mare, “Fanny,” or I may have the names mixed, and give my
early impressions. For more than fifty years the children and
grandchildren of the grand old man were raised on Robin Grey.
No man ever idolized the genus horse as he did—not General
Jackson, nor Hanie, nor Bailie Peyton. I fear he was really
a crank on the subject of the horse, and Robin Grey was his
prophet. Two gentlemen were once visiting his paddock, when one
of them (perhaps in a spirit of fun) discredited a pet of its
owner. Quick as a flash the critic went down. In a moment the
assailant was penitent, led the victim tenderly to the house,
washed the crimson from his face, saying: “I’m sorry—I’m—so
sorry! But you oughtn’t to insult my horses. There now; it’s
all over!” Better offend him personally a thousand times than
to insult his horses.
It was at the old Lexington race track. Robin Grey was there,
and his owner, also, of course. “Hurry up, Mr. Hieronymous! The
other horses are about ready to start,” the judges called.
“Go ahead, gentlemen, whenever you like,” replied the
enthusiast, “a quarter or a half minute, or such a matter,
doesn’t make the least difference to Robin Grey. He’ll be in at
the home stretch.”
I could relate, if you had the patience to read, many amusing
and, to me, at least, thrilling stories of Robin Grey. Mr.
Hieronymous sold a half interest in him to Col. John Hunt,
grandfather of the afterwards famed cavalry leader, Gen. John
Hunt Morgan, such were the exigencies of security debts. But
the old man never loved a child more devotedly than he loved
Robin Grey.
I must modify the statement that Robin Grey never lost a race.
Once, the old Lexington track had been recently repaired and
widened, and a bridge near the first quarter laid across a
gully to supply the necessary width, and covered with dirt.
Unfortunately Robin Grey took this side of the track, went,
heels up, through the treacherous but unsuspected pitfall,
threw his mount and himself to the ground, but was up at once
and waited for his rider to spring again into the saddle,
for Robin had the brains of a statesman. Even then he made
sufficient speed to save his distance.
Please don’t ever tell it, especially to “one of his kinfolks,”
that anything on four feet ever beat Robin Grey! You mustn’t
“insult his horses!”
Sincerely for Trotwood,
C. E. MERRILL.
[Our authority, as may be seen from the chapter quoted, is Hon. Bailey
Peyton, now deceased, than whom no more accurate authority on that
subject existed. We are glad, however, to publish the above.—Ed.]
* * * * *
_He who jests is weak, and nothing kills greatness like humor._
With Our Writers
The South’s Need for a Magazine of Its Own.
Editor Trotwood’s:
While New York and the East may be the natural publishing
place for American magazines, it should not be forgotten that
the South has within itself many important problems peculiar
to itself. If one should start from the Potomac and travel
southwest two thousand miles, barring mountainous sections,
he would find, generally speaking, less difference in people,
customs, and institutions than he would be going one or two
hundred miles north from that river. Coupled with this fact,
the following story may not be without significance:
A Northerner who had moved South noticed that his new neighbors
had what struck him as being a rather unsatisfactory method
of doing a certain thing. So he wrote an article suggesting
another method and sent it to a local publication. The
editor returned the article, pronouncing what it proposed to
be “impracticable and visionary.” The writer then sent the
article to a Northern publication, at the same time asking if
what it proposed was impracticable or visionary. It was again
returned, but the returner stated that, so far from proposing
anything impracticable or visionary, the trouble lay in the
opposite direction. He said that what was proposed had been
in successful operation so long that it would be useless and
tiresome reading.
This story seems to me to illustrate the case of innumerable
subjects important to the South. In the matter of education,
for example, what would sound revolutionary in some Southern
States would, I believe, be called pioneer work by the majority
of American-born Northerners. Again, in the realm of economics,
most of us in the South have yet to learn some of the first
principles. As to our code of social relations there are some
sections, fertile and penetrated by railroads, which are in
vital respects half a century behind the advance guard of
Anglo-Saxon civilization. As to our courts of justice, although
law has been the favorite profession of our ambitious young
men, and although we are supposed to have some of America’s
ablest practitioners, it seems that almost none of them ever
try persistently to contribute anything towards making either
our courts or our politics better, and by so doing accomplish
that for which courts and politics are supposed to exist. In
conclusion, let it be remembered that not only the Northern
magazines are not so directly interested in these matters as
are we, but also that when one wishes to make a suggestion
to his own section he naturally prefers to do so through a
publication in that section.
