High Twelve

A Southern Gentleman
and Brother

The Southerners are the most hospitable people in the world. Away back in colonial times the planter sent his colored servant at nightfall to the crossroads to watch for travelers and to bring them to his spacious mansion, where, provided they proved to be gentlemen, it was impossible to wear out their welcome. Our friends south of Mason & Dixon's Line have never lost this admirable trait. It is as marked today as ever. I was at Richmond at the unveiling of the Lee statue and mingled with the enthusiastic crowd, drawing many interesting experiences from those who had worn the gray. When I left for home, all my pockets were filled with cards, most of them with directions how to reach certain residences in the South. I hope my good friends will forgive me for breaking so many promises, for truth to tell, had I set out to keep them, I should have been still at it. There's no getting away from those fellows.

William Gilmore Simms, the distinguished novelist of South Carolina, came north directly after the close of the Civil War to ask for Masonic help in rebuilding the lodges that had been destroyed during General Sherman's march to the sea. Funds were showered upon him to that extent that the moisture filled his eyes and his voice broke when he tried to express his thanks. His library, -- the largest in the South, -- and his magnificent home had gone up in fire and smoke. But he was not embittered and accepted the fortunes of war philosophically, as did all real Southerners, seeing the Hand of Heaven in the sweep of events whose issue was the best for our whole country.

I became quite intimate with Simms, when he spent a few days in Trenton, N.J. Before his departure for the South, he notified me that I must make him a visit in his South Carolina home, or rather what was left of it. I accepted conditionally, impressing upon him that my visit would have to he brief. I had in mind two or three days, or at most a week.

"What is the shortest time with which you will be satisfied I asked. The gray-haired "old Roman" meditatively chewed and smoked his cigar. (He always chewed one-half to a frazzle.) Finishing his mental calculations, he replied:

"Well, if you are really pressed for time, I shall try to cut it down to six weeks, but not a single day less. That will not be a visit but simply a call, for my neighbors will be insulted if they are neglected."

No finer type of the old time Southern gentleman can be found today that Hon. James Gordon of Mississippi, in which state he was born at, the close of the year 1833. Possessed of ample means, his charities have been boundless and at this time are limited only by his financial ability, and I suspect that that does not always restrain his benefactions. He could name but a fractional part of those whom he has thus benefited, and nothing could induce him to specify a single one of them, Mr. Gordon was one of the first to enter the service of the Southern Confederacy. He armed and equipped a company of cavalry, known as Company B, Jeff Davis Legion, and served with conspicuous bravery under General J. E. B. Stuart in Virginia. At the close of the year he returned home with the commission of Colonel and authority to raise a regiment of cavalry. He promptly organized the 4th Mississippi cavalry, and when it was depleted by losses, it was recruited from other commands and became the 2nd Mississippi Cavalry. This noted regiment served under Brigadier-General Frank C. Armstrong, General W. H. Jackson's Division, with Major-General Van Dorn's Corps until he was killed in 1863. It then passed under that natural military leader and terrific fighter, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and was with him through all his whirlwind campaigns in Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, the force surrendering to General James H. Wilson, the captor of Jeff Davis, at Gainesville in the closing days of the war.

Mr. Gordon was a student at La Grange College, Alabama, but left the institution in his sophomore year on a tour of Europe with his parents. Returning home, he entered the sophomore class of the University of Mississippi at Oxford and was graduated in 1855. Knowing that Mr. Gordon was a Freemason before the war and stands today high in the order, I asked him to tell me some of the incidents in which he had taken part, or that had come under his observation and which bore upon Freemasonry. Among those related were the following:

"I was returning from Europe, in January, 1865, whither I had been sent on a secret mission by the Confederate Government. Our blockade runner entered the harbor of Wilmington, N. C., on the night of the Fall of Fort Fisher and was captured. I, with others, was taken to Old Point Comfort and kept on a prison ship, which was anchored on the Rip Raps for several weeks. The weather was bitterly cold and as I was just from the Bahamas, I suffered severely. We had no beds and had to lie on the bare floor in the hold of the prison ship. My feet were badly frost-bitten and my condition became so dreadful that I felt I must die unless relief soon came to me. In my utter misery, I made the Masonic sign of distress one day to a sailor and was thrilled when I saw him instantly recognize it. No brother could have done more than he. He sent to the surgeon, got the needed remedies and rubbed my feet vigorously each day until happily I was fully relieved. But for his kindness I should have been crippled for life.

