USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > The history of the town of Litchfield, Connecticut, 1720-1920 > Part 13
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Among the first was Aaron Burr, his own brother-in-law, whose sister Sally Burr he had married before coming to Litchfield. She was the daughter of President Burr of Princeton, where Tapping Reeve had first met her. Aaron Burr studied in the Reeve office till the War broke out, and he was a frequent visitor in Litchfield after- wards. Here he met Mrs. Theodosia Prevost, whom he afterwards married.
The most distinguished of these early students was Uriah Tracy, who represented Connecticut in the United States Senate from 1800 until his death in 1807. He was born in Norwich, 1754, and gradu- ated at Yale in 1778. He studied with Tapping Reeve in 1780 and was admitted to the bar the next year. He was a Major-General in the War, and Representative in Congress from 1793 until he became Senator. When in Litchfield he lived on North Street, in the house built 1760 by Col. Elisha Sheldon, from whom he bought it. At his death it passed to his son-in-law, Judge Gould, from whose estate, in turn, it was bought by Professor James M. Hoppin; it is now owned by John P. Elton.
Uriah Tracy, such is fame, is now remembered chiefly for a couple of repartees. "Few have had more wit, or used it more pleasantly", said James Morris of him; but others describe the sting of his witticisms as dreaded by his adversaries.
Much discussion has been aroused concerning one of his sayings and to whom it referred. I quote it from Mansfield, (p. 124) : "He was standing on the steps of the Capitol, which you know looks
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down Pennsylvania avenue, when a drove of mules was coming up. Randolph, who was standing by him, said: 'There, Tracy, are some of your constituents'. 'Yes, sir', said Tracy, 'they are going to Virginia, to keep school'." Mellowed by a hundred and twenty years, such a story becomes a classic; and it is entirely proper to debate whether the retort was at the expense of Randolph, or of Rhett of South Carolina, or of the Representative from North Caro- lina, or from Georgia. Each has its advocates. Of the seventeen times the story has been noticed in the preparation of this book, we find the advantage inclines slightly to Virginia, with North Caro- lina a close second.
As the years passed and the number of his students increased, the change in Tapping Reeve's method of instruction became more marked; but it would be difficult to say exactly at what moment the Law School as such began. The date usually accepted is 1784; though, in his Funeral Sermon, p. 10., Lyman Beecher says that he commenced regular lectures in 1782. The date is not important; the important thing is the revolution in the method of instruction. Governor Baldwin styles these lectures as constituting not only the first Law School in America; but he adds, p. 455, that no other then existed "In any English speaking country, for the Inns of Court had long ceased to be seats of serious instruction and the 'schools" of Oxford and Cambridge were little but a form".
The Law School made an immediate appeal. The Revolution left many young men in search of work, as every large war has done. Trade was at a low ebb, and many turned to the law which was already overstocked. The Law School made it easier and cheaper to get an excellent legal education than could be obtained elsewhere, and the students came not only from all parts of Con- necticut, but in due course from every state in the Union. The reputation of the students who went out from the School and the personality of Tapping Reeve added to the magnetic power of the institution. Connecticut itself felt the effect of the School the most; the proportion of lawyers grew out of keeping with their numbers in other states, and several of our best men began to go into other parts of the country. Governor Baldwin says that in 1798 there were 120 practising lawyers in the State, and adds the amusing opinion of Jedediah Morse, (American Universal Geogra- phy, 1796, Vol. I., pp. 453, 463), that, although these all found employment and support, "it was really because the people of the state were of a peculiarly litigious spirit, and 'remarkably fond of having all their disputes, even those of the most trivial kind, settled according to law'."
In this year 1798, the Law School entered on its second and more important phase. Heretofore Tapping Reeve had conducted the school entirely alone. He held it in the little building adjoin- ing his South Street house, now owned by Lewis B. Woodruff. This little building is now the property of the Litchfield Historical Society, which acquired it in 1911, through the public spirit of Dwight C.
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Kilbourn and Mrs. John A. Vanderpoel, after it had been removed from its first site to West Street and was again in danger of being taken down. In the years prior to 1798, Reeve had taught upwards of 200 men, but his ways were so informal that he kept no catalog of their names. In that year he was appointed a Judge of the Superior Court, becoming the Chief Justice of the State in 1814. It was now necessary for Judge Reeve to have an assistant, and he chose James Gould, who had graduated in his School the same year.
