The Age Herald

chance and to determine whether their veins flows heroic blood or not in Alabama.

Story of a Southern State

Judge Kittrell's Address on "Alabama" at the Dallas Fair.

The following address was delivered by Judge Norman G. Kittrell of Houston at Dallas last Monday:

The manifold attractions of the fair realm comprised within what are now the limits of our mother state drew thither as early as three centuries ago both savage and civilized adventurers and explorers. There is a legend of poetic beauty which has been handed down from generation to generation, that in the distant and misty past an Indian warrior who had long striven with his hereditary foes, when the tide of battle turned against him, fled with the remnant of his tribe toward the beautiful land which lay far toward the setting sun. In the course of his journey he came upon a realm where quiet vales lay in peaceful beauty between towering mountains, and wandered mid forests where grateful shades brought peace to troubled minds and rest to wearied limbs; heard the gentle murmur of rills which rippled to the rivers and watched the majestic flow of rivers to the sea, caught the roar of the mountain torrent and listened with delight to the songs of numerous birds whose rich notes made resonant with music the echoing woods, gazed with delight upon the rich quarries of game which promised food, and in the soughing and sighing of the winds through the boughs of the monarchs of the forest, and in the resounding notes of the storm as it roared and echoed amid the mountains, he seemed to hear the voice of the Great Spirit bidding him stay his steps and plant his tepee on the soil of the land of wondrous beauty into which he had been led: and the chief, obedient to that voice, threw himself upon the rich carpet of vivid green which nature had spread over that fertile and virgin land and exclaimed: "Alabama, Alabama." here we rest. here we rest.

The untutored savage who "saw God in tempests, heard him in the wind," perchance fondly dreamed that long would be the duration of his dominion, and that he would rule that fair realm in undisputed sway, and that neither to him nor to his people would ever come the necessity of resuming his journey toward the rolling plains beyond the father of waters. But soon there pressed upon him the bold and adventurous Spaniard. Across the mountain and through the forest and over the fertile valleys the cross-bowmen and arquebusiers of De Soto marched in bold array as their dauntless leader pressed on lured on by the ignis fatuus of an El Dorado, which he sought in vain until his worn and wearied body found repose and final sepulture beneath the turbid waters of the Mississippi. The plumes of crested cavaliers danced and nodded in the gentle southern breezes, their resplendent armor flashed in the light of the southern sun; the soft, sweet songs of Spain quivered in rich but gentle cadence amid the aisles of the mighty forest and gleaming swords lighted the way over which with restless ardor the bold wanderers pressed upon their fruitless search for that which they were doomed never to discover. Others of their race followed in their footsteps and soon the ardent and grasping Frenchman invaded too that goodly land, and between Spaniard and Gaul sovereignty and possession shifted, while the red man yielded the land wherein he had thought to rest and took up again his inevitable journey toward the western horizon. But such a land as Alabama was not in the economy of that providence which directs the current of human destiny intended to be possessed or controlled by Spaniard, Gaul or red man, but these three who had there contended for supremacy went on and down before the restless advance of that avant courier of civilization and enlightenment in every age, the all conquering and liberty loving Saxon. That apostle of freedom and the rights of man with the instinct inherited from an ancestry which had compelled concessions of vast importance at the hands of monarchical power and blazed out the way for the advance of constitutional government, signalized his coming into his new and fair possession by the establishment in 1817 of a territory, which eventuated in 1819 into the sovereign state of Alabama, as beauteous a star as ever yet has gemmed the jeweled brow of fair Columbia.

The men who established and organized that state, like those who laid the foundations of this glorious state of our adoption were men of no ordinary mold. They were men of intellect, courage and constructive and executive capacity, because the man of timidity, indecision, and who is deficient in intellectual, physical and moral courage is rarely found among those who mark out the way for human progress, create states and establish governments. It is only those heroic spirits who love liberty, whose souls are aflame with devotion to the principles of free government and who have the intelligence to perceive and the skill and courage to carry out those plans and policies necessary to found and establish a government of liberty and of law, who are found among the pioneers of civilization.

