USA > Georgia > The bench and bar of Georgia: memoirs and sketches. With an appendix, containing a court roll from 1790-1857, etc., volume II > Part 31
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In a few weeks, Judge Shorter transmitted his resignation to Gov. Forsyth. There was a cause: there was a church-investi- gation, there was feeling, there was agony, there was remorse. Let no further record be made .*
When the election to fill the vacancy came on, the Hon. Alfred Iverson, now of the United States Senate, then a Representative in the State Legislature from Jones county, so far departed from usage as to make an appeal on the floor in behalf of Judge Shorter for his re-election, to secure his great talents to the public as well as to soothe his wounded feelings. Whatever the aspect of the case, Judge Shorter received but a very small vote, and his rival, Judge Cobb, obtained the office. Thus passed away an occurrence which was considerably talked about at the time. But Judge Shorter was not the man to stay crushed. He was all hero: there was no despair in his nature. To use his own pithy words, "he cast off difficulty as a lion shakes the dew from his mane,"-a figure worthy of Napoleon. Another bracing expression cheered him from his youth,-that "there was more true glory in rising every time we fall than in never falling."
We find him the next year, 1829, again in the Legislature,-a proof that his fellow-citizens had not withdrawn their confidence. On the third day after the House was organized, the Journal (p. 35) states :-
On motion of Mr. Shorter,-
Resolved, That the Joint Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to inquire into the expediency of establishing a court for the correction of errors; and, if expedient, whether any and what alteration is necessary to be made in the Constitution of this State in order to effect the object, and that they report by bill or otherwise.
* See Judge Shorter's letter in the memoir of Judge Reid, p. 202.
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The Judiciary Committee on the part of the House consisted of the thirteen gentlemen named,-Messrs. Haynes, Shorter, Iverson, Saffold, Dougherty, Bailey, Charlton, Warren, Hutchins, Warner, Greene, Pearman, and Hatcher ; but the author has not been able to discover, from an examination of the Journal, any report or action of the committee on the subject referred. It is presumed that the measure had no favor from a majority of the committee, else there would have been some expression. At all events, it may be inferred from his motion that Judge Shorter desired the esta- blishment of a Supreme Court at least sixteen years previous to its organization. The attempt to bring it before the public was in the highest degree laudable. Long experience of the evil-each circuit being a sort of judicial republic to itself, construing sta- tutes, deciding principles of common law, and settling its own practice without comity to that of its neighbor republic-at last convinced the people that a court of appellate jurisdiction, cor- recting errors below, was necessary,-nay, the public good de- manded it. It is much to be regretted that Judge Shorter did not live to witness the tribunal he strove to create. It would have been a rich field for his talents.
It may be said that, while his own manly exertions did much to gain the high position at the bar and in the public view which was generally conceded to him, he was indebted to his natural gifts still more. His presence was commanding. A forehead round, projecting, and expanded, with that beautiful arch so expressive of genius. Perfectly black, keen, flashing eyes, luminous with intel- lect, and capable of an intensity of gaze which riveted court and jury to his arguments. He had a slight impediment of speech, which seemed to add force to his style. A leading member* of the bar once remarked of this peculiarity in Judge Shorter that it made him more interesting than he would have been without it.
He possessed great vivacity of spirits on all occasions, and was fond of good jokes, even took kindly those at his own expense, and bestowed his wit and humor with no parsimony. The author recollects a little scene of pleasantry in court between Judge Shorter and William H. Torrance, Esq., which, to some extent, signified the character of both. They were opposed to each other before the jury. Mr. T. had made an excellent speech, and his side of the case appeared most likely to prevail. He had spoken with gloves on, as he occasionally did, to correspond with his
ยท
* Col. Hines Holt.
