Memoirs of Georgia; containing historical accounts of the state's civil, military, industrial and professional interests, and personal sketches of many of its people. Vol. II, Part 40

Author:
Publication date: 1859
Publisher: Atlanta, Ga., The Southern historicl association
Number of Pages: 1166

USA > Georgia > Memoirs of Georgia; containing historical accounts of the state's civil, military, industrial and professional interests, and personal sketches of many of its people. Vol. II > Part 40

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and home she went. Cabinet ministers' ladies must call. Ministers replied that they did not interfere in such matters, and that he could not regulate their domes- tic affairs. All his raging and roaring could effect nothing against the female edict; but the cabinet resigned at his request. Excellent business this for the president of the United States, provocative of Homeric laughter in foreign diplo- matic circles! But with all his folly, and raging, and childish violence there were qualities in Jackson of such a high order as few men ever have.

Senator Again .- The next nine years Judge Berrien passed in the practice of his profession, but was again elected to the senate in 1841, and re-electd in 1847. An instance of his firmness of will can be found in his refusal to obey the resolu- tion of the legislature of 1841 instructing him to reverse his vote on certain ques- tions. This was followed by a vote of want of confidence, which he answered by a conclusive address to the people and the people sustained him. Resigning again in 1852 he retired permanently from public life and died in 1856.

Character .- Among the great lawyers of Georgia it is likely that most men would give the first place to Judge Berrien. Politician as he was, he never per- mitted his political life to oust his legal studies. At all times he combined extra- ordinary labor in his profession with whatever were the duties undertaken in the public service. Most men think of him as senator or statesman, but those who know him best remember him as the consummate lawyer. There are still living many who can recall his personal appearance before the court; tall, stately and handsome, he was the beau ideal of the barrister. Perhaps from nature, or more probably from association, his manners, extremely refined and polished, were as decidedly reserved, and had none of the geniality usually found in the men of his day. And when he wished to be cold the iceberg could be no colder. An old lawyer tells of an encounter between him and a young man who thought highly of himself, and, coming from Charleston, had panted for a trial against Berrien. At last he was gratified and had a case. Opening his argument at a table covered with books, he observed that Judge Berrien was constantly gazing at the ceiling with a wicked, sneering smile, while he twirled his eye glasses. At last Mr. C. was lashed into fury by the perpetual smile, and shouted to the court: "The gentleman may smile at me, but before I am done he will not smile at my law." At once Berrien arose to his full height, and said in his stateliest manner and most sonor- ous tones, laying his hand on his heart: "On my soul, may it please the court, I was neither thinking of the gentleman nor his laah." (He pronounced it nither.)

WILLIAM HARRIS CRAWFORD.

William Harris Crawford has been mentioned as one of Georgia's greatest lawyers, but not with perfect appropriateness. He was a great man, but his great- ness found its work in statesmanship, and not in law. He practiced only six years in his whole life, from 1799 to 1806; and the six years of judicial life passed by him as judge of the superior court, from 1827 to 1834, can scarcely be counted as years of acquisition. Born in 1771 and dying in 1834, he passed nearly his whole life in Federal office after reaching manhood, and in this sketch of Georgia lawyers there is little place for him. Judge Garnett Andrews knew him well, and here is what he says of him as judge: "When he came on the bench he was so impaired, mentally and physically, by bad health, that he was but the wreck of what he had been, so much so that I doubt doing justice to the memory of so great a man whom I never knew in his prime. He was the largest man I ever saw to be so well proportioned, and his face and head indicated a brain of the highest order, as it no doubt was, when in full health. His greatness was mani-

