Fulton-Dekalb-Taylor County GaArchives News.....Bathed In Blood March 18, 1879
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Linda Blum-Barton http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00003.html#0000645 February 22, 2008, 10:23 pm

The Atlanta Weekly Constitution March 18, 1879
Part 5 of 5 - INCIDENTS OF HIS LIFE AND FAMILY.

A FEAST THAT ENDED IN A TRAGEDY.
On the night of the meeting of the legislature, General Reed was elected 
speaker.  After the adjournment the members had assembled in Brown's hotel to 
enjoy the usual dinner given by the speaker to his friends.  While the banquet 
was at its merriest there was a slight commotion in the further end of the 
hall.  Pushing aside the crowd gathered about the door, a tall figure, wrapped 
in a long cloak, stepped hastily towards the table.  Although the face was 
hidden by a slouched hat, the tall and striking figure was known to the 
crowd.  "There's Alston! Alston!" they shouted.  At this point Colonel Alston 
threw the cloak back and disclosed his features.  Without an instant of 
hesitation Reed arose and drew his pistol and fired at Alston, tearing two 
fingers off of his right hand in which he was holding a bowie-knife.  Alston 
never hesitated at this but charged like a wild boar on Reed.  They were pulled 
apart after a struggle in which Reed was cut and Alston somewhat injured.  Some 
months afterward General Reed was walking down the street with a friend when he 
was attacked by Col. Willis Alston.  He received the contents of a shotgun, and 
as he turned to confront his assailant, received the other load in his face.  
He dropped mortally wounded.  Colonel Alston's friends claimed that he had 
notified Reed that he would kill him on sight.  Reed's friends claim that he 
received no such notification.  At any rate Colonel Alston was imprisoned.  He 
managed to get off to Texas, it is said, at a sacrifice of over $30,000 in 
property and money.  He settled in Texas, near Brazoria.  

After he had been there for some time he heard that a Dr. Stewart had been 
discussing his killing of Reed in uncompimentary terms.  He wrote down the 
remarks, and a short time afterwards met Dr. Stewart on the prairie.  He 
presented the letter, and asked Dr. Stewart if he had made the remarks he ws 
credited with there.  While Dr. Stewart was examining the letter, he drew his 
pistol and fired on Colonel Alston.  The shot entered his bowels.  In the 
meantime Dr. Stewart had dismounted, getting his horse between himself and 
Alston.  Alston advanced, and after being terribly mutilated, so much that his 
bowels protruded, he killed Stewart -- pouring a load of buckshot through his 
head.  He was taken to jail, and while there wrote his last letter on earth.  
It was addressed to Colonel Tom Howard.  It was confident, hopeful and 
defiant.  After writing this letter he took his fiddle and commenced playing, 
all gashed and torn as he was.  William, his faithful body servant, shortly 
afterward entered the jail, having a coil of rope wound about his body under 
his clothes.  While they were preparing for the master's escape, a noise was 
heard outside.  It was a crowd breaking into the jail to take the prisoner out 
and kill him.  The mob pressed through the doors, but the dauntless hero never 
quailed.  He sat there fiddling in lordly contempt of pain and death, looking 
upon his inhuman assailants with unblanced face.  They dragged him out, 
swinging him in a blanket, which they knotted at the ends.  There, muffled up 
from the light of day, but with the old fearlessness blazing in his heart, and 
the old dauntless smile playing on his olips, his body riddled with a shower of 
lyncher's bullets, the last of the Halifax Alstons died.  A lion-like race they 
were, their gentle blood flaming into passion at the slightest insult -- 
generous of life and gold alike -- fitter in their imperious habits and 
princely ways for the days of chivalry and a realm of barons than for our 
prosaic days and our commonplace land.

THE ALSTON DESTINY.

There is a point upon which "Bob" Alston has been more misunderstood than 
[several words are unreadable here]... The bravery and dash of the old Alston 
blood were there, but the passion-fever had been cooled out of it, and a most 
genial essence sent through it, cool and sparkling.  His mother was a gentle 
woman and gave to her sons a most admirable sweetness of disposition.  Whenever 
the Alston fire flashed in the veins, this delicious coolness put it down.  I 
never saw Alston angry five minutes at a time in my life.  It was a flash -- a 
frown -- a smile!  Why does not John Nelms say that in the crisis of that 
murderous fight, while the messenger of death was already winged, the pale, 
stern face turned toward him and lighted with a smile?  And does not the poor 
clay coffined and stilled, in that room, yet wear a smile that tells that the 
passion roused in that forbearing frame died away before the smoke had cleared 
from his face?

I know, besides this, as Alston's friends know, that he had a sort of 
superstitious dread of dying a violent death.  While he lved his ancestors, and 
honored their high spirit, he has told me time and again that his highest 
ambition was to live and die in peace.  He said to me once that he had kneeled 
by his boy's bedside and prayed to God that he might be allowed to leave him a 
legacy of peace.  The night he left Atlanta to go to meet Mr. E. Y. Clark in 
Alabama, he parted with me at the old Castleberry corner.  He turned and leaned 
against the well that stood there and prayed aloud that he might come back 
without having done or suffered violence.  He never knew what bodily fear was.  
I have seen him do the most audacious things, and he has now written courage 
with his life-blood.

