he was called to order amid demon-
strations of considerable feeling and excitement. He
has left the following account of this episode among
his notes : —
Delegates from Europe, Asia and America were pres-
ent. I delivered an address, prepared by request of Dr.
Schaff and others on the "Relations of Church and
State." An officious extension of time by one Dr.
Crookes, a Methodist minister, produced an intense
excitement. The Assembly en masse cheered and hur-
230 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
rahed and demanded that I should proceed; but I de-
cUned and retired, being followed by three-fourths of
the audience. Besides its appearance in the proceedings
of the Alliance, my address was widely published in
Europe and America, and the Liberation Society of Eng-
land issued it as a tract to help them in their work.
Curry's account of the incident does not seem,
however, to be exact in the light of the reports of the
current newspaper-press of the time. These show
that he was called 'Ho order " rather than 'Ho time";
and that Dr. Crookes, who was presiding, interrupted
him, not so much because his half-hour was up as
because his speech was regarded as unpleasant by
some of the English churchmen who were present.
Curry's status as a citizen of Virginia had by this
time become so firmly established, and the impression
which his ability and devotion had made upon the
people of the State was so strong that in January,
1874, members of the Legislature then in session at
Richmond approached him with the suggestion that
he should become a candidate for the office of State
Superintendent of Public Instruction. At this time
Dr. William H. Ruffner, who had drafted the bill
establishing the public school system under the new
Constitution of Virginia, and had been elected the
first Superintendent, was discharging with great
zeal and ability the duties of the office; and either
in recognition of Ruffner's services in this position,
or because he did not care to adventure the contest,
or for some other reason that is not disclosed, Curry
declined the invitation. At the same session of the
Legislature, when that body was anxiously looking
around for a fit and proper person to represent Vir-
ginia in the Federal Senate, — a search which finally
IN THE OLD DOMINION 231
resulted in the selection of Col. Robert E. Withers, —
Curry's name, with those of a number of other
native or adopted Virginians, was suggested for the
position. That his just self-esteem was touched by
the suggestion is evidenced by the note that he makes
of it; but it is very questionable if he was ever
seriously considered by any large number of the
members.
"Visited the Legislature," he writes under date
of January 10, 1874, in his diary, "in session for half
an hour. Several members propose to use my name
for United States Senate, as caucus of Conservative
members have not been able to agree on a can-
didate."
In January, 1875, he began preaching at the
First Baptist Church, according to an agreement
which he had made in the preceding November to
supply the pulpit for two months following the
resignation of Dr. J. L. Burrows. This pastorate
of two months was prolonged to six; and in the
meantime he declined a call for a year. His work
in this temporary pastorship was broadened by
degrees in various directions, the most distinctive of
which was a course of lectures to the church on the
principles of the Baptists, which were dealt with,
as he states, "not controversially, but for informa-
tion."
Curry had now reached the meridian of life — fifty
years of age. He had come up to Virginia from the
lower South at forty-three, in obedience to an im-
pulse always dominant in him, seeking an oppor-
tunity to array himself with the forces of progress
and growth. Wealth and dignity of living had
fallen to his lot, emancipating him from sordid anx-
232 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
ieties. Love and admiration and sympathy, con-
ditions absolutely necessary to the manifestation of
his highest powers, stimulated and pricked him on
to effort and helpfulness. His health was robust
and his ambitions keen. He had a genius for pop-
ularity, a nature for public service. The abiding
value of the idea of community effort, of collectivism
in a democracy, came to him instinctively, as they
did to Jefferson, despite the individualistic theories
of government held by both. He was such a figure
of humanitarian enthusiasm as New England had
produced too luxuriantly, almost rankly, but which
the South, since Jefferson's time, had produced
rarely. He beheld society as an organism trying to
grow under law. His passion was to aid in finding
the law and in welcoming and leading the growth.
He beheld Southern society, with unconquerable
courage, seeking new standards and new ways of
life, new economic conditions, amid a devastation
unequalled in modern times. Proud, sensitive de-
mocracies must be pleaded with and shown how to do
things needful to their growth, with infinite tact and
patience. This was Curry's function. He was a
pleader and a teacher and an ambassador to a proud,
capable, stricken, but indomitable democracy. The
bare record as set forth in this chapter seems scrappy
and fragmentary. We see an intensely busy man
teaching youth anything, from law to literature,
preaching everywhere from the Pacific to the At-
lantic, foremost in all great educational or religious
organizations, writing for the press, rushing hither
and thither and very happy and jubilant, not only
over the tasks at hand but over the calls that every-
where came to him to come and help everybody.
IN THE OLD DOMINION 233
Looked at closely, however, these vu'ile seven years
of Curry's in the Old Dominion are not desultory
years. They form a complete unit and constitute a
perfect preparation for the supreme work which
society needed to exact of him. The significance of
moral character, the training of all the people, the
spread of social sympathy — this trinity of public
virtues was the creed this tireless public preacher
was crying out to the South and to the Nation from
the vantage ground of the great Commonwealth
which had given the Nation birth, and had so suffered
for duty's sake as to evoke the tenderness and re-
gard of generous minds in all lands.
CHAPTER XIV
POLITICS AND PRINCIPLES
The Presidential election, the result of which was
finally determined by the extra-constitutional Elec-
toral Commission, took place in 1876; and Curry, in
common with the mass of the American people, ex-
perienced a deep interest in its conduct and results.
His journal of the period makes usually but scant
record of contemporaneous politics. The eager poli-
tician of the 'fifties, absorbed in religious and edu-
cational work, seemed to have forgotten the existence
of the machinery of government, but this startling
event, whose issue threatened at one time grave and
portentous results, is frequently mentioned by him.
He notes his exercise of the franchise on election
day, as follows: —
Tuesday, Nov. 7, 1876. — Voted before breakfast for
Tilden and Hendricks, and for amendments to the (State)
Constitution.
The following day shows this entry: —
Wednesday, 8. — News from the election of yesterday
assures the success of Tilden & Hendricks. Result rather
unexpected. People gathered in the streets in front of
the Dispatch office, reading and hearing telegrams from
various States and shouting vociferously. We feel as if
the days of Federal tyranny were numbered. Praise God
from whom all blessings flow.
234
POLITICS AND PRINCIPLES 235
His patriotic exultation was short-lived. On
Thursday, the 9th, he writes: —
Negroes very noisy and jubilant over Hayes' election,
which is not a "fixed fact."
Other memoranda bearing upon the controverted
result appear from time to time.
Nov. 20. — Still much uneasiness about the Presidential
election. Universal distrust of President Grant and his
party. Fraud or usurpation not considered beyond their
purpose or capability. I am tired of this turmoil and
distrust. I want a country I can love.
Dec. 2. — The country is much excited about the Presi-
dential election. In South Carolina. Florida and Louis-
iana serious charges of fraud and intimidation on both
sides. Gen. Grant has sent troops to each of the States.
The votes of those States, if counted for Hayes, elect him.
One electoral vote will elect Tilden. Business seriously
affected by the possibility of an outbreak.
Dec. 6, 1876. — The Legislature of Virginia and the Elec-
toral College meet in Richmond to-day. Heard that
Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, the doubtful
States, had been so manipulated as to secure their votes
for Hayes and Wheeler.
The early part of 1877 found the issue still unde-
termined; and in order to reach a settlement the
contending parties agreed upon the creation and or-
ganizing of the famous Electoral Commission, which,
after listening to the arguments of counsel and
gravely considering many momentous questions of
law and fact, decided the contest at last according
to the law of human nature. The Repubhcans upon
the Commission were in a numerical majority of one;
and the Electoral Commission, by a majority of one,
236 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
declared the Republican nominees elected. Curry,
keeping tally in his journal of the situation, writes,
under date of February 10, 1877: ''News this morn-
ing rather gloomy. Seems as if the Commission by a
party vote will decide in favor of Hayes for Presi-
dent."
Later in the month he and his son, Manly, went
to Washington; and the diary, under the date of
February 24, contains the following: —
After going to the President's house, we went to the
Capitol and spent most of the day in the House of Repre-
sentatives, to the floor of which both of us were admitted.
We witnessed the assembling of the two Houses twice
to count the electoral votes. Oregon, having passed the
Commission, was after debate passed on. Pennsylvania
was objected to.
Much dissatisfaction with the Commission. Demo-
crats complain of having been deceived. Some bitterness
on the part of Northwestern Democrats towards Eastern.
Southern Democrats opposed to mere dilatory and fac-
tious opposition.
Not impressed by the ability of the House. Very few
of the members with whom I served.
He again visited Washington on March 2.
Reached Washington at 1 :30 and stopped at Willard's
Hotel. Went in the afternoon and at night to the Capitol.
The Congress having this morning, at 5 a. m., after a
night's session, elected Hayes President, the business was
of a routine character. I met in the Senate and House a
number of old associates. The House did not impress me
favorably. Many of the members of very ordinary abil-
ity. At night I remained until 10 o'clock. . . . The
feeling of Democrats quite bitter, regarding themselves as
having been cheated out of the Presidency.
POLITICS AND PRINCIPLES 237
Curry's natural interest in the momentous ques-
tion before Congress and the Commission would of
itself have afforded sufficient reason for his visits to
Washington at this time; but there was also a ques-
tion of a more personal character that was doubtless
an impelling motive for his presence in the national
capital. His pardon for bearing arms against the
Government in the War between the States had been
granted in October, 1865, by President Johnson; but
during the twelve years following he still rested under
political disabilities. In 1872 a general amnesty
bill had been passed by the Congress removing the
political disabilities imposed by the new amendments
to the Constitution; but from its provisions were
excepted about seven hundred and fifty persons,
who had held the highest positions under the United
States government. He wanted, as he had written,
"a, government that he could love"; his ardent tem-
perament and instinctive patriotism demanded the
exercise of loyalty, and it was not unnatural, though
painful, for him to entertain some lack of complete
affection for the government under which he was
still inhibited from the right to hold office. The bill
to remove his disabilities was passed by the Senate
on February 27, 1877; and on March 2 the formali-
ties were completed by which he was restored to full
citizenship. Upon the following day he received an
extraordinary tribute to his high character, his repu-
tation for great ability, and his conceded patriotism.
"I called at the Capitol," he wrote, many years later,
" and had a pleasant interview with Senator Sherman, who
had, unsought, interposed in favor of the removal of my
political disabilities, and for whose integrity, patriotism,
and ability I had great respect and admiration. When
238 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
leaving, he asked me if I were not going to see the Presi-
dent. I repUed that as a matter of respect and friendship
I should be glad of the privilege, but I had no business with
him, and besides must leave the city in a few hours. To
this he answered, 'You ought to go. He likes you very
much. I have often heard him speak well of you.' ' If I
were to try to see him, I could not, as hundreds of people
must be pressing for interviews.' 'I will arrange that.
He is at my house. Take this card.' Writing something
on the card, which contained his name and street address,
he handed it to me, and I left. Arriving at the house, I
sent in my card and Mr. Sherman's, and was requested to
wait a few minutes until a deputation from Ohio retired.
In a few minutes I had a cordial welcome. After the usual
inquiries, he expressed earnestly his desire and purpose so
to conduct his administration as to bring the estranged
sections into harmony and fraternity. Then to my sur-
prise and gratification he declared his willingness to put
into his cabinet some Southern men, or a Southern man,
who had voted for Mr. Tilden, provided the person would
give his administration an impartial support. A place in
the Cabinet was tendered to me, but declined with proper
and sincere expressions of thankfulness for the confidence
reposed. He then said he was willing to appoint Gen.
