6 
 
 MEMORIAL ADDRESS 
 
 ON THE 
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER 
 
 OF 
 
 JUDGE Jeter Conley Pritchard 
 
 FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, ASHEVILLE, N. C, 
 TUESDAY, APRIL 12. 1921 
 
 BY JAMES J. BRITT 
 
Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 in 2014 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/memorialaddressoOObrit 
 
MEMORIAL ADDRESS 
 
 Judge Jeter Conley Pritchard 
 
 FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, ASHEVILLE, N. C, 
 TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1921 
 
 BY JAMES J. BRITT 
 
 The death of the loved and loving 
 friend so lately fallen on sleep is to me a 
 loss so keenly personal that I should not 
 trust my emotions, were it not tkat I 
 speak at the command of his own lips, 
 now forever closed in death. 
 
 We are sometimes overwhelmed by 
 the mysterious operations of the laws of 
 our own being. We stand like dumt) 
 beasts and unknowing children. We can 
 not fathm of the mystery why there are 
 so many different orders of men. Think- 
 ing bases, we can not comprehend why 
 some men are so far above others in the 
 scale of being. Children of the same 
 
 ON THE 
 
 LIFE AND CHARACTER 
 
 OF 
 
Father, nourished by the same earth- 
 mother, living under the same kindly 
 heavens, our statures ought not to be 
 so unequal Yet, like the myriad stars, 
 we differ one from another. Some 
 come and .go and leave no trace of 
 their hurried stay Others among us, a 
 unit stronger and a trifle wiser, Hnger 
 for a while, only to go and be forgot- 
 ten, too. But some there are that move 
 so powerfully among their fellows, that 
 play so large a part in the affairs of the 
 world, that, though dead, they yet abide 
 through the generations. Such was it 
 destined to be of him of whom I speak 
 today. 
 
 Jeter Conley Pritchard was strik- 
 ingly typical of the finest possibilities of 
 American institutions. He was a flower 
 of that free government that has made it 
 possible for so many men, though born 
 in huts of lowHness, to live in palaces 
 and reign in seats of power. It was un- 
 der these favors of divine Providence 
 that there went from the tailor's bench 
 the Johnsons, from the tow-path, the 
 Garfields, and from the woodsman's for- 
 est, the Lincolns to the Presidential chair, 
 there to occupy the highest seat of power 
 yet vouchsafed to man on earth. It is 
 these beneficent institutions that have 
 put hope into the souls of so many striv- 
 ing American boys ; that have rendered it 
 possible for so many of the humble of 
 
 Page Two 
 
today to be the exalted of tomorrow ; that 
 have taken the tatters of poverty and the 
 emblems of ignorance from millions of 
 the sons and daughters of America and 
 placed them upon the highway of great- 
 ness; that have lifted them above the 
 chilly surroundings of ill fortune; that 
 have put a new song in their mouths, in- 
 spired new hope in their souls, and ulti- 
 mately brought them to a full realization 
 of the highest achievements of which our 
 civilization is possible. Few men in 
 American life have better illustrated 
 these glorious possibilities than he who 
 lies in dreamless sleep before us today. 
 
 Jeter Conley Pritchard was born at 
 Jonesboro, Tennessee, on the 12th day 
 of July,i857,and died at Asheville,North 
 Carolina, on the loth day of April, 1921, 
 being sixty-three years, nine months, and 
 twenty-eight days old. Under the un- 
 fortunate conditions immediately follow- 
 ing the war, his opportunity for education 
 was so scant that, despite the most heroic 
 determination and untiring efforts, he 
 was unable to get more than a few 
 months' schooling in the public schools of 
 East Tennessee, schools not then of a 
 very high grade, nor calculated to inspire 
 in youth those lofty ambitions which 
 afterwards fired the soul of this aspir- 
 ing boy. The death of his father, a gal- 
 lant Confederate soldier, left him not 
 only to care for himself, but to be the 
 
