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 50
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(From the Southern Democrat, July 17, 1852.)
The following correspondence has been handed to us by Maj. MILLER for publication :-
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MACON, July 11, 1852.
DEAR SIR :- The Whig party of Bibb county have determined to make a rally on Thursday night in this city, and would be glad to see you pre- sent on the occasion. We feel certain that you are for Scott and Graham and the country, and against Kossuth and the Democracy.
Respectfully yours, &c.,
THOS. PINKNEY SMITH, One of the Whig Committee.
Maj. S. F. MILLER, Oglethorpe, Ga.
REPLY.
OGLETHORPE, July 13, 1852.
DEAR SIR :- I received to-day your note of 11th instant, inviting me to a Whig rally for Scott and Graham in the city of Macon.
Were I present at your gathering, I could have no sympathy with your demonstration. I might enjoy the fine speaking, but not the cause. Your standard-bearer, though covered with laurels and worthy to rank with Wellington as a military chieftain, is tainted with " higher law" associa- tions, if not propensities. As a Whig soldier in the campaigns of 1840 and 1844, sharing alternate victory and defeat under leaders who now exist only in fame, I exceedingly regret that a Whig National Convention should have ever presented a candidate for the Presidency whom I could not freely support. But I find myself in this embarrassing position in 1852.
Gen. Scott-though a native Virginian, and proud as he is brave-may have affections for CANADA incompatible with the welfare of Georgia. He has not relieved himself from the possibility by any act or declaration. I admire him as a hero,-and still must refuse to aid in clothing him with Executive powers. The Free States, as you well know, have a large ma- jority in the popular branch of Congress, and the equilibrium between the North and South has been destroyed in the Senate by the admission of California as a State. How vitally important, then, to the Slave States that we should have a President who would protect us against the uncon- stitutional legislation of a reckless majority in Congress, which may at any time proclaim, in solemn form, that the higher law forbids "man to sell his brother-man" !
The Whig party of the North has been absorbed by the Abolitionists and Free-Soilers : I cannot recognise such companions : nor am I willing to vote for Gen. Pierce, the Democratic nominee, though of the two can- didates in the field I regard his claim on the confidence of the South as the most respectable. I shall stand aloof, as at present inclined, folding my arms in the contest, with nothing to rally upon but the Compromise as expounded by the Georgia platform. I think the Whigs of the South can preserve their consistency and honor by remaining neutral; or, if they must take sides, let them unite on Gen. Pierce, and thus prevent Gen. Scott from receiving the electoral vote of a solitary Slave State,-a just rebuke for his condescension to the enemies of the South.
Thankful for the civility of your invitation, and trusting that old friend- ships will not be disturbed by this conflict of opinion between brother Whigs,
I remain, yours, sincerely,
STEPHEN F. MILLER.
Gen. THOS. PINKNEY SMITH.
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LETTER TO JOHN LIVINGSTON, ESQ.
IX .- LETTER TO JOHN LIVINGSTON, ESQ., ON "EMINENT AMERICANS." (From the Columbus Enquirer, February 7, 1854.)
TO THE EDITORS OF THE COLUMBUS ENQUIRER.
GENTLEMEN :- For two or three years past the country has been flooded with printed circulars, lithographed letters, and artful pros- pectuses from 157 Broadway, New York, inflicting on the legal profession several volumes of trash. Even this could have been submitted to, had the author kept within the bounds of common propriety; but when he made it a regular business to approach men on the blind side, and filch their money under pretence of establishing their fame, and when he opened his door to all sorts of company on payment of the admission-fee, and then labelled them "EMINENT AMERICANS," I am not disposed to sanction the outrage by further silence.
Whatever may be his ideas of character or the qualities necessary to exalt a man in public estimation is a matter entirely with himself : still, as he claims to influence public opinion by his labors, I protest against the new doctrine of measuring out fame on the principle of money. If his agrarian system shall domineer over the intellect and virtue of men, there will be a melancholy falling off in the requisites hitherto considered as the passport to public honors. For the sake of my country, of public morals, of the large number of my fellow-men who toil patiently for unsolicited though just rewards,-who despise reputation not fairly won,- I venture to unmask the Broadway " Barnum."
I herewith enclose a communication, which explains itself, and respect- fully ask you to publish it in the Enquirer.
Yours, &c.,
-, GEORGIA, January 2, 1854.
