History of Baltimore, Maryland, from its founding as a town to the current year, 1729-1898, including its early settlement and development; a description of its historic and interesting localities; political, military, civil, and religious statistcs; biographies of representative citizens, etc., etc, Part 30

Author: Shepherd, Henry Elliott, 1844-1929, ed. 4n
Publication date: 1898
Publisher: [Uniontown? Pa.] S.B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1344

USA > Maryland > Baltimore County > Baltimore City > History of Baltimore, Maryland, from its founding as a town to the current year, 1729-1898, including its early settlement and development; a description of its historic and interesting localities; political, military, civil, and religious statistcs; biographies of representative citizens, etc., etc > Part 30

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Alcacus Hooper: "You have before you one of the candidates for the office of Mayor. The question that the citizens of Baltimore have to pass on at the coming election is a very simple one, and that is, 'Are the affairs of this city being admin- istered in a way that you have a right to demand?' 'Are the results satisfactory, such as we have a right to expect?' If the re- sults from the recent municipal investiga- tion which was suggested by the Democrats are symptoms of the disease, then the con- dition of the body politic is very desperate. The city commissioners' department has been shown to have been so managed that no one can be found to defend it. Are the city's interests longer to be continued in the hands of those who have not been faithful to their trusts in the past? It is time, I think, to redeem ourselves from misrule."

John V. L. Findlay: "It was due to Mr. Cleveland that the country is not to-day upon a silver basis. We owe honor to Mr. Cleveland, who stood like a rock when, if that trickster who mouses in the Capitol had had his way, the country would have been placed in a sad plight for years to come." Mr. Findlay closed by saying that Mr. Lowndes would redeem the pledges made by him, and that "now is the ac- cepted time, and now the day of the salva- tion of the people."

Friday, October 25, a meeting of the In- dependent Democrats, in favor of the elec- tion of the Republican State and city ticket, took place. Mr. Joseph Packard presided. In his remarks he said: "From ordinary robberies our police authorities swear to ·protect us; why should not election thieves be worse than criminals, and dealt with in the same way? The newspapers have ex-

posed their haunts and the names on which they will try to vote are known. The Re- form League in the tenure of their existence has brought about the prosecution of a number of election criminals; about a dozen of these were actually convicted, though they were afterward pardoned and a num- ber of others escaped punishment by reason of the change in the law pending their trial."

David L. Bartlett: "The two great par- ties into which the country is divided con- nived at fraudulent registration and fraudu- lent voting, and a party in our city which has held what they felt to be an assured majority for a term of years has been ruled by a few designing men."

William Keyser: "The Democratic ma- chine in this city is a very powerful agency for the control of elections; it is the out- come of long years of crime and experience; its present managers are men well skilled in its use and thoroughly competent to em- ploy it to the best advantage to promote their own interest. The defense of the people against the machines rests ex- clusively in the ballot-box."

Charles Marshall: "If it were but the abstract question of fair elections, the vote would be unanimous. The question is, what can be done to procure them? Is there a necessity to promote this end? Surely there is. Are not all the signs pat- ent before us? First, were the people ex- cluded from witnessing the simple process of registration, said to be concealed and done in a corner, under the advice of coun- sel? Why did they drive out the watchers? What honest purpose could that serve? Why do men love darkness rather than light? Because their deeds are evil."

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Roger W. Cull: "Through the machin- ations of the Democratic party managers, the nomination instead of being equivalent to an election, is equivalent to fraud."

Mr. Edgar H. Gans: "Fair elections is not a party question; it was one that massed good people on one side and scoundrels on the other; the election frauds were worse than most other kinds of villainies. The Police Board should not only say there should be fair elections, but they should do something in favor of them. Give me the authority and the aid of six police offi- cers whom I could name, and I can prevent all tenement house election frauds."

On the evening of the same day the Re- publicans held a meeting in the Front Street Theatre.

Lloyd Lowndes: "There is a great battle going on in Maryland, which the entire country is watching to-night. It is not a fight of Republicanism against Democracy, but of good government against bad gov- ernment."

A man in the gallery persistently shouted to the speaker to "Shut up!" before he was ejected. Mr. Lowndes exclaimed: "We don't propose to be interrupted here to- night by any ruffians of the Democratic party. We propose to win this fight of good government, honest registration and an honest ballot, and an honest count."

George L. Wellington: "The Republi- can party is not fighting for a partisan gov- ernment, not for spoils, but to advance the political and material interests of Maryland. Democratic ring rule in Maryland has kept down the people in this State for twenty- five years, robbed them of their right of suffrage and their right to a fair election; there has not been a fair election in Balti-

more since 1875. To have a fair election, we must not bring in Greenmount ceme- tery. We must not register men from an orphan asylum or one hundred and thirty- two men from a house that has but one bed."

