The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-03-01
James M. Griggs, of Georgia
aY sAvoYARD.

Georgia has long been celebrated for
the many distinguished men she has
lent to American craftsmanship. Few,
Crawford. Berrien and Forsyth were
all Georgians, who were succeeded on
the stage by Toombs, Cobb, Stephens,
Hill and Brown. Few was sage of
the revolution. father of the consti-
tuition, and in the rank of the most dis
tinguished senators. Forsyth was long
eminent In both houses of congress,
and for seven years he discharged the
duties of secretary of state with dis
tinguished ability. Crawford narrow
ly escaped the highest place to which
an American citizen can aspire; he
was a practical man and an eminent
secretary of the treasury, a station he
filed for nine years. Berrien was
northern man, a graduate of Prince
ton; but he was practicing law in
Georgia at the age of 10. In 1925, when
the party of Jefferson had swallowed
up all other parties, he was elected
senator from Georgia. Later he was
attorney general in Jackson's cabinet,
in which he remained until 1881, when
the Wing party was formed, of which
he was a charter member. In 1S41 he
again entered the senate as Wing
and served eleven years. when he re-
signed and retired to private life, ven
Grated for his lofty character.
Toombs never met his master in de-
bate, and the same IS true of Ben Hill
Cobb was not a brilliant man, but he
was gifted with the wisdom of state
craft, and the south made mistake
in not electing him president of the
confederacy in 1861, and giving Jeffer-
son Davis command of an army in the
field Stephens was a doctrinaire, who
devoted a long life to the study and
expoundings of political principles. If
he could come out of the grave in 1908
he would have to be introduced to the
Democratic party of Mr.. Bryan. Jo-
seph E. Brown was the war governor
OF Georgia, in which station he gave
both aid and trouble to the govern
ment at Richmond
James NJ Griggs is a native of La
Grange, Ga. where Ben Hill lived and
practiced law and politics so long. He
was born a few weeks before the shot
that was fired against Fort Sumter
began to reverberate around the world,
and thus his childhood, youth and ear
~ manhood were associated with the
Georgia that so slowly, so painfully,
and so heroically recovered from Sher-
mans march and Stevens reconstruc-
ton. Young Griggs attended the COM
mon school, and his training was fin
ished at the Peabody normal school at
Nashville in 1881, when he was 20 years
of age.
He Immediately returned home,
taught school and studied law In 1883
he came to the bar, and two years
later he located at Dawson, Terrell
county, where he yet lives, in the dis
trict so long and so capably represent
ed In congress by that greatest
Georgian of his time, Henry G.. Turner,
man fashioned by nature and by
training for the great place of chief
| justice of the United States. l do be-
| lieve that of all the men l ever met
| Turner was the purest, and certainly
| he was one of the ablest-the only man
except Oliver Cromwell who extoTted
| a compliment from Thomas B. Reed in
| a public speech, and perhaps the only
man who ever oVercame Thomas 3.
| Reed in forensic debate. His district
was unanimous for his nomination for
a ninth term in congress, when he de-
| clined on the ground that he could not
| indorse the platform on which Mr..
Bryan was then running for presi-
dent.
| Griggs is an unaffected man of the
/ people without a particle of cheap
| demagogy in his makeup. Not at all
| self-conscious, he is always and
| everywhere approachable, and his dis
trict loves to slap him on the back and
say: Hello, Jim, let's go fishing!' II
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