SIR :- The January No. for 1854 of your Monthly Law Magazine has been received through the mail. As I did not order and am not inclined to subscribe for the work, I have enclosed you twenty-five cents to pay for the specimen, as you required.
You have labored diligently for the legal profession, and have opened a new era in fame itself. In the early part of 1852, you applied to gentle- men for memoirs and likenesses to appear in a work embracing about SIXTY of the most distinguished jurists in the United States. A letter of this kind was shown me by the judge to whom it was addressed, he desiring my advice as to what answer he should give, and also frankly confessing that he was not worthy of the honor you proposed to do him. As I had enjoyed his friendship a long time, and knew his manly character, I appealed to him, for the sake of the young men of the country, to let his struggles be known, and to place your letter and the subject of it in my charge. Within thirty days you were in possession of the memoir and a daguerreotype, as you requested. In a couple of months thereafter he exhibited to me another letter from you, requiring a deposit of one hun- dred and ten dollars before the likeness could appear,-you stating that only a few men, such as public benefactors, were excused from paying the engraver and the other expenses attending five thousand copies of the likeness to accompany the edition of that size. I was not a little mortified at your bad taste in sending the judge the proof-sheets of his memoir, as I felt embarrassed at his seeing it in advance of the volume. At my
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request he complied with your demand, and thus, indelicate as he con- sidered the act, bought his niche in your temple of " Eminent American Lawyers." This memoir and likeness may be seen in your "Portraits and Memoirs of Eminent Americans," vol. ii. p. 747.
This operation is intelligible enough. The judge was drawn into select company, as he imagined; of the twenty-five thousand members of the bar, the volume was to include but sixty of the most distinguished. The honor was gratifying. In a few months, however, the judge found him- self among a perfect rabble of great men : anybody and everybody who was able and willing to pay one hundred dollars for the privilege obtained a place in your work. After gathering up a regiment, in all varieties of uniform, your monthly numbers were then purged of all trashy characters who, from inability or self-respect, did not check on New York for one hundred dollars, payable to your order. And then came forth two splendid pictorial volumes, the richest ever before published, containing one hun- dred and four original portraits, from the United States Supreme Court down through every class of the male population to the village lawyer, the petty bank-agent, the beardless doctor, the frisky politician, the bom- bastic scribbler for magazines, the miniature hero, the county justice, the factory proprietor, the railroad-president, the cashier of a little bank,- some embryo statesman, merchant, farmer, mechanic, &c. &c.,-all figured in your pages as the very pith and soul of greatness !
Now, sir, I admire excellence in all the pursuits of life, and as readily yield homage to a skilful architect as to a Governor or the President. You have explored new mines, and are entitled to praise for producing from neglected and unknown quarries heavy loads of reputation and gold, which, but for your ingenious labors, your peculiar skill, might have slumbered forever, wholly lost to the world as a circulating-medium. For, believe me, you have not only secured the gold to yourself, but you have thrown into circulation names, ability, worth, virtue, courage, and other graces of character so much of the Barnum type-so gotten up with the genuine museum variety, the Tom Thumb squint, and the menageric classification-that you have gained the significant yet well-deserved title of "Lawyer Barnum." In awarding you this pre-eminence, I bestow honor far surpassing that which your "Eminent Americans" enjoy by reason of their being hatched or decorated from your nest of " Barnum" feathers and fustian. Allow me to say, with kindness and regret, that your grouping of characters, your men of note, the master-spirits of the age, those who give tone to society and shed lustre on the Republic,- your work, with all this merit, has been called a "Pantheon of vile mediocrity." Whether the facts authorize the epithet, I pretend not to decide.
One consequence has followed. Before your day-before you hung out your " Barnum" flag-rich blockheads, or men of the hundred-dollar stripe, found it impracticable to have themselves engraved and set forth in a book as " distinguished." This class are largely indebted to you for removing the obstacles which hindered their ascent to "Fame's proud temple." The way is now clear! One hundred dollars will gain the village jurist admission to the same platform with Marshall, Pinkney, and Webster; will open the door to the veriest quack to sit familiarly with Rush, Stone, and Mott; will lift the silly declaimer on election-days to a level with Clay, Calhoun, and Atherton ; will galvanize a militia-captain into the stature of Scott and Taylor; will transform a country merchant
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into a Girard or Astor, and achieve all such magical wonders. Your letters inviting the hundred-dollar people to rally, to become great, to have their faces exhibited in your " Pantheon," their deeds recorded in your " Magazine," were scattered broadcast over the land. I have seen them in the hands of men who were perfectly astonished that you found out their names. They had never made a speech,-never wrote an article for the papers,-never displayed any information beyond that of plain, half-educated farmers. They at once inferred that you had been in cor- respondence with the tax-receiver to ascertain the largest property-holders in the county. I presume their conjectures had a good foundation. Some of them laughed downright at your mistake; and others, of less penetration, swelled up with vanity, with " dictionary-talk," with constant training for a dignified posture, a wise expression of the face, to be copied by the artist to adorn your collection of " Eminent Americans."
