University of Virginia Library

This was written in the winter of 1852–3, at Washington.

The credit of originating it is due to William M. Burwell, then of Liberty, Virginia, now of New Orleans, who was that winter at Washington,—a person of infinite humor, a capital scholar and most original thinker. He composed three or four of the verses and handed them to Albert Pike, who completed the song.

The subject of it, “The Fine Arkansas Gentleman,” was Major Elias Rector, of Arkansas, long a resident of that State and living near the border, or the Choctaw and Cherokee lines, but who was that winter at Washington, seeking the position of Marshal of the Arkansas district, which he had before held for several years, but lost upon the accession of President Taylor.

Major Rector was a zealous Democrat, but with many warm friends on the other side. These friendships, which were lasting ones, he owed to his genial nature, his generosity, courage, high sense of honor, and abundant hospitality. He was a person of fine presence, of great intelligence, and of an excellent and most original quaint wit; one of his peculiarities being that he wore his hair long, and put up with a comb, like a woman's. In the earlier days of Arkansas, when the strife of politics was exceedingly bitter, he was a bold, daring partizan, often engaged in personal difficulties and making many enmities, all of which he outlived. No man had a kinder heart, warmer affections, or a more true, generous and loyal nature. Nor was any man more courtly and like an English gentleman in his manners.

The song was sung for the first time when he was present, and at a party given by Robert W. Johnson, then a member of the House of Representatives, and afterwards Senator from Arkansas.

Dr. Wm. P. Reyburn was a physician residing in New Orleans, and at that time in Washington. He had, many years before, lived in Arkansas, and was an intimate friend of Major Rector. The Doctor was immensely corpulent, and brimful of joke, jest and anecdote, a gourmand, easy and indolent, but of vigorous intellect and great shrewdness, jovial, generous, and loyally trustworthy, a better Falstaff, in all the huge Knight's good qualities, including his wit, than Hackett himself. Dear old fellow! he returned to Arkansas in 1861, a Surgeon in the Confederate Army, after an absence of more than twenty years, to die and be buried there.

Prindle, though the keeper of a gaming house on Pennsylvania Avenue, was a good, true, honest, generous man, whose kindness of heart and lavish bounties and his own improvidence at last made him poor. He had often returned to young men the money they had lost to his Bank; and was therefore liked and respected by many who knew him well, and among whom many had National reputations.—