All the while Travis studied his torts and contracts and criminal law, reading Blackstone, Chitty's Pleadings, and Harry Toulmin's Digest of Alabama Law, and the other texts in Dellet's library. Dellet himself, like most attorneys, would have taught Travis simply by assigning him extensive readings, then examining him orally, as well as allowing him to observe courtroom proceedings when the county and circuit judges sat. Dellet also set an example of industry, being himself a slave to his office. He let nothing distract him from business when he was working, and often seemed harsh and abrupt. “I was driven at first from cultivating an acquaintance with him by his stern and forbidding deportment,” another young lawyer found on meeting Dellet in 1829, “but I soon learned to value the sterling qualities of his mind and soul.”38 Beyond question, just as Travis hungrily absorbed the law from Dellet, so he also modeled some of his manners after his mentor.
With all that crowded Travis's day, he hardly had time to participate much in Claiborne society, such as it was, yet certainly he craved to be a lion of the community. The town sat atop a bluff in a scenic spot with a beautiful view of the five-hundred-yard-wide Alabama 180 feet below. Though hardly a city, it was considerable by Alabama standards at the time, with 453 white men and women and another 382 slaves and free blacks. More important, it served as county seat for Monroe, whose 8,782 inhabitants must all at one time or another have walked its streets.39 Settlers first appeared in 1816, and four years later planners laid out the town—one of its first citizens being Dellet, and another William Cato's friend Samuel DeWolf.
It was one of the five principal towns in the state by then. A steep slide allowed planters to shift cotton bales to the riverbank, from which boats carried the white gold downriver to Mobile. The steam ferry Emaline made regular passages to Mobile, while at least three full-size steamboats plied up and down the river making frequent stops below the bluff. Weatherford's ferry, just below Claiborne, allowed a crossing into Clarke County; another ferry operated north of town; and Monroeville, fourteen miles to the east, allowed connection with the stage road to Montgomery, the capital.40
The road from Monroeville came into town from the east and became Main Street, ending at the Masonic Hall on the bluff. Just south of Main Street sat the town commons, with the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, while the Baptists—often led by Travis's uncle Alexander—had no building of their own and met in the Masonic Hall. The occasional stage deposited travelers at Ansel Erwin's Eagle Hotel or at George Medlock's Washington Hall on Main, while Edward Ellis operated a tavern on Monroe Street. H. Goldsmith promised that his was the “Cheapest Store Under the Sun” for general merchandise, though he had plenty of competition from James Colburn, Francis Pridgeon, and several more. Samuel Forwood recalled Claiborne as all “bustle and full of life” in those days. There were a jeweler, three tailors, a saddler, three carpenters, a combination tanner and Baptist minister, and more. And there were also the characters, and even a celebrity in the person of the famed Sam Dale, now in his late fifties. Some called him the “Daniel Boone of Alabama,” though the local Creek and Choctaw regarded him as “Sam Thlucco” or “Big Sam.” No one would ever forget his famed Canoe Fight, when he and three others defended themselves in their boat against eleven warriors in the middle of the Alabama. He was a sad figure now, though, almost destitute thanks to being a spendthrift.41
It was thanks in no small part to men in debt like Dale that a county seat such as Claiborne offered thriving ground for lawyers. Dellet may have led the bar, but he had distinguished company. There was Arthur Bagby, just thirty-four yet already once an elected legislator and youngest speaker of the state house in its history. An exciting orator, only he truly rivaled Dellet. Then there was the tall and lanky Enoch Parsons, noted as much for his huge nose and “Indian features” as for his skill as an advocate, and also currently sitting in the legislature. The one-legged Virginian Charles Tait was over sixty, just retired as judge of the U.S. District Court for Alabama, but still occasionally active as an attorney, devoting his idle hours to science and literature, and believed to have turned down an appointment as ambassador to Great Britain in 1828 when offered by Jackson. Henry Abney practiced law and also served as clerk of the circuit court, while Benjamin F. Porter, little older than Travis, had come to town in 1829, first as a physician, but was studying law as well.42
It was a crowded bar to be sure, yet on February 27, 1829, it made room for its newest member. Shortly before Travis went before Judge Anderson Crenshaw to be examined, and after scarcely a year of studies, he proved equal to the test.43 Travis himself was proud of the intense application he made to learn from Dellet, and prouder still on that day in February when in his own Herald he announced to Claiborne for the first time that “WILLIAM B. TRAVIS has established his Office for the present at the next door above the Post Office, where he may be found, at all times, when not absent on business.”44 Schoolteacher, publisher, and now attorney at law, he had not yet turned twenty.
