Tunstall of Tensaw
by Will T. Sheehan
June 4, 1905, Montgomery Advertiser
Picturesque Career of Distinguished Citizen of Baldwin County, Sixty Years in the Public Eye
Tom Tate Tunstall of Tensaw
In his eighty-third year, with his form still erect, his shoulders still thrown back, his eye dimmed but slightly by his age, his speech clear and positive, his memory still strong, one of Alabama’s most picturesque sons is spending the evening of his life in rest and quiet in the City of Mobile. A descendant of that line of beautiful Indian women known as Sehoy, a member of the family of the State’s most distinguished Indian, he cherishes a pride in his Indian blood and has done his full share towards preserving the memory of the deeds and the character of the men and women of his Indian ancestry.
His own life has been of interest and adventure and of his own experience he has “moving tales of adventures by flood and field to tell.” Nearly sixty years ago, an ardent and eloquent young fellow fresh from college, he delivered a moving appeal to the legislature for the rights of those Alabamians of Indian blood to vote in the State’s election He was consul to Cadis Spain, and from that office he was removed by Abraham Lincoln at the outbreak of the war. And in an unsuccessful attempt to render needed aid and assistance to Raphael Semmes and the Confederate vessel he commanded he was arrested by the Federal consul at Tangiers and sent to Boston in irons. Even when released from the imprisonment he was later arrested in Washington as a spy while he was making an effort to aid the stricken Confederacy and imprisoned in Old Capitol prison. Nor was he released until he gave his promise to the Federal government that he would retire to Europe and remain there until the war was over, a parole that he faithfully kept.
Again in the term of President Cleveland he was a consul to Central America, a post that was given him because of his familiarity with the Spanish language and with Spanish customs. As an American consul, as a brilliant conversationalist, and as a fine companion he was entertained at Gibraltar in 1887, and on that famous island or rock he was initiated in the mysteries of Masonry. He has known every prominent Alabamian from William Yancy, Clement C. Clay, John Anthony Winston and other intellectual giants of the great days before the war down to the present times. He has been an eloquent speaker, a facile writer and has written verses of no mean order.
He was born with especial pride the designation of Tom Tate Tunstall of Tensaw, an appellation which recalls his plantation home of three-quarters of a century as well as the little center of wealth and education in the Northern part of Baldwin County, where abode for years and year the Tatem and the Tunstalls and other corollary branches of the Indian aristocracy, mixed with the no less aristocratic blood of England and Virginia. There has been no more chance of mistaking the individuality of Tunstall of Tensaw than of going astray upon the personality of the famous Marylander who signed his name to the Declaration of Independence as Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
A man of gifts and a man of positive views, freely expressed in this picturesque South Alabamian, carried career, spent in many lands, a communion and an intercourse with varied and different peoples, a mental horizon widened and broadened has only heightened his love for the splendid Ante-bellum life of the old South and crystallized in his memory the things which so endeared it in the minds of those who were fortunate enough to enjoy it at its best. The families who lived about Tensaw were families of wealth and of culture, proud of the blood of the Sehoys and of Weatherford, even as the Randolphs and the Harrisons of Virginia were proud of the blood of their Indian kinsmen.
The Indian Aristocracy
In the very house in which Tunstall of Tensaw was born William Weatherford lived and in its yard he is today sleeping his last sleep by the side of his mother, Sehoy McGillivray, for whom the war leader of the Creeks entertained a deep and changeless affection. It was his last wish that he should be buried by the side of his mother and today the two sleep side by side.
His bravery in battle and his diplomacy in council were not more characteristic of William Weatherford than his love for his mother. It is recorded of the great Indian leader whose father was a white man that when he was twitted for hesitating upon entering into the war against the whites, a hesitancy that was due to his conviction that the result of such a war could be only misfortune for the Creeks, he hotly replied to the Indian chiefs who had taunted him:
“My name is Red Eagle. If any among you believe I wear a white feather let him step forward and attempt to pluck it out. If the war comes I shall be found fighting side by side with those who speak the tongue of my mother and not those who speak the tongue of my father.”
The Indian Chieftain was half brother of the grandfather of Tunstall of Tensaw. Sehoy McGillivray, the beautiful daughter of Alexander McGillivray, who has been styled the Alabama Talleyrand was twice married. Her first husband was Colonel Tate of the British army who was the father of David Tate, the grandfather of Mr. Tunstall. Her second husband was Charles Weatherford, father of William Weatherford.
For his half brother David Tate Weatherford always entertained the highest affection and esteem. When he had successfully led his Indians against Fort Mims and hey had broken away from his control and were massacring the whites it was to the plantation of this half brother near Tensaw that Weatherford turned his horse in his rage and sorrow.