Alcacus Hooper: "I believe that all now understand that the present semblance of government, under city and State, is not a popular form of government. Democrats and Republicans are not allied in this cam- paign simply to put the Republican party in power, but for a change in the methods of government. The stockholders of this cor- poration want to know if the ledgers in the City Hall contain an accurate statement of the assets of the city. We also want to know what are the needs of the city. One of the speakers has said that I am one of the stubbornest men in Baltimore. Unless you put a stubborn man in the City Hall, men outside of it will control him."

On Saturday evening, November 2nd, at an Independent Democrat meeting, at Mu- sic Hall, Gov. Whyte, during his speech, said: "Believing as we do that there is no hope of the regeneration of our party through the ordinary channels of primary elections while the party machinery is in the hands of men in whose vocabulary there is no such word as fair play, what are we to do but to follow the example of Tilden and beat them at the polls.

"In a public speech six years ago, when I held the office of Attorney General, I said: 'There comes a time, though not often, when revolution within the ranks of party is the path of duty, and I am ready to tread it whenever I deem it necessary.' This is the day, this is the hour. I oppose the Democratic State ticket, because it was the

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offspring of a recreant party representa- tive, and is not the free choice of the party of the people."

Joseph S. Henisler: "I am a Democrat, and every man within sound of my voice knows it, but in order to rid our party of the men who defile the party honor, I am here to advise every honest Democrat to vote the Republican ticket."

At the election on Tuesday, November 5th, the Republican State and city ticket was elected.

For Governor-Lowndes, Republican, had 55,324, and Hurst, Democrat, 43,308; for Mayor-Hooper, Republican, 53,099, and Williams, Democrat, 45,192.

The Republicans elected the entire dele-

gation from Baltimore to the Legislature, First and Second Branches of the City Council, the Judges of the Orphan's Court, the State's Attorney, the Sheriff and Clerk of the Superior Court and Circuit Court No. 2 of the city.

The revolution was complete and new men of a new party were charged with the responsibilities of government. How they have kept their pledges and maintained plighted faith with the people, it is at this early stage not necessary to state. As soon as the political developments of the present attain the dignity of history, the appropriate and effective narrator and chronicler of such transactions will as- suredly appear.

CHAPTER IX.

A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF BALTIMORE CITY ..

By W. T. BRANTLY.

The bar of Baltimore City from its earli- est period down to the present time has been justly celebrated for the learning, abil- ity and eloquence of its great leaders. Many of the most eminent lawyers this country has produced, men of national rep- utation, have been practitioners at that bar. It is not in any degree an exaggeration to say that this bar was always the equal and often the superior of that of any other city.

The history of the bar is the history of the men who shed lustre upon it. These leaders were, it is true, first, but it cannot be said that the rest, their less famous breth- ren, did not occupy a distinctive and hon- orable position. The leaders were only the highest peaks of a lofty mountain range.

The great Maryland lawyer before and during the revolutionary period was Daniel Dulany. Many of his opinions upon cases submitted to him are reported in the early . volumes of the Maryland reports and were, for a long time afterwards, referred to as authorities of the first order. He did not become a resident of Baltimore until late in life and only a few years before his death in 1797.

The next commanding figure in our legal history is that of Luther Martin. When Chief Justice Taney began the study of law in 1796, he frequently attended the Courts and studied lawyers as well as law. In the

autobiographical sketch prefixed to his life by Tyler, Judge Taney says, referring to the period mentioned, that Martin was then "the acknowledged and undisputed head of the profession in Maryland. He was so in the eye of the public, and he was so admitted by the bar. Nobody disputed it with him until Mr. Pinkney returned from Europe. * Mr. Martin's habits, however, had at that time become bad. He often appeared in Court evidently intoxicated, and, per- haps, was not free from the influence of stimulants when I first heard him. His dress was a compound of the fine and the coarse and appeared never to have felt the brush. He wore ruffles at the wrists, richly edged with lace-although every other per- son had long before abandoned them-and these ruffles, conspicuously broad, were dabbled and soiled and showed that they had not been changed for a day or more. His voice was not musical and, when much excited, it cracked. *

* He was an ac- complished scholar and wrote with classical correctness and great strength, but, in his speech, he seemed to delight in vulgarisms which were never heard except among the colored servants and the ignorant and un- educated whites, but he was a pro- found lawyer. He never missed the strong points of his case, and, although much might generally have been better omitted,

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everybody who listened to him would agree that nothing could be added, but, unfortu- nately for him, he was not always listened to. He introduced so much extraneous matter, or dwelt so long on unimportant points, that the attention was apt to be fatigued and withdrawn and the logic and force of his argument lost upon the Court and jury. But these very defects arose, in some measure, from the fullness of his legal knowledge. He had an iron memory and forgot nothing that he had read, and he had read a great deal on every branch of the law, and took pleasure in showing it when his case did not require it."

