Biographies - Dr. Richard M. Swearingen

             Richard M. Swearingen was born in Noxubu county, Mississippi, on the 26th day of September, 1838. He is the lineal descendant of Garrett Van Swearingen, who emigrated from Holland to Maryland in 1645, and the son of Dr. R. J. Swearingen and Margaret M. Swearingen, who settled in Washington county, Texas, in 1848.

         His father was a pioneer in the cause of education, and was the projector of the splendid schools that—in ante-bellum days—made Chappell Hill famous throughout the State. His mother was the daughter of Major Boley Conner, of Irish descent, who was an officer under Jackson in the war of 1812. She was a lady of gentle manners, marked individuality and deep piety. In the new town—made by their efforts, and a few congenial friends, a center of wealth, culture and refinement—their children, Sarah Francis, Patrick, Henry, Helen Marr, Richard Montgomery, John Thomas and Mary Gertrude were raised and educated.

         R. M. Swearingen was growing into manhood when the political excitement of 1860-'61 began to shake the foundation of the government. Fiery denunciation of Northern aggression, and stormy oratory was the order of the day. Reason gave way to passion, and men seemed driven by inexorable forces on to an inevitable destiny.

         The voice of Sam Houston rang through the land like an inspired prophet, but was drowned in the whirlwind that heralded the impending war.

         The subject of this sketch, nearly thirty years after the guns of Fort Sumpter sounded the death knell of peace, with satisfaction records the fact that he was one among the few who stood with the immortal Houston in opposing and voting against the ordinance of secession. When, however, his State, by an overwhelming majority, went out of the Union, he felt in duty bound to give his allegiance to her, and responded to the first call ever made for troops.

         On the 28th day of February, 1861, he embarked at Galveston, under General McLeod's command, for the lower Rio Grande. After a six month's campaign in the regiment of that well-known and gallant old frontiersman, Colonel John S. Ford, the young soldier returned to his home in Chappell Hill. After resting a few days, information having been received that his younger brother, J. T. Swearingen, was sick at Cumberland Gap, Tenn., he started for that place.

         J. T. Swearingen had left the State some months before, with troops bound for Virginia, but having been refused enrollment on account of extreme youth, left them at Knoxville, Tenn., and volunteered in Brazelton's battalion of Tennessee cavalry. The brave boy had served under the ill-fated Zollicoffer, in Kentucky, and had won the admiration of his comrades, but the rough campaign had too severely taxed his physical powers, and rest was imperatively demanded. The ordinary methods to secure his discharge having failed, the older brother took his place in the ranks, and for the second time donned the uniform of a Confederate soldier.

         The new company joined was commanded by Captain A. M. Gofarth, who, a few months later, was promoted Major of the regiment, and who fell at its head, sword in hand, leading a desperate charge.

         About two months after the brothers had changed places, the company was reorganized, and the generous Tennesseeans elected the only Texan in the company their first Lieutenant, and in less than six months promoted him to the Captaincy. For nearly three years he commanded this noted company; noted, not only for faithful and arduous services rendered during the war, but for the brilliant successes made by some of its members, after the war had closed. Pryor Gammon, of Waxahachie, Texas, was first Lieutenant; George Moore, of Louisiana, was second, and Sam M. Inman, of Atlanta, Georgia, was third. Mr. D. C. Williams, of Collinsville, Alabama, and James Swann, of the firm of Inman, Swann & Co., of New York, and Sam Dick, of the firm of S. M. Inman & Co., were Sergeants. John H. Inman, of New York, now one of the railway kings of this continent, was a member of the company. The firms of Inman, Swann & Co., and of S. M. Inman & Co., rank high among the great business houses of the world, and he who commanded the men who made those houses great, through, perhaps the stormiest periods of their lives, gives to history this testimony, "that fame and fortune, for once, found men worthy of their richest offerings."

