There was not in the life and career of Governor Henry Watkins Collier that which was apt to catch the popular eye and invite popular applause, for he was not gifted with the flash of oratory, nor did he seek the clamorous applause which passes with the day. Governor Collier was of the practical mold of men who merely did things, who patiently wrought in painstaking silence far away from the madding crowd and the host of empty babble. He won distinction, but he did it by dint of granite merit, while disdaining the acclaim which comes as the vapid breath of the hour.

A Virginian by birth, Governor Collier had the prestige which comes of distinguished lineage. In the genealogical line were the names of such men as Sir Francis Wyatt, one of the original English governors of Virginia, and Admiral Sir George Collier of the British navy. But distinction like this he relied not on, and his career throughout showed that he regarded the life of each one a distinct entity dependent entirely on individual worth.

Governor Collier came to Alabama in the flower of his youth well qualified to respond to the demands arising from the colonial conditions of a new state. He had been grounded in the solid soil of academic drill at a time when the test of pupilage lay in the thought created by the student rather than in the mere mastery of that already kneaded by others, and served to the taste. For to be a student of those early times of even tolerable tolerance one had to dig rather than to reap, as others had sown. By the few really skillful preceptors of those primitive times, the student was encouraged to create and originate his own material from the bare principles furnished. This molded men of stalwart proportions, promoted self-assertion, augmented confidence, stiffened reliance, and toughened the fiber of character by effort.

Instruction of this character was given in the famous pioneer school of Moses Waddell at Willington, S. C., where were trained for the stern life of grappling with grim, original conditions such men as George McDuffie, James L. Pettigru and Augustus B. Longstreet, and many others whose fame, and, no less, whose example, remain as a perennial inspiration to aspiring youth, for after all every man who is made is self-made. Be one’s advantages never so much or so meager, self and self-worth are at last the determinative factor.

Girt with equipments like these borne from the Waddell school, young Collier reached Alabama just as it was emerging into statehood. His first residence was at Huntsville, where as a youthful pleader he opened his little office, but soon removed to Tuscaloosa as the partner of Hon. Simon L. Perry.

The demand for competent legislators and men for the occupancy of other spheres, at a time when the population of the state was sparse, opened the door of opportunity to aspiring young men to which class Collier belonged. When only twenty-six he went as a representative from Tuscaloosa County, and so profound was the impression made by this solid young man that the legislature, at the next session, elected him to a place on the supreme bench, a distinction the more pronounced because his competitor for the place was Judge Eli Shortridge.

Four years later, on the occasion of the reorganization of the state courts, Judge Collier was displaced from the supreme bench, but was retained as a circuit judge for four years, at which time Judge Saffold retired from his seat on the supreme bench, and Governor Clay appointed Judge Collier in his stead, till the legislature should meet and elect his successor. On the convening of the general assembly, Judge Collier was met by a contestant for the honor in the person of Hon. A. Crenshaw of Butler, but the election resulted in favor of Judge Collier, who received more than twice the number of votes given his opponent.

For twelve years he continued to dispense justice in that high tribunal, and the value of the service rendered the state by him is attested by the luminous and voluminous decisions which run through thirty-five volumes of the Alabama reports, a perpetual monument of valuable labor.

By this time no man so completely filled the eyes of the people of the state as Judge Henry Watkins Collier. His high sense of justice, his impartial incision, and his solid and unvarying calmness made him, without self-effort to attain it, the dominant public figure in Alabama. Practically without effort, he was chosen, almost by a unanimous vote of the people, to the office of governor.

This was in 1849. Judge Samuel F. Rice, one of the brightest and ablest of Alabamians, appeared against him, and the final vote stood 36,350 for Collier and 364 for Rice, with a few scattering votes. At the close of his first term for governor three competitors appeared in the field for the same distinction—B. G. Shields, Nathaniel Terry and William L. Yancey, and of a total popular vote of 43,679, Governor Collier was indorsed by 37,460 of these.

Nor was this due to an active canvass on the part of Governor Collier. While he was by no means indifferent to his retention of the gubernatorial chair, he preferred to base his claim on genuine merit illustrated in official function, rather than by clamor for recognition before the assembled multitude. He had scrupulously sought to make his work worthy as a judge and as a governor, and was entirely willing that it should shine by its own light. He could not plausibly plead for support or indorsement, had none of the arts and tricks of the vote-getter, and therefore relied on actual service and worth to give exploit to his value as an official servant. His ideal of the office was lofty, and he felt that he could not climb down into the arena of personal scramble when the people were as fully informed of his competency as they would have been had he made a heated canvass.

From the beginning to the close of his life, Governor Collier was under strain. He did not fret nor chafe under the burdens imposed, but his powers wore under the dogged strain of perpetual labor. Nothing could deflect him from public duty. To him its claim was supreme. He died in the ripeness of his manhood at Bailey Springs in 1865, being only fifty-four years old, his early death being largely due, no doubt, to the overstrain of his vigor.