Reminiscences of Rufus Choate, the great American advocate

Front matter

DDDDSbj^nO o

y o ♦ n I^M T X T S C E N C E S ov

II U ¥ US C II A T E

CHAPTER II. Outline of his Like, and Personal Reminiscences, . 29

CHAPTER ITT.

Personal Reminiscences, ...... "79

CHAPTER TV.

I'tlOFESSIONAL REMINISCENCES, - . . .117

CHAPTER V.

Conversations with Rufus Choate, . , . .231

CHAPTER YI.

Extracts from Letters of Mr. Choate to the Author, . 307

Xii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.

PAGE

RuFus Choate as an Orator, . . . . .321

CIIARTER VIII.

Forensic Arguments, ....... 354

CHAPTER TX.

Miscellaneous Reminiscences, ..... 489

CHAPTER X.

Faneuil Hall in Mourning for Him, and Everett's

Eulogy, 506

CHAPTER I.

Introduction To Reminiscences

THE niSTORIC POSITION OF RUFUS CIIOATE.

RuFus CiiOATE is to Lc ranked as — The great American advocate. He was an able lawyer, a shining statesman, an all-accomplished, man of letters ; but these are not his glory. His was that glory of which nightly he had dreamed, and for which he struggled daily from his first entrance upon active life — the glory of the great advocate, the ruler of the Twelve. To gain this particular attitude in history he made all his endowments and all his experiences contribute together.

He is just buried ; and the accordant voice of the press and of the public, however they may difter upon other points in his career, rises in applauding unison to crown him the first Advocate that has appeared upon this continent.

He will be remembered always as holding, in point of forensic advocacy, the same relation to America that Curran held to Ireland, and Erskine held to Great Britain. Erskine and Curran had the felicity to try some causes which elevated their court rooms into the dignity of national Senates. This will always give them in history a quasi statesman's position ; but tried as advocates, as omnipotent wielders of the jury, Choate is certainly worthy to rank as tlieir peer.

The British advocate. Lord Erskine, lives still in form and stature before the eyes of his brethren of the bar, in the monumental marble of his statue. Curran, the great Irishman, lies beneath a noble pile of granite, modeled after the tomb of Scipio ; to wliich his admiring countrymen bore his remains twenty-three years after his death in a foreign land. Eufus Choate will sleep in Mount Auburn ; and those who shall read upon the head-stone that simple name will remember that when he was placed there, Faneuil Hall flung open her gates at midday, and the first of living orators pronounced his eulogy in the ear of America.

In his lecture on the Study of History, addressed to Lord Cornbury, that oratorio philosopher Lord Bolingbroke, after describing the profession of the law as in its nature the noblest and most beneficial to mankind, in its abuse the most sordid and pernicious, rises to a high impulse of just enthusiasm as he exclaims : " There have been lawyers that were orators, philosophers, historians ; there have been Bacons, and Clarendons, my lord ; there shall be none such any more, till, in some better age, men learn to prefer fame to pelf, and climb to the vantage-ground of general science." This sentiment of Bolingbroke may aptly introduce a sketch of William Pinkney.

There have been in our country perhaps half a dozen advocates of national repute as orators — Pinkney, Choate, Legare, Wirt, Prentiss, and Ogden Hoffman ; all of them quite accomplished, well read, and widely learned, and blending with the severer qualities of the lawyer the higher and more kindling attributes of the man of genius. All of them have in some sense seemed impressed with the force of this opinion of Bolingbroke ; all of them have pursued ideal excellence rather than gold ; all of them have grasped that glory which is far better than gold. But among them two names stand advanced by general consent as chiefs at the bar, beyond dispute facile princeps — two men who united in themselves more of the essential qualities of the advocate-orator, and carried those qualities to a higher pitch of excellence than all the rest — William Pinkney and Rufus Choate. The mention of the one vividly suggests the other. They each had a conception of professional attainments of original hreadth and splendor. They are the luminaries of the American har, each rcirent of its firmament for his own hour — the morning and the evening star of its most effulgent day.

