The government sought by indirection and not always in the most creditable way, to uproot the confidence of the Indians by due exposure, but McGillivray was never found unprovided with means to account for the reasonableness of each separate charge. With the strategy of a Napoleon, this extraordinary man could outgeneral all who were pitted against him. Such was the character, such the career of Alexander McGillivray.
He was now an old man. The stylus of care and of responsibility, assumed in an arena the most atrocious, had drawn deep grooves on his brow. His silver hair and tottering gait admonished him of the brief time that was his, but so far from relaxing his grip on the things which had actuated him throughout, this condition only served to tighten it. Experience had sharpened his wits, and villainy had made him impregnable in plying his art. His was a master passion that gave fresh desperateness in view of the approaching end. A vast fortune was his, and with the passion of the man who never had a higher dream than that of personal gain, he hugged it with a tenacity common to men under conditions of advancing age, yet knowing meanwhile, that with his end would come that of the use of his immense means.
He lived to see himself repudiated by all alike. He was rejected by the American government, cast out by the Spaniards, and, by degrees, came to be distrusted even by the Indians. All sense of remorse was gone, all the finer emotions which shrink from public exposure of wrong, long ago deadened. Moral obliquity was complete, and hardened iniquity made him insensible to the frown of reproach with which he was everywhere met.
Worn out by the criminality of a long life, McGillivray sought a home, in his last days, at Little River, in the lower part of Monroe County, where he died on February 17, 1793. His remains were taken to Pensacola and interred in the spacious gardens of William Panton, a wealthy Scotch merchant, with whom McGillivray had long been associated in business connections. His very aged father survived him, and was still living at Dummaglass, Scotland, to whom William Panton wrote of the death of his notorious son. Thus passed away the greatest diplomat Alabama ever produced, but he left to posterity nothing worthy of emulation.
LORENZO DOW
So far as can be ascertained, and the fact seems beyond doubt, the first protestant that ever preached in Alabama was the eccentric Methodist minister, Lorenzo Dow. He combined in his character a number of strange elements, some of which were quite strong, and by his stentorian preaching he stirred the people wherever he went. He was unique in his make-up, and no conjecture could be had of what he would ever say or do. Mr. Dow reached the distant frontier settlements of Alabama along the Tombigbee as early as 1793. He was a fearless, stern, plain, and indefatigable preacher of the old-time type, who spurned all danger, and boldly faced the direst of perils on the border, that he might preach the gospel. He had a notable career, though still a young man, before he found his way to the vanguard of western civilization.
Born in Connecticut during the stormy days of the Revolution, Dow became a Christian in his youth, and for some time was perplexed about what church relationship he should form. He finally joined the Methodists, as the zeal of that people was an attraction to his heated temperament. His errant and arbitrary course soon made him an undesirable acquisition to the Methodists, and while not severing his relations with the church, he was disposed to yield to a disposition to become a general evangelist or missionary of the independent type. His health was broken, and he conceived the idea of going as far westward as the advanced line of Caucasian occupation had gone, taking with him on his perilous journey his young wife.
At this time Mr. Dow was about twenty-seven years old. By means of the tedious and uncomfortable methods of travel at that early time, he found his way from New England to the thin line of settlements along the Tombigbee. Here, in company with his wife, Peggy, he preached as a son of thunder, but as though the dangers encountered did not gratify his love of the perilous, he sought his way through the dangerous wilds to the region of Natchez, Mississippi, long before made an important French settlement. To Dow peril was a fascination, and like the Vikings of Saga story, he sought danger in order to gratify a desire to fight. Not that he was a man of physical violence, but his love of contention and of opposition was without bound. He loved combat for its own sake, and was never so much at peace as when engaged in wordy war. He was of that mold of humanity that immensely preferred disagreement with one than tranquil acquiescence. He rusted when not in use. His blade glimmered only by constant wielding.