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AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 
 Col. Richard Malcolm Johnston 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 
 Col. Richard Malcolm Johnston 
 
 ■ fep 
 
 washington 
 The Nea^e; Company 
 
 M C M 
 
COPYRIGHT, igOO, BY THE NEALE COMPANY 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Some; years ago my friend Henry M. Alden, 
 at whose house I was staying for the night, 
 said that I ought to write a book telling 
 reminiscences of myself and others whom I 
 had known. At that time I thought little of 
 the suggestion , not that I was not much inter- 
 ested in my many friends and very many 
 acquaintances, and intensely so in myself, but 
 I did not see how I could make clearly my 
 recollection of these interesting to others. 
 Now that I have grown old and, like others 
 at my time, growing more and more fond of 
 looking back and admiring the past, I decide 
 to put down some notes which I trust will be 
 perused with interest by those who have 
 known me, particularly those who have known 
 me best. These, I am sure, will not believe 
 that in this I am seeking any more notoriety 
 than what has already come from my pub- 
 
 3 
 
6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 lished works, which is already much more 
 than I had expected, and more, as I sincerely 
 feel, than I deserve. The favor with which 
 they have been received has surprised none 
 more than myself, and it has been the more 
 gratifying because of having been, of late, the 
 chief means of my support, after others, for 
 reasons outside of advanced age, had been 
 cut off. Remembering and intending to try 
 throughout to remember for whom, mainly, I 
 am writing, I begin. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 My father, Malcolm Johnston, was fond of 
 talking with his children about the antecedents 
 of his family. Since his death I have often 
 regretted that I did not listen with more 
 attentiveness. On his father's side he could 
 not go farther back than to his grandfather, 
 Rev. Thomas Johnston, who, early in the last 
 century, emigrating from Scotland, came first 
 to the State of Pennsylvania — what county I 
 can not now say. He had already taken orders 
 in the English Church. Some time after his 
 coming he intermarried with Sallie Adamson, 
 who came of the family of a gentleman who 
 afterwards was well known in the early history 
 of Charlotte County, Virginia, Colonel Thomas 
 Bouldin. In this journeying southward he at 
 first went no farther than Prince George Coun- 
 ty, Maryland, and for some years was rector of 
 a parish therein. Subsequently Colonel Boul- 
 
8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 din, after becoming settled in Virginia, re- 
 moved him thither, where he was settled on 
 a piece of ground named " The Glebe," in the 
 parish of Cornwall, County of Charlotte. 
 Among his children the eldest was William, 
 who, after serving in the War of Independ- 
 ence, at its end removed, with his family, in 
 the year 1799, to Hancock County, Georgia, 
 settling on a plantation four miles west of the 
 village of Powelton. My father, Malcolm, 
 who was the younger of the two sons of their 
 parents, was then eleven years old, having 
 been born in Charlotte County in 1788. 
 
 William Johnston's wife was Rebecca 
 Mosely, whose mother was Amy Goode, whose 
 mother was Amy Greene, all of Charlotte 
 County. 
 
 My mother was Catherine Davenport. Her 
 father, John Davenport (whose mother was a 
 Hancock), was killed at the battle of Guilford 
 Court House. One of his ancesters, on immi- 
 grating to this country, settled in Connecticut. 
 Whether or not he was the same who founded 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 9 
 
 the city of New Haven I know not. He 
 resided in, and probably was a native of, the 
 same county of Charlotte, wherein he inter- 
 married with L,ucy Barksdale. Some years 
 after the death of my maternal grandfather his 
 widow was married to Henry Burnley, who, 
 in the year 1789, removed to the County of 
 Warren, on the border of Hancock, State of 
 Georgia. 
 
 As it seems to me now, my childhood was 
 unmixedly happy in spite of my being through- 
 out of weakly health of body, and so continued 
 until I was fifteen years old. The living at 
 our house was mingled of strictest dicipline 
 with afFectionateness to whose tenderness there 
 seemed to be no bounds. We children were 
 an ardent set, and our parents punished our 
 oft offendings with switches pulled from the 
 peach tree. But afterwards we were not sub- 
 jected to everlasting talkings about it. In- 
 stead, a reasonably healthy flagellation satis- 
 fied every demand, and we began with re- 
 stored love and confidence upon a new career. 
 
IO AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 Iyike other children who are not strong enough 
 to be much out of doors, and who must be 
 occupied with something within, I learned 
 early to read. I have no recollection of a 
 time, except one, when I could not read, and 
 I remember how my father was chagrined in 
 that case. It was with me then as it has been 
 ever since — to apprehend quickly and as 
 quickly forget. One day a gentleman visiting 
 at our house noticing me upon the floor inter- 
 ested about some trifle, made some remark. 
 My father said with some pride that I knew 
 how to read, and forthwith he took from a 
 table near by a copy of Mercer's Cluster, the 
 hymn book then used by the Baptists, called 
 me, lifted me upon his lap, and opening some- 
 where confidently bade me proceed. I looked 
 on the page and thought how singular that I 
 should have forgotten every blessed thing the 
 familiarity with which had been making the 
 whole family so proud. But I had forgotten 
 the art. So I looked up to my father in 
 vague shame and sympathy. After some vain 
 
COIv. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON II 
 
 remonstrances he let me go down. I don't 
 remember if the guest laughed. I was then 
 somewhere between three and four. 
 
 I can just remember that my father during 
 these times was an active, ardent, rather gay 
 man in spite of his weight of two hundred and 
 fifty pounds, and that my mother, somewhat 
 his senior, had a quietness which tended more 
 and more toward melancholy. He was a 
 leader in neighborhood parties whereat indul- 
 gence in dancing was not forbidden too 
 strictly. He was fond of fox hunting, and 
 being one of the five freeholder judges of the 
 county court, he not seldom, when its session 
 was over, lingered at Sparta, the county seat, 
 and for a day or two and as many nights 
 played poker with other friends of that game. 
 Afterwards, and when he become a clergy- 
 man, in referring to these games he used to 
 say with pardonable pride that he came off 
 winner more often than loser. 
 
 When he was about five and thirty he felt 
 as if he ought to change the manner of his 
 
12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 life. There was no Episcopal church near by, 
 so he joined the denomination of his mother, 
 the Baptist. Not long afterwards Jesse Mercer, 
 the head Baptist in Georgia, one of the wisest 
 men whom the South has produced, prevailed 
 upon him to become a clergyman. He had 
 had an education much more limited than 
 that of his father, but on a line with that of 
 some of the leading men of the State. And 
 so he set forth. Some persons who used to 
 hear him preach have told me that he was 
 uncommonly succinct, sometimes almost elo- 
 quent in delivery of his views, and (what in 
 those days was as delightful as rare) he used 
 to stop when he was through with what he 
 had to say. I remember to have heard him 
 preach once or twice, and that he seemed to 
 be rather embarrassed, even when giving ex- 
 pression to strongest denominational opinions. 
 He was an ardent partisan as well in religion 
 as in politics. I heard him say once that 
 for all his preachings during twenty years 
 he had not been paid as much as twenty-five 
 
COIv. RICHARD MALCOIvM JOHNSTON 1 3 
 
 dollars in money. Indeed, many of the Bap- 
 tist divines in those days had more worldly 
 goods than a large majority of their congrega- 
 tions, and so they were in condition to avail 
 themselves of that higher beatitude — giving, 
 instead of receiving. The policy of Jesse 
 Mercer was to make preachers of leading 
 planters. It was wise ; it led to the bringing 
 into the Baptist Church of probably three- 
 fourths of the land-owners and negro-owners 
 of Middle Georgia. 
 
 My father's conversion, as they used to 
 call it, was followed by quick changes. He 
 gave up dancing and card-playing. Before 
 that he used to make a bowl of toddy of morn- 
 ings before breakfast, have it graced by the 
 touch of my mother's lips, modestly sipped by 
 us children, then drained by himself. All 
 these were stopped at once. He used to be 
 what they called a bright Mason, once presid- 
 ing, in the absence of the Master, over the 
 Grand Lodge of the State. But his denomi- 
 nation being hostile to that institution, al- 
 
14 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 though he ever spoke of it with respect and 
 some fondness, he never again met his broth- 
 ers of the mystic tie. 
 
 Our life at home was ordered by rules which 
 to our parents seemed the very best to employ. 
 The strictest obedience was required, and its 
 violations were met with quick punishment. 
 Even delegated authority was rigidly ratified 
 there. Punishments at school were not re- 
 ported, as we foresaw that they were most 
 likely to be approved without enquiries as to 
 the merit of their infliction. When night came 
 a chapter was read, a hymn sung, a prayer 
 said, and by nine o'clock everybody was in 
 bed and soon afterwards asleep. The next 
 morning's newly risen sun would find all, old 
 and young, awake and preparing for the work 
 of the new day. I look back with much fond- 
 ness to those evening orisons. Both of my 
 parents sang well, and some of the old hymns 
 were ineffably sweet. Yet, somehow, my 
 recollections of the Sunda}^, except one, were 
 always rather sad. The great monthly meet- 
 
COI,. RICHARD MALCOIvM JOHNSTON 1 5 
 
 ing day was grand. We two youngest chil- 
 dren, my sister Eliza and I, rode to church 
 with my mother in the gig, drawn by Bob, the 
 best of sorrels. The rest of the day, after 
 returning home, was cheerful, barring the long 
 time we had to wait after the first table of 
 invited guests to dinner were served. But the 
 other Sundays seemed gloomy. The children 
 were not allowed to go off the premises, or 
 even to play, such was the idea of observance 
 of the Sabbath. My mother all day long read 
 the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress, and my 
 father, naturally a cheerful man, meditated in 
 harmony with the thoughts of this strange 
 book. Yet Monday morning lifted the sombre 
 veil and all went cheerfully enough to their 
 accustomed employment. 
 
 When I was five years old I was sent to 
 school along with my older brother, Mark. 
 The teacher was a man named Hogg. I can 
 recall but one single incident occurring at this 
 school, which was kept in a small log house 
 in an old field near the line of the farms of two 
 
 s 
 
i 
 
 1 6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 of our neighbors, Mr. Edmund Randle and 
 Mr. Hamilton Bonner. The teacher kept a 
 large red book like a merchant's ledger, in 
 which he was fond of drawing with a pen 
 sketches of men, horses and other things. 
 One day, going to him to ask something 
 about my lesson, I inadvertently struck his 
 elbow while in the midst of some essay of his 
 art, and this incensed him to the degree that 
 he gave me a box upon my cheek, and sent 
 me away no wiser than when I came to him. 
 He was succeeded by a man named Josiah 
 Yellowby , whom and his wife Delilah I recalled 
 while writing my story of How Mr. Bill Wil- 
 liams Took the Responsibility . Little do I re- 
 member of the times I had then except the 
 last day. The boys had been asking, and in 
 vain, for a holiday. One morning they met 
 the teacher at the school-house door, where 
 the request was again made, and on his con- 
 tinued refusal they seized and carried him to 
 the spring branch. Persisting in the refusal 
 of their demands, four of the largest, taking 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 7 
 
 him by the hands and feet, let him down into 
 the stream. The water had reached to his 
 chin, when he gave up. Then he dismissed 
 the school (for it was near the end of the 
 term), went away from the neighborhood, and 
 I never saw him again. His little dog Rum 
 and his wife's mare Kate were as I have de- 
 scribed them in my story, although what was 
 told of the wife, a homely female, was pure 
 invention. 
 
 My next teacher was James Hilsman, son 
 of one of the neighbors. He kept school at a 
 cross-roads near his father's residence, which 
 was nearly two miles from our house. This 
 man was afterwards suspected of having been 
 rather insane always. He delighted in pun- 
 ishing. I think I must have gotten an aver- 
 age of at least one whipping a day, though I 
 was less than seven years old. He was not as 
 fierce as Israel Meadows, whom I have de- 
 scribed in The Goose Pond School, yet I remem- 
 ber that he had the circus and the horses. In 
 the latter I used to alternate in the riding and 
 
 -X 
 
1 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 carrying with a boy named Buck Connell. 
 The teacher bore with special heaviness upon 
 his younger brothers. I think he must have 
 intended to make such treatment pass for evi- 
 dence that he was impartial in his discipline. 
 At all events, no complaint was made of it, 
 many parents in those days seeming to believe 
 that education could not be imparted so well 
 in any other wise as by application of the rod. 
 This poor man was afterwards killed by his 
 son-in-law, whom he was pursuing and was 
 about to shoot after a runaway marriage with 
 one of his daughters. 
 
 After him a man named Barnes Sims taught 
 in a house that used to be occupied by Mr. 
 William Long, from whom upon his removal 
 to Troup County my father purchased it with 
 the plantation. I remember little of this 
 school, beyond the fact that some of the larger 
 boys established in a room of the second 
 story what they called a "Freemason's 
 Lodge," and that I and several others about 
 my capacity were initiated with ceremonies 
 
COI,. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 19 
 
 that for a long time afterwards I could not 
 recall without some resentment. The teacher 
 was a kind man, too kind, I suspect, for his 
 vocation, which he soon after relinquished. 
 Very often I recall a prayer that I made one 
 day while standing alone by the spring at the 
 foot of the hill. My oldest brother, Albon, 
 just come to his one-and-twentieth year, had 
 died that fall from sickness contracted while 
 waiting on a sick child of Colonel Farmin, 
 one of our neighbors. This affliction bore 
 with great heaviness upon my parents. On 
 this occasion while thinking of my brother, 
 partly for my own sense of his loss, but 
 mainly for sympathy with the grief of others, 
 I prayed that when I went home in the even- 
 ing I might find him returned to life, and I 
 indulged a strong hope that so it would be. 
 My disappointment was very sorrowful and 
 humiliating, but I spoke not of it to any one. 
 Some time afterwards my mother, taking with 
 her my next older brother, Mark, and sister 
 Eliza, went for a visit of a day and night to 
 
20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 my sister Sarah Ann, who was lately married 
 and living near the town of Crawfordville, 
 ten miles away. At night after supper my 
 father and I were on the piazza, he sitting on 
 a chair and I on the top step. We had en- 
 dured the absence well enough during the 
 day, but now he lapsed into a silence, and I 
 knew he was thinking of the dead as of the 
 absent. He sat and picked the seed from a 
 parcel of cotton on his lap, a thing often done 
 at night by men in our neighborhood, partly 
 from habit before the invention of the gin, part- 
 ly for entertainment, and partly because a softer 
 staple than that gotten by the gin was obtained 
 for thread in the knitting of stockings. For 
 some time I sought to entertain him, but 
 when he only answered briefly what I asked 
 and narrated, I became silent and sad also. 
 It was the first wave of melancholy that had 
 come over my spirit. I listened to the katy- 
 dids, and thought of how brother Albon used 
 to hear them, but not now. Then I thought 
 that the time would come when like him my 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 21 
 
 mother and father would depart forever out of 
 my sight. Indulgence of the feeling was no 
 doubt brief, but I remember it well, and that 
 my heart was full of that sort of sadness of 
 which we never can speak, never can feel like 
 speaking to another. Since then the fondest 
 to me of all night sounds has been what always 
 seems the wailing of the katydid. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 In the year 1831, when I was nine years 
 old, my father, leaving the plantation in the 
 hands of the overseer, removed with his family 
 to Crawfordville, ten miles distant, for the 
 purpose of getting better facilities for the 
 education of his children. The school was 
 kept by William Cowdry, a South Carolinian 
 of liberal education. At ten I was put in 
 L,atin, but made little progress until three 
 years afterwards, when we removed to Powel- 
 ton, only four miles from our plantation home. 
 The school at Powelton had been excellent 
 for several years. It got its first reputation 
 under Salem Town, a Massachusetts man, 
 who not long had returned to his native State 
 and become author of several school books, 
 which had a large sale. Many boys educated 
 at his famous school afterwards became dis- 
 tinguished, among them Governor Charles J. 
 
24 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 Jenkins, Judge A. Nesbit, Senator Walter 
 Colquitt, Hon. Mark A. Cooper, and others. 
 At this time the school was kept by L,ucian 
 ^ Whittle, a native of Vermont and graduate 
 of Middleburg College. He was a man of 
 excellent culture and one of the best of 
 teachers. Under him I learned Latin and 
 Greek with much ease. We lost him in a 
 singular way. His assistant in the school was 
 Miss Rebecca Pratt, also a native of Vermont 
 and one of the loveliest as well as most accom- 
 plished of women. For her I had a sort of 
 worship. I used to feel rather sad sometimes 
 to think how much too young for her I was. 
 I remembered this in the little story of Mr. 
 / Thomas Watts, though the state of my feelings 
 never became known to her nor anybody else. 
 With her Mr. Whittle fell deeply in love, and 
 desired earnestly to marry her. She did not 
 return his affection. So one day, it was in 
 the year 1835, he left the village, saying that 
 he was going to Augusta, the principal town 
 in that region, for the purpose of purchasing 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 25 
 
 some dramatic pieces for us to enact at the 
 approaching midsummer commencement. We 
 never saw him again. His reason had become 
 unsettled. He wandered off to the West, and 
 we never heard what became of him after- 
 wards. I felt deeply his loss, because I had 
 grown to have for him much affection, in 
 spite of the rigor of his discipline. I had 
 great dread of his displeasure. His tasks upon 
 me were always as much as I could do, even 
 with the help of my prayers. For a long time 
 I had the habit of leaning my head upon the 
 desk just before I was to be called to recita- 
 ation and saying a silent prayer that I might 
 say my lesson in a manner acceptable to Mr. 
 Whittle. Soon afterwards Miss Pratt married 
 Colonel Boydman, a wealthy planter from the 
 County of Houston. 
 
 After the departure of Mr. Whittle the trus- 
 tees secured Simpson Fouche, esq., a native of 
 the County of Wilkes. He had been educated 
 at the University of Virginia and had prac- 
 ticed some years at the bar. I rather think 
 
26 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 that he was the first well-educated native to 
 keep a school in that region. He was a man 
 of fine ability, and would have become a dis- 
 tinguished politician if he had known better 
 how to restrain his too-ardent temper. As it 
 was, he sometimes would take prominent part 
 in campaigning, especially Presidential, and 
 he could hold his own well with the best 
 stump-speakers. As a teacher he was perfect, 
 with one exception. His discipline was ex- 
 tremely rigorous, and he punished with a pas- 
 sion and severity that sometimes bore very 
 hard upon those who were not too large to be 
 out of danger. I went to him for two years 
 and a half, and never during a single day all 
 that time was I free from the fear of being 
 punished before the day ended. Yet I liked 
 him because he was so competent, so faithful, 
 and meant to be entirely just. He kept a list 
 of all the lessons, perfect and imperfect, that 
 had been recited during the term, and read it 
 aloud at the midsummer examinations, which, 
 occupying two days, were attended by many 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 27 
 
 hundreds of visitors. On such occasions the 
 pride that I used to feel when my imperfect 
 lessons were sounded aloud to be none, filled 
 me with pride which seemed to me then emi- 
 nently noble, and I was fully compensated for 
 all the apprehensions that I had undergone. 
 
 At the end of the year 1837, my brother 
 Mark having returned from the University of 
 Virginia and I being destined to go to college 
 after another year, we removed to our home 
 on the plantation. At that time I was almost 
 a dwarf in size, and never having been strong, 
 continuous attendance at school had kept back 
 my growth. I was ready for the sophomore 
 class half advanced, but my father saw fit to 
 detain me at home for a year, and required me 
 to work with the negroes four days in the 
 week — from Monday morning to Thursday 
 night. On Fridays and Saturdays I was 
 allowed to hunt with my gun and dogs. 
 