When Alabama became a state of the Union African slavery was already planted there as a domestic institution and a fixed system of labor. Long established in her sister southern states, from which the population of Alabama had migrated, slaves had been brought with them in common with other chattels. The climate was peculiarly congenial to the negro, and the character of labor at which he was employed was exactly adapted to the measure of his intelligence. He was not a product indigenous to the soil. He had been transplanted from New England. Experience had demonstrated that he was not profitable as a laborer in that frigid clime and those who had bought him with rum sold him for gold, and when he had changed masters, and the later master had by reason of his purchase waxed rich, and the land wherein he dwelt flowered and blossomed like the rose, the seller was stricken with regret and harrowed by deep remorse, because he had not bargained for a better price. To sell a slave into continual slavery was deemed by him a "cute" financial transaction, but the keeping as a slave, the slave so sold became at once in his eye a grievous and unpardonable offense.

New England and the "negro" did not harmonize. The thermometer at zero and a darkey in comfort were irreconcilable and impossible conditions. He instinctively yearned for a land where the summer's sun crimsoned the persimmon, where the toothsome "possum" ripened in the frosty autumn and where the succulent potato and luscious watermelon grew in tropical profusion. So the negro came into his own land, and unto a people who received him as a savage, eating snakes and worshiping toads and less than a century made of an idolator the most demonstrative and fanatical Christian, and if facts make proof, fitted the untutored savage for legislators, congressmen, senators and bishops.

Have no fear that I shall enter upon the profitless task of discussing the right or wrong, the wisdom or unwisdom of human slavery. That issue has been happily and forever eliminated from American politics, and though I speak to an audience a majority of whom were nursed and nestled in the arms of slaves, and were soothed to infant slumbers by the crooning lullabies of "black mammies," not one in the sound of my voice would, if able, re-establish slavery again in this land.

Germane, however, to my theme is the question of the relation of slavery and its influence upon the social and political conditions and interests of Alabama and of the entire south. Alabama, lying on the middle line of the tier of the extreme southern states, was fairly typical of the south, and what was true of her people was equally true of those of her sister states, for she fairly and worthily reflected the customs, habits and sentiments of the entire section. I shall not attempt to analyze causes or philosophize upon results, but shall deal only with the indisputable truths of history.

From the time of the admission of Alabama into the Union until the beginning of the war between the states was the golden era of the south. I do not desire to be understood by this statement as referring alone to her increase in wealth and population, or to her marvelous agricultural development and progress, for such results are possible of accomplishment by a people, while their intellectual, moral and social interests do not keep pace with their purely material progress and development. The true greatness and glory of a people can never be safely measured by the gross standard of numerical or financial strength. There are often elements and incidents of greatness and glory incomparably truer and nobler than these.

Alabama in those palmy days (as still she does in common with her sister states of which she was the type and example) gloried not alone in her wealth and the strength born of her great resources, but in the intelligence, culture, courage, honor and statesmanship of her sons and the matchless and manifold graces and charms of her daughters. Weighing well my words and speaking in the light of familiar history, I assert that in the land which Alabama fitly typified and at which fanatics railed and on which self-righteous Pharisees poured out the vials of their wrath, humanity in that era of which I speak, reached its loftiest stage of intellectual, social and moral development, and civilization its high water mark.

This statement will doubtless meet dissent at the hands of many, but the application of the true test and standard of civilization and social virtue will demonstrate its truth beyond cavil or dispute. The society of Alabama was synonymous with all that was cultured, elegant, chivalrous and refined, and was, indeed, the type and standard of earth's highest civilization. To this we have the testimony of a distinguished and disinterested witness.

More than forty years ago there came to America a famous English author who was received with that honor and hospitality to which he was entitled both by reason of his great personal worth and his literary reputation. After a protracted stay in the city of Philadelphia a distinguished citizen of that city, himself a gentleman of broad and liberal culture, who had represented his government as minister at an important diplomatic post, said to his guest: "You have now seen and studied the people of the north and you should now go south and mingle in the best circles of southern society, and you will meet there the highest type of human civilization the world has ever seen."

