USA > Maryland > Biographical sketches of distinguished Marylanders > Part 13
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General Washington died in his absence from America, In allusion to which he writes to his brother, Mr. Jona- than Pinkney .
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"The death of General Washington has ascertained how greatly he was everywhere admired. The pane- gyrics that all parties here have combined to bestow upon his character have equaled those in America."
In another letter from London, he expresses himself as follows: "I have at all times thought highly of Mr. Jefferson, and have never been backward to say so. I have never seen, or fancied I saw, in the prospective of his administration the calamities and disasters, the anti- cipation of which has filled so many with terror and dismay. I thought it certain that a change of men would follow his elevation to power -- but I did not for -. bode from it any such change of incasures as would put in hazard the public happiness. I believed, and do still believe, him to be too wise not to comprehend, and too honest not to pursue the substantial interests of the United States, which is, in fact, almost impossible to mistake, and which he has every possible motive to se- cure and promote."-From Pinkney's Life of Pinkney, page 39.
Upon his return to Annapolis, he was welcomed by expressions of public joy. These he responded to in the way most characteristic of the statesman and the gentleman. Although feeling proud of the genius that exalted him so high above most of his contemporaries, that genius was never dimmed by the darkness of in- gratitude to his fellow-man. He was truly great. He lived at a time when greatness meant more than a mere name or title, and yet not to be bought as a bauble. His greatness was striven for with the energy of life, and clasped as a prize by its possessor. His greatness was unbestowed of man, nor won by pandering to the popu- lar tastes and creeds of the day. Rather did he seek to uproot sneh systems as he deemed pernicious to the life and liberty of his beloved land.
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In 1805 he was appointed Attorney-General of the State of Maryland.
In 1806 he was sent as Envoy Extraordinary to Great Britain, from whence he returned in 1811. On his re- turn he was immediately elected a member of the State Senate, and at the end of the same year was appointed Attorney-General of the United States by President Madison. Not long after his appointment to the Attorney-Generalship an important case came up for decision in the Supreme Court. It related to In- ternational Law and the special claims of private citizens of the United States against the sovereign rights of foreign nations. In referring to the argument made by Mr. Pinkney on this occasion, Sparks says: " It was maintained by Mr. Pinkney, as Attorney-General, with an extent of learning, and a force of argument and eloquence, which raised him at once in the public esti- mation to the head of the American Bar."
Not satisfied with the might of the pen alone, his sword was drawn in defence of his country against the British invaders. In command of a company of riflemen, at- tached to the third brigade of Maryland militia, he fought and was wounded at the Battle of Bladensburg. He was sent from Baltimore to the National Congress. He resigned his seat before the expiration of his term, and accepted the appointment of Minister to Russia and especial Envoy to Naples, tendered him by President Monroe. He seemed wonderfully endowed with graces best suited to places of trust and dignity. His manner was gracious and winning; his eloquence won a more powerful charm through the musical depths of his voice. Nor did he scorn the assistance of fashion's latest modes. The perfect fit of his gloves has been com- mented upon frequently, and regarded by some staunch Republicans as a mark of effeminacy, rather than a proof
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of refined habits and elegant tastes. Upon his return to America, he resumed the practice of the law in the city of Baltimore. "He was retained in the Supreme Court, in 1819, by the Bank of the United States in maintaining its claim of exemption from State taxation." He continued his labors in the Supreme Court after his election to the United States Senate in 1820. The con- stant stress upon his nervous energies, of iron strength though they seemed, proved too great for him. His en- feebled health succumbed to an attack of illness which proved fatal. He died on the 25th day of February, - 1822.
Now, indeed, was Maryland bowed to the dust in grief ! Yet rising, she gazed with mournful pride upon the grave of her son. On her calm forehead shone the name of Pinkney, prelustrous amid the brilliant stars that make her glorious diadem !
Of him that wise man, Roger Brooke Taney, has said : "I have heard almost all the great advocates of the United States, both of the past and present genera- tion, but I have seen none equal to Pinkney. He was a profound lawyer in every department of the science, as well as a powerful and eloquent debater."