"In October, 1872, I visited some friends in Brunswick County, Virginia and took part in a fox chase. My mount was a thoroughbred, which took all the fences and ditches with ease and made me the winner of the brush. One of my steed's leaps was so prodigious that my back was violently wrenched and a displaced muscle pressed on the sciatic nerve. I started for home the next day, traveling in the berth of a sleeper. At Knoxville, Tennessee, the car had to be changed, and I was carried into a hotel on the mattress upon which I had been sleeping. I noticed the badges of Knight Templars on some gentlemen standing near and gave them the proper sign. Several of them ran forward, pushed aside the servants, took charge of the mattress and carried me with the utmost tenderness to a bed in the hotel.

"The joke of this incident was that all these good Samaritans were ex-Confederates and believed I was a well known Federal colonel of the same name as myself. They laughed when I made known. the truth, but it was impossible for them to be any kinder than they had been from the first. I was confined to my bed for two weeks and they were days of the rarest and sweetest pleasure. I had wines, cigars and a roomful of genial friends. Many of the finest ladies in Knoxville visited me, bringing tokens of sympathy, kind words, flowers and dainty dishes to tempt my appetite, which didn't need any tempting, for I was not sick, only hurt.

"When I was strong enough to travel, a brother of the Order was sent to see me safely home. They would have paid all my expenses had I permitted but fortunately I was not in need of financial help. The Reverend Dwight Witherspoon, a prominent Presbyterian minister and an old University friend, chanced to be on the boat and asked that he might take charge of me, but the Knights assured him there was no occasion for his kind service and he need not neglect any of his engagements. He wrote a letter to Mrs. Gordon telling her of my mishap and slyly adding that he never suspected I had half so many friends.

"There are many other pleasant reminiscences that I could give regarding Freemasonry, all of which help to show what a grand thing it is and how ready it is at all times to hasten to the relief of a brother in distress."

Mr. Gordon is a successful planter and possesses marked literary ability. He, is the author of "The Old Plantation and Other Poems," a little volume of verse, which has attracted favorable notice in many quarters. He has been a valuable contributor to magazines, especially field notes to Forest & Stream, American Field, London Field and similar publications. He has always been deeply interested in educational matters and everything that aids in the moral and. material development of the State. He is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the University of Mississippi at Okolona and was appointed United States Senator, December 27th, 1909 serving until the 22nd of the following February, when the Legislature elected a successor to Anselm J. McLaurin, deceased.

It is only truth to say that Senator Gordon became at once the most popular member of that august body of lawmakers. His old time courtesy which never forsook him, his genial nature, his glowing hospitality his quaint wit and winning personality made warm friends of all with whom he came in contact. The majority of visitors to the Senate gallery went thither to see him and to listen to his words, but he had been appointed only to fill the gap caused by death and when his successor was chosen, he rose at his seat and made his farewell speech to his Brother Senators. The following account from the Congressional Record:

"MR. GORDON. Mr. President. I am informed that the senatorial deadlock in Mississippi has been broken and that we shall soon have Mr. Leroy Percy to take my place in the Senate. As I am about to retire from the Senate, I wish to express my feelings and sentiments in regard to my brief experience here. I did not expect today to make a speech, notwithstanding I found after I got into the Senate Chamber that some of the newspapers had stated I would do so. I wish you to understand that I am not making a set speech, and I have not written any such poetry as that ascribed to me by the newspapers this morning. [Laughter.]

