The limited resources at his command compelled him to deflect his course into channels other than those purely literary, and in 1842 he was appointed county judge of Tuscaloosa, and during the same year published a supplement to the Digest of Alabama. Being appointed law clerk to the solicitor of the treasury at Washington, he gained an insight into the life of the national capital, and perhaps his residence there had some connection with his being made United States attorney for the southern district of Alabama, which position he held for four years, living meanwhile in Mobile. From this position he went to the associate editorship of the Mobile Daily Register. In 1853 we find Judge Meek representing Mobile County in the legislature, where, as chairman of the committee on education, he reported the bill to "establish and maintain a system of free public schools in the state of Alabama." The bill providing for the scheme, together with a voluminous and exhaustive report on education, excited profound interest in the legislature, and the documents were so appreciated that five thousand copies of the bill and ten thousand copies of the report were ordered to be printed. This was the dawn of a new era in education in this state. Various attempts had before been made to gain the attention of the legislature and the people of the state on this transcendant matter, but they had proved of but slight avail till the work undertaken by Judge Meek. The astounding prevalence of illiteracy in the state as exhibited by his report did more than to arouse interest; it created astonishment, with not a slight degree of apprehension. The work done by Judge Meek in this connection gave a strong propulsion to educational work in the state and the interest deepened and grew in intensity till checked by the Civil War. Being elected judge of the city court of Mobile, Judge Meek found sufficient time, amidst the exactions of his official duty on the bench, to gratify, to some degree, his taste for literary pursuits. It was during this period that he found time to write the three rare works which established his literary fame. These are "The Red Eagle," "Romantic Passages in Southwestern History," and "Songs and Poems of the South." Some of these were a collection of fugitive contributions which he had previously made to magazines and newspapers, and some of them were prepared at the time specially for embodied publication.