James Gould was born in Branford, December 5, 1770. He was graduated at Yale in 1791, and delivered the Latin Salutatory Ora- tion, the highest scholastic honor for the graduating class. From 1798 to 1816 he gave his entire energies to the Law School, only prac- tising as a lawyer in the holiday intervals. In May 1816, he was appointed Judge of the Superior Court and Supreme Court of Errors. In 1820, after he withdrew from the bench, he received the degree of doctor of laws from Yale.
Hollister gives us the following account of him, (History of Connecticut, Vol. II., pp. 602-3) : "Judge Gould was one of the most finished and competent writers who have ever treated upon any branch of the English jurisprudence. His great work upon Pleading is a model of its kind. ... He had at first contemplated writing a much more extended treatise, but while he was preparing the materials for it, the appearance of Chitty's work on the same title induced him to change his plan. As it was presented to the public, Gould's Pleading is, therefore, only an epitome of the original design, but for clearness, logical precision, and terseness of style, it does not suffer in comparison with the Commentaries upon the laws of England.
"As a lawyer, Judge Gould was one of the most profoundly philosophical of that age. He carried into the forum the same classical finish which appears upon every page of his writing. It would have been as impossible for him to speak an ungrammatical sentence, use an inelegant expression, or make an awkward gesture, in addressing an argument to the jury, as it would have been for him to attempt to expound the law when he was himself ignorant of it, to speak disrespectfully to the judge upon the bench, or to exhibit any want of courtesy to the humblest member of the profession who might happen to appear as his opponent. His arguments also, like his writings, were expressed in the most brief forms in which a speaker can convey his thoughts to his hearers. He seldom spoke longer than half an hour, and the most complex and important cases never exceeded an hour".
The greatest possible difference of character existed between the two Judges. To quote Baldwin again, p. 463: "It was feeling that predominated and ruled the character in Reeve, and intellect in Gould. Their students respected both, but they loved only one. The commonplace book of a girl who was at Miss Pierce's School in 1811 shows entries by each. Judge Reeve describes her affectionately
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as 'my Lucy', quotes a verse from a hymn, and urges upon her atten- tion the subject of personal religion. Judge Gould gives a few lines from Pope's Iliad". And again, p. 468-469: "Judge Reeve's method of instruction was based on written notes, from which he lectured with frequent off-hand explanations and illustrations of a colloquial nature. His thoughts often outran his utterance, and he would leave a sentence unfinished to begin another, as if distracted by what one of his students described as a 'huddle of ideas'. Judge Gould clung closely to his manuscript, from which he read so slowly that the students, each seated at a separate desk, could write down everything that was uttered. This each was expected to do then and there. The notes thus taken, and also those made at Judge Reeve's lectures, the students afterwards copied with care into large folio volumes. They filled in all five of these, the pages of which measured about nine and a half by seven and a half inches. The notes of those which Judge Reeve had been accustomed to give before the accession of Mr. Gould could be contained in one or more volumes of much smaller size".
The achievement of the School is perhaps best seen by compar- ing the course of study offered after 1798 with the reading usual for students in private offices prior to 1784. In those days they "studied some forms and little substance, and had within their reach but few volumes beyond Coke's and Wood's Institutes, Blackstone's Com- mentaries, Bacon's Abridgment, and Jacob's Law Dictionary; and, when admitted to the bar, were better instructed in pleas in abate- ment, than in the weightier matters of the Law". (Church's Cen- tennial Address, p. 50).
Theodore D. Woolsey, in his Historical Discourse at the Semi- Centennial of the Yale Law School, p. 8, gives the following list of the subjects studied at the Litchfield Law School, together with the number of pages of note-books occupied by each :
Lectures by Reeve : Master and Servant, 44 pages; Baron and Feme, 92; Parent and Child, 48; Guardian and Ward, 10; Executors and Adminis- trators, 69; Sheriffs and Gaolers, 41; Evidence, 72; Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes, 120; Insurance, 122; Charter Parties, 5; Joint Owners of Vessels, 2; Partnership, 7; Factors, 6; Stoppage in Transitu, 2; Sailors' Con- tracts, 2; Powers of Chancery, 51; Criminal Law, 64; Estates upon Condi- tion, 83; Modes of Acquiring Estates, 23; Devises, 57.