In some resjoects, too, Choate may be considered the pupil of Pinkney. He heard him and admired him in his own youth ; he has evidently studied him in his more mature discipline of liimself, and in one prominent particular he closely resembles him — the mastery of a diction e\ddently learned up, labored, and made a specific object of constant cflPort.

But Pinkney, although a very great lawyer, was not so great an advocate. His power was displayed in most ample sweep, not before the twelve men of the people, but before the bench of judges of the United States Supreme Court. It was there he met his most formidable antagonists, there the ladies crowded to hear him, and upon him there the eyes of all the nation were often fixed.

Choate's preeminence, on the other hand, was in dealing with man as man ; not educated, ermined man, but the mere mortal man. Him, he could magnetize and master.

He accomplished this magical mastery not by a mere transitory eloquence of pathos and beauty, but by concentrating vast energies upon that specific object. A singularly powerful yet delicate organization, a capacious yet prompt understanding, law learning enough for a lord Chancellor, and a lettered eloquence which Hortensius might have admired ; all these were the forces in array when Choate ranged his power in forensic action. And then, finally, Choate had genius, pure genius ; Pinkney had talent, great talent, but still only talent.

When Mr. Choate's arguments and addresses are published by his family, the world will at first be struck with their extravagance and eccentricity ; but a second thought will reveal their compact strength — the cruel steel beneath the purple velvet. And men will reason then, " How mysterious must have been that genius which could make these hyperbolical metaphors serve to strike conviction into grave human hearts !''

Some ten years ago I heard Daniel Webster, in Washington, say, " Rufus Choate is a wonderful man ; he is a marvel."

Edward Everett, in his Faneuil Hall eulogy upon Mr. Choate, said, with discriminating panegyric, " ' There was no one who united to the same extent profound legal learning with a boundless range of reading, reasoning powers of the highest order, and an imagination which rose on a bold and easy wing to the highest heaven of invention. With such gifts and such attainments he i:)laced himself, as a matter of course, not merely at the head of the jurists and advocates, but of the public speakers of the country. After hearing him at the bar, in the senate, or on the academic or j)opular platform, you felt that you had heard the best that could be said in either place.' He said Choate's eulogy on Daniel Webster at Dartmouth College had never been equaled by any performance of that kind in this country. He might have added with truth, or any other country."

At the meeting of the Suffolk bar, to take honorable notice of his death, Mr. Richard H. Dana, speaking what I know must have been lying unexpressed in the heart of every lawyer present, said felicitously : " The ' golden bowl is broken/ the age of miracles has passed, the day of inspiration is over ; the great conqueror, unseen and irresistible, has broken into our temple, and has carried off the vessels of gold, the vessels of silver, the precious stones, the jewels, and the ivory ; and like the priests at the temple of Jerusalem, after the invasion from Babylon, we must content ourselves with serving vessels of wood, and stone, and of iron."

This describes in metaphor, but not extravagantly, the wide interval which all Mr. Choate's compeers recognized as existing between his advocacy and their own. He was the wizard of the court room.

It has also been truly said recently, by a writer of much observation of the world : "In power of severe reasoning, and what Whately calls ' discovering argument,' on any question, Webster was the equal of Choate, and no more than his equal ; but in almost every other quality of a great orator, Webster, though gi-eat, was decidedly inferior to Choate. If the two men had been speaking on opposite sides of the same street, Choate would have drawn away Webster's audience, whether composed of the most common or the most learned men. That is the true test of the relative (Qualities of the two men as orators. We have heard the best public speakers of England, such as Brougham, Stanley, now Lord Derby, Gladstone, the late Sir Robert Peel, and others of less note ; and though very able and eloquent speakers, they were not any of them the equals of Choate. Brougham, in his prime, would have come nearest to him, but not up to him. We doubt even whether Erskine himself, justly renowned as he was, ever possessed the eloquence of Choate, or the same command over juries. We have not the least doubt, however, the remark may shock those who are imbued with too blind and ignorant a reverence for antiquity, that if Demosthenes had had Choate in the place of Mschinesfor his competitor, in the great oration for the croivn, he would have been beaten."

