Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians, with Illustrations and Speeches

by Unknown

His practice as a lawyer was a very lucrative one to have been acquired at so early an age. As an evidence of the esteem in which his abilities and learning were held, he was, at the age of twenty-seven, when he had been a lawyer but four years, retained as counsel for the State of North Carolina, with George E. Badger, in a most complicated mass of litigation, involving the title to more land than was ever sued for under one title in our State (except, perhaps, that instituted by the heirs of Lord Granville in 1804). Several hundred thousand acres of land had been granted to William Cathcart, Huldeman, and Elseman, citizens of Pennsylvania, lying in the counties of Burke, Buncombe, Haywood, and Macon. Subsequently, these same lands, in great part, were sold in smaller lots to settler citizens by the State, under the belief that when patented originally by Cathcart and others they were not subject to entry, for the reason that they were within the boundaries which had been reserved to the Indians by various treaties. One hundred suits in ejectment were brought against these settlers in the Circuit Court of the United States by the heirs of Cathcart. All these actions were dependent on similar facts, and each one involved the validity, accuracy, and definite character of various surveys made at sundry different times during a period of nearly half a century previous thereto, under treaties between the State and the Cherokee Indians, and between the United States and the same Indian tribe. The State resolved to defend the titles it had given to its citizens, and employed Badger and Swain to contend with Mr. Gaston, who was for the plaintiffs—a very high compliment to both of them. Here was a field wherein Governor Swain had no superior, and where his peculiar talents came specially into play. A complicated maze of long-forgotten facts was to be resurrected from buried documents, dimly traced surveyors' lines and corners through hundreds of miles of tangled mountain forests were to be established, partly by the evidence of old grey-haired woodmen and partly by the fading outlines of the rude maps and indistinct field-notes of the surveyors of that day; and old treaties and musty statutes were to be brought out of the dust and made to speak in behalf of the rights of our people. In such a work his soul delighted, and to his faithful labors and indefatigable energy must the final success of the State be mainly attributed. For though he was put on the bench, and from the bench was made Governor before the test case was tried in 1832, and the victory won, he never ceased his labors in this behalf, and his official letter-book of that period is filled with evidences of his zeal and research. Judge Badger, who was as generous as he was great, and who followed the case up to the Supreme Court of the United States, where he was assisted by Mr. Webster, frankly acknowledged that the cause was won mainly by the careful preparation of Swain. Another circumstance connected with this litigation, worth the mention in these days is, that notwithstanding the vast amount of valuable work he had done already, yet because the cases were not concluded when he was made a judge, Governor Swain voluntarily returned half of his retainer into the treasury. All of which goes to show that in selecting him out of so many able and older lawyers to assist Mr. Badger, the State had chosen wisely indeed.

There were giants in those days, and the giants were honest!

During his service in the Legislature no great or exciting issues were before the people, and his career there displays no extraordinary effort in any direction. He soon acquired, however, a high reputation for learning and industry in dealing with the practical questions of the day, among which then was the very vexed one of the ratio of representation in the Legislature between the East, where were many slaves, and the West, where there were few. This finally forced the calling of the Convention in 1835. It was, however, an era of great political importance, viewed in the light of subsequent events. The great political parties—Whig and Democratic—which have shaped the destinies of these United States for full half a century, were then crystallizing from the confused and crude opinions of our early American politics. All thinking men began about this period to range themselves with one or the other of the schools which undertook to construe the Constitution of the United States, to ascertain its meaning and its powers, and to define its relations with the States. A gigantic, and, as it would seem, an endless task indeed. Swain sided with Adams, Clay, and Webster, whose followers began to be called Whigs. Of the prominent men of that day, who agreed with him, or with whom he agreed, were Gaston, Morehead, Badger, Mangum, Cherry, Graham, Stanly, Moore, Miller, Outlaw, and Rayner. Of those who adhered to the school of Jefferson and Calhoun, were the venerable Macon, Ruffin, Haywood, Saunders, Branch, Edwards, Seawell, Shepherd, Donnell, Fisher, Craige, and Venable. It is not practicable to enumerate all the mighty men of that day who controlled our affairs and gave tone and character to our society. No State in the Union had a larger list of very able citizens, and we can pay no higher compliment to Governor Swain than to say that he rose up among such, and was the peer of them all.

