The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-04
OLD DAYS ON THE ALABAMA;
 GLORIES OF THE STEAMBOAT
Captain Luck" Wainwright Talks of Alabama
 River of Sixty Years Ago.
BY WILL T. STEPHAN.

7 Some forty-three years ago in the stormy and bloody year of 1863, Cap tain Luck" Wainwright, steamboat captain and familiar figure on the Alabama river in the golden halcyon days of the sidewheeler. when the in a Pullman. took his travel in a steamboat cabin. Some forty-three years ago. Captain Wainwright. think ing. he had served his time. retired to spend his days in peace and quiet from the lively and strenuous life of the Alabama River
 The steamboat captain was then strenuous life. How many thousand times he had gone up and down the Alabama River. how many times his boat had made ite headway up the Timbigbee and back to Mobile he could never tell, but he knew the Tombig- bee and the Alabama as a city man knows the way to his office. And in middle age he retired. But today in his eiRhty-eighth year. he Is strong and vigorous. with a liking for his neighbors' society and a hearty Inter est in the affairs of the outside world in the river town of Jackson. More over. his mind Is clear and certain and his memory Is tenacious of the full store that 1t holds.
 That is perhaps not such another link In all Alabama, which today reach es back over raore than a generation
 i,ringa forward the decayed glol of the Alabama River as does this memory of Captain Wainwright. He even joins together Pioneer Alabama and Twentieth Century Alabama. He Is the living embodiment of perhaps the most picturesque chapter in all the lift of Alabama
 The veteran today after his forty odd years retirement, takes his ease meets his friends and talks of the days when the sidewheeler was king of inland transportation. What mar vellous store of history Is the mem. ury of the cid man. In his day all that was vital, all that was political. all that was commercial, all that was so- ctai, touched and was affected by the great highway of the State. the Ala bama River. It was the center of tht States activity.
 Planter, merchant, emigrant. social, slave trader and his ,unhappy waraHs politician statesman, all passed up ana down the Alabama river and knew the steamboat captain as the steamboat cautain knew them. It is all In the ashes of the past The chapter is ftn- ished, the final word has been writ ten. Time and humanity have burn cd into other things.
  Clarke county home brings the past up to the present. One talks to him and the whole thing Is but as yester- day. William R. King, VicesPresfdent of the United States only yesterday, one might say, took trip up the river and charmed everyone aboard by the grace of his person and the courtliness of his manners. Dixon H. Lewis, huge of body and huge of brain. went down from Montgomery and two of his slaves helped him off the boat at Lowndes county landing.
 The people were still talking about the visit of Henry Clay through Ala bama up the river. Captain Vain wright was with him. The boat was stopped at all the principal landings that the people might give him a re- ception and hear the great Commoner make one of his wonderful addresses. The people of Cahaba were about the great leader; the whole town and sur- rounding country gathered to see and hear him. Cahaba was not then as 1t is now. an almost forgotten memory, an empty plain dotted by few decay ing houses. It was one of Alabama's principal cities, and was but lately Capitol of the State.
 His equally great contemporary, John C. Calhoun was down only a short tune before. He was on his way to visit his
 
 Yancey, the great agitator and a great CT orator than Clay or Calhoun, had just moved from Cahaba to Wetumpka because some miscreant had poisoned most of the slaves he brought from South Carolina. and he was forced to retire to the practice of the law to build up his decaying fortune.
 A little later, but only yesterday, a young lawyer. black haired, black eyed and of an ardent temperament, is ma 'eing trips from Cahaba to Mont gor1ery. He Is John Tyler Morgan and as yet he is having a hard struggle to build up a practice in his Cahaba of- flee
 Morgan and Pettus, Too.
 rugged, strong young man of al- IT ost gigantic physique has just gone down to Cahaba to open a law office. He has resigned the office O Circuit Judge to do it. His name Is Edmund W. Pettus, and he is con- neeted with the famous Alabama fam fly of the Winstons. He has already had a romantic career Solicitor and Judge he has been, and he has fought as an American officer in the Mexican war. He has been a "Forty-niner." too, and ridden a pony from Alabama to California
 And who. who in the world would