Joseph E. Johnston, and wished my opinion as to his ac-
ceptance on the conditions mentioned. As to his accept-
ance I had no knowledge, but the acceptance would imply
necessarily loyalty to his Chief. Having so confided in
me, I ventured to say that the appointment would defeat
the patriotic purpose of pacification he so warmly ex-
pressed. Gen. Johnston was so identified with the Con-
federacy, his promotion to a high place would awaken bit-
terest opposition in the North, and its strength would be
such as greatly to cripple, if not defeat, his policy. After
asking me about Gov. Hubbard of Texas and Judge Key
of Tennessee, afterwards made Postmaster General, he
expressed a desire to make the Federal appointments in
POLITICS AND PEINCIPLES 239
the South acceptable to that section. I felt it my duty to
express strongly my conviction: 'The South will not ob-
ject to have the offices filled by Northern men, if they are
honest and true, and go South, not to fleece the people,
but to identify themselves with the country and its inter-
ests.' 'It would be better,' he responded, 'not to float the
office-holders, but to select them from the residents.'
'No, no,' I interposed, 'you cannot find in the South a
sufficient number of capable and honest white Republi-
cans to fill the offices at your disposal.' This was naturally
received with some incredulity; but I reasserted what I felt
to be demonstrable truth, and I knew that putting ' scala-
wags,' as they were called, in responsible places meant the
defeat of his noble purpose, and the serious injury of the
South.
" This conversation occurred a quarter of a century ago,
and thanks to President Hayes and the better under-
standing between the sections, and the wiser action of the
governments, my strong expressions would now require
large modifications."
Curry's diary for this year contains a number of
interesting, if desultory, entries. Among them are
the following: —
March 7. — Took supper with Dr. Coleman. Moses
Ezekiel, the sculptor, was the guest, — a native of Rich-
mond, a Jew. He made for the Jews a statue of Religious
Liberty, which was unveiled during the Centennial. In
Mr. Ezekiel's studio in Rome we saw the huge block on the
first or second day after the workmen began upon it.
Since its author penned the foregoing paragraph,
the guest of Dr. Coleman's whom he was invited to
meet has achieved a larger fame that extends over
two continents, and is illustrated in America not
only by his statue of Religious Liberty, but by many
240 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
other noble works of art, that have sprung from his
chisel in his workshop at the Eternal City in the
old Baths of Diocletian. Ezekiel, now a chevalier by
the grace of the King of Italy, was a cadet at the
Virginia Military Institute in the later years of the
War between the States, and took part with the
cadet battalion in their heroic charge at New Market
in 1861, — an episode that he has commemorated in
his bronze statue of ''Virginia lamenting her Dead,"
on the grounds of the Institute at Lexington. His
Jefferson, donated by the sculptor himself, adorns
the north front of the Rotunda plaza at the Univer-
sity of Virginia.
Under the same date the diarist writes : —
The Secretary of the Baptist Publication Society noti-
fies me to-day that for a tract of mine on The Distinctive
Principles of the Baptists, the premium of Fifty Dollars
offered for the best on that subject was awarded.
He was at his father's old home in Talladega
County a few days later; and wrote of it in his jour-
nal: —
March 13. — Stopped at my father's place, where I
spent my boyhood years. Much dilapidated. Looked at
the graves in the garden. A bad custom to bury the dead
on farms in the country, as they change owners so fre-
quently. When my father removed to this place in May,
1838, it was very beautiful. The soil was fertile, the water-
courses clear, game was abundant, and there were some
unremoved Indians.
Of the town of Talladega, under the same date, he
wrote : —
Returned to town. Spent some time in the Court
House, where I practised law and made many political
POLITICS AND PRINCIPLES 241
speeches. People are poor and depressed. Radical mis-
rule has been impoverishing.
March 31. — Letter from Dr. Hoge, in behalf of the
Board of Directors, offering me the Presidency of the Vir-
ginia Bible Society. Declined.
April 28. — Reached Washington at 2 a. m. St. James
Hotel. Called on Mr. A. H. Stephens; found him abed
and cheerful. Spoke highly of Mr. Hayes.
At Willard's Hotel had a long talk with Senators Gor-
don and Lamar, Gov. Colquitt of Georgia, and W. H.
Trescott of South Carolina, on the pohtical outlook.
Called on Mr. Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury.
Mr. Lamar and I called on the President and had a
pleasant interview. The President seems determined to
unite North and South as one people. He is very sensible,
good mannered and patriotic.
During the summer he visited Dr. Sears, in Staun-
ton, on his return from the Warm Springs : —
July 31, 1877.— At 12:30 p. m. stage for Millboro.
View from mountain magnificent. Supper at Millboro.
Car for Staunton. Arrived at midnight. Found Dr.
Sears' son waiting to conduct me to his father's house on
the hill overlooking the town. Place much improved.
The oaks encouraged; other trees and flowers along the
gravelled walks. Quite a variety of fruit trees. House
well arranged, economizing space, and neatly furnished.
August 1. — Coming from chamber to parlor Dr. Sears
gave me a cordial greeting. Until 12 in the house and
under the trees, we talked of Education at the South and
the Peabody work. Dr. Sears said he was in Boston to
lecture before the Social Science Association. Geo. B.
Emerson invited him to a club of Bostonians. Mr. R. C.
Winthrop, who was present, invited him to present in writ-
ing his views as to the proper expenditure of the Peabody
Grant, as the Trustees were to hold their first meeting in
a few days in New York. This he did in a letter of eight
242 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
pages. When the Trustees met, his suggestions were
adopted, and he was elected Secretary to carry them out.
Thus arose his connection with the Peabody Fund.
While Horace Mann was Secretary of the Board of
Education in Massachusetts, and during Dr. Sears' first
two years in that office, their salary of $1,500 each was
paid by a Mr. Dwight.
In the autumn of the year Richmond was visited
by a distinguished party of guests, to whom was
given a cordial and hospitable reception, in which
Curry bore a prominent part. His account of this
event appears in his diary.
October 30. — Accompanied a deputation of the City
Council and a committee of the Agricultural Society, on
special invitation to meet the President of the United
States. At Quantico met him, his wife and his two sons,
Secretary Sherman and wife. Secretary Evarts, Secretary
Thompson, Attorney General Devens, General J. T. Mor-
gan and others. En route great curiosity to see Mr. Hayes.
At Fredericksburg, a reception. As we came within the
limits of the City of Richmond great crowds, all the mili-
tary, fire companies, etc., turned out to welcome the visi-
tors. At a stand, near Monroe Park, the President and
Cabinet spoke to many thousands. I was called for. The
President introduced me as his old college mate; and I
asked for three cheers, which were given and repeated.
En route to the hotel the streets were lined with enthusias-
tic people and flags. The President received at the Ex-
change Hotel at night. General Morgan our guest.
October 31. — Called at 10 on the Presidential party.
Soon started to the Fair. Governor Kemper on the
grounds, welcomed the President to the State. All the
members of the Cabinet, and General Morgan and Dr.
Loring, member of Congress from Massachusetts, spoke.
Mrs. Hayes was introduced to the multitude, who cheered
vociferously.
POLITICS AND PRINCIPLES 243
The Governor gave the President and party a reception
and then a collation.
November 1. — At 10 a. m., the President and Mrs.
Hayes, Mr. Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mrs.
Sherman, Mr. Evarts, Secretary of State, R. W. Thomp-
son, Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Devens, Attorney Gen-
eral, Governor Kemper, Generals Joseph E. Johnston,
W. H. F. Lee and Wickham, Judge Meredith, Hon. J. T.
Morgan, Senator from Alabama, Mr. James Thomas and
Miss Kate C. Thomas breakfasted with us. Room hand-
somely decorated with flowers.
V/ent to Fair Grounds. President and members of Cabi-
net spoke. The President reviewed the First Virginia
Regiment, and some other companies.
Dined at Col. Hobson's with Generals Morgan, Maury
and S. G. Jones and Colonel Archer Anderson.
In the latter part of December, 1877, Curry spent
several days in New York City, where he met Presi-
dent Hayes again. He preached at Hanson Place,
Brooklyn, and attended various gatherings of more
or less importance. Under date of December 21,
his first day in the metropolis, he makes the follow-
ing entry in his journal: —
In the afternoon, at the Union Theological Seminary, I
heard an informal lecture of Rev. Joseph Cook before the
students and others on the Advantage of Philosophical
Studies in a course of Theological training. Present, Doc-
tors Adams, Hitchcock, Shedd, Schaff, Hall, Taylor,
Ralph Wells, and others.
At night heard him again in the hall of the Young Men's
Christian Association on Ultimate America. The poet,
Wilham CuUen Bryant, presided.
During 1877 Curry's previous experience of re-
ceiving calls to many pulpits in various directions,
244 J. L. M. CUREY, A BIOGRAPHY
and elections to professorships and presidencies of
educational institutions, was repeated. He was
offered the Presidency of the East Tennessee Uni-
versity, and, provisionally, that of Richmond College;
and he declined calls from churches in St. Louis and
Baltimore; and he received invitations to make ad-
dresses and deliver lectures almost without number.
On February 23, 1877, he makes the following entry
in his journal, illustrative of the many demands upon
his time and energies: —
Invitations to lecture in Norfolk, Portsmouth and
Petersburg.
People seem to think that I am a public servant, with
nothing to do but respond to their calls.
With all his enthusiasms and aroused interests,
which responded whenever possible to such demands,
their number outweighed his strength and time; and
it is scarcely a matter of wonder that occasionally
his patience became strained. Many other solicita-
tions to render all sorts of services, and do all kinds
of things, were added to the burden of these invita-
tions. On November 15th he writes in his diary an
amusing list of what a day may bring forth in the
life of such a man: —
As illustration of requests made of me to-day, I have
been asked,
1. For photograph.
2. To read preliminary chapters of a novel, write notice,
get a publisher.
3. Obtain employment as associate or corresponding
editor.
4. Find grave of a dead soldier, and cost of removal to
Alabama.
5. Give opinion on feet- washing, as a religious rite.
POLITICS AND PRINCIPLES 245
6. Give opinion on rightfulness of firing tobacco on
Sunday.
7. On suits by administrator against a brother-member
of a church.
8. Secure appointment as superintendent of schools in
a county.
9. Tell what is meant in 24 Matt. 30 by "Sign of the
Son of Man in heaven."
10. Tell whether meteoric shower in 1833 had been
predicted by scientists.
This in addition to regular college duties and faculty
meetings.
In 1878 the question of the payment of the public
debt of the Commonwealth, which had been con-
tracted prior to the War between the States, and
before the separation of the State of West Virginia,
largely for the purpose of public improvements in
what is now both States, came to the front as a mat-
ter for political disposition. A movement was inau-
gurated, under the leadership of General William
Mahone, for a readjustment of the debt on a basis
which should compel the contribution by West Vir-
ginia of its proportionate part. A wide difference of
opinion sprung up in the older State as to its obliga-
tion and ability to pay the whole debt, and resulted
in the disorganization of the dominant democratic
party, and the birth of a new party known as ''Re-
adjuster." For several years the question was the
subject of bitter political contest on the hustings and
at the ballot-box, with the State and Federal Courts
taking turns at attempting its legal decision. The
Mahone party for a time were successful; and the
democracy was dislodged from power. Colonel Wil-
liam E. Cameron, the Readjuster candidate for Gov-
ernor, was elected to that office over Major John W.