Some of our newspapers have done creditable work through their
editorial columns, but an editor cannot be a specialist in
everything. We need, I think, a publication of the nature
of a magazine whose editors know what to solicit and can
determine whether or not a contribution meets a need. Such a
magazine should be free from imitation. With questions of vital
sectional importance bubbling and seething all around it, there
is no reason why it should give us stories and treatises in
competition with Eastern magazines which can pay larger prices
for such. Finally, its purpose should be for general rather
than partisan interest.
Generally speaking, Southerners seem to me not to be finished
writers. While some of our newspaper editors have a plain,
unadorned style which is better than the style of most
“authors,” nevertheless almost all of us Southerners seem
troubled with a limited and inaccurate use of the English
vocabulary. But there are plenty of Southerners who know their
business and can go to the root of a matter. I believe that
most readers who are looking for a Southern magazine would
rather hear from these than from the more finished narrators
and expounders of nothingness. Finally, a magazine which would
put a premium on substance told with clearness and brevity, at
the same time emphasizing the fact that a contribution must
meet a real need, would have a tendency to develop writers
whose work possessed style as well as substance.
Recently I made the acquaintance of Trotwood’s Magazine, and,
believing that I noticed in it a strong and sincere inclination
to be original, the question arose in my mind, Why should not
this magazine, already in actual operation, become a forum
for discussing Southern problems? So, if this be Trotwood’s
purpose, to it I say, may you succeed; and to Tennessee and the
South, give Trotwood a chance. It may prove to be what you have
long needed.
J. G. SIMS, JR.
Nashville, Tenn.
Editor’s Note.—Trotwood’s thanks Mr. Sims (who, so far, like many of our
readers and contributors, is a stranger to us) for his kind expressions.
We learn that he is a graduate of Princeton, and a teacher and writer of
reputation. We agree with him that the South has problems peculiar to
itself, and that the proper place for their discussion is among ourselves
and in a Southern journal. It is the aim and ambition of Trotwood’s to
be the medium for this as well as for the development of the South’s
great resources. We welcome such communications as the above, even if
some of his plain assertions do grate somewhat on our nerves; for only
by a calm and fair discussion of the problems which confront us can the
truth be ascertained. Some of Mr. Sims’ assertions above are plainly open
for discussion, and some are plainly ambiguous. For instance, what does
he mean by “As to the code of social relations, there are some sections
fertile and penetrated by railroads which are in vital respects half a
century behind the advance guard of Anglo-Saxon civilization?” Social
relations and civilization are two different things, and as to the
former, it is our opinion that the South, in her fight for the purity of
her race, the integrity of her morals and the hospitality of her people,
surpasses all other sections of this country. In proof of this I will
call our esteemed contributor’s attention to the following facts.
1. The white population of the South, never having been augmented by
foreign immigration to any appreciable extent, is more purely American
than any other section. It is to-day as it was one hundred years before
the Revolution. I am not asserting that it is better for this fact,
but as a matter of “social relations” I am claiming that it is purely
American.
2. The religion of the South is in keeping with the Anglo-Saxon race; it
is the simple religion of the Protestant peoples of England, Scotland
and Wales, the Huguenots of France, and the sturdy, honest Catholics of
Ireland. There is less skepticism and less materialism in the South than
in any other section. I consider the above statement appropriate, under
the head of “social relations.”
3. There are fewer barrooms in the South than in Greater New York
alone—about 35,000. The South is essentially temperate. This, too, seems
to Trotwood too, under the head of “social relations.”