 Page Three 
 
chief support of his brothers and sisters 
 and helpless mother. It is here that we 
 find the dawning of those high qualities 
 of manhood which afterwards so distin- 
 guished Jeter Conley Pritchard in all his 
 public and private relations, namely, 
 loyalty and devotion to those who had a 
 right to claim his love, protection, and 
 support. Never once did he fail in devo- 
 tion to his mother. She was the object 
 of his tender care every day of her Hfe. 
 There was nothing that could come be- 
 tween him and his concern for her wel- 
 fare. It has been thus with alll the great 
 men of earth. All history is replete with 
 the fact that love of father and mother, 
 of wife and children, is inseparable from 
 human greatness. The gods have per- 
 miteed no man who has forgotten the 
 parents of his being, or the family of his 
 bosom, to attain greatness among men. 
 To forget these is to fix an impassable 
 gulf between human aspiration and hu- 
 man attainment. 
 
 The time alloted by this occasion does 
 not permit further details as to the early 
 boyhood of Judge Pritchard. It is suf- 
 ficient to say that his early life-story, like 
 that of thousands of other American 
 boys is told in the ''simple annals of the 
 poor.'' But it was the poverty of honor, 
 of manliness, of independence, of bold 
 strife, and determination to lift himself 
 above his surroundings and see the day 
 
 Page Four 
 
when he could look back with a smile 
 upon the years of self-denial, of priva- 
 tion, and of poverty and want, and such 
 a day, in God's goodness, he was permit- 
 ted to see. 
 
 There is a treble relation in which I 
 would speak of our departed friend. He 
 was one of the few men of our time, or 
 of any time, who could be pre-eminently 
 great in the three- fold relation of public 
 servant, Christian gentleman, and patri- 
 otic citizen. In all the crowded days of 
 his life, he never once lost the poise of 
 this finely balanced proportion. Not a 
 few of our great men, on assuming the 
 chair of state, or the seat of justice, have 
 forgotten the ties of the Christian and 
 the duties of the patriot, submerging 
 everything in one central calling. But 
 not so with him. Whether in the legisla- 
 ture of the State, in the Senate of the 
 United States, on the District Court 
 bench, or on the bench of the Circuit 
 Court of Appeals, he never once suffered 
 a lapse of his dominant idea that the 
 public service. Christian citizenship, and 
 patriotic duty were an inseparable trio, 
 and that remissness in one was unfaith- 
 fulness to the others, and he maintained 
 that sacred balance of these fundamental 
 essentials in public men to his very last 
 days on earth. Only Ave days before 
 his death, though racked with suffering, 
 he was still mindful of his duty as a 
 
 Page Five 
 
citizen, and directed that his absentee 
 ballot be cast for improved public school 
 facilities in the city of Asheville, the 
 cause of education being near his heart, a 
 cause to which he never failed to rally 
 with enthusiasm. 
 
 He was elected as a Representative in 
 the lower house of the General Assembly 
 of Xorth Carolina from Madison County 
 in the years 1884, 1886, and 1890, and 
 served with the highest credit to himself, 
 to his constituents, and to the whole 
 State. It was here that he first gave 
 earnest of those fine talents that so dis- 
 tinguished him in after life, and of that 
 earnest devotion to duty from which he 
 never once departed while in the public 
 service. 
 
 Although one of a very small party 
 minority in the General Assembly, he 
 made himself heard and felt on the lead- 
 ing questions of the day, such as honest 
 elections, improved public schools, public 
 roads, the equalization of taxation, the 
 care of ex-Confederate soldiers, appro- 
 priations for the State University, and 
 other State institutions, taking high 
 ground on all the great questions of 
 thirty years ago, and so impressing him- 
 self upon his own party that he became 
 its unanimous choice for United States 
 Senator from Xorth Carolina. Although 
 defeated, as his party at that time had 
 but a few votes, yet his record in the heg- 
 
 Page Six 
 
islature, and particularly the high ground 
 he took on great questions affecting the 
 Hfe of the State, paved the way for his 
 election a few years later when a com- 
 bination of his party and the Populist 
 party in the State was effected. 
 