You have roused the spirit of the people ; you are hailed as a benefactor of the masses. Until you cut down the barriers, men of genius, of edu- cation, of true eminence and brilliant qualities,-men who had faithfully served the public as legislators, as judges, or in some other conspicuous situation, or who excelled as writers, or in deeds of arms, or in science,- could alone be admitted into the galaxy of intellect, of high renown. But you, sir, came to the rescue, and happily illustrated the declaration, made by Mr. Jefferson and the immortal signers, that "all men are created equal." Standing on this rock, you sounded the trumpet in every nook and corner of the land, from the Lakes to the Gulf, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, over mountain and valley, that one hundred dollars would show all men equal,-all "Eminent Americans." If they were too modest to write their own memoirs, or had no friend near to perform the task, just furnish you with dates, a few random facts and hints, and your pen would fix up the flaming biography. From the style, I rather think your courtesy was often taxed by your subjects. There is much of whirlwind uniformity, much of the nauseating hyperbole, the grand rhetoric, which mark your composition, whether in lithographed circulars, (supposed to be written singly to the individual,) in dedications, in arguments, or prefaces, demonstrating your claims to the patronage of the bar, or in the luminous detail of great qualities or great actions for your "Pantheon."
I pass over the irregularities,-the suspension of the "Biographies" for months together, when your subscribers were hungry for the new food, because you promised it should be choice and savory ; the transposing of the old subscription-work into a new dress, into two volumes, with the portrait-class repeated, at a charge of five dollars per volume, a few recruits being mustered in on the hundred-dollar principle : I hasten over these casualties to say that I have taken all your publications from the beginning, so far as I know,-several thousand pages ; and I have paid you for them, as your receipts will show. I prize your volumes. I often look at the pictures, and sometimes read a sketch or two. You have accom- plished much to deserve the thanks of the country; you have invented a cheap literature, a current history of cheap characters, exciting hopes in the illiterate and lazy to figure in your pages, natural as life, along with the President and his Cabinet,-one hundred dollars being the price of such companionship. I hope your books will find ready sale. The portraits alone, just for their variety,-for the noble expression of some faces and for the equivocal meaning of others,-are worth the money. You have indeed erected a "Pantheon," with entrances inscribed on VOL. II .- 27
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your title-page,-" New York," "London," "Paris,"-by which you announce that in all those cities your " Eminent Americans" are ready for exhibition to all such as may desire to see how the Puritan blood has improved, how Cavalier sprigs of the old English stock have degenerated, and how the Huguenots of France have flourished under republican insti- tutions in spite of their coats-of-arms. While the scholars and leading men of Europe are inspecting your volumes, the work of the engraver and of the pen alternately, I tremble for the character of my country abroad --- for the unfortunate classes outside the "Pantheon"-if those on exhi- bition are the "eminent" citizens, the truly great men, all the great men, or even a fair specimen.
I recognise in your miscellaneous group a few worthy of a better fate than to be immolated on your altar of gold. You have, by accident, drawn into your " Museum" men who justly rank as "eminent" in this or any other Government. Such I honor; many of your characters I respect; some I know to be good and great, and I am sorry that you have mixed them with so many of an opposite cast as to endanger their safety in the stampede for fame,-pure hundred-dollar fame,-such as you guarantee to all your clients in this branch of your practice.