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general neatness. Judge S. had wonderful tact in ridicule, though usually within the bounds of good taste. He began his reply by stating to the jury that his "brother Torrance expected to divert their attention from the weakness of his cause by a display of his peach-blossomed kid gloves, which, however suited to the drawing- room, did not materially assist an advocate in handling the intricacies of litigation." There was a general smile at his adver- sary's cost. When Mr. T. appeared in conclusion, he thus referred to the gloves :- "My brother Shorter can well afford to dispense with the aid which other men sometimes find it necessary to em- ploy to conceal defects; for he has permitted you to admire his delicate, patrician, lily-white hands, which far surpass my gloves in softness and aristocratic pretension. I leave you, gentlemen, to decide which of us is entitled to your sympathy or your cen- sure." The author is inclined to think that Judge Shorter "took nothing by his motion" except the hearty laugh which was always contagious from him.
Whether such an artifice was excusable or not, a joke played off in Putnam Superior Court, more than thirty years ago, has been related to the author by an eye-witness,* which is too amusing to be omitted. Judge Shorter and his brother-in-law, Hon. Ste- phen W. Harris, were arrayed against each other in a very im- portant action of ejectment; and, as the court adjourned for the day, the presiding judge (the late C. B. Strong) announced the case as first in order the next morning. Shorter knew his danger, and made his best preparation. When the jury-hour arrived next morning, Harris was called, but did not appear. The court waited for him some half-hour or more, when at last he came hurriedly into court. Judge Strong said, "Mr. Harris, the court regrets that you have kept it waiting for you so long, and hopes that you will at once proceed with the case." Shorter, with a mischievous gravity, appealed to the court in behalf of his rival brother to this effect :- "Mr. Harris ought to be excused, as it was evident that he had used all possible expedition ; for the court will perceive that in his hurry to complete his toilet he has put on his shirt wrong end upward,"-alluding to his enormous shirt-collar, which was only a full-grown specimen of the then-prevailing fashion. Being very sensitive, and the roar of laughter which filled the court-house deeply mortifying him, Mr. Harris lost his self-posses- sion, became dejected, and, with all his acknowledged ability,
* Pleasant Lawson, Esq.
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managed the case so badly that he lost it for no other reason. So much for a joke, as cruel as it was artfully applied. Harris found it difficult to forgive it.
Resuming the narrative, in the letter of Gen. Shorter already given mention is made of the kindness of heart toward the younger members of the profession for which his brother was distinguished. As proof of it, the author submits a letter which he received, as follows :-
EATONTON, 30th June, 1830.
DEAR SIR :- Your esteemed favor of the 15th inst. has been received, and should have been answered sooner but for my absence from home. * * *
I am sorry to find you still subject to the "blues." You are a man of sound mind, good health, tolerable education, and good character. You have many friends, who will stand by you in adversity (should it come) as well as in prosperity. The field of enterprise is before you, the road to distinction is open, and you have only to fix upon your object, and indus- try, patience, and integrity will, sooner or later, enable you to attain it.
Look at the course which others have pursued. See what were their prospects when they began, and see what has been their end. What has been done by others who possessed not your advantages can surely, by the same means, be also achieved by yourself. And by all means accustom yourself to looking upon the brightest side of all your prospects and efforts. This will produce good to you in various ways. It will inspirit you to make greater exertions; it will give to your whole character a cast of benevolence; and, what is still more important, your heart will frequently be light and happy.
When I first settled in this place my prospects were gloomy beyond my power of description. I was young, illiterate, poor, and friendless ; and, what was worse, I have been all my life a slave to bad habits, which have hung around me as heavy as millstones. I remained here about fourteen months, and during that time I received but one fee in the county, and that was only for six dollars. Now, contrast my then situation with your present prospects, and tell me what cause you have of despondence. My advice to you is to brace yourself up like a man; go on in your profession with confidence and patience. Sow the seed, and in due time you will assuredly reap a rich harvest.
During my late absence from home an ill-natured and abusive attack has been made upon me in this county by -, who is a candidate for the Legislature. Among other violations of truth, he charges me with having been, in 1825, opposed to Troup and the Old Treaty. This may be believed abroad, but at home every school-boy knows it to be false. I had intended to reply, but all my friends advise me to leave him to his fate. If the people of Putnam, who know us both, elect him to the Legislature, (for which he is a candidate and for which his prospects were fair,) then the community may believe his statements; but, if they refuse, then I may stand exculpated. I have not decided what I shall do. My own opinion is one way and that of my friends the other. I have not. time to say more.
