Transcribed from a photocopied clipping from

The Columbia Spectator

Columbia, Adair County, Kentucky, Vol. XXV.

Thursday, August 8, 1895, page one.

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FOUGHT HIS LAST BATTLE

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Gen. F.L. Wolford Calmly Expires at His Home Last Friday

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An Original Character With Few Equals and No Superiors

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RESOLUTIONS

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  The death of General Frank Lane Wolford, which had been expected for about two weeks, occurred at the family residence in this city last Friday afternoon, at three o'clock and fifty-three minutes.                       

  The funeral services were taken charge of Sunday morning by the Masonic fraternity, of which the deceased was a member. All of the lodges in Adair County, the one at Jamestown, and many others were represented in the procession.

  For an hour before the time the services were to be held, the people began to pour into the court-house, and by the time the remains were brought in, every seat was taken, and a large crowd was standing.

  Songs were sung, and Prof. Appleman read a passage of scripture and offered a word of prayer.

  The speakers present were Judge James Garnett, who had been selected by the Columbia Bar to deliver an oration; ex-Gov. J. Proctor Knott, and Col. Silas Adams, who spoke in the order named. The orations were all well-prepared and fitting for the occasion, and brought to mind the life and character of a great man, a battle-scarred veteran, a hero of two wars, whose record was untarnished; a giant among men, kind and charitable, whom everybody loved and respected. A man whom Kentuckians will always be proud to honor was being honored with the last rites due to man on earth, and certainly the occasion was solemn and earnest.

  The body was taken to the cemetery and with the usual ceremonies of the Masonic Fraternity, placed in the tomb, while the life and public acts of General Wolford has gone into history and will be remembered as long as time lasts.

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  Gen. Wolford first married Miss Nancy Devers, of Marion or Lincoln county, and by that union three children were born -- George, John, and Miss Mary. His first wife died about 1860. His last wife, who survives him, was Miss Bettie Bailey, of Liberty. They were married thirty years ago last April, and seven children were born to them -- Miss nancy, Mrs. S.D. barbee, Sam, Clay, Mrs. John Stone and Miss Mabel. All the children are living except two -- Misses Mary and Nancy.

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Resolutions Adopted

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By the Columbia Bar and Columbia Lodge No. 96, F. & A.M.

 

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COLUMBIA BAR

COLUMBIA, KY., Aug. 3, 1895.

  At a meeting of the members of the Columbia Bar, and the officers of the Adair Circuit and County Courts, held at the court-house in said place, this day, to take action on the death of Gen. Frank L. Wolford, on motion Judge James Garnett was called to the chair, and H.C. Baker was appointed Secretary. Gov. J.R. Hindman, J.F. Montgomery, and F.R. Winfrey were appointed a committee to confer with the family to arrange for the funeral ceremonies. On further motion, a committee composed of Judge James Garnett, Judge W.W. Jones, H.C. Baker, J.F. Montgomery and Rollin Hurt was appointed to prepare resolutions appropriate to the occasion. Said committees reported the following resolutions which were adopted:

 

Transcribed from a photocopy of the microfilmed

Louisville Times

Saturday, August 3, 1895 edition, page four

                     

SERVICES

 

IN THE COURT-HOUSE

 

Great Gathering Will Honor the Dead Soldier at Columbia.

 

Inadequate Church Buildings Compel Other Funeral Arrangements

 

All the Bar Will Attend as Honorary Pall-Bearers.

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TRIBUTE TO THE MAN.

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  Columbia, Ky., Aug. 3 -- (Special) -- The death of Gen Frank Wolford has caused the profoundest regret, but the end of the old warrior had been expected hourly for some days, so low was his condition.