If Mr. Choate's death calls forth such panegyric, it is not surprising that when alive, and actually wielding " the law's whole thunder," he made his country look in upon his court room, and enjoyed a national renown.

I shall endeavor to present an outline of this great man's life, but especially and fully to present him as he Avas during the last fifteen years of his life. That was the period of my personal acquaintance with him. But I feel painfully how utterly im})Ossiblo it will be to frame any descriptions adequate to give those who never saw or heard him a full impression of this loonder, for such he was. I have heard it said, and said truly, that although Webster was a greater man, yet he was of a species of man comparatively common ; but Choate, taken as a whole, viewing him as a man of action as well as reflection, was the rarest genius who has grown up on this side of the Atlantic. Of such a genius, how shall Avords tell all the story ?

In appearance he was, though in a different way, quite as marked as Webster. No one who once saw him could ever forget him. His head, and face, and figure all equally signalized him. That dark, Spanish, Hidalgo-looking head, covered with thick raven curls, which the daughters of the black-eyed races might have envied ; and the flash of his own sad eyes, sad but burning with Italian intensity — What canvas shall ever bid them live again, so that men shall see once more our Prince of the forum ?

In the prime and flush of his youth, when first he stood up before the bar and the bench of Essex county.

Mr. ChoatC is described as of fascinating beauty. In his maturity he was not so handsome as he was striking in liis aspect. It was then the combination of poetry and power expressed in his looks, which was the source of his fascination rather than any grace of feature. The luster lingered in the eye, but his Herculean toils had driven away all bloom from the cheek. Yet still the quick smile of singular beauty illuminated the weary face of the veteran ; he was old, but his smile was young ; and victor in so many fights, with the story of his conquering life stamped on his jaded countenance, he must have been quite as interesting a being in form and feature as when, in the beauty of his youth, he stood up, and Joy and Hope brightened his mantling crest.

THE author's acquaintance WITH MR. CHOATE.

Twenty years ago I heard a man say in the street in Boston to his companion, as they walked along, " I'd as soon hear this man Choate speak as Webster." I was only a boy then, but my young imagination about " this man Choate" was instantly aroused. Webster, to my boyish apprehension, w^as the greatest man in the world ; and for any one to say that anybody could speak as well as he, seemed to me like challenging an Olympian divinity.

Five years after that, a lady introduced me, in Washington, to this rival sovereign of men's homage ; and a little circumstance which followed led to that more intimate acquaintance from which came the conversations and observations which are here recorded.

I was in Yale College, and, impatient of its various restraints, was anxious to start off in the world and leave the halls of Alma Mater at the close of the junior year.

Mr. Choate heard of it, and, with his unfailing and characteristic interest in young men, sat down at once and wrote to the person who had introduced me to him a long letter dissuading me from leaving before graduation, and setting forth the argument for a full collegiate education in such a manner that the thought was instantly abandoned, and the remainder of the college course pursued with far greater diligence. At the close of the studies of colle<re and the Dane Law School, he took me into his office ; and from that time on I saw him almost daily till the close of his life.

How fascinating and endearing he was to youth I need not say ; and for that reason, no less than his magnetic and marvelous eloquence, I observed and studied him every day of my life for ten years. During those years many an afternoon, and far into the night, I have listened to his conversation, not less fascinated than instructed. And to deepen the impression of his thoughts and suggestions, tlicy were alivays committed to paper on returning home.