Yours, truly, ELI S. SHORTER.
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ELI S. SHORTER.
The Journals of the Legislature for 1830 do not exhibit the name of the gentleman referred to in the closing paragraph of the above letter: of course, he was defeated. Had Judge Shorter lived ten or fifteen years longer, he would have seen this enemy a Representative in Congress, then judge of the very circuit the commission for which Judge Shorter resigned; and the causes of this resignation constituted the most violent part of the attack. This gentleman afterward died Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives. It is not here pretended, however, to justify his severe publication about Judge Shorter. Probably he regretted it himself after the excitement of the canvass died away.
In the fall of 1831, a number of delegates from various coun- ties of the State assembled at Eatonton to consult on some method of internal improvement,-the first meeting of the kind ever held in Georgia. The main question was whether canals or railroads should be recommended. A committee reported routes for both, and another committee was appointed to memorialize the Legisla- ture on the subject. These proceedings possibly gave the first impulse to that grand movement which has done so much for Georgia. Judge Shorter was at that time attending the Anti- Tariff Convention in Philadelphia, to which, with several other pro- minent citizens of the State, he had been deputed by a public meeting at Athens. This circumstance is mentioned to show why he did not appear in the Eatonton convention, the place of his residence .*
/
While in Philadelphia, Judge Shorter and Col. Jones, one of his colleagues in the convention, published a defence of Georgia in the case of the missionaries, which was copied into the Georgia Mes- senger of November 5, 1831, as follows :-
(From the Philadelphia Gazette.)
We ask the attention of our readers to the communication of Messrs. Shorter and Jones in the Gazette of to-day, which prefaces the article entitled "Trial of the Missionaries," from the Milledgeville (Ga.) Jour- nal. The character of those gentlemen is deservedly high ; they are both native citizens of Georgia ; and Judge Shorter has presided judicially over one of her districts. His acquaintance with her laws is unsurpassed by that of any persons of his profession in the Northern States who have differed from him in reference to the question on which he has written. We have not yet been put into possession of the documents mentioned, save those marked in the Journal enclosed by our correspondents. We have no desire or design to enter into a discussion of the missionary ques- tion in Georgia ; but we may be permitted to remark that the communi- cation from Judge Shorter and his colleague places the matter in a light
* For Proceedings, see p. 69.
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entirely different from that in which the people in this quarter are accus- tomed to view it. The fact that one of the missionaries and eight lay- men accepted the pardon from the Governor of Georgia seems to indicate, in those who declined to accept it, a great share of stubborn hostility, calculated to excite unmerited commiseration, rather than that obedience to the law whose source, in the language of a great expounder, "is the bosom of God."
(For the Philadelphia Gazette.)
We have seen with pain and mortification a spirit displayed in many of the papers published in the Northern and Eastern States to misrepre- sent the facts out of which has grown the unpleasant controversy between the State of Georgia and a few missionaries lately residing in the Chero- kee Nation. It is but sheer justice to the State that the facts should all be accurately known, and that none of them should be wilfully suppressed. The course which her revilers have deemed it proper to pursue has been to publish to the world, in the most aggravated shape, every allega- tion, no matter from what source or upon what authority, tending to put her in the wrong, and to withhold every fact and explanation, however well authenticated, showing her justification.
We only ask that she shall not be condemned by the moral and reli- gious portion of the American people until after that people shall be made acquainted with all the facts.
We are both native Georgians. We have resided from our infancy within her borders, and we have been attentive and, we trust, impartial observers of her acts and policy, particularly in regard to the existing controversy, and may therefore be permitted to say that her course has been misrepre- sented, and is not understood by the community by whom we are at this time surrounded. The object of this note is to dispel, as far as we may be able, the errors into which many of our fellow-citizens have been led in reference to this subject, and to provoke a spirit of impartial investigation and inquiry, such as may result in the ascertainment of the truth.