 Conscious of the vast benefit that I was 
 getting from this service, I tried, but in vain, 
 to like it. Instead of this I hated it — hated 
 
 s 
 
28 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 all of it, plowing, hoeing, gathering corn and 
 cotton. Sometimes when plowing in the sum- 
 mer afternoons I would keep my eyes from 
 the sun for quite a time, having a sort of re- 
 sentful suspicion that when I watched it it 
 refused to advance, and many a time, after 
 thus forbearing, have I turned to it again and 
 sighed to think how near it was to the place 
 in the heavens where I had seen it last. I 
 never could understand, considering how dili- 
 gent at my studies I had been always, that I 
 should be so reluctant to do farm work. I 
 have always loved the country and the sight 
 of country work, but never could overcome 
 the irksomeness of doing it myself. My 
 father was not one whom it would have been 
 worth my while to undertake to divert from 
 his purpose, and so I continued to work with 
 more or less fidelity. When Thursday night 
 came whoever would have liked to see a glad 
 boy would have been satisfied to come to our 
 house. This discipline served its purpose, and 
 I grew in size, strength, and health. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 29 
 
 Manual labor two hours a day was a part of 
 the discipline in Mercer University, whither I 
 was sent in February of 1839. At the end of 
 that year I had grown from something under 
 five to my present height, six feet, and had 
 acquired a soundness of body which has kept 
 with me until now. 
 
 I doubt if ever there was a boy more green 
 than I had been always and continued to be. 
 I used to be the most credulous of mankind. 
 In my father's house there never had been 
 secrets of any kind. He and my mother were 
 entirely candid with each other, their children, 
 their servants, their neighbors, all with whom 
 they ever met. I believed what the negroes, 
 even the negro children, said, the same as 
 everybody else. I used to envy our negro 
 boys, Antony, Simeon, Ned, and others of 
 my own age, for knowing so much more about 
 everything than I did, except books. Away 
 from home I felt a sense of incompleteness in 
 myself which seemed to disqualify me for any- 
 thing except preparing well lessons in my 
 
30 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 books. Up to this time I had read Don 
 Quixote, Alo7izo and Melissa, The Bandit's 
 Bride, The Three Spaniards, The Scottish 
 Chiefs, and Thaddeus of Warsaw. I have 
 been sorry ever since I read the first when so 
 young. It interested me deeply, but not the 
 humorous with which it abounds. I loved 
 the episodes in it, and whatever had anything 
 about love, especially love opposed or delayed 
 by difficulties. I often laugh at the remem- 
 brance of things therein recorded, the humor 
 of which I did not then perceive. For the 
 Don I had much compassion always, and I 
 think I was rather glad when Sancho Panza 
 would shut his mouth. The other books 
 absorbed me quite. I love yet to think of the 
 delight, sometimes painful, even terrified, with 
 which I pored over them. 
 
 My sensitiveness was extreme. When 
 people laughed at my mistakes it cut me to 
 the quick, often to shedding tears of shame. 
 I took the notion that I would never be able 
 to manage any business well, or do anything 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 3 1 
 
 that would be of value to anybody, including 
 myself. But going from borne imparted more 
 strength. I bad been so well prepared in 
 studies tbat I found myself at once able to 
 keep along with the best of the sophomore 
 class which I entered. When my father, after 
 leaving me at the college, drove out of the 
 village, I watched him from behind a chimney 
 of one of the college buildings and wept and 
 wept when he had gotten out of my sight. 
 Our home was but a little more than twenty 
 miles away, and as often as once in every two 
 months, after making up my lesson for Satur- 
 day morning, I got leave, and walking to the 
 residence of my youngest sister's father-in-law, 
 four miles out, or to one of his neighbors, 
 begged on a Friday afternoon — and was 
 always granted — the loan of a horse for a two 
 days' visit home. The one whom I wished 
 most to see was my mother, in whose lap I 
 used to lay my head as she fondled my hair, a 
 practice continued through our joint lives 
 ntil har d^ath, when I was twenty. 
 
32 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 College life imparted to me some self- 
 reliance, which theretofore I had never been 
 able to acquire. I soon began to take part in 
 the Saturday morning debates of the Phi Delta 
 Society, of which I was a member. Declama- 
 tion had been ever taught in our school, and 
 it was not very difficult for me to acquire a 
 leading position. I often recall, with a sense 
 of the extreme ridiculousness of it all, the 
 oratorical attitudes and words which I and my 
 rivals could employ with imagined high pas- 
 sion in those Saturday discussions, upon ques- 
 tions of whose merits we knew hardly one 
 single thing. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 33 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Within the last two years loss of their 
 property had befallen the husbands of my two 
 oldest sisters, and one of them, Madison Cal- 
 laway, husband of Catherine, my next oldest 
 sister, died. It became necessary for my 
 father, who went to the relief of their families, 
 to retrench expenses. So immediately after 
 my graduation, in July, 1841, I took a school 
 in the village of Mount Zion, in our county. 
 This I was not far from abandoning on the 
 morning of the first day. The gentleman 
 whom I succeeded was singularly unqualified 
 for the discipline of a class in which were sev- 
 eral boys nearly grown, and habituated to 
 mischief. I was much pained by the rude 
 liberties taken by one of these, a boy of nearly 
 my own size and only a little younger, as I 
 was moving among them, examining boys and 
 girls with a view to classifying. Though tall, 
 
34 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 I was very slight, and very decidedly averse 
 to violence of any kind. Some of this boy's 
 attitudes were so unbecoming that I asked 
 him softly and with some timidity to please 
 carry himself with propriety. He changed as 
 I was looking at him, but in a few minutes 
 was behaving as before. Again I asked him, 
 in the same manner and tone, to oblige me by 
 complying with the request. The same pre- 
 tended respect was paid, followed by a speedy 
 withdrawal. I went back to my seat by the 
 fireplace and looked at him. He seemed much 
 amused by my discomfiture, which was plain 
 to all eyes, and I noticed that he had a large 
 knife open in his hand. I looked at my hat, 
 and then I resolved what I must do. Suppose 
 I should leave the house and this, the first 
 business upon which I had entered. He was 
 heavier than I was, but I had never felt per- 
 sonal fear of any person except my parents 
 and others who had right to claim my obedi- 
 ence and punish for refusal to render it. Yet 
 I was almost made sick at the idea of having 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 35 
 
 an encounter with one of my size and nearly 
 my age in the beginning of an engagement for 
 which I believed myself rather incompetent, 
 to the undertaking of which I had almost to 
 be driven by my father and urged by other 
 friends. I thought how it would seem, if, 
 before I had undertaken it, or in the inception 
 of undertaking, I should suffer myself to be 
 driven away by a great, ill-behaved, lubberly 
 boy. In a very few moments I came to my- 
 self, so entirely as to feel much indignation, 
 and with an eager wish to encounter him, 
 particularly when I noticed he had in his hand 
 an open knife. He was reclining on the last 
 bench. I walked rapidly down the aisle be- 
 tween the desks of the boys on one side and 
 the girls on the other. Getting to where he 
 was, I asked again for his name, and then 
 said : "I have asked you twice as respectfully 
 as I know how to sit upon your seat becom- 
 ingly. If you had known anything of good 
 manners you would not have needed any such 
 reminder in the presence of these girls, to say 
 
36 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 nothing of what is due to me. Now I tell you 
 again to take down those great, ugly, feet, and 
 if you lift them again in that disgraceful way, 
 I'll beat you so that your people will not know 
 you when you get back home." He settled 
 himself instantly. I went back to my seat, 
 looked around, and saw and felt that I could 
 be master. The feeling of manhood, for the 
 first time in all my life, rose in me with a 
 strength that filled me with delight. I felt as 
 relieved as dear old John Perrybingle, just 
 after resigning the thought of running away 
 from Dot, for indeed, like him, "I was very 
 near it." 
 
 Looking back, it never fails to seem strange 
 that in those times violence was regarded as 
 the only fit punishment for derelictions in 
 schools. I believed then that a better dis- 
 cipline could be employed. Hereafter I will 
 speak of how I inaugurated one. Yet school 
 boys and school girls were happy. The whip- 
 pings were never thought to impose disgrace, 
 and with the truly educated teachers who had 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 37 
 
 come in these could be avoided by diligence 
 and proper deportment, which under such a 
 regime obtained rewards that nearly all to 
 whom they were possible loved to win. Ex- 
 aminations were the great days of the year. 
 They closed with exhibitions of plays, to wit- 
 ness which men, women, boys, girls, even 
 children , used to come as far as ten and fifteen 
 miles. I have seen more than a thousand at 
 one of these exhibitions on a stage under an 
 arbor of green boughs in front of the school- 
 house. To persons of culture the fun was 
 mainly the crude conception of scenery and 
 other appointments of the dramatic art. To 
 the rest, even to these, the enjoyment was 
 simply glorious. 
 
 Nearly all the schools in that region were 
 mixed, or, as it is now called, co-educational. 
 For many years the Powelton Academy, 
 known far and wide, had far more boarding 
 than resident pupils. There were no laws 
 against association of boys with girls, yet in 
 all its history there was never a scandal, 
 
38 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 
 
 although many a happy marriage resulted 
 from affections there begun. I sincerely be- 
 lieve there was never a community in which 
 the tone of purity was higher. After teach- 
 ing until the end of the year 1842 I decided 
 to study for the bar. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I had read Blacks to?ie' s Commentaries during 
 the last year at Mount Zion . Early in Decem- 
 ber I went into the law office of Colonel Henry 
 Cumming at Augusta, and at the same time 
 attended the law lectures of Mr. William 
 Tracy Gould (afterwards judge), son of Judge 
 Gould, who with Judge Reeve held for many 
 years the well-known law school at Litchfield, 
 Connecticut. I was admitted to the bar at 
 Augusta in about two months, and returning 
 to Hancock was taken into partnership with 
 Captain Eli W. Baxter (afterwards judge), a 
 lawyer of much eloquence, but neither studious 
 nor regular in his methods. Few men, I sup- 
 pose, were ever more careless in the arrange- 
 ment of papers and the preparation of cases. 
 Yet his vigorous intellect and fervid eloquence 
 gave him a high standing. He had much 
 boldness and sincerity in asserting his opinions. 
 
4-0 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 This cost him the loss of his party nomina- 
 tion for governor (I believe it was in 1839), 
 when he announced himself in favor of a 
 national bank. Elected by the legislature 
 judge of the northern circuit, he resigned six 
 months before the expiration of his term and 
 removed to the State of Texas. 
 
 I was married in November, 1844, to Mary 
 Frances Mansfield, whose father, Eli Mans- 
 field, was a native of New Haven. Her 
 mother was Nancy Barrow Hardwick, of our 
 county. I was then twenty -two and my wife 
 fifteen years of age. In these two years I had 
 done little in [the profession besides clerical 
 work. Almost all my leisure was spent in 
 reading Latin aad English literature. After 
 marriage I decided to withdraw from the bar. 
 The academy at Mount Zion was offered to me, 
 so I returned and kept it until the end of the 
 year 1846. The class was large and promised 
 to increase yet more, but Mr. James Thomas 
 (afterwards judge) offered me a partnership, 
 which I dicided to accept. Returning to 
 
COIy. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 41 
 
 Sparta in December I determined to study the 
 law industriously. I reported cases in which 
 we were not of counsel, not only in our 
 county, but those of other counties in which 
 we practiced. I read constantly three years, 
 taking notes. In that time I found myself 
 regarded as a lawyer well grounded in princi- 
 ples and familiar with pleadings, which in that 
 time, following English precedents, were much 
 complicated. But the habit of depending upon 
 my senior in the conduct of jury trials I could 
 never overcome. Demurrers or other issues 
 involving purely legal questions I was rather 
 fond of arguing, but I was extremely reluctant 
 to wrestle with facts before juries. This in- 
 firmity increased to the degree that I began to 
 suffer poignant anxiety at the approach of 
 court sessions. In the year 1849 my partner 
 retired, to be made not long afterwards judge 
 of the circuit. I retired also, much against 
 his most friendly, earnest remonstrances, and 
 for two years kept the academy in Sparta. 
 Again I came back and became partner of 
 
42 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 Linton Stephens, who had married a daughter 
 of Judge Thomas. 
 
 On the retirement of Judge Baxter, six 
 months before the expiration of his term, ex- 
 ecutive appointment to his late position was 
 offered to me, and I was much urged by him 
 and others to accept it. But I, the Democratic 
 candidate for the judgeship, had been beaten 
 a few weeks back in a contest before the 
 people by Judge Garnett Andrews, whom the 
 "Know-Nothings" had put up, and so I de- 
 clined this appointment. It was understood 
 that I was to be put up again before the leg- 
 islature of 1858, the election of judges having 
 been remanded to that body. That legislature 
 was Democratic, and therefore I should have 
 been elected. But a vacancy in the professor- 
 ship of English literature having occurred in 
 the State University by the resignation of Rev. 
 Dr. Wm. T. Brantly, at the ccmmencement 
 in August, 1857, I was elected to it. I ac- 
 cepted after some hesitation, and retired for 
 good and all from a profession for which, in 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 43 
 
 some of its most important and trying func- 
 tions, I felt myself to be not sufficiently 
 qualified. During the first four or five years 
 after coming to the bar I took active interest 
 in politics, not infrequently taking the stump. 
 In time I discovered that I was of too ardent 
 a temper for a politician. Once even at the 
 bar I came near getting into a duel with a per- 
 sonal friend on account of some intemperate 
 language on my part, upon what I regarded 
 and so characterized as rather unprofessional 
 action on his. Friends of us both presently in- 
 terfered, and I was very glad on the next day 
 to receive his hand instead of the challenge 
 which I had expected and made up my mind to 
 accept. I was also involved in several political 
 disputes which sometimes threatened serious 
 consequences. Reflection led me to retire from 
 active partisan contests, although I have ever 
 felt a warm interest in the principles to which 
 I have ever given my adherence. 
 
 A week before my election to the professor- 
 ship, the trustees of Mercer University, my 
 
44 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 Alma Mater, unanimously elected me its presi- 
 dent, despite the remonstrances which, being 
 one of the board, I made. The salary was 
 larger than that of the professorship, the offer 
 of which I had been led to expect, and they 
 would have increased it further. But this 
 was a denominational institution with a de- 
 partment of theology attached. I loved the 
 place and some of the faculty, but I felt sure 
 that the trustees had made a mistake, and 
 that I would make a greater to accept the 
 offer. First, I would have preferred a pro- 
 fessorship, even then, to the presidency, hav- 
 ing little fondness to the course of college 
 discipline then obtaining everywhere. I knew 
 that I could never practice over youth an 
 espionage from which my feelings revolted. 
 Yet my chief reason for declining was that, 
 although I was a member of the Baptist 
 Church, my trust in some of its principles had 
 dwindled, although I had never contemplated 
 withdrawal from it altogether. Besides, I 
 had not taken part in any of the public exer- 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 45 
 
 cises of the congregation, and it would have 
 much embarrassed me to lead the morning 
 and evening prayers in the chapel. After the 
 election the meeting dispersed for dinner. 
 Two hours afterwards I declined the offer, 
 and we at once elected another. 
 
 The election at the State University had not 
 been solicited by me. Yet after reflecting 
 upon it for some weeks I decided to accept. 
 It was extremely sad to me, the parting from 
 my partner and dearly loved friend, Linton 
 Stephens. I remember always with sweet 
 pleasure the intimate intercourse held by me 
 with him, who was one of the most true- 
 hearted, affectionate, as he was one of the 
 very greatest, men that the State of Georgia 
 ever had. The next year, or the one there- 
 after, he was raised to the bench of the 
 Supreme Court, and his decisions, during the 
 brief time before his resignation, compare 
 well with those of any judge in American or 
 British courts. 
 
 The times, oh, the times, which he and I have 
 
46 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 had together, both at his house and mine, and 
 in our buggy travels to and from county- 
 courts in our circuit. I shall refer to him 
 again when I come to speak of his brother 
 Alexander. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 47 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Our life at Athens during the four years we 
 spent there was very happy. My wife and I 
 were met with heartiest hospitality, and we 
 made some very warm friends, to be loved 
 afterwards, living and dead. The tone of 
 society therein had long been high, probably 
 equally so with any town in the whole South. 
 The president of the University, Rev. Dr. 
 Alonzo Church, a native of Vermont, but 
 since his youngest manhood a resident in 
 Georgia, was a gentleman of courtliest man- 
 ners. His colleagues were good men, social, 
 honorable, and during his sojourn never was 
 there a serious dispute in the faculty. After 
 evening prayers several among us used to 
 walk, generally to the new cemetery on the 
 banks of the Oconee River. Several evenings 
 in every week my wife and I were with friends, 
 either at their homes or at ours, when, besides 
 
48 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 conversation, we had music, I being a moder- 
 ately good flutist and she a very excellent 
 pianist. They used to call on us for such 
 entertainment even at large parties. 
 
 With one matter in the University I became 
 dissatisfied at the start. My recitation-room 
 was in the second story of the building known 
 as New College, and I was to become responsi- 
 ble for the good order of that story during the 
 day, the tutor, who selpt in one of the rooms, 
 having it in charge at night. Looking over 
 a printed copy of the rules that I had not seen 
 before, I saw that professors were required to 
 visit every student's room within his range 
 once a day. The reading surprised me, and 
 pained somewhat. Yet I did as required, 
 hoping the while to be able to devise some 
 plan by which a surveillance so inconsonant 
 with my feelings could be avoided. I often 
 smile to remember how ashamed I felt when, 
 in answer to my knock (for I never would 
 enter without notice), I was invited within, 
 saluted, and offered a chair with even more 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 49 
 
 cordiality than might have been expected by 
 the most welcome of visitors. Sometimes, for 
 mere decency's sake, I sat down for a few 
 moments, conscious of the meanness of enter- 
 ing as a mere spy, while I was being treated 
 as a gentleman. I almost swore (to myself) 
 that I'd stop such as that. A happy thing 
 occurred one afternoon in (I think it was) my 
 first week. The door of my room was at the 
 foot of the stairs leading to the third story, 
 which was under the jurisdiction of another 
 of the faculty. As I sat in my rocking chair 
 ruminating upon this new life, an iron ball, 
 four or five inches in diameter, that once 
 belonged to a dumb-bell, was started from the 
 upper story, and rolling down step by step, 
 was stopped at my door. I sprang up aston- 
 ished, not to say terrified, by the vast sound ; 
 indeed, I half suspected that the whole of the 
 upper part of the building was crumbling in. 
 Kntire silence followed the stopping of the 
 projectile, and presently old Sam, the negro 
 man-of-all-work for that building, came run- 
 
50 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 ning up, seized upon the ball, and entered 
 where I was. 
 
 "What is it?" I asked. 
 
 " It's a i'on ball what dem young men up- 
 stairs rolled down de steps, gis for badness. 
 I'm guine to hide it." 
 
 "Do no such thing," I said; "put it back 
 and leave it where you found it." 
 
 He was much astonished, but obeyed. 
 When the class came in for recitations not 
 very long afterwards, seeing the ball, I noticed 
 that some of them were disappointed that I 
 made no allusion to the matter. 
 
 More happy was another about two weeks 
 afterwards, when I had returned from a jour- 
 ney to my family, whom I had not yet removed 
 from my home in Hancock. I could not 
 reach Athens on the return in time for the 
 before-breakfast recitation of one of my classes 
 on Monday morning, and so I had asked one 
 of my colleagues to meet them in my stead. 
 He did so. On Tuesday morning, on repair- 
 ing to my room, I was surprised to find no 
 
COIy. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 5 1 
 
 lesson had been prepared. On asking the 
 reason, the youth whom I had called upon 
 answered that none had been assigned by the 
 professor who had taken my place the day 
 before. It was the junior class in rhetoric, 
 and they had been regularly reciting to me a 
 fixed number of pages. 
 
 I felt much indignation at a subterfuge so 
 unfair, and, with as much coolness as I could 
 command, remonstrated. I said that I re- 
 gretted that a necessary absence from my 
 college duties had hindered their proper per- 
 formance in even a small degree ; that I had 
 not believed it important to ask my colleague 
 to make specific announcement concerning a 
 matter which I had, as I believed, abundant 
 reason to suppose was fully understood ; that 
 hereafter I must leave to chance what unfin- 
 ished business of my own I had left behind, 
 so as to avoid doing injury to the obligations 
 that I had assumed here ; that having claimed 
 to be a gentleman, and having passed for one 
 theretofore, it seemed rather hard that such 
 
52 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 claim should be ignored simply because of my 
 having quit one profession and undertaken 
 another, and that whatever was the motive 
 that prompted behavior so unexpected, it had 
 succeeded at least in inflicting pain which 
 would have been greater but for my conscious- 
 ness of not deserving it. 
 