246 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
Daniel; and Mahone and Riddleberger were chosen
by the Readjuster legislature, the United States
Senators.
Curry stood with the Debt-payers. He believed
that as Virginia had contracted the debt, and had got
value for the bonds, which had been expended for
beneficent public uses, both a legal and a moral obli-
gation existed for their payment in full, in spite of
the State's great poverty and of the further fact that
the debt was owned almost altogether abroad. He
therefore favored, as against the '^ forcible readjust-
ment" advocated by Mahone's followers, such a set-
tlement with the creditors as should be satisfactory
to them and should preserve the Commonwealth's
ancient and untarnished financial honor. In Janu-
ary, 1878, he received a request in writing, signed by
many of the most eminent ''debt-paying" democrats
of Richmond, including Gen. Joseph E. Johnston,
Bishop Doggett, Drs. Jeter and Hoge, and Judge
Meredith, to address the people on the momentous
subject of the State debt. In response to the invita-
tion, a week after its reception he spoke, with a dis-
cernment that penetrated at once the core of the
issue, and with his characteristic political courage,
upon the subject of ''Laws and Morals" as bearing
upon the question at stake. His address was deliv-
ered in Mozart Hall, a meeting-place in Richmond
whose name became famous during the great politi-
cal struggle by reason of its association with various
gatherings of the two discordant and excited parties.
A large audience greeted with tremendous applause
his speech of an hour and a quarter, in which he ad-
vocated his side of the question with unusual power.
He records with pardonable pride the fact that no
POLITICS AND PEINCIPLES 247
address which he ever deUvered received more ap-
probation and commendation than did this one; and
his spirit so warmed to the contest, that it was not long
before he was in the thick of it, debating the subject
with speakers on the other side, or deUvering ad-
dresses in very many sections of the State. Success,
pronounced though temporary, perched upon the
banners of his adversaries; and it was only after a
long period of political acrimony and bad feeling,
and a bitter struggle through all the courts, that the
matter was brought to a final conclusion as a political
issue.
But politics, as has been said, in spite of his long
experience in the political forum, had now come to be
of secondary consideration with him. Without any
recantation of his old beliefs, but with a steady ad-
herence to those which the issue of war left to him
intact and permissible, — and all the while with a
patriotic acceptance of later conditions, — he had
long since set his face to a hopeful sunrise, and was
filled with a spirit of determination to do his best
for the people among whom he dwelt. Under date
of November 28, 1878, he writes in his diary: —
I attended Thanksgiving meeting at the Second Church,
and spoke. The South has never observed these days,
from a prejudice against their supposed New England
origin. I mentioned as cause for thanks:
1. Good crops.
2. Arrest of yellow-fever scourge and the Northern aid.
3. Abolition of slavery.
4. Divorcement of government from religion.
5. Constitutional Republic.
6. Peace, and freedom from entangling alliances; and
spoke of the future with an honest, intelligent and Chris-
tian people.
248 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
Still holding, as so many of his Southern com-
patriots had held, to the constitutional interpreta-
tion of government, ^ the righteousness of State
rights, and the unrighteousness of centralization in
the Federal organization, — the one-time ardent seces-
sionist recognized secession as a thing of the past,
the earlier advocate of slavery rejoiced that it had
passed away, and the prophet of the future con-
ceived that the wise preoccupation of the South
should be in education and industry rather than in
politics.
Some days later he writes: —
Met Drs. Cutting and Lathrop in conference in refer-
ence to holding Institutes for training and instruction of
colored Ministers. Very cordial acquiescence.
No record appears among his journals and papers
of the incidents and happenings of the year 1879;
but in that year he was still busy with his teaching
and preaching, while he wrought into the fabric of
his political campaigning the morality of maintain-
ing public obligations.
In 1880 the journals reappear; and an entry in
March of that year contains the notation of an offer
from President Hayes of an appointment on the
Board of Visitors of the United States Military
Academy at West Point; but the offer appears to
have been declined, as was a similar one to the
Board of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, emana-
ting from the same source.
After another visit abroad, he returned to Vir-
ginia; and in the Presidential election of that
autumn voted for General Winfield Scott Hancock,
the democratic candidate for President.
CHAPTER XV
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST
In 1866 George Peabody, a wealthy merchant of
England, who was by birth a native of Massachu-
setts, of old New England stock, had visited the
United States, and had made a gift of $2,100,000,
which he increased to $3,500,000 in 1869, for the
promotion of education in the South. The first
General Agent chosen by the corporation of the
Peabody Fund to administer its trust, as has been
stated in previous pages, was Dr. Barnas Sears.
Dr. Sears died in July, 1880; and in February, 1881,
Curry was elected his successor in the General
Agency.
" Thursday, February 3. — Telegram from Hon. R. C
Winthrop," he writes in his journal, " and letter of Pres-
ident Hayes, announcing my unanimous election as Agent
of the Peabody Fund."
Mr. Winthrop and Curry had already been in
correspondence with each other on this subject; and
under date of November 3, 1880, a letter had come
from the former at Brookline, Massachusetts, to
the latter at Richmond: —
My dear Sir: — Your favor of Sept. 30th reached me
just as I was leaving home to attend our Triennial Church
Convention at New York. I only returned home at the
249
250 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
end of last week; and I am unwilling to leave it longer un-
acknowledged.
I thank you for your kind personal expressions, and for
your offer of a welcome to Richmond. I shall hardly leave
home again until I go to the meeting of the Trustees at
Washington on the 1st Wednesday of February. It
would have been particularly pleasant, and perhaps I may
say, profitable, for me to meet you before that meeting, —
if we had come together casually. But any concerted in-
terview might cause misunderstandings by others, if not
by yourself. My own views are unchanged since I wrote
you, and are not in the way of being changed. But I must
keep myself open to conviction, until I have had a full and
free consultation with my associate Trustees. Meantime
I hope and trust that nothing of sectional feeling will get
into our Board. We have escaped it so far. But yester-
day's results prove that the air is saturated with prej-
udice, — on both sides, I fear. I have purposely avoided
all active participation in political strife since Mr. Pea-
body charged me with presiding over this Southern Trust.
I inclose the only expression of opinion which I ventured
on during the campaign; and that was forced from me by
an unauthorized use of my name. But it was prophetic of
the result. Solid Souths and Solids Norths have been
plainly arrayed against each other, and the issue has been
very much what I anticipated. A good Providence pre-
sides over Nations as well as over individuals; and I will
not question that all will be for the best in the end. But I
yearn for an era of good feeling, and wish that all the old
parties could be merged into a grand union of patriots.
Mr. Evarts has just sent for my files the letter of Dr.
Cutting, which you sent him. I shall take it, with all the
other testimonials, to Washington.
BeUeve me, Dear Sir,
Very truly, yours,
ROBT. C. WiNTHROP.
Hon. J. L. M. Curry.
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 251
Mr. Winthrop, in his telegram announcing the
new appointment, had requested Curry's presence
in Washington, where the Board was in session;
and accordingly on the day following that of its
receipt, he went to the Capitol.
Friday 4. — To Riggs Hotel. At 11 met Peabody Board
of Trustees, who received me cordially.
To the Senate and House of Representatives.
Dined with the Peabody Trustees at Secretary Evarts'.
Other details of his appointment are recorded in
an additional entry: —
In acknowledgment of the high honor sought by many
worthy applicants, I expressed my sincere thanks, and my
determination to give my best power to carrying out the
past policy, with which I was familiar. Gen. Henry R.
Jackson, a Trustee from Georgia, informed me that Gen.
Grant made the motion for my election, jocularly remark-
ing that the nomination was fit to be made, notwithstand-
ing the gentleman was not from Ohio.
Curry's acceptance of the position of General
Agent of the Peabody Fund necessitated the sur-
render of his duties as Professor in Richmond Col-
lege. He accordingly resigned at once; and at the
close of the session in June was made a Trustee of
the College, and this office he continued to hold for
fifteen or twenty years, during a large part of which
time he was President of the Board.
To the discharge of his duties as Agent of the
Peabody Fund Curry brought the varied experience
of a busy and already distinguished career, the
enthusiasm which remained a peculiar character-
istic of his mind throughout his life, and the am-
bition to put aside the losses of the past in the
252 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
endeavor of achievement for the future. There
were very many eminent scholars and educators
who either made direct application to succeed Dr.
Sears in the position, or whose names were presented
by their friends and admirers; but both Mr. Win-
throp, the President of the great Trust, and Dr.
Sears, its accomplished General Agent, had long
before the latter's death fixed upon Curry as Sears'
successor. In their disinterested judgment his char-
acter and capacity and catholic spirit conspicuously
marked him as the man for the place; and in their
view the members of the Board concurred with a
unanimity that was without hesitation.
His association with both Mr. Winthrop and Dr.
Sears had already informed them of his fitness, and
had prepared him to take up and develop the work
on the lines of its successful foundation and former
conduct. His qualifications were all accentuated by
the facts of his Southern birth, association, and
training; and were calculated to appeal to the con-
fidence and to arouse the favorable expectations
of both North and South.
Dr. Sears, with his eye long upon him as the man
of all men to take up the dropped thread of his own
ended work, had written to him in February, 1880 : —
We shall be more and more interested in the legislation
of the several States. We come directly in contact with
legislative bodies in arranging for normal schools. I would
not be surprised if when you come to the front (as I confi-
dently expect you will), you shall find yourself specially
in this congenial atmosphere. I am sure a great work is
before you. I do not regret being a pioneer. I only hope
the pioneer work will be well done. I want no higher
honor. I could have had no higher joy. ,
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 253
It would have taken doubtless a less discerning
mind than Curry's to interpret the suggestions of
such communications as this; and he responded to
them with a study of the Trustees' aims and plans.
As early as 1873, he had attracted the attention of
Dr. Sears, who wrote to Mr. Winthrop in that year
that he knew a man ''at that moment who was
abundantly qualified and admirably adapted" for
the duties of the General Agency, "if anything
should happen" to him; and in a later letter in the
same year he mentions Curry's name as that of the
man of whom he had written. In a letter of Sep-
tember 7, 1877, he says: —
Speaking of our successors, I would say, I have recently
had Dr. Curry with me, and went over with him all my
plans and doings. I am more and more satisfied that he is
our man; he is so many-sided, so clear in his views, so judi-
cious, and knows so well how to deal with all classes of men.
His whole being is wrapped up in general education, and
he is the best lecturer or speaker on the subject in all the
South. He is in perfect accord with us on all points. If I
can be the means of securing him for future General Agent,
I think it will be the best thing I ever did for the Trustees.
And in April, 1879, he writes again to Mr. Win-
throp : —
I am trying to put things in good order for my successor.
I keep Dr. C. informed of all I do. He understands well
that I have no authority, though he knows my opinion of
his fitness for the office.
Winthrop shared heartily in Sears' views of Curry;
and when the time arrived for the election, it was
only natural that he should have been chosen by
254 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
the Board with the unanimity which his support
by such authority demanded.
At the time of Curry's election, the Peabody
benefaction had been in existence for fourteen years.