  The arrangements for Gen. Wolford's funeral are complete. Neither of the local church buildings are adequate to hold the crowd that will be here. The remains will be brought to the rotunda of the courthouse and there viewed by hundreds of friends. They will then be conveyed to the courtroom, where religious services and addresses will be made, and at 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon the procession will move to the cemetery, headed by the family and Masonic fraternity. The active pall-bearers are J.H. Hudson, Dr. J.H. Grady, L.P. Hurt, A.G. Todd, E.G. Atkins, J.L. Hurt, W.W. Jones, Thomas A. Murrell, H.C. Baker, J.R. Hindman, F.M. Frazier, J.E. Murrell. All the Members of the bar are honorary pall-bearers. The bar has just had a meeting and adopted suitable resolutions on the General's death.

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  Frank Lane Wolford was born in Adair county, Ky., in the second decade of the present century. His parents were poor, and in youth he trod no primrose path. He received but the rudiments of an education, as his labor on the farm was necessary to his family. He married early in life and he used to tell how, the day after the wedding, the neighbors gathered in, cut and hewed the logs and erected a house, into which he and his bride moved two days later. The young man Wolford labored unceasingly as the boy Wolford had done. He grew up a stalwart man, athletic and strong. He read few books, but those he mastered, and few men could repeat more passages from the Bible than this uncouth farmer.

  Wolford was an ambitious young fellow. When scarce out of his teens, he was a formidable stump speaker in the Whig cause, and not long after he attained his majority he was licensed to practice law. He "rode circuit," and in criminal cases held his own with the best lawyers of that section, famous for an exceptionally strong bar.

  When war was declared against Mexico, Wolford was one of the first men in Kentucky to volunteer. He raised a company which he sought to have attached to the famous Second Kentucky; but the regiment was already full. Wolford found a place in the ranks and proceeded with the command to Mexico as a private in the ranks. At the battle of Buena Vista he was near young Henry Clay, Lieutenant Colonel of the regiment, who was mortally wounded. Around Clay's body a desperate struggle took place and Wolford was in the midst of it, fighting hand to hand with a score of Mexicans. Though desperately wounded, he was one of those who helped to bear Clay's body off the field after Jefferson Davis at the head of the Mississippi Rifles had driven back the Mexicans and restored the battle. He never forgot Davis and later took his political life in his hand when expressing his grateful admiration for that distinguished leader.

  After the war Wolford returned home and continued the practice of his profession. He was on the stump in every campaign, and in the fifties he was elected to the Legislature. He was a noted and a marked man in the mountains and a power in the Whig ranks.

  When the war between the States broke out Wolford espoused the Union side and raised a regiment whose fame soon became national. "Wolford's Cavalry" fought over five states and illustrated Kentucky valor and Kentucky prowess in a hundred fights. A born politician, Wolford was bound to tinker with politics in the army. By this time he was a Democrat, and soon he was in hot water. For he was arrested and carried to Washington, where he remained several months and where he had several disputes with the President about the conduct of the war.

  He was released in time to participate in the operations around Knoxville, where he commanded twelve regiments of cavalry and performed prodigies of valor. In 1864 he stumped Kentucky for McClellan and gave utterances to sentiments the super-loyal called treasonable.

  After the war he again turned his attention to the law and to politics. In 1865 he was elected to the Legislature on the Democratic ticket, and to him more than to any other individual is due the credit of the complete amnesty legislation of 1865-67.

  He participated in every political campaign for years and was one of the most effective stumpers in the State. In 1880 he was a candidate for the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, but was defeated in convention by a narrow majority. Two years later he was elected to Congress and in 1884 he was re-elected.

  After his retirement from Congress, old age and his wounds cut short his activity, though nothing could quench his ardor. To the last he took a deep interest in public affairs. He was a type now almost extinct.

Transcribed from a photocopy of the microfilmed                        

Courier Journal

Louisville, Kentucky

Saturday, August 3, 1895 edition, page one (continued to page ten)

 

 

WOLFORD'S

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FIRST SURRENDER.

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The Old Soldier Finds Relief at Last

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FROM MANY WOUNDS.

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His Eventful Career in Peace and War.

