The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1870-01-13

DAVIS AID FooTE.

are commended to special attention, be-
cause the colonel il vOuched for as having
been participant" In the scenes he des-
cribes.
We have a natural interest In all such
things, and some curiosity about Thorpe's
mode of handling them. They we're not
In his line when he was floating about
here, a quarter of a century ago, mixed
adventurer and Bohemian, noted for the
aIacrity with which, as his patrons soon
discovered he was always ON hand to take
an order to do anything-paint picture,
trade for a horse or write an editorial
1t made no difference in his readiness to
undertake, and not often in the results of
his work, whether he knew anything or
not of the subject. An anecdote is told of
him, at a time when his pen was his
bread-Winner, before his hypothetical pos
session of that sword, the right to wear
which somewhere is the supposed basis of
his claim to be entitled Colonel" 1t
was about 1915, when the famous free
trade report of Robert j. Walker, from
the Treasury Department, was, by zeal
Gus tariff Wing, put into his hand to be
cut up. ''Tom," as he was familiarity
called, stuck for an hour on the first page,
over the mystical words lad valorem. -
A convenient Office boy helped him over
that bar, and once ahoat, he went on
smashing Robert j. Walker pretty much
as he now does Jefferson Davis. He was
not appreciated, or perhaps too well APP
preciated in the Southwest, and left here
about twenty years ago, only to make
casual temperance as one of the camp
followers of Butler, in 1862. prowling
about in small offices, but still with so
little success, that he found no induce
ment to remain after his patron left
Naturally, we are curious to know what
Tom Thorpe could possibly know of the
men or politics of Mississippi, or how
make up for utter unacquaintance with
either at any time and are particularly
interested to learn how he accounts for
his personal acquaintance with and parti-
cipation in the excited political contest be-
tween Foote and Davis in Mississippi
That election took place in 1851, and
Thorpe, by the best records we can get at,
must have been thousand miles off when
that election took place, in addition to
the fact that if he had been in Mississippi
he would have expounded its political
phases about as lucidly as he could the
Nebular theory or the differential calcu-
lus. Thorpe's forte never lay in nara
tive, and his memory is wretchedly bad.
In these "reminiscences about the cleo
ton of 1851 in Mississippi, not only was
he not there participant, but things
he describes were not done or said there
at that time, or at any other time. He
appears to have picked up lot of loose
stories of incidents, told, on no sufficient
authority, to have happened at widely dis
tant places, and many years apart. These
he has misconceived and misrepresented,
inverted them in the order of time, and
mixed them up with tales of things that
never happened at all and having worked
them into grotesque sensational tableau,
to make them sell the better, has per-
suaded the purchaser to believe that all
these things he, "Col. T. B. Thorpe"
like the Plus Eneas, saw, and was a great
part of them himself
He tells us that in the year - there
was an election for Governor of Missis-
sippi, in which Henry S. Foote encount-
cred and defeated Jefferson Davis, and
drove him into long political obscur-
ity," under these circumstances.
Foote was at the time of this nomina-
ton of Davis, :" literally an exile from the
State of Mississippi" He had taken so
decided a stand against the Disunionists
that he was politically ruined, and had
" literally fed from the State-a political
Micawber, awaiting for something to turn
up"
jefferson Davis is represented by
Thorpe to have been then "a young man
who had Just reached early manhood, and
outside of limited number of people in
his immediate locality, unknown. At
the same time, according to Thorpe,
Davis was also the head of a powerful
organization which nominated him as the
party candidate for Governor, without
opposition, and looked upon his election
as a certainty.
In this crisis, FoOte suddenly reappear-
ed Foote made brilliant, eloquent and
daring campaign canvass; Foote was
elected over Davis, and Davis was conse-
quently consigned, by Gov. Foote and
the people of Mississippi to a political
grave, from which all his efforts to rise
for ten years were abortive.
All this Thorpe tells as something he
saw and knows yet there is not a mate
rial fact or date or assertion that is not in
some way mistated.
The candidate against whom Foote
took the field in that election was not
Jefferson Davis, but Gen. John A Quit
man. The canvass was made on the
question of the degree of support which
should be given by the State to the Com
promise measures of 1850. Secession
was not known in the canvass. General
Qnitman was more decided in opposition
than his party, and seeing failure before
him, declined in the midst of the race.
Jefferson Davis was taken up late in the
canvass as man of less pronounced sent
iments, to keep the party together. There
ming through Thorpe's analysis of the
election, and his political deductions are
all assuredly wrong.
So far from having been an exile re-
turning suddenly to State which had
5anished him, Foote was at the
hight of all the personal popularity he
ever enjoyed in the State. He was, when
he ran for Governor, Senator in Congress
from Mississippi. The occultation of
Davis by that election was very brief A
few months afterwards found him in the
Cabinet of the new President Pierce,
whenceforward his career has at least no
shadows of obscurity. Before that time,
too, this young man" was beyond rival
~, the foremost man in Mississippi. But
from that date it was that Foote himself
began to wane out of Mississippi favor.
Then commenced his pilgrimage from
State to State, and his shiftings from one
party to another, importunate for Office
ed up a furious Confederate Tennessee
member of the Congress at Richmond,
from which he passed over one midnight
through the lines into Washington on
another Micawber search for +" something