I am guilty of one little act of poetry. I published a little book, which I have got hid away in the desk here and which I am going to give to the President of the Senate when I get through here, and probably he will have a worse opinion of me then than he had before. [Laughter.]

I will tell you how I came to be a United States Senator. I started when I was 5 years old. It took me a long while to get here, and I found it a very rugged road to travel; but I did get here. When I was a little chap about 5 years of age -- I will tell you a story, and you may tell your children, and you old fellows may tell your grandchildren -- I received as a present something like a map on pasteboard. I had this great Capitol as a picture at the top of it and squares with numbers on them. Those numbers represented all the passions that had escaped from Pandora's box. That map had marked on it all the temptations that would befall a youth growing up. It had a little teetotem, as it was called, in octagon shape, and it had numbers on it up to 8, on which to spin. My mother used to take me to her side.

If you should spin the teetotem and it went over the mark and got on a bad place in the square, that would be one of the bad passions; but if it escaped all those, and the teetotem got on the great Capitol of the United States, you would be in the United States Senate. I saw a great big fellow sitting up there in that stand. I wanted to know of ma if I would get there; and, God helping me, I got there yesterday. [Laughter.] She told me that if I would lead a clean life and form no bad habits I would be sure to get there. She never told a story in her life, and so I knew it would come true. In all my life, Senators, that thing has stuck to me, and every time I wanted to do wrong I saw one of those passions on that board; and that board has stood before my eyes from that day until today, though I have never made it public until Dow. I thought this was the place to do it.

Now, I wish to talk to you about our affairs in Mississippi, and so forth. I am a peculiar sort of a genius -- not much of a genius, either -- but I have got about a thimble full of common sense that I use occasionally, and I want to use it now to the best advantage.

I have had a varied life. I was born a multimillionaire, very unhappily, too, for I never saw one of them that was happy yet, and I never was happy myself until I got rid of my millions. The largest portion of them went to feed a large number of slaves that I unfortunately inherited and the rest I spent on my friends, like a gentleman should, and got rid of the encumbrance. [Laughter.]

I have been listening to speeches here very carefully, and the more I heard of the speeches the sorrier I felt for the millionaires. Thank God, I am not one any more. [Laughter.]

I heard the Senator from Arkansas [MR. DAVIS] the other day made a speech in which he abused Rockefeller. If there is a man in the United States that I am sorry for, it is Rockefeller. [Laughter.] I can not help sympathizing with a fellow that everybody is "cussing," and I never could see what they "cussed" him for unless because he had more money than anybody else. I do not think that is a fault, but it is a misfortune. I am sorry for a man in his condition, when he can not go out on the street and have even his little grandchildren walk in sight of him without threats that they will kill his little babes. I know the old fellow loves those children better than all the gold in his vaults; and he would not be a human being if he did not.

I am now going to say something that is unpopular in my section of the country. If I were an office seeker, I might be tempted to do wrong, but I always did say before my people what I thought was right. I think that Mr. Rockefeller is a good man, and I am going to think so until somebody shows me that he has done wrong. I see his employees very often and I never saw one of them who did not speak well of him. I am told that he never had a strike among his employees. I am told another thing, that he has given more millions -- I do not think much of him for that, because he had more than he had any use for; but he has given more of them -- to the poor, to charity, to the churches, to education, and to build hospitals all over the country where they are needed for his employees, where they can go when they are sick and be cared for, than has any other man. If anybody in the United States does not like that let them put it in their pipes and smoke it. [Laughter.] I have said it.

If my friend from Arkansas is opposed to what I call prosperity, I would like for Mr. Rockefeller to come down and run his pipes through Mississippi. He can go all over my land. [Laughter.] We shall be glad to have him. I used to pay 40 cents a gallon for oil to be burnt in my lamps. We are a little better off now, we are independent, because we have got electric lights, but we paid 40 cents a gallon for oil, and now we can get it for 10 cents a gallon. I do not know whether Mr. Rockefeller is the cause of the price coming down to 10 cents, but I think it will be that way in Arkansas if they get the conveniences that this pipe business proposes to give them, and I intend to vote for the pipes. That is all there is to it. [Laughter.]