The instrument creating it bears date of February
7, 1867; and by its provisions sixteen men of national
reputation, representing in their most intimate local
attachments the North, East, South and Middle
West, were made Trustees of the Fund, with power
to perpetuate their number, for its efficient and
beneficent administration. The roster of its Trus-
teeship as constituted by Mr. Peabody contained
the names of many who were illustrious, among all
who were distinguished. They were Robert C.
Winthrop of Massachusetts, Hamilton Fish of New
York, Bishop Charles P. Mcllwaine of Ohio, General
Ulysses S. Grant, Admiral D. C. Farragut, William
C. Rives of Virginia, John H. Clifford of Massachu-
setts, William Aiken of South Carolina, William M.
Evarts of New York, William A. Graham of North
Carolina, Charles Macalester of Pennsylvania,
George Wetmore of New York, Edward A. Bradford
of Louisiana, George N. Eaton of Maryland, and
George Peabody Russell of Massachusetts.
It was the purpose of Mr. Peabody that his gift
should be employed to meet "the educational needs
of those portions of our beloved and common country
which have suffered from the destructive ravages,
and the not less disastrous consequences, of civil
war"; which was an euphemistic statement of great
delicacy whose meaning pointed to the battle-
ravaged and impoverished States of the late Southern
Confederacy.
On March 14, 1867, Dr. Barnas Sears, the Presi-
PEABODY AND HIS TEUST 255
dent of Brown University at Providence, Rhode
Island, upon the soHcitation of Mr. Winthrop, the
chairman of the Peabody Board, submitted to the
Trustees a letter, in which he outlined his views as
to the best methods of carrying out Mr. Peabody's
purposes, — a letter which Sears had read to Curry,
under the oaks at Staunton, as related in an
earlier chapter. Five days after the submission
of this letter by Dr. Sears to the Board, the
Board approved its suggestions; and with a com-
mon impulse determined that the author of the
plan which it proposed was the proper man to put
it into effective operation. Dr. Sears was thereupon
elected the first General Agent of the Fund. He
had studied in Germany after graduating from
Brown University, and had bee;i successively a Pro-
fessor in the Newton Theological Seminary, Secre-
tary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education,
and President of Brown University; and he brought
to the work, upon which he entered, and which he
continued during his tenm-e of the office to conduct
with great energy and extraordinary tact and
diplomacy, a varied wealth of educational and pro-
fessional experience. His noble and disinterested
career as General Agent, in which he labored with
unvarying patience and good temper, and with a
most admirable willingness to modify and adapt
opinions to developed circumstances, is deserving of
unqualified praise in the history of education in
America. He stimulated, with intelligence and in-
creasing success, State aid to public education; he
sought to develop a public sentiment in favor of
general education; and he was efficient in aiding to
put into the organic and statute laws of a number
256 J. L. M. OUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
of the Southern States provision for the establish-
ment of free public schools. It was due in no in-
significant measure to the energies and labors of the
first Agent of the Peabody Fund, that at the time of
his death in 1880, all of the eleven States of the South
which had constituted the Confederacy, and were
the first and chief beneficiaries of Mr. Peabody's
endowment, had established public-school systems
at least on paper, and were moving onward to their
larger development in response to the educational
evolution of a new economic and social condition.
"In each of them," writes Dr. A. D. Mayo, in the Edu-
cation Report for 1903, "model schools had been estab-
Hshed by the encouragement of Dr. Sears; teachers' insti-
tutes had been subsidized; the Peabody Normal College
had been founded, in connection with what remained of
Dr. Lindsley's University of Nashville; and in all practical
ways the aid of the Fund, with that of the United States
Bureau of Education, had been extended to the authori-
ties of the new State and municipal systems. The great-
est step of all was the including of the more than 1,000,000
colored children and youth in the new arrangement in all
the ex-Confederate States."
Yet, if the work of the former General Agent was
important and far-reaching, that which lay before
his successor was scarcely less so. Measuring liter-
acy by percentages demonstrated its woeful lack in
many of these Southern States. These percentages,
taken among whites and negroes together, demon-
strate that, as late as ten years after the death of
Dr. Sears, the averages ran, counting persons ten
years old and upwards, from 14.4 in the State in
which there were fewest negroes to 45 in two of those
in which the blacks were most numerous. The
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 257
Southern section of the Union was impoverished in
many directions almost to penury, by war, and by
the reconstruction pillage which followed it; and
perhaps nowhere was this more keenly felt than in
those States whose percentage of illiteracy was
highest. The growth of public sentiment in favor
of universal education remained to be further devel-
oped and cultivated among a people, who had hitherto
believed that the new educational system apparently
operated to confer the largest direct benefit upon
those who bore the least part of its heavy burden
of expense.
Perhaps no one could have appreciated more
keenly than did Curry, with his wide experience
and profound knowledge of conditions, the mag-
nitude of the task which he had undertaken, and
the difficulties and uncertainties that stared him in
the face at every onward step. In discussing what
Sears had accomplished before him, Curry writes: —
It would be a hasty judgment to conclude that the work
was finished during the period of his agency, or that free
schools had been established beyond the possibility of de-
struction. There were many considerations which would
have made it foolish to relax vigorous efforts for keeping
alive and strengthening the favoring educational senti-
ment, and making irrepealable what had been put upon
the statute books. . . . Some excellent men had deep-
seated convictions, arising from political, social, or relig-
ious reasons, adverse to gratuitous State education. The
experiment of free schools was not, in all localities, so suc-
cessful as to clear away doubts, and prejudices, and re-
verse those traditional habits of thought and action which
the experience of all peoples has shown it to be difficult for
the mind to free itself from. Time was also needed to pass
from private to public schools, to quiet or overcome the
258 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
selfish oppositions of those who engaged in private teach-
ing, and to transfer education to the control of cities and
States. Prejudice, interest of teachers, sparseness of
population, impatience of taxation, financial depression,
were serious hindrances. School-houses had to be built and
furnished, teachers to be trained, schools to be graded,
friction to be overcome, and an unfamiliar system to be
accommodated to environments. The whole work of in-
troducing a new system and improved methods of teach-
ing was beset with many difficulties, one of the chiefest of
which was insufficiency of means to pay competent teach-
ers and continue the schools in session for longer periods.
(History of the Peabody Fund, pp. 79, 80.)
While Curry, in his administra-tion of the trust
committed to his charge, did not hesitate to enter
into its smaller details, as occasion demanded, or op-
portunity afforded, he nevertheless made it his habit
to work largely through the already established
agencies that had shown themselves of approved effi-
ciency. He spent much of his time in conference
with teachers, pastors, school superintendents, and
college presidents; he addressed, with renewed in-
terest and enthusiasm, the familiar educational and
religious assemblies, with which his recent life had
brought him into such frequent and continued
contact ; he visited schools and colleges, and met and
mingled with their students and faculties; he made
himself acquainted by private contact and in public
speeches with State executive oflScials and legislative
statute-makers; he drew near to the fountain-heads
of social and political effectiveness; and directed
their flow in streams of irrigating beneficence.
Even before his first annual report was presented
to the Peabody Board, in October, 1881, he had al-
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 259
ready addressed the legislatures of Texas, Tennessee
and Georgia upon the subject of Education in its
varied relations, including those in which it stood to
the Peabody Trust. His address to the Tennessee
legislature, on normal instruction and the Peabody
Normal College at Nashville, was made on March 18,
1881; and on the preceding day he had made his first
visit to the College in his new capacity of General
Agent, to find the names of Peabody, Sears and
Curry illuminating the walls of the chapel, and to
meet with an appreciative and enthusiastic greeting
on the part of those to whom he spoke.
Of the Normal School at Nashville, which, at this
time of Curry's visit, had already been in existence
for more than five years, Dr. Mayo has written an
account in the "Education Report" for 1883.
"In due time the Peabody Fund, under the expert guid-
ance of Dr. Sears, was brought to the parting of the ways
encountered by every public school system everywhere.
Even before the death of Dr. Sears, which occurred at
Saratoga, New York, July 6, 1880, it was realized that the
moderate income from $2,000,000, rarely exceeding $100,-
000, must be concentrated largely on the training of teach-
ers. In 1875 arrangements were made with the corpora-
tion of the University of Nashville, Tenn., for the absorp-
tion of its academical features and the use of its buildings
in an institution named the Peabody Normal College.
With no help from the State, the school was opened on
December 1, 1875, in one room, with thirteen female
pupils, under the Presidency of Dr. Eben S. Stearns of
Massachusetts. The trustees established scholarships
for the benefit of all the ex-Confederate States and West
Virginia worth $200 a year for two successive years, the
number limited to the delegation in Congress of each
State. The result was that during the twenty-one years,
260 J. L. M. CUREY, A BIOGRAPHY
1876-1897, twelve States received $383,584.10 in Peabody
scholarships. A crisis in the finances of the College raised
the question of its removal to Georgia in 1880; but in the
spring of 1881 the city of Nashville and the State of Ten-
nessee came to the rescue." (p. 536.)
The annual appropriation for the College, made by
the legislature of Tennessee in 1881, was $10,000;
but it was coupled with such conditions that only
one-half of that amount was actually realized. In
1883 the State, acceding to a proposition of the Pea-
body Trustees, made the $10,000 an annual appro-
priation, unqualified by other conditions or encum-
brances; and in 1891 the amount was increased to
$15,000 per annum. Dr. Stearns, the first President
of the College, died in 1887, and was succeeded in the
Presidency by Dr. William H. Payne, who had been
Professor of the Art and Science of Teaching in the
University of Michigan. Dr. Payne's election and
acceptance of the office were brought about by the
influences of Curry, who was at that time at home in
America, on a leave of absence from his post as
United States Minister to Madrid. Dr. Payne held
the office until 1901, when he resigned; and in his
place the Hon. James D. Porter, a former governor
of Tennessee, and a staunch and well-known friend
of the College, was elected.
It may be remarked in passing that while the
policy of establishing and encouraging normal
schools had the favor of the Peabody Board from the
beginning, this policy was carefully and conserva-
tively exercised, until the several States had all been
committed thoroughly to the more elementary prin-
ciple of organizing public free schools, and establishing
them upon a permanent basis and progressive system.
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 261
On Wednesday, October 5, 1881, the Peabody
Board of Trustees assembled in annual meeting at the
Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City. It was their
twentieth assembling; and there were present Mr.
Winthrop, the chairman, and Messrs. Fish, Aiken,
Evarts, Wetmore, Stuart, Barnes, Whipple, Jackson,
Hayes, Manning and Lyman. Curry submitted to
the Board his first annual report, which in the printed
records of the Proceedings of the Peabody Education
Fund occupies thirty-one octavo pages.
Appropriately and generously, the General Agent
began his report with a tribute to his predecessor,
and a review of the work that he had accomplished.
"To succeed one so competent," he writes, "was an
embarrassment and a stimulus, exciting fears and giving
encouragement. To walk in his footsteps was an impossi-
bility; to profit by his almost unerring wisdom and sagac-
ity has been my daily experience. No one can study the
work of Dr. Sears, as I have had occasion to do, without
being filled with wonder and admiration at his adapted-
ness to the difficult and delicate duties he had to discharge.
. . . The best eulogy of Dr. Sears is that he met all the
requirements."
The Proceedings of the Peabody Education Fund
have been published in a series of volumes; and Curry
has left behind him a ''History of the Peabody
Fund," in which his association with the Trust is
dealt with at length. It would therefore be a work
of supererogation to dwell at length in these pages
upon what has been more fully and better presented
elsewhere. But in order to keep before the mind of
the reader Curry's figure and life and mental attitude
towards what had come to engage his best energies
and most eager efforts, some passages from this first
262 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
report of his may be appropriately quoted here.
