Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1911-11-03
Arnnistead c. Gordon is
Joint Author of the
New Biography
INTERESTING REVIEW
Colonel R. S. Turk Gives His I'm
pressions, While Making Splendid
Criticism of the Book

I have read with much interest
and great profit, the biography o1
the late DR.. J. L. M. Curry, recently
issued by the Mcmillan Co., of New
York, the book being the joint work
of President Edwin A. Alderman, OF
the University of Virginia, and Mr.
Armistead Churchill Gordon, of this
city. Under such collaboration, il
is easy to conjecture that work OF
peculiar interest and value would be
| evolved. But when we consider that
biographies are usually made inter
esting to the immediate family and
friends of the subject, rather than to
the public generally, it is also easy
to see how men of great attainments
and lives of abounding interest, often
slumber, indeed are made to slum-
ber, in oblivion, because those who
undertook their history failed to
grasp the best in those lives, or to
present in attractive form and with
| force, the periods which were most
| interesting in them. In the work be-
fore us, the biographers have dealt
plainly and in a matter of fact way
with DR.. Curry from boyhood. They
have left out color entirely and pres
ented the scenes and environment of
his career, together with the impor-
tant events in which he figured, in
such calm, true, but attractive, man
ner as enables the reader to judge
fairly of the character of the man
whose life is chronicled, and say
whether he were wise or foolish |;
whether or not he measured up to
the standard; whether he stood of
equal stature with the great men of
his day, or lowered above or fell be-
low them.
The work contains no effort at
word painting, but the style is what
might be termed, we think. the re-
finement of English, fitted and
grooved SO that it presents the polish
ed surface of the best diction, in
their presentation of pure fact.
Many persons in Staunton knew DR..
Curry. His interest in education
during the latter part of his life
brought him here. Whilst I was a
member of the public school board,
l had the pleasure listening to him
in an address before our public
schools at their closing, and none
could have heard him and forgotten
the man, or his discourse. AS
member of the Peabody Board, as
president of Howard College and
Richmond College, with positions as
visitor to various institutions of
learning including West Point, he
was constantly associated with the
educational world, so that educators
intimately knew him and students
were drawn to him In ties of very
close friendship
The work, perforce, begins with
the birth of DR.. Curry, in 1925, in
Lincoln-not Abraham but Benja-
min Lincoln-county, Georgia. His
given name was probably the heav-'
lest load he had to bear in life. 1t
was Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry. His
school days are Interestingly told of;
then the removal of his father to
Alabama and the gradual rise of the
boy to positions in his state, serving
three times in the legislature; of
his authorship of bill for a geolo-
sical survey Of his state; of his be-
ing state elector or the Democratic
presidential ticket in 1856; of his
election to Congress in 1857; of his
resignation from Congress in 1861
and his election to the Confederate
Congress in 1852; of his military re-
cord, being aid to General Joe John
son, special aid to General Joe
Wheeler and Lieutenant-C Colonel of
the 5th Alabama regiment; thence
through an interesting and eventful
life until he was appointed minister
20 the court of Spain by Mr. Cleve-
| land in 1885. 1t is recalled that he
| stood as Godfather to Alfonso, the
present King of Spain. In 1902 he
was appointed special envoy to the
| Of
he occupied then as Ambassador
Extraordinary was peculiarly try
ing and obviously delicate, because
| the Spanish War had ended only a
| few years prior to this occurrence,
and Spain had been deeply hum
iliated at the hands of the United
States.
The manner of handling the oc-
currences in DR.. Curry's life, by his
biographers, just prior to the Civil
War is of peculiar interest. They
not only present them in way that
rivets attention and interest upon
the individual actions of DR.. Curry,
but they present history of the
events of the time when DR.. Curry
was in the thickest of the fray, which
centers the greatest wisdom and the
best thought about him, not only
recalling the travail of the times, bu1
showing that their subject was guild
ed by the purest, wisest and bes
thought Quotations from speeche,
of such a man as John C. Calhoun
whose mind. metaphorically speak