Well, I want you to understand that I am a plain, blunt, old confederate soldier. I wore the gray and I fought and bled but I did not die, though I skedaddled frequently. [Laughter.] You understand that word "skedaddled." These old soldiers will understand it.

I had the honor during my service to capture some very prominent men in the northern army; among them was General Coburn, of Indianapolis, Ind. I captured one great big man who afterwards became General Shafter. He was then a major in the Nineteenth Michigan. He was a very poor shot, for I advanced with my saber, and he shot at me five times and never touched me. [Laughter.]

Now, I will tell another story. That fellow Shafter gave me an awful scare. When I approached him he handed me his pistol and said:

"You are welcome to it, but it will do you no good, as I have shot all the cartridges away, but over at the stockade near Franklin Tenn., I have a valise that has got a thousand cartridges in it, and you are welcome to those, if you will go after them."

I said:

"Thank you for the pistol; I will go after the cartridges."

In a few weeks later with Forest I went to Brentwood Station, captured the fort, and got the cartridges, but I never used them. I never fired a shot during the war. [Laughter.] That is a fact. I had just about enough to do to look after the men that I had engaged. That is the kind of a soldier I was. I told the other fellows to do the fighting. A great many of them stayed at home, and if I had been as smart as they were, I might have done the same. [Laughter.]

When the confederate soldier and the Union soldier-we called them "Yanks" in that day, and they called us "Johnnies" -- met they were always friendly. General Coburn asked permission of General Cheatham and General Polk to present me his sword for kindness extended to him when he was a prisoner of war. I carried him from near Franklin to Tullahoma, Tenn., and that sword was presented to me at Tullahoma. I sent it home with the petition that I had, with the signatures of General Cheatam and General Polk, and I have it yet; and when Grierson made his raid through my country and went by my father's house, my wife presented that order to his adjutant, and they gave us a guard and protected the house.

Another time a gentleman, who is living yet, by the name of Captain Brown, of the Seventh Illinois, and I had a little engagement. That Seventh Illinois was the meanest regiment I ever saw, for it never wanted to quit fighting. [Laughter.] The Seventh Illinois and the Second Iowa were the worst men I had to light; but I am glad when I see them alive today. When we meet, we shake hands; we are the best of friends, and Captain Brown of the Seventh Illinois and I have kept up a correspondence ever since the war. He is living at Leon, Iowa, now; and if you think I am not telling the fact you can call on him and prove it. As I have said, he is still living, and I hope he will live a hundred years, and that I will live to see him decently buried. [Laughter.]

Now, gentlemen, I did not get up here just to make you laugh. I want to tell you something that will not make you laugh. Down in Mississippi where I live, when I go home and go to my bed to sleep and dream sweet dreams of the hours I have spent in the Senate, I sleep with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. We have a problem to settle there that I want you to help me settle. I do not ask you to agree with me, but I ask you to talk with me and listen to what I have to say and, in kindness and friendship, I want to see Mason and Dixon's line obliterated from the map of the United States, and on it the words written "Our country." [Applause on the floor and in the galleries.]

I am tired of sectionalism. God knows I got enough of it fighting. I do not want any more of it. I do not want to hear any speech in the Senate or anywhere else that stirs up strife between the old soldiers or citizens who are not in the army.

I do want to bring about peace. I am an old confederate; you are old veterans, perhaps. We disagreed, and you were the victors; but we still think our generals were good men and our people were good people; and we do not dispute that yours were just as good as ours. Our people down South are not quarreling over these things at all. We have a few blab-mouthed fellows that always want to make a fuss, but they are not even worth "cussing." [Laughter.] So I will not use any invectives against them. We have them down South; but they are not my sort, and I have got more influence with the people than they have. I talk with them as I talk to you. I tell them the truth and the facts, and I tell them we have friends here, but they do not see things as we do.