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HERO OF MANY BATTLES.

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Kentucky Has Produced Few Characters So Remarkable.

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SKETCH OF HIS LIFE.

 

  Columbia, Ky., Aug. 2 -- (Special.) --  Gen. Frank L. Wolford's brave struggle for life ended this afternoon. He died at 3:53 o'clock, after having been unconscious for several hours.

  Had he lived until September 2 he would have been seventy-eight years old. He was a grand old man and been a constant sufferer for years on account of wounds received during the war. A few days hence he said when God called him he would be ready for the summons.

  The funeral will take place at 10 o'clock Sunday morning from the Christian church, and the funeral services will be conducted by the Masonic fraternity, of which he was an honored member. Col. T.B. Hill, of Stanford; Gen. Hobson, of Greenberg; and Col. Silas Adams are expected to be present and deliver funeral orations.

 

A RUGGED KNIGHT

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Savoyard Draws a Pen Picture of Frank Wolford's Unique and Powerful Personality.

 

  The death of Frank Lane Wolford severs a link that bound the Kentucky of the last decade of the last half of the Nineteenth century with the Kentucky of the last decade of the first half of that century. Soon the time will come when it will be impossible to find in Kentucky that picteresque character of whom Frank Wolford was a type, and the most pronounced type, as it is now impossible to find in Scotland a type of the Black Douglas or the Red Cumin, embalmed in the history, in the romance and n the poetry of that most historic, most romantic and most poetic place.

  Frank Wolford was born in Adair county, Ky., September 2, 1817. He was the child of humble and honest parents, the heir to no estate, except a good name and Roman virtues. He acquired such education as was then afforded by the primitive "old field school." He was endowed with an incisive mind and an imagination that, properly trained, would have astonished and delighted the world. A natural orator, he sought the field where orators gleaned, and when yet a youth was admitted to the bar. At that time the bar in his section was brilliant in the extreme. There was George R. McKee, who could have stepped into Westminister and on the shortest notice made an argument that would have delighted and instructed the bench of England; there was Thomas E. Bramlette, William T. Willis, Richard A. Buckner, the greatest nisi prius judge in Kentucky's annals; George Alfred Caldwell and his brother Isaac, each in turn to become the head of the Louisville bar; there were Timoleon Cravens, Zachariah Wheat, E.L. Van Winkle, Joshua F. Bell, Fontaine F. Fox and Aaron Harding, and there, of a junior class, were Samuel H. Boles, James A. Rousseau, M.H. Owsley, James Garnet, John H.C. Sandidge, Eldridge Hayes, T.C. Winfrey, William Stewart, Gideon Suddarth, and William E. Russell. Among these men Frank Wolford was far from the least. In that day it was oratory that told, and then it was that the criminal practice invited the fancy lawyer, and he might as well have thrown away his license and gone to the plow or the artisan's bench that possessed not the tongue of eloquence. It was before a jury that Wolford gained his fame. He was rude, unlettered and uncouth, but there was a fire in his eye, a poetry in his imagination, an enthusiasm in his heart, that rendered him one of the most effective advocates of his day. No man ever defended more criminals, few men ever successfully gained so many verdicts in desperate cases. He cared little what the evidence was, and less about the law. If there was one salient fact in his client's favor it was sufficient for him.