         During the occupation of Cumberland Gap, while on a scout in the mountains of East Tennessee, Private Swearingen prostrated with pneumonia, and left in Sneedville, at the house of Mr. Lee Jessee. This trifling episode would not be worthy of record, but for the fact that Mr. Jessee had an accomplished daughter named Jennie, who was very kind to him while sick, and who won his life-long gratitude and affection. During the subsequent years of the war, neither distance nor danger deterred him from seeing that genial, happy family, whenever it was possible to do so. On the 12th day of September, after a rough and perilous journey over the mountains from Sneedville (then within the enemy's lines), to Jonesville, Virginia, Miss Jennie Jessee, in the presence of her brave, sweet sister Sallie, was married to Richard M. Swearingen.

         Ten days after the marriage, upon a dark night, Captain Swearingen ventured into Sneedville, to tell his wife and the family good-bye! but before the words were spoken, the house was surrounded by a company of mountain bushmen, and he was forced to surrender. For two weeks he was in the hands of these hard men, suffering all kinds of cruelties and indignities. Once he was tied apparently for prompt execution, and would certainly have been killed, but for the interference of one Joab Buttry, who had once been the recipient of some kindness from Mr. Jessee, his wife's father. Buttry was the chief of the band, and his hands were stained by the blood of many Confederates. He had seen his own brother shot down in cold blood by a scouting party of Confederate soldiers, and the bold mountaineer, then a quiet citizen, hoisted a black flag and enlisted for the war.

         During the days of imprisonment, the young wife and her friends were not idle. A written proposition from General John C. Breckenridge, commanding the department, that he would give the bushmen any three men that they might name, then in Confederate 'prisons, in exchange for their prisoner " was accepted. That same day, the chief of the band, alone, took his captive to the north bank of Clinch river, and released him, with expressions of good will.

         Joab Buttry seemed made of iron, but through the dark metal would shine the gold of a noble manhood, that desperate deeds and a desperate life had not altogether obliterated.

         After this fortunate escape, Captain Swearingen started on a long hunt in search of his lost company, and found it not a great distance south of Raleigh, North Carolina. The space allotted him in this volume of biographies, will not permit even a casual notice of the incidents and experiences of those eventful years. The company participated in many engagements; was with Bragg in Tennessee, Kirby Smith in Kentucky, Joseph E. Johnson in the retreat through Georgia, with John H. Morgan, when he was killed, with Hood at Atlanta, and again with Joseph E. Johnson in South and North Carolina. To enable the reader to form some estimate of the hardships of the Confederate service, the statement is here made,—that this company the last year of the war did not possess a tent, or wagon, or anything in the shape of a cooking vessel. Their rations of meat were broiled upon coals of fire, and the cornmeal cooked in the same primitive fashion. Notwithstanding these deprivations, the men as a rule were happy, buoyant, capable of great physical endurance, and they wept like children, when among the tall pines of Carolina, their flag went down forever. In obedience to the cartel of surrender. Captain Swearingen marched the company back to Tennessee, before disbanding it.

         That last roll call, and parting scene on the banks of the French Broad river, is one of those clearly defined memory pictures, that possible live with our souls in higher forms of existence.

         For three years, those men had shared each other's dangers, and under the shadow of a common sorrow, the humiliation of a hopeless defeat, they were to look for the last time upon each other. The commanding officer, whose route at that point diverged from the one to be taken by the company, —fronted them into line,—and tried to call the roll, but failed to do so! he then moved around by the roadside, and they filed by, one at a time, and shook his hand. There was a profound silence—no one attempted to speak a word, and every eye was filled with tears, as the curtain rolled slowly down upon the saddest act in that long, and well-played drama of war.

         Captain Swearingen, a few weeks later, assisted by his wife, was teaching a country school at the foot of the  Cumberland mountains, in Lee county.

         In the autumn of 1865 information having reached him of a requisition from Governor Brownlow, of Tennessee, upon Governor Pierpont, of Virginia, for his arrest and return to Sneedville, the newly installed teacher abruptly closed his prosperous school.