Wealth was never the standard of worth or money the measure of merit under the social system of Alabama. The gates of that inner circle where grace and culture held sway opened not to golden keys, yet modest merit and true refinement though poor in purse, never knocked in vain for admission. The influences which swayed and the principles which controlled that system were based, not upon financial, but moral wealth; not upon a plethoric purse, but upon intelligence and culture; not upon bullion, but upon breeding; not on guild-edge bonds, but gentle blood; not on gaudy apparel, but on genuine worth.

The primal principle in social ethics was that money could not purchase the insignia of social rank or distinction. The standard of female virtue was higher than in any other land under heaven; and in no country and in no age of the world was ever woman treated with such chivalric courtesy and deference or her name and fame so sacredly guarded or so promptly and bravely defended.

Society in that era was perhaps in the eyes of some who live in this day and generation, unprogressive, and not up to the standard of the present time. The marriage pledge to cleave each unto the other was observed with fidelity unequaled in any age of the world. Men reared under that system do not, as I have read some do now, swap wives as savages trade squaws. Divorces were most rare, and the divorced parties did not, ere the ink was dry upon the divorce decree, rush to the embrace of new spouses.

In that day and time no man sought consolation for outraged honor at the hands of a court or jury. No jingling of the guinea healed the hurt that honor felt. Rarely, indeed, if ever, did a suit for loss of service of a daughter or the alienation of the affection of a wife ever stain and blacken the docket of a court in Alabama. The seducer of confiding girlhood or the defiler of a marriage bed had paid the penalty with his life, and a jury of the slayer's peers, with hands upon their hearts, executed the unwritten law of a lofty and chivalric social system and declared him not guilty.

There may be those who call the civilization which excuses, yea, demands and justifies such results, barbaric; but it is infinitely nobler, purer and safer than that so-called higher civilization which finds in sordid gold soothing for wounded honor, and an emollient for family pride insulted and fair fame stained and blackened by the lecher's touch.

If the prevailing sentiment of that social system which imperatively forbade that any man should barter marital honor or family pride for gold was barbaric, while that society which weighs honor and virtue against sordid cash is civilized, then God grant that such barbarism be never supplanted by such civilization.

Social conditions so productive of men of courage and honor and women of grace and modesty and virtue, developed and produced also orators, statesmen, soldiers and men distinguished in every field of high and important endeavor. The bar of Alabama has always stood upon a level with that of any state in the Union and the decisions of her supreme courts have always been and are yet accepted as the highest judicial precedents and authority.

Four score years her sons have been conspicuous in the council halls of the nation and never has one proven faithless or brought to his state reproach or shame. Texas has during her entire existence as a state been largely debtor to Alabama. Never since her supreme court was organized in 1845 until this day has there ever been a time when at least one member of that court was not a native of that state, and the time was a few years since when three distinguished jurists who composed it were sons of Alabama.

The senior United States senator from Texas, at this time, scion of a knightly line of Alabama jurists, orators and statesmen, while his accomplished, scholarly and eloquent colleague was born upon her soil, and we as native Alabamians and adopted Texans rejoice to know that both are worthy of their name and lineage, and than this there can be no higher praise.

The hardship of camp and field and the shock of battle is often the crucial test whereby to try men's courage and endurance. It was asserted by some in 1861 that the men reared under and amid the influences of slavery would prove unable or unfit to meet the demands of the coming conflict. There were those who derided them as "dandies" and "dawdlers," and as effeminate devotees of fashion and frivolity enervated and unmanned by idleness and selfish indulgence. These carping critics seemed to have forgotten that those whom they derided were descendants of heroes: that the blood of Cavaliers flowed in their veins, and that their ancestors in council hall and on battle field had made luminous the pages of history with the record of their achievements.