He was gentle of spirit, and he shuddered at the thought of bloodshed.  His 
impulsive nature -- and most often his generous chivalry -- frequently led him 
into difficulties, but he always sacrificed all that honor would permit to 
avoid violence.

I heard it said yesterday that he had killed two men.  Nothing could be 
falser.  He never fought a duel.  He never hurt a human being.  He never 
carried a pistol.  He was an authority on the code, and has adjusted, I 
presume, more difficulties than any man in Georgia.  The saddest memory of his 
life, as I know, was his connection with the McGraw-Tabor duel.  An article 
appeared in the Charleston Mercury assailing Judge McGraw.  Young McGraw, 
Alston's friend, challenged the three editors of the paper, declining to hold 
the author of the article responsible, and contending that the publication was 
the offense.  Tabor accepted.  Alston loaded the pistols.  At the second fire 
Tabor sprang into the air and fell to the earth a corpse. Alston never got over 
the horror of that sight.  He believed in the "code", but he believed in it as 
a peacemaker.  He held that it settled difficulties rather than raised 
them.  "Under the code," said he, "street fights are impossible and murders 
almost so.  In Charleston with the code in vogue, there was not a murder in 
twenty years.  The code simply means that two gentlemen in passion shall leave 
their dispute to two gentlemen who are cool and disinterested."  His own death 
seems to give weight to his argument.  Had his difference with Cox been left 
two hours it would have been settled.

He laughted to me a few months ago when I noted him with an old enemy.  "Oh, I 
am getting cooler now.  I think I am going to break the old tradition that the 
Alstons must die in their boots."  There was a flavor of sadness in this 
remark.  I know that this vague horror of a violent death overshadowed his 
whole life.  What could have been more piteous, to those who knew the fire that 
lived in the man's heart, and the pride that flashed through his veins, than 
the abject way in which he tried to avoid the difficulty with Cox.  How he 
avoided him, dodged him, expostulated, begged for peace -- asked his friends to 
interfere and save him, and at last threw himself in the treasurer's chair and 
said: "How awful it is to be hunted down by a man who is determined to kill 
you!"  Ah -- God alone knows how that proud heart was ????? and that gentle 
spirit tortured, when he answered that cry!  And about the last thing he did 
was to walk up to Cox, lay his two hands gently on his breast and looking into 
his enemy's face with that frank, winsome way of his, say "Ed, why should we 
have a difficulty?  I don't want to kill you, and you oughtn't to want to kill 
me?"

When at last he saw that the fight must come he met it grandly and like the man 
he was.  When Cox with his pistol in his hand turned to lock the door for hte 
death struggle, how easily Alston could have killed him.  But no!  There he sat 
calmly aweaiting, until his assailant had turned full upon him.  Then he arose 
deliberately, and stood nerved for the deadly shock.  And he met it like a 
hero!  He never stirred from his tracks.  He stood erect, his head thrown back 
in the old royal way, half-wheeling on his heels at each shot to confront his 
enemy, who dodged and jumped from one side of the room to the other.  When his 
pistol snapped, and he knew his life was gone, he never blanched or dodged.  He 
turned toward Nelms, his friend, smiled, and without a frown met his death in 
the old Alston way!

There was a touching thing done by Ed Mercer, who always loved Alston passing 
well.  He knew of Alston's fear that he would die a violent death, he said, 
with tear in his eyes, "Poor Bob.  He shall not die in his boots," and he 
tenderly pulled them off.  At the bed-side the scene was heart-rending.  The 
poor wife, holding her husband's hand and calling on him in the most piteous 
tones.  Near her kneeled Governor Colquitt praying aloud, his voice so broken 
that he could not syllable his words.  Around the bed stood friends with 
uncovered heads and streaming eyes, while the crowd thronged outside the door 
eager for the slightest bit of news.  On the bed, peaceful and resigned, his 
eyes resting fondly on his wife or lifted now and then to some friend, lay the 
sufferer.  Ah, surely in God's mercy, here was the peaceful death he had prayed 
for!  Surely here was a peace that mocked all earthly storms -- a peace that 
smiled at the ghastly hole in the temple and the blood-stains -- a legacy of 
peace that would enrich his son beyond all measure -- a peace that "passeth 
understanding."  
-----------------------------------------------------
"BOB" ALSTON'S LIFE.