After his surrender Weatherford, who had before the war been wealthy in slaves, negroes, and plantations, retired to his favorite plantation near Tensaw where so many of his relatives lived. He was still possessed of what twas in those days a comfortable fortune and lived in a style second to that of no plantation owner of South Alabama. It was a wealthy settlement, the plantation community about Tensaw. About there lived the aristocracy of the Indians, the descendants of the chiefs and beautiful women of the famous Wind family whose blood mingled with the best of the white settlers who came to the State in the pioneer days.
The father of Tom Tate Tunstall was George Tunstall, a descendant of a noble family of England and the man who established at Pensacola the first newspaper published in the State of Florida, he later came to Tensaw where he married the daughter of David Tate.
“I was but little over a year old when Weatherford died,” said Mr. Tunstall in speaking of his early days at his childhood home. “And of course I have no recollection of his appearance or his characteristics, but he often held me in his lap and I was told manifested a great fondness for the baby of his niece. My father was on the bear hunt with Weatherford when the war leader caught the severe cold that resulted in his death in 1824. My mother was at the second marriage of Weatherford, an event that was regarded as of great importance in the pioneer days. He stood up to be married in full Indian costume, hunting shirt, leggings, belt and all, for he was devoted to this costume and although one of the wealthiest men of our section, he never wore any other costume.”
“Ah, it was a great life that was lived in the old days about Tensaw,” said the old South Alabamian regretfully. “Tensaw was then the garden spot of South Alabama. Everybody there owned plantations, negroes and horses. The plantation owner took life easy. He spent his time in hunting, fishing, reading the papers, in entertaining and being entertained. He had no apprehensions about making a living. His plantation worked under his overseer brought him each year a great cotton crop and his negroes were continually multiplying to his profit. He could take the boat, come down to Mobile and discount his note for two or three thousand dollars as easy as a man can buy a hat now.”
Old Plantation Life
Some of the most definite traditions of South Alabama cling around the education and the wealth of Tensaw. It is recorded in history that the first school established in all Alabama was taught by a Professor Pierce at Tensaw. In all the years that have followed the students who attended the schools which succeeded this original institution of learning had as a majority of their students boys and girls of more or less remote Indian ancestry.
“The remains of the old school which I attended seventy-five years ago,” said Mr. Tunstall, “may still be noted.” In those early days I went to school with the Sizemores, the Stiggins, the Durants, the Weatherfords, and other descendants of the prominent Indian families. Many of my school mates went with the Creeks when they were removed from Alabama to the Indian Territory. A few of them returned to Alabama. Most of them lived and died in the west.”
His family being one of wealth it was felt incumbent that young Tunstall should be sent to a good school to complete his education. Chapel Hill, NC, was the place selected. As a youth he went to Montgomery on a boat and from Montgomery to the Virginia line he made the trip on a pony and in the same way returned to his home. Among his school mates at college were the Harrisons, the distinguished Virginia family who like him ar proud of the strain of aboriginal blood in their veins.
His education having been completed he chose the law as a profession. He entered upon the practice of the law with every prospect of attaining great distinction. A partial friend at that time, and it was as far back as the forties, called him “the rising start of South Alabama.” He was enamored of plantation life, however, an existence he felt that was more in harmony with his temperament than the dry work, and the contention which form so large a part of the life of a successful lawyer.
He gained as far back as 1847 a wide reputation for an impassioned address he made to the Legislature of Alabama, contending for the rights of the Indians of Alabama to the ballot, a right of which they had been deprived by the State constitution which limited the ballot to men of white blood. He made a eloquent plea for the rights of his fellow men of Indian descent to participate in the State’s elections, basing his claim upon the proposition that the Federal Constitution gave the right and it could not be taken away by the law of the State.
A copy of this address on an issue that had been dead in Alabama for half a century is preserved in the Department of Archives and History. In this address he takes occasion to say:
“In a conflict between the National and the State Constitution, which must prevail, what virtue or validity should attach to any system of ethics, whose moral injunctions impart a contravention of the Decalogue? None. Then by comparison what stability should belong to the resolutions are at variance with the avowed supremacy of the National Constitution? The answer is easy.
“I then throw myself under the broad angle of the National Constitution and demand it as a right to be citizenized. If I am a citizen by the supreme law of the land, why should I not be by the law of the land? Why should I not be by this constitution? Is it because there runs in my veins ‘the blood of a thousand kings?’ Because I wear within me the aboriginal divinity of blood – simply because my ancestors worshipped for their god, the spirit ‘that mounts the storm and walks upon the wind?’ Oh and who of you would not be proud to have flow through his veins the blood of the native American – the aborigines of such a country? And shall we, because of it, be the victims of a political proscription – be accursed with political damnation – aye, with the force of a political attainder? It is a shame! It is a shame!”