When he got his first legal business, almost certainly a suit for collection of debt, which constituted the great bulk of an attorney's efforts at the time, he filed his papers with Sheriff George Medlock first, then with Draughton if it was a county court matter, or Samuel McColl for circuit court cases. Since Claiborne remained without a separate courthouse, the ground floor of the Masonic Hall served as courtroom and courthouse combined, and there he would argue his cases when and if they came. Meanwhile, Travis waited for those clients to appear, and until then the overwork and distracted energies of the past months left him facing his own first real experience with debt. The newspaper cost money to run, and he had borrowed at least $90 at the beginning of the year. Just ten days before opening his law practice he borrowed another $55.37, probably for the expenses of setting up even a modest office.45 Undoubtedly there were more debts, forcing Travis to undertake even more efforts to provide income. He did job printing at the Herald office, sold blank forms, business cards, even made book plates, including his own. He took subscriptions at the office for journals like the National Souvenir and the Jackson Wreath, and at home he apparently took in two or three boarding students to tutor. Having a middle-aged slave woman to help around the house, and a young slave male to assist with any heavy work may have eased the load on Rosanna, but it also added to the expense of a household already financially stressed.46
In order to attract the widest possible clientele, Travis stood ready to practice not just in the Monroe courts, but also in neighboring counties Clarke and Wilcox, but the customers had to come to him first.47 Unfortunately, the clients never rushed to that office next to the post office. Years later when Samuel Forwood recalled Claiborne in 1829-30, he spoke of the town's many “able” attorneys and mentioned Dellet and Bagby and Parsons and several others. But he did not recall Travis. Worse, despite Travis's earnest efforts to take a prominent role in community affairs, Forwood could not even remember Travis being a resident.48
Certainly young Travis tried his best. He undoubtedly participated in the Euphemian Lodge, a debating club whose members included Samuel Cloud, his recently married near neighbor in town.49 He promoted the efforts of the American Tract Society, no doubt helping in the formation of Claiborne's auxiliary group in March 1829, and at the same time assumed the secretaryship of the Claiborne Temperance Society, helping to disseminate its constitution and ideals to neighboring counties, all in keeping with his Baptist upbringing.50 Even though few cases took him to the first floor of the Masonic Hall, he saw the second floor more frequently when in June he secured induction and initiation into Claiborne's Alabama Lodge No. 3, Free and Accepted Masons as an Apprentice, took the Fellowcraft degree a month later, and became a Master Mason in August, despite the fact that he was only twenty and regulations required a man to be twenty-one. Most likely he simply lied about his age, as he would do again in his life.51
And as any gentleman of spirit and patriotism should, Travis joined the militia. On January 3, 1830, he took a
commission as adjutant of the Twenty-sixth Regiment, Eighth Brigade, Fourth Division, head-quartered at Claiborne, an appointment that made use of his considerable writing and legal skills. Sheriff George Medlock commanded the local troop, also called the Monroe Cavalry, but it was only eighty men strong, many of them without arms.52