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  Wolford soon became a marked man. At that time politics was part of the trade of the lawyer, and if there was one thing that Wolford loved to do better than he loved to make an argument before a jury it was to make a stump speech to the populace. A Whig of the Whigs, he was in his early manhood as much of a terror to the Democracy as afterward became a holy terror to the Republicans. If not a born lawyer he was certainly a born soldier, and when the Texas boundary quarrel kindled a war on the Rio Grande, Wolford sprang to arms. In a few days he had recruited a company and was chosen its Captain; the regiment, however, was completed before he was commissioned and his company was disbanded. He then joined the ranks, and made one of that heroic band that under the lead of Taylor stormed Monterey and fought the bloody battle of Buena Vista. His arms it was that bore young Henry Clay off the field, and his bayonet it was that saved the body from mutilation at the hands of the barbarous lancers. And thereby hangs a tale, but more of that anon. Wounded in the battle, and wounded desperately, he was sent home, and at once was chosen a member of the State Legislature, in which body he sat in 1847 and 1848. The next dozen years found him engaged in his two chosen lines. When he was not in the courthouse, persuading a jury, he was on the stump, persuading the populace that the only salvation of the country was the triumph of the Whig party and Whig principles. After the death of that party he became a Know-nothing, and gave the Democrats a great deal of trouble. Though he had a tremendous practice he never accumulated any estate. It is said that he never asked a client for his fee, and every dollar paid him for legal services was a voluntary contribution. No prince was ever more generous, and no philosopher ever had a more sovereign or a more genuine contempt for lucre.

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  Thus Wolford lived until congressional oratory drove the North and the South to cutting each other's throats. Kentucky for three score and ten years had been part of the Union. Clay had been the man of magnetism; her sons had won victories in Mexico, and then, in even greater degree than now, the name Kentuckian was a synonym for manhood in Boston and New Orleans; in Charleston and in Philadelphia. Kentucky was naturally for the preservation of the Union, and overwhelmingly so. Lincoln humored her; had Seward been President there would have been separation -- temporary though it might have been -- without war; had Wade been President he would have solidified the South and made Kentucky as rebellious in 1861 as she became in 1866; but Lincoln was the greatest of politicians, and his conservative utterances and conservative pledges held Kentucky in the Union and sent Bramlette and Hobson and Ward and Wolford into the Union army, and they took with them 100,000 men. The First Kentucky Cavalry was recruited by Wolford, and he became its Colonel. It was the best regiment in the army, and did more fighting than any other. Wolford was the Forrest of the Federal cause, and like his Southern prototype was never able to drill a squad. It is related that early in 1863 an inspection of the Army of the Cumberland was had. Among the rest Wolford's regiment came under the scrutiny of the regular army officers, and was a subject of much adverse criticism. "Old Meataxe" became restive and grew impatient. Said he, "I know nothing about your drills, your evolutions and your maneuvers. My boys know how to ride, how to shoot, how to fight and how to stand fire. You may take any two Yankee regiments in the whole army -- them two Michigan regiments over thar will do -- station them where you please, on any ground, in town or country, in field or in forest, and I will take my regiment and what I don't kill of them I will chase out of the State of Tennessee in forty-eight hours. The boys came out to whip the rebels back into the Union, not to steal niggers." After delivering himself of this oration, Wolford was permitted to handle his men to suit himself without interference from his superiors. He fought so well that he was finally given command of twelve regiments and his command it was that saved Knoxville from the clutch of Longstreet. He led the van in every advance and brought up the rear in every retreat. Many wounds, some of them severe, enough to kill the average man, attested his personal bravery and for thirty years his will power alone kept him alive.

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Though an officer at the time, Wolford was chosen a Democratic elector for the State-at-Large in the Presidential campaign of 1864. He at once left his command and began to make a series of speeches in Kentucky, doubtless the most remarkable ever delivered on any stump. He was in the full plenitude of his remarkable natural oratorical gifts. His arraignment of Lincoln and his Administration would have cost any other man his life, and did cost him his liberty. By almost a miracle he escaped assassination, and Wolford went to his grave in the firm belief that only the interposition of Providence averted his murder at the direct order of Burbridge. In one of his speeches he said the country was crucified between two thieves -- Abe Lincoln and Jeff Davis. This cost him his liberty, and he was sent to Washington in chains and under guard. It was while in prison at Washington that he addressed that famous letter to Lincoln upon the rights of the citizen in matters of opinion and speech that even a Somers, in England, or a Black, in America, might have been proud to father. It is now lost in the musty and neglected files of newspapers, but it ought to be resurrected and printed again to show to the men of this day what a man and patriot was thirty years ago.