Lectures by Gould : Municipal Law, 50; Contracts, 113; Fraudulent Con- veyances, 33; Bailments, 55; Inns and Innkeepers, 9; Covenant-Broken, 42; Action of Debt, 9; Action of Detinue, 2; Action of Account, 9; Notice and Request, 3; Assumpsit, 31; Defences to Actions, 72; Private Wrongs, 74; System of Pleading, 232; New Trials, 27; Bills of Exceptions, 4; Writs of Error, 18; Practice in Connecticut, 68; Real Property, 115; Title by Deed, 40; Actions for Injuries to Things Real, 46.
Charles G. Loring, in 1851, at a meeting of the Story Association of the Harvard Law School, gave a picture of the Litchfield School which is well worth quotation:
JUDGE JAMES GOULD
THE GOULD LAW SCHOOL
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"It will, probably, be news to ... many ... here, that thirty eight years ago, which to many here seems a remote antiquity, there existed an extensive Law School in the State of Connecticut, at which more than sixty students from all parts of the country were assembled. ... I joined it in 1813, when it was at its zenith, and the only prominent establishment of the kind in the land. The recol- lection is as fresh as the events of yesterday, of our passing along the broad shaded streets of one of the most beautiful of the villages of New England, with our ink-stands in our hands, and our port- folios under our arms, to the lecture room of Judge Gould, the last of the Romans, of Common Law lawyers; the impersonation of its genius and spirit. It was, indeed, in his eyes, the perfection of human reason, by which he measured every principle and rule of action, and almost every sentiment. Why, Sir, his highest visions of poetry seemed to be in the refinement of special pleading; and to him, a non sequitur in logic was an offense deserving, at the least, fine and imprisonment,-and a repetition of it, transportation for life. He was an admirable English scholar, every word was pure English, undefiled, and every sentence fell from his lips perfectly finished, as clear, transparent and penetrating as light, and every rule and principle as exactly defined and limited as the outline of a building against the sky. From him we obtained clear, well defined, and accurate knowledge of the Common Law, and learned that allegiance to it was the chief duty of man, and the power of enforcing it upon others his highest attainment. From his lecture room we passed to that of the venerable Judge Reeve, shaded by an aged elm, fit emblem of himself. He was, indeed, a most venerable man, in character and appearance, his thick, grey hair parted and falling in profusion upon his shoulders, his voice only a loud whisper, but distinctly heard by his earnestly attentive pupils. He, too, was full of legal learning, but invested the law with all the genial enthu- siasm and generous feelings and noble sentiments of a large heart ... and discanted to us with glowing eloquence upon the sacredness and majesty of law. He was distinguished by that appreciation of the gentler sex which never fails to mark the true man and his teach- ings of the law in reference to their rights and to the domestic relations, had great influence in elevating and refining the senti- ments of the young men who were privileged to hear him. As illustrative of his feelings and manner upon this subject, allow me to give a specimen. He was discussing the legal relations of mar- ried women; he never called them however by so inexpressible a name, but always spoke of them as, 'the better half of mankind', or in some equally just manner. When he came to the axiom that 'a married woman has no will of her own', this, he said, was a maxim of great theoretical importance for the preservation of the sex against the undue influence or coercion of the husband; but, although it was an inflexible maxim, in theory, experience taught us that practically it was found that they sometimes had wills of their own, most happily for us. We left his lecture room the very
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knight-errants of the law, burning to be the defenders of the right and the avengers of the wrong; and he is no true son of the Litch- field School who has ever forgotten that lesson".
Judge Reeve's efforts to improve the rights of married women bore fruit, but not till many years later, in the work happily of another Litchfield man, Chief Justice Charles B. Andrews, through whose efforts was enacted in 1877 the statute that in our state women are not responsible to their husbands in the transfer of property, either real or personal.
The fruits of the Litchfield Law School are found of course in the records of its students. And we have only to turn to the list of names in the Appendix, to find what these fruits have been. The list is very incomplete. In the first place it includes none of the students of the first fourteen classes; then, although all later names were preserved, the achievements of the various graduates were known only in a fortuitous way. There was no organization of alumni to keep track of what the men were doing. A catalog was printed in 1828, and a supplement in 1831. In 1849, the catalog was reprinted, with the addition of the ranks and positions attained by certain graduates, compiled by George C. Woodruff. Later manu- script notes were made by Lewis B. Woodruff, and still later find- ings are given in Kilbourn's Bench and Bar. Collating all these sources, we find that there were 1,015 students in all, of whom 805 were at the School after 1798, whose names appear in the catalogs. The men of these later classes achieved in the aggregate the positions of distinction which follow: Vice-Presidents, 1; Members of the Cabinet, 5; U. S. Senators, 17; Members of Congress, 53; Diplomats, 5; Asso- ciate Justices U. S. Supreme Court, 3; Judges U. S. District or Cir- cuit Courts, 4; Chief Justices of States, 7; Associate Judges of the Superior Courts of States, 27; Other State Judges, 15; Governors of States, 10; Lieutenant-Governors of States, 7; State Secretaries of State, 2; State's Attorneys, 3; State Chancellors, 3; Vice-Chancel- lors, 1; Speakers of the House of Representatives of States, 4; Col- lege Presidents, 3. Their names and a few others will be given in the Appendix.