After further comment upon the character of Dr.
Sears and upon the value of his services, Curry pro-
ceeds to point out the need of a constant and contin-
ued vigilance on the part of the Board, that no step
gained might be lost, and that other and pressing
demands might be properly met. With a yet unas-
sured confidence in the ultimate establishment of a
fixed public opinion in behalf of general education,
and with a large experience in dealing with legisla-
tive bodies, he felt it uncertain to rely alone upon the
statute-books for the systems of public instruction,
and unsafe to relax any vigilance or omit any use of
energetic effort. "Nulla vestigia retrorsum;" '^Vigi-
lantihus, non dormientibus," seemed to be the charts
by which he sought to direct his sails over a yet tem-
pestuous and uncertain sea.
"Free schools," he declares, "have a ceaseless enemy in
the illiteracy of the masses. Ignorance does not feel its
needs. Enlightenment must come from without. The
uneducated do not appreciate the import and value of
education. When to fearful illiteracy there are superadded
changed social conditions, remodelling of laws and consti-
tutions, and general pecuniary prostration at the South,
there will be apparent and imperative need for money that
State and local taxes and ecclesiastical and private bene-
factions cannot supply."
These statements were truisms, so potent in them-
selves, and so well known to the Trustees, as to seem
to require no reiteration. And yet it was as abso-
lutely a necessity for Curry himself, and for the mem-
bers of the Board, to carry them constantly in their
view, as it is for the mariner to watch the veering of
his compass' needle in sailing his charted ways.
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 263
"Since my appointment," he continues, "I have visited
all the States included in our work, except Florida and
West Virginia, and by special request have made addresses
before the legislatures of Texas, Tennessee and Georgia.
These visits have given me an insight into the workings of
school systems, and a personal acquaintance with school
and other public officers, which must be of much value.
As your comprehensive plans are carried on under State
auspices, mere office work will not enable me to accom-
plish them. Besides the need of awakening and keeping
alive the public mind on the general subject of free educa-
tion, there must be conferences with law-makers and school
officers, and the stimulation of such legislative action as
will consummate and perfect the widely beneficent ends
you have had so steadily in view.
"Although, for convenience, the late avowal of the Trus-
tees as to their future purpose has been termed a ' new de-
parture,' yet from the first consultations two grand objects
were determined upon. 'The urgent and pressing physi-
cal needs of an almost impoverished people' precluding
them ' from making, by unaided efforts, such advances in
education as were desirable, the Trustees decided the es-
tablishment of public schools and the training of public
school teachers to be the wisest disposition of the Fund.
Free school education and Normal Schools were the ob-
jective points, and these, looking to permanent results,
have had the support of the Trustees throughout the en-
tire history of the Trust. Instead of distributing the in-
come of the Fund promiscuously, aid has been concen-
trated on a few central schools of a high order, to serve as
examples and incentives, rather than on a larger number
of inferior or less influential schools. During the present
year help has been given to a few schools, and has been
promised to a few others, in communities where insuffi-
cient State revenues have been generously supplemented
by local taxation.
"The instruction of the Board to apply the greater por-
264 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
tion of the income of the Fund hereafter to the education
of teachers for the public schools has met with general and
decided approval.
" . . . Special aid has been given to Teachers' Insti-
tutes, defined by some one as ' locomotive Normal Schools. '
. . . Normal Schools, as having continuous life and
influence, and coming more literally within the purview
of the instruction of the Trustees, have had much thought
and labor. Permanent arrangements are needed to train
the multitudes of teachers which our school systems de-
mand. The short-lived Institutes are not attended by all,
or by the most incompetent, and cannot give thorough
professional discipline and training. Not a few summer
months, but toilsome years, are indispensable to teacher-
training.
"The Normal College at Nashville has been regarded
by the Trustees with peculiar favor, the purpose being to
build up an institution of very high order, and a fit monu-
ment of the benefaction of Mr. Peabody. For years the
College was sustained largely by their donations, efforts to
secure direct State aid and co-operation being fruitless.
The Trustees of the University of Nashville gave what aid
they could with their limited means, but there was an in-
creasing disappointment at the want of co-operation on
the part of the State. You were, therefore, constrained to
consider seriously the withdrawal of your donation, and
the giving of help to a State which would show by ade-
quate pecuniary aid a higher appreciation of a Normal
College. It is needless to recapitulate the protracted and
embarrassing negotiations which oppressed the mind and
impaired the health of the late General Agent. Suffice it to
say that such assurance and guaranties of permanent as-
sistance were obtained as to convince Dr. Sears that the
entire or chief burden of sustaining the College would not
hereafter fall on the Peabody Fund. The question of with-
drawing aid from the College was therefore cheerfully
abandoned." .
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 265
The report then states the agreement which had
been reached during the year, by which aid, amount-
ing to several thousand dollars annually, was guar-
anteed by the State of Tennessee to the Nashville
Normal College; and indicates the strong probabil-
ity, which later became a reality, that more liberal
appropriations would soon follow. This statement is
succeeded by a more particular and detailed account
of the work that was then in progress, in connection
with the Fund, in each of the States of West Vir-
ginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi,
Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas; and the
report closes with a table, showing what portions of
the total expenditure of $50,375.00, made during the
year, had been applied respectively to Teachers' In-
stitutes, permanent schools, Nashville scholarships,
and educational journals in the several States.
This first report of the new General Agent made,
as was to have been expected, a very favorable im-
pression upon the Trustees of the Fund; and is set
out here, in its somewhat dry details, both as show-
ing the conditions surrounding Curry's undertaking,
and as illustrating his comprehensive and immedi-
ate grasp of the situation. After hearing it read,
there could remain no doubt in the minds of the mem-
bers of the Board, if such a doubt had even for a mo-
ment existed, that they had found the right man for
the place.
His diary for the year, 1881, under date of October
5, contains the simple entry : —
Trustees met. All present except Waite, Chief Justice,
and Mr. Russell,
Read my first Report. Much complimented.
266 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
During the succeeding official year Curry contin-
ued his work upon the hues and according to the
methods theretofore pursued, and with a steady and
glowing enthusiasm and an ever unabated industry.
He attended the local Institutes, visited schools and
colleges, made speeches at educational meetings, and
availed himself of whatever opportunities offered
themselves to his alert and eager intelligence of ad-
vancing his cause. He paid especial attention, too, to
arousing the interest of public men and State officials
in his work, and before the anniversary of his first
annual report came around again, he had made ad-
dresses in behalf of State aid to education before the
legislatures of West Virginia, South Carolina, Geor-
gia, Mississippi and Texas.
The progress of his work, and the misconceptions
of many as to its significance, may be read in an ex-
tract from his second Report, made to the Trustees
October 4, 1882:—
Although the administration of the Peabody Fund has
been in operation since 1867, and twenty full reports have
been published and widely distributed, it affords matter
for surprise that inaccurate notions are entertained as to
the intention of Mr. Peabody, the amount of the Fund,
and the oft-declared policy of the Trustees. Application
for aid for the most diverse objects — educational, religious,
charitable, personal — are constantly made. It seems al-
most impossible to eradicate two misapprehensions; first,
that the Fund was intended as a charity for the poor; and
secondly, that all schools, complying with the prescribed
conditions precedent, are entitled to promote assistance.
One of the most urgent pleas for help is that the commu-
nity is poor. Much as this appeal may excite personal sym-
pathy, the Fund is not eleemosynary, but has a distinct
and well-defined object. As the income of the Fund is
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 267
limited, only a few schools can be aided; and the Trustees,
in accordance with the wish of Mr. Peabody, by judicious
selections of schools and localities, and by appropriations
limited as to amount and time, have sedulously striven to
aid in the establishment of a permanent system of "free
schools for the whole people." The prime purpose of
aiding nascent school-systems of the Southern States, so as
to enable them to attain to permanency and efficiency, has
been kept steadily in view. Thus to stimulate communi-
ties and States has required wisdom, patience, firmness,
acquaintance with men and educational systems, large
correspondence and much travel.
Another error, not so prevalent, is that the Fund is for
the exclusive benefit of the white race. By carefully
chosen language, both races were included in the benefac-
tion; and the late and the present General Agent have es-
teemed it a patriotic and Christian privilege to carry out
the wishes of the Founder of the Trust and of the Trus-
tees, that no discrimination betwixt races should be made
beyond what a wise administration required. In every
State aid is given to the colored race and the General
Agent has frequently besought and obtained from State
Superintendents special efforts in behalf of colored schools
and colored teachers.
This statement of Curry's in regard to the attitude
of the Southern States towards the education of the
negroes carries with it a significance, which it doubt-
less gave him pleasure to indicate. All of these
States, by the time at which he wrote, had recovered
themselves from the political and social chaos into
which they had been plunged by the War and by
Reconstruction; and though none of them had
emerged from the poverty that had been thrust
upon them by these two equally tragic episodes, they
were already affording an example, unparalleled.
268 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
perhaps in the history of the world, of unselfish pur-
pose to lift up and elevate by education a servile and
untaught race, that had been so short a time before
but "hewers of wood and drawers of water" among
them.
"One cannot but contemplate with intense joy," he
continues, "the potent agencies which are at work to place
beyond contingency or peril the free-school systems. If
it were not invidious, it would be pleasant to specify certain
Southern newspapers, which, although chiefly political,
have given column after column to accounts of Normal
School and Institute exercises, and to convincing argu-
ments in favor of free schools. Unusual as such mention
may be, it would be unjust not to refer to the valuable
labors of Rev. A. D. Mayo, one of the editors of the 'New
England Journal of Education,' whose addresses in Vir-
ginia, North Carolina and South Carolina have been stim-
ulating and instructive, and whose ministry of education
has been productive of much good."
Curry then gives an account of the ''Slater Fund,"
about the organization and work of which President
Hayes, one of its incorporators, had already been
seeking his advice.
"On 2 March, 1882," he continues in his second report,
"John F. Slater of Norwich, Connecticut, gave one mil-
lion of dollars in trust to several gentlemen, who have been
created by the State of New York a body politic and cor-
porate by the name of 'The Trustees of the Slater Fund.'
Two of the members of this Board, Ex-President Hayes
and Chief Justice Waite, are among the corporators. The
general object of the trust is to apply, for a term of years,
the income to 'the uplifting of the lately emancipated
people of the Southern States and their posterity, by con-
ferring on them the blessings of a Christian education,' so
as 'to make them good men and good citizens.' While the
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 269
prosecution of the general object is left to the discretion
and largest liberty of the Trustees, Mr. Slater indicated as
desirable oV;jects 'the training of teachers from among the
people requiring to be taught' and 'the encouragement of
such institutions as are most effectually useful in pro-
moting this training of teachers.'"
That the Trustees of the Slater Fund were already
largely relying on Curry's judgment and experience
in perfecting their organization and mapping out
their work is indicated by the letters which Mr.
Hayes had written him.
"I thank you," wrote the ex-President, from Fremont,
Ohio, under date of April 20, 1882, "for the speech and
your letter. The consolidation of educational funds has a
great deal to recommend it. We have suffered vastly in
Ohio by scattering among thirty or forty colleges funds
which would have amply endowed three or four. But it is
idle to criticise. We must make all we can out of existing
facts.
