Makers and Romance of Alabama History. B. F. Riley
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felt impelled to take to him the gospel of salvation.
His labors were not confined to any particular region and he trudged the country over, imperiling his life among the wild tribes, who came to love him because he was one pale face who sought to do them good. He founded an Indian school near the Chattahoochee and taught the Indians the elements of the English language. When Bishop Asbury, the most indomitable of all the Methodist bishops, came to the South, Mr. Smith was his close friend and adviser, and most valuable were his services to the bishop in planting Methodism in the lower South.
All real teachers are greater learners than instructors, for in their zeal to impart they must first come to acquire. Mr. Smith was an assiduous student and with the growth of his years was an accumulated stock of both wisdom and learning. As he passed the meridian of life he became a power in his denomination and his counsel was freely sought in the high circles of his church. When, in 1825, General LaFayette visited Alabama in his tour of the South, he passed through the Creek Nation, in Georgia, and was escorted by a body of Georgians to the Chattahoochee River and consigned to the care of fifty painted Indian warriors, who vied with the pale faces in doing honor to the distinguished visitor. Rowing LaFayette across the river to the Alabama side, he was met by Rev. Isaac Smith. The great Frenchman instantly recognized Mr. Smith as one of his boy orderlies during the campaigns in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. There was a cordial demonstration of mutual affection between the old French veteran and the younger man, now a Methodist preacher. The painted Indian warriors looked on the exchange of greeting with evident pleasure. It so happened that LaFayette reached the Alabama side just at the point where stood the humble school building of the intrepid missionary.
The first demonstration of greeting being over, Mr. Smith eschewing all conventionality, and, in keeping alike with his Methodist zeal and the joy which he experienced in meeting his old commander, proposed that all bow in prayer. When LaFayette and Smith dropped on their knees the Indian warriors did the same, and there on the banks of the deep rolling Chattahoochee, beneath ancient oaks, in fervid and loud demonstrations of prayer, the voice of Mr. Smith rang out through the deep forests. The picture thus presented was worthy the pencil of the master—the ardent but devout preacher, the great French patriot and the half hundred warriors, each with his hands over his face, praying in the wild woods of Alabama. The prayer was an unrestrained outburst of joy at the meeting of the old commander and a devout invocation for the preservation of the life of the friend of American liberty.
Yielding to the hospitable pressure of the boy soldier of other and stormier days, LaFayette was taken to the humble cottage of the missionary in the woods, and in order partly to entertain the distinguished guest and partly to afford him an insight into aboriginal life, Mr. Smith arranged for a game of ball to be played by the Indians. The day over and LaFayette was taken into the cabin, served with the scanty fare of the pioneer missionary, and beside the primitive fireplace the two, the missionary and the great Frenchman, sat that night and fought over the battles in which both were participants during the Revolution. They parted on the following morning, LaFayette continuing his course toward Cahaba, the state capital, and Mr. Smith resuming his treadmill round of duty as a secluded missionary to the Indians. They parted with the same demonstrations of affection with which they had met, and never again met each other in the flesh.
With cheerful alacrity Mr. Smith continued his work among the Indians, to which work he gave expansion in later years as the white population continued to multiply. He was of immense service to the government in adjusting the claims of the Indians and in pacifying them in the acceptance of the inevitable lot finally meted out to them. As a mediatorial agent Mr. Smith prevented much butchery in those early days when the extinction of the Indian was so seriously desired.
With fame unsought and undesired, the Rev. Isaac Smith continued his missionary and evangelistic labors in Alabama till forced by the weight of years and the results of the privations of pioneer life to retire from the scene of activity. He lived, however, to see the state of his adoption pass from an infantile stage to one of great population and prosperity and to witness the consummation of much of that of which he was one of the original prospectors. Retiring in his last years to Monroe County, Georgia, he died at the age of seventy-six. On the moral and spiritual side he was one of the foundation builders of the state of Alabama. His labor and sacrifice deserve recognition alongside that given of men whose stations in life gave them great conspicuousness in the public eye. He was of the class of men who labored in comparative obscurity, passed away, and in due time are forgotten, but their works do follow them in their everlasting results.
CLEMENT CLAIBORNE CLAY
Hon. Clement Claiborne Clay inherited all the strong traits of his distinguished father. His birthplace was Huntsville, where he was born in 1817. In his boyhood years he would learn much of the struggles through which the people of the state were passing in a transition from pioneer conditions to those of real life, and thus manhood unfolded contemporaneously with the development of his native state. His first knowledge of Alabama was derived at a time when conditions were rude and crude and during his career of more than three-score years he saw it expand through successive periods, his sentiments keeping pace with its development.
In most respects highly favored by fortune and condition, Mr. Clay knew how to prize these and use them as stepping-stones to success. His father was his most intimate companion, and the stations held by him were as largely shared in by the son as was possible. So soon as young Clay was prepared to do so he was sent to the state university, from which he graduated at the early age of seventeen. While his father was governor, the youth served as his private secretary and while his father was serving as senator at Washington, the son was at the same time pursuing his law course at the University of Virginia, which course he completed in 1840.
At the early age of twenty-five the junior Clay was elected to a seat in the lower house of the legislature. He attracted attention at first by the introduction of a resolution instructing the Alabama delegation in Congress to support a bill favorable to refunding to General Andrew Jackson the fine of one thousand dollars imposed on him by Judge Hall of New Orleans in 1815 for declaring martial law in that city, under which the judge was imprisoned by Jackson for discharging on habeas corpus a member of the Louisiana legislature who had been caught in the act of secretly communicating with the enemy and had been imprisoned by General Jackson. The fine was for contempt and Jackson paid it, and now, after the lapse of more than a quarter century, the sum was returned with interest, the total being at the time of the refunding about $3,000.
The speech made by the young man in advocacy of his resolution won him his first spurs. It flashed with fervid eloquence and was pervaded throughout with the choicest diction. Many were the predictions of his future greatness because of that speech.
His service in the legislature led to his retention in that body for three successive terms, during the last of which he was elected by the legislature to the judgeship of the county court of Madison. After serving thus for two years, he resigned and resumed the practice of the law. Five years later still, he offered for congressional representative, but was defeated by the Hon. W. R. W. Cobb of Jackson County. The sting of defeat was abundantly alleviated, however, when he was chosen by the legislature a United States senator at the close of the same year. The distinction was the greater because of the handsome majority given him over his distinguished opponent, the Hon. R. W. Walker, Clay having received eighty-five votes, while Walker received thirty-seven.
The gifts, training, and acquirements of Mr. Clay eminently fitted him for this exalted forum. It was at the time when state rights doctrine was well at the front and into the thick of the fray he entered as an ardent disciple of Mr. Calhoun. His speeches on the floor of the senate chamber won for him wide attention, and gained for him national renown. Throughout the country his speeches were a subject of comment, while in Alabama his name was on every thoughtful lip.
Having served for six years in the National Senate, Mr. Clay was again chosen in 1859, and was in the senate when Alabama seceded in 1861, and with all the other southern senators resigned, which furnished occasion in harmony with the temper of that