The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 14, July 1910 - April, 1911 Page: 149
348 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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General Volney Erskine Howard.
149
ing; his sarcasm keen as the edge of Saladin's scimitar; his
power of statement luminous and graphic. In terms of epigram-
matic sentence he was fertile and even profuse. In impassioned
arraignment, especially when his sense of wrong or injustice was
aroused, he was withering and overwhelming. He was most dan-
gerous when his expressive lip was curled with a smile and a
peculiar sparkle, as if of humor, lurked in his piercing eyes.
When in this vein and the occasion called it forth, he was a
terror to those who fell athwart the lacerating excoriation of his
invective. This country has produced but few men with a more
comprehensive or absorbing mind, and none stored with a wider
or more judiciously selected range of literature. His memory was
one of great strength and tenacity. Whatever he read was stored
away, and subject to call when required. No subject, however
recondite or complex, had escaped the tireless industry of his
research, and he was always ready to invest it with an interest
and originality of treatment that stamped him as one whose in-
vestigations were accompanied with the penetrating power of the
deep thinker.
He was a statesman in the highest sense. A graduate of the
Jacksonian schools, he was firm and immovable in his political
principles. His party might, in the hands of trimmers and time-
servers, veer to the right or left, but he was as true as the needle
to the pole.
His courageous nature was incapable of fear and when he
knew and felt he was right, his firmness became so fixed in its
purpose that no amount of danger could turn him from his course.
Had he been more politic, more suave and bending in his char-
acter, more flexible to his own personal interests, he might have
left his children greater riches as the world goes, but he could
not have left them a more lofty and honorable heritage than that
which descends to them from his pure and unsullied name and his
great and lasting fame.
Such was the man who gave Texas eight years of his most
vigorous manhood. The Legislature of Texas, in 1876, grate-
fully remembered his services and erected a monument to him
by naming Howard county in his honor.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 14, July 1910 - April, 1911, periodical, 1911; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101054/m1/163/: accessed April 20, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.