University of Virginia - Corks and Curls Yearbook (Charlottesville, VA)

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........c.-m. ,-.-. ,4.-.......... ., ,.,, ,.,..-... ni..- .--.. H . i g...,-..1,.,-, mg... i914 Qturks ann Qturls 5 where he lived for ten years at St. Paul, then a military post, though an ambi- tious, restless, new town of pioneers, Thus he found himself on the border again, not a sectional, but a civilization or Indian border, for such at that date was Minnesota. l-le could see-probably did see there-General Hancock, The Superb, General Custer, subsequently the brave but piteous victim of an Indian massacre when he and many other brave men fought unavailingly until the going down of their sun , and also Buffalo Bill, the latter perhaps in the eyes of young Underwood, as in those of most youngsters, the greatest man of the three. The writer of an article in Current Opinion says that Custer lived only a block away from the Underwood house in St. Paul and General Hancock next door. The family returned in IS75 to Kentucky where Oscar received his ante- university schooling at Louisville. It is not to be wotndered that after Hnishing his law course at the Univer- sity of Virginia under that most lovable of all characters, Stephen Southall, and that greatest of teachers, John B. Minor, he should have returned to Minnesota, because there he had spent the impressionable years of his life and had breathed the stimulating breath of the free, wild, growing, aspiring and achieving West. Not for long, however, was he to remain away from the congenial South. What was this gospel of a new birth carried upon the breezes from the South, these Hglad tidings of a new industrial awakening? A new Birmingham had been born in Alabama to rival in iron and coal and steel the old Birmingham in the 'Black Country, of Old England. Thither, then, let us wend our way, ithemore especially prompted thereto by the fact that we have a brother already on the ground. V - And thus it came to pass that, instead of remaining longer in St., Paul seeking a law practice, Oscar Underwood went to Birmingham to throw in his fortunes with what has sometimes so mistakenly been called The New South. From that time, in December, l884, until now, he has beeniidentified in every good and right way with the village, the town, and the city-for it became each after the other. I-le was so much part and parcel of the new Birmingham socially, politically, industrially, that when he first .sought a place on the Ways , W.. ...U- , , , ,L .m,,,,..-.,,, ,,-,tg - ...ons-,e..-,.. Am-A , .., ,,..-,..m.,,.,..-..,. ..-..... .-. ,.i..U.L..Ln-:4:.:y-1...-.:.4:fa: ...-

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4 Qljurks HUD QILIKIS 1914 His grandfather, Joseph Rogers Underwood, was a Senator from Ken- tucky from I847 to 1853 and was a colleague of Great Harry of the West in that then august body. He opposed secession and remained in spite of secession a Union man , although having reached the scriptural age of three score and ten, he saw no service as a soldier. The younger members 'of the Underwood family followed each his indi- vidual bent, as was so usually the case in the border states, where frequently brother stood embattled against brother-sometimes father against son. This was true in the Breckenridge as well as the Underwood family and in many others, if not most others. ln the border states-Kentucky and Missouri- and in the mountains of Tennessee and Western, afterwards West, Virginia, and in an isolated part of Northern Alabama alone did our great struggle lose its character as a War between the States and become really a civil war. Thus it came to pass that Oscar Underwoodis father was a sympathizer with the Confederate cause and people and was, when captured, placed by the Federals in prison for his pains, while one of his uncles, making his escape from Ken- tucky, served in the Confederate Army. His father owed his escape from Federal imprisonment to his grandfatheris intervention. It is no news to the reader that as long as Lincoln lived, old Whig families and men of standing in the border states exercised great influence with the authorities at Washington. Indeed, in all essentials of tradition, ideal, and temperament, Abraham Lincoln himself was a borderer and belonged more to the border states than to either section. Joseph Rogers was, or at any rate was thought by many people in Kentucky to be, one of these border state confidential advisers of Mr. Lincoln. It was never my fortune to be associated with Oscar at our Alma Mater- the University of Virginia. He was there from 1881 to l884, after my time, although a college contemporary of my younger brother, from whom l have learned that he was attentive, studious, clear-headed, and not pretentious, nor in any way over-self-demonstrative-indeed, as a student there foreshadowing himself as a congressman now. But, returning to our sheep, to the early history of this genial, whole- souled, warm-hearted, able, but unpretentious man-firm, yet conciliatory, tactful, yet purposeful. At the age of three years he was taken to Minnesota,

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6 QEUIZIKS HUD QILIIIB 1914 and Means Committee of the I-louse, the then Democratic leader fmyselfl refused to place him there for fear lest, if the I-louse should go Democratic and tariff revision work were to be done, the young Representative would think so much of his town and its special industrial interests that he would lose sight of the larger interest of the whole country and of the policy of his party, thus proving an obstacle to the contemplated reduction of duties on coal, iron, and steel. This refusal came to him, too, despite the fact that Underwood had a larger number of Democratic Representatives as sponsors for the appointment than any other applicant for the vacancy. This same Democratic floor leader, however, afterwards noting and ad- miring the man's unswerving, unselfrsh, and even self-sacrificing fealty to party principles and policies and his uniform opposition to governmental subserviency to special interests, hastened to appoint him to fill the very next vaciaiiizzy on that great committee and has never been prouder of any exercise of his political authority or any act of his political life. It has been related of Lucius C. Lamar that, calling upon a newly arrived Mississippi Representative, he found him laboriously perusing the Rules of the House, whereupon Lamar said: My dear fellow, put that dull and stupid thing aside. What do you want to becloud your intellect that way for? The response was: Well, Senator, I thought if one was going to play any game, it was essential to learn its rules. Pshaw! replied Lamar, you learn what you want to do in Washington. There are plenty of damn fools who make a profession of telling you hotvf' Underwood did not take Lamar's view of the case. I-Ie studied and mastered the rules of the game and during my last six years of service in the House I regarded him-taking him and others all in all-as the ablest parlia- mentarian in that body. I-le has in the present Republican minority leader, Mr. Mann, of Illinois, a foeman worthy of his steel, but I yet hold to my opinion. I-Ie was elected to Congress in 1894 as a member of the Fifty-Fourth Congress, if I remember aright. The old University of Virginia boys are soon thrown together. From that time dates my acquaintance with him. From that time on he has been