Hon. C.B. Neal was born on a farm the 10th of January, 1829, in Anderson county, east Tennessee, and followed agricultural pursuits until he attained his majority. He acquired a common-school education at intervals when not engaged on the farm. After attaining his majority he spent two years at college, and mastered a good education in the English branches. At the end of his collegiate course, financial embarrassment led him to temporarily embrace the occupation o school-teaching for a small monthly salary 0 an occupation followed by a great number of men early in life as a stepping-stone, and by many who afterward became greatly distinguished. From the school-room he went to the accountant’s desk in the office of clerk and master in chancery – one of the best preparatory schools to entering the legal profession. Here he assiduously cultivated that system and method his responsible position imposed, and became deeply impressed with the conviction that method is the first law of business as well as of nature.

East Tennessee at that time contained many lawyers of great ability, and the arguments of some of these distinguished men over exceptions to his reports as master in chancery first impaired an impulse and then a settled conviction to embrace law as a profession. Such resolve, coupled with a well-organized and disciplined mind, will make a good lawyer. Where these great primal elements unite in the same man, no ordinary impediment will cut him off from success. In 1856 he admitted to the bar in east Tennessee. In 1860 he located at Greenwood, in Sebastian county, where he has remained ever since in the practice of his profession, save the interval when the courts were closed during the war of the Rebellion. In 1862 he was elected to the legislature from Sebastian county, and again in 1864. Although not an active combatant in the field, he was intensely southern in his views, and aided and abetted his native south, and abided her fortunes, and when she went under in the tremendous conflict, he did not, like Longstreet and Mosby and men of that stripe, turn on his countrymen by joining the dominant party, that thrift might follow disgraceful fawning. Of all the contemptible objects the war produced it was the Confederate parasite who joined the conquering northmen to raid and pillage the scanty resources of his distressed and fallen countrymen. Some of these monstrosities, after willing a glorious name in the Confederate service, have sold and peddled it for pottage. The man who turns traitor is, nevertheless, an Arnold, whether it be in field or cabinet.

Mr. Neal owned valuable slave and other property, all of which perished with the Confederacy. Lee’s surrender found him on Red river, Louisiana, without a dollar to defray his expenses back to Greenwood. To overcome this financial embarrassment he opened an office where the disaster overtook him, and practiced law there until the next year, and then returned to Greenwood. In 1871 he was elected to the legislature from Sebastian the third time. Less than one-third of that body were democrats. This minority, under the lead of Mr. Neal, soon broke the radical majority in the lower house, and obtained control of it, and passed articles of impeachment against Powell Clayton, governor, and John McClure, chief justice. McClure was tried and acquitted by the republican senate. Mr. Neal conducted the impeachment trial before the radical senate in behalf of the house of representatives, and, although a partisan tribunal acquitted the defendant, the moral effect of the trial before the bar of public opinion was great. He has the courage of his convictions, and is fearless in maintain what he conceives to be right, and in denouncing that which is wrong. He is a fine judge of human nature, and always displays this ability in the selection of juries, before whom he is powerful. He is a good lawyer, and acts in the management of a case on the principle that lawsuits are won in their preparation before the trial court commences.