 Some time afterwards I said that hereafter 
 I should not visit students' chambers unless I 
 had something to say ; that on my entry into 
 them, sometimes, I found them not fully 
 dressed, or not otherwise prepared to receive 
 visitors outside of their own set, and that such 
 meetings were embarrassing to me, more so 
 since it was well understood that I came, not 
 as a visitor, but as an official on his rounds, 
 and that whenever one of them wished to 
 have the place assigned to him during study 
 hours, I would thank him to give me notice 
 and ask permission, which I was sure that I 
 would seldom feel that I ought to withhold. 
 Yet the most fortunate of all was another, 
 which put me securely on living terms. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 53 
 
 I decided to spend a few minutes before the 
 hour of recitation was out in reading to the class 
 from one or another of the English authors. 
 On the second day thereafter I thought I 
 noticed in a member of the class a movement 
 which indicated that he was bored . I addressed 
 him with some sharpness, saying that if he 
 chose to do so he might retire from the recita- 
 tion room if such behavior was repeated. I 
 added that I should give up what I had in- 
 tended purely for their benefit. He was a 
 good young man, but unambitious, even indo- 
 lent. When the class was dismissed a few 
 minutes afterwards he was the last to leave the 
 room, and looked at me as if he would say 
 something. I remarked to him that he seemed 
 to have been hurt. He answered that he was, 
 and that I had been mistaken altogether in 
 what I suspected of his action. I replied that 
 I was very much gratified to have him say so, 
 and that I regretted that I had spoken to him 
 with such acrimony. He left at once, well 
 pleased with what I had said. 
 
54 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 In the walk that afternoon I mentioned to 
 one of my colleagues this occurrence, and said 
 that upon my meeting the class on the next 
 morning I should make to this student the 
 apology to which he was entitled. This gen- 
 tleman remonstrated earnestly against what he 
 prophesied would hurt my standing in the 
 institution. He even came to see me after 
 supper and urged me to give up my purpose. 
 I could only answer that I felt myself bound 
 to undo my own wrong as far as possible, 
 without taking into view the consequences of 
 such action. On the next morning at the 
 close of the recitation I spoke about thus : 
 
 "Gentlemen, yesterday, in your hearing, I 
 
 reprimanded Mr. with some severity. In 
 
 a conversation held with him since I was con- 
 vinced that my suspicion of the intention in 
 his deportment was unfounded, and therefore 
 my language was unjust. I said as much to 
 him ; but as the class were witness to the 
 affront, I thought that they were entitled to 
 hear this withdrawal and apology." 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 55 
 
 I have been seldom more gratified than by 
 what followed. They clapped with their hands, 
 stamped with their feet, and beat the benches 
 with their books. Then I knew that I had 
 not been mistaken in my notion of how it was 
 best to deal with them. 
 
 Our house was nearest of all to the college 
 buildings. My wife was warned against at- 
 tempting to raise fowls. She did not harken, 
 however, believing that she could succeed. 
 She began the habit of inviting the students, 
 in more or less numbers, to tea, and afterwards 
 they smoked with me in the library. She 
 never lost a chicken. These used to wander 
 out of the yard, even as far as the campus, but 
 it was understood that they were not to be 
 molested. One day a student, seeing a young 
 chicken, took up a stone to cast at it. 
 
 "Stop that," cried another; "that is 
 Mrs. Johnston's chicken." 
 
 "No," answered the first, "it belongs to 
 those people over yonder," as he pointed to a 
 house beyond our side of the campus. 
 
56 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 They ran down the intruder, and a court 
 was improvised to decide if it was liable to 
 confiscation. A gentleman, now well known 
 in Georgia, stood for the defense. The jury- 
 finding that the defendant was the property of 
 Mrs. Johnston, it was acquitted, thus escaping 
 until such time as suited its owner's purposes, 
 the griddle or the frying-pan. 
 
 It is very pleasant to recall many of the 
 scenes in this happy period. To me now it 
 seems to have been almost unmixedly con- 
 tented until its last year, 1861, when the Con- 
 federate war came on, and I deemed it best to 
 resign my position, retire to my home in 
 Hancock and open a boarding school for boys. 
 
 I had been opposed to the movement for the 
 secession of the State from the Union, although 
 I believed that as a matter of right it belonged 
 to Georgia and every other of its confederates. 
 The people of Athens, led by the brothers 
 Howell and Thomas Cobb, were nearly uanan- 
 imous in its favor. This was the first occasion 
 on which Thomas, the younger, had taken 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOIvM JOHNSTON 57 
 
 any public interest in political matters. Into 
 this campaign he rushed with all his ardor, 
 which was greater than that of any man whom 
 I have ever known. He had been one of the 
 most eminent and successful lawyers of the 
 State from the time when he was not more 
 than twenty-four until now, when he was 
 thirty-seven years of age. He was deeply 
 pious, often leading with impassioned addresses 
 in the prayer meetings of Athens and other 
 towns while in attendance upon court sessions. 
 He believed firmly that it was a solemn duty, 
 owed by him to the Supreme Being, to urge 
 secession as a means pointed out by Provi- 
 dence for the security of the South, in pre- 
 serving its liberties and institutions. The 
 crusade conducted by him was really wonder- 
 ful. His great ability, his burning eloquence, 
 his entire confidence in the integrity of his 
 motives and the righteousness of the cause, 
 conspired to make him irresistible. To him, 
 more than to any other, was due the success of 
 the movement in the State. Always he held 
 
58 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 himself ready to take all risks and sacrifices. 
 
 When the Ordinance of Secession was ac- 
 cepted by the State Convention I felt pro- 
 found, painful solicitude, and did not forbear 
 on proper occasions to give expression to it. 
 Heartiest congratulations were felt and in- 
 dulged among the townspeople and the stu- 
 dents, and it was proposed that on some night 
 all the houses should be illuminated in witness 
 of the universal joy. A dear friend of mine 
 among the faculty, who was an ardent seces- 
 sionist, first mentioned that matter to me, 
 expressing the hope that I would not make 
 myself the only exception among the citizens, 
 and expressed apprehensions of insult offered 
 to me if I did so. I said at once that nothing 
 could induce me to join in a public manifesta- 
 tation of delight on an occasion so solemn 
 and, in my opinion, destined to lead to mis- 
 fortune. I never asked, and never knew what, 
 if any, influence my position had with the 
 abandonment of the purpose. 
 
 The trustees passed unanimously a resolu- 
 
COIy. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 59 
 
 tion of regret when my resignation was acted 
 upon. Not long after the beginning of the 
 next year the college exercises were suspend- 
 ed, most of the students having gone into 
 military service. At the end of the year I 
 retired to the new settlement made upon the 
 plantation in Hancock, my native county, 
 preparatory to opening a school for boys. I 
 gave it the name of " Rockby," suggested by 
 the many huge granite bowlders on the hillside 
 above the spring in the rear of the mansion. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 I began this school upon a system unlike 
 any other that I had known or heard of. The 
 class, beginning with twenty, was engaged 
 several weeks before the opening in January, 
 1862, made up of sons of leading merchants, 
 lawyers, and planters in several portions of 
 the State. At the opening I said to them that 
 I should neither practice espionage upon them 
 myself, nor permit them to practice it upon 
 one another, at least with intent of reporting 
 to me ; that no pupil should give to me infor- 
 mation of another's misconduct, unless it was 
 hurtful to him personally or of a nature that 
 an honorable person was in duty bound to 
 make public, as an admonition to others to 
 withdraw from the society of the doer; that 
 whenever I regarded it important for me to 
 know the persons and facts connected with 
 any matter of dereliction, I should call them 
 
62 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 all together and demand that those persons 
 should report themselves to me in my study, 
 and that if any one failed to respond promptly 
 to this requisition, and the fact should be 
 ascertained by me afterwards, the one thus 
 failing would be at once dismissed from the 
 school. 
 
 On Saturdays I occasionally permitted one 
 or more to go to the village, Sparta, three 
 miles distant, without attendance by myself 
 or my assistant. Two things every one was 
 bound by promise to report of himself — any 
 indulgence in profane language or in intoxi- 
 cating drinks. 
 
 I allowed use of playing cards, confining it, 
 however, to the drawing-room and the hall 
 and piazza of the mansion. I forbade it in 
 chambers and elsewhere, knowing that, except 
 when within sight or hearing of their elders 
 they would get into disputings, as is the case, 
 strangely enough, with adults. They were 
 also forbidden to have cards of their own. 
 
 Occasionally on Friday evenings we invited 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 63 
 
 girls, daughters of our neighbors, and, to the 
 music of a negro fiddler, we had dancing in 
 the dining-room. Many of my neighbors be- 
 longing to the several religious bodies were 
 much surprised and a few shocked at such a 
 system as far contrary to those theretofore ob- 
 taining, and disastrous results were confidently 
 predicted. Those owning orchards and other 
 things which from all times schoolboys were 
 wont to invade had the usual apprehension. 
 In time, although the cost was high compara- 
 tively ($500), the school increased to beyond 
 fifty, and applications many times that num- 
 ber were disappointed. 
 
 The school was continued through five 
 years and a half with a success far beyond even 
 my own first expectations, and I sincerely 
 believe that, to say nothing of diligence and 
 advancement in studies, there has been not 
 another anywhere in which veracity and other 
 things becoming honorable deportment were 
 more habitually practiced. In every session, 
 naturally, it became necessary to dismiss one 
 
64 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 or more who were not strong enough to con- 
 form to a discipline at once so liberal and so 
 exacting, and occasionally one, long used to 
 another, would have broken in the point of 
 absolute veracity in dealiug with me but for 
 the high tone among leading pupils of which 
 he was more afraid than of myself. In those 
 years grew attachments which matured into 
 affection between my pupils and me, which 
 even yet I am extremely fond to recall and 
 to cherish. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 65 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 After the close of the Confederate war life 
 on a plantation in a neighborhood wherein 
 negroes were more numerous than whites 
 became far less agreeable than it had been 
 theretofore. Mine for half a mile bordered on 
 the public road leading from our county seat 
 to the one adjoining on the east. L,ike other 
 landholders thus situate, I allowed persons 
 dwelling behind me to pass through my plan- 
 tation through a gate kept in the rear. All, 
 from oldest to youngest, regarded the obliga- 
 tion to shut a plantation gate after passing 
 through as most solemnly binding. Yet the 
 negroes in my rear, meaning by that means 
 among others to evince their consciousness of 
 freedom, neglected this duty, thus exposing 
 my fields to inroads from cattle and other 
 beasts browsing upon adjoining fallow fields. 
 I then put a padlock on the gat^, but this they 
 
66 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 tore away, and afterwards, instead of following 
 the path set apart along my fences to the pub- 
 lic road, took that leading to my dwelling, and 
 walking around and in front of it, took my 
 carriage way to the public road. After several 
 remonstrances I threatened them with my 
 shotgun, and this diminished their maraudings 
 considerably. 
 
 In this connection it seems to me proper to 
 say that through foresight of the emancipation 
 of the slaves, its fact afterwards gave to me 
 never even the slightest sense of pain. While 
 I did not regard it as wrong to hold them in 
 slavery, yet I had begun to feel embarrassed 
 and oppressed by thoughts of the future of 
 both races, especially in view of the fact that 
 the inferior was increasing with great rapidity. 
 The responsibility of their care was always felt 
 by me with much seriousness, and, except by 
 the continued appreciation of their moneyed 
 value, I accumulated by their work and my 
 own nothing beyond the maintenance of my 
 whole family. Often while speculating upon 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 67 
 
 the subject, my feeling was that if present con- 
 ditions were not the best for both races, and 
 especially if there was anything in them con- 
 trary to the will of the Creator, they would be 
 changed ; and during the remainder of my life, 
 when emancipation became an accomplished 
 fact, I had a sense of relief from very great 
 responsibility — never before quite compre- 
 hended — although my estate was thereby re- 
 duced to nothing from fifty thousand dollars 
 that it would have brought at sale at the com- 
 mencement of the war. I then had a family 
 of seven children, six of whom were ready to 
 be educated. 
 
 At this time one of my daughters, Lucy, a 
 child of fourteen, seeming to her parents to be 
 of uncommonly good promise, after an illness 
 of six days from pleuro-pneumonia, died. 
 Prostrated by this loss, and apprehending dete- 
 rioration of the white race in being thus sur- 
 rounded by negroes, I and my wife, who was 
 now my chief counsellor, after much reflection, 
 decided to go away from the place. I knew 
 
68 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 that whithersoever we went, unless it was in 
 an unreasonable distance, I could take my 
 school with me. In time we decided upon 
 Baltimore, and in the month of June, 1867, we 
 removed thereto. Having purchased a place 
 within the suburbs, we gave it the name of 
 "Pen Lucy," in honor of the child whose 
 grave we had left behind. 
 
 Forty boys (as many as could be accommo- 
 dated) lollowed. Here for six years I con- 
 ducted my school after the same methods as 
 at " Rockby." After about three years finan- 
 cial matters in Georgia, from which came my 
 main supply of pupils, became greatly de- 
 pressed. The price of cotton — twenty-five 
 cents immediately after the war — declined 
 rapidly to a figure below ten, and I got no 
 more than about twenty pupils from that 
 source, so I supplemented this failing with 
 day pupils from Baltimore. I found it more 
 difficult to maintain my methods now than 
 before, because of less personal contact and 
 familiar acquaintance with half of my pupils. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 69 
 
 Yet the school prospered as before, and lost 
 none of its good name. Thus it was when an 
 important change occurred: 
 
 This was my conversion to the faith of the 
 Roman Catholic Church. This, as I foresaw 
 that it must, caused the boarding department 
 (now being made up increasingly less from 
 Georgia) to dwindle. I had not, and never 
 had had, as a boarder a son of Catholic par- 
 ents, for Catholics, as is generally known, 
 do not send their children to schools (boarding 
 schools) wherein they can not receive religious 
 instruction. Although the matter had been 
 revolved in the minds of my wife and myself 
 during a considerable time, it was known to 
 few outside of the family, and when the change 
 became public it occasioned much surprise, 
 and indeed many regrets, among our friends 
 and acquaintances. 
 
 I continued the school, however, with an- 
 nual lessening attendance for two or three 
 years, then, declining to receive the few board- 
 ing pupils who offered, I opened and kept a 
 
70 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 small day school in Baltimore. This I gave 
 up in a short time, and taught a few pupils in 
 private. 
 
COIv. RICHARD MAIXOLM JOHNSTON 7 1 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 And then I bethought me to become an 
 author. I had already written a few short 
 stories intended to illustrate ' characters and 
 scenes among the simple rural folk of my 
 native region as they were during the period 
 of my childhood, before the time of railroads. 
 To this period I have always recurred, and I 
 do so now, with much fondness, and indeed 
 with high admiration for the good sense, the 
 simplicity, the uprightness, the lo3 r alty to 
 every known duty that characterized the rural 
 people of middle Georgia. Two or three of 
 these stories were written while I lived in the 
 State. After my removal to Baltimore, Mr. 
 Henry C. Turnbull, Jr., between whom and 
 myself soon arose a very cordial friendship, 
 beginning publication of The Southern Maga- 
 zine, asked me to allow him to print these 
 stories, which had appeared in a Georgia jour- 
 
72 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 nal and were not copyrighted. I consented to 
 do so, supposing they were to be my last essays 
 on that line of endeavor. They were so well 
 received that I began to write others, partly to 
 assist my friend in his enterprise and partly to 
 subdue as far as possible the feeling of home- 
 sickness for my native region. It never 
 occurred to me that they were of any sort of 
 value. Yet when a collection of them, nine in 
 all, was printed by Mr. Turnbull, who about 
 that time ended publication of his magazine, 
 and when a copy of this collection fell into the 
 hands of Henry M. Alden, of Harper' s Maga- 
 zine, whose acquaintance I had lately made, he 
 expressed much surprise that I had not received 
 any pecuniary compensation, and added that 
 he would have readily accepted them if they 
 had been offered to him. Several things he 
 said about them that surprised and gratified 
 me much. 
 
 I then set into the pursuit of that kind of 
 work, and down to this time, besides my three 
 novels, Old Matk Langston, Widow Guthrie, 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 73 
 
 and Pearce Amersori's Will, and other literary 
 work in the way of lectures, juvenile articles, 
 a History of English Literature, and a Biog- 
 raphy of Alexander H. Stephens (the last two 
 in collaboration with !)%. William Hand 
 Browne, of Johns Hopkins University), I have 
 written and printed about eighty of these 
 stories . 
 
 To the publication of the collection made 
 by Mr. Turnbull I give the title Dukesborough 
 Tales, entirely arbitrary, as also was my nom 
 de plume, " Philemon Perch." By the name 
 " Dukesborough " was intended Powelton, 
 four miles from my native place, and at whose 
 academy I was educated the last four years 
 preparatory to college. Of all places this is 
 and has been ever most fondly loved by me, 
 and I have gotten very, very much solace to 
 the sadness of long separation from it in 
 recalling people, places, and occasions — once 
 familiar — and imagining their like in new 
 inventions. 
 
 In making up a story of imagination I never 
 
74 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 could do without places. I must see in my 
 mind those places which I have seen with my 
 eyes. My imagination, such as it has been, 
 has taken care of the rest. In order to give 
 greater verisimilitude to these stories, I some- 
 times introduced myself upon the scenes as 
 taking part in their action. This was wholly 
 imaginary, as well as most of the actions in the 
 stories themselves. As it seemed to me, there 
 was in that region, consisting (as far as I be- 
 came well acquainted with it) of five or six 
 counties, an almost wonderful amount and 
 variety of individualism. To varieties in dis- 
 tricts of one county were superadded others 
 entirely distinct in the others. Often when 
 with intent to get up something new for a 
 magazine, without a single idea or purpose in 
 my mind, I have held my pen in hand for an 
 hour or more, then laid it down, feeling that 
 I had about gleaned all from my little field. 
 But not content to turn myself away from the 
 perspective of a check that for several sufficient 
 reasons would be acceptable, I have turned 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 75 
 
 my eyes again upon the past, and in time 
 appeared before them yet another scene, 
 whether in family life, in the village, court- 
 room, or elsewhere, as I began to revive it. 
 
 In the start I usually had only one or two 
 characters in my mind, and none or little 
 thought as to how long the story was to be 
 conducted and how ended. As the subject 
 revived in interest, other characters presented 
 themselves, and according to my feeling the 
 story went to five thousand, ten thousand, 
 or twenty thousand words. Whenever it ex- 
 tended as far as the last figures, the manu- 
 script, after the first writing, was wholly with- 
 out unity, for during its writing other charac- 
 acters and scenes introduced chang ed entirely 
 the current as it started forth. I seldom ended 
 a story with the names I started with, for they 
 also have always seemed important to my own 
 satisfactory understanding and picturing of 
 characters. Thus it happened very, very 
 often, that an incident that I could have told 
 in five minutes has developed into a story 
 
76 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 requiring one or two hours in the reading. 
 As often has it occurred that a character 
 selected for certain illustrations has evolved 
 traits of which I had no thought at first, and 
 varied far from the line which I had (but 
 never very clearty) projected. Therefore, my 
 custom has been to rewrite, seldom less than 
 twice, frequently as many as four or five times. 
 I could never feel that a story was finished 
 until I could plainly see my characters and 
 become thoroughly acquainted with their ac- 
 tions and the intent of their words. As for 
 attempting to analyze them, I never felt that 
 I had any sort or sign of gift for a matter that 
 always appeared to me too subtle for me even 
 to essay to study it. Recalling a scene of my 
 boyhood or young manhood, and afterwards 
 dwelling upon it with fondness, yet seldom 
 without some sadness, I have put it into men, 
 women, and children, often out and out inven- 
 tions of my own imagining, yet in harmony, 
 as I clearly remembered those whom I well 
 knew in those periods. 
 
COIy. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 77 
 
 Several times when a new story was called 
 for, and my mind was feeling absolutely 
 empty, my wife would bring to my mind some 
 remembered oddities among our common 
 acquaintances that would serve for another 
 temporary supply, and I have gone to work 
 again with some heartiness. Quite a number 
 of the stories, such as Operchee Cross-firings, 
 Moll and Virgil, and The Suicidal Tendencies 
 of Mr. Ephroditus Tzvilley, I owe to her timely 
 suggestions . 
 