His death was announced in the House of Representa- tives by the famous John Randolph, of Virginia, who said : "I rise to announce to the House the not unlooked- for death of a man who filled the first place in the pub- lic estimation, in the first profession in that estimation, in this or any other country. We have been talking of General Jackson, and a greater than he is not here, but gone forever. I allude, sir, to the boast of Maryland, and the pride of the United States-the pride of us all, but more particularly the pride and ornament of the profession of which you, Mr. Speaker, (Mr. Philip P. Barbour,) are a member and an eminent one."
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Judge Story said that the name of Pinkney was "one of the proudest names in the annals of the American Bar. His language is most ele- gant, correct, select and impressive ; his delivery fluent, and continuous ; his precision the most exact and forcible that you can imagine. He pos- sesses beyond any man I ever saw the power of elegant and illustrative amplification. . His style was ornate in the highest degree. Indeed, Chief Justice Marshall said of Mr. Pinkney that he never knew his equal as a reasoner-so clear and luminous was his method of argumentation. One who, while abroad honored his country by an unequaled display of diplomatic service, and on his return illumined the halls of justice with an eloquence of argument and depth of learned research that have not been exceeded in our own age."
William Pinkney, like all successful great men, had his bitter enemies and his false accusers; yet even they who willingly defamed him while living, aided in doing honor to the " dead Lion." The hatred born of that malignant fiend, Jealousy, disappeared when he, the subject of it, was no longer present in their path to dispute the right of way to the highest success. By the illness of a little more than one week, the life of this wonderful man was ended. On the night of the 25th of February, 1822, he died, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, just when the world was echoing, and re- echoing, with his oft-repeated name.
The last book that he is said to have read was the far-famed "Pirate" of Sir Walter Scott; the love of the poetic and romantic did not desert him in his arduous labors. The Beautiful seemed over glowing in gold and rose-color upon his vivid word-pictures. The most rugged Truth he adorned with the graceful mantle
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of Poetry, which served to enhance the charms without concealing the grand beauty of that stern Monitress.
Mr. Benton, in his " Thirty Years' View," says : " Mr. Pinkney was kind and affable in his temper, free from every taint of envy or jealousy, conscious of his powers and relying upon them alone for success. He was a model, as I have already said, and it will bear repeti- tion, to all young men in his habits of study and ap- plication, and at more than fifty years of age was still a severe student. In politics he classed democratically, and was one of the few of our eminent public men who never seemed to think of the presidency. Oratory was his glory, the Law his profession, the Bar his theatre ; and his service in Congress was only a brief episode, dazzling each House, for he was a momentary member of each, with a single and splendid speech."
Mr. Tyler, in his Memoir of Chief Justice Taney, writes this: "William Pinkney, the great lawyer, was then a Senator from Maryland, in the Congress of the United States, and stood forth as the champion of the equality and sovereignty of a State when admitted into the Union. Rufus King, a Senator from New York, a man of great ability and high honor, was the leader of the party which wished to introduce States into the Union manacled by Federal authority. Such was the marvelous power of Pinkney's vindication of the right of States to be admitted, if admitted at all, into the Union on no other conditions than those imposed by the Constitution of the United States, that the enemies of State sovereignty quailed under his mighty blows. Rufus King, while yet subdued by Pinkney's Titanic strength, remarked to John Nelson, 'that the speech of Pinkney had enlarged his admiration of the capacity of the human mind.'"
Again, the author of Taney's Memoir says: " When I
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was a student of law, Judge John Scott, an eminent lawyer of Virginia, told me that soon after the death of Mr. Pinkney, Chief Justice Marshall remarked to 'him at Richmond, in the presence of that eminent lawyer. Walter Jones, that Mr. Pinkney was the greatest man he had ever seen in a Court of Justice ;' and that Mr. Jones responded, 'yes, no such man has ever appeared in any country more than once in a century.'"
A writer in The Literary World, of 1850, says: "To use the language of Mr. Kennedy, (author of Horse Shoe Robinson), he asked and gave no quarter. To the younger members of the profession he was a warm and steadfast friend; to all just and fair. If, in the ardent struggle for supremacy with the most renowned of his contemporaries, he neither asked nor gave quarter, it is no less true that he sought an honorable victory, and labored to build up for himself a solid granite character-a reputation-the reward of real ac- quirements and profound attainments."
