Part 22 (1/2)
WILLIAM C. OATES
Altogether worthy of enrollment among the great men of Alabama, is the name of Governor William C. Oates. His service to the state for many years was varied and loyal. He was crowned with honors by his countrymen and was altogether worthy. Reared to manhood with only ordinary educational advantages, he was for many years recognized as one of the foremost citizens of the state. He was a man of solid qualities without the glint of the picturesque or the foil of the superficial. Honesty was his purpose in life, and in view of this quality, his faults were as transparent as were his merits. In no cause or issue was there a misapprehension of his position. If in some respects he was rugged, it was due to the fact that he did not propose to pose for that which he was not. He had his enemies, but they were no more cordial in their opposition than were his numerous and strong friends in their attachment and loyalty.
In the dawn of manhood he gave but little promise of success. Leaving home at the age of sixteen, he roved the far Southwest for a period of years, struck the hard sides of life, and returned to his home more matured in wisdom by his bitter experience, and came to realize the necessity of stability of plan and purpose in order to succeed. In the raw region of Henry County, as it then was, Oates taught a rural school for a period of months, later readdressed himself to study, and finished his course at a high school at Lawrenceville. At that time the bar opened the widest and most inviting gateway to eminence, and Oates aspired to be a lawyer.
In the office of Pugh, Bullock & Buford, at Eufaula, the rustic aspirant learned the principles of his chosen profession, and was admitted to the bar in 1858. Locating in the rural village of Abbeville, the seat of justice of Henry County, he rose to be the leading lawyer of southeast Alabama, and gradually came to be recognized as one of the best lawyers of the state. His matter-of-fact manner and st.u.r.dy honesty won him a wide circle of confidence, and men would ride on horseback long distances to engage his professional service.
The rural press was not so abundant at that early day as it has since become, and because of a lack of representation in that then inaccessible region, he edited a newspaper at Abbeville. He was engaged in the combined functions of editing a country journal and practicing law, when the storm of war broke over the land in 1861. Raising a company of volunteers, he became the captain, and was attached to the Fifteenth Alabama Regiment of Infantry. He led his command into twenty-seven battles and became conspicuous for his courage on the field. He received his commission as colonel in 1863, and received a wound at Brown's Ferry, on the Tennessee River, near the close of that year. At Fussell's Mills, near Petersburg, Va., he sustained the loss of his right arm, but after recovering from the wound, he resumed the command of his regiment, which command he retained until the close of the war.
Returning to Abbeville after his capitulation, Colonel Oates again took up his practice, and came to be esteemed one of the leading citizens of the state. With all important movements in the state he was connected, and his practice meanwhile became immense, so that Colonel Oates came to be regarded not only as one of the most successful and leading lawyers of the state, but one of the most prosperous. In many ways his name was prominently known throughout the state, and a number of times mentioned in connection with gubernatorial honors. This was notably true in the two conventions for the nomination of a governor in the years 1870 and 1872.
In 1870 he represented Henry County in the state legislature, where he became a distinguished leader. His service as a legislator brought him still more prominently before the public. He was a member of the const.i.tutional convention in 1875, and from 1881 to 1894 he served his district, the third Alabama, in the National Congress. His long and useful career in congress gave him an influence second to that of none other of the Alabama delegation. He was serving in congress when he was chosen governor of the state in 1895.
Shortly after this came the monetary slogan of the free coinage of silver at the sixteen-to-one ratio, of which William Jennings Bryan was the apostle, and Governor Oates was with the minority of eminent Alabamians who resisted the doctrine, in consequence of which he paid the penalty of defeat at the polls for the national senators.h.i.+p in a subsequent election.
When the Spanish-American War began in 1898 Governor Oates was commissioned a brigadier general and served throughout the ninety-three days of that sharp and decisive contest.
He was again chosen a member of the convention which revised the state const.i.tution, in which body his services were of immense value to Alabama.
His closing years were spent in the city of Montgomery, where he continued to practice law till compelled by failure of vision to surrender it. He died at an advanced age.
