The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 9, July 1905 - April, 1906 Page: 39

John H. Reagan.

stitutions, nor were those that here and there managed to exist
celebrated for their teachers. Indeed the modern over-vaunted
cultural influences were wanting in large measure-the time was
not yet. But, perhaps better than all, because rarer in this day
of graft and pompous formality, he imbibed those principles which
have always distinguished gentlemen of the South-knightly re-
spect for woman, watchful care of his own honor, whole-hearted
hospitality, simplicity of every day life (a lost art), and an ardent
love of country. Frontier-born and bred, he entered life endowed
with an intuitive faculty of meeting emergencies on the spot, with
a tact useful later in placating antagonists of various types. He
had other qualities of the frontier, too-force, directness, frank-
ness, patience, courage,-scarcely ever found in the same degree in
the settled centers of society. The temptation to contrast him
with Senator Hoar is very strong, for they were in many respects
at antipodes,-in many, shoulder to shoulder. It is sufficient to
know that one was born in Concord-the Concord of Emerson and
Hawthorne-and the other in Tennessee-the State of Sevier and
Jackson.
Politically, Judge Reagan was a Democrat of the Andrew Jack-
son type. As a boy, he grew up under this influence, for "Old
Hickory" had assumed his sway in Tennessee. Besides, Democracy
of this sort could exist only on the frontier or in the communities
but newly sprung from the loins of society. The application of
the dogmas of such a Democracy as was held by the West from
1800 to 1850 was impossible in a society which had begun to build
cities and establish factories. And all his life Judge Reagan stood
for the simplest governmental forms, looking with alarm upon the
innovations of latter-day administrations. Chiefest of his cares,
the core of his code of statecraft, was the individual. Like Jeffer-
son, he desired to throw about the weak all the legal protections
possible, realizing, as the father of ultra Democracy did, that with-
out the erection of barriers the individual was but a pigmy in the
power of harpies. Thus it was the tremendous growth and in-
fluence of trusts filled him with forebodings of disaster. In his
opinion it was all wrong, and to be reprobated. Principles were
everything to him. As a candidate for governor, he refused to per-