Albert Pike

Lawyer, Poet.

Albert Pike, lawyer, poet, philologist, and for many years prior to his death the highest Masonic dignitary in the United States, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, December 29, 1809, and died in Washington City, April 2, 1891.

In early childhood he removed to Newburyport, in the same State, at which place and at Framingham he received his early education. In 1825 he entered Harvard College, supporting himself at the same time by teaching. Having studied at home for the junior class and passed the examination to enter in 1826, he found that the tuition of the two previous years was required to be paid, and, declining to do this, he completed his own education, teaching the meanwhile at Fairhaven and Newburyport, where he was principal of the grammar school, and afterwards conducted a private school of his own. In later years the degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon him by the faculty of Harvard College. In March, 1831, he went to the west, going with a trading party as far as Santa Fe, New Mexico. In September, 1832, he joined a trapping party at Taos, with which he went down the Pecos river and into the Staked Plains, where with four others he left the party and, traveling for the most part on foot, reached Fort Smith, Arkansas, December 10, 1832. His adventures during these expeditions, in which he underwent many hardships, are related in his volume of "Prose Sketches and Poems," published in 1834. While teaching in 1833, below Van Buren and on Little Piney river, he contributed articles to the Little Rock "Advocate," which attracted the attention of Robert Crittenden, through whom he was made assistant editor of that paper, of which he afterwards became owner and conducted it for upwards of two years. In 1835 he was admitted to the bar. He had read only the first volume of "Blackstone's Commentaries," but the judge of the territorial superior court said, as he gave the license, that it was not like giving a medical diploma, because as a lawyer he could not take anyone's life. He subsequently made an extensive study of the law, being his own teacher, and practiced his profession until the outbreak of the Mexican War, when he recruited a company of cavalry, and was present at the battle of Buena Vista, being attached to Colonel Charles May's squadron of dragoons In 1848 he fought a duel with Governor John S. Roane, on the occasion of an account of that battle written by him, and which Governor Roane considered reflected unjustly on the Arkansas regiment.

In 1849 he was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, at the same time with Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. A famous case pleaded by him before that tribunal was the claim of Henry M. Rector for the famous Hot Springs property in Arkansas. In 1853 he transferred his law office to New Orleans, having, in preparation for practice before the court of Louisiana, read the "Pandects," making a translation into English of the first volume, as well as numerous French authorities, and he also wrote an unpublished work in three volumes upon "The Maxims of the Roman and French Law." He resumed practice in Arkansas in 1857. In 1859, having been for many years attorney for the Choctaw Indians, in association with three others he secured the award by the United States Senate to that tribe of $2,981,247. He was the first proposer of a Pacific railroad convention, and was sent as a delegate to several conventions of the kind before the war, at one time obtaining from the Louisiana Legislature a charter for a road with termini at San Francisco and Guaymas. During the war of secession, he was sent by the Confederate government to negotiate with the five civilized tribes in Indian Territory, to secure their alliance and adhesion, and commanded a brigade of Cherokees at the battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas. He was also for a short time on the Supreme Bench of Arkansas. In 1867 he edited the "Appeal" at Memphis, Tennessee, and in 1868 he removed to Washington City where he practiced before the courts until 1880.

From the year 1880 until his death, he devoted himself to literary pursuits and to Masonry. In his twentieth year General Pike composed the "Hymns to the Gods," poems published in "Blackwood's Magazine" in 1839, and included in "Nugae," a volume of poems privately printed in 1854. In 1873 and 1882 he printed, also privately, two other collections of poems. In 1840-45 he was the author of five volumes of Law Reports; in 1845 of the “Arkansas Form-Book;” in 1859 of "Masonic Statutes and Regulations;" and in 1870 of "Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry." Unpublished translations of the "Rig Veda," the "Zend Avesta," and other works of Aryan literature (with comments) filled seventeen or eighteen volumes of manuscript, without blemish or erasure. He composed numerous Masonic rituals, and replied to the bull of Pope Leo XIII against Masonry. In 1859 he was appointed grand commander for life of the supreme council of the thirty-third degree for the southern jurisdiction of the United States, the mother supreme council of the Masonic world. He was also at the head of the Royal Order of Scottish Rite Masonry in the United States.

SOURCE: William Richard Cutter, Editor, American Biography: A New Cyclopedia, Volume 2, p. 184-6