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fested, not only by his talents, but by his stoicism (I know not what else to call it) by an indifference to all ostentation, and a disregard of mere effect. He never did anything with a view as to what might be said or thought of it. He was entirely above all the weakness, vanity, envy and such like contemptible passions, except prejudice, which the rest of mankind are more or less heir to. If he made a speech he thought nothing of the manner of delivery; if he wrote he thought nothing of the style, save to express his ideas clearly. He cared nothing to please, if he could convince. So, in society, he cared nothing for its conventionalities, not because he felt above or below them, but because he was so concerned about the practical, that he cared not to think of such matters; and after I knew him he carried it to such an extent that he seemed to be wanting, sometimes, in delicacy. I say seemed, for he never designed to hurt the feelings of anyone, but taking it for granted that all were as practical as himself, it did not occur to him that the sensibilities of others would suffer by the truth. To a lawyer who had repeated his argument until the judge had become bored, he impatiently exclaimed: 'Mr. C., you go round, and round, and round like a blind horse in a gin.' Clark and the Clark party having been his life-long political opponents, he never spared them, thinking that thereby he was honestly doing God and the country service, not understanding how delicacy should stand in the way of such a laudable object. Once, at Lincoln court, a witness was sworn whose evidence was the subject of not very complimentary remarks at the dinner-table, where two Clark men were pres- ent. Upon someone saying that the witness was an old Clark man, the judge replied: 'I thought so, I thought so.' George A. Young, now of Mississippi, as remarkable for his refinement, consideration and delicacy as the judge was for the want of them, said, to shield the two at the table: 'There were some very good and clever Clark men,' when the judge promptly replied: 'Mighty few, mighty few, mighty few.' Holding a two weeks' session of Wilkes court, he remained at his tavern on Sunday without going to church. At dinner his landlady, chiding him for it, said: 'Mr. H. had preached a "mighty good sermon,"' when the judge replied: 'Mrs. A., I presume you are like my mother, who would go to church and hear the veriest jackass preach and say, a mighty good sermon, a mighty good sermon.' "

JOHN FORSYTH.

Much of what has been said of Crawford is equally true of another great Georgian, John Forsyth. Lawyer he was by profession, and little more of the lawyer he was. Admitted to the bar in 1802 and going to congress in 1811, from that day he was all statesman and no lawyer, to his death in 1841. His life has been written and anyone can read it. Orator, politician and statesman, he was an ornament to his state, of whom the state was justly proud. But he was no jurist, and we will pass to less aspiring men of much humbler fame.

JOHN M. DOOLY.

John M. Dooly's name is associated with the most humorous traditions of the bar of Georgia. Solicitor-general of the western circuit in 1802, and judge in 1816, his wit has made him famous. Says a contemporary. "When I first knew this extraordinary man he was in the prime of life, and I shall never forget the impression which his person made upon me. He had a large head, with a bold, elevated forehead, heavy eyebrows, prominent nose, small, compressed mouth, large, vivid, sparkling eyes, with long lashes, which, frequently opening and shut- ting, gave his countenance an expression as if under the influence of an electric

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battery, from which the beholder at first sight was almost sure to recoil. His peculiarity of voice, which was sharp and discordant, was well calculated of itself to get up attention from all within its reach. But there was a point, a special felicity of expression, in all he said, marked with a conciseness which showed him at once to advantage, and which silenced all other tongues when he spoke. The learned and the ignorant, the old and the young, all felt his power to please, and did him honor. It was his wit and sarcasm which gave him such power to please and to hurt. I never knew his equal in either, yet the very subject of his wit, from the happy manner in which it was played off upon him by the judge, was generally the first to join in the hearty laugh which it produced."

Another mirth-loving lawyer writes: "Like Charles II., Dooly could not only say good things to set off his bad deeds, but what was more fortunate, could say them of the deeds themselves, and always thus gild the pills of impropriety which he administered to the public. When up almost all night trying Holderness, the sheriff voluntarily placed a small pitcher on his bench, half filled with toddy (the pitcher-not the bench-the bench was dry) and when it was finished he told that officer to 'bring some more water out of the same well.' When he went to Buck Walker's faro table and broke the bank during Wilkes court, after having elo- quently charged the grand jury against the vice and crime of gaming, he excused himself by saying, that 'finding he could not suppress it by the juries, he had to take that method to do it himself.' When at the bar Col. Dick Long got the better of him in a stick fight, he told the former that he 'need not be so proud of the victory, for it was no such great thing, as he had fought through six states and had never yet found any one he could whip.' When Mr. Tait, with a wooden leg, challenged him, his reply was that he 'could not fight Mr. Tait, as they would not be on an equality unless he, Dooly, could be permitted to put one leg in a beegum,' and on being told that he would be published as a coward, said he 'preferred filling two newspapers to one coffin.'" But these samples suffice ---- a good judge and a man of infinite jest.

ANDREW J. MILLER.