In short, William B. Travis—he always insisted on the inclusion of the middle initial in his name—did everything an ambitious young man was supposed to do to establish himself and become a success, to make himself another Dellet. But it all failed. The Herald went steadily down by the end of 1829. The leading men in Claiborne, such as Dellet and Tait, did not subscribe.53 By the fall he actually failed to get out as many as six issues, and in December was down to publishing a single two-sided sheet along with the apology that “the disorganization of our office for some time past compells us to issue a half sheet this week, for which we would beg to be excused.” Advertising fell by more than a third, and most of his receipts now were for legal announcements, with less and less coming from business. After almost a year, no one suitable had responded to that advertisement for a journeyman printer, which meant that he was still doing the whole job virtually alone.54 It cannot have lasted more than another few issues.55
And the debts continued to accumulate. The deadlines on the notes for those loans for $90.00 and $55.37 came and went without payment, and the holders turned them over to Dellet for collection. More unpaid notes joined them—$192.40 in May 1829, $50.12 in June, and another $50.00 in July, and so it continued. By August 1830 Travis's creditors turned increasingly to Dellet to file suit in the circuit court for collection. All of them went unpaid.56 He could not even afford to buy a house or property, and most likely operated newspaper, law practice, book sales, and home all in the same rented building not far from Dellet's town home.57 Including the slaves, nine people lived under his roof by the latter half of 1830, and feeding them became a trial. By the end of 1829 he even tried to get his hands on a large quantity of corn and half a ton of pork, obviously in hope of a resale.58 There was a real question of him even being able to pay the modest county tax of $1.00 for himself and $2.00 for his slaves. Probably he could not afford even to pay the $1 tax for a gold watch, much less own one.59
When finally he did get cases, they promised little reward. His brother-in-law William M. Cato gave him a brief for collection of a $5.50 debt, but Travis's fee at the usual 5 percent would only amount to 27.5 cents. When Cato had larger business, moreover, he took it to Dellet instead, which must have hurt. In August 1830 Travis undertook collection of debts to the estate of Ansel Erwin, but when he spent hours filing subpoenas for collecting $4.77 due for tavern meals, $1.77 for drinks, 31.25 cents for glassware, and so on, he must have felt shaken when he considered that his fee would be barely 60 cents, and measured that against all the effort it had taken him to come to this. The largest case he got for collection in the fall 1830 term of the Monroe court promised a fee of less than $2.50. Just like the newspaper, his law practice was a dismal failure.60
And then there was the marriage. Relations may have been strained from the day of the wedding if not before, especially if young Charles arrived a year earlier than the 1829 that Travis or Rosanna later altered in their family Bible. With Travis trying to manage so many things at once, there could be little time to be a husband to his teenage wife or a father to the baby boy. Mounting debt certainly caused a strain, especially since some of it may have been unnecessary. Travis liked fine clothing, and he also liked to gamble, while three slaves in the household certainly showed a penchant for living beyond his means, even if they were only on loan from parents. As for Rosanna, she was strong-willed and perhaps flirtatious, as the circumstances of her youthful marriage would suggest, and Travis, too, may well have given cause for jealous discontent, for he would soon show an immature young man's cavalier attitude toward fidelity in matters of the heart. It can hardly be denied that all the frustrations and disappointments of his thwarted dreams of career success and social position made Travis an unhappy, even brooding man, hard to live with, and harder perhaps to love. The mounting pressure of debt and the impending humiliation of being sued in court, himself a lawyer, surely put froth on an already poisoned domestic cup.
