The Memories of Fifty Years / Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the Southwest

by W. H. Sparks

In the pursuits of life, and the duties of time, nothing of religious intolerance enters. A man's opinions upon that subject are his own, and for these he is responsible to God only. His neighbor respects his prejudices and feelings, and appreciates him according to his conduct toward his fellow-man, and the discharge of his duties to society.

Good follows the honest discharge of the duties of his vocation, from every moral and religious teacher, if he is sincere and earnest, whether Jew or Christian. An intelligent and virtuous community appreciates this, and encourages such efforts as advance and sustain public morals and social harmony. How such a man is esteemed in New Orleans, a recent instance is ample illustration. A distinguished Jewish Rabbi, long a resident minister of his faith in that city, was called, to minister in a synagogue in the city of New York. His walk and his work had been upright and useful. The good of all denominations were unwilling to give up so good and so useful a man. In the true spirit of pure religion, a large committee, appointed by a meeting of the citizens from among every sect, composed of the leading and most influential men of the city, waited upon him, and influenced him to remain among them, and continue his vocation and pious usefulness in the field where he had labored so long and so efficiently.

To the teachings of Dr. Clapp, much of this toleration is due. This tone of feeling is the offspring of enlightenment, the enemy of bigotry. His mission completed, he retired for health and quiet to a point from which he could contemplate the results of his labors. He saw that they were good, and felt his whole duty had been done. In the fulness of years he awaited the coming of the hour when, released from his prison-house and freed from earth, he should go to his reward. It came, and ere the spirit was plumed for its final flight, he asked that its wornout casket should be carried and deposited by those he loved in life, in the city of his adoption and love; where, in death, the broken community of life should be restored. This was done, and now with them he sleeps well.

Memory turns sadly back to many, now no more, who were compeers of Dr. Clapp, and to New Orleans, as New Orleans was; but to none with more melancholy pleasure than to Alexander Barrow and E.D. White. These were both natives of the city of Nashville, Tennessee. Both came to New Orleans in early life: White, with his father when a child, and Barrow, when a young man. White was left an orphan when quite young, in Attakapas, where his father lived, and with very limited means. He struggled on in the midst of a people whose very language was alien to his own, and managed to acquire a limited education, with which he commenced the study of the law, the profession of his father. When admitted to practice, he located at Donaldsonville, in the Parish of Ascension, where he rose rapidly to distinction. Appointed subsequently to a judgeship in New Orleans, he removed there to reside. This appointment he did not continue to hold for any length of time, his popularity being such as to point him out as a fit person to contest with Mr. Livingston the seat in Congress then filled by the latter. In this contest he was successful, and continued to represent the district until he was chosen Governor. He filled this chair for the constitutional period of four years, and immediately upon the expiration of his term, he was again elected to Congress. He continued to represent the district until the treachery of a family, numerous and ignorant, yet influential with their ignorant, uneducated neighbors, caused him to be beaten. They succeeded subsequently in placing one of their family in his place, only to show the triumph of folly and stupidity over worth and intelligence. Yet this cross of an Irish renegade upon an Acadian woman was a fit representative of a large majority of his constituents.

The climate of Washington operated injuriously upon his constitution. Long accustomed to that of Louisiana, it failed to resist the terrible winter-climate of Washington, and he found his health broken. He returned to his plantation, on the Bayou La Fourche, where he lingered for a year or more, and died, in the meridian of life, leaving a young and interesting family.

Governor White was a man of great eccentricity of character, but with a ripe intellect, and a heart overflowing with generous emotions and tenderness. He loved his kind, and his life was most unselfishly devoted to their service. Like all who have for any time made her their home, he loved Louisiana first of all things. He was too young when coming from his native land to remember it, and his first attachment was for the soil of his adoption. He was reared in the midst of the Creole population of the State; spoke French and Spanish as his mother-tongue, and possessed the confidence and affection of these people in a most remarkable degree.