 He had prior to this time been admit- 
 ted to the bar of the State, and was lay- 
 ing the foundations of that large prac- 
 tice, and taking practical lessons in that 
 broad course of legal training, which so 
 eminently fitted him in after years for 
 the high judicial stations which he was 
 called to fill. In the old nisi prius days, 
 when the lawyers of the State, much 
 more than now, went away from home 
 and traveled over the circuit with the 
 judges, he was everywhere a favorite, 
 particularly in the counties of Western 
 North Carolina. In those early days, he 
 showed those splendid and determined 
 fighting qualities which brought him suc- 
 cess in almost every undertaking of his 
 life. 
 
 In 1892, he was the nominee of his 
 party for Congress from the Ninth Dis- 
 trict, now the Tenth, against the late 
 William Tecumseh Crawford, by whom 
 he was defeated by a small majority, 
 their joint canvass of the District attract- 
 ing keen attention throughout the State 
 and bringing both of the champions high- 
 ly deserved popularity. In 1894, he was 
 elected by the General Assembly of 
 
 Page Seven 
 
North Carolina to the United States Sen- 
 ate to fill the unexpired term caused by 
 thedeath of Zebulon Baird Vance. He 
 was again re-elected in 189.7, serving the 
 full term expiring March 4, 1903. 
 
 Although suddenly called to this re- 
 sponsible trust, and naturally inexperi- 
 enced in national legislation, he, never- 
 theless, immediately took high rank as a 
 Senator, receiving prominent committee 
 assignments, speaking frequently, and 
 advocating those liberal and beneficent 
 policies, both domestic and foreign, 
 which gave to the administration of Wil- 
 liam McKinley so important a place in 
 American history and in the history of 
 the world, particularly in the settlement 
 of those vast and complicated questions 
 growing out of the Spanish-American 
 war, resulting in the banishment of the 
 saffron flag of Spain from the Western 
 hemisphere, the establishment of the 
 Republic of Cuba, and the acquisition by 
 the United States of a vast empire on 
 the other side of the earth, the Philip- 
 pine Islands, bringing ten millions of 
 strange people under the aegis of our flag 
 and making them wards of the nation. 
 
 I have recently had occasion to look 
 into some of the votes on those great 
 questions cast by Senator Pritchard dur- 
 ing those mighty days, and it is gratifying 
 to know that upon every question he took 
 the lofty ground chosen by William Mc- 
 
 Page Eight 
 
Kinley, and it is but justice to President 
 McKinley and Senator Pritchard, and 
 highly to the credit of both, to say that 
 it was under the guidance of the noble 
 McKinley, that Senator Pritchard took 
 such safe and high ground on the great 
 domestic and international questions of 
 the day. It was impossible to sit at the 
 feet of William McKinley and not take 
 lofty moral ground on any public ques- 
 tion. His fine presence, his innate good- 
 ness, his kindly intonations, his ingratiat- 
 ing manner — all these conspired to 
 move in others the highest possible de- 
 termination to rise to the duty of every 
 occasion, and it was under this fine 
 tutelage that Senator Pritchard received 
 his first lessons in statecraft, and from 
 them was moved to such eloquence of 
 speech, such lofty devotion to duty; and 
 to vote so soundly on matters of policy 
 afifecting our own country, Cuba, the 
 Philippine Islands, and our other newly 
 acquired possessions. 
 
 A distinguished American once said 
 that he had journeyed all the way to 
 London to see the illustrious WilHam 
 Ewart Gladstone in his prime; that he 
 met him ; heard him speak on the floor of 
 ParHament ; beheld him as Prime Minis- 
 ter; went to his church, and heard him 
 teach the Bible and preach a lay sermon ; 
 was a guest in his home, and saw the 
 dignity, gentleness and sweetness with 
 
 Page Nine 
 
which he presided as the master of that 
 earthly sancturary, and, upon his return 
 to America, this distinguished American 
 felt a new and moving inspiration to 
 noble endeavor which never afterward 
 deserted him, and he declared that he 
 owed some of his best accomplishments 
 of his life to this single inspiration. 
 Such was the influence of Gladstone 
 over men, and such was the influence of 
 William McKinley over ^Senator Pritch- 
 ' ard. He was a masterful leader of men, 
 and no aspiring American could escape 
 the magnetic influence of his personal 
 touch. 
 