Andrew J. Miller was a specimen of the best of Georgia lawyers. He was born in 1806 and had too large a practice in Augusta and the eastern counties to accept judicial office at any time. He was easily the head of the bar of his day, and to his cool, clear mind his own professional brethren looked with perfect confidence. He was not selfish in his life, but gave himself and his abilities zealously to the state in its legislature for eighteen years. Probably, almost cer- tainly, if he had lived he would have served in more conspicuous office as the time drew nigh when he could feel that he was entitled to the repose of a veteran of the bar, but death at fifty robbed the state of a great jurist and of a wise man of affairs.

PETER CONE.

In this account Judge Peter Cone cannot be omitted. "The most agreeable circuit companion I ever knew," said a contemporary, "besides being one of the ablest, if not the ablest, lawyers in the state. He had wit and inexhaustible humor that made his society on the circuit always agreeable. He once represented his county in the state senate, when he had several acts passed that were worth more than all the others of the session, and which will, no doubt, stand their ground almost without amendment, as long as Georgia shall have statutes. In the senate, as at the bar, his humor and wit enlivened very much that sedate body. The

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following is an instance of his capacity to make amusement out of anything and everything: When one of the candidates for doorkeeper came to his room, can- vassing for his vote, the judge asked 'if he had ever kept a door;' being answered in the negative, he next asked the aspirant for portal honors if he had 'ever seen a door kept,' and receiving the same answer, he asked the seeker of votes if he had 'ever read a treatise on door-keeping,' and the answer disclosing that he had never gone through such a preparatory course, to learn the mysterious art of door-keeping, the judge told him that he was unfit for such a responsible and difficult office, but if he would get the proper books and study the art hon- estly and diligently for twelve months he should have his vote next year."

WILLIAM H. UNDERWOOD.

But more marked and extraordinary in his humor and wit than even Cone or Dooly was William H. Underwood, at one time judge of the western circuit. His name was famous from the mountains to the seacoast for the humor, the odd expressions, the fantastic manner in which he expressed himself about every- thing that came before him. We suppose that a volume could be written filled with the amusing sayings of Judge Underwood. Unfortunately, like most of the good things of the Georgia bar, they were unwritten, and will die with the lives of the men who heard them or to whom they were told. Judge Garnett Andrews has rescued a few of Judge Underwood's jests from oblivion, and no apology need be made for giving them in his words: "I found him at the bar when I was admitted, rugged in appearance as was his mind. He had an un-law- yerlike look, stammered or rather spoke with difficulty, but he had that all-import- ant element of a lawyer-an ability to see the strong points of a case, as well as a searching discrimination, which could always see the true difference between things not the same, however much like they might appear to some. He was then esteemed a humorist rather than a wit. Before he died he was an eloquent advocate, as well as a profound lawyer, and decidedly the greatest wit of his day in the state. The convictions of his conclusions, whether as lawyer or poli- tician, were painfully intense, so much so, that he was nearly his whole life on the weak side in the latter. He was held by his logic with a cord so strong that he was obliged to follow, let it lead where it might. He not only grew in knowledge and eloquence, but in wit-which of all gifts is thought to be the most inde- pendent of cultivation-so that in the latter years of his life he was even superior to Dooly in this captivating quality of the mind. He had a slow and distinct utter- ance of every word and syllable that gave a raciness to all he said. Of many good things said by him I can recollect but few. The first and about the beginning of his reputation for wit was at Oglethorpe court, when the solicitor and his imme- diate predecessor were disputing over that old bone of contention, the costs made by the latter and collected by the former, from fines imposed during his term. The incumbent, after a long and heated argument, closed by saying he was 'not very fastidious about it no how,' when Underwood promptly replied: 'I now understand the derivation of the misunderstood word, fas-tid-i-ous, which I now learn means, to hold fast and for a long te-di-ous time.' Arguing with the usual fervor of his convictions, before a judge reputed to have been very arbi- trary, he was arrested, with Blackstone in hand, by his honor announcing he 'decided against him and did not wish to hear any more law or argument.' Under- wood answered: 'By no means do I wish to read law with any expectation of convincing your honor, but only to show what a great fool Blackstone was.'

