USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Standard history of New Orleans, Louisiana, giving a description of the natural advantages, natural history settlement, Indians, Creoles, municipal and military history, mercantile and commercial interests, banking, transportation, etc. > Part 41
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STANDARD HISTORY OF NEW ORLEANS.
FRANCOIS XAVIER MARTIN.
François Xavier Martin, one of the great jurists of the world, was born in France at Marseilles, March 17, 1762. Little is known of his parentage or his edu- cation. At the age of eighteen he emigrated to the French Colony of Martinique. Then he emigrated to Newbern, N. C., and it is said that while here he volunteered in the Continental Army in the last years of the war of the American Revolution and saw some service. At the close of the Revolutionary war he returned to New- burn, taught French, and finally became a printer. Then he published a news- paper, and in addition to his printing business and his newspaper, published some books, some novels which other people had written, and some law books which he wrote himself; "Martin's Sheriff," "Martin on Executors," and "A Revision of the Statutes of North Carolina." The printing and publishing business was now a partnership, the firm being Martin and Ogden.
In 1789, Martin having studied law, was admitted to the bar of North Caro- lina, although he seems to have still continued his old business, and, as is not unu- sual in country towns in those days and at the present, to combine the legal profession with other work.
In 1806 Mr. Martin was elected to the Legislature of North Carolina, in which he served one term.
In 1802 he had published a translation of "Pothier on Obligations," which shows that although he had practiced his profession in a State where the common law prevails, he had not neglected the study of the civil law, in which he afterwards became so distinguished.
While in North Carolina, although he had practiced with ability as a lawyer, it was as a law-writer that he had made his principal reputation. It was for this reason that in 1809 President Madison appointed him to a judgeship in the Terri- tory of Mississippi.
In Mississippi Judge Martin served for about a year, when on March 21, 1810, he was transferred to the bench of the Superior Court of the Territory of Orleans, which sat in New Orleans.
In 1812, when the Territory of Orleans was admitted into the Union as the State of Louisiana, the territorial courts ceased to exist. Judge Martin was ap- pointed the first Attorney General of Louisiana, and served in that office until Feb- ruary, 1815, when he was appointed one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the State.
Upon this bench he sat for thirty-one years. From 1846, when Judge Matthews
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died, Judge Martin was Chief Justice. In 1817 he was elected a member of the Academy of Marseilles. In 1841, he was given the degree of Doctor of Laws by Harvard College.
Besides the labor of the sessions of the court and his judicial opinions, Judge Martin was reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court, eighteen volumes of the reports bearing his name, "Martin, Old Series," and "Martin, New Series," being familiar to every Louisiana lawyer and every student of the jurisprudence of Lou- isiana.
In 1827 Judge Martin published his "History of Louisiana," which, although it labors under the disadvantage of being written in English and composed in French, is an accepted authority of high rank among scholars. No lawyer in Lou- isiana can take high rank in his profession without studying the decisions of Judge Martin, and no writer upon the history of Louisiana can do competent work with- out consulting Martin's History.
In 1846, under the constitution adopted in that year, a new Supreme Court was formed and Judge Martin was thus retired from the bench.
On the 10th of December, 1846, Judge Martin died, at the age of 84. He left a fortune of $400,000. For the last eight years of his life he had been blind. This circumstance was urged in the suit to contest his will that was brought by the State. It was claimed that a blind man could not make a valid olographic will. Un- like Tilden and other lawyers who have made their own wills, Judge Martin had known how to make his. The will was held good and his brother, Paul B. Martin, to whom his estate had been left, came into possession of it. Judge Martin had never married.
There were brilliant advocates in New Orleans in the first part of this century, yet the legal reputation of Louisiana, which is as high as that of any other State in the Union, though spread abroad by their eloquence, was founded upon the genius of Martin. Matthews and Porter and his other confreres were able men, but it was Martin who was the court. Never has there sat upon any bench in any country in the world a judge whose decisions were. more able, more clear, more authoritative. There is that brevity in them to which only a master mind in jurisprudence can at- tain. More than the decisions of any other judge, the decisions of Martin read like the Code.
JOHN RANDOLPH GRYMES.