We want you to think well of us, and there is no use of calling us traitors. They used to call George Washington a rebel and a traitor, but we do not think so ourselves; and I do not think any of us fellows were traitors, while we may have been rebels. I do not deny that. We thought we ought to fight for our States and we disagreed just on a little section in the Constitution -- a very small thing to fight about, but we made an awful big fuss when we got at it. [Laughter.]

Now, nobody can take away the glories of either side. A man had as well attempt to scale the ramparts of Jehovah and pluck from heaven's diadem God's brightest star as to snatch the laurel from the brow of the conqueror or the conquered that stood under the apple tree of Appomattox. They go together; they are all famous; and there were good men on all sides. They-disagreed, and they fought for it; but when one side conquered and the other was conquered, we took our oaths of allegiance, and I can hold up my hand before high heaven and before this Senate today and say I have never violated that oath that I took to be a good citizen of the United States, and I never knew of a soldier of the confederacy violating that obligation.

This is my father's house. I am proud to be in it. I am proud to be associated today with the men whom I see around me. I have read the papers and I have heard you all abused and censured, but I find that this is the finest working body of men with whom I have ever been associated. I had no idea of the amount of work that was incumbent upon a man who occupied a seat in this Senate. If he does his duty, he has a great amount of labor to perform for the benefit of his country -- of our country. I know no North, no South, no East, no West; but love my country, every part the best.

I love Mississippi because it is my home. A man always loves his home a little more than any other place. I love the particular spot where I live better than any other spot, and you do the same. We have there ties of friendship and love and everything that we have not anywhere else.
I come to you to talk of friendship and of love for one another. My religion is the eleventh commandment of Christ, when He said, "A new commandment I give unto you; that ye love one another." That is what I want to bring about here; that is my object in standing here today to talk to you as I do. I want to implant in you, just as it is in my heart, a growing love for the country I live in and the people I live with. I live with you all; you are not divided from me by Mason and Dixon's line, isothermal lines or any other plagued lines. [Laughter.] I want to wipe out all lines. That is my desire.

I want to see you join me in taking away the bayonets that are on those guns you sent down there to a race of people who came out of a jungle and are only partially civilized. We can not civilize them in a half a century. We were not civilized in a thousand years as we are today.

We do not want to hurt the negro. We all love the negro. I want to read you here a little sentiment of mine. I have got a little book here, and I want to read from it and show you just how we feel toward the negro. This is my poetry, but I will not bore you with much of it [Laughter], and, understand, I am not advertising it either; it is not on the market yet. [Laughter.]

THE OLD BLAK MAMMY

'Tir easy to wander olf from my theme
When traveling over the ground;
Thro' evergreen pastures across the bright stream
When in fancy I wander around,
And see in the picture which never grows older
Tho' age chills the blood which never grows colder.

In fancy I see those good negroes again
I loved in the days long ago,
As they worked in the fields of cotton and grain
And sung as they chopped with the hoe;
I can never forget, wherever I roam,
The scenes of my childhood and home.

The dear old black mammy so gentle and tender,
So faithful and true to her trust --
I loved her so well I dared not oifend her;
She is gone, yet I honor her dust,
From the wells of my heart arise tears of regret;
Tho' she sleeps 'neath the sod, I can never forget.

She was lovely to me in her colored bandanna
With which she turbaned her head;
Her songs were far sweeter than flute or piano
As she put me to sleep in my bed;
Her soft crooning voice I can never forget,
Like an angel in dreams, she comes to me yet.

Those are our sentiments. [Applause.] I think my friend BAILEY will testify to that. Excuse me for calling your name, Senator --

MR. BAILEY. That is all right.