It seemed to me then, and it does now on reviewing them, that his familiar talk was the best revelation of his genius of all the ways by which the inward man was outwardly expressed. The plane of thought in which his mind habitually moved, even when off duty and in repose ; the energy of its action and the richness of his intellectual resources were there seen, stripped of the glare of rhetoric and the enchantments of distance and parade which might be supposed to magnify his public efforts ; and I soon became satisfied that it might be said of him in every field of thouglit, as many of his professional eulogists have said of his strictly legal attainments, that he was as solid as he was showy. Strip him of his rhetorical plumage, quench that unearthly flame of those deep eyes beaming on a jury, calm those torrid heats of passion which swejit his audience along in ardent sympathy with his si)arkling sentences, — and still, the great thoughts, the historical truths, the wise generalizations, the just judgments on men and things, the intellectual grasp, all were only more clearly manifest in the still clear light of quiet conversation.

Had he not been brilliant, he would have led the bar by mere law-learning and law-logic, and then no one would ever have questioned the tough texture of his brain ; and so he who shall read these pages of his familiar talks — when his mind was not up and on duty — will see, in the themes among which he habitually moved, and the intellectual alacrity with which he grasped at every topic suggested, and poured out instantly new and glowing thoughts about it, the substantial and essential powers of his head. He could talk on any thing, and talk originally and wisely. I think he often talked more wisely even than he spoke.

His more pleasurable intellectual exertions revolved back among the ancient ages, but he was always booked up on all the fresh topics and lines of modern thinking. His table in his library was covered six deep with the newest issues of the press ; and within reach of the sofa upon which he habitually lounged or reclined, were several movable stands packed and piled with books ; which he could draw directly up to him into more intimate contact than the formal rows of innumerable volumes, which lined the walls and rose rank upon rank from floor to ceiling all round the spacious chamber. Surrounded by these mute friends, he loved to be and to talk.

22 KEMINISCENCES OF KQFUS CHOATE.

HIS CONVERSATION.

Let wlioever would talk with him, he would meet him on his own topic. With me, as he would with any young man of a taste that way, he talked chiefly of lawyers and public men, their eloquence, their advocacy, their character ; great historical subjects, political retrospections and prophecies ; the study of the law, its best method ; oratory, and the best way to cultivate a genuine eloquence ; the great jury trials with which he had been directly or indirectly connected, and many other kindred themes. Take him sick or well, lying down or standing up, the flow of his thinight seemed always as clear, exact and ready at one time as at another.

These conversations have seemed to me Avorth printing for the benefit of other young men. They contain a great deal that is directly practical. They contain the teachings of the greatest of American advocates upon many of the secrets of his singular art. They express his thinking also upon many subjects of absorbing interest to all students of law, of politics, or of intellectual development generally.

It has been said by a high authority, of the first Napoleon, that the talks of St. Helena revealed his fiber and volume of brain as surely as the fights of Austerlitz and Lodi. " Let me talk with a man," said Dr. Johnson, " and I '11 find out in fifteen minutes how much of a man he is." No person of intelligence could talk with Kufus Choate at any time on any theme without coming away more impressed with his absolute power, the long range and the steady grasp of his mind, than he had been by all his dazzling outside public performances.

The bar of Essex county, where he first practiced, are eloquent to tliis day whenever their thoughts turn to Choate's conversation ; and I have known kidies at a dinner party, who expected only dry thoughts from so great a man with a face so wrinkled and so grave, siu-- priscd to find themselves enchained by his original and striking talk, presented with a manner of such unpretending hut assured power. And in the capital of the Union, at Wash in ton, I have heard celeb; ated men say that no talk was ever uttered even in that metropolitan center of every sort of intelligence, at all equal to that which was heard when Choate and Webster got their legs opposite each other under some friendly host's mahogany. The sparkle and flash produced by such a battle of brains as that, however, can not be preserved. The most that wo can keep memory of is the character of his thoughts, the quality and readiness of his information, and something of the style, whether dashing or demure, in wliich they were presented. No man can paint battles to the life ; but we can always review the regiments, inspect the arms and ammunition, and infer the deadly range of the rifled ordnance.

