USA > Connecticut > Biographical encyclopaedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island of the nineteenth century > Part 24
USA > Rhode Island > Biographical encyclopaedia of Connecticut and Rhode Island of the nineteenth century > Part 24
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In the extra session of the Legislature held in the fall of 1863, Governor Buck- ingham, in reply to a resolution of that body asking information, sent a message stating that in July preceding he had distributed seven hundred and fifteen muskets and sets of accoutrements to different persons-upon execution of proper bonds for their safe-kceping and return-and among them to Dexter R. Wright, of Meriden, to prevent any riotous opposition to the execution of the draft under congressional authority. The armed resistance that was threatened never occurred. Had it broken out, the two hundred muskets and sets of accoutrements entrusted to the care of Colonel Wright would have doubtless done service in suppressing domestic insurrection. In the same session Colonel Wright drafted and introduced a bill authorizing the Governor to organize regiments of colored infantry in Connecticut. It was passed in the General Assembly, notwithstanding the unmeasured denunciations of its antagonists,
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and in pursuance of its provisions the Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth Regiments of Connecticut Volunteer were raised and sent to the field, where, both in Virginia and Texas, they proved themselves to be the worthy compatriots of the colored warriors of Massachusets and Rhode Island, and also of the heroic soldiery of Caucasian blood.
Near the close of the war, in which, at great pecuniary cost, Colonel Wright had served in the field, and as commissioner, for nearly three years, he removed to New Haven, resumed the practice of law, and has continued therein to the present time. From 1865 to 1869 he served as Assistant United States District Attorney for Con- necticut, and discharged the duties of that position with his wonted acceptability and success. In 1868 he was chosen a member of the Common Council of New Haven, and in 1872-3 was President of the Court of Common Council of the same city. From 1872 to 1875 he was Commissioner of Police of the city of New Haven, and within those limits-1873-4-also held the post of Corporation Counsel. In 1877 he was elected a member of the Board of Aldermen, and in 1878 was re-elected for two years. In the latter year he was also chosen a representative from the town of New Haven to the General Aesembly for 1879, and in the legislative session of 1879 was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, which position he filled with signal ability, and with great satisfaction to the body over which he presided.
Colonel Wright has led a busy, eventful, and studious life. Not alone in legal lore, but also in general literature and national science he is well versed. With medical studies he is so familiar that the honorary degree of M.D. has been con- ferred upon him. All knowledge, in his true estimation, stands related to the theory and practice of law. Upright, honorable, and thoroughly disciplined ; a first- class lawyer, an earnest and eloquent speaker, and a laborious worker, he has built up a large and lucrative practice, and adorns while he enjoys the position so hardly and honorably won.
Colonel Wright was married on the 3d of February, 1848, to Maria H., daughter of Colonel Epaphras L. Phelps, of East Windsor, Conn., and has had issue six children, of whom four survive.
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ENCKES, THOMAS ALLEN, of Providence, Rhode Island. Born Novem- ber 2d, 1818, in the town of Cumberland, on the estate where he died. He was descended from an old Rhode Island family, which was identified with the early settlement of the State, and which has always maintained a position of high respectability. The Providence Journal of January 5th, 1875, states that he lived with Samuel F. Man until he went to college, and that there hc learned many a useful, practical lesson which he never forgot. Among them was the art of book-keeping. Few experts were more thoroughly versed in it. He detected and exposed many a well-laid scheme of fraud in a set of books.
