EDMUND WINSTON PETTUS.
It is seldom that any magazine may present to living readers the letter of a man who has seen four generations arise and pass away. And such a man!
Edmund Winston Pettus is one of the great living men of the world. He is an old Roman who represents the high-water mark of the Republic’s true greatness—one who might sit at the council table of the Gracchii, of Pitt, of Washington. I speak not from hearsay—all my life I have known him. And never will the Republic look upon his like again, for as he quotes, “Time changes and men change with it.” But there was a scope, a broadness, a breadth and dignity in the Time which reached out to all the ages in making the men of his day and generation which seems sadly lacking to Trotwood’s in making of some of our Southern statesmen of to-day. But blame not the South for this. She has passed through the shoals and the rapids of politics since the war. It is natural that much froth and foam should follow it. But the two old Romans which Alabama has sent to the Senate go far to atone for the froth of some of our sister Southern States. All honor to Alabama for clinging to such ideals!
The picture we present of this grand old man (by courtesy of The Saturday Evening Post) brings to my mind a flood of remembrance—tender, and of the kind which has gone into the soul of me. One morning in the year 1868, when I was too small a boy to go anywhere alone, my father took me by the hand and led me to the courthouse to hear General Pettus speak. He turned me over to the sheriff while he himself went on the bench, and the sheriff placed me in a big chair, and, small as I was, I sat spellbound under the thunder of this man’s oratory. It was the first great speech I had ever heard.
And when I see this picture I see the old Judge, before whom he practiced—the old Judge, my father—who died the oldest judge in the State, wearing for twenty-six years the ermine and never sullying it.
They were men of the same type—men of the Old South—men whom the poet called for, saying:
“‘God give us men. A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the love of office cannot kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking—
For while the rabble with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land, and waiting justice sleeps.”
The Saturday Evening Post, in its issue of March 17th, says this of Senator Pettus: “It isn’t much of a trick to be eighty-five years young, but to be a vigorous and virile senator at eighty-five is an accomplishment. Few men have done that. Edmund Winston Pettus, of Alabama is one. One is reminded of a buffalo when Pettus comes into the Senate chamber. He has shoulders a yard across and a barrel of a chest upholding a short, thick neck and a massive head. When he walks he holds his head forward and shakes it slowly from side to side. It is fascinating to watch the sturdy old man and speculate how strong he was when he was young. He left Selma with a party of neighbors at the beginning of the gold excitement and rode horseback to California. He carried a Bible and a copy of Shakespeare in his saddle-bags and read them while on horseback and by the light of the camp fires at night. The Senator asserts that no better library has been taken there since. Pettus was a lieutenant in the Mexican War and a brigadier-general in the Confederate Army in the Civil War. There is a big, sprawling painting of the battle of Chepultepec over one of the stairways in the Senate wing of the Capitol. A few days ago a man was studying the picture. Senator Pettus came along.
Edmund Winston Pettus.
“Sir,” said the man, “I observe that you are an old man. Will you kindly tell me if the people of those days wore clothes like those in the picture there?”
“No, sir,” thundered Pettus, “they did not! I was in that battle, and I saw no such clothes as those. So far as that raiment is concerned that representation is a mere pictorial lie!”
It is remarkable that from one section of Alabama—the Black Belt—and from one town in it—Selma—should have come two such men as Pettus and Morgan, both now octogenarians, and the same intellectual giants they were a half century ago.
In a near issue of Trotwood’s, perhaps in the next number, will be told the story of that section—a section rich not only in sturdy, progressive people, but in a soil and climate of such great natural advantages that the mere telling of it will be a revelation to those who have not heard of it before.
Mr. John Trotwood Moore, Columbia, Tenn.—My Dear Sir: I received your letter and the magazines you sent me. I read carefully your article on what Parton calls “The murder of Dickinson,” and I enjoyed it very much. I have always thought that people who live in this age give too much importance to questions of right and wrong, to what I call “modern ideas,” or, rather, who attach too little importance to the theories of the former generations. I have lived through four generations complete, and there have been in my day marvelous changes in public opinion, and even the established theories in the churches as to whether a certain thing is right or wrong. When I was a boy in North Alabama instrumental music in a church was considered as a sacrilege, and was not allowed under any circumstances. Duelling was not more condemned than the resenting of an insult in any other way, and the old saying is perfectly true, “Times change and we change with them.” In your article about the duel you failed to notice that Mrs. Jackson, with her first husband, resided in Kentucky, but Kentucky was then a part of Virginia.
In my young days I was familiar with the Hermitage grounds. For four years I was a student at what was then called Clinton College, which was in Smith County, between Carthage and Alexandria, and about forty miles east of the Hermitage on the old emigrant road from Knoxville to Nashville. I visited the Hermitage on several occasions. My grandfather lived for many years about a mile from the Hermitage, and General Jackson attended the marriage of my father and mother, and my father and several of my uncles went with General Jackson through the Creek War.
In 1840 I went from Clinton College to attend the Nashville convention, in what has been called “the log cabin and hard cider” campaign, and we stopped at the Hermitage to see General Jackson. Whilst we were sitting with a number of persons on the piazza the East Tennessee delegates to the Whig convention, in vast numbers, passed on the pike in front of the house. One party of them had a small cannon, and when they reached the front gate, then about two hundred yards from the house, they brought the cannon inside the gate and fired on the house, with blank cartridges, of course. This created great indignation throughout Tennessee. I did attend the convention. The principal purpose of the students in attending the convention was to hear Henry Clay; and we did hear him. It was as poor a speech as I ever heard from any man reputed to be a speaker. The speech was not more than ten minutes long, and the best part of it was a fling at Felix Grundy. Mr. Clay said that when he reached Nashville he inquired for his old friend, the Hon. Felix Grundy, and that he learned “that he was at his old trade in East Tennessee defending criminals.” Mr. Grundy was then making political speeches in East Tennessee for Mr. Van Buren and the Democrats. You remember that Mr. Clay was beaten for the nomination a few weeks before by General Harrison, and his whole speech and demeanor on that occasion indicated great sourness and dissatisfaction, and did him much injury with his party.
I was much gratified to see from your letter that you remember how your father, the late Judge John Moore, and I were for so many years fast and devoted friends. Most respectfully, your friend,
E. W. PETTUS.
Washington, March 30, 1906.
And Plutarch says: “We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against nature.”
TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY Devoted to Farm, Horse and Home.
TROTWOOD PUBLISHING CO., Nashville, Tenn. Office 150 Fourth Ave., North.
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE,
Editor-in-Chief.
| E. E. SWEETLAND | Business Manager. |
| GEO. E. McKENNON | President. |
| JOHN W. FRY | Vice-President. |
| EUGENE ANDERSON | Treas. |
| WOOTEN MOORE | Sec’y. |
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION: One Year, $1.00; Single Copy, 10 cents.
Advertising Rates on application.
NASHVILLE, TENN., JUNE, 1906.