Mr. Choate's conversation was grave, rich and stately ; yet always there was a play of humor glimmering through its thoughts de'lighting and dazzling by turns. You never heard him sav much, however grave, without catching something thrown in at once startling and sparkling, or strange and mirthful. I do not tliink I ever saw him, even in his own house, where of course there was no disposition to do any thing for effect, either in his library or at his table, fatigued or fresh, without hearing him say something in that quiet and sometimes sepulchral tone of his which could hardly fail to set a smile on the grimmest features. It was not done for effect, but the natural play of a great but truly frolicsome mind. The dry, quaint and fearfully sober manner, too, in which he would utter these things intensified their effect very much. As frequently in court he would throw off a scintillation, which when repeated would seem not very humorous perhaps, but which by his portentously solemn visage and manner would set the jury, the Bench and the audience into convulsions of laughter.

Perhaps, too, the contrast between the generally elevated character of his diction and thoughts, and the comical or humorous, added to the impressiveness both of his gravity and his humor.

His words in talk were the same rare and hish-soundino; words which he used in his speaking. I do not believe any man in America, if even in the world since Adam, had such a remarkable vocabulary of language as he had. It was the language of learning, of literature/ of romance, of art, of newspapers, of slang even, all mixed up together. But chiefly, I think, he delighted in long words — " longtailed words in osity and ation." I asked him once how he supposed that plain jury before him of farmers and workmen were going to understand that deluge of dictionaries with which for three hours he had overwhelmed them. " Well," said he, laughing, " they know which side I'm on, and they know I spoke a great while, and that's enough for them to know about it." He did not accord at all in Mr. Webster's veneration for the Saxon element of our language, — the words short, simple and strong. He rather agreed with Thomas de Quincey, that the Latin element of the tongue is needed, to bear in upon the mind an impression of general power, of beauty, and of sensibility. Wlien he chose, or the exigency de-

KEMINISCENCES OF RUFUS €HOATE, 25

manded, he could salt down a thought into the smallest and snuggest sentences, — but he did not generally choose.

But though his thought and talk were all bookish*and smelt of the lamp, yet they were as racy with the elements of every-day life as they were flavored with the essence of all good literatures. The truth was, he lived two lives : one alone with his library, the other active in courts ; the one led him in silence through the memorable thoughts and splendid epitaphs of the dead ; the other in noise and confusion through the jealous hearts and squabbling tongues and tedious narratives of the living. By both he educated himself ; and, theoretically, he knew men as well as books. I think he was profoundly acquainted with human nature, under ordinary aspects. He knew the sjirings of men's actions, and, so to speak, the secret history of their words ; and often in examining a witness, he would, as it were, quietly talk with him familiarly and friendly, and finally dismiss him from the stand fully satisfied with himself, all unconscious that the astute lawyer had divined his inmost secret, had drawn out from him enough to show it, and when the hour for the jury came, would honeycomb and riddle his evidence. Yet he never did this unless the necessity of the case demanded it. He treated all witnesses well. He was too great to bully ; and whatever was the witness's weakness or sin, Choate never harmed him unless compelled to do so. But if it became necessary, if the witness lay athwart his verdict, then he was crushed down and crushed up and marched over.

Besides the conversations alluded to, this volume is designed to exhibit reminiscences of Mr. Choate's forensic and public life for the last fifteen years ; to allude to the great occasions upon which he appeared, their circumstances, and, in some cases, his own personal remarks to the author upon them ; to mention sahent and sparkling passages in his arguments and speeches, interlocutory discussions of evidence, and points in the trial of cases — passages noted down at the time, many of which are not elsewhere preserved or if preserved, are so only in speeches reported hastily, and therefore imperfectly, for the daily press. Many of his speeches, however, have been deliberately reported and revised, and all such will be, it is hoped, carefully preserved in the volumes of his Works published by his family. In some instances, to illustrate a thought descriptive of him, single passages taken from his wellaccredited reports will be presented, but his Speeches as speeches, must be looked for elsewhere.