MR. GORDON. I am not familiar here. They call me "Jim" down at home, and I hardly recognize myself when I am called by any other name. [Laughter.]

I want to read another little verse here to you fellows who do not love us:

We make our sorrows, the evils of fate,
When we take in our hearts malice, envy, and hate.
There is good in the world, and we may be sure
That a heart full of love will keep the soul pure.
When we cross Death's dark river and reach the bright
shore
Beloved ones will greet us and welcome us 0'er.
And while it is given to dwell on this earth,
No matter where may be the land of our birth,
Our duty to God is to do all we can,
Be true to our country, love' our fellow-man.

Those were my sentiments long before I came here or thought of coming here.

Now, gentlemen of the Senate, I have made these few remarks. I hope you will take them in, and I hope you will give consideration to them. I hope you will believe I am telling nothing but the truth; and I want to say in kindness and with regard for the Senator from Idaho [Mr. HEYBURN] that I want him to come down South and come to my cottage on the prairie and I will show him a little of the Southern life. When we get through we will come back here and we will walk into Statuary Hall, and what will I say to him? I will say, "Help me persuade the Senator from Indiana [Mr. BEVERIDGE] to take the Lew Wallace statue out of here and hide it away in some river or pond where it never can be seen any more, and build him a statue worthy of so great a man as Lew Wallace." [Laughter.] I have admired him ever since I read Ben Hur and ever since I heard of his getting a little out of temper at the battle of Shiloh. I reckon he must have had a good deal of human nature in him. He is a man that I was very fond of, and I am fond of his memory. I want to see him have a grand statue, and I will come up here and see them set it up. After they do that -- with the Senator from Idaho, after he has seen the South through my spectacles, and I will lend them to him on that occasion -- I want to come back here and stand before Grant's statue and stand before Lee's statue, and I will pull off my bat and hurrah for Grant, and, I think, he will holler, "Lee was a pretty good fellow," and he will say, "Hurrah for Lee." That is the kind of feeling I want to cultivate with him. [Laughter.]

I want you all to understand that what I say to the Senator from Idaho I say with no feeling in my heart against him. No; I love him. I love everybody. I am a happy man. I never let hate get into my heart, so as to make me unhappy. That is the reason I have lived and kept young, and retained my youth and beauty while you have gotten old and ugly -- some of you. [Laughter.] I have not lost my hair yet; but it is falling out, and I am going to leave here to keep from losing it altogether. I am going to leave here, for many of you have got all the hair off your heads, and I think I had better go home. [Laughter.]

Well, Senators, I am very glad that there is such a good man coming from Mississippi to take my place without the pleasure of having to kick me out.

Senators, I know I am infringing on your time. I did not intend to say as much as I have said, but I do hope I have said something to you that you will remember and ponder over; and when' the time comes that you think I told the truth, I want you to write to me and say, "Well, GORDON, old fellow, we will help you." That is what we want -- help. I want your capitalists to come down to Mississippi, and we will give them the right hand of fellowship) because we want to get your money. [Laughter.] We want you to erect our factories, build our railroads, and do everything else. We will give you all the opportunities you want, and we will be there with you, whether you run an oil machine or any other sort of a machine. [Laughter.] I do not care whether it is Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. Anybody else just so he has what we have not-the money to build up the State.

I thank you, gentlemen, for your attention.

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, I have heard a great many farewell addresses in my life; I read the most famous of them on Washington's Birthday, the 22nd of this month; but this is the most unique contribution to literature of this character which any of us have ever heard. It will live in the records of the Senate as probably the most remarkable address either of a new Senator coming in or of an old one going out that has ever been delivered. Its patriotism and good-fellowship, broad mindedness, charity, and humor will remain among the best recollections of those who heard it. I believe I express the sentiment of every one of the colleagues of our departing friend when I say that we deeply regret his going, and that no matter how wonderful a genius or great a statesman succeeds him he can never be Senator GORDON, of Mississippi. [Applause.]"