From the house of Mr. Man he went to Brown University, and graduated from it with the class of 1838, which was one of more than ordinary distinction- including Judge Chas. S. Bradley, Judge Marcus Morton, President E. G. Robinson, and many others. Judge Bradley first saw him "walking up the paths of the college green to Hope College, a chubby, rather overgrown boy, in a roundabout and home-made clothing, with no grace of movement, but rather an awkward swing, which," said he, "I can now see indicated something in his character, for 'the child is the father of the man' -- that is, nature gives us certain qualities which may be said to make their way, aided or thwarted by education, into the man of the futurc." "There was a consciousness of power in his very carriage -- a movc- ment which he had a right by nature to assume." His teacher had been a clergyman without a parish, a man who had a great faculty for mathematics, and who took great pride in the development of his only pupil. At college young Jenckes was characterized by marked individuality and by tireless labor. " His journeyings and studies were prolonged without regard to the periodic rest which nature demands. He was indifferent to choice in his physical sustenance, as he was when he spurned our Graham table and its abstinences," This indiffer- ence to the established laws of health was doubtless one cause of his comparatively early removal. Both at school and at college he was distinguished for love of study, great capacity for labor, wonderful memory, and unusual acquirements in litera- ture, and for wit, love of poetry, mathematics, and physical science. His memory, particularly, was marvellous,
' Wax to receive, and marble to retain.'"
His faculty of applying its treasures to the relief of present emergencies was no less remarkable. "Whatever he knew that could bear upon the question before him, whether of fact, of illustration, or argument, rose spontaneously, at the moment when it was most useful to him. What others studied and recalled and hunted authoritics for, he simply remembered, and apprehended, and applied." His power of analysis
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was amazing. Years and practice only increased its vigor. "He could go through a case, and give a knowledge of the principles upon which it had been decided, with more rapidity than I [Hon. James H. Parsons] ever met with. General Cushing, our Minister to Spain, once said to me: 'Mr. Jenekes possesses two quali- fications, which, if he possessed only ordinary ability, would make him a cultivated and accomplished lawyer. But, with his great. ability, they make him a great one.' Said I, 'What are these qualities?' Said he, 'Intense power of concentration combined with an amazing memory.'" Thorough and profound as his knowledge of the law was, his knowledge of general topies was as profound and accurate. Like Sergeant Talfourd, the accomplished lawyer and cultivated judge, who is best known by his poems and literary essays, Mr. Jenekes was passionately fond of polite litera- turc.
When he left college he began his preparations for legal pursuits at once. Entering Mr. Atwell's office in Chepachet, he undertook to make himself master of his profession, taking not, as Bacon said, " all knowledge for his province, but all the love of the profession he meant to make his own." Even his strong powers quailed before the mighty task of thoroughly studying the law as a seience, and as a whole, before he would undertake to apply it to practice. Charles S. Bradley wrote to him : "Why not come down here and take a tutorship in mathematics. It would be but play to you, and perhaps rather a healthier atmosphere than the hardness of your present studies." He accepted the position for a time.
Admitted to the bar in 1840, he went into the office of Edward H. Hazard, of Providence, and expressed some impatience to go to work. They at once formed a copartnership, which commenced on the 25th of September, and continued eleven years. The purposes of the partners were one, and they had no seerets from each other. Between the two no word of unkindness ever passed throughout the entire period of their association.
Mr. Jenekes rapidly rose to cmincnee in his profession. "He was first brought prominently into notice by an argument before Judge Story, in a ease under the bankrupt law of 1841, in which he took a position against the opinion of the general legal authorities, and carried the court in what seemed a strained construction of the law. The act was approved August 19th, 1841, but did not go into effect till February ist, 1842. It forbade preferences to ereditors made in contemplation of bankruptcy. On the 18th of December, 1841, George W. Taylor made an assigr .- ment to Amasa Manton, preferring him to his other creditors. The question was whether this preference was forbidden by the act which was passed previous to the date of the assignment, but did not go into effect till afterward. Mr. Whipple, Mr. Atwell, and other leading lawyers gave their opinion sustaining the assignment.
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Mr. Jenckes, then a very young man, gave his opinion against all this weight of authority, and the court (Judge Story) so held." " The presentation of the case was wholly his own, and the reputation which it gave to him was abundantly justified by his subsequent triumphs in his profession."
