SCV Camp 1524 Dragoons Compatriot Tyrone Crowley addressed
the October 2016 camp meeting as Daniel Pratt presenting an autobiographical
history of the life of this important 19th century industrialist.
WAR BETWEEN THE STATES
When secession was voted on and approved by the
people of the State of Alabama, I joined the effort wholeheartedly, helping to
recruit and outfit the first Confederate unit to leave Autauga County, the
Prattville Dragoons. I spoke at a
meeting at Alida Hall, offering all support possible to men who volunteered to
fight for the Confederacy. I helped to
outfit the company of men your camp is named for, the Prattville Dragoons,
including horses, equipment, and the fine black uniforms that sometimes caused
Dragoons to be mistaken for officers. My
wife Esther was president of the Ladies’ Aid Society in Prattville, which made
clothing for soldiers.[1]
With respect to my business,
the departure of our men to fight the war was a setback. I lost twelve employees when the Dragoons
mustered and rode away to war, and fifteen more when my nephew Merrill formed
Company K of the 1st Alabama Regiment and went away to defend our country. A year later, I managed to get some of these
men transferred back home by sending a request to Governor John Gill Shorter. Governor Shorter requested that General
Braxton Bragg transfer some of my workers back to Prattville, stating that the
Prattville Manufacturing Company (our cotton mill) was "worth a regiment
of men to the Confederacy" due to its production of fabric for uniforms at
a low price. Prattville also produced
knapsacks, skillets, wooden buttons, and horse brushes for the Confederacy.[2]
During and after the War, I actively sought in
various ways to relieve the suffering of the poor in Autauga County, providing jobs to workers, or charity. Col J H Livingston, a eulogist, said the
following: "Born and reared in
poverty, (Daniel Pratt) well knew how to appreciate the wants of the
needy. Strangers he clothed and fed, and
to the sick he administered comfort. Not
restricted by limits of sectarian propriety, he considered the poor of every
creed, and bestowed his charities with a lavish hand".[3] While serving as a state representative in
1862, I sponsored a bill to authorize an Autauga county tax to support families
of soldiers away at war; it was enacted into law and this relieved some of the
suffering of our families here.[4]
After the War, I gave a lot and two-story
building to the black people of Prattville, to use as a church and school. This
became known as Ward's Chapel. I also
wrote letters to the Montgomery Daily
Mail newspaper, offering the colored people my advice on how to proceed
after the War. [5]
The War Between The States ended badly for the
South, and for me, though with my Northern connections I was able to obtain a
pardon rather soon and get back to recovering my losses. At the end of the War, Shadrach Mims and I
calculated that I had lost upwards of half a million dollars, but at the end of
my life I had recovered enough wealth to leave a respectable inheritance to my
nephew Merrill and my daughter Ellen.
Ellen's husband, Henry Fairchild DeBardeleben, took her inheritance and
became a principal figure in the coal and iron industry in Birmingham. One of his undertakings was one I had begun
during the War, the Red Mountain Company, which built the Oxmoor furnaces.
Thankfully, I was able to see this happen before my life
ended on 5 May 1873.
A month after my death (at 10 a.m. on Tuesday
12 June 1873), the citizens of Prattville, in an official town meeting chaired
by Reverend E S Smith, assembled at the Methodist Church (other side of creek,
near where Masonic Hall is now), "to pay public tribute to the memory of our belated friend and
fellow-citizen, the Honorable Daniel Pratt, deceased."[6] Five of Prattville's leading men came to the
podium and honored me with their words.
Shadrach Mims, Autauga County's first historian and my sometimes business partner
wrote this about me, which I think represents my life fairly well: "(Daniel Pratt) seemed to think that
really money had no other value than to subserve a valuable purpose. He regarded himself only as a steward."[7]
I am also proud of this inscription on my tombstone:
"BLESSED ARE THE DEAD WHO DIE IN THE LORD,
FOR THEY REST FROM THEIR LABORS, AND THEIR
WORKS DO FOLLOW THEM."
In the front room of your Prattaugan Museum
hangs a copy of the poem I read a few minutes ago, but with these verses added:
But the angel of death passed by on his mission,
And knock'd on the door with his death-dealing rod;
Now throbs not his heart, now ceases his vision,
And Daniel Pratt lives in the mansions of God.
Free as the sunshine that falls on the marble,
That stands by the tomb where his ashes repose,
Were the gifts of his hands, such free benefactions
As heaven-blessed charity only bestows.
Disturb not his slumbers, let Daniel Pratt sleep
'Neath the bows of the willows that over him weep.
His arm is unnerved, but his deeds remain bright
As stars in the dark-vaulted heaven at night.
Finally, ladies and gentlemen, I leave you with
this admonishment: Remember your
fathers, who gave you this land and this nation "to secure the blessings
of liberty for ourselves and our posterity".
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