 I have been often asked of which among 
 my characters I was most fond. Perhaps the 
 two most often recurring to my mind are Mr. 
 Bill Williams and Old Mr. Pate, each of 
 whom I extended through several sketches. 
 Both of these are entirely imaginary, although 
 in time they grew to seem to me more real 
 than the rest, and I often suffer myself to 
 linger in their society, as if they were as real 
 as any whom I ever knew. 
 
 As for laying out in my mind plans for a 
 story, I never once did or attempted it. That 
 
78 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 is a thing for which I never believed myself 
 to have any capacity. Characters and scenes 
 starting from one slight initiation in a place 
 well remembered, have come along as my 
 pen moved, and the finale became such as 
 served to fit the actions. I always thought 
 with my pen in my hand. Therefore, my first 
 manuscripts were filled with erasures, inter- 
 lineations, changes of names, new directions 
 given to characters and incidents, and others 
 of like sort. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 79 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 It was always a gratification to me that 
 among the surviving acquaintances of my 
 earliest youth, even the plainest, not one, so 
 far as I have heard, ever suspected me of 
 meaning to ridicule them, either in class or in 
 individual. Instead, whenever one or even 
 many of my sketches may have seemed famil- 
 iar, and not infrequently some have said con- 
 fidently that they knew whom and to what I 
 referred, they have recognized not only the 
 affection I have always had for them, but the 
 respect, admiration, and oft reverence. I never 
 heard complaint that I had done injustice to 
 any man of his memory. In the particular 
 neighborhood wherein I was born, and the 
 period of my childhood was spent, I often 
 recur in this latest time to the high standard 
 then obtaining in domestic and social life, 
 regarding them as the more noteworthy be- 
 
80 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 cause education in books was so little diffused. 
 It was about the time of my birth that acade- 
 mies were established in a few villages, 
 notably in Powelton and Mount Zion, in our 
 county. These within a few years rose to 
 great importance, and were widely known and 
 patronized by leading families in several 
 counties. But the rural people in general 
 received no higher instruction in books than 
 was to be obtained in what were known as 
 Old Field schools, wherein besides spelling, 
 reading and writing, geography, arithmetic, 
 and English grammar were taught after fash- 
 ions varying with the particular make-up of 
 the schoolmasters, a class of beings as unique 
 as perhaps were to be found in the world. 
 Yet those early settlers, some of them of good 
 Virginia and North Carolina families, who 
 had been lowly reduced by the War of Inde- 
 pendence, brought with them, along with 
 sturdy purposes, an amount of common sense, 
 and of observance to recognized obligations 
 whose influences were to a very high degree 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 8 I 
 
 benign. It was a healthy, fertile region, 
 undulating in small hills, vales, and creeks, 
 and covered with dense forests of oak, hickory, 
 and kindred growth . Living was easily gotten , 
 and mere money-getting almost unknown. 
 While patrician rule obtained for many years, 
 as in all newly settled communities was always 
 necessarily the case, yet community existence 
 formed itself on a basis approaching as nearly 
 approximate equality as was possible to the 
 sense of individual differences distinctive in 
 all minds. Hospitality was regarded as indis- 
 pensable, even sacred, duty. The most lead- 
 ing citizens not infrequently sat at the board 
 of their less gifted neighbors, and had the 
 latter perhaps more often at their own. Thus 
 a sense of freedom was in every man's mind, 
 and this led to the evolution of those numer- 
 ous individualities by which that and the 
 region around was particularly distinguished. 
 Interchanges of visits, general rendering of 
 helpful services in cases of sickness or other 
 needs, contributed their part to the develop- 
 
82 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 ment of loyalty to every duty, to charitable- 
 ness, veracity, and courage. The people all 
 laughed at one another's eccentricities and 
 instances of overweaning aspirations, and 
 equally despised meanness, stinginess, coward- 
 ice, lying, and other such defalcations from 
 integrity and manfulness of life. 
 
 A large majority of the purely rural popu- 
 lation were Baptists. Quite a number of men 
 were members of some church ; the women 
 were so almost without exception ; the non- 
 professing husbands being as zealous as the 
 others in all things needed for the mainte- 
 nance of the meeting-house, and as ardent par- 
 tisans for the tenets of the faith practiced by 
 their wives. Under the lead of the greatest 
 preachers of the period, Jesse Mercer of the 
 Baptists, and L,ovick Pierce of the Methodists, 
 was a good deal of asperity in discussion both 
 inside of the pulpit and out. Men , sometimes 
 women, freely engaged in animated argu- 
 mentation upon doctrinal points, the very 
 subtlest and knottiest; men who were not 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 83 
 
 members perhaps counting for the salvation 
 of their souls upon their being at least not 
 Methodists or not Baptist according to the 
 membership enrollment of their wives . Among 
 these people generally, especially among the 
 women, was piety that was as sincere as it 
 was in the main cheerful. Many had read the 
 whole Bible over and over again, and were 
 able to quote freely its recorded doings and 
 sayings. As for feminine honor, it was not 
 more free from hurt than the apprehension or 
 thought of it. 
 
 The stated Sunday meeting day was attended 
 by all from oldest to youngest, and many a 
 marriage resulted from courtings on horse- 
 back rides to girls' homes when the exercises 
 were over. Among other things, as I recall 
 them, the men as a rule had a sort of rever- 
 ence for their women. According to the laws 
 of the State regarding property, the husband 
 became owner of the whole of the wife's prop- 
 erty. I do not now recall a case of either 
 ante-nuptial or post-nuptial settlement of even 
 
84 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 a part of the latter. Husband and wife were 
 regarded, as far as concerned business with 
 the world, one being, that of the latter having 
 been merged in that of the former. The 
 marriage union was regarded indissoluble, 
 except by act of the Creator who had formed 
 it. I can remember the first libel for divorce 
 in that region, and the awe which it put upon 
 almost all minds. As for domestic happiness, 
 I doubt if it was ever on a better scale any- 
 where else. As a rule, marriage took place 
 as soon as boys and girls grew to puberty. 
 Courtships were brief, yet hands were joined 
 with profound assurance that they were to be 
 parted by nothing except death. The young 
 bride knew that with herself and her name 
 she gave all else that she possessed, and she 
 joyfully let herself become absorbed into the 
 one whom she believed that Heaven had sent 
 for her one earthly guide and defender. 
 
 Out of this simple life I have drawn from 
 memory the materials used in my Sketches, 
 which, although in far the greatest number of 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 85 
 
 cases were inventions, yet are in entire har- 
 mony with the real as I recall it. As for the 
 dialect, I do not see how I could make a mis- 
 take, accustomed as I was to both hearing and 
 speaking it when in familiar intercourse with 
 persons of all degrees of culture. Educated 
 persons, including eminent lawyers and di- 
 vines, loved it well, and spoke it often even in 
 the society of themselves alone, except when 
 in serious discourse. There are things in one's 
 thoughts sometimes, particularly upon humor- 
 ous themes, that can not be put with near as 
 much aptness and poignancy in entirely gram- 
 matical, rhetorical phrases. Even if this were 
 possible, the characters that I have tried to 
 illustrate spoke the language that I put into 
 their mouths. 
 
 I said that I began writing after my re- 
 moval to Baltimore, partly for the sake of 
 subduing as far as possible the sense of home- 
 sickness. I might add, of alleviating the bur- 
 den of misapprehension which soon befell me, 
 that perhaps after all I had made a mistake in 
 
86 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 coming so far away from the other people who 
 knew me, and setting out to maintain my large 
 family among strangers, by practice of my 
 profession, my entire competency for which 
 was not known outside of my native State. In 
 the fall of 1867 the price of cotton began to 
 decline rapidly, and foreseeing that planters 
 and others who had sustained me heretofore 
 must lessen in numbers, I became intensely 
 apprehensive of the consequences upon my for- 
 tunes. I knew well that if I were to return to 
 Georgia I could reinstate myself without dif- 
 ficulty or delay. But my wife, who was al- 
 ways my most earnest, trusted, and efficient 
 counselor, decided to remain, a decision which 
 after all I feel confident was the better. I 
 mention this fact in connection with the pre- 
 ceding to show the frame of mind in which I 
 wrote some of my stories, in which only the 
 humorous appears. This was the case, I re- 
 member well, particularly with that called 
 The Early Majority of Mr. Thomas Watts, 
 which perhaps was the most popular of all my 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 87 
 
 platform readings, although I wrote it when 
 most heavily weighed down by a load of appre- 
 hension. The work did its part in rescuing 
 me from entire despondency. I suppose that 
 many writers of humorous tales have had like 
 experiences. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 I may as well give in this connection a brief 
 account of my business experience as an 
 author. My first paid story, Mr. Neelus Peel- 
 er's Conditions, printed in The Century (at that 
 time Scribner 's) magazine, and its half dozen 
 successors in that and Harper's, went with 
 most gratifying favor. In the year 18 — 
 Messrs. Harper & Brother purchased from me, 
 for one hundred dollars, the nine stories 
 printed in The Southern Magazine, for the pur- 
 pose of printing in their ' ' Franklin Square ' ' 
 series, along with several others printed in 
 their magazine and Scribner' s , afterwards The 
 Century . 
 
 The greatest part of the income received 
 from my stories has come from the compensa- 
 tion paid by the magazines at the time of their 
 acceptance, and from readings of extracts upon 
 platforms. The editors both of The Ce?itury 
 
90 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 and Harper' shave been satisfactorily liberal in 
 the sums paid, and the not-very-inany read- 
 ings given by me have been received by the 
 public with a favor very gratifying. 
 
 My other literary work has consisted mainly 
 of lectures read before classes of adults at 
 Peabody Institute, and at the Convent of 
 Notre Dame, Baltimore. They are about a 
 hundred in number. Twenty of these were 
 published by the Bo wen -Merrill Company, 
 Indianapolis, in two series, entitled Studies, 
 Literary and Social, and about a dozen more 
 by D. H. McBride & Co., Akron, Ohio, 
 entitled Studies on English, French and Span- 
 ish Literature. 
 
 Some years ago the Baltimore Publishing 
 Company printed for me a work, entitled Two 
 Grey Tourists. This house became insolvent, 
 and the plates and copyright were purchased 
 (for what sum I never knew) by P. F. Ken- 
 nedy, New York. Another work of mine, 
 Mr. Billy Downs and His Likes, was printed 
 by Charles L. Webster & Co. At the sale of 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 9 1 
 
 their effects by the trustee appointed at their 
 failure in business, I purchased the plates, 
 which are now in my possession.* 
 
 In conjuction with Prof. William Hand 
 Browne, of Johns Hopkins University, I have 
 published two other works, one a Biography 
 of Alexander H. Stephens and the other a His- 
 tory of English Literature. The latter has 
 been used as a text-book in several colleges 
 and schools, and we have gotten a small yearly 
 income from it. 
 
 In the year 1895 the thought which I had 
 been revolving for a year and more presented 
 itself distinctly to my mind, that I should 
 retire from the sort of work I had been doing, 
 and I resolved to do so whenever I could find 
 another occupation. I did not like the idea 
 of continuing at story telling down to the very 
 grave. Besides, while I was conscious of 
 little dereliction of understanding and inven- 
 tion (a thing, through the kind forbearance of 
 
 ^Editor's Note. — These plates have recently been purchased 
 by The Neale Company, Washington, and an edition issued 
 therefrom September 1 , 1900. 
 
92 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 the Creator, common to all men), yet I felt 
 sure that such dereliction, in the natural 
 course of things, must come and be apparent 
 ere long. I had often thought of the admoni- 
 tion in Philip James Baily's " Festus, know 
 when to die," and I decided to make applica- 
 tion of it at the earliest opportunity. In this 
 frame of mind, I sought a position under the 
 United States Government. Having little or 
 no acquaintance with Maryland politicians, 
 after a vain appeal to President Cleveland, 
 who, answering my letters promptly, referred 
 them to the head of the department (State) in 
 which I first sought employment, I made 
 known my wishes to a few old friends in 
 Georgia . These promptly wrote to Hon . Hoke 
 Smith, urging him to obtain a place for me. 
 He, whom I had never known personally nor 
 even seen, yielded to the petitions of those 
 Georgians who were his friends as well as 
 mine, and so, after a brief stay in the employ- 
 ment of the Commissioner of Labor and on the 
 preparation of the Blue Book, I was placed in 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 93 
 
 the Bureau of Education, with a salary of 
 twelve hundred dollars. There I have been 
 since the first of January, 1896, going back and 
 forth every week day. The diversion I feel to 
 have been a benefit, notwithstanding the very 
 laborious work, which, notwithstanding some 
 very kind admonitions of my chief, Hon. Wm. 
 T. Harris, I somehow could never feel that it 
 would be quite fair to make less. The first 
 ten weeks of my time in the Bureau were given 
 to assisting in editing and indexing the papers 
 of the Commissioner. About the middle of 
 March the latter suggested that I write a paper 
 on early educational life in my native region, 
 middle Georgia, beginning with the rural 
 schools known as " Old Field." I was to tell 
 of the sort of teachers, the schoolhouses, 
 text-books, manner of teaching, the sports 
 and games of school children, of holidays, 
 turnouts, etc. To this end I read quite a num- 
 ber of books of school life, and upon chil- 
 dren's sports in England, Japan, etc. This 
 was printed in the Commissioner's report, and 
 
94 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 was followed b}^ another paper of about equal 
 1 ength in which were told first of boys and girls 
 out of school, the rise of academies, the effort 
 to maintain a manual labor school, ending 
 with a sketch of the State University. 
 
 Since the completion of these papers I have 
 been employed in synopsizing educational re- 
 ports of States and cities, and in translating 
 from the French articles mainly upon educa- 
 tional subjects, from such writings as the Con- 
 stitution, Lavoisier, and several others. With- 
 in the last eighteen months, besides reviewing 
 many books upon the several subjects in hand, 
 I have written for the Bureau near four hun- 
 dred thousand words. The Commissioner of 
 Education, who, besides being one of the most 
 gifted and cultured of men, is also one of 
 the kindest, and some of his next subordi- 
 nates have advised me several times against 
 overworking myself. But when I went into 
 the service of the Government I had the nat- 
 ural desire of honorable men to evince that, 
 old as I was, I could do adequate, satisfactory 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 95 
 
 work. I felt that I owed to the Government 
 six and a half hours of faithful work, which 
 I was in honor bound to bestow. Then some- 
 how I never could work satisfactorily to my- 
 self without doing so rapidly. Slow, deliber- 
 ate work at any business always seemed to 
 fatigue me more than rapid. Not seldom have 
 I begun at nine o'clock and been surprised at 
 the clock's stroke of twelve, when I had not 
 moved the while from my chair. True, I some- 
 times felt the consequences of such confine- 
 ment late in the afternoon , but have been able 
 to go back to work next morning feeling 
 refreshed. 
 
 The diversion from long-continued habi- 
 tudes I feel has been beneficial to me. The 
 certainty of fortnightly payment of wages, 
 small as they are, has served to keep my mind 
 comparatively free from anxiety as to income, 
 and the work I have had to do has been com- 
 paratively easy of quick dispatch. Some- 
 times, but only during the summer months, I 
 have felt right heavily pressing the daily 
 
96 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 eighty miles travel between Washington and 
 Baltimore, particularly on the return in after- 
 noons. But the Government's liberal allow- 
 ance of vacation with continuance of pay 
 seem to give nearly all the recreation I have 
 seemed to need. 
 
 In some points life in one of the Depart- 
 ments in Washington has been interesting. 
 When I first became engaged on the Blue Book, 
 my desk being in the Patent Office, I began a 
 diary, which I kept for about a week, and then 
 stopped, deciding that although several things 
 coming under my observation were interesting 
 to me, they were too inconsiderable in them- 
 selves to be favorably written down, to say 
 nothing of the fatigue. 
 
 In so far as daily official life is concerned, 
 that in the Bureau of Education, so far as I 
 have seen it, and heard of other Departments, 
 is most exceptional in that particular. Dr. 
 Harris is a noble exemplar of what a high 
 Government officer may be to his subordi- 
 nates. While he is exacting of faithful work, 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 97 
 
 it is within the limits of reason. He trusis 
 to his employees to do their work well, and 
 privately and kindly chides them when they 
 are remiss. His invariable courtesy has made 
 him not only respected, but to a degree loved. 
 I venture to express the belief that in no other 
 branch of the public service is done more com- 
 petent and cheerful work. 
 
 Since I have been in this employment, I 
 have been reminded several times, and in a 
 rather ludicrous way, that a man, no matter 
 how old he is, will continue in some things to 
 be a boy. While I have been frequently 
 assured that the work I have done has been 
 even more than satisfactory, and been admon- 
 ished against too constant devotion to it, yet, 
 most unexpectedly, there have been occasions 
 whereon I have had thoughts akin to those I 
 used to feel when a boy at school. Never 
 having been, since my school and college 
 day, under the surveillance of any, I have 
 been occasionally surprised to the degree that 
 has caused me to laugh at myself at my 
 
98 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 own embarrassment on occasions when the 
 Commissioner coming into the room unex- 
 pectedly has found me idle, and perhaps tell- 
 ing my colleagues of some ludicrous story. I 
 suspected from his smiling that he saw and 
 was amused by the quick alteration in my face 
 and voice. Smaller and less humane officials 
 would have been pleased with that instance of 
 what is due to official superiority. It reminded 
 me, yet with no pain or sense of abasement, of 
 my young time when, as I easily recalled, I 
 was always the easiest boy in school to be 
 caught at laughing out or other pranks, from 
 never finding out how to dodge detection. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 99 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 During my life I have become acquainted, 
 and more or less familiar, with some characters 
 in several ways interesting. I have already 
 spoken of those teachers from New England 
 who acquired high distinction in their voca- 
 tions, both as teachers and divines. The influ- 
 ence wrought by them was rapid, and in most 
 respects highly salutary. Perhaps they were 
 too rigid in their teaching of the uselessness of 
 observance of such holidays as before their 
 coming had been recognized as becoming, and 
 indeed due to the source of their establishment, 
 such as Good Friday, Easter week, Whitsun- 
 tide and others theretofore regarded as even of 
 religious obligation, by the most cultured in 
 the communities wherein they settled. It was 
 not difficult with a simple-minded people to 
 eradicate what recollections they had of the 
 pious observance of those days. When I was 
 
IOO AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 a little child I was aware, as were even our 
 negroes, of their recurrence, although there 
 was pious observance only in a very few fami- 
 lies. The young and the workers accepted 
 the holidays with thanks, and spent them in 
 repose, or in hunting and other sports. By 
 the time I was eighteen, the meaning and the 
 recollection of them had gone from nearly all 
 minds and their observance had entirely ceased. 
 Among the men in prominent careers in my 
 native region were some of marked ability. 
 William H. Crawford, becoming early super- 
 annuated by paralysis, which prevented his 
 being President of the United States, was re- 
 tired ; and Joseph Henry Lumpkin, the greatest 
 orator of his time, was forced, from a serious 
 affection of his throat, in the midst of his 
 prime, to leave the bar, and take the Chief 
 Justiceship of the Superior Court, which had 
 lately been created. When I came into the 
 profession in 1843 the bar, in the Northern 
 Circuit especially, had a considerable number 
 of lawyers of very great ability. With these 
 
COL,. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON IOI 
 
 were joined several from trie two adjoining 
 circuits, trie Middle and the Ocmulgee. In 
 that rural region leading lawyers were wont to 
 travel outside of their circuits in order to get 
 full employment of their time and adequate 
 compensation for their professional acquire- 
 ments. Francis H. Cone, William C. Dawson, 
 Iverson L,. Harris, from the Ocmulgee, habit- 
 ually; Charles Jenkins, Andrew Miller, and 
 W. V. Johnson, from the Middle, occasionally 
 attended our courts. Noteworthy was the high 
 standard of professional honor among the 
 leaders of the bar of that generation. To 
 a degree they were in some respects, even 
 more than clergymen, conservators of public 
 tranquillity and social business fair dealing. 
 In general, litigant parties were counseled 
 fairly, and persuaded to submit to proposals 
 from each other that seemed to be reasonable 
 compromises. In the trial of issues before the 
 courts, while counsel were not oblivious of 
 what was due to their opponents and to the 
 main requirements of justice, yet the struggles 
 
102 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 before the court and before jurors were often 
 extremely interesting to witness. In the last 
 of a supreme tribunal for correction of errors 
 of courts of Nisi Prius, issues of law were of 
 constant recurrence because of never having 
 been definitely ascertained and authoritatively 
 settled. Adjudications in one circuit were 
 often different from those in another, accord- 
 ing to the difference in understanding and 
 temper among presiding j udges . Then , also , a 
 judge in one circuit was sometimes led to over- 
 rate his own decisions after subsequent study 
 and reflections or the overwhelming argument 
 of some very great lawyer. Thus it was that 
 the very incertitude in the laws and in the rul- 
 ings of different incumbents of the bench and 
 in their own individuality served to evoke the 
 greatest endeavors of counsel. Some of the 
 very ablest, most eloquent addresses were often 
 made upon issues wherein the amount of money 
 in dispute was not more than a few hundred 
 dollars. Three or four thousand dollars was 
 a large income to a lawyer in a circuit of eight 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 103 
 
 or nine agricultural counties, holding two 
 court sessions, averaging about five days each 
 in the year. No lawyer had ever been known 
 to grow rich from the proceeds of his practice. 
 A large fee was a rarity, because the wealthiest 
 farmers generally chose to adjust serious differ- 
 ences by arbitration of common friends rather 
 than resort to the law, whose uncertainties 
 were well known to them, and whose frequent 
 long delays they revolted from enduring. 
 