John Randolph Grymes was named after his father, who was a Virginia tory in the time of the Revolution, and a soldier of some distinction. He was born in
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Orange County, Virginia, in 1786, and died in New Orleans on the 4th of Decem- ber, 1854. He came to New Orleans not long before the battle of New Orleans, in which he served as an aide to General Jackson, and in the dispatches of that General to Washington, the name of John Randolph Grimes received complimentary men- tion.
Colonel Grymes was counsel for Jackson in the United States bank case. He was also counsel in the Gaines case, and opposed to Daniel Webster. He was United States District Attorney, Attorney General, member of the Legislature for several terms, and a member of the State Constitutional Convention.
During his professional career he fought two duels, after the fashion of the times, although he was not a particularly quarrelsome man. He was very popular with all classes, and while it is said that his learning was not profound, he was un- doubtedly one of the ablest advocates of the early bar.
Mr. Gayarré thus describes Mr. Grymes :
"John R. Grymes claims to belong to one of the first families of Virginia, and of course is not destitute of a coat of arms. He is an elegant, distingue looking man, above the middle size, always fashionably well dressed and always systematically courteous. He brings to the bar some of the etiquette and forms observed in the saloons of refined society. He is never boisterous, loud, passionate, and rough in his tone and gesticulations. *
* * As a lawyer he has a lucid, logical mind, and speaks with the richest fluency, never being at a loss or hesitating about a word ; but that word, although presenting itself with the utmost ease and confidence, is not always the proper one. His style is far from being classical or even gram- matical, but it is effective, it is persuasive, and the meaning which it intends to convey is understood without effort even by the dullest. His pronunciation denotes at once his Virginian origin; but his voice is musical, and his easy, pleasing flow of speech leaves no time and no desire to the hearer to analyze its constructive elements.
"There is nothing of the scholar in Grymes ; his collegiate education has been imperfect ; his reading is not extensive as to legal lore or anything else. But there in infinite charm in his natural eloquence, and his powerful native intellect knows how to make the most skilful use of the materials which it gathers at random outside of any regular course of study and research. * * * He stands among the highest in his profession, and exercises great influence over judges and jurors.
"He has a decided taste for luxurious living, for horse racing, cock-fighting and card gambling. Notwithstanding the considerable fees which he
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annually receives for his services as a very able and popular member of the bar, there are few men known to be more dunned than he is. But he possesses privileges and immunities to which nobody else would aspire. * * For instance, as an example of the liberties which he takes, if dunned too actively he will give a check on any bank of which he bethinks himself at the moment, and the person who presents it becomes an object of merriment. It is looked upon as done in fun. There is not, of course, any idea of swindling, or of doing any real impropriety. It is only one of Grymes' practical jokes. He will pay in the end, as everybody knows, with any amount of interest in addition, and without questioning the rate. Such was John R. Grymes, the most careless of men about money, coining it by the bushel, and squandering it in the same way. But toward the end of his life he became more economical, honorably paid all his debts, and left to his family a com- petency when he died at a ripe old age."
ALFRED HENNEN.
Alfred Hennen, one of the most distinguished lawyers of the first part of the Nineteenth Century in Louisiana, was born at Elk Ridge, Maryland, on the 17th of October, 1786, and died in New Orleans, on the 19th of January, 1870. He was graduated from Yale and studied law and came to New Orleans in 1808. He was one of the most prominent of the Protestants in New Orleans and one of the founders of the first Presbyterian Church in the city. He accumulated the largest private library, both of law and of general literature, in the city. Besides being a profound lawyer, he was a man of wide culture, a linguist of considerable attain- ments, with a strong leaning towards the love of literature. He was professor of Constitutional Law for many years at the University of Louisiana.
Several members of the present bar received their legal education in the office of Alfred Hennen or attended his lectures at the Law School. Everybody who is now living who remembers him has a kind word for that venerable coun- sellor, for many years one of the most distinguished figures at the New Orleans bar. He was upwards of cighty when he died and had come to be regarded as the Nestor of the profession.