The following proof of Mr. Pinkney's kind feelings toward young lawyers is culled from among many of a like nature: Joseph Palmer, a young lawyer of Mary- land, and in later years a well-known practitioner at the Bar, was from illness prevented from attending court. The circumstance was told to Mr. Pinkney by the phy- sieian of Mr. Palmer. Pinkney went at once to the young man and asked him for his brief-argued his case for him, and, as a matter of course, won it.
Much has been written and said on the subject of Wirt's unjust feeling and the expression of it, with re- gard to William Pinkney, his contemporary and pro- fessional adversary. The following well-authenticated story is, however, more agreeable to record than the petty animosities which are always foreign to truly great natures. Not long after the death of Mr. Pink-
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ney, Mr. Ross, a member of the Maryland Bar, was returning from Annapolis, where he had attended the Court of Appeals. Upon the same steamboat with him was Mr. William Wirt. They engaged in conver- sation. Mr. Ross asked Mr. Wirt his opinion of the relative abilities of Mr. Webster and Mr. Pinkney as lawyers. Mr. Wirt said : "You might as well compare a farthing candle to the Sun, as to compare Mr. Webster as a lawyer to Mr. Pinkney. Mr. Pinkney had an oceanic mind; and, sir, he had made himself so complete a master of International, Maritime, Consti- tutional and Municipal Law, that he could count them upon his ten fingers. He was the most thoroughly equipped lawyer I have ever met in the Courts."
EXTRACTS FROM PINKNEY'S SPEECH ON THE MISSOURI QUESTION.
As I am not a very frequent speaker in this As- sembly, and have shown a desire, I trust, rather to listen to the wisdom of others than to lay claim to superior knowledge by undertaking to advise, even when advice, by being seasonable in point of time, might have some chance of being profitable, you will perhaps bear with me if I venture to trouble you once more on that eternal subject which has lingered here until all its natural interest is exhausted, and every topic connected with it is literally worn to tatters. I shall, I assure, sir, speak with laudable brevity-not merely on account of the feeble state of my health, and from some reverence for the laws of good taste which forbid me to speak otherwise, but also from a sense of justice to those who honor me with their attention. My single purpose, as I suggested yesterday, is to sub- ject to a friendly yet close examination some portions of a speech, imposing certainly on account of the dis-
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tinguished quarter from whence it came-not very imposing (if I may say so, without departing from that aespect which I sincerely feel and intend to manifest for eminent abilities and long experience) for any other reason.
I believe, Mr. President, that I am about as likely to retract an opinion which I have formed as any member of this body, who, being a lover of truth, inquires after it with diligence before he imagines that he has found it; but I suspect that we are all of us so constituted as that neither argument nor declamation, leveled against recorded and published decision, can easily discover a practicable avenue through which it may hope to reach either our heads or our hearts. I mention this lest it may excite surprise, when I take the liberty to add, that the speech of the honorable gentleman from New York, upon the great subject with which it was princi- pally occupied, has left me as great an infidel as it found me. It is possible, indeed, that if I had had the good fortune to hear that speech at an earlier stage of . this debate, when all was fresh and new, although I feel confident that the analysis which it contained of the Constitution, illustrated as it was by historical anecdote rather than by reasoning, it would have been just as un- satisfactory to me then as now. I might not have been altogether unmoved by those warnings of approaching evil which it seemed to intimate, especially when taken in connection with the observations of the same honor- able gentleman on a preceding day, 'that delays in disposing of this subject in the manner he desires are dangerous, and that we stand on slippery ground.' I must be permitted, however (speaking only for myself ), to say, that the hour of dismay is passed. I have heard the tones of the larum bell on all sides, until they have become familiar to my ear, and have lost their power to appal, if, indeed, they ever possessed it.
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Notwithstanding occasional appearances of rather an unfavorable description, I have long since persuaded myself that the Missouri Question, as it is called, might be laid to rest, with innocence and safety, by some con- ciliatory compromise at least, by which, as is our duty, we might reconcile the extremes of conflicting views and feelings, without any sacrifice of constitutional principle ; and in any event that the Union would easily and triumphantly emerge from those portentous clouds with which this controversy is supposed to have en- vironed it. I confess to you, nevertheless, that some of the principles announced by the honorable gentleman from New York,* with an explicitness that reflected the highest credit on his candor, did, when they were first presented, startle me not a little. They were not, per- haps, entirely new. Perhaps I had seen them before in some shadowy and doubtful shape,
" If shape it might be called, that shape bad none Distinguishable in member, joint or limb."