Many other graduates doubtless achieved definite work, which cannot be recorded by a title. Prominent among these we may men- tion the picturesque figure of Junius Smith, who was born in Plymouth in 1780 and graduated at the Litchfield Law School in 1803. "In 1832, he interested himself in the cause of trans-Atlantic steam navigation, convinced that the ocean could be crossed by steam. He was met with incredulity. He undertook to charter a vessel for an experiment but had no success. He tried to organize a company but men of science declared that no steamer could survive the terrible storms that sweep the Atlantic. Not a single share of stock was taken. Notwithstanding this, he persevered. His indomitable will conquered, and in 1838, the Sirius, a steamer of 700 tons, sailed from Cork on the 4th day of April, and reached New York on the 23rd.
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the first vessel that steamed her way across the Atlantic". (Atwater: History of Plymouth, 1895, p. 179).
Horace Mann was born in 1796, in Franklin, Mass. He was in the class of 1822 at the Law School. His career as an educator dates from 1837, from which time to his death, he worked for the cause of education with constant intensity, holding conventions, lecturing, introducing many reforms, planning and inaugurating the Massachusetts Normal School System. He virtually revolu- tionized the common school system of the country. He died in 1859.
The two most distinguished of all the graduates were both Southerners, John C. Calhoun and John M. Clayton, both of whom became Secretary of State, and the former, Vice-President of the United States. It is always a source of speculation how far the later successes of such men can be traced to the stimulating influ- ence of Litchfield Hill in their most impressionable years. We can at least join with Morris W. Seymour, (Address at the Presentation of the Litchfield Law School, 1911, p. 25), in the fervent prayer that the seeds of secession were not sowed in young Calhoun by the views held by many men in Connecticut at the time, 1804-5, when he was in Litchfield. That this doctrine was undoubtedly widely discussed here appears from Governor Baldwin's essay, p. 485: "In 1829, Judge Gould took an active part in a controversy that followed the publi- cation in 1827 of Jefferson's letter to Governor Giles, stating that John Quincy Adams had told him that designs of disunion were meditated in New England early in the century. Uriah Tracy had been mentioned as one of those who were engaged in them. Judge Gould wrote to those of the leaders among Connecticut Federalists of the Jeffersonian era who still survived, for their recollections as to this matter, and published them with caustic comments on the assertions of President Adams in a lengthy communication to a New York newspaper. (Henry Adams, New England Federalism, pp. 93-106). It was a vigorous and loyal effort to vindicate the memory of his father-in-law; but other letters from other sources of earlier date, that have since come to light, seem to show that Adams was substantially in the right. While there was no definite plan of secession, the right to secede was certainly asserted, and the policy of a resort to it advocated in 1804 by not a few Federalist leaders, and among others by Judge Reeve, in confidential corres- pondence with Tracy". (H. C. Lodge, Life and Letters of George Cabot, p. 442).
Among the Litchfield men, who received their training at the Law School, were Aaron Burr Reeve, 1802, the promising young son of Tapping Reeve, who died prematurely in 1809; Seth P. Beers, 1803; Oliver S. Wolcott, 1818, the son of Oliver Wolcott Jr .; Origen S. Seymour, 1824; George C. Woodruff, 1825; Lewis B. Woodruff, 1830.
Daniel Sheldon, the son of Dr. Sheldon, was in the first Gould class, 1798. He was afterwards Secretary to Albert Gallatin in Paris, when the latter was Minister there. An interesting account
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of his experiences is given in Mrs. Edgar B. VanWinkle's paper, A Litchfield Diplomat, read before the Litchfield Historical Society in 1904.
The Law School was never incorporated. "Judge Reeve's share in the work of the Law School was not large after he left the bench, and he withdrew from it altogether in 1820, although Judge Gould continued to pay him a third of the net receipts from tuition, annu- ally. ... His place was supplied after a few years by bringing in Jabez W. Huntington, a member of the Litchfield Bar and one of the alumni of the school, who continued his connection with it as long as it was maintained, then becoming an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, and subsequently a Senator of the United States.