In his "The New Orleans Bench and Bar in 1823," Charles Gayarre thus describes Mr. Hennen: "Hennen is from New England. He is a tall, well- formed, massive man, with a handsome benevolent face, glowing with the warm tints of a florid complexion, which denotes his Northern origin. He is invariably self-possessed, and no provocation can throw him off his guard, in his fortress of cold
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and passionless reserve. Nothing can ruffle his temper, and if the attempt is made he turns it off with a good-natured laugh, which blunts the edge of his adversary's weapon. He is an erudite, but plain, dry, plodding, practical lawyer, who never aims at any fancy flight of eloquence. He has a large and well furnished library which he liberally puts at the disposal of his friends. He is laboriously industrious and always comes into court with a long string of authorities, which he uses as a lasso to throw around the neck of his opponent. He is not much addicted to urge upon the court argumentative deductions from the broad principles of jurisprudence, but prefers relying on an overwhelming avalanche of precedents and numerous decisions gathered from far and wide, in cases which he deems similar to his own. His fees amount to a large income, of which he takes thrifty care, although he lives according to the exigencies of his social position. He is a conspicuous and worthy member of the Presbyterian Church. He is abstemious in his habits, very fond of exercise on horseback and on foot, and a strict observer of the rules and prescriptions of hygiene. Like all members of the legal pro- fession from the other States of the Union, he much prefers the common to the civil law, the latter being looked upon by them as an abortive creation of the Latin mind, which they hold, of course, to be naturally inferior to the Anglo-Saxon intellect."
CHRISTIAN ROSELIUS.
Christian Roselius, said by some to have been a Swede, by other authorities to have been born near Bremen, Germany, 10th of August, 1803, came to New Orleans in 1819, at the age of 16, on the bark Jupiter as a "redemptioner," that is, he hired his services for a stated period as a consideration for his transportation, a common enough arrangement with the emigrants to Louisiana of that day. Roselius was at first a printer, and it is said that he learned French at the case, setting up French manuscript. Then he studied law and the French civil law became a passion with him. He studied law in the office of A. Davezac, and gradually rose into prominence. For a while at first he had to support himself by teaching.
In 1825, while still a printer, he started the first literary journal in Louisiana, The Halycon, which had a short-lived existence.
In 1841 Rosclius was Attorney General of the State. Not long afterwards his legal reputation had become so great that he was offered a partnership by Daniel Webster, but declined it, as he preferred to live in New Orleans.
For many years Christian Roselius was Dean of the law faculty of the
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University of Louisiana, where for twenty-three years he was professor of civil law.
In 1863 he was offered a position as Chief Justice of the Supreme Bench, but declined it, as New Orleans had been captured by the Federal army, and was held under military law and Roselius refused to serve as a judge on a bench when he would be subject to military interference.
Besides being a profound civilian Roselius became a very cultivated man in a literary sense, and collected a magnificent private library. At his large house surrounded by magnificent grounds in Carrollton, which was then just above New Orleans, but has since been absorbed into it, for many years he exercised a liberal hospitality. In his private life he was very charitable.
While not a remarkably eloquent speaker Christian Roselius was a profoundly learned lawyer, one of the ablest civilians that ever practiced at the New Orleans bar. Tradition has handed down the memory of his magnificent voice, of immense volume and great carrying power. When he spoke, it is said, it was as if there. was a lion at the bar.
Christian Roselius dicd in New Orleans on the 5th of September, 1873.
JOHN ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL.
John Archibald Campbell was born in Washington, Wilkes county, Georgia, on the 24th of June, 1811. His ancestry was of Revolutionary stock. His father had been a distinguished lawyer before him.
Judge Campbell was educated at the University of Georgia, from which he was graduated in 1826. In 1829 he was admitted to the bar by a special act of the Legislature, dispensing him from attaining his majority, as he was then only eighteen years old.
On the 22d of March, 1853, President Pierce, on account of the eminence to which he had attained in his profession, appointed him one of the associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Here he served with marked ability and distinction until 1861, when at the outbreak of the Civil War, out of sym- pathy with the Southern cause, he resigned and went to Richmond as Assistant Secretary of War in the Confederacy.
In 1856 Judge Campbell was one of the Confederate peace commissioners ap- pointed to meet Lincoln and Seward. After the war he was held as a prisoner at Fort Pulaski by the Federal authorities, but was soon discharged on parole. Then he came to New Orleans, where he practiced law with marked success and distinc- tion until his death.