"I shall want to confer with you about the line of action
that is wise for the Slater Trustees to take, and would like
to know of your probable movements for the next two
months. If a charter is granted, as we expect, by the State
of New York, our headquarters will be in the City of N.
Y., and I shall go there perhaps two or three times yearly.
"I shall take occasion to correct the misapprehension
as to the work of the Peabody Fund among the colored
people."
And again Mr. Hayes writes to Curry on the same
subject: —
Fremont, 0.,
5 July, 1882.
My dear Sir: — I send you herewith the act incor-
porating the Trustees of the Slater Fund, and Mr. Slater's
letter defining the Trust.
270 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
At the first meeting held in New York in May, the trus-
tees appointed a Finance Committee, an Executive Com-
mittee, consisting of the President of the Board, the Secre-
tary, President Oilman, Oov. Colquitt, Dr. Boyce and
Hon. Wm. E. Dodge; and a Committee on Rules. Presi-
dent Oilman is permanent Secretary. Mr. Jessup is Treas-
urer.
The funds were invested by the Finance Committee at
about six percent interest. The rate of interest of the se-
curities taken is six percent, but a small premium was paid.
Inasmuch as the income, only, can be expended for the
purposes of the Trust, no expenditure will be made until
after next December, when the first income will be avail-
able. In the meantime a Oeneral Agent will be appointed,
and a policy and plans matured. The subject of a Oeneral
Agent and plans are before the Executive Committee for
consideration and report. The next meeting of the Board
will be in October, in New York, at the time the Peabody
Trustees hold their meeting.
Throughout the proceedings thus far the Peabody
Trust has been the model in the mind of Mr. Slater, and of
the Trustees of his appointment.
No person has been fixed upon for General Agent. I
am inclined to think that a Southern man should be se-
lected. Dr. Haygood and Mr. Orr of Georgia have been
suggested. Neither is a candidate, and I do not know that
either would accept. Dr. Steiner of Md. is in the same
position. Can you aid us with a confidential suggestion?
Indeed, after reading the trust deed, may I not hope for
suggestions from you on the whole matter? One of the
points which I deem important is such an administration
of the trust as will strengthen the cause of Education in
the South, especially for the Colored. It seems to me that
one of the best things now doing by you with the Peabody
Fund is the aid afforded to those who are creating a sound
public sentiment on the subject of Education in the
South.
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 271
I would like to preserve the particular copy of the Slater
trust paper which I send you, — but keep it as long as you
wish.
Sincerely,
R. B. Hayes.
Hon. J. L. M. Curry,
Richmond.
Another of the ''potent agencies" for education
of the South, which rejoiced Curry's heart, and of
which he also makes mention in his report of October,
1882, to the Peabody Trustees, is the endowment of
the "Tulane Administrators," which resulted in the
establishment of The Tulane University at New
Orleans.
"Another illustration," he writes, "of honorable munif-
icence, more local in its benefits, is the gift of Paul Tulane,
of New Jersey. To certain persons, incorporated under
the name of ' The Administrators of the Tulane Education
Fund,' Mr. Tulane, in June, 1882, executed a trust-deed,
conveying certain real-estate, in the city of New Orleans,
State of Louisiana, ' for the promotion and encouragement
of intellectual, moral, and industrial education among the
white young persons in the city of New Orleans, and for
the advancement of letters, the arts and sciences therein.
"Such benefactions, for such unselfish purposes," com-
ments Curry, "are honorable to our race and country, and
their influence will survive with increasing strength and
usefulness. Mr. Slater says : ' I am encouraged to the exe-
cution, in this charitable foundation, of a long-cherished
purpose by the eminent wisdom and success that has
marked the conduct of the Peabody Education Fund in a
field of operation not remote from that contemplated by
this Trust.' The letter of Mr. Tulane furnishes internal
evidence, corroborated by the statement of the counsel
272 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
who drew the papers, that the gift of Mr. Peabody and the
administration of the Fund afforded much assistance in
shaping the terms of the trust.
"Stimulating and valuable as are these gifts, the South-
ern States cannot rely on individual beneficence. Educa-
tion is a civil as well as a parental duty. It is of the es-
sence of true manhood. By no other means can man make
the best of himself and fulfil his obligations. It is his in-
alienable birthright. What is true of all men is especially
true of an American citizen. General intelligence is neces-
sary to popular liberty, to the safety and perpetuity of our
representative institutions."
In May, 1882, Curry, as their General Agent, pre-
sented on behalf of the Peabody Trustees to the
United States Congress a petition, calling the at-
tention of that body to a former memorial of the
Board, which had been presented two years earlier;
and renewing the solicitation contained in the
memorial, that the Federal Government's aid be
given in co-operation with the public school systems
in the Southern States.
In October, the Trustees of the Fund held their
regular annual meeting in New York, to which Curry
reported satisfactory progress in the work under his
charge. He had visited nearly all the Southern
States, and by request had addressed the legislatures
of North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and
Arkansas, in each of which States the movement in
behalf of general education had aroused the interest
of its public men. He reported further at this
time : —
All the State Superintendents have been cheerful in
their co-operation with the General Agent, and zealous in
their respective States for the Public Schools. It would
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 273
be ungrateful and unjust not to make mention of the aid
often given by him to the Bureau of Education at Wash-
ington. General Eaton, beyond a technical discharge of
office work, delights also to advance the general cause by
his abundant information, wide experience, personal coun-
sel, and eloquent voice.
The year has been marked by the usual assemblages of
educators. The discussions are taking a wide scope, and
embracing problems connected with education which show
the increasing importance of the subject. . . . There
is a growing recognition of the alliance betwixt industrial
and mental training. ... In some of the States a
new phase of the free school question is presenting itself.
Kentucky has recently stricken from her statutes an un-
wise discrimination betwixt the races in the disbursement
of school funds; but in the flush of our rejoicings over such
a triumph of patriotism and generous self-sacrifice, we
find a disposition elsewhere to adopt what Kentucky, after
trial, has cast aside. It is not proper in this Report to
mention, much less to discuss, the causes which have cre-
ated this hurtful sentiment in favor of throwing upon each
race the burden of educating the children of that race.
Were we to concede all that is claimed as justifying the dis-
crimination, it might be conclusively replied that the
confinement of the school revenues pro rata to the race
paying the taxes is a measure that originates in narrow
prejudice, or is punitive for certain alleged political of-
fenses, and is, therefore, an unstable and unworthy ground
for the legislation of Christian statesmen.
Public education at public cost has its best defence in
the obligation to preserve national life.
This attitude of Curry's in favor of meting out
equal and exact justice in the distribution of State
funds in aid of education to both whites and blacks
was one which he had assumed long before his con-
nection with the Peabody Fund, and had publicly
274 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
announced as early as 1866, in his speech at Marion,
in which he had advised the people of the South to
pay of their poverty for the education of the dense
mass of negro ignorance in their midst, upon which
the readjustment of a revolutionized society had
conferred the privileges of an unintelligent citizenship.
The preservation of the national life seemed to him
impossible without the education of the citizenship
which goes to make up that life; and in this view
there was no divergence by him from the demo-
cratic attitude on the subject of education, which
was held by his political exemplar, and the founder of
the school of governmental thought to which he had
always maintained allegiance. Mr. Jefferson had
not only been an advocate of State aid to higher
education, but he had insisted that the State Uni-
versity, in the properly constructed educational
system, should be the capstone of the common
schools, supported by local taxation. For him the
common school was an essential part of the free
government of the individual citizen, whose func-
tions should be: —
(1) To give to every citizen the information he needs
for the transaction of his own business ;
(2) To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express
and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writ-
ing;
(3) To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;
(4) To understand his duties to his neighbors and coun-
try, and to discharge with competence the functions con-
fided to him by either;
(5) To know his rights; to exercise with order and jus-
tice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduci-
ary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with
diligence, with candor and judgment.
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 275
(6) And, in general, to observe with intelligence and
faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be
placed.
The " readjustment " by one or more of the
Gulf States of some of the bonds included in Mr.
Peabody's donation was engaging the attention of
the Trustees at this time. In 1886 the Peabody
scholarships were withdrawn from those States; but
in 1892 they were restored. At the meeting of the
Board in October, 1883, a memorial was presented,
signed by Bishop Thomas U. Dudley, Dr. W. H.
Whitsett, Dr. John A. Broadus, Rabbi A. Moses,
Vice-Chancellor John G. Simrall, Dr. Basil Manly,
and eighteen others, prominent citizens of Kentucky,
praying that their State might also be included
among those receiving the benefits of the Peabody
Fund. The memorial was referred to a committee
consisting of Messrs. Waite, Fish and Jackson of the
Trustees, who in their report embodied the following
resolution : —
That this Board will cordially unite with the people of
Kentucky in any effort that may be made to create an
interest in favor of education by means of public schools,
and the General Agent is requested, if an opportunity
should be afforded him, to address the Legislature on the
subject, and to do what else he can to direct attention to
the importance of making ample provision for the per-
manent establishment and maintenance of such a system
of schools in the State.
This report was accepted by the Board; and on
the 25th of January following, Curry, by special in-
vitation, appeared before the Legislature of Kentucky
and delivered an address along the lines of the
276 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
Peabody Board's resolution. The Legislature soon
afterwards passed a bill providing for great improve-
ments in the public school system; but the aid to
the State on the part of the Peabody Board appears
to have been little more than that of a tender of
moral encouragement; for it seems that no dis-
bursements of money were ever made from the Fund
to education in Kentucky.
Some of the entries in Curry's diary about this
time are not without a personal interest. In
December, 1883, Matthew Arnold visited Richmond,
and was hospitably received by many of its prom-
inent citizens. Curry writes in his diary under date
of the 18th of that month: —
Called on Mr. Matthew Arnold. Heard him lecture at
night on "Literature and Science."
And on the day following: —
With Mr. Arnold visited two colored schools.
Early in 1884 he writes: —
January 30. — Called on George Bancroft at Washing-
ton. Had a very pleasant interview.
But the journal is unfortunately silent as to the
impressions which were made on him, at this time,
either by the English author of "Literature and
Dogma," or by the great American, whose monu-
ment is his "History of the United States."
In April, 1884, he was elected President of the
Board of Trustees of the State Normal College for
Women, at Farmville, Virginia, which had been
recently established by the Virginia Legislature, and
to the Principalship of which Dr. William H. Ruffner,
whom Curry ranked as an educator with Mann,
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 277
Sears and Wickersham, was chosen at the same
meeting. Curry maintained a deep interest in this
institution, and continued President of its Board
until October 1, 1885, when he resigned the presi-
dency, though still remaining a Trustee until April
25, 1893.
At the ensuing October meeting of the Peabody
Board, he made his usual report, which contained an
interesting paragraph concerning those educational
institutions in Virginia, which derived aid from the
Fund:—
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, under the
administration of its accomplished president (General
S. C. Armstrong) is almost an anomaly in educational
work. Its success has been extraordinary. . . .
The Normal and Collegiate Institute at Petersburg, —
the instructors of which are colored, — is well sustained by
the State, and closed a year of good work. The Legisla-
ture authorized a State Normal School for Girls, which has
been located at Farmville. Litigation embarrassed and
delayed the action of the Trustees. The difficulties being
removed, the school will soon be opened under the head-
ship of Hon. W. H. Ruffner.
A Convention of County Superintendents and four
Teachers' Institutes have been valuable agencies in stimu-
lating and directing educational energies. One thousand
and twenty-eight teachers attended the Institutes, — nearly
double the number enrolled any single year before.