The State of Georgia, after many years of forbearance, exercised her unquestionable constitutional right of extending her laws and jurisdiction over all persons residing within her chartered limits. In the exercise of this right she did no more than had previously been done by many of her sister States, some of whom (strange as it may be) are now her most relentless revilers. That she did not in this step transcend her constitu- tional power has been asserted by the President of the United States, and virtually by Congress and the Supreme Court. In justice to Georgia, it should be remembered that she forbore to exercise the power under con- sideration until after the head-men of the Cherokee Nation had devised, agreed upon, and promulgated a regular and permanent form of govern- ment of the State. In this aspect of affairs, it was not to be expected that Georgia, or any other sovereign State, would remain silent and inactive, and permit within her own limits, and upon her own territory, three sepa- rate, independent, and inconsistent governments to exist. To prevent such a state of things, she extended her own laws over that portion of the Cherokee country within her limits, and abrogated the Cherokee laws and form of government. Among other things, the laws of the State provided that all white persons (whether citizens of Georgia, or persons coming from other States) who should be found residing upon the Cherokee territory within the limits of the State, on or after a particular day designated in the act, should take and subscribe an oath to support the Constitution and
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laws of the State of Georgia, or be held and considered guilty of a high misdemeanor, subject to indictment therefor, and, on conviction, to be punished as therein specified. When the day mentioned in the act arrived, many white persons were found residing upon the territory, some of whom removed, and many took and subscribed the oath required; but a few absolutely refused to do either, and among and at the head of these were the missionaries. They were then respectfully notified, by the authorities of the State, of the provisions of the law, and urged to a compliance with them ; but they utterly and peremptorily refused. Their arrest was the necessary and inevitable consequence. They were, however, discharged from their first arrest upon the ground taken by themselves that they were agents of the General Government. This was subsequently ascertained not to be the fact; and they were again respectfully notified, by the authorities of Georgia, that their continued residence was unauthorized and illegal ; that they should have, if desired, a reasonable time within which to re- move, or if they chose to remain they could do so, by taking and sub- scribing the requisite oath. They again braved the authorities and laws of the State, took to themselves the right to decide upon the constitutional power of the State to pass the law in question, and made known their deter- mination to disregard its provisions. It was not to have been expected that a sovereign and independent State would have suffered herself to be brow- beaten by a few men, though they were in holy orders. The State was thus forced to the alternative of either permitting her laws to be delibe- rately violated with impunity, or to cause the missionaries to be a second time arrested. The latter course was promptly pursued : the missionaries were not only arrested, but indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced in due form of law. And to show how tenderly the State was disposed to act toward those misguided and unfortunate men, and how regardful she was of the rights of others, we will in conclusion state that after those men arrived at the penitentiary of the State as convicts, and before their commitment, the Governor of the State tendered to each one a full and ample pardon, on condition of an assurance that they would in the way most agreeable to themselves obey the laws of the State. One of the missionaries, (Mr. Trott,) and eight other men not missionaries, promptly accepted the pardon; but the other two (Messrs. Butler and Worcester) maintained their original ground,-that the State had no right to pass the law by which they were about to be punished,-and rejected the pardon.
We now beg the favor of you to publish in your paper, in connection with the foregoing, the passages in the Savannah paper herewith enclosed and marked. We also request you to procure and republish in your paper the correspondence between the Governor of Georgia and the missionaries; the letter of the Governor to the Rev. John Howard; two letters from the latter gentleman on the same subject. The documents referred to may be found in the Georgia Journal or Macon Advertiser of early part of last month.