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Judge Campbell will be remembered in history as a distinguished jurist, as a statesman, who did as much as any man in either section in the country in 1861 to endeavor to avert the war, and as a patriot who resigned one of the highest offices in the world, of which he had a life tenure, to serve the South.
JUDAH P. BENJAMIN.
Judah P. Benjamin-Judah Philip Benjamin his full name was-was born in 1811 at St. Croix, West Indies. His parents were English Jews, and were emigrating to America. The British fleet was blockading the entrance to the Mississippi river, the second war with Great Britain just having commeneed, and not being able to make New Orleans, their destined port, they put in at St. Croix, one of the islands of the West Indies, and here Judah P. Benjamin was born.
Part of his boyhood was passed at Wilmington, N. C. In 1825 he entered Yale. College and remained there three years, finally leaving without a degree. Next he studied law in New Orleans in a notary's office, and was admitted to the bar on the 11th of Deeember, 1832.
At first, he met with small sueeess and devoted himself to teaching, mean- while keeping up his legal studies by taking notes from the reports which he after- ward embodied in the Digest of Louisiana decisions, published by him with Slidell in 1834. This was one of the first digests of Louisiana decisions ever published, and formed the basis of the digest of Hennen, which has superseded it, and is in use in the courts of Louisiana at the present day.
Benjamin finally suceeeded in establishing himself in his profession, and had beeome a member of the firm of Slidell, Benjamin & Conrad, which had a large clientèle among the planters. In 1845 he had begun to turn his attention to politics and became a member of the Constitutional Convention of that year.
In 1847 Benjamin was retained in the cases of the Spanish land titles in California, and went to Washington on this legal business. Henceforth he had a considerable practiee, his reputation as a lawyer having become national.
In 1852 he was elected to the Senate of the United States from Louisiana and re-elected, his term continuing until, with the other Southern Senators and Repre- sentatives, he left Washington and his seat in the Senate at the outbreak of the Civil War. While serving as Senator he established a great reputation as an orator and a statesman among the giants that were in those days. So great was his reputation for ability that Northern writers have written of him in his after career as "the brains of the Confederacy."
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It was while he was in the Senate that his defense of slavery was so zealous and aggressive that Senator Wade, of Ohio, wittily referred to him as "a Hebrew with Egyptian principles." While there is no recorded reply to the witticism of Senator Wade, Benjamin never came off second best in his contests with the states- men of the North. Any one can understand this who reads his magnifi- cent farewell address to the Senate. Jefferson Davis' farewell address is cold, logical, deliberate. He even asks pardon if in the heat of debate he has un- wittingly given offense to anyone or hurt the feelings of anyone. Mississippi has called and, as the delegate that Mississippi has sent to represent her in the Senate, it is his duty to obcy the call. He goes because it is his duty to go. The eloquence is the slow and stately eloquence of Brutus. Not so with the fiery Senator from Louisiana. He admonishes, upbraids, and attacks them. It is a philippic. Like Mark Anthony over Cæsar, or Demosthenes accusing the Athenians of subserviency to Philip, or Cicero accusing Cataline, or Burke impeaching Warren Hastings, he brings his accusation against the statesmen and people of the North and charges them with high crimes and misdemeanors, with fanaticism, uncharitableness and bad faith. In his peroration he bids the assembled Senate farewell forever in the tone of an orator of the ancient days. No one who heard it and no one who reads it can ever forget the ringing words of that speech. It is one of the masterpieces of modern oratory.
When the Confederate Government was first formed Benjamin was appointed Attorney General. In August, 1861, he was transferred to be Secretary of War and then later he was made Secretary of State, remaining in the Confederate Cab- inet until the close of the war.
After the war was over he escaped off the coast of Florida to the Bahamas and took passage to England. In effecting his escape his knowledge of French gained in Louisiana was of immense service to him, as he was enabled to pass hini- self off for a Frenchman, and so elude his enemies.