The general voice of his professional contemporaries placed him at the head of the Rhode Island bar during the greater part of his practice. No other man among them, it is probable, ever rose so rapidly, or received such large rewards for his services. " IIe had given great attention to the law of patents, for the practice in which he was further qualified by mechanical tastes and acquirements; and he was employed in many of the heaviest patent cases that have been litigated for the last thirty years" [1875]. Ilis " information upon mechanical and scientific matters was illustrated in a report which he made on the ventilation of the halls of Congress. The subject was referred to a joint select committee, of which he was chairman, on the part of the House, and in the conduct of which he astonished his colleagues- and the experts by his acquaintance with the principles, the methods, the defects, and the difficulties of the whole matter." The pride hc felt in this achievement was far greater than that experienced in those of much greater relative importance. " When the Government decided to proceed against the partics to the Credit Mobilier in the Pacific Railroad, Mr. Jenckes was selected as one of the counsel on the part of the Government ; but his failing health prohibited him from that active and leading part in the case which had been expected from his talents and his reputation. His name was familiar in all the courts, and much of his practice was in the city of New York, where he had an office. His practice was also large in the Supreme Court at Washington." His connection with suits growing out of the Sickles and Corliss patents relating to the steam-engine, and the famous Day and Goodyear rubber suits, frequently took him into the circuit courts of the different States, and into the Supreme Court of the United States. He was engaged in nearly every important litigation pending in the State. Only a Herculean constitution could have enabled him to perform such numerous and gigantic tasks. In the terrible panic of 1857 " his labors were literally restless, and during many nights he did not take off his clothes."
Mr. Jenckes was a natural politician in the true sense of the word. In the insurrection of 1842 he adhered to the constituted authorities, whom he served in a civil and in a military capacity, and whose cause he supported with his pen. " He was one of the secretaries of the Landholders' Convention of 1841, and of the convention which framed the present Constitution of the State in 1842. When the Governor's Council was established, he was appointed its secretary." At that time he was a contributor to the columns of the Providence Journal, and by the keenness of his wit and the spirit of his travesties and satires, gave great interest
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and liveliness to that excellent periodical. " He served in both houses of the General Assembly, with the ability and distinction he displayed in whatever employment. There he made a remarkable speech in the celebrated case of Hazard and Ives, involving the right of the General Assembly to revise the judgments of the court so far as to direct a new trial. This speech, with that of Nathan F. Dixon, after- ward his colleague in Congress, carried the General Assembly against its own previous opinion, against what was undoubtedly the popular sentiment and the prejudice of tradition, and against some of the most powerful appeals ever made to the people of the State. This was one of the greatest forensic triumphs in the annals of Rhode Island." From 1840 to 1844 he held office as one of the clerks of the House of Representatives, and during that period perfected himself in all the forms as well as substance of legislation. Governor Dorr's office joined that of Jenckes & Hazard till he left in 1842. When Governor King appointed his Coun- cil, they held daily sessions in the office of the firm for seven months. Mr. Jenekes was appointed their secretary. "Every state paper was drawn by him, and bears his impress." He "possessed by far the most perfect collection of documents and letters for a history of the Dorr Rebellion of any man in the State." It was his purpose to supervise the editing of such a work, and made provision for its execution by a competent hand before his death. He was secretary of both the conventions that assembled to frame a constitution, and in the "several capacities of clerk of the House, secretary to the Governor and Council, and secretary of the conventions to frame the Constitution, and made the personal acquaintance of every leading man in the State, and performed "an astonishing amount of labor." As a constitutional lawyer he had few equals, and perhaps no superiors. His great speech in the case of Hazard and Ives "will long be remembered by all who listened to it, not only for the great learning which it displayed, but also for the irresistible logic with which it sustained the position for which he contended, that under our Constitution the judicial power was vested solely and exclusively in the courts. It was a great speech, and a masterly vindication of the great principles of liberty and law upon which a free government rests." In 1855 he was appointed one of the Commission- ers to revise the laws of the State. The Revised Statutes of 1857 were the result of their labors.