 Time forbids my speaking more in de- 
 tail of Judge Pritchard's career as a 
 Senator in Congress. It is a record of 
 which the whole country, and Nortli 
 Carolina in particular, may well be 
 proud. Not a vote was cast, not a speech 
 was made, not a policy was advocated, 
 that did not contemplate the very best in- 
 terests of our beloved country. 
 
 In 1903, President Roosevelt ap- 
 pointed him Judge of the Supreme Court 
 of the District of Columbia, where, un- 
 der assignment to the Criminal court 
 division, he bore a conspicuous part in 
 the adminstration of justice in that high 
 court, winning a national reputation for 
 his finely discriminating and well-bal- 
 anced judgments, his clemency where 
 mercy was deserved, and the severity 
 
 Page Ten 
 
with which he punished those who had 
 knowingly and wilfully violated the laws 
 of the country. So brilliant was his rec- 
 ord on the bench of the District Court 
 that he won the plaudits of both bench 
 and bar, as well as the high commenda- 
 tion of President Roosevelt. 
 
 In 1904, he was promoted by Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt to United States Circuit 
 Judge for the Fourth Circuit, where he 
 added new laurels to his fame as a judge, 
 trying every possible variety of cases, 
 civil and criminal, that came within the 
 jurisdiction of the Circuit Court, and sit- 
 ting on the bench of the Circuit Court of 
 Appeals in the trial of cases on review, 
 as was then provided by law, his opin- 
 ions taking high rank for their legal 
 soundness and the finely discriminating 
 balance with which he held the scales of 
 justice. 
 
 On the first day of January, 1912, 
 when the United States Circuit Court 
 ceased by law to exist, he became the 
 Presiding Circuit Judge of the United 
 States Circuit Court of Appeals for the 
 Fourth Circuit, a position which he held 
 with the very highest distinction, and to 
 which he gave the most painstaking la- 
 bor and patient industry, writing many of 
 the opinions of the Court, all of which 
 are characterized by fine practical sense, 
 a sound knowledge of the law, exhaustive 
 inquiry, and a deep regard for all the 
 
 Page Eleven 
 
rights of the parties in interest. 
 
 For several years, I have read, with in- 
 creasing interest, his opinions on questions 
 relating to employers and employees, 
 or capital and labor. Of all the judges 
 who have sat in this high Court, and they 
 have been numerous and able, I do not 
 think any have excelled him in the just 
 and equitable balance he has always 
 struck between these seemingly conflict- 
 ing interests. In him the employer and 
 the capitalist had a friend, but only so 
 far as they used their power and their 
 capital within the law and enlightened 
 conscience. So far, they were perfectly 
 safe, but beyond this they dared not ven- 
 ture. On the side of labor he never once 
 lost that human touch, that sympathetic 
 co-operation, born of his own struggles 
 as a hired boy, as a journeyman printer, 
 and as one of the toiling masses of men. 
 Yet his sympathy for the laborer, or for 
 organized labor, never once led him to 
 override the just rights of capital or the 
 true interests of the employer. It is 
 here, I think that Judge Pritchard's 
 fame as a jurist will chiefly rest in the 
 years to come. A careful reading of his 
 opinions will not fail to rivet upon any 
 lawyer or layman the conviction that 
 here was a man endowed with the ability 
 to determine justice between man and 
 man, between the commonw^ealth and 
 citizen, and one wdio knew and dared 
 
 Page Tzvelve 
 
alike the rights of all parties to the con- 
 troversy. 
 
 So eminently fair was he, so thorough- 
 ly sympathetic with the progressive 
 movements of the day, particularly 
 those in relation to capital and labor, that 
 he was often called upon to prosecute 
 inquiries and make findings in important 
 matters of public controversy, the most 
 notable of which was the arbitration of 
 the controversy between the Western 
 railroad companies and their employees, 
 where he sat as presiding arbitrator at 
 Chicago five years ago, and was largely 
 instrumental, through his sound knowl- 
 edge of economics, his fine understand- 
 ing of the human questions involved, as 
 Well as the law of the case, in settling the 
 dispute to the satisfaction of both par- 
 ties, and in the Reconciliation of the 
 strained and divergent relations between 
 employers and employees. 
 