"Gold had been discovered in the Cherokee country in fabulous quantities, it was believed. The lands were to be disposed of by lottery, and everybody entitled

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to draw looked on the Indian attorney as one who delayed their possession of a fortune. He was in consequence in danger of lynch law, then being inaugurated to the great disgrace of the country. The Indians refusing to sell their lands, Georgia had extended her laws over the whole of their territory, at which the indignation of Judge Underwood was lofty and in its furiousness, to some, amus- ing. Living near the Alabama line, he practiced in some of the courts of that state, and on occasion he was taunted by a young 'squirt' of the profession with 'not understanding what was law in Alabama, that the law of the gentleman from Georgia might do for that state, but he would inform him that Georgia law was not in force in Alabama.' Underwood, in reply, among other things, said: 'My young friend has reminded me that I could not introduce Georgia law into his state, and, with much confidence, repeated the assertion. I think the young man is rather premature in his boastful congratulations, for 1 will let him understand that of which he seems to be ignorant, to-wit: that Georgia takes the liberty of extending her laws over all the adjacent savage tribes, and, what concerns the young man personally still more, with very little evidence or ceremony she hangs or sends to the penitentiary all the young savages that traduce her, or are in any manner in her way.'"

At this time Gen. Jackson was at the height of his popularity, and having taken strong measures for the removal of the Indians, was more popular in Georgia, perhaps, than in any other state; and for that reason, more unpopular with Judge Underwood than any other man in the United States, and he took every occasion to give his opinion of that distinguished individual. To the aston- ishment of all of his friends, he delivered a Fourth of July oration at the court house of his county town, and some of them having expressed their surprise that a gentleman of his age and distinction should occupy his time with such an insignificant matter, he gave as a reason that he not only wished to abuse Gen. Jackson before a large audience but also by authority. He, too, like Judge Dooly, had his controversies with his landlords at the taverns, but, unlike Dooly, all in a good humored way. At a court, thinking his landlord was remiss, he asked John Mabry if he had taken the oath of the special bailiff. "Why?" asked Mr. Mabry, the landlord. "Because you have kept us without meat, drink or fire -- candlelight and water only excepted; and that is the oath which is administered to the bailiff before he takes charge of the jury, John Mabry, and from the way you have kept us in this court I thought you must have taken it. If you have, John Mabry, I can certify you have scrupulously observed it." He never forsook horseback and saddle bags while I knew him for buggies or railroads, and always rode a fine animal, about which he felt great anxiety. Stopping all night witlı Charter Campbell of Madison, when his bill was presented next morning, he said: "Well! Mr. Campbell, do you really think I owe you three dollars for the entertainment of me and my gray horse, Cherokee?" "Oh, yes, judge! It is a fair and usual charge." "Well, Mr. Campbell, if the poet had stopped with you instead of saying 'man wants but little here below nor wants that little long,' he might have said, 'If man has but little here below, and stops with you, he will not have that little long.'"

During the know-nothing campaign a drummer, recommending his tavern, said it was a "know-nothing house," when Judge Underwood replied: "Well! If the landlord knows less than Jim Toney-his old landlord of the tavern-I shall not risk myself with him." Having been asked the politics of a friend, whom he accused of fickleness, he said: "I can't say, for I have not seen him since dinner." Judge Thomas of Elbert-in which county Underwood once lived-meeting him, said the people of that county would like to see him there,

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and he (Thomas) thought he could make a pleasant visit to the old place. "Yes," said Judge Underwood, "there is an honest stupidity about the people of Elbert which is amusing, and which I rather like." Some citizen of the county, who took the remark of Underwood as offensive, meeting him afterward, rebuk- ingly said he ought to take it back. "Well," said the judge, "I will take part of it back, and since the county voted for Buchanan I will withdraw the word 'honest.'" As I before intimated, he was the most independent man in politics in the state, of his distinction. Often, not caring for the red rose or white, guelph nor ghibelline, he would thrust, right and left, his sharp cimeter into all who exposed themselves to his wit. However, in the latter part of his life he seemed to have settled down in opposition to democracy as indicated by another anecdote. Howell Cobb having made an appointment to speak at Lumpkin court on Tues- day, for some cause, postponed it until the next day, the day for taking up the criminal docket, according to the practice of the court. Underwood asking the reason of the postponement, and not receiving a satisfactory answer, said: "I think it a very proper time, as that is the day for taking up the democratic docket, and if the defendants all should appear there will be a very general turnout of the party." For a long time he was accused of being an old Federalist of the John Adams school, which, in Georgia then, was little short of a charge of theft, and having been taunted with it by a politician, who said: "There have always been but two parties in the country, and we class you with the Federalists, for all know that is your place." "Yes," said Underwood, "there have always been two parties, Federalists and fools, and I have never heard you accused of belonging to the Federalists." "On being importuned to move to the town of Marietta, he said he would not like to live there, but thought it the best place to die in that he knew of, and gave as the reason that he could leave it with fewer regrets than any other place in the world. And what may seem to be a strange coincidence, he died in Marietta."

