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
