Dictionary.net

An American jurist, journalist, and miscellaneous writer; born at Columbia, S. C., July 17, 1814; died at Columbus, Miss., Nov. 30, 1865. He served in the Seminole war, 1836; was attorney-general of Alabama, 1836; judge of Tuscaloosa County, 1842-44; member of the Legislature in 1853, where and when he established the free-school system of Alabama; Speaker of the Alabama House, 1859. Besides a legal digest (1842), he wrote: "The Red Eagle" (1855); "Songs and Poems of the South" (1857); "Romantic Passages in Southwestern History" (1857); "History of Alabama" (unpublished); etc. His best-known poem is "The Charge at Balaklava".