 Let me now speak a word about the 
 great humanitarian side of Judge Pritch- 
 ard's nature. In all my acquaintance 
 with men, I have known none who had 
 a larger heart, more generous impulses, 
 or who took a keener interest in the 
 well-being of others. This was par- 
 ticularly true of him in all conditions of 
 distress of unfortunate men and women. 
 His heart was ever responsive to the 
 appeal for charity, to the craving for 
 education, and to the appeal for aid to 
 
 Page Thirteen 
 
hospitals and other institutions for those 
 upon whom fortune had frowned. All 
 the State is famiHar with his efforts in 
 behalf of the colored race. His idea of 
 the best interests of the colored man 
 was that he should eschew politics; 
 should attend to his domestic affairs; 
 should devote his energies and talents 
 to the building of churches, schools and 
 homes; that he should become better in- 
 formed that he might be more useful to 
 the community and to himself. Again 
 and again did he go North to solicit aid 
 for the colored schools of the State, never 
 charging anything for his services, 
 usually bringing home large assistance 
 to those needy institutions, greatly to the 
 benefit of the colored youth of the State, 
 his one hope being that they might be 
 better fitted for citizenship and for earn- 
 ing a livelihood, and that they might 
 learn obedience to law and order. 
 
 Never did he rise to nobler heights 
 than in his great activities in behalf of 
 the late War. His sons were at the 
 front; the sons of his neighbors and 
 friends were there; and his own great, 
 yearning heart was there. He left his 
 home, at a time when he was physically 
 weak and made a canvass of the State of 
 Texas in the interest of Liberty Bond 
 . subscriptions, a task that taxed his 
 strength to the utmost, and I fear had 
 much to do with the illness which 
 
 Page Fourteen 
 
brought him to his untimely end. 
 
 His interest in the cause of education 
 never flagged. No preoccupation or 
 press of work, except official duty, could 
 prevent his giving aid to the cause, and 
 particularly to the public and primary 
 schools where the larger interests of his 
 heart lay. I have known him to travel 
 for miles to address an obscure, back- 
 wood school, paying his own expenses, 
 with no hope of reward but the con- 
 sciousness that he had done something 
 to aid some boy in the struggle for educa- 
 tion, the need of which had vexed his 
 own boyhood life, and prevented him 
 from making that early start so necessary 
 for the success of one's career, whatever 
 his calling may be. He was the warm 
 and enthusiastic friend of all schools, 
 teachers, and institutions of learning. 
 
 It was in the interest of the poor, the 
 oppressed, and the submerged that his 
 heart swelled the largest. 1 have known 
 him to give his last dollar for the benefit 
 of persons whose names will never be 
 known, a service that could bring him no 
 return, save a satisfied longing to answer 
 some Macedonian cry. 
 
 At one of my calls a few weeks be- 
 fore his death, his first inquiry was about 
 two poor old fellows, both of them down 
 and out, who are to-day living on charity 
 in the city of Asheville, and he anxiously 
 wanted to know how they were being 
 
 Page Fifteen 
 
cared for. I told him about one of them, 
 but as to the other I had no knowledge 
 of his situation, whereupon he had me 
 promise that I would, for him, give aid 
 to the poor old friendless men, who in 
 this world had no one to love them, and, 
 save such as Judge Pritchard, none to 
 care for them. I could multiply these 
 instances by the score. Surely, if ever 
 reward was laid up for the giver who let 
 not his left hand know what his right 
 hand did, that reward is reserved for the 
 cherished one who lies before us to-day. 
 
 His nature was tender, gentle, sympa- 
 thetic, and affectionate. His heart bled 
 for the sufferings of others. How often 
 have I heard him say, "Oh, if I had the 
 money, that should be different, and dif- 
 ferent now.'' 
 
 If every one for whom he did a kind- 
 ness should bring here a flower, the very 
 walls of this sanctuary would overflow 
 with the blossoms of spring; if everyone 
 for whom his heart bled should shed here 
 a tear, an overflowing fountain would 
 submerge this presence; if all his prayers 
 for the betterment of men should be gatti«= 
 ered together, the air would resound with 
 one continuing chorus of supplication. 
 