Arrived in England, the country from which his parents had come, he at once entered himself as a student of law, to perfect himself in the knowledge of English law. This was on the 13th of January, 1866, and he enrolled himself at Lincoln's inn. The following summer he was graduated. For a time, as when thirty-four years before, he had begun at the Louisiana bar, he was unsuccessful. He had to resort to journalism to support himself. But he persevered, and after the appearance of his book on Sales his practice became established. Benjamin on Sales is the recognized text-book of English law on that subject. It is pro- nounced by competent authorities to be the greatest book on Sales ever written. .
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Benjamin's practice at the English bar grew and increased to an extent that was marvelous. In June, 1872, he was created Q. C. In the latter years of his practice he only accepted briefs on appeal and appeared only before the House of Lords and the privy council. It was said that at one time on his single law docket he had one-half of the appealed cases of all Great Britain.
In 1883 he retired. On the 30th of June, of that year, he was banqueted at the Inner Temple and toasted as one of the greatest lawyers that had ever been a member of the English bar. Shortly thereafter he went to Paris, where his wife and daughter were, and there on the 8th of May, 1884, he died. Without doubt Judah P. Benjamin was a great statesman and one of the greatest lawyers that ever lived. His portrait in the gallery of the Supreme Court of Louisiana shows in the dark black bearded face the stupendous intellect of the man. His work as a statesman was for a country that has been conquered; as a lawyer his memory will live in a text-book that is now a daily authority in practice and will always be one of the classics of the law.
MOREAU LISLET.
Moreau Lislet, who was a member of the commission appointed by the Legis- lature that framed the Civil Code of Louisiana, is described by Mr. Gayarre as follows :
"Moreau Lislet is a rotund Frenchman past the meridian of life. His eyes sparkle with good-natured wit under the large spectacles which bestride his small nose. Everything seems soft in him, even his bones. His flesh is tremulous, like blanc-mange or jelly, and as yielding under the touch. His hands are diminutive and plump. He does not look formidable, does he? No. Well, you had better beware of him. He is an artesian well of legal lore-deep, very deep. He is one of those two or three jurists who were entrusted by the Legislature with the work of adapting the Napoleon code to the wants and circumstances of Louisiana under her new institutions. He has no pretensions to oratory. He addresses the court or the jury in a sort of conversational, familiar way. He is always in a good humor, which is communicative. He is a very great favorite with the judges, the clerks, the sheriffs, the jurors, the members of the bar-in fact, with everybody. He is so kind, so benevolent, so amiable in all his dealings and sayings! His bonhomie is so captivating."
But Moreau Lislet, bonhomie and all, was a great advocate, as Mr. Gayarré shows concluding his description of this famous lawyer with "Ho, ho! beware of Moreau Lislet and of his bonhomie!"
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EDWARD LIVINGSTON.
Edward Livingston, of the distinguished American family of Livingstons, was the son of Robert Livingston, one of the early American statesmen, and was born in Clermont, New York, on the 26th of May, 1764. He died at Rhinebeck, N. Y., on the 23rd of May, 1836. He was graduated from Princeton in 1781, and studied law in Albany, N. Y., with John Lansing. He was admitted to the bar in January, 1785, and removed to New York City, where he had as com- petitors, Benson, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, where he held his own with these formidable rivals. In 1794 his political carcer began, in which he afterwards attained the highest distinction. He was elected to Congress, to the House of Representatives, where he served three terms, till March, 1801. In this year, he was appointed United States District Attorney in New York, and before the expiration of that year, was elected Mayor of New York City. His extreme popularity was demonstrated when he stuck to his post, during the yellow fever epidemic in New York in 1803. He took sick of the fever, and it was learned, that although his physician had prescribed Madeira wine for him, he had given away all the Madeira in his cellar to those who were more in need of it than him- self. When this became public, the people of New York sent him all the wine that he could use, and crowds daily gathered around his house to learn the con- dition of the charitable hearted mayor.
In 1804 he left New York for New Orleans. His brother Robert had just completed the negotiations for the purchase of Louisiana. He left New York because he had run deeply into debt to the United States Government, by reason of the defalcation of his business agent, who had embezzled some forty-three thou- sand dollars of the Government money. With his characteristic and impulsive sense of honor, before it could be discovered exactly how much he was indebted to the Government, Livingston confessed judgment in favor of the United States for one hundred thousand dollars.
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