But in the honorable gentleman's speech they were shadowy and doubtful no longer. He exhibited them in forms so boldly and accurately defined, with contours so distinctly traced, with features so pronounced and striking, that I was unconscious for a moment that they might be old acquaintances. I received them as novi hospites within these walls, and gazed upon them with astonishment and alarm. I have recovered, however, thank God, from this paroxysmn of terror, although not from that of astonishment. I have sought and found tranquility and courage in my former consolatory faith. My reliance is that these principles will obtain no gen- eral currency ; for, if they should. it requires no gloomy imagination to sadden the perspective of the future.
*Mr. King.
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My reliance is upon the unsophisticated good sense and noble spirit of the American people.
I have what I may be allowed to call a proud and patriotic trust, that they will give countenance to no principles which, if followed out to their obvious conse- quences, will not only shake the good fabric of the Union to its foundations, but reduce it to a melancholy ruin. The people of this country, if I do not wholly mistake their character, are wise as well as virtuous. They know the value of that federal association which is to them the single pledge and guarantee of power and peace. Their warm and pious affections will cling to it as to their only hope of prosperity and happiness, in defiance of pernicious abstractions, by whomsoever in- culcated, or howsoever seductive and alluring in their aspect.
Sir, it is not an occasion like this, although connected, as contrary to all reasonable expectation it has been, with fearful and disorganizing theories, which would make our estimates, whether fanciful or sound, of natural law, the measure of civil rights and political sovereignty in the social state, that can harm the Union. It must, indeed, be a mighty storm that can push from its moorings this sacred ark of the common safety. It is not every trifling breeze, however it may be made to sob and howl in imitation of the tempest, by the auxiliary breath of the ambitious, the timid, or the discontented, that can drive this gallant vessel, freighted with every- thing that is dear to an American bosom, upon the rocks, or lay it a sheer hulk upon the ocean. I may, perhaps, mistake the flattering suggestions of Hope (the greatest of all flatterers, as we are told) for the conclusions of sober reason. Yet it is a pleasing error, if it be an error, and no man shall take it from me. I will con- tinue to cherish the belief, in defiance of the public
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patronage given by the honorable gentleman from New York, with more than his ordinary zeal and solemnity, to deadly speculations, which, invoking the name of God to aid their faculties for mischief, strike at all es- tablishments, that the union of these States is formed to bear up against far greater shocks than through all vicissitudes it is ever likely to encounter. I will con- tinue to cherish the belief that, although like all other human institutions it may for a season be disturbed, or suffer momentary eclipse by the transit across its disk of some malignant planet, it possesses a recuperative force, a redeeming energy in the hearts of the people, that will soon restore it to its wonted calm, and give it back its accustomed splendor. On such a subject I will discard all hysterical apprehensions-I will deal in no sinister auguries-I will indulge in no hypochondriacal forebodings.