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After the close of the war Wolford was the first man in the country to declare for amnesty. Happily for Kentucky a statesman and patriot was Governor of the State, and he put in practice what Wolford preached. By the unlimited, almost reckless, use of the pardoning power, Thomas E. Bramlette averted feuds in Kentucky that would have cost oceans of blood and rendered the state a Corsica. In 1865 Wolford announced himself a candidate for the Legislature on a platform of complete and absolute amnesty. The district was composed of the counties of Casey and Russell, both of which had not sent a dozen men to the Southern army, and each of which had contributed a regiment to the Federal army. His opponent was Silas Adams, the Lieutenant Colone of the old First Kentucky Cavalry. He was a splendid fellow, a cultured lawyer, a fine orator, a knightly gentleman, the idol of the then infant Republican party of the State. He had a superb army record, having been in more than 110 battles and actions. He was opposed to amnesty, as an overwhelming majority of the district was. The opposing candidates held joint discussion in every school district of the two counties, and the welkin was vocal with fervid eloquence. On the Saturday before the election on the following Monday an immense concourse greeted them at Liberty, the county seat of Casey county. Wolford spoke first and created great enthusiasm. Adams arose to reply, and, after speaking a few minutes, he turned to Wolford and said: "Gen. Wolford, you claim to be for complete and unconditional amnesty for unrepentant rebels. Now, sir, no dodging; tell this people if you are willing to discharge that arch-traitor, Jefferson Davis, from his prison quarters in Fort Monroe." Wolford said: "I'll answer you, Col. Adams, when your time is up." "I want an answer now," roared Adams. There was not a single Southern sympathizer in that vast throng. It was a crowd of Union men, Union at all hazards and without condition. They believed that secession was the sum of all villainies, and that treason should be made odious. His friends trembled for Wolford and feared that he was lost however he answered, and certainly lost if he took counsel of his heart in the answer he should give. But Wolford showed his manhood. Stepping to the front, he said: "Fellow-citizens, I was at Buena Vista. I saw the battle lost and victory in the grasp of the brutal and accursed foe. I saw the favorite boy of Harry of the West -- my Colonel -- weltering in his own blood. I saw death or a captivity worse than death in store for every surviving Kentuckian on that gory field. Everything seemed hopeless and was hopeless, when a Mississippi regiment, with Jeff Davis at its head, appeared on the scene. I see him now as he was then -- the incarnation of battle, a thunderbolt of war, the apotheosis of victory, the avatar of rescue. He turned the tides, he snatched victory from defeat; his heroic hand wrote the words Buena Vista in letters of glory on our proud escutcheon. I greeted him then a hero, my countryman, my brother and my rescuer. He is no less so this day, and I would knock the shackles from his aged limbs and make him as free as the vital air of heaven and clothe him in every right I enjoy had I the power to do so. Put that in your pipes, Silas Adams and you new-dipped black Republicans, and smoke it." The effect was electrical. Men cheered, laughed, wept. The sublime moral courage of the man who thus bared his heart at the risk of political annihilation was not lost on that mountaineer assembly; perhaps nowhere else except in the mountain section of Kentucky could be found a community with appreciation of such moral heroism so vivid. For a moment that crowd of stalwart mountaineers swayed, then, altogether -- friend of amnesty and partisan of rigor -- sprang forward, and taking the old scarred veteran on their shoulders, made a procession through the town, singing and cheering as they went. Next Monday Frank Wolford was elected by eight majority, and that tribute to Jefferson Davis elected him. In the legislature he brought in the amnesty bill that is now in law, and by its provisions the returned ex-Confederates again became Kentuckians with all the rights and privileges of Kentuckians.