It is my opinion that in the death of "Bob" Alston, the state of Georgia lost 
one of her most useful sons.  He was just emerging from his boyhood when he 
died.  He had hardly entered upon his real and earnest life.  He carried the 
freshness and the impulses of his teens into his forty years.  He was just 
throwing these off.  And those splendid energies -- that marvelous information -
- that active brain -- that buoyant force -- what could they not have 
accomplished when ballasted with the wisdom and experience of fifty years?  In 
the legislature, he had already gone to the front ranks, and as fast as the 
vein of earnestness and sagacity was discovered beneath the apparent tightness 
his leadership was being confirmed.  He would have gone out of the present 
house very nearly its foremost man if he had lived.  His real career was just 
opening and the man in him was just asserting itself over those charming and 
boyish traits which, winsome as they were, could not enforce a genuine 
leadership.  Just recovered from his financial troubles, he would have been 
more than independent in a few months.  It is hard that, just as his hand was 
outstretched to pluck the tedious fruitage of a lifetime, it should be palsied 
with death.  Truly, God's ways are inscrutable!

Alston was the most generous man that I ever knew.  I have seen him literally 
give away his last dollar.  Never in my life did I see him refuse help to any 
applicant, if he had aught to give.  He gave lavishly, hearily and without a 
question.  He has spent several snug fortunes since 1872.  At one stroke he 
made $9,8000;  at another $11,000, and at another $15,000.  He spent wondefully 
little money on himself.  He denied himself even the comforts of life that he 
might give to others.  I never shall forget how my eyes filled with tears and 
laughter at the same time, when I saw him at the governor's inaugural ball with 
trousers that had great holes in them, and remembered that two days before he 
had given to a noble purpose ten times the amount needed for a new pair.  I 
have seen him spend the day without a mouthful of dinner, and the next day make 
$50 and give $40 of it away.  Of the $15,000 that he received a short time ago, 
I am sure he gave away nearly $5,000, and in two weeks he had not a cent left.  
He showed me a list of his expenditures, and there he had give to friend and 
enemy alike, to all who had asked, as long as he had a dollar.  There was no 
ostentation about all this.  He rather kept it hidden that he might excape the 
scoldings of his more worldly-wise friends.

He was true to his friends to the last degree.  He never failed to help them 
when chance offered, and never deserted them when they were in trouble.  
Lovable, sympathetic and frank, he was wonderfully magnetic.  Every man who 
worked on the old Herald with him loved him.  On yesterday dispatches were 
received from them all over the state, and to-day a half hundred of them will 
be in Decatur to see him buried.  Moore comes from Augusta, Winter from Macon, 
Burney from Albany, and two-score from Atlanta.  Those men who knew him best 
loved him most.

His love for his wife was marvelous in its freshness and strength.  It was the 
passion of his life.  To the very last he was her lover.  The last letter he 
ever wrote was addressed to her as if he was suing for her hand in marriage, 
and he says: "I shall be in Atlanta on Saturday for my answer." The morning 
that he left her he kissed her in the door.  She followed him to the steps and 
there stopped.  "What! no further than the steps with me?"  he said.  And, 
laughingly, she went with him to the gate.  Ah! the poor woman spoke the secret 
of her heart and the glory of her life when she rubbed his chilled hands and 
said: "Oh! my poor lover; my precious lover.  Speak to me -- look at me!"   She 
was all to him -- and nobly did she fill his life with her sweet and loyal 
love! May God in his infinite gentleness bathe her heart with mercy!

Alston was child-like in his faith.  He had absolute trust in prayer.  I doubt 
if he ever closed his eyes at night without going on his knees.  He prayed all 
the time and in all places.  I have seen him go down on his knees in our 
editorial room and pray aloud for help and guidance.  And the first impulse 
that followed this prayer he would follow blindly and to the end.  At heart he 
was profoundly religious, and his beliefs were old-fashioned on all religious 
subjects.  He used to upbraid me for working on Sunday in the severest terms.  
That he sometimes sinned himself was due to the peculiar impulsiveness of his 
nature.  His life though was singlularly free from vices.  I know of few men 
who were cleaner in their habits.  His life was a struggle, in which a great 
religious heart tried to corral a myriad of impulses.  It is not for me to 
judge him.  I know none of the secrets of the future, but I do know that if 
there is mercy in God He will not turn away from this silent heart, that in all 
its sorrows and triumphs went up to Him in an impulse of praise or 
supplication.  If ever a man walked reverently in the shadow of His footstool 
my poor friend did.

I might write forever about him.  About his home-life, so soft and loving and 
gentle -- about the kindliness with which he placed his arm about me when I 
came to this city a friendless youngster -- about the charming surprises that 
his life developed day after day -- about the half-sad, half-tender talks we 
used to have about his life and the hopes and loves he had centered on his 
children -- about his wonderful adventures and exploits, so full of that bright 
audacity that sat him so well!

But the public has nothing to do with this.  To-day we bury him -- to-morrow we 
shine his memory in our hearts and turn our faces to the future.  Tears are 
idle, and no cry can bring back that bright presence and that winsome face.  
Noithing can light those darkened eyes -- nothing thrill that coffined heart -- 
nothing quicken that tired brain -- nothing nerve that listless hand!  God's 
will be done, and God rest thee in peace, thou honest friend -- thou golden-
hearted gentleman!
H. W. G.

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