Governor White was a passenger on board the ill-fated steamer Lioness, in company with many friends, among whom were Josiah S. Johnston, (the elder brother of A. Sidney Johnston, who fell at the battle of Shiloh,) and Judge Boyce, of the District Court. Josiah S. Johnston was, at the time, a Senator in Congress. Some miles above the mouth of Red River, and in that stream, the boat blew up, many of the passengers being killed, among whom was Judge Johnston. Governor White was terribly burned, and by many it was thought this led to his death. His disease was bronchitis, which supervened soon after this terrible disaster. The steamer had in her hold considerable powder. This, it was said at the time, was ignited by the mate of the boat, who had become enraged from some cause with the captain. The body of Judge Johnston was never found. The boat was blown to atoms, with the exception of the floor of the ladies' cabin. The upper works were all demolished. This floor was thrown, it seemed almost miraculously, intact upon the water. There were some six or eight ladies on board, who were saved on this floor. When the smoke had lifted sufficiently to permit a night view—for it was night—Governor White and Judge Boyce were seen swimming near this floor of the wreck. White was burned terribly in the face and on the hands, and was blinded by this burning. The ladies were in their night-clothes; but what will not woman do to aid the distressed, especially in the hour of peril? One of the most accomplished ladies of the State snatched from her person her robe de chambre, and, throwing one end to the struggling Governor, called to him to reach for it, and with it pulled him to the wreck, and kindly, with the aid of others, lifted him on. The same kind office was performed for Boyce, and they were saved. Though a stranger to the Governor, this great-hearted woman tore into strips her gown, and kindly did the work of the Good Samaritan, in binding up the wounds of one she did not know, had never before seen, and to whose rank and character she was equally a stranger; and when she was floating upon a few planks, at the mercy of the waters, and surrounded by interminable forests covering the low and mucky shores of Red River for many miles, where human foot had rarely trod, and human habitation may never rest—one garment her only covering, and all she could hope for, until some passing steamer should chance to rescue them, or until she should float to the river's mouth, and find a human habitation. She, too, is in the grave, but the memory of this act embalms her in the hearts of all who knew her. Blessed one!—for surely she who blessed all who came within her sphere, and only lived to do good, must in eternity and for eternity be blest, like thousands of others who have ministered in kindness for a day, and then went to the grave—in thy youth and loveliness thou wert exhaled from earth: like a storm-stricken flower in the morning of its bloom, wilted and dead, the fragrance of thy virtues is the incense of thy memory!

It was long before Governor White was fully restored to sight. No public man, and especially one so long in public life, ever enjoyed more fully the confidence of his constituents than Edward Douglass White. His private character was never impeached, even in the midst of the most excited political contests, nor did the breath of slander ever breathe upon his fair fame, from his childhood to the grave.

I am incompetent to write of Alexander Barrow as his merits deserve. In him all that was noble and all that was respectable was most happily combined. A noble and commanding person, a manly and intellectual face, an eye that bespoke his heart, a soul that soared in every relation of life above everything that was little or selfish, a ripe and accurate judgment, a purpose always honorable and always open, without concealment or deceit, and an integrity pure and unsullied as the ether he breathed, an affectionate father, a devoted husband, a firm and unflinching friend through every phase of fortune—in fine, every element which makes a man united in Alexander Barrow. Dear reader, if I seem extravagant in these words, pardon it to me. When seventy winters have passed over your head, and you turn back your memory upon all that has passed, recalling the incidents and the friends of life, and you remember those which have transpired with him you loved best and trusted most, and remember that he was always true, never capricious, always wise, never foolish, always sincere, never equivocal, and who never failed you in the darkest hours of adversity, but was always the same to you in kindness, forbearance, and devotion, remember such was ever to me Alexander Barrow, and forgive this wild outpouring of the heart to the virtues of the friend, tried so long, and loved so well. For more than twenty years he has been in his grave; but in all that time no day has ever passed that Alick has not stood before me as he was when we were young and life was full of hope. His blood with mine mingles in the veins of our grandchildren. O God! I would there were nothing to make this a painful memory.

Barrow served some years in the Legislature of the State, and was thence transferred to the United States Senate, where, after a service of six years, he died, in the prime of his manhood. Those who remember the speech of Hannegan, and the attempt of Crittenden, who, under the deep sorrow of his heart, sank voiceless and in tears to his chair—the feeling which filled and moved the Senate when paying the last tribute to his dead body, coffined and there before them in the Senate chamber—may know how those estimated the man who knew him best. Friend of my heart, farewell! We soon shall meet, with vernal youth restored, to endure forever.