The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1908-11-12
SAVOYARD'S STORY
OF CARMACK'S LIFE
Dead Editor Inherited Ardent
Love For Books
LAW TOO TAME FOR HIM
Carmack Shone In the United States
Senate With Almost Unequaled
BriIlahce and His Name Will
Long Be Remembered.

Eugene Newman, under the nom de
plume "Savoyard, wrote of Senator E.
| ". Carmack a few years ago as follows:
Senator Carmack was born in Sumner
| county, West Tennessee. in 1853 the son
| of learned professor in a southern col
| lege, who was also a minister of the
| Christian church. When the future SEN
| ator was a child of three years his father
| died, leaving his family little save an hon
ored name. Mrs. Carmaek, the mother,
was a woman of strong character and
much culture, and she it was who di-
rected the early studies of her gifted son.
1.-THE boy worked for his living, and
his mother inculcated studious habits and
impaired to him taste for reading. For
tunately the fathers library was a choice
collection of books, and these the boy
read dgested and assimliated. He re-
eeived an academic education and was
! prepared for college, but did not enter.
AS he verged on manhood he studied law
and was admitted to the bar.
But the law was too tame a profession
for this ardent young man. who was born
for the fierce field of public life. He de
lighted in political discussion, and was a
formidable disputant before he had
emerged from his teens. He was born to
be molder and a leader of public opin-
ion, and thus it was that in 1885 he was
member of the state legislature and
then he entered journalism.
Here was his field. He was a graceful,
a forceful and striking writer, and at
once commanded attention. He had con-
victions and would not sell them for ease.
He was his own man and took orders
from no other man. In a little while
CarmaclS was in the front rank of south
ern editors and a powerful factor in pub
lie affairs.
ut was when Carmack was editor of
the Memphis Commercial that the Farm
ers' Alliance took a whirl in politics and
seriously threatened the democracy of the
democratic party. 1t looked as though the
Ocala manifesto was to become the plat
form of the Tennessee democracy. That
did not suit Carmack, and he threw
down the gauntlet. He wrote exactly like
he spoke. Everybody who had heard him
in the Senate recognized his editorials
against the agrarian movement.
Described the Rotous Scenes.
HE admitted that it had an honorable
origin, for its first meeting was presided
over by King David in the Cave of Adult
lum He described the riotous scenes
which attended the birth of the populst
party, and said they had started to build
a Babel tower to the political heaven,
and were smitten with a confusion of
tongues that their convention was COM
posed of numerous cranks, each with his
separate plan of salvation which they
all threw into a common pot and stirred
together. There had never been such a
stew since Macbeth's witches danced their
Internal can-can on the blasted heath,
and then he described the populist dance
about the boiling caldrons, with Mrs.
Lease in the part of Hecate, and quoted
the well-known lines of Shakespeare:
Round about the caldron go:
In the posond entrails throw, etc.
Had there been Carmack in every
state the democracy might not have
quaffed that witches broth at Chicago
in 1896
ut was not until the second session
of the Fifty-hfth Congress was some
months old that Carmack became ma
tional figure. He had a seat in that Con-
gress, and 1t was contested by josiah
Patterson. The House was overwhelm-
ingly republican, and the committee had
reported against Carmack 1t was ap-
parently a hopeless case. Patterson was
a Sound money man and had served
several terms in the House. He was a
man of ability and not at all ashamed of
the fact On the contrary, he was proud
of IT, and boosted of it, The chivalry and
gratitude of the republican party were
enlisted in his behalf.
"Carmacks case was managed with
consummate skill. The drollery of John
Allen was brought to bear to laugh old
Josiah out of court, and the case for
his side was closed by Carmack himself
In speech of great eloquence and power.
Ridicule and invective bristled in its
every paragraph 1t was one of the
very few speeches to which Thomas B.
Reed listened with delight, Patterson,s
strongest partisans were now filed with
rage and now convulsed with laughter
The opening sentences serve as examples
of Carmack's captivating literary style:
Whatever may be the action of this
House, it will be but a trif1ing incident
In the country's history, and of no trans
cendent Importance even in my own.
While the world stands every day will
have its morrow, and l am not yet so
old that I need grieve for the event of
one little hour. If this term in Congress
represented to me- as possibly IL does 10
another, the last floating fragment of
shipwrecked ambition, | might clutch at
1t with desperate eagerness and contem-
plate it's loss with agony of SOUL
Used Cutting Invective.
at was only little while until he en-
ployed invective, and every sentence cut
like a knife. He spoke of Patterson in
the camp Of the stranger, having aban-
doned the friends of his youth and the
home of his childhood to become de-
spised and distrusted mental In
strangers house. Like the captive Jew
amid the splendors of foreign land, he
will sit down by the waters of Babylon
and weep when he remembers Zion 'Hs
must learn to chant hymns to his con-
queror in foreign speech and babble the
praises of his master in an alien tongue.
mo one can question the severity OF
those passages, and the speech teemed
with them. Every shaft found Its billet,
and made a wound that ranked and fes-
tered.
ut was developed in the case that Fat
terson had at least three nominations, one
of which he commended was better DEM
ocratic nomination than Carmack's. Here
ia how Carmack treated that, ana the