With all your merit and good intentions, you have wounded the Ameri- can mind; you have emasculated ambition of its energy, and genius of its high prerogative. Greatness is humbled,-cheap, very cheap ; you have glutted the market. You have thrown so much of your fancy stocks upon 'Change all at once that dealers in the solid class have withdrawn. Your price-current quotes them all at a premium, and operators,-men forming their judgments of character,-having been deceived by your figures, will never again refer to your list for accuracy. Lopez issued his bonds to be paid when Cuba should be conquered, and did not live to redeem them. You did better. You got the full hundred dollars per share in advance, and paid subscribers in counterfeit fame,-such as good judges nail to the counter as base alloy. In fact, there is so much of this coin afloat from your mill that people begin to reject all book- quotations, all printed matter, and look elsewhere for the truth. For this unhappy effect you must answer at the bar of public opinion. Full pockets cannot bribe the jury to let you escape with the balance of your plunder.
Since your fiery coursers are pawing the air for a flight upward, there is danger of collision with less daring spirits who may prefer a voyage outside of your paper balloon. The bold eagle that hovered over our Revolutionary fields, and perched upon our capitols, up to the middle of the present century, now droops his imperial feathers in shame at the multitude of kites you have turned loose to compete with him in his own regions. To magnify your protégés, you have exhausted the pomp of language, the fertility of invention, and the zeal of applause,-all in the vain effort to turn pigmies into giants, mortals into gods. So you can have the privilege of writing out a man's character, you never ask his dimensions, but at once hang on him all sorts of toggery, of all sizes, bespangle him with phosphorescent stars, and paste up his head at an angle of forty-five degrees, and then call him a great man,-a real Gul- liver in Lilliput !
I shall not leave it to be inferred that I consider all the gentlemen whose physiognomies grace your work purchased the honor with "malice aforethought." You entrapped them. You crept up softly, and whis-
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pered. The deed was done. The engraver's bill succeeded the likeness, without previous intimation. Of course, they protected you from loss on their account, just as an ex-Governor of this State cashed a bill for one hundred and sixty dollars, several years ago, for his portrait in the Democratic Review. So you perceive that the tax you levied on your victims did not have the merit of originality. You have shown your love of economy and progress, however, by reducing the cost of engraved portraits fifty per cent., and the standard of reputation in a still greater ratio. Rampant as the Democratic Review has ever been to swell trifles into consequence, it had some respect for public opinion, some idea of decency. It was reserved for you to eclipse all your predecessors in the art of showing up men. Writers before your day looked to the interior qualities, the mind, the cultivation : you reversed the rule, and solemnly adjudged that one hundred dollars, in the absence both of mind and cul- tivation, constituted a great man. From your observatory, and with your hundred magnifying-power, you have done for your countrymen what Sir William Herschel did for astronomical science,-you swept the fields of space, and discovered planets of the first magnitude where previously no- thing had been seen. If any admirer should rank you with him as a benefactor of mankind, the deed may be done with impunity, there being no statute forbidding such madness.
I regret that Lavater died fifty years too soon. Were he living now, his facilities to interpret character would be greatly multiplied by your labors. For instance, he might take up Part I. of "Biographical Sketches of Eminent American Lawyers," published in March, 1852, and see an intelligent face belonging to the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. Then, passing to " Portraits and Memoirs of Eminent Americans," published in 1853, (vol. ii. p. 789,) he would be introduced to another member of the same tribunal, of striking resemblance. And, closing with the Law Magazine for January, 1854, his eyes would be delighted with still another justice, whose features he must have seen before. His conclusion would be-and he would so write it down for posterity-that the physiognomy best adapted to the administration of law was made up of thin lips, the nether one a little protruding, a large beefy nose, big eyes, and an oval forehead, with the hair combed over the right temple,-all illuminated by a good-natured, pouting expression. This would be Lavater's honest opinion from having seen the features of three justices of the Supreme Court, of that identical mould, in your publication. This triple device of yours is only a part of your system to cry out "Portraits ! portraits ! hundreds of portraits ! ten thousand dol- lars paid for engraving ! wonderful enterprise, deserving support ! pub- lisher will lose, unless every member of the bar takes a copy!"-when, in fact, your magnificent gallery of pictures never cost you a farthing. They were paid for by your "Eminent Americans," and still you have the face to experiment further on human infirmity !
I have been candid, yet forbearing. You have contributed to the fine arts, and deserve the special gratitude of the engravers,-as I suppose you allow them a portion of each hundred-dollar bonus. You have published, or professed to publish, a list of all the attorneys in the Union; and you have bored them all for pay,-even threatened that, if they did not remit instantly for your Register, you would omit them in the next edition,- which might prejudice their business. Some of your country brethren thought you a little despotic thus to exact tribute and alarm them out of
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their money. Some called it "swindling," others "black-mail;" all agreed that it was "Barnum" in his glory,-that you had no rival in humbug. Will you not hold in a little, for the profession to look around and consult whether or not they can dispense with your aid ?