When those documents shall have been consulted, and when the facts which they shall develop shall have been made public, no one, we think, can believe that the missionaries have paid that regard to the laws of the land, and to magistracies, which is most plainly enjoined upon them by the Holy Scriptures of which they profess to be the heralds. They utterly deceive themselves: they are not martyrs to the cross of Christ, but they are martyrs to their own folly and stubbornness. If it were necessary to the defence of the State, we apprehend there would be but
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little difficulty in establishing a further important fact,-to wit: that these missionaries have been most active and mischievous agents in exciting the Indians to a course hostile to the mild and philanthropic policy of the General Government toward that unfortunate people, and in engendering the most unfriendly feeling toward Georgia and her citizens. But we forbear to insist upon this for the present, and content ourselves with the foregoing statement of facts, by which it will appear manifest that, unless the missionaries were clothed with power to resist the State of Georgia and nullify her legislative acts, the reprobation of an enlightened community must fall on them, and not on the State whose sovereignty they have contemned and defied.
PHILADELPHIA, 10th October, 1831.
ELI S. SHORTER, SEABORN JONES.
It was during the next year perhaps that he removed to Columbus and engaged largely in banking-operations. He also had an interest in a heavy mercantile establishment, and pushed several enterprises ahead with his native energy. His land-specu- lations in Alabama have been already glanced at. In May, 1836, the author happened to be in Columbus, where, for miles round, in the warehouses, in every vacant building or shed, and in hundreds of tents, a portion of the citizens of Alabama had taken refuge from the fury of the Indians. It was a time of great suffering and apprehension. While the stage halted a few hours, (the last trip made in safety through the nation that spring,) the author met Judge Shorter in the streets of Columbus, and was kindly invited to spend the evening with him; but the necessity of going forward to dear ones compelled him to decline what, under other circum- stances, he would have gladly accepted. The stage soon left; and the beaming countenance of Judge Shorter was never seen after- ward by the humble friend who pens this acknowledgment.
In tracing the career of so remarkable a man, it may be allow- able to notice his infirmities, not as a reproach to his memory, but as a caution to young men in forming habits. Until 1827, Judge Shorter had indulged freely in card-playing, and considerable sums of money had passed through his hands in this manner. He has been heard to say, after he united himself with the church, that whenever he saw cards his fingers itched to handle them. He regretted this passion exceedingly. In his letter to the author he refers to his " bad habits" as a great misfortune. But- to his praise be it said-he was never intemperate, though much exposed to the temptation of drinking, from the custom that generally prevailed in his day of having liquors and wines on the circuit as a necessary part of the garniture of almost every lawyer's room. His good qualities far outweighed all defects, and as such let honor rest upon his memory.
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CHRISTOPHER B. STRONG.
A very fine monument in the cemetery near Columbus bears the following inscription :-
Erected as a Tribute of Love, By his Family, To the memory of ELI S. SHORTER, Who departed this life December 13th, 1836, In the 44th year of his age.
The eminent distinction of Judge Shorter was founded in the happiest union of the social, kindly, and intellectual elements of character. Pro- found and distinguished as a jurist, ardent as a friend, just and kind as a citizen, his name will be long revered in the great circle of his acquaint- ance, and his memory be forever embalmed in the hearts of his bereaved family.
" When this corruption shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written : Death is swallowed up in victory."
XXIX.
CHRISTOPHER B. STRONG.
THE Nestor of the Georgia bar deserves a prominent notice. He was the last of the old school uniting suavity and courage with sympathies practically manifested in behalf of his fellow-beings.
CHRISTOPHER B. STRONG was born in Cumberland county, Virginia, in the year 1783. His father-the Rev. Samuel Strong, a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church-was a native of Maryland, but in early life settled in Virginia. He intermarried with Miss De Graffenreid, whose ancestors came from Switzerland. This lady was the mother of C. B. Strong. Removing from Virginia to Oglethorpe county, Georgia, the father brought the son with him when quite a youth and imperfectly educated. He was never a student at any college. After returning when grown to his native homestead, Needham, which had been sold to Chan- cellor Taylor, and completing his legal studies under the direction of that able jurist, young Strong came back to Georgia, and at January Term, 1808, of Wilkes Superior Court, he obtained licence to practise in the several courts of law and equity. Within a few months after his admission to the bar, he again returned to Virginia. During this visit he married Miss Lucy Ann Wood-
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