4. Lastly (and this will doubtless astonish some of our readers) since
the half-breed, the grade—the mulatto—is the curse of any nation, whether
white, black, red or yellow, every mulatto is a living misfit, whose
making is the spoiling of two men—a white man and a black man. Either of
these, in his ability to accomplish the ends for which he was made, is
far greater than the cross-bred, this being true in Maine,[1] where there
are no barriers between the social relations of the whites and blacks,
about two per cent. of the population are negroes, but about 59 per cent.
of her negroes are mulattoes, while in South Caroline, where 59 per cent.
of her people are negroes, only 9.7 per cent. are mulattoes. And it runs
about that way in the entire country, north, where negroes are permitted
to intermarry with the whites. And if the sturdy white population of the
grand old State of Maine—the State of such intellectual giants as Blaine,
Hale and hosts of others—if this State becomes wholly mulatto, it might
as well be wiped from the map of civilization and be added to Hayti, the
Philippines and Cuba.
This, to Trotwood’s, seems to be an unanswerable argument as to the
superiority of the South’s social relations.
But this is as we understand social relations. We welcome all
communications of thought and progress, but we expect each correspondent
to defend his position and if, on the other hand, our correspondent means
to use social relations and civilization as synonymous, this is another
proposition, and one which, doubtless, he is able to defend.
There are other of his premises so painfully true that we repeat them for
emphasis:
1. “In the realm of economics, most of us in the South have yet to learn
some of the first principles.” For example, it is said that the thrifty
Yankee can live on what the Southerner wastes. And
2. “As to our courts of justice,” etc.—e.g., where to-day is the old
Southern lawyer, who held his profession above money, and his opinion
beyond barter?
[1] See page 16, Census Bulletin No. 8.
EDMUND WINSTON PETTUS.
It is seldom that any magazine may present to living readers the letter
of a man who has seen four generations arise and pass away. And such a
man!
Edmund Winston Pettus is one of the great living men of the world. He is
an old Roman who represents the high-water mark of the Republic’s true
greatness—one who might sit at the council table of the Gracchii, of
Pitt, of Washington. I speak not from hearsay—all my life I have known
him. And never will the Republic look upon his like again, for as he
quotes, “Time changes and men change with it.” But there was a scope, a
broadness, a breadth and dignity in the Time which reached out to all
the ages in making the men of his day and generation which seems sadly
lacking to Trotwood’s in making of some of our Southern statesmen of
to-day. But blame not the South for this. She has passed through the
shoals and the rapids of politics since the war. It is natural that much
froth and foam should follow it. But the two old Romans which Alabama has
sent to the Senate go far to atone for the froth of some of our sister
Southern States. All honor to Alabama for clinging to such ideals!
The picture we present of this grand old man (by courtesy of The Saturday
Evening Post) brings to my mind a flood of remembrance—tender, and of
the kind which has gone into the soul of me. One morning in the year
1868, when I was too small a boy to go anywhere alone, my father took me
by the hand and led me to the courthouse to hear General Pettus speak. He
turned me over to the sheriff while he himself went on the bench, and the
sheriff placed me in a big chair, and, small as I was, I sat spellbound
under the thunder of this man’s oratory. It was the first great speech I
had ever heard.
And when I see this picture I see the old Judge, before whom he
practiced—the old Judge, my father—who died the oldest judge in the
State, wearing for twenty-six years the ermine and never sullying it.
They were men of the same type—men of the Old South—men whom the poet
called for, saying:
“‘God give us men. A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the love of office cannot kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking—
For while the rabble with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land, and waiting justice sleeps.”
The Saturday Evening Post, in its issue of March 17th, says this of
Senator Pettus: “It isn’t much of a trick to be eighty-five years
young, but to be a vigorous and virile senator at eighty-five is an
accomplishment. Few men have done that. Edmund Winston Pettus, of Alabama
is one. One is reminded of a buffalo when Pettus comes into the Senate
chamber. He has shoulders a yard across and a barrel of a chest upholding
a short, thick neck and a massive head. When he walks he holds his
head forward and shakes it slowly from side to side. It is fascinating
to watch the sturdy old man and speculate how strong he was when he was
young. He left Selma with a party of neighbors at the beginning of the
gold excitement and rode horseback to California. He carried a Bible and
a copy of Shakespeare in his saddle-bags and read them while on horseback
and by the light of the camp fires at night. The Senator asserts that no
better library has been taken there since. Pettus was a lieutenant in the
Mexican War and a brigadier-general in the Confederate Army in the Civil
War. There is a big, sprawling painting of the battle of Chepultepec over
one of the stairways in the Senate wing of the Capitol. A few days ago a
man was studying the picture. Senator Pettus came along.