 In such a state of things it was always an 
 advantage in jury trials for a lawyer to get the 
 concluding address before jurors. The rules 
 of court assigned that to the plain tiff, except 
 in cases where the defendant introduced no evi- 
 dence. Very often it occurred that the latter's 
 counsel forbore from such introduction for the 
 sake of concluding the argument before the 
 jury. 
 
 Yet able and adroit counsel learned acts to 
 avoid some of the consequences of lack of this 
 advantage. Judge William M. Reese told me 
 one day of a case of this sort occurring between 
 
104 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 Alexander Stephens and Joseph Henry Lump- 
 kin in Wilkes County. Lumpkin was a lawyer 
 who owed much of his success to the warm, 
 often passionate interest that it was in his im- 
 pulsive, generous nature to feel in the cause of 
 his clients. It often seemed that he emerged 
 from his own personality and became the client 
 who was appealing for justice or (in criminal 
 cases) for mercy . The case referred to involved 
 an inconsiderable sum, but much feeling be- 
 tween two respectable citizens of the county. 
 From the opening and throughout the exami- 
 nation of testimony, Lumpkin evinced deep 
 concern for his client, whom he had long 
 known personally, and much liked. Stephens, 
 then young, but rising rapidly in his profes- 
 sion, noting this, resolved how he could man- 
 age in the circumstance of Lumpkin having 
 the conclusion. Passionate himself, he knew 
 how to keep himself, or, at least, seem to keep 
 himself, entirely cool . Eye witnesses expected 
 a highly animated combat between the great 
 advocate and the younger, who had been show- 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 105 
 
 ing promise of the high career he was destined 
 to make. They were strangely disappointed. 
 When the case went to the jury, Stephens, in 
 words and tones almost entirely conversational, 
 referred to the unfortunate controversy between 
 two gentlemen of the county equally respecta- 
 ble, alike honorable, intending to be to each 
 other just. In the same tone he reviewed the 
 testimony, and while admitting that the jury, 
 fair-minded men, might have some difficulty 
 in adjusting a dispute that, at least, was of 
 quite inconsiderable pecuniary or other im- 
 portance, he could not but trust that the bal- 
 ance, so nearly equal, would be found by them 
 to weigh upon the side of his client, pump- 
 kin, one of the most open of men, evinced dis- 
 appointment. A greater part of his feeling 
 subsided before an adversary who had parted 
 from all his own, and was, perhaps, restrained 
 to a degree little above his. Stephens, who 
 (if my recollection does not fail me) prevailed, 
 being told afterwards by some of the bar of 
 their surprise at the little excitement mani- 
 
106 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 fested by him, answered, laughing, ' ' I saw that 
 Colonel IyUmpkin was intensely excited, there- 
 fore I resolved to keep myself as calm as pos- 
 sible, although my feeling was as high as his ; 
 for if I had given full expression to it, it would 
 have excited him still higher, and having the 
 conclusion on me, he Avould have torn to pieces 
 me and my case." 
 
 Another instance was told me by L,inton 
 Stephens, who, when just after coming to the 
 bar, was eye witness to a trial in Milbysville 
 in which L,umpkin and the elder Colquitt 
 were of counsel. It was for murder. Two 
 lads of fourteen or thereabouts, sons of two of 
 the leading citizens of the town, falling into a 
 dispute one day when, with several of their 
 school -fellows, they were engaged in bathing 
 in a swimming hole, one of them, seizing his 
 knife, slew the other. The father of the 
 deceased prosecuted the slayer, employing 
 Walter T. Colquitt. Colonel Lumpkin was 
 engaged for the defense ; for indeed he would 
 not serve as counsel for the State in cases 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 107 
 
 involving life. Colquitt was a very interest- 
 ing man. Neither a very learned lawyer nor 
 a close student of questions of State, yet tie 
 was an eloquent, successful practitioner at the 
 bar, and on the stump or in the United States 
 Senate could hold his own with the foremost, 
 being possessed of a fiery temper and of a fund 
 of partisan words which served to compensate 
 far for his lack of large information. Indeed, 
 when in his prime no man in the State was 
 more than a match for him in debate. He 
 was known to be thoroughly upright in prin- 
 ciple, and this knowledge made amends for 
 some eccentricities that in another might be 
 liable to censure. While at the bar he be- 
 came a member of the Methodist Church, and 
 almost immediately afterwards felt it his duty 
 to include preaching along with his main 
 vocation. Brave to the extreme degree, he 
 was as combative, even after he became a 
 judge and a divine. The following anecdote 
 was told of him while serving as judge of the 
 Chattahoochee circuit, in which (in the city 
 
108 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 of Columbus) he resided. Late one night on 
 returning from the church in company with 
 Several members of the bar, he recited with a 
 smile, yet not without sign of regret, some of 
 his actions during the day, His words were 
 these: " Well, well ! I've had a rather curi- 
 ous and varied experience to-day. I held 
 court the forenoon, in the interval for dinner 
 made a political speech in the court-house 
 square, held court in the afternoon, after 
 adjournment whipped a Whig who had made 
 insulting remarks in my presence about my 
 noon speech, and preached to-night." 
 
 He had been an ardent supporter of President 
 Jackson, and in 1840, when the majority of 
 the Georgia delegation went to General Har- 
 rison, he, with A. Cooper and Edward J. 
 Black, adhered to Van Buren. In the cam- 
 paign of 1844 he was easily in the lead of the 
 Democratic party in the State in the support 
 of James K. Polk against Henry Clay. The 
 first and only time that I ever heard or saw 
 him was at the Democratic mass-meeting at 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON IOQ 
 
 Macon in August, 1844. It was intensely 
 interesting to note how for two hours he 
 thrilled that vast multitude assembled in one 
 of the warehouses. 
 
 To return to the trial in Milbysville. He 
 and Lumpkin had been acquaintances and 
 friends since the years when they were in 
 college together. Apart in politics, yet there 
 was respect and friendship between them. In 
 the trial at Milbysville, the State, as in all 
 cases, whether the accused does or does not 
 introduce evidence, has the conclusion in the 
 argument before the jury. Lumpkin, as 
 Stephens had done with him in Wilkes, re- 
 solved as best he could to lessen the fierceness 
 of attack on the part of his adversary. In 
 criminal cases, juries, by the laws of the State, 
 were made judges of the law as well as the 
 facts. Charges from the bench, therefore, 
 necessarily had less weight than in civil suits. 
 When the issue in this case, at the close of 
 the testimony on both sides, was to be sub- 
 mitted by counsel to the jury, Lumpkin, after 
 
IIO AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 an exhausting sifting of the facts, and a gen- 
 eral pathetic appeal in behalf of the boy, who, 
 in a moment of passion, had slain his school- 
 fellow, paused for a brief while, and looking 
 at Colquitt, seemed to be resolving what was 
 most fit and becoming to say. Then he made 
 a peroration that Linton Stephens declared to 
 be a masterpiece of its kind. Many of its 
 words he remembered, as I remember them 
 from his recital. Some of them were as fol- 
 lows: "Gentlemen of the jury — I am to be 
 followed in this discussion by a man whom I 
 have known from our boyhood. Walter Col- 
 quitt, even when a boy, was well known for 
 adherence to the principle of his conviction, 
 for intrepid defense of them, and readiness to 
 incur all risks in their maintenance. As ready 
 for fight as for argument if his adversary so 
 chose, there was ever little delay between the 
 provocation and the conflict. But, gentle- 
 men, Walter Colquitt was one who wanted a 
 peer or a superior for his adversary. He was 
 never one to contend with a weakling of any 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON III 
 
 degree. When a boy, he fought with boys 
 his equal or his elder. Grown to be a man, 
 his fights have been with men, never more 
 with boys. This chevalier among men has 
 never combatted with those who were not in 
 all respects able to strike back with the strength 
 of a man. To-day to find himself unequally 
 matched, the great, eloquent, powerful law- 
 yer, with yonder stripling sitting silent, yet 
 silently appealing for forgiveness of a vast act 
 done without premeditation or malice, which 
 from his heart he regrets, and he will ever 
 regret more sorely than all others. Walter 
 Colquitt will find such a combat unfit for the 
 prowess of the man that he is, and you will 
 find that vain will be his efforts to main- 
 tain it." 
 
 The effect of these words, according to Lin- 
 ton Stephens, was most apparent. Colquitt 
 must acquit himself of the professional obliga- 
 tion assumed by him, but throughout his 
 address he evinced, as his opponent predicted, 
 his sense of the inequality of the combat, and 
 
112 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 subdued most of the fire of his assaults. The 
 lad was easily acquitted, even of manslaughter. 
 The northern circuit may well claim Col- 
 quitt, as his childhood and early manhood 
 were spent in Hancock County. The family 
 afterwards removed, first to Monroe, then to 
 Columbus. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 113 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Thk two lawyers who easily led at the bar 
 of the northern circuit during the whole 
 course of their practice were Robert Toombs 
 and Alexander Stephens. Of about equal 
 age, the former only one year older, they at 
 their coming out almost at once became dis- 
 tinguished, and although professional rivals 
 were dear friends throughout life, with the 
 exception of a brief while, due to a misunder- 
 standing, after the passage of which they were 
 the same to each other as before. 
 
 Toombs, who was generous to the highest 
 degree, having inherited an ample property, 
 was attracted to Stephens, who, despite both 
 poverty and weak health, was struggling with 
 increasing pertinacity towards the height for 
 which he felt to be competent, if life was spared 
 to reach. At one of the towns of Taliaferro 
 Court, his home, Stephens becoming obliged 
 
114 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 by ill health to absent himself, Toombs put 
 himself promptly into all his cases, so as to 
 prevent harm from falling upon his clients by 
 their continuance. It was always pleasant to 
 witness the warm attachment between them. 
 Both were men of ardent temper; Stephens 
 naturally irate and resentful, and both fired 
 with high ambition. It was evident that they 
 avoided as much as possible being put into 
 conflict before the courts, and that when this 
 was unavoidable, each was careful of touch- 
 ing unpleasantly the other's feelings. 
 
 In my judgment, Toombs possessed an intel- 
 lect above that of any other man with whom I 
 ever had acquaintance. He became a learned 
 lawyer. It was not known, except to a few, 
 that, despite all appearances to the contrary, 
 he was a deep student, having capacity far be- 
 3^ond any other lawyer of his day for rapid, 
 intense study during the interstices of public 
 business and the claims of domestic and social 
 life, the latter never being neglected. In read- 
 ing cases found in law reports he had the fac- 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 115 
 
 ulty of quickly noting the points involved, 
 decisions upon them, and the reasons as- 
 signed. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who almost 
 never read a book through, was not more 
 prompt and accurate to discover what was val- 
 uable in it . At village taverns during the week 
 sessions of the spring and fall terms, either in 
 the big hall then called the bar-room, or in his 
 own and other chambers, his habit was to spend 
 hours in chit-chat, in which were had some of 
 as racy rehearsings of anecdotes and other 
 stories as were held in such reunions any- 
 where. At bedtime, on his retiring, he would 
 spend several hours studying his cases and re- 
 ports in which their likes had been adjudi- 
 cated. It was so in his office and on the court- 
 house square in Washington, where he resided. 
 Interviews with clients, that is to say, business 
 interviews, were brief. Quickly perceiving 
 the points involved in their cases, his counsel 
 followed at once, and then either there, or 
 upon the street, sitting before the door of one 
 of the stores, he would chat about crops and 
 
Il6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 other rural things of interest, and yet find 
 time for study, sufficient for the unexampled 
 rapidity with which he could pursue it. 
 
 He was the only eminent lawyer who made 
 agriculture one of his studies to the degree that 
 he made money by its pursuit. With the 
 others this and practice at the bar seemed not 
 well to coincide, and so not many of them 
 worked farms, except on an inconsiderable 
 scale. Yet Toombs held frequent communi- 
 cations with overseers on his plantations, one 
 of which was in Stewart County, near one 
 hundred and fifty miles distant, sending to the 
 manager there and receiving weekly bulletins. 
 In a conversation with him one day he said to 
 me that in the matter of overseers he always 
 avoided selection of one with other than a 
 moderate, even tending to low, understanding. 
 He spoke about thus: "I wouldn't have on 
 one of my plantations an overseer who believed 
 himself competent to run it on his own judg- 
 ment. What I want in an overseer is for him, 
 besides understanding what is good work and 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 117 
 
 how it is to be done, to have just sense enough 
 to do implicitly what I tell him I wish done. 
 He must write me once a week the condition 
 of things and their various accidents. Then I 
 write, giving instructions of what he must do. 
 In seasons, wet and dry, I instruct him how to 
 have the work distributed. If a mule is sick 
 or dies, I make the changes needed. In fine, 
 I manage my plantations myself." It was 
 thus that he became acquainted with even the 
 lesser matters in agricultural life, and suc- 
 ceeded in making good yearly accretions to bis 
 estate. 
 
 As an advocate before juries he was without 
 a peer. Powerful before the court, before 
 which his arguments were always brief, he was 
 almost resistless, What, to a high degree, had 
 contributed to this was the conviction usually 
 felt that the cause of his clients was just and 
 ought to prevail. Recognizing on their first 
 presentation the law and the right, unless those, 
 in his opinion, were in their favor, his habit 
 was to counsel against litigation, that after 
 
Il8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 being conducted in anxiety and acrimony 
 would end in failure. There was not his equal 
 in readiness to accept what he regarded fair 
 proposals of compromises from the opponents 
 of his clients. If the latter, moved by com- 
 bative feelings, or eager to strive for more than 
 their cases could justly claim, rejected such 
 proposals, he would promptly declare that if 
 they persisted he would sever his connection 
 with them, saying, in his open manner : ' ' The 
 terms are fair; if you won't agree to them get 
 somebody else to plead your case. I go out of 
 it, for I will not be the instrument either of 
 your resentment or your greed." 
 
 Thus it was that before a jury he felt him- 
 self to be in a just cause and bound at all points 
 for its lead. His examinations, especially 
 cross-examinations of witnesses, always seemed 
 to me perfect. The truth, whatever of it was 
 in a witness' mind, he would have. One who 
 was prejudiced or reluctant he comprehended 
 at once. Placing himself close to a witness- 
 stand, and fixing his eyes upon him, he plied 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 119 
 
 him in a wise that was irresistible. One day 
 such a witness in Taliaferro Court, before his- 
 searching, fainted and fell upon the floor. 
 ' ' Take him out ! ' ' cried Toombs ; ' ' his travail 
 in the forced letting out of what was in him 
 has been too much for him ; take him out ! ' ' 
 
 When the issue was to be argued, it was sin- 
 gular what disregard he had for mere acts of 
 speech. With him these seemed to be counted 
 as of little value. He did not undertake to 
 persuade. His aim and his labor were to con- 
 vince. He forbore from praise of juries for 
 their intelligence and honorable intents and 
 purposes. In rapid and always brief speech he 
 commented upon the facts, making the jury 
 understand that he relied for a verdict upon 
 their being fair-minded, honest men, whom he 
 virtually defied to act against justice and their 
 consciences . In not one of the many addresses 
 before juries that I have heard him make do I 
 recall an instance in which he employed words 
 or tones of flattery. He not often spoke more 
 than half an hour. Ig-norin°- all side or un- 
 
120 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 important issues, he seized upon the one or two 
 strong points of the case until he had made it 
 absolutely clear, and when this was done he 
 turned away with the looks of one who, hav- 
 ing discharged his own portion of responsi- 
 bility, had left it with those whose final deci- 
 sion would depend upon the question of whether 
 they were intelligent men or fools, honest men 
 or knaves. Yet, except Lumpkin, no lawyer 
 of his time equaled him in excitation of pathos 
 in juries, but he did so by no appealings, but 
 by the presentation of a case of injustice and 
 oppression with such force as occasionally 
 moved to pity and indignation, finding vent in 
 tears, even in cries. A case of this sort was 
 related to me by Linton Stephens, at Athens, 
 shortly after I had withdrawn from the bar and 
 entered the University. It was in a suit for 
 damages, brought by a young girl, through her 
 relations and friends, against a Baptist clergy- 
 man. I well remembered its frequent calls 
 upon the docket for years, and its as many 
 continuances, for one cause and another, by 
 
COL,. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 121 
 
 the defendant, who stood in much dread of the 
 influence of Toombs's invectives, which he. 
 foresaw. It was the habit of both the latter 
 and Stephens to leave their seats in Congress 
 during the spring and fall sessions of the courts. 
 Toombs made it a special matter to be present 
 at the call of this particular case. I was pres- 
 ent at one of the continuances, and as the de- 
 fendant, after succeeding in his motion, was 
 leaving the bar, scowling upon him he said, in 
 words audible to several around him : ' ' You 
 may dodge, you old reprobate, but I shall get 
 to you at last." 
 
 The plaintiff, an orphan girl of sixteen or 
 seventeen years, was a ward of the defendant. 
 She was of rather weak understanding, and 
 perhaps slow in rendering service such as her 
 guardian deemed it his right and duty to exact. 
 One day (my recollection is) she mislaid a 
 bunch of keys where it could not be found. The 
 defendant, suddenly exasperated with anger, 
 seized a hickory and punished her with some 
 severity . The girl 's relations , indignant at the 
 
122 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 outrage, withdrew her and instituted suit, lay- 
 ing the damages of two thousand five hundred 
 dollars. More than once, through her friends, 
 she offered to compromise on the payment of 
 fifteen hundred. The offer was rejected, for 
 the defendant had no notion that, even if the 
 verdict should be rendered against him, the 
 damages would be so great for inflicting a pun- 
 ishment which in that day and generation was 
 not uncommon in domestic life. When the 
 case at last came up for trial, and after the evi- 
 dence was ended, Toombs, excited to the high- 
 est degree, stood before the jury and delivered 
 a speech, of which L,inton Stephens declared 
 his opinion that it had never been surpassed in 
 all the annals of the bar. Indeed, an intelli- 
 gent gentleman, a physician of the county, who 
 had been a friend of the defendant, said to me 
 afterwards that the effect of the speech on all, 
 jurymen and bystanders, was overwhelming. 
 The large court-room was crowded with spec- 
 tators. These and all, whilst the orator was 
 declaiming upon the audacity of a large, pow- 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 23 
 
 erful man, a professed minister of the Word ol 
 God, inflicting a disgraceful penance upon a . 
 weak, orphaned girl for a trifling offense — an 
 outrage from the sight of which even the 
 Creator, whom he pretended to serve, must 
 have turned away in horror — bowed their heads 
 in their hands and cried aloud. The speech 
 was brief. When it was over, the jury rushed 
 to their room as if they felt that instantaneous 
 recompense must be rendered — even for their 
 own security against charge or suspicion of 
 complicity — wrote out their verdict, rushed 
 back, and their foreman handed it to the clerk, 
 who read in a loud voice the finding to be five 
 thousand dollars . Half of this sum , as all law- 
 yers know, must have been recouped, but for 
 the following noteworthy circumstance. At 
 one of the continuances made by the defend- 
 ant the showing was loss of the original writ, 
 which, as has been seen, laid the damages at 
 two thousand five hundred dollars. In making 
 out what in the law is styled an alias, Toombs, 
 who wrote it, being fully convinced that one 
 
124 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 of the local counsel had purposely withdrawn 
 and hidden the original, raised the figures to 
 five thousand. The physician above alluded 
 to told me that after the verdict was rendered 
 one of the defendant's counsel, intending to 
 reassure him, told him that he need not be 
 distressed, for there was no doubt of being 
 able to obtain a new trial, by writ of error to 
 the Supreme Court, he, lifting his hand, an- 
 swered : ' ' No ! I never want to hear anything 
 of it again, the good Lord knows I don't ! " 
 
 Toombs' career as a member of Congress is 
 generally well known. At the dissolution of 
 the Whig party, and the overthrow of the 
 Know Nothing, he became allied to the Demo- 
 cratic, and was among the foremost among 
 the leaders in opposition to the measures event- 
 ually leading to the Confederate war. Next 
 to Thomas Cobb his was the most powerful 
 influence upon the movement for secession by 
 the State. 
 
