Ma Dike Picks Her Battles

She had plenty to choose from--battles, that is. In many instances, her passion for justice and "the sweet courtesies of life" drove her pleas for help or determination toward a goal. One series of correspondence is between the Governor of Alabama and Martha D., instigated by the latter. In those, she begs for the pardon of her cousin. A segment of her initial letter on behalf of cousin J. Dubose Bibb, convicted of keeping a gambling table follows:

—

To Governor Seay of Alabama

Montgomery, Ala.

Sept. 15th, 1888

Governor Thomas Seay

"Dear Sir,
Will you allow me to make an appeal to you on behalf of my kinsman Mr. J. Dubose Bibb, recently convicted of keeping a gambling table.
I know applications of a similar nature are often made upon your decency, and I invite with some apprehension lest I lay too great a tax upon your kindness I feel assured will at least pardon me when I tell you the circumstances which impel me to crave your mercy.
Mr. Bibb was taken from the arms of a dying mother when only one day old and tenderly reared by my own mother as one of her children. He reached the years of manhood with no bad habits and probabilities of a bright future seemed to beckon him to the goal of a successful life.."

And a bit more:
"Though my parents had entreated him with tears and prayers to forsake his evil ways, they again sought him in this extremity and offered him home and sustenance so long as he refrained from gambling. He stayed with them six months and against their most earnest protestations, again he returned to his former haunts and gambled, he said for a living, as all legitimate means of earning subsistence were denied him though he had earnestly and diligently sought employment for a long while. His peculiar conduct then and since that time has been so contrary to his education and former associations that our family, as well as a number of physicians, believe that his mind is unhinged. He is also a physical wreck and being unfitted for labor of any kind would prove a burden to the State."

Then Martha pulls the trump card:
"I now bespeak your kind offices on personal consideration. You know that two of my father’s brothers held the honorable office you now fill, when Alabama was a Territory and after the organization of the State and through a long ancestral line no stain has ever dimmed the brightness of their reputation. They served this Commonwealth in peace and defended her in war and with this record of fidelity, I plea the anguish of the sorrowful old man for whom I seek your official pardon and whose chains are only more galling because his own hands have wrought them."

She knew how to pour it on, but regardless of her attempt, or words, or allegiance, it was a rather pathetic letter. It showed that some of today's heartaches are the same as those in the 1800's and that life changes, and doesn't. Her letter is much longer and details his life before gambling took hold and after. It is included, along with the Governor's and Cousin J. D. Bibb's, full-bloom in my book.The Governor was taking it under consideration, but his response didn't prove hopeful.

Dubose's response in part to Martha's and the Governor's letters:

"...My Dear Cousin, if you only knew how sad it makes me feel when I reflect about all the pleasures on my past life; for I believe no mortal ever enjoyed more. I think of my Angel wife and every thing else which could make life desirable. I say when I think of these things and my present condition in my old age, my life being at last a failure, I am simply dumb..."