In the legislature he threw his cultured being into the single cause of education, procuring for it a special committee, of which he was made the chairman. He prepared with great pains and labor an elaborate report and a bill to be offered, and in due time it was submitted. The measure met with stout opposition, especially at the hands of B. G. Shields, of Marengo, the chairman of the general committee on education, who resented the policy of a special committee as a reflection on himself and his committee. In the opposition Mr. Shields was supported by Judge Smith, of Madison. But general committees had never done anything, and for that reason Dr. Bestor asked for a special committee.
The occasion was made a memorable one on the floor of the house by the contest which it provoked. Dr. Bestor husbanded all his resources and skill in the conduct of the contest and proved himself a giant in debate, and, though met by much passion, he preserved his coolness and dignity throughout the debate. He failed in his effort at that time, though his labor was not in vain, for the array of facts presented respecting the illiteracy of the state awoke wide interest which gave an impulse to the educational spirit of the state which has not ceased to this time.
Coupled with all his immense work was that of an active pulpit ministry. He was a great leader in the Baptist denomination and rendered signal service in the thorough organization of the Baptist forces. With the exception of a few years spent in Mississippi, Dr. Bestor’s career was confined to Alabama. He died at Mobile in 1869.
F. W. BOWDON
There is much more in unwritten history that affects the destiny of the race than there is in that which is recorded. Gray’s “gem” in his Elegy, and his “flower” “born to blush unseen,” illustrate the fundamentals of the history of the race, wherein the bulk of worth is frequently unmentioned, and, if so, often scarcely. While Franklin Welsh Bowdon was by no means unknown, and while his worth was not altogether unrecognized, who that knows him in retrospect today as one of the most matchless orators of southern history? Who knows of his clearness of demonstration in presenting the most tangled and abstruse of problems? Who today knows not alone of the power already alluded to, but who that knows that his ability before a jury has never been surpassed in the state, or that he was peerless as a popular speaker before a promiscuous audience? Who that has learned of his subtle force of illumination of difficult problems or of knotty questions, in speech that glittered in its own chaste delicacy and beauty of phraseology after having passed through the crucible of his brain?
The history of others is perhaps more iridescent, because the drift of the currents into which they auspiciously fell bore them into fuller and more applausive view before the public eye, in which event it is the condition, and not the man who happens to be its representative, that deserves consideration. The force inherent in Frank Bowdon, and his superior ability to wield the elements already named, really make him a prodigy among the men who have made famous the history of the state. He was not ambitious to be showy, nor sought he special occasion to flash his powerful gifts, but when occasion did logically and legitimately come, he was prodigious.
Many men fall just short of accorded greatness because of the needed stride across the boundary over which others bound and catch the loud plaudit of the crowd and are borne to the crest of eminence. Many another receives undue applause because he boldly thrusts himself on public attention and forces recognition, while others, far superior perhaps, stand in manly disdain of bald tawdriness and the impudence of ignorance of which certain competitors are the innocent victims. Gifted men are usually, though not always, men of delicate taste, which is itself an element of real greatness. It is the ripest and heaviest ear of corn that hangs lowest. Mr. Bowdon, with the consciousness of his own power, which every strong man has, eschewed the cheap clatter of the flatterer, and always appeared in public to advantage because he was summoned thither. This, at least in part, affords an explanation of the absence of the fame which was justly his because of the possession of the vast powers already named.
Frank W. Bowdon was a native of Chester district, South Carolina, and was brought by his father to Shelby County, Alabama, while his gifted son was still a child of only three years. On the farm of a thrifty planter and in a home of piety and of hospitality the youth was reared. It was one of those old-time southern homes where ease and elegance, culture and refinement were, and where children were reared free from over-exaction and with just sufficient freedom to develop real manliness.