 For a time there was prospect that he would 
 be made President of the new Confederacy. 
 
COL. RICHARD MAIXOIvM JOHNSTON 1 25 
 
 Perhaps he would have been but for one of 
 those accidents, apparently of not serious im- 
 portance, but that serve to impart turns to 
 most serious undertakings. At the first Con- 
 gress at Montgomery, Alabama, his name was 
 mentioned more often and earnestly than any 
 other for leadership. By a singular mishap, 
 Toombs, on the occasion of a party given to 
 the members of the new Congress, partook too 
 freely of wine. The most ardent and impul- 
 sive of men, a very little of spirituous, or even 
 vinous, liquors served to excite his brain 
 more highly than others would have been by 
 much larger potations. It is not improbable 
 that he partook less freely than any other at 
 the dinner. Yet the fact brought apprehen- 
 sion upon some of the delegates who had been 
 among his supporters, and when the name 01 
 Jefferson Davis was mentioned they reluctantly 
 left him for the latter. He had not avowed 
 himself a candidate, and, so far as I have been 
 able to find out, exhibited no signs of disap- 
 pointment. 
 
126 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 After the election of Davis it was believed, 
 particularly among Toombs' friends, that he 
 would be offered the portfolio which, under 
 the circumstances, was the most important of 
 the Cabinet, that of Minister of War. But 
 the President, declaring the while that he 
 regarded himself bound to offer the highest, 
 appointed him Secretary of State. Toombs, 
 feeling that this was not only an empty but 
 an insincere compliment, at first declined, 
 but, at the instance of Stephens, afterwards 
 accepted it. 
 
 In this position there was simply nothing 
 to do, nor would be until (what was not likely) 
 one or more foreign powers would recognize 
 the new nation. Toombs used to say humor- 
 ously, "I hold myself ready to be as polite 
 and hospitable as I know how to my neigh- 
 bors, but not one of them will even speak to 
 me." 
 
 Assured in his own mind that the President 
 had assigned him to this position in order to 
 neutralize any efforts that he might make to 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 27 
 
 interfere with his own policy, Toombs after 
 some months resigned and was made a brig- 
 adier-general. 
 
 It was easy to foresee that a man of con- 
 summate genius, ardent, open as the day, 
 would be hampered in a situation so far sub- 
 ordinate to those who were for the most part 
 his unequals. Soon detecting the weak points 
 in the administration, and never having learned 
 how to refrain from expression of his opinions, 
 the coldness between him and the President 
 became constantly more pronounced, until he 
 retired from the army altogether. Long be- 
 fore the end of the war he felt that the cause 
 of the South, under existing plans and pur- 
 poses of the administration, must fail. One 
 day when a man asked him about the con- 
 dition of the public finances, he answered: 
 "Oh, they seem to be getting along swim- 
 mingly. The officials charged with the manu- 
 facture of money spend every day in grinding 
 it out for the government, and all night for 
 themselves." 
 
128 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 When the war ended he resolved, if possi- 
 ble, to avoid arrest; and so one day, when 
 notified by one of his neighbors that a squad 
 of cavalry had just come into the town of 
 Washington, where he resided, he retired to 
 the back portion of his premises, and mount- 
 ing his good mare, Alice, he escaped the 
 comers, who shortly afterwards repaired to 
 his house. Of his wanderings, if he had so 
 chosen, he could have told some interesting 
 things. Failing in his efforts to get out of 
 the country through the west, he turned to the 
 south. Two of my neighbors, Col. A. J. 
 Lane and Major Edgworth Bird, and myself 
 were his escort during portions of the nights 
 in both of these endeavors. Our residences 
 were two or three miles from the village of 
 Sparta (where was a squad of Federal soldiers 
 under command of a lieutenant), mine on the 
 north, and my neighbor's on the south of 
 the road leading towards Augusta. Receiv- 
 ing word one night from Colonel L,ane that 
 the fugitive was a second time in a pine 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 29 
 
 thicket near his house, I mounted my horse 
 and went thither, and we and Major Bird 
 escorted him through my plantation to the 
 road leading northwardly and for some miles 
 thereon. I remember well that as we crossed 
 the road from Colonel Lane's, Toombs, taking 
 off his hat, waved and uttered his respects to 
 the lieutenant commanding in the town. He 
 was accompanied by Charles Irwin, a youth, 
 son of his dearly beloved friend, Isaiah Tucker 
 Irwin, who, in the session of the legislature 
 before the war, was Speaker of the House of 
 Representatives, and until his untimely death 
 was regarded as the most prominent candidate 
 for Governor. They traveled altogether at 
 night, his guide during the day procuring all 
 things needed for his health and comfort. 
 
 A few weeks afterwards, again receiving a 
 message from Colonel L,ane that Toombs, who 
 had been concealed in a pine thicket near his 
 residence during the day, needed our further 
 assistance, I again repaired there, and we two, 
 with Major Bird, conducted him through the 
 
130 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 latter 's plantation to the road leading south. 
 
 In neither of these journeys, according to 
 my memory, did he speak a single word of 
 bitterness about the condition of the country 
 or his own. During the last ride, for several 
 miles toward the end of our guidance, he and 
 I rode side by side, the rest being ahead of us. 
 A few months before, the elder of his two 
 daughters, Mrs. Felix Alexander, had died, 
 and this was only a few weeks after the death 
 of my daughter Lucy. In extending condo- 
 lence to me, he referred to his own loss, and 
 for several minutes he wept freely, talking the 
 while on the sufferings which, more keenly 
 than all others, such bereavements inflict upon 
 the human heart. 
 
 It is known that after journeying through 
 southern Georgia and Florida, he succeeded 
 in making his way to Havana from whence 
 he proceeded to France. He had been only a 
 brief while in Paris, when one day, while at 
 dinner, a telegram was brought to him 
 announcing the death of his only other child, 
 Mrs. Dudley Du Bose. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 131 
 
 As soon as it appeared that he could return 
 without risk of arrest and prosecution, he did- 
 so, and for the rest of his life gave his time 
 mainly to rehabilitating the State and arrang- 
 ing a new constitution. Declining to apply 
 for amnesty, his native boldness found expres- 
 sion in public and in private upon his regrets 
 for the failure of secession, and for the dis- 
 asters to come from it upon constitutional 
 liberty. He persisted in claiming Georgia for 
 his country. He was the acknowledged 
 leader in the formation of the new constitu- 
 tion, his strong personality and overpowering 
 genius easily having their way. The conven- 
 tion expenses had been about twenty-five 
 thousand dollars over the limits, and at its 
 adjournment he gave his own check for the 
 deficit, for prudent investments before the war, 
 outside of land, had saved a considerable 
 part of his estate, and besides he had gotten 
 several large fees from railroad and cotton 
 litigations. 
 
 The alienation between him and Stephens 
 
132 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 was of very short duration, growing out of 
 some misunderstanding regarding the lease of 
 the State railroad. They were both profoundly 
 gratified at the reconciliation. Not long 
 afterwards Toombs had an opportunity of 
 evincing in a signal manner his devotion to 
 this friend of forty years. After the nomina- 
 tion of Horace Greeley for President, Stephens 
 became so hostile to his election that he estab- 
 lished a journal in Atlanta in order to control 
 a more extensive field than he could cover by 
 stump-speaking. It was a very unfortunate 
 undertaking financially. Whatever were the 
 profits, not a dollar came into his hands, but 
 on the contrary claims upon claims were pre- 
 sented, for which, when the campaign was 
 over, he gave his promissory notes. When 
 this became known to Toombs, he repaired to 
 Atlanta, sought out the holders, and, paying 
 them off to the amount of several thousand 
 dollars, took them to Stephens' room, and 
 throwing them upon the table said about as 
 follows: " Here, Ellick, are your notes given 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 33 
 
 to those Atlanta people. I couldn't bear the 
 idea of their being hauled about the streets, 
 and so I took them up." Stephens' death 
 was an occasion to him of profound sorrow. 
 
 Ignoring Federal affairs, he continued to 
 take an intense interest in those of the State. 
 Despising with all his heart- the men who, as it 
 seemed to him, evinced early and eager desire 
 to be restored to the good-will of those with 
 whom they had lately been contending, and 
 pained at sight of the general demoralization 
 which, as after all great wars, befell the peo- 
 ple, particularly those engaged in politics, he 
 was accustomed to indulge in wrathful feel- 
 ings, to which no man living knew how to give 
 more poignant, effective expression. For the 
 last legislature before his death, he had most 
 pronounced hostility. In his opinion it con- 
 tinued to sit far longer than was necessary, 
 and mainly for advancing the personal inter- 
 ests of a large number of its leading members. 
 From his bed of sickness, which proved to be 
 the bed of death, he hurled invectives toward 
 
134 ' AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 those, calling many of them by name, who had 
 degraded so far below the old standard of pa- 
 triotism and honor in the State. One day, 
 while near the end, slightly emerging from 
 obscuration of understanding, he inquired if 
 the legislature had adjourned; being assured 
 that it had not, in a low, just audible voice he 
 replied, ' ' Send for Cromwell ! ' ' 
 
 Various are the estimates that have been 
 placed upon Toombs' character and career. 
 One thing is certain, the men who were near- 
 est to him, who were closest witnesses of his 
 actions, whether as colleagues or as rivals, both 
 knew and most admired his genius and his 
 magnanimity. If he had been less indifferent 
 to men's opinions before or after death, he 
 would have left some written memorial of his 
 actions and their motives . He was often urged 
 to do this, but he forbore, and was content to 
 be judged by the Creator and the country. 
 
 Thinking of Toombs, I sometimes recall 
 what seem to me apposite words of the Em- 
 peror Augustus, on occasion when he happened 
 
COIv. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 35 
 
 to find a young lad in his household with a 
 volume of Cicero, which he had been furtively 
 reading. The Emperor, taking the book out 
 of the hands of the lad, who was dreading a 
 rebuke, after glancing over the pages for a few 
 moments in silence, handed it back, with the 
 words: "My son, he was a great man, and 
 loved his country." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 In collaboration with Professor Wm. Hand 
 Browne, of Johns Hopkins University, I have 
 already written a biography of Alexander 
 Stephens. In this memoir I shall mention 
 some things not seeming fit to be included in 
 that more important work. 
 
 My intimate acquaintance with Stephens be- 
 gan during the Know Nothing campaign in the 
 year 1855. Although born within ten miles 
 of each other, though in adjoining counties, 
 being of different politics, he a Whig and I a 
 stripling Democrat, we did not happen to be- 
 come on particularly friendly terms with each 
 other until this campaign. Although neither 
 he nor I knew much of the dogmas of the 
 Roman Catholic faith, yet we both revolted 
 from the thought of proscription of its adher- 
 ents. He had about decided that he would 
 retire from Congress and keep to his profession. 
 
138 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 It was wonderful how the sudden passionate 
 hostility against foreign-born citizens, particu- 
 larly Catholics, spread among Southern 
 "Whigs, who could not be Free Soilers, as their 
 allies in the North became, nor join with 
 Democrats with whom for years and years 
 they contended on gory fields. And so when 
 Know Nothingism was born, they flooded to 
 it, accompanied by a not considerable number 
 of pious Democrats, who, supposing that the 
 time had come for suppressing Antichrist, or 
 the Scarlet Woman , whichever of those might 
 be the Pope, joined their forces. 
 
 The central point of Know Nothingism in 
 the State was the city of Augusta, where 
 there was quite a number of politicians among 
 the Whigs who for some years had been dis- 
 posed to get Stephens out of the way, partly 
 because of his independence of party con- 
 straints and partly for his well-known affilia- 
 tions with rural instead of urban people. On 
 account of the constantly increasing exaspera- 
 tions in Congressional discussions upon the 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 39 
 
 question of slavery, and what appeared to him 
 growing dangers to the Federal Constitution, 
 he decided during the last months of his term 
 to retire from politics and devote himself en- 
 tirely to his profession. The figure of speech 
 employed by him in talks with his friends was 
 this: Supposing himself on a railroad train, 
 foreseeing there was to be a wreck of some 
 sort, he had decided to get off at the next 
 station. The announcement of his intention 
 gave rise to much comment, particularly in 
 Augusta, where some of the leading men of 
 the new party declared that he had retired with 
 pretended self-denial because of knowing he 
 could not be elected . Although not vindictive , 
 he was keenly resentful to unjust reflections 
 upon his courage or his integrity. When 
 these remarks were repeated to him he imme- 
 diately reversed his decision and announced 
 himself for reelection, and appointed an early 
 day for opening the campaign in Augusta. 
 His conduct of this campaign was to me 
 always the most interesting portion of his 
 
140 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 career. An orator rather persuasive than 
 otherwise, in this, from the beginning to the 
 close, he was denunciatory to the highest 
 degree of passion . To-day he would harangue 
 to a multitude two or three hours, and after- 
 wards retiring to his hotel, change for fresh 
 vestments those which had been drenched 
 throughout with perspiration, take his dinner, 
 enter his buggy with Harry, his driver, and 
 Rio, his dog, and make for another appoint- 
 ment for the morrow twenty-five or thirty 
 miles distant. 
 
 It was the most exciting political campaign 
 ever made in the State. Stephens was un- 
 questionably its most influential leader. 
 Wherever he spoke vast numbers of both par- 
 ties came to hear him. Know Nothingism 
 was defeated for good and all, and afterwards 
 very many persons of entirely upright inten- 
 tions long regretted the delusion into which 
 they were led. 
 
 It was in the village of Warrenton during 
 a session of the Supreme Court, while the 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON I4I 
 
 campaign was at its midst, that the intimacy 
 between him and myself began. I had just 
 been defeated by Judge Garnett Andrews, the 
 Know Nothing candidate, for judge of the 
 circuit. The present incumbent was Judge 
 Eli H. Baxter, a Know Nothing himself, al- 
 though a particular friend to me. His term 
 was to expire after six months. One night he 
 called me to his room in the hotel and said 
 that he intended to resign as soon as the pres- 
 ent term of Warren Court was ended, and he 
 besought me to accept appointment to the 
 place which he was confident the Governor 
 (Howell Cobb) would offer. I at once said 
 that I would not accept, as I should have only 
 a term of six months, in which time the mis- 
 takes necessarily made by a young judge 
 would not have time and opportunity for 
 correction. Besides, I must lose somewhat by 
 withdrawal from my practice. Baxter was so 
 urgent that I decided to take counsel with 
 Stephens, who at once coincided with my 
 views. The friendship thus begun continued 
 
142 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 eventually with much intimacy until his 
 death twenty-five years afterwards. 
 
 As a lawyer Stephens was unequal to sev- 
 eral others whom he met habitually at the bar. 
 He came forward after a few weeks' prelimi- 
 nary study, and became involved in politics 
 too soon afterwards to allow opportunity for 
 very elaborate study of legal principles. But 
 his strong intellect, his excellent common 
 sense, his quickness to perceive the main 
 issues in cases, his intense sympathy with his 
 clients, capped by his very great powers as an 
 advocate, enabled him to stand on a level with 
 the best. Then the knowledge not obtained 
 by reading he got in apparently sufficient 
 quantity through his quick absorption from 
 the debates of more learned compeers, Lump- 
 kin, Toombs, and Cone. 
 
 His manner before juries was in the main 
 persuasive, yet he knew as well as any the 
 value of satire and passion, and employed 
 them often with wonderful effect. If he had 
 given himself entirely or mainly to the pro- 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 43 
 
 fession he would have made a great lawyer. 
 But he loved politics. Within only a year or. 
 two after coming to the bar he was sent to the 
 legislature, where he continued until he was 
 elected to Congress. 
 
 Possibly no man in the State (if one may 
 except Howell Cobb) was as adroit in the 
 management and conduct of political cam- 
 paigns. At his home in Crawfordsville, near 
 the western limits of his Congressional district, 
 he was made familiar by personal visits of 
 subordinate leaders and by correspondence 
 with conditions in every county, and had con- 
 troling influence of its nominations for the 
 legislature and county offices. When upon 
 the stump he always drew a large audience. 
 This was owing in good part to his unique ap- 
 pearance — his youthfulness (as a boy of seven- 
 teen), beardless face with a pallor of death, 
 his emaciated body of weight little over eighty 
 pounds, his voice that was as that of a woman 
 and his eyes that pierced like the eagle's — 
 these were a charm that not seldom rose to in- 
 
144 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 fatuation. Above these, doubtless aided by 
 the contrast, were his instant recognition of 
 the quality and temper of his audience, the 
 never-failing deliberation and art with which 
 he gathered them in hand, the choice of argu- 
 ments and words, the gradual rise into high, 
 passionate declamation got and easily held 
 sway. Fine as his voice was, the distinctness 
 of his utterance made him clearly audible to a 
 larger audience than any other man in the 
 State could have commanded. As a stump 
 speaker, in my judgment, he was without a 
 peer among all whom I have known. 
 
 Of his course in Congress Dr. Browne and 
 myself have spoken in our biography, There 
 are some things not contained therein relating 
 to his conduct during the period of secession 
 and the war that followed which I will relate. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 45 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Thk rise oi the Soil party and its rapid 
 growth from small beginning gave much con- 
 cern to Stephens, as well as to a large majority 
 of thoughtful minds North and South. He 
 had intense admiration for Douglas, whose 
 bold — and what Southern people regarded — 
 unselfish, patriotic endeavors, served to post- 
 pone the final issue. In the Democratic Con- 
 vention of 1852 this eloquent champion was 
 supplanted by General (after President) Pierce, 
 an honorable man, but not of signal ability, 
 as he had not rendered specially important 
 service to the country on any line. The same 
 was done in 1856, when Douglas was again 
 turned down and Buchanan received the nom- 
 ination. Then he resolved to not submit 
 another time to such treatment. For this he 
 was blamed by Stephens, whom I have heard 
 say that Douglas's one infirmity was personal 
 
146 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 ambition ; that while the South owed more to 
 him than any other statesman in the North for 
 his services and sacrifices in their behalf, he, 
 as a true patriot, ought to have been content 
 with consciousness of the merit of these serv- 
 ices and sacrifices and restrained personal 
 resentment and kept himself in touch with his 
 party. His refusal to do this brought on the 
 results of the Democratic Convention at 
 Charleston in the summer of i860, which, not 
 agreeing upon a candidate, separated to meet 
 afterwards in Baltimore. 
 
