“Every dollar of that money remained in the house until I got married and came off here.  I got two thousand of it, one negro, and two hundred head of cattle.  I had promised my wife’s people that I would come and live with them.  I am glad I did.  I was twenty-one years old when I learned my letters.  I have been lucky; have educated my children, and they have educated me, and are talking about running me for Congress.  Well, my friend, I believe I could be elected; but that is a small part of the business.  I should be of no service to the State, and only show my own ignorance.  Come, Sue, can’t you give the gentleman some music?  Give me my fiddle, and I will help you.”

Sue was a beautiful and interesting girl of nineteen, only a short time returned from a four-years residence at the famous Patapsco Institute.  She had music in her soul, and the art to pour it out through her fingers’ ends.  It was an inheritance from her extraordinary father, as any judge of music would have said, who had heard the notes melting from that old black violin, on that rainy night in December.  There are not many such instances of men springing from such humble origin in Eastern Mississippi; but this is not a solitary case.

There emigrated from different States, North and South, at a remote period in the brief history of this new country, several young men of talent and great energy, who not only distinguished themselves, but shed lustre upon the State.  Among the first of these was George Poindexter, from Virginia; Rankin, from Georgia, (but born in Virginia;) Thomas B. Reid, from Kentucky; Stephen Duncan, and James Campbell Wilkins, from Pennsylvania.  The most remarkable of these was George Poindexter.  He was a lawyer by profession and a Jeffersonian Republican in politics.  Very early in life he became the leader of that party in the State, and was sent to Congress as its sole representative.  Very soon he obtained an enviable reputation in that body as a statesman and a powerful debater.  His mind was logical and strong; his conception was quick and acute; his powers of combination and application were astonishing; his wit was pointed and caustic, and his sarcasm overwhelming.  Unusually quick to perceive the weaker parts of an opponent’s argument, his ingenuity would seize these and turn them upon him with a point and power not unfrequently confounding and destroying the effect of all he had urged.  From Congress to the Gubernatorial chair of the State was the next step in his political career, and it was in this capacity that he rendered the most signal service to the State.  As a lawyer, he was well aware of the wants of the State in statutory provisions for the protection of the people.  These were wisely recommended, and, through his exertions, enacted into laws.