Curry's busy life in this period may be appreciated
by a glimpse at the varied activities in which he was
engaged, — activities which demanded the constant
exercise of physical no less than of mental energies.
First and foremost, he was the General Agent of the
Peabody Fund, and in the discharge of that office,
278 J. L. M. CUERY, A BIOGRAPHY
he had made out of every legislative chamber in the
South, a new and very vital sort of pulpit from which
to preach the gospel of training for all people, high
and low, black and white. He delivered addresses
during the year 1884 before the legislatures of Vir-
ginia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana, and South
Carolina; and he spoke before a joint committee of
the Virginia Legislature in favor of a State Normal
School, and to a House Committee of the United
States Congress on the subject of Federal aid to
State education. He was a member of the Board
of Trustees of Richmond College and of that of the
Farmville Woman's College, and was President of
both of these boards, giving to the discharge of the
duties incident to the positions he occupied on them
a full measure of his time, energies and talents.
His services were constantly in demand, and scarcely
less constantly given to attending and addressing
educational and religious conventions and assem-
blies; and he filled in the spare moments of a life,
busy to overflowing, with commencement speeches
at schools, colleges and Universities. The man's
vitality of mind and body seems almost super-normal
in the light of his unremitting work. He served on
the Board of Directors of the Richmond Woollen
Mills ; he taught a Sunday-school class with the un-
dimmed and undiminished enthusiasm of his earlier
religious work; he took part in pastors' conferences;
he married couples; he preached funeral sermons;
he participated in the work of committees on foreign
missions, and for aiding the advancement of religion
and education among the negroes of the Southern
States. In fine, he was preacher, teacher, man of
affairs, politician, lecturer, educator and philan-
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 279
thropist at once; and in all the relations of these
varied pursuits, he left a vivid impress of his per-
sonality upon whatever he touched. Of the de-
mands made upon his physical energies some idea
may be formed from the statement that, in his
widely distributed work during the year 1884, he
travelled altogether a distance of more than seven-
teen thousand miles.
A few days after the meeting of the Peabody
Trustees in October, 1884, he went to Georgia, where
on the 8th of the month he attended the Centennial
meeting of the Georgia Baptist Association at the
town of Washington in that State. During his visit
to Washington he was a guest at the hospitable home
of General Robert Toombs, who had been a con-
spicuous figure in the ante-bellum discussions of
slavery, state rights and strict construction; and
after serving as Secretary of State for the Con-
federacy, and as a general in the army of Northern
Virginia, had sought England as a place of refuge
succeeding Appomattox. He had come back to his
native land after a brief period of exile; but even
at the time of Curry's visit he was still ''irrecon-
cilable" in his refusal to take the oath of allegiance
to the Federal government.
In Curry's diary of the time of this visit to Georgia,
we find the brief exhibition of a reminiscent and
tender mood: —
Saturday, October 11. — Left for Lincoln County in a
buggy. Night at Jesse Cartledge's, where I was born.
Sunday, October 12. — Talked to Sunday school, and
preached at Double Branches, where I heard my first ser-
mon.
280 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
In early January of the following year he was in
Washington, D. C, working for the passage of the
Blair bill by the Federal Congress. In the latter
days of March he was again in Washington: —
March 27. — To Washington and back.
Saw Secretaries Lamar and Garland, Assistant Secre-
tary Porter, and Gen. Eaton and Atkins. Lamar asked if
I would accept place of head of Bureau of Education, and
I replied in the negative.
Early in May he was the recipient of a letter from
President Hayes inviting him to confer with the
Slater Board.
In response to this invitation he went to New
York; and his diary under date of May 20, 1885,
contains the following: —
Attended by invitation the annual meeting of the Trus-
tees of the Slater Fund, to confer as to the policy of the
Board.
Talked an hour or more, giving my opinion, and answer-
ing questions.
Dined at the University Club. Present, M. K. Jesup,
host; President Hayes; Chief Justice M. R. Waite; D. C.
Gilman, President of Johns Hopkins; J. A. Stewart; W. E.
Dodge; Dr. A. G. Haygood; Hon. G. J. Orr of Georgia.
"In the autumn of 1885," he writes, "I was in South-
west Virginia and East Tennessee, attending associations
and making speeches in behalf of Education, Missions, &c.
During my absence Mrs. Curry received a letter from
Hon. Thos. F. Bayard, addressed to me, offering in behalf
of President Cleveland the position of Envoy Extraordi-
nary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Spain. For some
days neither letter nor telegram could reach me. Finally
at Rogersville, Tennessee, the unexpected news reached
me, and I took the first train for Asheville to join Mrs.
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 281
Curry and discuss the question of acceptance. After two
visits to Washington, I saw Mr. Bayard and the President
and accepted the position; but concluded to have no publi-
cation thereof until after the meeting of the Peabody
Trustees, which was to occur soon in October."
On October 1, 1885, Curry resigned his position
as President of the Board of Trustees of the Woman's
Normal College at Farmville, retaining, however,
his office of Trustee until April 25, 1893. Six days
later he submitted his annual report to the Peabody
Board, at their regular meeting in New York City.
After reading the report, he presented to the Board
the following communication: —
Richmond, Va., Oct. 7, 1885.
To the Trustees of the Peabody Education Fund:
Having consented to accept from the Government an
important diplomatic trust, I must ask you not to renew
my appointment as General Agent, unless it be for a very
brief period, so as to prevent any confusion from a too
sudden severance of the connection which I hold with the
Fund.
In closing a relation, which to me has been uninter-
ruptedly pleasant, you will pardon me for expressing my
most grateful appreciation of the confidence and of the
personal regard with which you have honored me. From
the honored Chairman and every Trustee, I have had only
kindness and generous support. The performance of my
duties, not easy as I interpreted them, has been a labor of
love. Mr. Peabody was the most liberal benefactor the
South ever had, and his benefaction came at a time when
she was in the depth of poverty and anguish. Education
being necessary to material advancement, and in every
mental and moral relation, his munificence took most
wisely the direction of aiding in the education of the youth
of both races. The initial effort of the Trustees was to stim-
282 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
ulate the establishment of pubhc school systems, and after-
wards to insure their permanency and constant improve-
ment. As a factor in the production of these accomplished
results, no single agency has been so potent and beneficial
as the Peabody Education Fund. The next and correlated
step was to labor for the improvement of the teaching in
the public schools. This has been effected in a marked
degree by sustaining Teachers' Institutes and Normal
Schools. The States are gradually incorporating into their
school systems, and sustaining by annual grants, these
most effective instrumentalities for the improvement of
those systems. The Normal College at Nashville has
emerged from the difficulties which five years ago im-
perilled its life, and now, with the cordial co-operation of
Tennessee, is vindicating its right to a place among the
best institutions of its kind in the United States.
Instead of confining myself to office work, — to the hum-
ble but useful avocation of almoner for the distribution of
the income of the Fund, — I have sought to do something
towards the creation of a healthier educational sentiment,
and to identify the Trust with the most advanced educa-
tional progress. Every door of access to the people, — to
schools, colleges, legislatures, — has been thrown wide open
to your representative, and if good has not been done, the
fault is his. Everywhere I have advocated the uplifting
of the lately emancipated and enfranchised negro, and
upon no part of my work do I look back with greater per-
sonal satisfaction.
In the spirit of the Trust, and in known harmony with
the opinions of Mr. Peabody, I have labored assiduously
to renew and cultivate a feeling of broad and catholic patri-
otism, to cement in closest fraternity all sections and peo-
ples of the Union, to bury discords and strifes, and to lift
up to a higher plane than that of sectional animosity or of
angry prejudices. To-day, thank God, the South is as
loyal to the Union, and as ready to pour out blood and
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 283
treasure for the national honor and national safety as
Ohio or Massachusetts.
What has been achieved in the States which are the bene-
ficiaries of the Trust, since you organized as a Board in
Washington City, on the 8th of February, 1867, is incredi-
ble. There have been revolutions in labor, economic in-
dustries, customs, traditions, feehngs, convictions, laws
and institutions, any one of which considered singly would
mark a social era, a civil epoch. No people ever accom-
plished so much for education, in so brief a period, under
such crushing embarrassments, as the South has done. If
the General Government, heeding the earnest words and
the unanswerable arguments of this Board, will come to
the relief of States struggling with heroic energy to meet
the responsibilities of their new life, problems of gigantic
import will be aided in their solution, and the faith and
the hope of the patriot and the Christian will be strength-
ened in reference to the success and the perpetuity of the
Republic.
The policy of your Board is so well established, and the
method of administration has been so simplified, that my
withdrawal will put you to no inconvenience.
Thanking you for your numerous kindnesses, and wish-
ing great success to the work of the Fund, I am,
Yours most respectfully,
J. L. M. Curry.
On motion of Mr. Evarts, this communication of
Curry's, which sets forth in perspicuous summary
the purposes and achievements of the Peabody
Trustees on the one hand, and the methods, aims
and aspirations that had animated himself on the
other, was referred to the Executive Committee of
the Board for consideration. Mr. Winthrop, for
the Executive Committee, on the next day submitted
284 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
the following resolutions, which were unanimously
adopted by the Board: —
Resolved, That the Trustees of the Peabody Education
Fund have received with sincere regret the announcement
of Dr. Curry, that, having accepted the appointment of
United States Minister to Madrid, he must decline a re-
election as the General Agent of this Trust; that the Trus-
tees desire to enter on their records the deep sense which
they entertain of the fidelity and devotion with which he
has discharged his duties for more than four years past,
and of the great success which has attended his labors; —
and that the grateful regards of the Trustees will follow
him into his new sphere of public service, with their best
wishes for his health and happiness.
Resolved, That the appointment of a General Agent be
postponed for consideration until the next meeting of the
Board, with authority to the Executive Committee, in the
meantime, to make such temporary arrangements for the
conduct of the General Agency as they may find necessary.
Curry was requested to continue to act as General
Agent until his departure for Spain; and Dr. S. A.
Green, the Secretary of the Board, was requested
and authorized to serve temporarily as General
Agent in Curry's absence.
It is interesting to note that at this meeting Pres-
ident Cleveland and Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan were
elected to membership on the Board of Trustees.
Mr. Morgan was chosen Treasurer and held that
office uninterruptedly thereafter. For four years
Curry had been engaged in the most fruitful work
offered to any man in Southern life. The paralysis
of war had at last passed away and hope everywhere
reigned. He had a country which he "could love"
and which he was about to represent in a foreign
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 285
land. This service, distinguished and agreeable as
it was, must be considered as a mere interlude in
the man's essential career. The Peabody Trustees
perceived this and kept his work waiting for him.
The great preacher had found his ultimate pulpit
in the schoolhouses and legislative chambers of
eleven States awakening to a new national life.