[Illustration: Edmund Winston Pettus.]
“Sir,” said the man, “I observe that you are an old man. Will you kindly
tell me if the people of those days wore clothes like those in the
picture there?”
“No, sir,” thundered Pettus, “they did not! I was in that battle, and I
saw no such clothes as those. So far as that raiment is concerned that
representation is a mere pictorial lie!”
It is remarkable that from one section of Alabama—the Black Belt—and from
one town in it—Selma—should have come two such men as Pettus and Morgan,
both now octogenarians, and the same intellectual giants they were a half
century ago.
In a near issue of Trotwood’s, perhaps in the next number, will be told
the story of that section—a section rich not only in sturdy, progressive
people, but in a soil and climate of such great natural advantages that
the mere telling of it will be a revelation to those who have not heard
of it before.
Mr. John Trotwood Moore, Columbia, Tenn.—My Dear Sir: I
received your letter and the magazines you sent me. I read
carefully your article on what Parton calls “The murder of
Dickinson,” and I enjoyed it very much. I have always thought
that people who live in this age give too much importance to
questions of right and wrong, to what I call “modern ideas,”
or, rather, who attach too little importance to the theories of
the former generations. I have lived through four generations
complete, and there have been in my day marvelous changes
in public opinion, and even the established theories in the
churches as to whether a certain thing is right or wrong. When
I was a boy in North Alabama instrumental music in a church
was considered as a sacrilege, and was not allowed under
any circumstances. Duelling was not more condemned than the
resenting of an insult in any other way, and the old saying is
perfectly true, “Times change and we change with them.” In your
article about the duel you failed to notice that Mrs. Jackson,
with her first husband, resided in Kentucky, but Kentucky was
then a part of Virginia.
In my young days I was familiar with the Hermitage grounds.
For four years I was a student at what was then called Clinton
College, which was in Smith County, between Carthage and
Alexandria, and about forty miles east of the Hermitage on the
old emigrant road from Knoxville to Nashville. I visited the
Hermitage on several occasions. My grandfather lived for many
years about a mile from the Hermitage, and General Jackson
attended the marriage of my father and mother, and my father
and several of my uncles went with General Jackson through the
Creek War.
In 1840 I went from Clinton College to attend the Nashville
convention, in what has been called “the log cabin and hard
cider” campaign, and we stopped at the Hermitage to see General
Jackson. Whilst we were sitting with a number of persons on the
piazza the East Tennessee delegates to the Whig convention, in
vast numbers, passed on the pike in front of the house. One
party of them had a small cannon, and when they reached the
front gate, then about two hundred yards from the house, they
brought the cannon inside the gate and fired on the house, with
blank cartridges, of course. This created great indignation
throughout Tennessee. I did attend the convention. The
principal purpose of the students in attending the convention
was to hear Henry Clay; and we did hear him. It was as poor a
speech as I ever heard from any man reputed to be a speaker.
The speech was not more than ten minutes long, and the best
part of it was a fling at Felix Grundy. Mr. Clay said that
when he reached Nashville he inquired for his old friend, the
Hon. Felix Grundy, and that he learned “that he was at his old
trade in East Tennessee defending criminals.” Mr. Grundy was
then making political speeches in East Tennessee for Mr. Van
Buren and the Democrats. You remember that Mr. Clay was beaten
for the nomination a few weeks before by General Harrison, and
his whole speech and demeanor on that occasion indicated great
sourness and dissatisfaction, and did him much injury with his
party.
I was much gratified to see from your letter that you remember
how your father, the late Judge John Moore, and I were for so
many years fast and devoted friends. Most respectfully, your
friend,
E. W. PETTUS.
Washington, March 30, 1906.
* * * * *
_And Plutarch says: “We are more sensible of what is done against custom
than against nature.”_
TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY
Devoted to Farm, Horse and Home.
TROTWOOD PUBLISHING CO., Nashville, Tenn.
Office 150 Fourth Ave., North.
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE,
Editor-in-Chief.
E. E. SWEETLAND Business Manager.
GEO. E. McKENNON President.