This age is truly marvellous. Steam, telegraph, caloric-engine; all producing mighty effects, and only surpassed by your machinery for the manufacture of great men,-your engine being propelled by the magic power of one hundred dollars, and turning out Websters at every stroke of the piston! I congratulate you on the patent, and hope that no man will be base enough to infringe your right.
Your obedient servant,
JOHN LIVINGSTON, Esq.,
Counsellor-at-Law, 157 Broadway, New York.
X .- LETTERS TO A YOUNG FRIEND.
To be of service to one very dear to him, as well as to young men generally who might happen to read them, the author con- ceived the plan of writing a series of letters, addressed as above, through the Southern Democrat. The first number appeared on the 29th December, 1853, and others weekly, until No. VIII., when, owing to the removal of the press to another town, the letters were discontinued. They are here republished with the hope of doing good :-
LETTER I.
Feeling a warm interest in your welfare, and with the hope that my experience may profit you, I readily yield to your wishes by giving some hints-a sort of outline, which your judgment can fill up as necessity may require-relative to the beginning and progress of active life. My qualification for the task is nothing higher than a sincere friendship, on which you may ever rely until you shall have committed some act more culpable than seeking my poor advice,-until you shall have swerved from that rectitude which is a part of your nature, impressed by the example and teaching of your father, who now, alas ! can only speak to you from the grave. Your reverence for his memory, and your applica- tion to me, his bosom friend, for counsel at a period most critical in the life of every youth, places you in such a sacred relation to me that I shall discourse with you from time to time as if you were my son.
On the score of family you claim nothing, you fear nothing. You are truly one of the people, with no ancestral fame to boast and no dishonor to regret. With yourself alone, by the virtues of your heart, the energy of your will, and the firmness of your character, the prospect before you is to open. Luckily, your fortune is trifling and your education is sound. To-be-sure, no college ever conferred its parchment honors on you, or infused the vanity of learning into your mind by the high-sounding title of a graduate ; still, you know something of the English language,-how to speak and write it correctly, even gracefully. That is sufficient. More I could not ask for you. Certainly, if you knew Latin or Greek, I should not presume to offer my poor thoughts, lest you might despise them be-
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cause I was not also of Latin and Greek scholarship. Your literary and scientific foundation is such that you may safely aim at the highest re- wards this life can afford. I do not mean that you can at once lead off at the bar, in the pulpit, in medicine, or in the halls of instruction ; but you can build on your present stock, and work your way up, step by step, toiling in the closet and mingling in the crowd, alternately relieving your brain and extending your knowledge of men as they figure on the bustling stage of competition.
A wide field is open before you. Labor and idleness, integrity and fraud, honor and disgrace, are all soliciting the artless youth. The vices of the catalogue are especially active and enticing to gain dominion, to fetter the young man with chains of pleasure, and then, robbing him of his innocence and his happiness, to leave him nothing but the agonies of remorse,-degraded, hopeless! I know that your blood curdles at the picture,-at the idea of a blasted reputation. You are above the influ- ence, the company of base men. Shun the drunkard, the gambler, the bully, the idler, the debauchee, as you would the coil of a serpent. They are a miserable class,-many of them once honorable, but no longer to be tolerated as companions. Even if some of them are less vile than so- ciety considers them, it is dangerous to listen to their talk, their pro- fanity, their vulgar stories, their brainless ideas, their licentious merri- ment, and all the low figures of speech with which they usually embellish their vapid conversation. Take it for granted that nothing elevated, no manly resolve, no virtuous sentiment, no plan to benefit society, ever escaped them. It is a moral impossibility. When such characters happen in your way, treat them civilly, avoid giving offence by any rudeness of speech or behavior. Get away from them just as soon as propriety will admit. From my soul I pity them, and would fain restore them all to a fair condition,-to the possibilities of happiness. I know some clever young men drifting to this whirlpool who are not apprized of their danger. Oh that I could draw them back and whisper a word in their ear! I had rather hear of your funeral than of your slavery to vice. On this subject, however, your pious training and pure moral walk re- lieve me from all dread and guarantee your safety. I make the allusion merely to strengthen your principles, not to disturb your peace.
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