In 1862 Mr. Jenckes was elected a member of the National House of Repre- sentatives, and served therein for four successive terms. " He at once took a commanding position in the House. He was placed at the head of the Committee on Patents, and on the Committee on the Judiciary. When the impeachment of Johnson was voted by the House, he came within a few votes of being selected as one of the managers. Some of his most distinguished services in Congress were
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upon the civil service reform, the general bankrupt law, and the patent and copyright law. But he took a prominent part in all the deliberations of the House, and on legal questions he was an acknowledged authority with the best lawyers of the body. He was a firm and vigorous supporter of the war for the maintenance of the Union, in the beginning, and took an advanced view of the measures that were necessary for its successful prosecution. Before the rebellion beeame flagrant, he was deeply impressed with the gravity of the erisis and with the certainty of the impending struggle. "He did not," continues his biographer in the Providence Journal, " under- estimate the strength of the enemy, but he never doubted the success of our arms, and looked forward to a final triumph with a confidenee based on the justness of the enuse, and the superior resources of the national party. He was in communica- tion with Mr. Stanton, when that strong and patriotie man was penetrating the secrets of the rebel leaders, and especially of those marvels of treachery, who, while holding intimate and responsible relations with the Government, were in complicity with the conspirators for its overthrow ; who were disposing of the seanty military resources of the country in such manner that they might most easily fall into the hands that would turn them against us; and were ordering everything for the success of the rebellion, of which they were among the chief promoters. Entertaining these views, and possessing this information, Mr. Jenckes urged upon the State and Federal Governments the most active and vigorous measures, and employed his personal influence with his fellow-citizens to the same end. In his apprehensions and in his policy he agreed mainly with Governor Andrew, as did his opinions in a large degree. Both these eminent men were thought by too many to have overestimated the magnitude of the erisis, but both were soon and abundantly justified by the attitude of the Southern States." While in Congress he was among the first, if not the very first, to make the appointments for eadets at West Point depend upon eom- petitive examinations, and not upon his will or favor.
Perhaps none of our American statesmen have more elearly seen the danger to the system of self-government by the people, arising from the corruption of those appointed to public service, and from the selfish uses of power by publie men, than Mr. Jenckes. To meet this danger he proposed measures to test by examination the intellectual and educational qualifications for office. Moral fitness is not so easily demonstrable; "but the man who is mentally qualified has taken a long step toward the complete qualifieation for office which the publie welfare requires." " Grave, taeiturn, almost saturnine, he could light up with a play of wit and fancy which made him the life of the social eirele. At such times his conversation was delightful and instructive. He drew from his memory, or rather there came welling up from his memory, anecdote, illustration, history, poetry, romance, and
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philosophy. Whatever subject was started, he had read something upon it that was worth reading, and what he had read he did not forget. To verify a quotation, or to fix a date, he was as good as a dictionary. He kept up to the last his familiarity with the Greek and Latin classics, and he devoured contemporaneous literature with an appetite that was ravenous." "He could devour the contents of a book while other men were considering the question of reading it. He was a judicious reader, knowing intuitively the portions to pass over unread-for all books are not to be all read. An examination of his library would disclose books in every department of science, of history, of literature; books not kept for ornament, but showing hard marks of use." Phoenixiana, or The Widow Bedott Papers he enjoyed with keen relish and refreshment. With Roman law he was perfectly familiar, spoke enthusiastically of the marvellous recovery of the manuscript of Gaius, and of the remarkable similarity of its language to that of the Institutes of Justinian, of which Tribonian had been supposed to be the author. But Mr. Jenckes was no mere pedant, or collector of other men's sayings. Judge Bradley says that his "great mental characteristic was the creative power, the imagination, the power that bodies forth in the mind's eye shapes and forms of its own creation, as if they were real." In this, as in other respects, he resembled Lord Bacon, of whom it is said, " that he had the mightiest imagination that ever bowed its neck to the yoke of the human reason."
