U. M. Rose

After graduating in 1853, in search of warmer weather, Rose, his new wife, and his brother-in-law William T. Gibbs moved to Batesville, Arkansas, in 1853. He set up a law practice there in partnership with Gibbs. The Roses had three children.[10] "The couple bought a house on the north side of Main Street, between Third and Fourth Streets, and U. M. Rose rented a small building next door to use as an office."[1]^: 175 ("He lived on the lot now [1935] occupied by a filling station just across the street from where the Crouch furniture store is now l[oca]ted. His law office was located in his yard."[13]) Rose subsequently moved his practice to Washington, Arkansas.[14]

In 1860, he was appointed chancellor (chancery judge and chief county officer) of Pulaski County; "county judges in Arkansas have served for decades as one of the strongest political forces in the state."[15] "The [Pulaski County] chancellor's office was the only such office in the state and thus had statewide jurisdiction."[10] He held this position until Union forces captured the state capital on September 1, 1863. Although initially opposed to secession, on the practical ground that the South could not win a war against the North,[1]^: 175[3]^: 22 he backed the Confederacy throughout the Civil War. (Both he and his brother-in-law each owned a slave, though his ran away.[1]^: 175) He took an oath to support the Confederacy, without which he could not have continued as a state judge;[1]^: 176 when briefly captured by Union forces that occupied Batesville, he refused to swear allegiance to the Federal government.[1]^: 176 The Confederacy named him state historian.[1]^: 177 He moved with the pro-Confederate Arkansas government to Washington, Arkansas in 1863, following the fall of Little Rock.[3]^: 22 Rose, "along with all men who had the welfare of the state at heart",[3]^: 23 "worked hard" to convince Arkansas voters not to ratify the Reconstruction Constitution.[1]^: 181 (As a Confederate loyalist, he had lost the right to vote.) He was chairman of the Resolutions Committee of the state Democratic party, determined "to preserve 'WHITE MAN'S government in a WHITE MAN'S COUNTRY'".[1]^: 181 (His wife was later active in the Daughters of the Confederacy.[16][17][18][19][20])

The end of the Confederacy meant the end of his position as judge. Moving to Little Rock in 1865, where he and his wife had four additional children,[10] he set up a law partnership, much later to become the Rose Law Firm, with George C. Watkins (1815–1872), former chief justice of Arkansas. This lasted until Watkins' retirement, five years later. He then brought in John Green, who died suddenly in May 1875.[1]^: 188 His son George B. Rose then became associated with him, under the firm name of U. M. & G. B. Rose.[21] In 1893 Wilson Hemingway, associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court since 1889, resigned from the court to join them. In 1905, the firm merged with Cantrell and Loughborough, and the partners adopted the named Rose, Hemingway, Cantrell, and Loughborough, which remained the name of the firm long after Rose’s death. The firm did not become the Rose Law Firm until 1980;[1]^: 188 no Rose has been associated with the firm since George's death in 1942.

He was offered a position as U.S. Senator but declined, saying "I have no love of political life. I have seen much of it at a distance. I regard it for the most part as a sham and a delusion, and often it is a shame and a disgrace."[1]^: 187

A man of learning in the law, science, and literature, Rose knew both German and French; poems translated by him from the French of Sully Prudhomme and the German of Goethe and Schiller were published posthumously.[22] When faced with a colonial document, he "exhibited a degree of almost perfect familiarity with Spanish".[23] He was "deeply versed in the classics",[8] and was also a noted and "enthralling"[24] public speaker. In 1872 was the first of several trips to Europe, in which he visited Italy, Austria, Scandinavia, Russia, and Turkey; he also visited Mexico.[3]^: 26

His library, which his widow donated to the Little Rock Public Library, contained over 8,000 volumes, including almost 2,000 books in French and German; there are two published catalogues of it.[25][26][27][28] He was the organizer of the Arkansas Bar Association, whose first meeting was in his office,[1]^: 194 and its president from 1899 to 1900; he was a charter member of the American Bar Association and its president from 1891 to 1892 and again 1901 to 1902. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him U.S. ambassador to the Second Peace Conference at The Hague in 1907.[10] In preparation for that responsibility he spent time in Washington, D.C., where he was "a daily caller at [the] White House".[29]

Rose died at his home at 620 West 3rd St., Little Rock, Arkansas, on August 12, 1913, as a consequence of a fall.[30][31] "The funeral was attended perhaps by the largest number ever gathered on a similar occasion."[32] People attended from "every section of the state".[14] State offices were closed by the governor so employees could attend the funeral.[33]

He and his wife had 9 children who survived to adulthood, in order of birth: John M. Rose (1855-1915), an attorney who practiced next door to his father but not in partnership with him,[1]^{: 188 n. 60} William G. Rose of Butler and Independence, Missouri (1857–1941), his partner George B. Rose (1860–1942), Janata Rose "Fanny" Dickinson of Little Rock (1863–1932), Lawrence (1866, died in infancy), Ellen Rose Gibbon or Gibbons of Los Angeles (1867–1915), Emma Rose Coleman (1870–1907), Charles C. Rose of Little Rock (1872–1954), Prof. Lewis Henry Rose of the University of Arkansas and of Chicago (1874–1921), and Mrs. (Jessie Rose) Hay Watson Smith of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Little Rock (1877-1953).[12] [34][35] His son George was "known and honored not only as a most successful lawyer, but as a litterateur, art critic and scholar."[36] His grandson U.M. Rose was president of the New Mexico Bar Association.[37]