JOHN W. FRY Vice-President.
EUGENE ANDERSON Treas.
WOOTEN MOORE Sec’y.
TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION: One Year, $1.00; Single Copy, 10 cents.
Advertising Rates on application.
NASHVILLE, TENN., JUNE, 1906.
With Trotwood
THE TRUTH IS PRECIOUS.
Trotwood holds that the truth is a very precious thing. “It is more to be
desired than gold; yea, than much pure gold.” It is more to be desired
than office or fame or popular approval. For these things are transient,
while truth is eternal. And one truth fits every other truth in the
world, whereas, a lie fits nothing but some other lie, made especially
for it.
* * * * *
Trotwood loves also to build up. He does not wish to tear down. And if
he is anything, the records of his writings—and there is no record so
complete as the records put in writing—will show that he has, both in and
out of season, plead for a reunited country.
* * * * *
In the May installment of our “Historic Highways” we gave what we knew
to be the plain facts of history when we said that the War of 1812 was
very unpopular in New England; that she secretly aided the enemy; that
she held the first secession convention ever held on our soil. And this
was said, as stated, not in malice nor to arouse bitterness, but for the
truth of history, which is precious.
* * * * *
Buffalo, N. Y., May 3, 1906.
Mr. Trotwood Moore,
Dear Sir: We all read your monthly and are very much pleased
with it. Wish you success. In the May number you speak of
New England sitting sullenly, secretly aiding the enemy and
watching for a chance to secede. As a descendant of New England
parents, I must protest. Whatever may have been the sins of New
England, secession was not one. Not all of New England favored
the War of 1812, but that isn’t secession. Men were killed
in Baltimore, Md., because they opposed the war, but no one
accused Baltimore of secession. Write for the whole country and
not for a section.
Yours truly,
E. D. PRESTON.
Fortunately, we know Dr. Preston, the writer of the above, and remembered
most pleasantly that he stopped off once to see us in his journeyings
South. He is a gentleman and a man of much intelligence, and we must make
good our assertions or acknowledge we have erred.
* * * * *
When Thomas Jefferson was elected to the Presidency in 1800, New England
regarded it just as the South did Lincoln’s election sixty years later—as
a fit cause for secession. John Quincy Adams published a statement over
his own signature in which he said that in the winter of 1803, a plot was
formed in New England to separate from the Union: “The plan,” he says,
“was so far matured, that a proposal had been made to an individual to
permit himself, at the proper time, to be placed at the head of military
movements which, it would be foreseen, would be necessary to carry the
project into successful execution.” Again, he says: “The separation of
the Union was openly stimulated in the public prints, and a convention of
delegates of the New England States, to meet at New Haven, was proposed.”
This is the same gentleman who was the sixth President of the United
States, but who, before that event, was forced to retire to private
life by his New England constituency for voting with the Jefferson
Administration in laying an embargo on all shipping in American ports in
retaliation for the insults of England. “The great damage fell upon the
maritime States of New England, and there the vials of Federalist wrath
were poured forth with terrible fury upon Mr. Jefferson and the embargo.
But the full measure of their ferocity was reserved for the Adams,” etc.
(Appleton’s Enc. of Am. Biography, Vol. I., p. 25.)
* * * * *
Governor Wolcott, of Connecticut, said: “I sincerely declare that I wish
the Northern States would separate from the Southern the moment Jefferson
is elected.”
And Governor Plummer, of New Hampshire, declared in 1805 that it was the
purpose of certain distinguished New Englanders “to dissolve the Union.”
James Millhouse, U. S. Senator from Connecticut, said: “The Eastern
States must and will dissolve the Union and form a separate government of
their own, and the sooner they do it the better.”
Jonah Quincy, on the floor of Congress: “I am compelled to declare, as my
deliberate opinion, that if this bill (to admit Louisiana) passes, the
bonds of the Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose
it are hereby freed from the moral obligations, and that, as it will be
the right of all, so it will be the duty of some to prepare definitely
for the separation, amicably, if we can; forcibly, if we must.” When he
was called to order for this by Poindexter, of Mississippi, who proposed
a vote of censure by the House, the House sustained Quincy and let him
proceed.
* * * * *