I will look forward to the future with gay and cheer- ful hope; and will make the prospect smile, in fancy at least, until overwhelming reality sball render it no longer possible. I have said thus much, sir, in order that I may be understood as meeting the constitutional ques- tion as a mere question of interpretation, and as disdain- ing to press into the service of my argument upon it, prophetic fears of any sort, however they may be coun- tenanced by an avowal, formidable by reason of the high reputation of the individual by whom it has been haz- arded, of sentiments the most distinctive, which, if not borrowed from, are identical with, the worst visions of the political doctrines of France, when all the elements of discord and misrule were let loose upon that devoted nation. I mean "the infinite perfectibility of man and his institutions," and the resolution of everything into a state of nature. I have another motive which, at the risk of being misconstrued, I will declare without re-
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serve. With my convictions, and with my feelings, I never will consent to hold confederated America bound together by a silken cord, which any instrument of mis- chief may sever, to the view of monarchical foreigners, who look with a jealous eye upon that glorious experi- ment which is now in progress amongst us in favor of republican freedom. Let them make such prophesies as they will, and nourish such feelings as they may, I will not contribute to the fulfillment of the former, nor minister to the gratification of the latter. Sir, it was but the other day that we were forbidden (properly for- bidden, I am sure, for the prohibition came from you) to assume that there existed any intention to impose a prospective restraint on the domestic legislation of Mis- souri-a restraint to act upon it contemporaneously with its origin as a state, and to continue adhesive to it through all the stages of its political existence. We are now, however, permitted to know that it is deter- mined, by a sort of political surgery, to amputate one of the limbs of its local sovereignty, and thus mangled and disparaged, and thus only, to receive it into the bosom of the Constitution. It is now. avowed that, while Maine is to be ushered into the Union with every possible demonstration of studious reverence on our part, and on hers with colors flying, and all the other graceful accompaniments of honorable triumph, this ill-conditioned upstart of the West, this obscure found- ling of a wilderness that was but yesterday the hunting- ground of the savage, is to find her way into the Amer -. ican family as she can, with an humiliated badge of remediless inferiority patched upon her garments, with the mark of recent qualified manumission upon her, or ratner with a brand upon her forehead to tell the story of her territorial vassalage, and to perpetuate the men- ory of her evil propensities. It is now avowed that
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while the robust district of Maine is to be seated by the side of her truly respectable parent, co-ordinate in au- thority and honor, and is to be dandled into power and dignity, of which she does not stand in need, but which undoubtedly she deserves, the more infantine and feeble Missouri is to be repelled with harshness, and forbidden to come at all, unless with the iron collar of servitude about her neck, instead of the civic crown of republican freedom upon her brow, and is to be doomed forever to leading strings, unless she will exchange those leading strings for shackles.
I am told that you have the power to establish this odious and revolting distinction, and I am referred for the proofs of that power to various parts of the Consti- tution, but principally to that part of it which author- izes the admission of new states into the Union. I am myself of opinion that it is in that part only that the advocates for this restriction can, with any hope of suc- cess, apply for a license to impose it ; and that the efforts which have been made to find it in other portions of that instrument are too desperate to require to be en- countered. I shall, however, examine those other por- tions before I have done, lest it should be supposed by those who have relied upon them, that I omit to answer what I believe to be unanswerable. The clause of the Constitution which relates to the admission of new states is in these words: "The Congress may admit new states into this Union," etc., and the advocates for restriction maintain that the use of the word "may" imports dis- cretion to admit or to reject ; and that in this discretion is wrapped up another-that of prescribing the terms and conditions of admission in case you are willing to admit: Cujus est dare ejus est disponere. I will not, for the present, inquire whether this involved discretion to dictate the terms of admission belongs to you or not
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It is fit that I should first look to the nature and extent of it.
I think I may assume that if such a power be any- thing but nominal, it is much more than adequate to the present object ; that it is a power of vast expansion, to which human sagacity can assign no reasonable lim- its; that it is a capacious reservoir of authority, from which you may take, in all time to come, as occasion may serve, the means of oppression as well as of bene- faction. I know that it professes at this moment to be the chosen instrument of protecting mercy, and would win upon us by its benignant smiles ; but I know, too, it can frown and play the tyrant, if it be so disposed. Notwithstanding the softness which it now assumes, and the care with which it conceals its giant proportions beneath the deceitful drapery of sentiment, when it next appears before you, it may show itself with a sterner countenance and in more awful dimensions. It is, to speak the truth, sir, a power of colossal size-if, indeed, it be not an abuse of language to call it by the gentle name of a power. Sir, it is a wilderness of pow- ers, of which Fancy, in her happiest n.ood, is unable to perceive the far-distant and shadowy boundary. Armed with such a power, with religion in one hand and phi- lanthropy in the other, and followed with a goodly train of public and private virtues, you may achieve more conquests over sovereignties not your own, than falls to the common lot of even uncommon ambition. By the aid of such a power, skilfully employed, you may " bridge your way" over the Hellespont that separates State legislature from that of Congress ; and you may do so for pretty much the same purpose with which Xerxes once bridged his way across the Hellespont that separates Asia from Europe. He did so, in the language of Milton, " the liberties of Greece to yoke."
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