"At this period the regular course of study at the school was completed in fourteen months, including two vacations of four weeks each, one in the spring and one in the autumn. $100 was charged for the first year of tuition and $60 for a second, which, of course, if pursued to the end, consisted largely of the repetition of lectures previously heard. Few students ever remained more than eighteen months. After the retirement of Judge Reeve the courses were re-arranged under forty-eight titles. Judge Gould occupied from an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half in lecturing daily. Reported cases were still comparatively few, and he aimed to notice all that were of importance decided in the English Courts. The students were expected to examine some of these for themselves dur- ing the remainder of the day, and to accompany each lecture course by parallel readings in standard text-books. One or two moot courts were held weekly, Judge Gould presiding. The briefs of counsel were carefully prepared together with the opinion of the court. There was an attorney-general elected by the students. ... It was, indeed, often no easy matter for an instructor in such a school to keep so far ahead of his pupils that they would always be forced to acknowledge his superior authority. Many of them were practicing lawyers who came there for a year to round out their professional education. ...
"From 1826 the Law School began to decline quite rapidly. The publication of Swift's Digest and Kent's Commentaries made its whole theory of instruction antiquated. The Harvard Law School had been founded in 1817, and that of Yale in 1824. No unendowed private institution can long maintain a competition with one sup- ported by permanent funds and forming part of an established uni- versity. But six students were in the entering class of 1833. Judge Gould's health had been slowly breaking down for years, and the time had evidently come to close the school. He had been able to maintain it so long only by the aid of a son who sometimes read his lectures to the class, and of a young lawyer of Litchfield, whose assistance in addition to that of Mr. Huntington, was occasionally invoked, Origen Storrs Seymour, afterwards Chief Justice of Con- necticut". (Baldwin, pp. 481-487).
TAPPING REEVE HOUSE, 1774. (Lewis B. Woodruff ) X marks Site of the Law School
L
×
SHELDON TAVERN, LATER JAMES GOULD HOUSE, 1760. (John P. Elton)
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
In its later years, the School was conducted in a second little building, adjoining the Gould house on North Street, just as the Reeve Law School adjoined the house on South Street. During the intermediate period, when the school was at its height, both build- ings were in use. The Gould Law School was later carried out a mile or more on the Bantam Road, where it was converted into a tenement at the sharp turn in the roadway.
There is something very distinctive about these two small build- ings, which have contributed so unpretentiously and so successfully to the legal history of our country. They fitted into the simple direct life of Litchfield, and served to convey to the young men who studied in them something of this simple, direct manner. And beyond all, was the kindly, paternal image of Judge Reeve himself, the real soul of the School, though in many respects Judge Gould was the more important teacher. So generous, so chivalrous, his memory will be treasured when some greater names are forgotten. An anec- dote told by Catherine Beecher sums up in a sentence his respect for and devotion to all womankind, namely, "that he never saw a little girl but he wished to kiss her, for if she was not good she would be; and he never saw a little boy but he wished to whip him, for if he was not bad he would be". (Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 224).
CHAPTER X.
MISS PIERCE'S SCHOOL.
"It was about the middle of June, 1823", we read in the Personal Memories of E. D. Mansfield, p. 122, "that my father and I drove up to Grove Catlin's tavern, on the Green, of Litchfield, Connecticut. It was one of the most beautiful days of the year, and just before sunset. The scene was most striking. Litchfield is on a hill, about one thousand feet above the sea, and having fine scenery on every side. On the west rises Mount Tom, a dark, frowning peak; in the south-west, Bantam Lake, on whose shores I have often walked and ridden. In the north and east other ridges rolled away in the distance, and so, from Litchfield Hill, there is a varied and delightful prospect. One of the first objects which struck my eyes was interesting and picturesque. This was a long procession of school girls, coming down North Street, walking under the lofty elms, and moving to the music of a flute and flageolet. The girls were gaily dressed and evidently enjoying their evening parade, in this most balmy season of the year. It was the school of Miss Sally Pierce, whom I have mentioned before, as one of the earliest and best of the pioneers in American female education. That scene has never faded from my memory. The beauty of nature, the love- liness of the season, the sudden appearance of this school of girls, all united to strike and charm the mind of a young man, who, how- ever varied his experience, had never beheld a scene like that".
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