 But our friend is gone, gone from us, 
 gone before us. Since death to all must 
 com^e, and to ?11 an end is fixed, let us 
 not mourn too much that a fellow-pilgrim 
 is called, but let us rather strive to fill the 
 
 Page Sixteen 
 
broken ranks and do the work he did. 
 Judge Pritchard was preeminently a hu- 
 man man. And it was his work with 
 human things that made him so intensely 
 human. He knew what it was to till the 
 soil ; to want the things men need ; to toil 
 at the printer's desk ; to study law alone ; 
 to supplement his education by unaided 
 study; to battle against fearful odds, 
 sometimes with indifferent success; thus 
 he was hardened in the reaHties of life, 
 and yet he was mellow, and his soul 
 remained unembittered. 
 
 As for the future life, we know not 
 fully what it is, but that it is, we know, 
 and that it will be ample, we doubt not. 
 Four hundred years before Christ, Socra- 
 tes, the Greek, a pagan philosopher, in 
 making his defense before the Athenean 
 dicastery, on trail for his life, and real- 
 izing the hopelessness of his cause, gave 
 utterance to this obscure prophecy, 
 to the Christian, utterly comfortless, to 
 him, the only comfort: ''After all," said 
 he, ''if, as some men say, death is only 
 an eternal sleep, then how glorious it 
 will be to be free from the distractions 
 of men and things ; from the elements 
 and beasts, from taunts and worries; 
 from disease and death; but if there is 
 a world different from this, in which 
 men may be happy according to their 
 deeds in the flesh, then how infinitely 
 better than this, for there we know we 
 
 Page Seventeen 
 
shall meet with the scholars, the philoso- 
 phers, the saints, and even the gods, 
 who have promised us good things, the 
 things which only in the spirit we may 
 know/' 
 
 Eleven hundred years before, Job, the 
 man of Uz, the son of affliction, a patient 
 and suffering Jew, had cried out in his 
 anguish, ''If a man die, shall he live 
 again?'' Fifteen hundred years after 
 Job's exclamation of doubt, and four 
 hundred years after Socrates' obscure 
 vision, the Alan of Galilee came, and 
 went, and rose from the dead, and ascen- 
 ded into heaven, since when,through him, 
 there is no doubt of the immortality of 
 the soul, no haunting fears as to the 
 possible happy end of man. 
 
 Despairing Villon once exclaimed, 
 *'Where, oh, where are the snows of yes- 
 teryear? Gone, gone forever, and min- 
 gled with the past." But the snows of 
 yesteryear are not gone ; they live in the 
 rain, in the fogs, in the dews, in the 
 water of stream and ocean, in^ plant and 
 shrub, in flower, and tree. They are the 
 sources of new growth and life. And, 
 in like manner, the deeds of good men, 
 though they take other forms, are not 
 gone forever ; they abide somewhere, aye, 
 they still abide where men may feel and 
 know their blessed influence. So the 
 works of our departed friend will not 
 perish with him ; they abide with us. 
 
 Page Eighteen 
 
When the sun goes down beyond the hills, 
 we say it is setting, but it does not dis- 
 appear. There follow it great streams 
 of light, coruscations of glory, and long, 
 long after the great luminary is lost to 
 view, it throws back its effulgent streams 
 to light the pilgrim's way; and so it is 
 with the influence which our friend has 
 set in motion. 
 
 To those who mourn, let there rise in 
 their hearts a wellspring of hope; to 
 those who long for a face not again to 
 be seen, let their souls cease to yearn ; to 
 those who long for a voice no more to be 
 heard, let their hearts be still. Let all 
 who reach for a vanished hand take com- 
 fort. They who are separated shall 
 meet again. Our friend is not dead; he 
 is only away. In another and nobler ex- 
 istence he is estabHshed. For him, the * 
 day is done, but it is written that ''J^Y 
 Cometh in the morning." But 
 
 ''There is no night ; the stars go down 
 To rise upon some far-off shore. 
 
 And bright in heaven's jeweled crown 
 They shine forevermore." 
 
 f V :rl PROJECT 
 
 Page Nineteen