         Captain Swearingen was confronted with an indictment for some unknown offense, and the trial of Confederates in East Tennessee, at that time, was on the style of drum-head court-martials, with verdicts prepared in advance. To remain there, only twenty miles from Sneedville, was not to be thought of;—to go elsewhere for safety, and leave his wife, without a protector, and without money, was another dilemma equally as painful as the first. About 10 o'clock the first night after closing the school, while the husband and wife were discussing the situation, a rap upon the door, and an unforgotten voice, announced the arrival of the young brother, who four years before had been found at Cumberland Gap, only a few miles from the place of their second meeting. J. T. Swearingen had heard of his brother's dangerous surroundings, and selling about all of his earthly possessions to get funds for the trip, went to his relief.

         The next morning R. M. Swearingen left his wife in safe hands and started for Texas. At Huntsville, Alabama, he awaited (as had been previously planned) the arrival of those left in Virginia, and with bright faces they journeyed on to Alta Vista, where the best of all good sisters, Mrs. Helen M. Kirby, received them with open arms.

         The State was then going through the agonies of reconstruction, and the machinery of government was virtually in the hands of military rulers, and reckless adventurers. Old customs and systems, and ties, and hopes, and fortunes, were lost forever! but the old South crushed to earth, with vandals on her prostrate form, and bayonets at her breast, bravely staggered to her feet, and faced a glorious future. The courts were closed, or only opened to make a burlesque of justice and a mockery of law.

         In such a reign of anarchy, the profession of medicine was the only one of the learned professions that offered any promise of immediate success, and Captain Swearingen selected it for his life work. He at once commenced the study, and graduated in the school of medicine, New Orleans, March, 1867, delivering the valedictory, and located in Chappell Hill. The friends of his parents and the friends of his youth, received him with great kindness, and when the yellow fever epidemic of that year desolated the town, he was conspicuous as a tireless worker among all classes, and was rewarded with a patronage both gratifying and remunerative. His wife, as courageous as when tried in the furnace of war, would not leave her husband, although urged by him to do so, rendered faithful services to the sick, and survived the epidemic, but her only child, beautiful little Helen, was taken from her.

         In 1875 Dr. Swearingen removed to Austin, where he still resides, and where a clientelle has been secured that satisfied his ambition and enabled him to provide comfortably for those dependent on him. His family consists of wife, one daughter, Bird, now happily married to E. B. Robinson, their baby—winsome Jeanie—and his wife's niece, Miss Lula Bewley.

         When the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, made such fearful ravages in the Mississippi Valley, he responded to an appeal for medical assistance made by the Relief Committee of Memphis, Tenn., and with his friend, Doctor T. D. Manning, reached that city the third day of September. From there they were transferred by the Relief Committee to Holly Springs, Mississippi, where they organized a hospital service, that did effective work, until the close of the pestilence.

         The good accomplished, however, viewed through the dim lights of human understanding, seemed dearly bought, for in less than two weeks after they had entered that valley of death, a thousand hearts were sorrowing for the young, gifted and dauntless Manning. The great loss of life, and the destruction of property caused by that wide-spread epidemic, induced the Congress of the United States to enact a law, authorizing the President to appoint a Board of Experts upon Contagious Diseases, consisting of nine men, and directed them to prepare a report upon the causes of epidemics, and also to suggest some plan of defense against subsequent invasions, for the consideration of that honorable body. Doctor Swearingen was a member of that board, and the bill creating the National Board of Health, was drawn in accordance with the plan presented to Congress by that Board of Experts.

         January, 1881, Governor O. M. Roberts appointed Doctor Swearingen "State Health Officer," and in 1883 Governor John Ireland reappointed him to the same position. Under the guidance of those two distinguished executives, he controlled the Health Department of the State for six consecutive years. He has always been a zealous friend of public schools, and has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Austin City Schools, since the free school system was inaugurated. He is a member of the American Public Health Association, and the President of the State Medical Association, numbering more than five hundred active, progressive physicians.