 Having never been active in politics, and 
 now for three years engaged in the State 
 University, I had not supposed that such end- 
 ing of the Charleston Convention foreboded 
 very momentous consequences. And so when, 
 a few days afterwards, as I was returning to 
 Athens at the close of the summer vacation, 
 and stopped for the night at his house, I was 
 much surprised to find him in a state of excite- 
 ment far more intense than I had ever known 
 of him. During supper he had little to say, 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 47 
 
 even upon commonplace matters. When we 
 returned to his study, which was his bedroom 
 also, I asked what he thought of the existing 
 condition of the Democratic party. I remem- 
 ber distinctly his answer, which was rendered 
 in tone as if he was on the platform in the 
 most passionate discussion before a large 
 audience : 
 
 "What do I think of it? Why, sir, that 
 we are on the verge of a civil war, which, 
 when it comes, will be one of the most unhappy 
 and disastrous of all in modern times ! ' ' 
 
 This surprised me greatly, and I answered 
 that I could not but believe that his apprehen- 
 sions were without good foundation ; that the 
 dispersion of the Charleston Convention was 
 only because of disagreement as to the nomi- 
 nee, and that interchange of opinion among 
 the most prominent leaders the while would 
 lead to some sort of compromise at the conven- 
 tion to meet at Baltimore some weeks afterward. 
 
 He at once replied that such was a vain hope ; 
 that the time for compromise was passed, and 
 
148 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 intentionally so, through the influence of cer- 
 tain Southern politicians, among them William 
 S. Young and Howell Cobb, who preferred 
 secession to the election of Douglas . The last 
 hope of peace was blighted at Charleston. 
 The convention at Baltimore would nominate 
 an anti-Douglas ticket, and Douglas would be- 
 come an independent candidate. The division 
 would make sure the election, whoever he 
 might be, of the Republican candidate. When 
 that took place South Carolina would secede. 
 As for himself, he would be willing for her to 
 go. He had no doubt that in time she would 
 return. But her action would necessarily be 
 followed by the Southern Atlantic and Gulf 
 States. What would add to the difficulties of 
 the situation would be that the border States 
 would hesitate until too late to hinder aggres- 
 sion from the Northern. 
 
 Among many other things said by him dur- 
 ing many hours, a great portion of which he 
 walked about in the room, often gesticulating 
 with passion, was the fact that the South was 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 49 
 
 not possessed of statesmen from whom to choose 
 one in all respects competent to lead in the 
 coming crisis ; that although its cause was just, 
 conflict of force was being precipitated by men 
 who, from disappointment of personal aspira- 
 tions, had not made themselves familar with 
 meeting exigencies that would be far more mo- 
 mentous than they were able to foresee, and 
 that the North, with its far greater population 
 and other resources, fortified as it would be by 
 the opinions of mankind, would go into the 
 struggle with manifold greater advantages. 
 From the outside world the South would get 
 no sympathy, except from individual minds ; 
 that even if it should have temporary success, 
 it would be known as the Black Republic, and 
 be a reproach among the nations. 
 
 Since the above was written I have found 
 what had been mislaid for several years — a 
 blank-book, in which I set down events shortly 
 after their occurrence, and bits of conversation 
 I had with Stephens. I find the following of 
 the date of May, i860: 
 
150 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 ' ' J . — Well, the convention at Charleston has 
 adjourned. What do you think of matters 
 now ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' S .—Think of them ? Why, that men will 
 be cutting one another's throats in a little 
 while. We shall, in less than twelve months, 
 be in a civil war, and that one of the bloodiest 
 in the history of the world. Men seem to be 
 utterly blinded to the future. Their reason 
 has already left them , and in a little while they 
 will be under the complete control of the worst 
 of passions . You remember my reading to you 
 a letter I wrote to a gentleman in Texas, ask- 
 ing the use of my name in his State as a candi- 
 date for the Presidency ? ' ' 
 
 "J. — The one in which you said that we 
 should make Charleston at the time of the 
 convention either a Marathon or a Waterloo ? ' ' 
 
 "S. — Yes. Well, we have made it a Wa- 
 terloo." 
 
 "J. — Don't you think it possible that mat- 
 ters may be adjusted in Baltimore? " 
 
 "S— Not the slightest chance of it. The 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 151 
 
 party is split now and forever. If it could 
 have agreed, either on Douglas or any one else,* 
 we might have carried the election. As it is, 
 the cause is hopelessly lost. The election can 
 not be carried without Douglas's support." 
 
 "J. — I hope he will give it." 
 
 "S.— Never!" 
 
 "J. — What a misfortune it is that he did 
 not support the L,ecompton constitution . ' ' 
 
 " S. — Yes ; but he knew, as we all did, that 
 it was procured by fraud. I supported it, not 
 because it was fairly obtained, but because it 
 was right when obtained. The fraud was 
 glaring. I feel, when looking back at it, like 
 the sons of Noah when they saw their father 
 naked — I wished it might be covered up from 
 the world. Douglas would not support it. I 
 thought it ought to be, and think so yet, be- 
 cause it gave us only what we were entitled to 
 under the Kansas Act." 
 
 "J. — You consider him entitled to the 
 nomination, don't you?" 
 
 " S. — I won't say that he is entitled to it, 
 
152 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 but I will say that lie has done more for slav- 
 ery than any other man in the North. He 
 has far surpassed all other men in vindicating 
 the truth that the negro is the inferior of the 
 white man. And then his name has been the 
 strongest in two conventions. He voluntarily 
 withdrew it in 1852; the same in 1856. I 
 suppose he has made up his mind not to do 
 so a third time. The only objections to him 
 are his ambitions and his countless hordes of 
 office-seekers that are in his suite. If I could 
 make a platform and nominate a candidate, I 
 am inclined to think that I would nominate 
 Hunter. If the party were satisfied with the 
 Cincinnati platform and would cordially nom- 
 inate Douglas we should carry the election, 
 but I tell you that now that is impossible." 
 "J. — But why must we have civil war ?'■' 
 " S. — Simply because there are not virtue, 
 patriotism, and sense enough left in the coun- 
 try to avoid it. I repeat that in less than 
 twelve months we shall be in one of the 
 bloodiest civil wars, that history has recorded, 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 53 
 
 and what is to become of us then, God only 
 knows. The Union will certainly be dis-* 
 solved. The South has strength enough to 
 make a great empire if its men were wise and 
 patriotic and prudent. These are the only 
 points on which I should have fears for the 
 future. But unless we change in these re- 
 spects, this whole country, North and South, 
 will sink into the condition of Mexico." 
 
 ' ' J . — Did you really say what was reported 
 of you when you resigned your place in Con- 
 gress — namely, that matters were going to 
 ruin in Washington, and that you got off at 
 the nearest station because you foresaw a 
 break down ?" 
 
 ' ' S. — Yes; 1 think I used those very words. ' ' 
 
 ' ' J . — Do you think you were right in refus- 
 ing to allow your name to go before the 
 Charleston convention ?" 
 
 " S. — I do. I did not wish the office in the 
 first place, nor any other. What amazes me 
 is to see Douglas' ambition to be President. 
 I have asked him what he wished the office 
 
154 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 for. It never yet has added to one man's 
 fame. You may look over the list of the 
 Presidents. Which of them made any repu- 
 tation after he became President? Four 
 years, or even eight years, are too short a time 
 to enable a man to employ any policy which 
 will be permanent enough to give him repu- 
 tation . 
 
 " Louis Napoleon, as President under the 
 constitution which elected him, could have 
 made more. He is beginning now to make 
 it. When he has been where he is as long 
 again as he has been already, he may then, if 
 he has really good ability, become illustrious. 
 I never could see why so many men wish to 
 become President. People don't believe me 
 generally, I suppose. That is all indifferent 
 to me. Some of you people in Athens will 
 persist in believing that I opposed the nomi- 
 nation of Governor Cobb at the Milledgeville 
 convention. I had nothing on earth to do 
 with it, neither for nor against him. I was 
 perfectly willing that he should get the nomi- 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 55 
 
 nation if he could. I never had any doubt 
 that he could not. No, sir; I should prefer • 
 to live here, right here, to being President. 
 If I had loved office, I should have continued 
 Representative in Congress." 
 
 The next entry in my book was made on 
 May 30, 1861. It was on an occasion when 
 Hon. Thomas W. Thomas, ex-judge of the 
 Northern circuit, at;d myself met at Mr. 
 Stephens' home in Crawfordville. Among 
 other things said by him, I recorded the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 " S. — All the Cabinet, except Blair, were 
 opposed to the war, honestly so. They were 
 driven into it by Cassius Clay, Jim Lane, and 
 the Republican Governors. The North, I be- 
 lieve, will go into anarchy. They have lost 
 all appreciation of constitutional liberty. 
 They may hold up longer and break down in 
 six months, but the ruin will come before 
 Lincoln's administration is over. They have 
 never before had any just idea of the value of 
 the South to them. They are now like leeches 
 
156 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 that have been shaken off a horse's leg, and 
 are beginning to find out what it was that 
 fattened them. We are the horse, and what 
 they are determined to do is to get the horse 
 back again. Why, look now; three months 
 ago William Soto was worth thirty millions 
 of dollars; he is now worth fifteen. He is 
 likely very soon to be worth only one. Brick 
 and mortar are his property, and they had 
 almost as well be in Babylon . ' ' 
 
 "Judge T. — Governor Cobb thinks that 
 when Congress meets the showing which Sec- 
 retary Chase will make of money will frighten 
 them into a cessation of hostilities." 
 
 " S. — I wish in my heart it may be so, but 
 I don't believe it. Either they will do that, or 
 they will become an assembly of French Jaco- 
 bins, and, if necessary, will raise money by 
 putting assignats upon Astor and the balance 
 of the rich ones. The Administration can not 
 stop the war. They are pushed on by the peo- 
 ple, and they who hesitate will be hung or ex- 
 iled. This is, in my opinion, what is to happen 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 57 
 
 to Scott. The Girondists in the French Revo- 
 lution led first, and afterwards were put out of 
 the way by the Jacobins. Seward may be 
 smart enough to become a Robespierre." 
 
 ' ' Judge T— What do you think of the South 
 having a Dictator ? ' ' 
 
 " S. — It would never do ! We are the only 
 ones who can hold on to constitutional liberty, 
 and we must not part with it for one day. 
 
 Our War Department is managed badly. 
 
 is very inefficient. He'll do, and do, and do 
 nothing at last. He is like a man who is 
 playing chess — thinks, and thinks, and thinks 
 before moving, and then makes a feel move. 
 He is very rash in counsel and lamentably in- 
 efficient and irresolute in action. There were 
 twenty thousand stand of arms offered him for 
 sale. He was urged to buy them, but post- 
 poned until after the fall of Sumter, then tried 
 to get them, but it was too late. Toombs 
 ought to have been there. He is the brains of 
 the whole concern. Slidell was offered a place 
 among the Commissioners to Europe, but put 
 
158 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 his objection on the ground of there being 
 three — he would have gone alone. 
 
 ' ' I could not for my life persuade General 
 Lee that the North wanted specially to get 
 back Harper's Ferry, and that it was the most 
 important point for military operations on both 
 sides. I greatly fear that we have not suf- 
 ficient force there. Sidney Johnston is the 
 man to lead the army. Beauregard and Lee 
 are best at inquiring. We ought to have 
 Johnston. I very much fear that he has been 
 arrested in New York. We can whip in this 
 fight, but we will have to fight hard. It will 
 be a hard one, I've not a doubt. Ideas are 
 changing — ideas of greatness. The heroic 
 spirit will be uppermost now for some time. 
 If we had a million bales of cotton pledged to 
 us we could borrow money in Europe and get 
 as many ships as we want." 
 
 I remember to have heard him earnestly 
 advocate the purchase by the government of 
 cotton, which was then selling at eight cents. 
 The government, if need be, might purchase 
 at ten. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 59 
 
 In an interview on June n, 1862, lie said 
 the following, among other things : 
 
 " Beauregard is no general. He is only a 
 clever little fellow. Instead of retreating on 
 west, and protecting Memphis and the coun- 
 try between the Tennessee and the Mississippi, 
 he has come farther south. Memphis will 
 fall, of course. Beauregard expects Halleck 
 to follow him. He won't do it, in my opinion. 
 All that our army can do where they are will 
 be to eat up everything within fifty miles of 
 it. The day for a vigorous policy is past. It 
 is too late to do anything. 
 
 ' ' What stupendous ignorance of the value 
 of cotton to us ! The government and those 
 who favored its policy did not undervalue it, 
 but misunderstood the character of its value. 
 In their opinion, cotton was a political power. 
 There was the mistake — it is only a commer- 
 cial power. If it had been understood and 
 employed that way, it would have been easy 
 to manage the government by getting money 
 in Europe to buy enough ironclad ships to 
 
160 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 keep several ports open. It is now too late 
 for that. Our portal system is closed effectu- 
 ally, and we can no more stand it than a man 
 can stand the closing of his portal system. 
 He dies of strangury, and we must naturally 
 do the same. I think we are ruined irre- 
 trievably." 
 
 " J. — Do you think that Mr. Davis has any 
 confidence in the attainment of independence ? ' ' 
 
 " S. — He acts as if he did not. I suppose 
 he intends to imitate the career of Sidney 
 Johnston, the way I read some of his conduct. ' ' 
 
 "J. — Suppose the Government were to de- 
 volve upon you ?" 
 
 " S. — It would be too late to do anything." 
 
 "J. — You would not abandon it, however; 
 you would take hold and try to do something." 
 
 ' ' S — I can not say that I have most deeply 
 regretted allowing the use of my name last fall. 
 I don't know how I came to make the mistake, 
 but I hoped it would do good in the way of 
 preserving harmony." 
 
 "J. — In what shape, think you, our ruin is 
 to come?" 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON l6l 
 
 "S. — I don't know. Our enemies do not 
 know themselves what they intend." 
 
 "J. — What of the next elections North ?" 
 
 "S. — The Black Republicans will largely 
 prevail. No doubt that some of the present 
 Congress will be left out, and others as bad, or 
 even worse, will get in." 
 
 "J. — What, in your belief, will become of 
 the negroes?" 
 
 " I — I can't say. No one but God can tell. 
 If they are freed, they must become extinct 
 after a while. I have most abundant confi- 
 dence in the Providence of God, and feel that 
 His hand is over all, and that whatever comes 
 to us all will be by His Providence. Oh, the 
 ruin, the ruin that war brings to mankind ! 
 Ruin to character, to domestic affections, to 
 everything good and valuable ! 
 
 ' ' Our last Congress was a weak and con- 
 temptible body. They sat with closed doors. 
 It was well they did, and so kept from the 
 public some of the most disgraceful scenes ever 
 enacted by a legislative body." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 The following is a portion of a conversation 
 with Stephens, on November 30, 1862 : 
 
 "J. — On what sort of terms are you now 
 with the President ?" 
 
 " S. — Very good, indeed. Whenever we 
 meet he is perfectly agreeable. We meet but 
 seldom, however. He used to send for me 
 often to consult. Since the Government was 
 removed to Richmond he has done so, I think, 
 but once. Somebody, I suppose, told him of 
 some remarks I made in the Provincial Con- 
 gress on the government of the army. I was 
 very anxious for the Secretary of War to be 
 present when I introduced the resolutions, 
 and hoped he would be. I was probably a 
 little severe in my remarks upon the subject 
 of granting furloughs to sick soldiers. I 
 wished to do away with the medical board 
 established for that purpose, and leave grant- 
 
164 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 ing of furloughs where it ought to be left, 
 with the surgeons and colonels of regiments 
 and the brigadier generals. The Government 
 objected on the ground that the surgeons 
 might be corrupted. I could not but feel 
 some indignation at this, because one of the 
 medical board I knew to be corrupt, as he 
 was known by the Government to be so. 
 Since that time, as I remember, the President 
 has not sent for me. 
 
 ' ' He is awfully deficient in the dispatch of 
 business. Toombs would dispatch more in 
 twenty minutes than he does in three hours." 
 ' ' J . — Are Toombs and he avowedly hostile? ' ' 
 " S. — Not at all; Toombs has no resent- 
 ments whatever. He has never gotten over 
 a quarrel he had with him in the Gas- 
 kill case. It is singular that I have for- 
 gotten this case. My recollection is that it was 
 of little importance, altogether too little to 
 excite resentment in either of the parties. Yet 
 they are ostensibly friendly enough. Toombs 
 took dinner with him as he came through Rich- 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 65 
 
 mond. When the President was first elected 
 I urged him to give Toombs first choice of 
 place in his Cabinet, hoping that he would 
 take, as he ought to have done, that of Secre- 
 tary of War. But he (the President) replied 
 that he desired to pa}^ him the highest com- 
 pliment by naming him to the highest position. 
 When he did, Toombs answered declining. 
 The President sent the telegram to me. I then 
 sent Toombs one, to Argus, where he then was 
 with a sick daughter, urging him to accept. 
 He answered that he would consider it ; upon 
 his return in May he decided to take it for a 
 short time." 
 
 ' ' J . — Has not the Secretary of the Treasury 
 come somewhat near your views ? Is not the 
 Government buying cotton ?" 
 
 " S. — Yes, I believe so. I received a note 
 from Clayton, the Assistant Secretary, com- 
 plimenting the speech I made upon the subject 
 at Crawfordville, saying it was the best effort 
 of my life. I don't agree with him at all as to 
 that, and was very much surprised at receiving 
 such a letter from him . ' ' 
 
1 66 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 " J. — Have not your views of General Lee 
 undergone some change ?" 
 
 ' ' S. — No. He is about as good a general as 
 we have, and better than any in the North. 
 But he does not reach with the great generals 
 of the world. I mean that he is nowhere such 
 a man as Csesar and Bonaparte. He was evi- 
 dently surprised at Sharpsburg. I do not think 
 that he knew the enemy to be in his rear." 
 
 1 ' J. — There seems to be a growing sentiment 
 among the people in favor of a stronger govern- 
 ment. The experiment of self-government by 
 the people is beginning to be regarded a 
 failure." 
 
 *" S. — There was no fault in the government. 
 It was the best that ever was. The difficulty 
 was with the people." 
 
 "J. — But it was a failure, say from that 
 cause. Had we not, then, as well give up the 
 question?" 
 
 " S. — No, I say not. I am not willing to 
 give up constitutional States rights. I repeat 
 that the fault was not with the government, 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 67 
 
 but with the people. Until they become more 
 virtuous and more patriotic, no government 
 will stand with them." 
 
 On December 13, among many other things 
 said by him were the following : 
 
 " S. — I knew that Douglas would oppose 
 the settlement of the Kansas difficulties under 
 the Lecompton constitution. I won a bet on 
 it from Governor Cobb. I knew this because 
 of the fraud that was prevalent in the election. 
 The Free Soil men had been promised by Gov- 
 ernor Walker, who told them that he spoke for 
 one higher than himself, meaning the Presi- 
 dent, that the constitution should be again 
 submitted to the people for their ratification or 
 objection. Acting upon that promise, they 
 did not vote. Douglas was willing to make 
 the issue upon the first election, but the 
 Administration did not, because of the design to 
 ruin Douglas at the North. As the issue was 
 then made, Douglas refused to abide by the 
 first election. I voted purely upon its legality 
 and upon its being right. There was immense 
 
1 68 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 fraud, but the election was right, as the result 
 gave to the South only what was just and right. 
 If the South had not seceded, Lincoln's 
 Administration would have broken down in 
 sixty days. He was entirely powerless to do 
 harm." 
 
 ' ' J . — Do you not suppose that the Southern 
 leaders who induce secession must shudder 
 sometimes in contemplating its consequences?" 
 
 ' ' S. — No, not at all. People can always find 
 somebody or something to blame rather than 
 themselves or their actions for failures and dis- 
 asters. Our people do not seem to understand 
 anything of the nature and cause of this revolu- 
 tion. We seceded because the North refused 
 to support the Constitution. We seceded in 
 order to retain it. The people seem to think 
 that we broke up the Constitution because it 
 was found to be useless. This Legislature 
 abuses Governor Brown because he wishes to 
 save the Constitution. He is old-fashioned, 
 yet he knows what he is about. Truth is, he 
 has more sense than the whole Legislature." 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 69 
 
 On August i, 1863, Stephens, while on a 
 visit to his brother L,inton, at Sparta, spoke by- 
 request of the people in the Baptist church. I 
 put down afterwards some of his words: 
 
 " The country is in great peril, and matters 
 will become worse before they are better; but 
 there is not adequate reason for the great de- 
 spondency now pressing upon the public mind. 
 The fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson was a 
 misfortune. The fall of Charleston and Rich- 
 mond would be another, but the former was 
 not sufficient, and the latter would not be suf- 
 ficient to discourage us. There is but one 
 question to ask ourselves — that is, Are we 
 determined to be free ? If we are, subjuga- 
 tion is impossible. Charleston, Savannah, and 
 Augusta were all in possession of the British 
 during the War of Independence. Our Con- 
 gress was driven from Philadelphia, as that 
 city was long in their possession. The taking 
 of cities is but a small matter towards subju- 
 gating a people who are determined not to be 
 subjugated. Frederick the Great of Prussia 
 
170 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 was driven back and forth over his dominions 
 seven years, having his capital sacked twice, 
 but resolving not to quit, he succeeded, com- 
 ing out of the war more powerful than when 
 he went into it. 
 