He was also remarkable for his love of nature: knew the notes and habits of the birds, had an intimate acquaintance with every lowly plant, and a special friend- ship with each nobler tree, and knew where to look for the fringed gentian, or other shy flower. In conversation with young people who were good listeners, he was a charming companion, and if he commenced talking upon any subject- Napoleon Bonaparte and his campaigns, for instance-would hold them spell-bound, enchanted by his anecdotes and personal reminiscences. With his pen he was quite as ready as with his voice, wrote with great facility, and with an accuracy that was as remarkable as its rapidity. Unlike most good writers, his manuscript was remarkably free from erasures and emendations, and he did not disdain a legible penmanship. In his own judgment he had the utmost confidence, and was wholly immovable by ignorant popular clamor. The public opinion of his State was decidedly opposed to the Bankrupt law, of which he was the author, and poured in remonstrances against its enactment. But he steadfastly carried it through, being satisfied that the bill was based on sound principles, that it was a necessary part of a commercial system, and that it would vindicate itself in practice. " Long afterward he had the satisfaction of receiving as earnest remonstrances from the same quarter against the propositions to repeal the law."
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His essentially poetic temperament inclined him to the credulous reception of anything new and strange, and suggestive "of the poetic and unaccustomed powers of nature." Clairvoyance was something to which, on one occasion at least, he gave entire credence. His self-control was singular. He never lost command of his temper, nor allowed irritable words to escape his lips. Though often traduced himself, he never stooped to the detraction of others. His courage was of the heroic stamp, which never counts adverse odds, or shrinks from meeting an cnemy upon his own ground. If, in any particular, he failed to exhibit a perfectly sym- metrical character, it was in that of judgment; not that it was deficient in quality, but that it was sometimes overmastered by his other powers, which led him, the victim of his own ingenuity, "into sophistries which he would have detected at once in another, and which only his own imagination, not another's, could have imposed upon him."
As a lawyer, Mr. Jenckes, according to the testimony of his shrewdest and most experienced clients, was capable of more prolonged, continuous, and effective mental labor than any other man they knew. His brain was not only strong but tough, and withstood the strain of the most troublesome and complex litigation. He seemed to grasp the deepest questions as though it were given to him by genius. He seemed to divide up, separate, and split apart the nicest questions, as though he were born a metaphysician and a lawyer. "Only mention the principle, give him the case that you wished him to resolve, and in an incredibly short time he would carry you over the whole field, and tell you where that question had been discussed in Queen's Beneh in England, in New York, in Massachusetts, or before the Supreme Court of the United States, with a facility, with a clearness, with a power so great" that all who heard were amazed at his attainments. No legal antagonist ever came into conflict with him without being impressed by his power and strategie skill. "It was no security against apprehension that one had the stronger side of the cause. His fertile mind was constantly on the alert to discover the most vulnerable point of attack." His opponents were only safe when they had "the final judgment of the court of last resort. All his victories were fairly won by the legitimate weapons of the law. He was the most tenacious and persistent of men in holding to, and pursuing, every legal advantage, but he never stooped to deception or artifice to carry his point." Chief Justice Durfee said: " His knowledge of the law, though it may not have been systematically amassed, was of immense range and singular accuracy. I do not think there was any legal problem too intricate for his analysis, any refinement too subtle for his apprehension, any doctrine too repulsive for his study, or any inquiry too recondite for his indefatigable research. He was equally at home in the black-letter folios and in the most recent reports. When I
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came upon the bench there was a cause awaiting decision in which the late Judge Curtis was counsel against him. It involved a valuable water privilege, and called for a discussion not only of voluminous masses of contradictory testimony, but also of complicated theories and hypotheses in hydraulics and mechanical engineering. I did not hear the viva voce discussion, but judging from the written and printed record which was laid before me, I think it not too much to say, that in the minute mastery of facts and figures, in the easy handling of scientific and mathematical proofs, and in the logical disposition and development of the argument as well, he was a match, if not more than a match, for his more famous antagonist." The resolutions of the Providence County Bar, adopted unanimously by that body after his decease, exhibit the deliberate estimation in which he was held by his professional brethren. They say :
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