American author and soldier; born in Boston on the 29th of December 1809; studied a short time at Harvard College, which bestowed upon him in 1859 the degree of M.A. He taught school at Newburyport and Fairhaven, MA, and started in 1831 to travel to Santa Fé by way of St. Louis, doing the journey mostly on foot. He reached Fort Smith, AR, in destitute circumstances. Here he engaged in journalism, also studying law. He edited The Arkansas Advocate until 1834, when it became his own property; in this year he married, and in 1836 sold out his printing-establishment and became employed in supervising the publication of the Revised Statutes of Arkansas. He served as a cavalry captain in the Mexican War, and was a brigadier-general in command of the Indian allies of the Confederates. In 1867 he became editor of the Memphis Appeal, but removed next year to Washington and practiced law until 1880. He achieved fame as a poet and writer, and was prominent in Masonic circles. In 1839 his Hymns to the Gods appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine. In 1834 he published Prose Sketches and Poems Written in the West Country (1834); Nugæ, a collection of his poems (1854). The Ode to the Mocking Bird, originally published in 1836, was republished in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1840; and An Indian Romance in 1835. He published in 1859 The Statutes and Regulations, Institutes, Laws and Grand Constitution of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, by Albert Pike, 33d M.P., Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States. He died in Washington, DC, on the 2nd of April 1891. See also “Dixie,” “The Widowed Heart,” “Tennessee” and “Night on the Arkansas.”