His general theme was an efficient citizenship in a
reunited republic. He perceived the real menace
of the ignorant negro. He saw the necessity of
industrial preparation. He felt the need on the
white man's part of the philosophic view and the
sense of obligation. He had faith in the justice and
good sense of the people, and he knew their sturdy
power. His appeal was to the heart and his method
the method of the orator. Looked at in the clear
light of another generation, the group of men who
preceded and were now gathered about Curry, as
he began his notable work, was worthy of such a
period in our educational history. Samuel Chapman
Armstrong, a young man of original genius and con-
secration, schooled under Mark Hopkins, was be-
ginning, on the shores of Hampton Roads, a revo-
lutionary movement for negro education destined
to pour into that misguided work a stream of com-
mon sense and high purpose which has served to
steady and direct it until this day. He saw that the
first necessity was a military government of these
negro youth, practically and morally let loose into
infinite space. Then must follow a training, all
the way up, in work, the boys or girls being expected
to furnish to a considerable extent the means for their
schooling and support. The schooling must be co-
educational, that the educated colored boy could
286 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
have for his wife an educated colored girl. The
religious education should be Christian in the broad
sense that it left the worship of creed and ecclesiasti-
cal polity out of account. As soon as possible the
school at Hampton was set free from dependence
on any association and organized under a board of
directors. He also understood that any system of
schooling of the colored people, to be effective and
permanent, while it might depend largely on the
North for pecuniary support, must commend itself
to the common school public of the Southern State
in which it was set up. Thus he persuaded the
Legislature of Virginia to appropriate $10,000 an-
nually of its national industrial school fund, with
the superintendent of public instruction and other
gentlemen of the State as advisory trustees. He
left the classical upper story out of his system of
instruction, organizing the school as far as possible
according to the methods of the best primary and
secondary graded schools of the day. The normal
training of the superior students was at once estab-
lished, under competent management, in connection
with the practice department, the Butler common
school, afterwards named the Whittier.
WilUam H. Ruffner, a young Presbyterian clergy-
man and scientist, as first State Superintendent of
Public Instruction in Virginia, was planting the
American Common School upon a philosophic basis,
from which it could never be dislodged in the statutes
and affections of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Men like John Eaton, Edward S. Joynes, WiUiam
Preston Johnston, Calvin H. Wiley, Atticus G. Hay-
good, were striking hands with Armstrong, Sears
and others of their kind in Northern life and develop-
PEABODY AND HIS TRUST 287
ing a cause and a quality of leadership to which the
best of the younger generation could repair. The
home of the late President of the Southern Confed-
acy had been reconstructed into a public school-
house, and as a background of infinite dignity and
inspiration to the whole idea had stood the example
of Lee quietly at work, reorganizing the old Wash-
ington College into the institution which should also
bear his honored name.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAND OF THE ALHAMBRA
Curry's invitation to represent the United States
Government at Madrid came in a flattering way,
and all the circumstances of his designation to one
of the foremost offices in the foreign service were well
calculated to arouse the recipient's interest and to
kindle his enthusiasm.
Mr. Bayard, the Secretary of State, wrote to him
as follows: —
Department of State,
Washington, Sept. 7, 1885.
Personal and Confidential.
My dear Sir: — I wish to enlist you in the public service,
and believe that an opportunity for high usefulness is open
to you, in which it may be in your power to render impor-
tant service to our country.
The mission to Spain is now vacant, and I consider that
point in our foreign relations as second in importance to
none.
Nothing could exhibit to you my personal trust and
confidence in your character and capacity more than this
expression of my wish to see you the representative of the
United States at Madrid. If you wish to consult with me
before accepting the trust, let me hear from you, — and see
you here.
I can give you a room in my house (1413 Massachusetts
Avenue), where we can have free conference.
Sincerely yours,
T. F. Bayard.
288
THE LAND OF THE ALHAMBRA 289
Upon learning of the tender of the Spanish Mis-
sion, Curry's mind turned at once to his friend, Mr.
Winthrop. From the httle town in East Tennessee,
where the news reached him, he wrote at once to the
venerable President of the Peabody Board.
ROGERSVILLE, TeNN.,
Confidential 14 Sept., '85.
Dear Mr. Winthrop : —
For nearly a week I have been near " Cumberland Gap,"
remote from railways and telegraph. Arriving here a few
minutes ago, I find a, letter and a mailed telegram from
Mrs, Curry, startling me with the announcement that
President Cleveland tenders me the Mission to Spain.
The tender was suggested, of course, by no solicitation of
mine. It is a surprise. In my confusion, I turn to you as
my most valued and trusted friend. What shall I do? I
rather suspect Mrs. Curry would not be unwilling to spend
a year or two abroad. My Peabody work out of the way,
I should not be unwilling to go to Italy or Austria; but I
love the Peabody work; I am under obligation to the Trus-
tees; and I value, as the most prized and pleasant of all
earth's gifts, wife and children excepted, your friendship
and my labor with you. Pardon me for the utterance, but
I love you as I have never loved any man outside my
father's family; and I can consent to do nothing to which
you object. Help me in the dilemma. I know nothing be-
yond what I have written, save that I am summoned to
Washington. I shall reach Asheville to-morrow, and may
leave for Washington on the 16th.
Ever yours sincerely,
J. L. M. Curry.
Hon. Robt. C. Winthrop,
Brookline, Mass.
The effect of this letter of Curry's upon Mr.
Winthrop may be best shown by the latter's reply,
290 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
evidently written upon the day of its receipt, and
illustrated with a scriptural text of which the com-
munication itself is an exposition.
For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and
that which I was afraid of is come unto me {Job 3:25).
Brookline, Mass'tts.,
16 Sept., 1885.
My Dear Dr. Curry: —
Your "confidential" letter of the 14th inst., from Rog-
ersville, Tenn., has just reached me, and has filled me with
consternation. I had written to you at Asheville yester-
day, after examining the proofs of your Report, and my
soul was at ease. I looked forward to our approaching
meeting at New York with confidence, and felt that our
Peabody work was secure for a long future. I felt, too,
that take it all in all, it was the greatest work of our time
and land, and that the names of good Dr. Sears and your-
self would go down to posterity embalmed by the memory
of the highest services to the South and the whole country.
The idea of losing you from our labors came strongly
upon me, when the new Administration first came in. And
if our friend Bayard had at once offered you a first-class
mission, I should at least have acquiesced in its being de-
servedly assigned. The text which I have written at the
top of this letter was then often in my mind. But as one
after another of the foreign appointments was filled by
men inferior to yourself, and as your oAvn assurances of
unfailing devotion to our work were renewed to me by
letter and by lip, I had abandoned all apprehensions, and
had looked forward to being lovingly associated with you
in the cause of Southern Education for the little remnant
of my own life.
I do not wonder that Bayard has been tempted to pluck
you from our hand. But for him to propose to plump you
and dear Mrs. Curry down into the midst of a raging
cholera at Madrid, is certainly of doubtful kindness.
THE LAND OF THE ALHAMBRA 291
Were there a great exigency there, you would not shrink
from such a service at any risk, I well know. But is there
anything to be done at Madrid, which can be compared in
importance to the work you are now doing so admirably
and so effectively at home? Will any honor ever attach
to your name, by a service at Madrid, in any degree com-
parable to that which you have won and are winning in
your present sphere?
But all this is aside from the real issue, to which I hasten
to turn. It is in no spirit of flattery or compliment that I
say, that you are the very pivot of George Peabody's great
Southern benefaction. All its success turns upon you.
To take you from your post at this moment, would be like
taking the pilot of the "Puritan" away, when she was just
on the starting line. The American cup would go to the
" Genesta." Seriously, I am afraid your withdrawal from
our work, so suddenly and at such short notice, would not
only embarrass and perplex us terribly, but would awaken
feelings in our Board which would afflict me.
Were such a separation six months off, — so that there
would be time for deliberation, — sad as the prospect would
be to me, it would be less appalling. When good Dr. Sears
died, I was able, with the aid of his daughter, to carry our
work along for many months. But I am older and feebler
now, and should not know where to turn. Our Board, too,
is in a crippled condition, — three vacancies to be filled next
month, and several of those who are left suffering from old
age and infirmities.
I write frankly, as you would have me, and from the
fullness of my heart. But I should do injustice to the vital
importance of your services as our General Agent, if I did
not say that your withdrawal would be an irreparable
loss. Should that loss really befall us, and your place be
supplied by some pressing Northern candidate, the South
would be disquieted. But your place could not be filled in
the estimation of either South or North.
I fully appreciate your wife's natural disposition to
292 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
spend a few years abroad as an Ambassadress. I am afraid
I shall be out of her good graces, which would be a great
grief to me, by writing as I have. But better things than
Madrid may turn up for both of you one of these days.
She would not like to have it said hereafter that the cause
of Southern Education had been brought to a stand, and
the Peabody Fund plunged into confusion, by her hus-
band's acceptance of a Mission abroad.
Forgive my strong expressions. I write off-hand, and
take no copy of my letter. Let me thank you, however,
as I do sincerely, for your warm and affectionate personal
expressions, which I heartily reciprocate. One of my main
obligations to George Peabody is that his Trust brought
me into such intimate relations with Dr. Sears and your-
self. And let me not conclude without assuring you, that
however you may decide this question, my own regard
and affection for you and Mrs. Curry cannot be changed.
Ever sincerely,
Your friend,
ROBT. C. WiNTHROP.
Hon. J. L. M. Curry, LL.D.
On the 23rd of September, Curry wrote to Mr.
Winthrop : —
After a most painful conflict between dual duties, the
decision has been made and the Government has been no-
tified that the mission will be accepted. If I had been re-
quired to go abroad at once, a sense of obligation to the
Peabody Fund would have precluded any consideration
of the tender made, however honorable. Time is allowed
for the selection of a successor, and to enable me by cor-
respondence, or personal interviews, to acquaint him with
our principles and methods of administration, and the
personnel with whom the Fund must co-operate.
And Mr. Winthrop, while Curry was penning the
letter containing this announcement, had already
THE LAND OF THE ALHAMBRA 293
overcome his first feelings of disappointment, and
under the same date was writing to him thus: —
While I cannot abate a jot or tittle of what I have here-
tofore said about your importance to our Trust, I feel less
anxious than I did at first about our ability to carry along
the Peabody work after a fashion, without serious injury
to the cause, or any great strain upon myself.
After the adjournment of the Peabody Board in
New York on October 6, 1883, Curry proceeded at
once to Boston, to call on Mr. Lowell, who had been
appointed to Madrid by President Hayes, in 1877,
and transferred thence to the court of St. James in
1880.
I visited Hon. James Russell Lowell in Boston," he
writes, "and lunched with him. He was courteous and
kind . . . and gave me valuable suggestions, the re-
sult of his own diplomatic experience in Madrid. One re-
mark he made surprised me. He said he had much diffi-
culty in convincing government and the best people that
an American Minister could be a gentleman.
A few years later in response to a request for his
portrait Mr. Lowell writes in this strain to his suc-
cessor :
Deerfoot Farm, Southborough,
11th Jan., 1887.
Dear Sir:
Immediately after receiving your very kind letter of
the 24th Nov., I gave directions that an engraved portrait
of me should be sent to you through the Department of
State. I hope that it will already have reached you. It
is thought to be a pretty fair likeness.
I am very glad you liked my address at the Harvard
Centenary. It was a very pleasant affair and everything
294 J. L. M. CURRY, A BIOGRAPHY
went off smothly and successfully. The audience,
especially that part of it on the platform, was a very
remarkable one, the preponderance of gray and even
white heads being remarkable. It was observed that
nearly all those who had an active share in the ceremonies
were much older than those who performed similar func-
tions at the last celebration in 1836. The chief marshal
of the day had been one of the marshals fifty years before,
the poet was a graduate of fifty-seven years' standing,
the orator of forty-eight, the President of the day of
forty-eight, and so on. Is this a sign that we begin later
than we used? At any rate it is encouragi 
