For solid and substantial worth without ornament or frippery, no son of Alabama has surpassed the Hon. James L. Pugh. His presence and bearing and his conversation and speeches conveyed the same idea. Utterly without ostentation, he acted and spoke with an evident absence of self-consciousness.

Mr. Pugh was a man of stable rather than of brilliant qualities, hence he was an intensely practical man. He was indifferent to nothing of interest, was never superficial, and regarded everything from the viewpoint of the practical. He was studious, judicial in his cast of mind, of conservative temperament, and deliberate of speech. Often animated in public address, he was never excitable or explosive. His every utterance indicated deliberation.

The year of his birth was identical with that of the admission of Alabama into the Union—1819. He came from hardy North Carolina stock, and was brought by his father to Alabama when he was only four years old. At eleven he was an orphan boy, a most precarious condition for one so young in a frontier state. A bare-footed boy, left largely to shift for himself, he afforded an index of his future worth and greatness, by engaging to ride the country mail on Saturdays in order to provide means for the payment of his tuition during the remainder of the week. Later, while yet a youth, he became a clerk in a dry goods establishment in Eufaula, where he obtained frugally hoarded means with which to prosecute his studies, meanwhile looking forward to the law as a profession. After a severe taxation of strength during the day as a clerk, he would study late at night, and by such studious application, qualified himself for entrance on his legal studies. He studied law in the office of John Gill Shorter, who afterward became governor of Alabama.

After the entrance of Mr. Pugh on the practice of law for a number of years, he was chosen an elector on the Taylor ticket, and later still, was a Buchanan elector. Thus, before the people, his way to congress was opened, and as a member of the house of representatives he was chosen in 1858. The outbreak of the war occurring two years later, like all other southern members, he withdrew from congress, shared in the secession sentiment of the state, and was among the first to enlist as a volunteer from Alabama in the service of the Confederacy. He was enrolled as a private soldier in the first Alabama regiment of infantry.

He shouldered his musket and went with his command to Pensacola, where he underwent all the fortunes of a soldier in the ranks, declining any consideration because of the position which he had held as a member of the national congress. Numerous were the offers made him by his comrades to assume his duties, and thus relieve him of hardship, but all this he politely declined, and met the exactions of military duty with cheerful alacrity. His position was one that tested his mettle, for often beneath the blazing sun he was engaged in common with his comrades in throwing up earthworks. The regiment of which he was a member, was ordered to Paducah, Kentucky, where he served for a year, when his constituents recalled him by electing him a member of the Confederate congress. In his first race he had no opposition, but in the second campaign, in 1863, he had three opponents, but was a second time elected, and served the state in the congress of the Confederacy till the downfall of the government. No one was more loyal to the young government than Mr. Pugh, for there was not a month, of the four years of its career, that he was not engaged in its service. After the capitulation of the armies, he returned to Eufaula, and resumed the practice of law.

An ardent southerner and patriot, he naturally shared in the resistance against carpetbag rule, and as occasion would demand he would lend assistance to his struggling people, though he sought no office, but was rigid in his devotion to his profession. In the memorable contest of 1876, he was a Tilden elector, and made an active canvass in this and other states. In 1875, when the backbone of reconstruction was broken, he was chosen a member of the state constitutional convention, and rendered valuable service as one of the most prominent members of that body.

In appreciation of worth and service, Mr. Pugh was chosen a National Senator from Alabama in 1880, and was a yoke-fellow of John T. Morgan in the senate for the space of eighteen years. It was universally conceded that no state had a stronger brace of senators than Alabama during that period of southern rehabilitation. He was not conspicuous as a speechmaker in the senate chamber, though he was not silent, for as occasion demanded he was heard, and always effectively. When he did arise to speak, he commanded universal attention, partly because of the high esteem in which he was held, and partly because it was understood that when Senator Pugh spoke it was with well-digested views on measures of great importance. He retired from the senate in 1897, being at that time seventy-seven years old, and returned to his home at Eufaula, where he resided till his death.

A review of the career of Mr. Pugh will reveal the fact that in all his emergencies from private life it was in response to recognized duty. He was not spectacular, and never relied on his oratory for popular acclaim. His power before the people lay in his impressiveness as a solid speaker, for no one could listen to him without the impression of the intensity of his conviction. Whether always right or not, he believed it, and therefore spoke. Only when he felt that he could be of service was that service tendered. No more convincing expression of his patriotism could be afforded than when as a returned congressman he quietly enlisted as a private in the ranks of the army, at a time when men vastly inferior to him were solicitous for commissions. This affords an index of the sturdiness of the character of Senator Pugh. No position ever held by him was characterized by other than by the most substantial efficiency. No man who ever represented Alabama in any sphere was more practically and patriotically loyal than James Lawrence Pugh.