As before stated, he rode but four circuits as judge. From all his decisions during that time there came up but eighteen appeals. Of these, thirteen were sustained by the Supreme Court, consisting of Ruffin, Henderson, and Hall, and in one other he was sustained by the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Ruffin, leaving but four in which he was unanimously overruled. This, says Mr. Moore, who is now our highest living authority in matters relating to the law, is an evidence of judicial ability more satisfactory than could elsewhere have been furnished among our judges, and no higher compliment could have been paid him. Mr. Moore also informs me that Swain was very popular as a judge, even in those days when the only road to popularity in that office was the honest and able discharge of its exalted duties. In the contest for judge, when he was elected over Seawell, he first acquired a nickname which stuck to him till after he retired from politics. Repeated attempts with various candidates had been made to defeat Seawell, who was obnoxious to the party to which Swain belonged, but all these efforts had failed until Swain's name was brought forward. "Then," said an enthusiastic member from Iredell, "we took up old 'warping bars' from Buncombe, and warped him out." After the Governor became President of the University he lost this humorous and not ill-fitting sobriquet, and acquired from the college wits the geographical descriptio personae, "Old Bunk," which adhered to him through life.

The official letter-book of Governor Swain during his administration shows that his time and labors were principally devoted to the questions of constitutional reform; the coast defenses of North Carolina; the claims of the State against the general government; the removal and settlement of the Cherokee Indians, the adjustment of land titles in the West, and other matters of domestic concern.

During this time, however, many letters of literary and historic importance were written by him. There is found on those pages a letter written by Mr. John C. Hamilton, of New York, son of Alexander Hamilton, propounding eleven inquiries relating to the history of North Carolina; more particularly with regard to the system of her colonial and early State taxation; and the reasons of the action of her convention in regard to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and kindred topics. Governor Swain's replies to these queries show a wonderful amount of information and research into the minuter sources of our early history, clearly indicating that he was possessed in a high degree of those peculiar talents which constitute the true historian. Most of his literary labor throughout his life was in this department, and his collections were especially rich in the early history of North Carolina. Who is there left now in our State able to use the material for its history which he had been accumulating through so many years? To this great work he had intended to devote the closing years of his life. What stores of information perished with him! He was the special vindicator of that much-abused and much-misunderstood class of men, the Regulators of our colonial times. No man in the State has done so much to clear their fame—few have been so competent. The papers contributed by him to the University Magazine on the subject would form a volume, if collected, and their great value is indicated by the numerous inquiries instituted for them by men in various States of the Union. His lecture before the Historical Society in 1852 may be said to have settled the question of the merits of the Regulators and their service to liberty.

As Governor of the State, in 1833, he laid the cornerstone of the present capitol amid imposing ceremonies; a building designed with perhaps as pure and simple taste as any in America, and as solid and enduring as any in the world.

On the 12th of January, 1826, he was married to Miss Eleanor H. White, daughter of William White, Secretary of State, and granddaughter of Governor Caswell, a union productive of great domestic happiness to a man so fitted as he, by nature and by a life of unsullied purity, to appreciate the ties of home and the love of wife and children. By this lady there were born to him several children, of whom but three, two daughters and a son, ever reached maturity. His oldest son, David, who died in childhood, was a boy of great promise. His eldest child and daughter, Anne, died unmarried in 1867. The second daughter, and now only surviving child, Eleanor Hope, married General S. D. Atkins, of Freeport, Illinois, where she now resides. The son, Richard Caswell, was killed a few years since, near his home in Illinois, being crushed to death by falling between two railroad cars while in motion. There is now no male representative of the name surviving.

From the time that Governor Swain entered upon his duties as President of the University his career is marked by few notable events of which his biographer can make mention. Although the work he did here was undoubtedly the great work of his life, it is impossible for us to compute it. As with the silent forces of nature, which we know to be the greatest that are exerted in this world, but which yet elude the grasp of our senses, so is it impossible for us to measure the power of the able and faithful teacher. The connections between moral cause and effect are much more difficult to trace than those between physical cause and effect, but although in either case the lines are dim the wise do not fail to see that they are there, and that the results are powerful. It is conceded that the imperceptible and benign force of light and heat which lifts the mighty oak out of the earth, and spreads its branches to the skies, is infinitely greater than that of the noisy whirlwind which prostrates it in the dust.

Says Mr. Herbert Spencer: "In every series of dependent changes a small initial difference often works a marked difference in the results. The mode in which a particular breaker bursts on the beach may determine whether the seed of some foreign plant which it bears is or is not stranded, may cause the presence or absence of this plant from the flora of the land, and may so affect for millions of years, in countless ways, the living creatures throughout the earth. The whole tenor of a life may be changed by a single word of advice, or a glance may determine an action which alters thoughts, feelings, and deeds throughout a long series of years."