  After his term expired he went back to his former dual calling, that of jury lawyer and stump orator. About a dozen mountain counties were laid off and called "Wolford's Kingdom," and woe to the Republican that set his foot in that territory when Wolford was about. He could talk a parrot dumb and an argument made no more impression on him than a shower on a duck. I will not repeat the story of how he drove Gen. Frye out of the territory by asserting in his speech that Jeff Davis, Gen. Lee, A.H. Stevens and others were hanged to illustrate what a "hell of a magnanimous party the Republican party was." But another story equally good is not so well known. In 1880 the late A.M. Swope was a Garfield elector for the State-at-large. Everybody in Kentucky remembers what a superb stumper he was; he was sent into Wolford's "kingdom" and the Democrats put Wolford on him. In his first and only speech Swope criticised the Democratic party for passing over such statesmen as Tilden, Thurman, Hendricks and Bayard and nominating Hancock, a mere soldier, and no great shakes of a soldier at that. He called attention to the fact that Hancock had never risen above the station of Corps Commander, and that had he been much of a soldier Lincoln and Stanton would drafted him into the command of the army of Virginia at sometime. They had tried in turn Scott, McDowell, McClellan, Pope, McClellan again, Burnside, Hooker, Meade and Grant, but had never thought of Hancock. In his reply Wolford delivered himself of the following bit of oratory: "Fellow-citizens, Gen. Swope criticises Gen. Hancock's record as a soldier; he don't know what he's talking about. In 1863 I was in Washington and we held a council of war. I was thar, Mr. Lincoln was thar, Mr. Seward was thar, Mr. Stanton was thar, other members of the Cabinet were thar and judge Jo Holt was thar. We discussed the matter the whole day, and all of us were of the opinion Gen. Hancock should be appointed Commander of the Army of the Potomac. Mr. Lincoln said that Hancock had always been his first choice anyhow. Gen. Hancock was notified of the determination and came to Washington, and old Abe gave him the command, but required that he should  rob, plunder and murder the Southern people, and Gen. Hancock was too much of a gentleman to take command under any such conditions, and Gen. Swope, that is the reason Gen. Hancock was not made Commander of the Army of the Potomac. You don't know the history of your country, sir." I once asked Gen. Wolford his reasons for adopting such methods on the stump. He replied: "The Republican party is founded on a lie; all the stock in trade Republicans have a is batch of lies. It is a good plan to fight the devil with fire if you can get together fire enough. That is my way of fighting the Republican party on the stump."

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In 1882, by a combination in the State Democratic convention, Gen. Wolford was defeated for the nomination for the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, though the masses of the party were for him. The Legislature at once made a congressional district for him, and he was given the nomination without the formality of a convention and by general consent. Nobody took so great an interest in the race as the ex-Confederates. Gen. Lewis was on nettles till old Barren gave Wolford the largest majority she ever gave a Democrat, the vote being just two to one -- 2,660 for Wolford to 1,330 for Carr -- though Carr was a citizen of Barren. Gen. Duke was also active, and the party in every district bore a hand in the bloody old Eleventh. In the canvass Wolford Wolford adopted the tactics against Carr that had been so successful against Frye, Swope, and others, and for two months he had Carr as mad as a wet hen, and as miserable as a wet rat. In Congress the old war-horse was a unique character. One Horr, of Michigan, engaged him in debate, and, though Horr had bested S.S. Cox in a match of wits, Wolford floored him with half a dozen passages of Scripture that set the house in a roar. On one occasion he fired a Scriptural quotation at Speaker Carlisle that disconcerted that gentleman as no logic could have done. Tom Browne, of Indiana, an able and brilliant man, confessed himself worsted by Wolford, and declared that nobody but a hopeless born fool would ever tackle him twice. He once answered a letter, declaring he was in Congress to attend to matters of State, and that if his constituents wanted a man to atend their private affairs they must get another Congressman. His bullying Beck and Blackburn into consenting to the nomination of Jim Smith, an ex-Confederate, postmaster of Glasgow, is well remembered. I could relate numerous anecdotes of interest touching his congressional career if space permitted.

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