After all, however, that those who knew and loved Mr, Choate can do, he will be forever unknown to those who never saw and heard him. There have been greater men, and speakers more spontaneously charming ; but there never has been, nor will there be, a second Rufus Choate. He can have no parallel, he had no rival, he has no successor. The scepter of his forensic empire sinks with him into his grave. But many men of his own and the younger generation, especially the latter, will long love to dwell upon his genius, to recall his marvelous feats of eloquence, to appreciate the masterly grasp of his vigorous intellect, to remember his fraternal words of encouragement to them, his rich and cordial smile, those antagonisms in which no malice mingled, those victorious verdicts which no insolence of triumph barbed to the defeated, and all those matchless qualities which made his brethren of the bar feel prouder that they belonged to a profession of which he was a member.

At the meeting of his brethren of the Boston bar, before referred to, held when they learned that the dead body of their great leader was on its way to them from Halifex, every speaker, especially the senior gentlemen who had been his frequent antagonists, alluded particularly to his unfailing urbanity and his unruffled temper. In a profession of forensic fighting, he was always himself at i^eace. And his associates particularly remembered and recounted that he was not only unruffled in action, but in the management of his cause he was always magnanimous and indulgent to his adversary. Whatever formal concessions he could make to that adversary which would save liim trouble, — as of procuring extra witnesses, of guarding against surprise, and such things, — this monarch of the bar would accord with a princely liberality. But the miracle about his character was, that with a temperament whose excitableness was daily cultivated on principle to support his eloquence, his self-command was as supreme as his passion was stormy. Though everybody else might be in a passion, and he had made them so, he was to be seen as serene as if he had just risen from the breakftxst-table ; though everybody else was galling, ugly and ill-natured, his words were as composing and honeyed as the utterances of a lady's boudoir.

In court or out of court, a romantic interest always seemed to invest him. With his disheveled locks waving about his head ; his gloomy countenance in which grief and glory contended — the signature of soitows and the consciousness of acknowledged power — the oriental complexion speaking of an Asiatic type of man ; his darkly burning eyes ; his walk swaying along in that singular gait which made his broad square shoulders careen from side to side, like the opposite bulwarks of a ship ; his moody loneliness, for when oif duty he was rarely seen other than alone ; his self-absorption of thought producing a sort of impression as of a mysterious silence around him — lie moved about more like a straggler from another civilization than a Yankee lawyer of New England growth and stature.

In his manhood as in his youth, everybody loved this romantic man. It may be said without extravagance that in his own section of the country he was the ornament and dear delight of his generation. Men even who utterly condemned his politics and disliked many things in his career, still spoke kindly and fondly of " Rufus," as the elders called him — of " Choate" as everybody else loved to call him. Of those that knew him I do not think ho had a single enemy ; and of those that did not know him, he had very few, except of such as hate mankind. When he died the sunlight foded from the forum; and thenceforth the atmosphere of the courts became the cold, prosaic air of daily business details.

His loss takes from the profession its most stimulating example, its most splendid and charming illustration. For a season certainly, if not for ever in our practical age — ^his death eclipses the gayety of the Courts, and the luster of the judgment-seat vanishes away.

CHAPTER II.

OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE, AND PERSONAL REMINISCENCES.

RuFus Choate was born in Ipswich, Mass., on the 1st October, in the year 1799, and died in July, 1859, in the sixtieth year, therefore, of his age. He is known to the world outside of his profession of the law, chiefly by his speeches in the United States Senate, and his Addresses to the people on political and literary subjects from the caucus and lyceum Platforms. But though his speeches in Congress charmed and conquered the universal ear, and his platform harangues led the feelings of great audiences as moons lead tides, yet his true fame must rest on his professional career as a legal .advocate. To be — The great advocate, he gave the thinking and the enthusiasm of his life ; in that career he had garnered up his heart, and on tliat he rested his reputation. Whatever else he did was incidental and comparatively accidental. Had he not been sought out and urged to other fields of public service, it is not probable he would ever have wandered outside of the courts ; and when he did do so, he came back again soon and joyfully, as if he had returned home.