 "We do not lack courage. The Yankees 
 predicted that we would have enough of that ; 
 but they predicted, also, that we would be lack- 
 ing in patience. 
 
 ' ' The idea of reconstruction is now obso- 
 lete. Some persons dream of it, especially the 
 speculatives. I see that Mr. Vallandigham 
 dreams of it also. It is a dream, and is like 
 that of the Indian who trusts that when he 
 dies his hunting ground and dogs will bear 
 him company in the world beyond. 
 
 " I loved the old Union. If States Rights 
 had been respected, as ought to have been 
 done, we would have been the greatest, freest 
 nation on earth. We should be so if they 
 were acknowledged now. When South Caro- 
 lina seceded she ought to have been allowed 
 to go in peace. If it had been best for her 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 171 
 
 she ought to have done so. If it had not been 
 best, she would have returned, just as small 
 bodies, on the principle of universal attraction, 
 will return to the greater. It is vain to hope 
 for the intervention of France or Great Brit- 
 ain." t 
 
 On March 4, 1868, I went to Crawfordville 
 in response to a letter from Stephens on the 
 eve of his departure from Richmond after the 
 Fortress Monroe Conference, asking me to do 
 so. I find on reference to my MMS. that I 
 recorded less of his conversation then than I 
 had been supposing during the years since 
 gone by. The following are some of these : 
 
 "The objects of this mission are misunder- 
 stood by the people. It was to obtain a truce 
 if possible. Blair had stated in Richmond 
 that President Lincoln was very much pressed 
 by the Radicals at home to employ the most 
 extreme measures with whom they termed the 
 rebels, and that now, as the relations with 
 France were becoming embarrassing, it would 
 be a good time to make overtures to the United 
 
172 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 States Government on the basis of the Monroe 
 Doctrine. I believed that Blair was sincere 
 and that much good could be done by the ex- 
 ercise of prudence. I urged Mr. Davis to 
 keep the matter a profound secret, and to send 
 some one from Richmond whose absence 
 would not be noticed, and I suggested Judge 
 Campbell. He answered that the commission 
 must consist of more than one. I then sug- 
 gested to add Tom Flourney, who at that time 
 was in Richmond. I was sent for afterwards 
 by the President, who said that the Cabinet 
 had agreed upon myself, Hunter, and Camp- 
 bell. I found that the appointment was al- 
 ready generally known in Richmond. Before 
 that I had advised the President to go himself; 
 but he declined, saying that President Lincoln 
 would refuse to meet him. I was reluctant to 
 go, because the President sympathized little 
 with the object of the mission. But I con- 
 cluded to do so, because it would have been 
 mentioned to my injury if I did not, and be- 
 cause of even a slight hope of doing some 
 <?ood." 
 
COI,. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 73 
 
 He then spoke of General Grant, whom he 
 met for the first time while on the way to the 
 conference, and of whose qualities and pros- 
 pective fortunes he formed high opinions. 
 Among very many other things said in his 
 praise were these : 
 
 " I was much impressed by Grant, noticing 
 particularly his consideration of his subal- 
 terns. It is a great mistake to suppose that 
 he is not popular with his army. He is much 
 beloved by them. His quarters were in a 
 double log house. I noticed that when he 
 spoke to an orderly he always concluded with 
 about such words as these, 'Do this as quickly 
 as you can, will you, orderly ?' Grant is ex- 
 ceedingly anxious for peace. He greatly dis- 
 likes the idea of a military despotism. He 
 wants peace, and with it, liberty for the people. 
 
 ' ' I strongly preferred a truce without terms, 
 leaving the States to adjust themselves as 
 would suit their interests. If it was to their 
 interests to reunite, they would do so. 
 
 " President Lincoln and Seward admitted 
 
174 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 complications with France, but they did not 
 expect us to speak publicly of that matter. 
 They insisted on reconstruction. I urged 
 Lincoln to reconsider his conclusion that an 
 agreement for reconstruction must precede a 
 truce ; he answered that he would, but that he 
 did not think that he could change his mind. 
 I insisted upon States Rights. Seward put 
 the case, supposing that Louisiana should 
 secede and be united to France. I answered 
 that he took an extreme case, but if France 
 would treat her better than the Union it would 
 be right to do so. 
 
 ' ' President Davis received the report of the 
 commissioners in the wrong spirit. I urged 
 that something might yet be done ; but he 
 would do nothing, and was inclined to com- 
 plain of the terms in which the note was writ- 
 ten by the commissioners to Grant. We are 
 at sea. The President seems determined, if 
 he can not succeed on his plan, to ruin every- 
 thing. 
 
 " I do not believe that Europe has any no- 
 
COI,. RICHARD MALCOIvM JOHNSTON 1 75 
 
 tion of interfering. Momentous events will 
 soon transpire. We shall know by tlte sum- 
 mer solstice what is to be. I hope that among 
 the probabilities, ruin may be averted ; but 
 unless our policy changes it can not be." 
 
 I was much surprised, on looking up my 
 manuscripts, which I had not regarded for 
 many years, that I did not record what I well 
 remember to have heard Stephens say of a 
 portion of President Lincoln's remarks at this 
 conference. During the interchange of 
 thoughts upon the subject of slavery, Mr. 
 Lincoln, in his own peculiar manner of ap- 
 parently unstudied speech, as if he were indif- 
 ferent whether the words he spoke were re- 
 garded as expressing his sentiments, said 
 about as follows, addressing himself familiarly 
 to Stephens : 
 
 "Mr. Stephens, if I lived in the South — 
 although of course a man of my views about 
 slavery wouldn't be allowed to live there — 
 Still, if I did, it seems to me that I would 
 counsel owners of slaves to decide upon some 
 
176 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 time when they would be emancipated : say- 
 twenty years, thirty years, or even fifty years. 
 But to fix upon some certain date for which 
 they could make timely preparation . ' ' 
 
 Entirely clear interpretation of these words 
 can not be given, but they seem to indicate 
 that if the South would agree to reunion, favor- 
 able, even liberal, treatment of the slavery 
 question would have been accorded in so far 
 as it might be influenced by President Lincoln. 
 He exhibited during the conference earnest 
 desire for the composition of existing dis- 
 putes. I have seen it stated that he proposed 
 to the commissioners that, after writing upon 
 a blank page the word ' ' Reunion ' ' they 
 might insert the rest. I have no idea that 
 this is true. Nothing like it was said by 
 Stephens to me, with whom he held closest 
 intimacy. 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 77 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Mr. Stephens had resolved that in the 
 event of failure of the Confederate cause he 
 would not avoid capture by the United States 
 Government. Providing himself with what 
 amount of gold he could get for allowable 
 extra expenses in prison he remained at home, 
 awaiting those who were to be sent for his 
 arrest. During his imprisonment at Fortress 
 Monroe he kept a diary, intended only for his 
 brother Linton and myself. It contained 
 some two hundred pages, with observations 
 partly upon the occurrences of his life therein 
 and upon philosophical and literary subjects. 
 This MS. is now in possession of a member of 
 his family. 
 
 It seemed an unbecoming severity in plac- 
 ing so frail a man in a low, damp room. 
 Therein he contracted the rheumatism, which 
 
178 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 remained throughout the rest of his life. 
 When I met him upon his release several 
 months afterwards he had grown quite gray 
 and otherwise aged much. 
 
 Upon his return he determined to exert his 
 whole influence in counseling his people in 
 the way of reconstruction. He sorely re- 
 gretted the death of President Lincoln , regard- 
 ing it a great calamity to the whole country, 
 particularly the South. It was but an added 
 great misfortune that his successor was a 
 Southern man. Him the Southern people 
 never liked, and the policy of reconstruction 
 adopted by him they detested. He made the 
 mistake not uncommon with men in his con- 
 dition of bestowing amnesty upon the great 
 body of Confederates and withholding it from 
 its leaders. In this he showed that he was 
 entirely ignorant of the Southern people. 
 Imprisonment of those whom they had most 
 trusted, both in peace and in war, alienated 
 them further and further from him, who had 
 vainly expected to form a party for himself by 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 79 
 
 such action. The exclusion from C jngress of 
 such men as Herschel Johnston and Alexander 
 Stephen, and the acceptance of such as Foster , 
 Blodget and his likes could not but serve to 
 exasperate a brave people . Yet , while Toombs , 
 defiant to the last, kept himself aloof, Stephens 
 entered heartily into the midst of existing con- 
 ditions, counseling compliance with the inevi- 
 table, and endeavored to make all that was 
 possible out of it. He could not ally himself, 
 as some did, with the Republican party ; but 
 he could commend patience that he practiced 
 himself. 
 
 The following is the last extract that I shall 
 make from these MSS. They record a portion 
 of the conversation had with him December 
 4, 1866: 
 
 ' ' Nothing could have been worse than se- 
 cession as a means of obtaining redress for the 
 violated rights of the South. Congress was 
 against Lincoln, and would have rendered any 
 unlawful action nugatory. We were in the 
 fort and the enemy outside. We left it in order 
 
180 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 to fight him outside. We have been conquered, 
 and are now trying to get back into the fort 
 and can not. We are like a man who had a 
 gun, while his enemy was unarmed, and who 
 gave up his weapon. 
 
 ' ' I used to have great confidence in the good 
 sense of the people, but I begin to fear that 
 they are not competent to cope with the great 
 difficulties before them. The white people of 
 the South are slow in being brought to see the 
 necessity of doing justice to the negro. The 
 education of the latter is now absolutely nec- 
 essary in order to make him useful to the white 
 man. If we had risen at once to the full view 
 of all the necessities attending the emancipa- 
 tion of the negro, we should have been in the 
 Union long ago. It is hard to get our people 
 to the point where they can do the negro full 
 justice. I see it stated that General Grant has 
 been advising the President to urge upon the 
 South the adoption of the Constitutional 
 Amendments. 
 
 ' ' I think Grant is in favor of the Amend- 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON l8l 
 
 ments. He is an unsophisticated man . * He 
 does not see the consequences of the Amend- 
 ments. He believes that the enfranchisement 
 of the Southern whites would soon follow its 
 adoption." 
 
 ' ' J . — Do you not suspect now that he is 
 beginning to grow ambitious ?" 
 
 " S. — General Grant is combative. We 
 made the mistake of not cultivating him. He 
 is destined to play an important par* in the 
 future history of this country. ' ' 
 
 I saw much of Stephens during his last 
 years in Congress. He often appealed to me, 
 in tones that were not easy to resist, to come 
 to his rooms in the National Hotel on Satur- 
 day and remain until Sunday evening. This, 
 often inconvenient as it was, I did about once 
 a month. On Saturday night at the coming 
 in of other guests we had whist, of which he 
 was more fond than any person I ever knew. 
 He and I were never partners, and had not 
 been in twenty years. I always was surprised 
 at the enjoyment in the game by one who 
 
1 82 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 could become so angrily excited by a misplay 
 of his partner. Many years ago, at one of 
 these on my part, his language was so offen- 
 sive that, throwing down my hand, among 
 other things I declared that I would never 
 again be his partner in the game. 
 
 At ten o'clock, after the departure of the 
 other guests, he and I withdrew into his bed- 
 room, where, after being undressed and lifted 
 into bed by Aleck, a negro who had taken the 
 place left by Harry's death, his pipe was 
 lighted, and generally I read aloud to him 
 until he fell asleep. 
 
 Sundays he had eight or ten guests to meet 
 me to dinner in his front room. To my re- 
 monstrances against the needless expenditure, 
 which he could not afford to undergo, he 
 would answer about thus: "Ah, well! we 
 can not be together much longer." Later in 
 the afternoon I left to return home. It hap- 
 pened very often that immediately after my 
 departure, he wrote to me, sometimes a long 
 letter, telling me of his gratification at my 
 
COI,. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 83 
 
 visit and the sadness of bidding me good-bye. 
 
 Several times he had long, dangerous spells 
 of sickness, and not unfrequently suspected 
 that he was near his end. During these sea- , 
 sons I went, at his pathetic request, to Wash- 
 ington at night, returning in time for my school 
 next morning. Times not to be counted have 
 I heard him crying, with the feeling and voice 
 of a child, at being left alone in the world, 
 without parents, brothers, or sisters; indeed, 
 of all persons whom I have ever known, his 
 natural affections seemed to me the most pas- 
 sionate. 
 
 There are many things that I could tell of 
 how he was beset and, as it were, robbed, dur- 
 ing those years in Washington, by beggars, 
 from the well-dressed to the squalid — beggars 
 of all sorts , kinds , sexes , and conditions . From 
 these he was absolutely without power to tear 
 himself away, and so his pockets, in a brief 
 while, often were emptied to a few dollars or 
 cents, which, as he used to say, he would keep 
 for seed. 
 
184 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 At his Sunday dinners, besides several of the 
 Georgia members, I sometimes met distin- 
 guished officials — Davis, of the Supreme Court ; 
 General Ewing, Senators Beck and Blackburn, 
 and others. He was a good host, learning 
 easily how to accommodate himself to every 
 individual . 
 
 On my arrival one Saturday morning he was 
 preparing to take a party of several Georgians 
 for a call upon President Grant. He and the 
 rest persuaded me to go along with them. 
 In a few minutes after being shown to a room, 
 wherein was a long table, the President entered, 
 and after introductions, sat down at the head 
 of the table and spoke not a word. His face 
 seemed somewhat flushed, his eyes dull, and 
 his linen collar rather drooping. Stephens 
 addressed several observations, which, after 
 lifting his eyes from their recumbent position, 
 Grant answered briefly, and let down his eyes 
 again. The only remark of Stephens which 
 seemed to interest him, and that only slightly, 
 was an allusion made by the former to a very 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 85 
 
 severe criticism upon him that had appeared 
 that morning in the New York Sun. Grant, 
 bringing his eyes to a level, answered in about 
 these words : ' ' No ; I never read anything in 
 that paper. The proprietor, shortly after my 
 coming into office, applied to me for an office. 
 I didn't give it to him because I didn't think 
 he was fit for it. Ever since then his paper 
 has been abusing me; but I never open its 
 pages." 
 
 Stephens did not take very well my rather 
 teasing him for the President's silence and 
 apparent indifference to all his callers. With 
 slight petulance he answered: " Grant is just 
 as I've frequently told people — he never talks 
 unless he has something to say! ' ' 
 
 I could not but smile at a reply that I 
 thought I could make with some aptness, but 
 I said no more because it was evident that he 
 felt rather disappointed. 
 
 He survived his inauguration as Governor 
 but a few weeks. It seemed fit that his last 
 official act was signing the pardon of a con- 
 
1 86 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 vict. The remnants of the hundreds of thou- 
 sands gotten by his work was about enough 
 for the payment to Linton's estate of the sum 
 advanced to start his journal in the Greeley 
 campaign. 
 
 I thought it as well to record some of the 
 parts of the many conversations we had 
 together during the war, a very small portion 
 of which I wrote down at the time of their 
 occurrence. During that whole period he 
 suffered often with much intensity from appre- 
 hensions of results of a revolution unwisely 
 brought on and conducted. In time he lost 
 almost all confidence in President Davis, re- 
 garding him as narrow, shortsighted, willful, 
 arrogant, and resentful, long before it came, 
 doomed to entire failure. Very many things 
 he said to me privately on several matters in 
 his public policy, and other things which I 
 did not record then and which I will not 
 record now. 
 
 After the return from Fortress Monroe, it 
 behooving him to get some sort of income for 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 87 
 
 the maintenance of his very expensive lamily, 
 not being able to follow the circuit as before, 
 he accepted an offer from an agent of the 
 United States Publishing Company, of Phila- 
 delphia, to write a history, which he styled 
 "A History of the War Between the States." 
 Its success as a selling book was great, bring- 
 ing him perhaps, if any, only a little less than 
 a hundred thousand dollars. This money, 
 like the first that came and continued to come 
 from other sources, went in the way of keep- 
 ing to the last as from the first, in uncounted 
 bestowment of charities, and keeping a house 
 ever open at all hours, day and night, to visit- 
 ors of every degree, from near and from afar, 
 known and unknown, heard of and unheard 
 of. It was really pathetic to his nearest people 
 and friends, even a matter of some resentment 
 now. As some expressed it, he was eaten up 
 by appeals for help which, although in far the 
 greatest cases were little meritorious, he could 
 no more turn away from than a mother could 
 endure without feeling the moanings of her 
 sick child. 
 
1 88 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 
 His household continued to the last as be- 
 fore. His farm negroes rented at small cost 
 the land, and his man-servant, Harry, and his 
 family attended to affairs at the mansion. The 
 three persons most dear to him were his bro- 
 ther Iyinton, his nephew William Stephens 
 (son of his brother John), and Harry. The 
 deaths of all of those, particularly Linton, the 
 pride of his life, broke his heart. On a visit 
 I paid a year or so afterwards, he was in great 
 prostration of spirit. Among many other 
 things, I remember his saying, while speaking 
 of his death, about thus : " If I could have 
 it as I wish, I would prefer being carried alone 
 to the grave by the negroes with torches and 
 be buried at night." Yet the necessity of 
 bracing himself against utter despondency, and 
 what was as urgent, that of continuing his 
 hospitalities and charities, forced him to re- 
 enter politics, of his subsequent career in 
 which it is not needful to speak. He secured 
 the nomination for Governor with a satisfac- 
 tion that he did not express to others — indeed 
 
COL. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 1 89 
 
 endeavoring, I suspected, to keep it ov- of his 
 own consicousness. He asked me to come to 
 Washington on the day of his departure, and 
 be the last to take leave of him. After shak- 
 ing hands with all, among whom I am sure 
 there were at least twenty of the hotel ser- 
 vants, every one of whom got a parting gift, 
 we entered a carriage, and were driven over 
 several streets, his face indicating profoundest 
 sadness as he looked, knowing it was for the 
 last time, upon buildings very familiar to him. 
 As we passed one of these, on my asking what 
 it was, he answered, "That is the jail ! Do 
 you know that it makes me sick at heart to 
 look at a jail ? The misery endured there from 
 false charges, neglect, from despotic treatment 
 and myriad forms of wrong and outrage, make 
 me sick in my heart to think of. ' ' Among 
 other things he said : "I ought not to have 
 accepted this nomination. I tell you I'm 
 worn out. I sometimes feel like I wish, and 
 that I ought to pray, that Gartrell [General 
 L,ucius Gartrell, his opponent] would beat me. ' ' 
 
190 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Ill this there was no doubt in his mind that 
 he deluded himself. His defeat would have 
 mortified him more than anything that ever 
 occurred to his personal history. 
 
 Regarding it from every point of view, the 
 being of Alexander Stephens seemed to me the 
 most unique of all with which I have been 
 acquainted. Extremes were more distant from 
 each other, with many various means between. 
 The wise man that he became kept within 
 him very much of the little child. His native 
 irascibility showed itself in middle age and old 
 as in childhood and youth. An offense, or 
 what he took to be such, roused instant resent- 
 ment with desire to fight. He challenged to 
 the duel consecutively Herschel (afterwards 
 Governor) Johnston and Benjamin (after- 
 wards United States Senator) Hill. His 
 pride, perhaps rather I should say his vanity, 
 was as exquisitely sensitive to slight, real or 
 apparent, as his own suffering body was to 
 a new, sudden pain. Yet of all men he was 
 the most ready to forgive an enemy. 
 
warn 
 
 ■</..'',.