And further on he says:
“And who are we? But the scant remnant of a race – a hero emblem of those who have passed away – a few sparks smoldering among a nation’s funeral pile – an outcast train attending the bier of past generations, mourners gathered around the urn that contains the ashes of our people.
Literary Alabamians
In those days he was a friend and associate of Alexander Beaufort Meek, the gifted Alabamian who wrote “Red Eagle,” a poem on Weatherford and his deeds, and who made valuable contributions to the literature of Alabama.
“Meek was at that time District Attorney,” said Mr. Tunstall, “I spent a good part of my time in the city. He and I being close friends, we roomed together. He was one of the hansomest men I ever saw, standing, as he did, full six feet four inches in height. He was a charming companion, too, one of the most entertaining men I ever knew. A mutual friend of ours at that time was Johnson J Hooper, the State's famous humorist who wrote "Simon Suggs." Hooper was at that time holding a county office in Tuscaloosa, but he was a frequent visitor to Mobile. He was a small, undersized man, dark and brilliant."
In I841 Mr. Tunstall moved to Texas,
where he practiced law for a year or
so. But he was soon drawn back to
his Alabama home. In 1856 came his
appointment as consul to Cadiz, Spain.
The consulship was tendered him
through the good office of Senator
Clement C Clay. The wife of Senator Clay, who is still living: and generally
beloved throughout Alabama, was Mrs.
Virginia Clay Clayton, who is the
cousin of Mr Tunstall, her maiden name
being Miss Tunstall.
*My appointment come about in this
way," said Mr. Tunstall. "I met Senator Clay in Montgomery on one of my
visits to that city In 1855. He said,
"Tom, what are you doing now?"
I replied, *Oh, I'm superintending; the
plantation" " How would you like to have something at Washington" he asked.
1 told him that If ha he had a paymaster In the navy he could dispose of I would take it. Sometime after I got a telegram from him offering
me the consulship at Cadis, Spain. I
went across and took charge of the office In 1861."I administered the affairs of the office until I was removed In 1861 by
Abraham Lincoln, whose election had
brought on the Civil War. For some
time after my removal I remained at Cadiz. Hearing of the presence of the
Sumter, at Gibraltar, commanded by Raphael Semmes and officered and manned by Southern men, I went down to
Gibraltar to visit the vessel. On
leaving I was accompanied by Paymaster Myers of the Sumter. At that
time Semmes was in a very embarrassing position so far as the Sumter was
concerned. The vessel was in a neutral port and without coal. It was
the purpose of Myers and myself to
buy a Moroccan vessel loaded with
coal and turn It over to Semmes to allow him to continue his cruise. Because of our arrest and the failure of
cur mission the Sumter never left port.
Semmes was forced to abandon her
and go to London where he took command of his famous fighting ship, the
Alabama.
"But to get back to our own experience. On the boat which took us to
Tangiers were two missionaries who
in some way learned of our errand.
As soon as the boat was landed they
informed the United States consul of
our presence and our purpose. We
were arrested by a squad of gendarmes
and put into irons.
Put In Irons.
"We were then put aboard a United
States vessel and sent to Boston. I
remembered that as our vessels passed
Narraganett Bay some fishermen
threw aboard the first American newspapers we had seen for many months
and the papers contained the first news
to us of the battle of Shiloh. We were carried to the office of the United
States Marshal where the irons we
had worn for fifty-seven days were
struck from our limbs.
"We were thrown in prison at Fort Warren but were subsequently given
an unconditional release.
*I went to Washington where I got
permission from the War Department
to go South. But some of the government officials got the idea that I
was trying to help the Confederate
cause in Washington. I was arrested
with a Confederate pass upon my person and charged with being a spy.
They threw me into old Capitol prison
where I was kept for six months, but
later the Secretary of War released
me under the parole that I should go
to Europe and remain there until after
the war was over. After keeping this
parole I returned to Alabama in 1864."
Mr. Tunstall spent a couple of years
In Texas practicing law but his love
for Alabama drew him back to Tensaw and Mobile In 1861.
His life was spent quietly among his Alabama friends, mostly in Tensaw and Mobile until Grover Cleveland was elected President in 1884. The following year he was offered by the Cleveland administration the consulship at Ascension, Paraguay, but declined it. A little later he was offered and accepted the consulship at San Salvador, Central America, a position he held until he was removed by the advent of the Harrison administration.
The evening of his long and adventurous life he Is spending quietly with
his two nephews, the Doctors Tunstall
of Mobile. It was at the house of one
of them on Dauphin Street that I saw
him In the quiet hours of a perfect
summer afternoon, an afternoon whose
serenity seemed to typify the rest and
quietude with which the old gentleman was spending the late years of that life which has already spanned more than four score years.