“Choose wisely the wife of they bosom,” Travis wrote in the Herald early in 1829, quoting an essay no doubt borrowed from a book or some other newspaper. A man should avoid the gaudy and preening in a woman, as well as the proud, for all that would wither. More to the point, a wife should be subservient and obedient. “She must be the unspotted sanctuary to which wearied men may flee from the crimes of the world, and feel that no sin dare enter there.”61 With all his troubles, that was the kind of wife Travis needed, but Rosanna was independent, perhaps even accusing, and at only eighteen hardly mature enough herself to be dealing with a son, heavy debt, a distracted and morose husband, and late in the year another child on the way when she was scarcely out of childhood herself. She may even have sought comfort from their friend Samuel Cloud, who lived in town next door to her brother William, and who though a few years older than Travis, probably knew him from their younger days at Sparta or through the Euphemian Lodge.62 He had a wife and two children by 1830, but an old friend could still be a friend, though if he was, Travis might well have seen it as something else. For her part, Rosanna protested: “I endeavoured to preform my duty as a wife with the most undeviating integrity and faithfulness and if any thing occurred to dissatisfy him with me it was the result of my ignorances as to what was my duty as a wife, or I would have performed it to his entire satisfaction.”63
It was not enough, and for all these reasons and more, the marriage was breaking down.64 Travis himself would only say that “my wife and I had a feud which resulted in our separation.”65 But that was disingenuous, and Travis knew it. Disappointment, debt, fear, and humiliation finally tore them apart. The bills and overdue notes hung around his neck like a dead weight. He could not pay for the corn he fed his horse. A new creditor filed a suit with Dellet to collect $202.93. His brother-in-law Allen Cato did likewise for $55.06. As the spring 1831 term of the circuit court approached, Dellet alone held briefs for the collection of debts against Travis totaling $834, and certainly other attorneys held more.66 Other men owed much greater sums. Poor old Sam Dale was in debt to a single creditor for $1,174, but Travis was just twenty-one, susceptible to the special pain that only youthful pride can feel. Even when he went to Clarkesville on the rare occasion that he got a case in that county, as like as not men at the court there simply used him as a courier to take their business letters back to Dellet in Claiborne.67 Worse, the newcomer Benjamin Porter, just admitted to the bar in 1830, was now to be Dellet's partner and was already spoken of as a candidate for the legislature in the next year's election.68 That was the success that should have been Travis's.
With the opening of the court and the hearing of the suits against him scheduled for March, William Barret Travis sank even lower within himself. Everyone saw it, even Porter, who scarcely knew him. “Never have I seen a more impressive instance of depression from debts,” Porter recalled, sympathizing in the struggles to support his family that he felt had led Travis to this unhappy pass.69 But Dellet had no such sympathy. When the court opened and the suits for those debts came up before Judge Taylor, Travis received the summons he knew must inevitably come. At least he managed to make himself go down Main Street to the Masonic Hall, the same building where he attended church, where he had become a Mason, where he had passed the bar on that proudest day of his life. But now he came to the rail as a defendant, and to act as his own counsel.70
Dellet was there, and Porter, and no doubt the other litigants that day, as well as a few loungers. When Travis arose to speak they saw a man slightly above average, perhaps five feet nine or ten inches tall, at 175 pounds a bit fleshy for his stature, with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a reddish-brown beard trimmed short over what Porter called “a fine Saxon face.” Some thought his
manner gentle, but that may have been merely his humble pose for the court on this most trying of days. His usual associates found him instead not unlike Dellet, brusque to the point of giving offense, and when someone took his manner for an insult, he simply turned his back. “He was unquestionably an honest man,” said the onlooker Porter, “but debt will weigh down the loftiest soul, and humble the brightest intelligence.”71
As Dellet brought to the bench one suit for debt after another, Travis had no answer until finally a possible means of escape came to him. Almost all these debts dated to the two years prior to his twenty-first birthday, now just seven months past. A minor, by custom and law in many jurisdictions, was not considered legally responsible either to incur or to redeem debts. The official plea in such a case was to dismiss the suit on grounds of “infancy.” But Travis should have known Dellet better than to give him that opportunity. As soon as Travis offered his plea, his former mentor came to him and had him stand, then led him to the jury box, Travis apparently having no idea what his opponent was doing. Then, with all the theatrical sarcasm for which Dellet justly enjoyed fame, he pointed to Travis and said: “Gentlemen, I make ‘proofest’ of this infant.” If the strange word confused the jury members at all, there was no mistaking Dellet's meaning. Porter found that “the effect was electrical, on account of Travis' size.” With a tall, filled out, bearded man standing before them claiming to be an “infant,” they could do nothing but break out in howls of derisive laughter, and after that they promptly found against him.72
Three Roads to the Alamo Page 25