         By his friends he is classed among conservatives, but is positive in his convictions, and was never a neutral upon any great moral or political question.

         He has made some reputation as a speaker, but has no aspirations in that line. His last effort, undertaken at the earnest solicitation of old Confederate soldiers, was made in the House of Representatives, December 11, 1889, to an audience of two thousand people. The occasion was the memorial service in honor of Jefferson Davis.

         It is Dr. Swearingen's wish to have the address appended to his biography, not on account of any special merit claimed for it, but to perpetuate, and if possible, to make imperishable some evidence of his love and admiration for a pure, a good and great man.

MEMORIAL ADDRESS.

             MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: —The unsuccessful leaders of great revolutions loom up along the shores of time as do light-houses upon stormy coasts, all of them brilliant and shining afar off like stars! But few of these men have left behind them substantial evidences, of their greatness, or monuments of their works. Their names are not often wreathed in the marble flowers that glisten upon splendid mausoleums. Tradition tells no story of loving hands having planted above them the myrtle and the rose, and of manly eyes paying to their memories the tribute of tears. History can now write another chapter. Last Friday, when the wires flashed the news to the uttermost borders of civilization that the Ex-President of the Confederate States was dead, a wave of sorrow swept over the fairest portion of the earth. The soldiers of the dead Confederacy were bowed down in grief, and men and women, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, talked in low, tremulous tones of their old chief, and the glorious record he had made.

         This occasion will not permit even a brief review of his illustrious life, nor an analysis of the "why" he formed a new republic, nor the "how" that young republic, after a colossal struggle, went down beneath the tread of a million men.

             Jefferson Davis was the ideal Southerner—the highest type of American manhood.

         For four consecutive years he was the central figure in the stormiest era of the world's history. Around him gathered the hopes of a nation, and upon his shoulders rested her destinies. At his word legions sprang to arms, and his name was shouted by dying lips upon every field of battle.

         Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the last shell exploded over the contending armies. Green forests have grown up in the rifle pits and in the trenches. An universal charity has thrown a white mantle of forgiveness over the men who fought beneath the Stars and Stripes, and over that gallant few who followed to the death the waning fortunes of that "bonnie blue flag" we loved so well.

         Through all these years the dark-robed reaper has been busy at his work, striking with impartial hand the fearless hearts that formed the lines, and the lofty plumes that led the van.

         Lincoln, Grant, Sheridan, Thomas, Albert Sidney Johnson, Lee, Jackson and Bragg have long since passed to the other shore; and today the martial form of Jefferson Davis, clothed in a uniform of gray, is consigned to mother earth.

             Death never gathered to her cold embrace a purer Christian; the cradle of childhood never rocked to sleep a gentler heart; the fires of martyrdom never blazed around a more heroic soul; the Roman eagles, the lilies of France nor the Lion of St. George never waved above a braver, truer soldier.

         On the field of Monterey, wounded and almost dying he bore through fire and smoke the victor's wreath! In the counsels of state he wore the insignia of a leader, and when his official light went out forever, he won the glory of a martyr. Crushed down by defeat, cast into the dungeons of Fortress Monroe, unawed by manacles, unterrified by a felon's death that seemed inevitable, this ideal Southerner, this leader of the lost cause, was still true to his people, and rose above the gloom of his surroundings, tall, majestic and eternal as the pyramids that look down upon Sahara. As bold Sir Belvidere said of kingly Arthur, "The like of him will never more be seen on earth."

         Farewell, my peerless, unconquered old chief.

         Your fame will go down the ages as the purest and grandest of mortals; and I do pray that your mighty spirit has found some beautiful spot on the ever shining river, where no beat of drum nor clank of chains shall mar the melody of golden harps when swept by angel fingers; where no prison walls can hide the light of the throne, and where the smile of a loving God will fall around you forever.