Did the sons of Alabama who sprang from the loins of a slave-holding ancestry bear themselves as men in that line of fiery trial and stubborn conflict? Ask those who met them amid the leaden storm where the battle's surging tide highest and bloodiest flowed. "Let history unroll her proud annals and say." Let Manassas, Chickamauga, Antietam, Gettysburg make reply. Those and other historic fields were hallowed by the devotion and consecrated by the blood of the best and bravest of the sons of Alabama. Nobler spirits never sank to rest in a country's cause, and on the altar of liberty and constitutional government ne'er was richer offering paid than their heroic lives.

They died for very love of the state on whose bosom they were born, and their comrades who survived, animated by the same spirit of unselfish and patriotic devotion, endured with heroic fortitude and uncomplaining heroism the cruel years worse than those of war, which followed upon the close of the conflict. Broken in fortune and sore stricken by hardships, wounds and disease, they returned to desolated homes and barren fields to meet and battle with gaunt and bitter poverty.

They were disfranchised, oppressed and deprived of participation in the privileges of citizenship and in that dread hour faced a future as dark as ever shadowed the pathway of patriots. Misinterpreting and misapplying the maxim that "all men are created free and equal," those vested with national power placed the control of the state government of Alabama in the hands of the ignorant and corrupt. The master was supplanted in the hall of legislation by his former slave. Ignorance usurped the place of intelligence. Vice and venality sat in high places, where honor and integrity had before been enthroned.

Such legislation and such exercise of governmental power was born not of statesmanship, but of revenge. It was theory run mad. It was the very fury and frenzy of fanaticism. It begot a riotous revel of rottenness and robbery: a carnival of crime and corruption. The alien and the adventurer directed and controlled the political destiny of Alabama. Her legislative halls were made the market overt where legislators and officers were bought and sold like sheep in the shambles. Her temples of law were defiled by judges at once ignorant and corrupt. Justice, affrighted, gathered up her garments and fled; and a fair state, rich in glorious history and tradition, fell defenseless into the remorseless clutches of political spoilmen and official plunderers.

'Tis needless to tell here the story of her deliverance. The same heroic sons who had for her dared death on many a hard fought field rose to her rescue, and by the inevitable and irresistible power of intelligence, courage and patriotism, operating by constitutional method, they delivered her from the hands of those who under the forms of iniquitous legislation had placed intelligence, wealth and virtue at the mercy of ignorance, poverty and vice.

By that object lesson of the redemption of a great state from the control of its most incompetent and ignorant elements, encouraged, aided and directed by the alien and adventurer of another race, there is revealed that truth which needs to be learned by many even at this day, yet which need to be burned into their minds. It is that political clans may theorize, fanatics rave, demagogues declaim, political parties promulgate platforms and declare politics, yet the truth remains that in this land under all circumstances and conditions, whether in the minority or majority, henceforth the blue veined and white skinned man will rule. He has ruled this land for an hundred years, and he will rule it

"Through all the days and nights to come, In sole and sovereign sway and masterdom."

With her government once again in the hands of her own people, Alabama has moved forward with giant strides in every field of development and progress. The rich treasures beneath her soil have been explored and developed and the day draws nigh, if it is not even now at hand, when old King Iron will place upon her brow his crown and in her hand his scepter.

Again in the halls of national legislation her sons stand as of yore, among the proudest and ablest, and she moves abreast of the foremost in the march of moral and industrial development and improvement.

A few years ago I stood in her capital city and saw a band of grizzled veterans who had marched and fought in the ranks of the gray battalions marching with reverent step and slow behind the funeral car whereupon was borne the encoffined clay of him who had in that city nearly thirty years before, with bared head and uplifted hand, vowed, before the God of his fathers, to support and defend the constitution of that young republic, the task of guiding the destinies of which had been to him committed.

I saw there a throng of Alabamians that no man could number standing with uncovered heads and tear-dimmed eyes as the great procession moved toward that capitol, upon the portico of which he to whose memory they did honor had assumed his sacred trust. I saw that casket wherein he slept hidden beneath a covering of flowers, spotless white, each quivering leaf and drooping petal of which was gemmed with the tears of his sorrowing people.