Reviewing a sketch so brief and imperfect, and one altogether unworthy of his long career of usefulness, we are enabled to glean sufficient to learn that for a full half century Governor Oates was engaged in contributing to the growth and development of the state. The stations filled by him with ability so signal, and extending through so many years, attest his usefulness as a valuable citizen of Alabama. As a lawyer of distinction, a soldier as courageous as any son of Alabama, a delegate in molding the fundamental law of the commonwealth, a statesman whose qualities were signally demonstrated in the halls of congress, and in the gubernatorial chair, there is due him the worthiest praise. Solid rather than brilliant, rugged rather than polished, useful rather than ornate, and substantial without the alloy of artificiality, there were embodied in Governor Oates elements of genuine greatness. In nothing mediocre, he rendered a permanent service to Alabama and went to his grave as one of the state's most distinguished public servants.
JONATHAN HARALSON
Judge Jonathan Haralson was an eminent type of that generation of southern gentlemen who were a connecting link between the old and the new South. He had just reached the threshold of cultured manhood when the crash of war came. He was of the finished mold of the young southerners of that period.
He descended from a n.o.ble stock that was pre-eminent in southern society and in the affairs of his native section. His father belonged to that wealthy cla.s.s of typical planters that gave prestige to the South on two continents. His uncle, General Hugh A. Haralson, was one of the most distinguished congressmen from Georgia, and for many years together was one of the most learned jurists of that state.
Graduating from the University of Alabama in 1851, Judge Jonathan Haralson studied law and was admitted to the bar a year later, but in order to equip himself thoroughly he went to the law school of the University of Louisiana, where he spent a year and obtained his degree of LL.B. He immediately entered on the practice in Selma, where he became eminent as a citizen, barrister, and an active Christian.
When, in 1876, the legislature of Alabama organized the city court of Selma, a court of common law with civil, criminal and equity jurisdiction, the bar of Dallas County recommended Judge Haralson to Governor Houston for the judges.h.i.+p of this court. For sixteen years he presided over the court with signal ability. At the end of that time he was elected to the supreme bench of the state, where he served for twelve years.
One of the distinctions conspicuous among others possessed by Judge Haralson is worthy of special mention. His unusual culture, affableness of disposition, cheerfulness, varied ability, and prominence in Christian work found for him unsought niches of high honor in Christian work. Purely in recognition of his worth, he was chosen the president of the Baptist State Convention of Alabama in 1874, which position he held for eighteen years, and was the most distinguished layman in the denomination of the state during that time. In 1888 he was chosen the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which embraces the largest Baptist const.i.tuency in the world, and for ten successive years presided over that great body. He was a model parliamentarian, and came to rank as one of the foremost laymen of his denomination in the union. His retirement from that position was voluntary, for no one ever enjoyed more universal confidence and popularity than he.
Other honors still were his. He was for many years a member of the board of trustees of the Polytechnic Inst.i.tute at Auburn, chairman of the board of trustees of Howard College, and a member of the American Baptist Education Society. An index to the character of Judge Haralson is afforded in the remark which he has been heard to make that he suffered nothing to interfere with his religious obligations. His conception of life throughout was ideal. Himself a model of genuine manliness, he sought to stimulate it in others. In all things his method was that of exactness.
There was a scrupulous care in his bearing, his speech, his conduct toward others, and to the close of his life, the little amenities that make up so much of life, were not lacking in his character. While his high sense of manliness begot firmness, it was of that type which always bore the stamp of gentleness.
His suavity won him friends by the mult.i.tude, and his character and ability gained for him unlimited confidence. Presiding over bodies sometimes rent by agitation, where skill and firmness were put to the severest test, such was his personal influence, and such the confidence reposed in him, that no appeals from his decision as a parliamentary officer were ever taken.
Judge Haralson has but recently pa.s.sed away, leaving behind him a record of public life of more than fifty years, with not a dent in his s.h.i.+eld or a tarnish on his armor. He labored as long as he was able, and under the weight of years voluntarily retired from public life. His death occurred in his eighty-second year. In the quietude of his own home circle in Montgomery, after his retirement from the supreme bench, he serenely awaited the call of death.
Among the public men produced by Alabama, none ever excelled Judge Jonathan Haralson in loftiness of character, incorruptibleness of life, gentleness of disposition, and fidelity to duty. He was never the least ostentatious. His manner was quiet and cordial, and never the least reserved. While his conclusions were always positive and firm, they were so tempered by gentleness as to leave never a shadow behind. He was as cautious of the feelings of others as he was for those of his own.
No man was freer of self-seeking. It was purely in recognition of his worth that he was called forth by others to the varied functions which he performed. His companionableness bound to him the best of men who loved him because of the loftiness of his life.