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He was born on December 10, 1821, in Columbus, Mississippi, the son of Richard and Mary (Sullivan) Barry, who moved from Virginia and established their home on the Tombigbee River, at the present site of Columbus, Miss. , in the latter part of the second decade of the nineteenth century.
After finishing a preparatory course in the home academy, young Barry attended Yale College, where he graduated in 1841. He then returned to Columbus and studied law in the office of Harrison & Harris.
After his admission to the bar he formed a partnership with Judge J. S. Bennett. But he soon became "weary of professional monotony, " and retired to his farm in Oktibbeha County (1847). Two years later he entered politics, and was twice elected to the lower house of the legislature. Reuben Davis, who knew Barry well, says that he enjoyed the excitement of a political campaign, but "abhorred the labors and responsibilities of office, " and "could rarely be induced to work in harness. " He was a man of imposing personality and of ability as a stump speaker, though his style was somewhat turgid and sophomoric. The same writer says that as a speaker Barry was in some respects the equal of Jefferson Davis and in others the equal of Sargent S. Prentiss "but in the aggregate inferior to both".
In 1852 Barry removed to what is now Leflore County, in the Mississippi Delta, and in the following year was elected to the national House of Representatives. In a speech on "Civil and Religious Toleration, " which he delivered in Congress, December 18, 1854, he made a strong assault on the policy and principles of the Know-Nothing party. He declined reëlection at the end of his term in Congress, and resumed the practise of law in Columbus. A few months later he reentered politics, was elected to the legislature and made speaker of the House. He became a leader in the disunionist wing of the Democratic party in the state, and was among the delegates who withdrew from the Charleston convention in 1860 and nominated Breckenridge and Lane in the Baltimore convention.
He was later chosen president of the Mississippi secession convention of 1861. It is said that he never again used the pen with which he signed the ordinance of secession, but carefully preserved it as a family heirloom. He was also chosen as one of the seven Mississippi delegates to the Montgomery convention which organized the Government of the Confederate States, and was then elected a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy. At the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as Provisional President of the Confederacy, Barry made an extempore speech which according to James D. Lynch was "more happily conceived, more eloquently delivered and more highly applauded" than that of any other speaker on that occasion. In 1862 he resigned from the Confederate Congress and organized the 35th Regiment of Mississippi Infantry, of which he became colonel. He served in many engagements in Mississippi from the battle of Corinth to the fall of Vicksburg; also in the Georgia campaign, being wounded at Allatoona.
He was finally captured at Mobile, April 9, 1865. After the war he retired to his home, saying to a friend, "My thinking in the past has not been profitable - my hopes for my country have all been blasted, and as far as I can, I will quit thinking and for a while lead a negative existence. " His despondency caused a rapid decline of his health, and he died in the house of his sister, Mrs. J. D. Bradford, of Columbus, January 29, 1868.
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He was :"as to religion, by education a Presbyterian; by taste an Episcopalian; in practise, nothing".
He was married, December 20, 1851, to Sally Fearn, daughter of Dr. Thomas Fearn, of Huntsville, Alabama.