They gave no heed to the fact that he was a son of nativity of Kentucky and by adoption of Mississippi. They knew that they were heirs to the priceless heritage of his heroic life, a heritage which they were proud to share with the people of the young nation, of which the illustrious dead was the civic chieftain.

The memories of many in that mighty multitude reached from that sacred shrine to other days and other scenes. They saw him again as he assumed his great office. They remembered the four weary and wearing years through which he bore its mighty burdens. They recalled that dark and bitter hour of defeat and disaster when he rose superior to adverse fortune and illustrated the dignity and grandeur of heroic manhood in defeat.

They felt again the cruel pain felt in the long ago when they saw him pass from the executive chair of a great nation to a dungeon's depths. But amid these sad and tender memories those faithful souls felt a thrill of joy and pride, when they remembered that he did ennoble even a prison by his princely presence; and that in the majesty of his manhood, in martyrdom he glorified a dungeon; and that the shackles wherewith impotent hate sought to degrade him became upon his worn and wasted limbs a badge of honor grander than the guerdon of a king.

They saw him again as he came forth strong in the consciousness of the right, and with kingly grace and dignity to face his accusers and saw him go proudly forth unscathed from before the judgment seat, because his "robes and his integrity were stainless, unto heaven."

They saw him an exile and an alien in the land the pages of the history of which he had enriched and illumined by the splendor of his deeds. They saw him exempted from the general pardon and denied the rights which were accorded his former slaves, but in that hour of sad reflection they recalled with gladness that in the time of his sorest trial the love of his people had been about him, and that in his political isolation and his heroic endurance of political martyrdom he had stood in their sight the most majestic figure ever projected upon the canvas of history since Israel's leader stood with God on the cloud wrapped heights of Pisgah.

If the people of Alabama had given no other evidence of the possession of those lofty attributes of character which mark a cultured and Christian civilization, the demonstration of that day above the dust of Jefferson Davis would alone and of itself have stamped them as worthy of the illustrious ancestry from which they are descended.

Glorious old state, home of a brave, hospitable and chivalric people: meet and fit is it that we, thy sons and daughters, should gather here to recite the story of the deeds of thy children and recall what they have wrought for liberty, for humanity and for God.

We, thy children, do love thee, blessed mother state. We glory in thy past, rejoice with an exceeding great joy in the abundant prosperity of thy present, and look with an abiding confidence to the splendor of that future, which, radiant with the hues of hope and roseate with promise, is unfolding before the enraptured vision of thy rejoicing people.

They are laying broad and deep the foundations of a prosperity which will bless those of thy children who now live, and will descend like the benedictions of heaven upon generations yet unborn.
former slaves, but in that hour of sad reflection they recalled with gladness that in the time of his sorest trial the love of his people had been about him, and that in his political isolation and his heroic endurance of political martyrdom he had stood in their sight the most majestic figure ever projected upon the canvas of history since Israel's leader stood with God on the cloud wrapped heights of Pisgah.

If the people of Alabama had given no other evidence of the possession of those lofty attributes of character which mark a cultured and Christian civilization, the demonstration of that day above the dust of Jefferson Davis would alone and of itself have stamped them as worthy of the illustrious ancestry from which they are descended.

Glorious old state, home of a brave, hospitable and chivalric people: meet and fit is it that we, thy sons and daughters, should gather here to recite the story of the deeds of thy children and recall what they have wrought for liberty, for humanity and for God.

We, thy children, do love thee, blessed mother state. We glory in thy past, rejoice with an exceeding great joy in the abundant prosperity of thy present, and look with an abiding confidence to the splendor of that future, which, radiant with the hues of hope and roseate with promise, is unfolding before the enraptured vision of thy rejoicing people.

They are laying broad and deep the foundations of a prosperity which will bless those of thy children who now live, and will descend like the benedictions of heaven upon generations yet unborn.