But the patience of readers will not permit separate mention of the scores of really able and distinguished lawyers, educated and trained in the forum of our superior courts. To be even fairly faithful it should include Thomas W. Cobb, who resigned his seat in the senate of the United States to run for the superior court bench; Upson, considered by many the profoundest lawyer in the state; George R. Gilmer (sometime governor), who foamed and spat upon the jury; Oliver Hillhouse Prince, the delightful companion and inveterate jester; Duncan G. Campbell, father of the late Associate Justice John A. Campbell, and himself a fine orator; John A. Heard, quick at points, and ready in reply; Tom Peter Carnes, full of law and fun; Thomas S. Foster, of Greensboro, more politician than lawyer; Eli S. Shorter, of powers that would have sustained him in any position; Richard Henry Wilde, the courtly gentleman with poetic fancy-but the task is impossible. Mere mention of names is too perfunctory, and more than mere mention is beyond the occasion. Still it would be unpardonable should we leave this delightful theme without the mention of two names, both of which came into prominence toward the end of the period of which we are thinking. Of the first of these men, Thomas R. R. Cobb, we shall see more when we come to the code of Georgia, of which he was largely the parent. But the second ought to be spoken of now.

HERSCHEL V. JOHNSON.

The very spot of his birth, now little but ruins, marks emphatically the difference between his early days and ours. The writer has often passed the ruined homestead in old Burke county where Gov. Johnson was born. There is

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nothing now that shows the home by the roadside except a clump of bushes on the old red Georgia hill, one of those hills of which our poet Lanier sang so tunefully and hopefully. Johnson was a university of Georgia man and early disclosed great power of mind and strength of will. He addressed himself early to political life and was elected governor of Georgia in 1853. His unusually solid qualities made him so conspicuous in the Union that in 1860 he was nominated for the vice-presidency, with Stephen A. Douglas for president. But it was not until after the civil war that the greatness of Gov. Johnson exhibited itself, yet in a manner that found no response in the sympathies of his fellow countrymen. When the dreadful conflict had ended in the defeat of the south, and provisional governments took the place of governments by election, when petty officers were lording it in insolent style over every county under the title of the Freedman's bureau, when no man knew what would be the fate of his state, his person, or his property, when Gov. Brown had returned from the Old Capitol prison, with advice to the people whom he had recently urged to the bitterest war, to accept the inevitable with open arms, and to embrace the doctrines of their late enemies, in order that, with the doctrines, they might reap the substantial bene- fits; when B. H. Hill was writing his Notes on the Situation, pressing upon the people the policy of resistance by peaceable methods to every attempt of the north to impose upon the south the legal and illegal results of the war-then came a letter from Johnson, as grand a letter as was ever written by man, in which he declared equally against servility and childish rage. "Preserve your self-respect," was his message to his people, "and in good season all things must come right for you." This generation is not in position to decide whether the fortunes of the south would have been better or worse if she had heeded these words rather than hastily re-entered the union which she had as hastily left, groaning under invaria- bly corrupt elections, and critical of dishonest repudiations; but posterity may possibly be more severe upon us than we are now upon ourselves. The last years of Gov. Johnson's life were spent upon the bench of the superior court. His career had been too much that of a politician to permit him to be also a profound lawyer; but, like Crawford, he presented the spectacle of a very great man on the bench administering more in the nature of a personal law than the law of statutes and books. Many still remember his charges to the grand juries. In them he would put all the power of his splendid intellect, and as he would solemnly place before his juries the duties incumbent upon them his charge would be unconsciously converted into such a grand and eloquent oration as men have seldom heard elsewhere.

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Memoirs of Georgia; containing historical accounts of the state's civil, military, industrial and professional interests, and personal sketches of many of its people. Vol. II, Part 40

Author: Publication date: 1859 Publisher: Atlanta, Ga., The Southern historicl association Number of Pages: 1166

Author:
Publication date: 1859
Publisher: Atlanta, Ga., The Southern historicl association
Number of Pages: 1166