The first great State trial in America was the impeachment of Judge Chase, of the Supreme Court, in 1804, which was tried before the Senate, presided over by Aaron Burr. The prosecution or impeachment was led by John Randolph, of Roanoke, while Martin led for the defense. In Henry Adams' Life of Randolph, he says: "Most formidable of American advocates was the rollicking, witty, audacious Attorney Gen- eral of Maryland; boon companion of Chase and of the whole bar; drunken, generous, slovenly, grand; bull-dog of Federalism, as Mr. Jefferson called him, shouting with a school-boy's fun at the idea of tearing Ran- dolph's indictment to pieces and teaching the Virginia Democrats some law-the no- torious reprobate, genius, Luther Martin." And again, in the same work, "Nothing can be finer in its way than Martin's famous speech. Its rugged and sustained force; its strong humor, audacity and dexterity; its even flow and simple choice of language, free from rhetoric and affectations ; its close and compulsive grip of the law; its good natured contempt for the obstacles put in

its way-all these signs of elemental vigor were like the forces of nature, simple, direct, fresh as winds and ocean."

Martin was born in New Jersey in 1744 and was graduated at Princeton with the highest honors of his class in 1763. He came in the same year to Queen Anne's county, Maryland, where he taught school while studying law. He was admitted to the bar in 1771 and took up his residence in Somerset county. He quickly obtained a lucrative practice in both the Maryland and Virginia counties of the Eastern Shore. In 1778 he was appointed Attorney Gen- eral of the State and moved to Baltimore, which continued to be his principal place of residence until shortly before his death. This office of Attorney General he held un- interruptedly from 1778 to 1805, when he resigned. In 1813 he was Chief Justice of the Court of Oyer and Terminer of Balti- more county, but held this position for only some three years. In February, 1818, he was reappointed Attorney General. Mar- tin was a member of the Convention of 1787 which framed the Constitution of the United States, but he refused to sign that instrument and published a letter to the Maryland Legislature, in which he strongly advocated its rejection. Subsequently, however, he became an ardent Federalist.

The second great State trial in American history was that of Aaron Burr for high treason at Richmond, in 1807. In this Martin again led for the defense in a mas- terly manner and was again successful. Martin's private life was stained by the vice of drunkenness, which, in his later years, became a fixed habit. Not the least extra- ordinary thing about this extraordinary man is that he should have done the prodig-

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ious amount of work and achieved the emi- nence that he did in spite of such a fatal defect.

Another defect in his character was his reckless extravagance and imprudence, which, however, was accompanied in his case, as it often is, by much generosity and kindness of heart. He himself says that he had never been an economist of anything but time. Although he had an income which he said exceeded twelve thousand dollars a year, yet he was always in debt. He suffered a stroke of paralysis in 1820 and his capacity for work was at an end. So great, however, was the admiration with which he was regarded that in 1822, the Legislature passed a joint resolution requir- ing every lawyer in the State to pay an an- nual license fee of five dollars for the use of Luther Martin. Although manifestly unconstitutional, no Maryland lawyer ever refused to pay this license. Burr had never paid Martin anything for his services in the trial for treason, but he now took Martin into his house in New York and there the great hero of countless forensic struggles died on July Ioth, 1826. His wife, a daugh- ter of the well known Capt. Michael Cresap, had long before preceded him.

William Pinkney, although twenty years younger than Martin, was his greatest rival and, in the judgment of some, his decided superior. Judge Taney said that when Pinkney returned from England "the reign of Martin was at an end." Except in legal learning and ability, there was a great con- trast between the two men. Martin was rough and overbearing in manner, slipshod in speech, careless in dress, and often drunk. Pinkney was a man of fashion and society with distinguished bearing; studiously

courteous, with great charm of manner; a master of rhetoric and fine phrases; an ac- complished diplomat who had served at the Courts of England and Russia and had been the friend of Pitt and Erskine and Canning. In addition to all this, he was a great law- yer and great orator. Of all the Maryland lawyers, he was the one who possessed the highest native genius. William Wirt wrote of him as "the comet," "the Maryland lion." Pinkney fascinated his contemporaries and the spell he cast upon them is perpetuated by tradition so that his name is still the greatest in the annals of the Maryland bar. Perhaps one may say it is the greatest in the history of the American bar. Rufus Choate and some others are now more widely known, but only, I think, because they lived in a succeeding generation. It is said that Choate as a young man saw Pinkney fall back fainting during his last argument in the Supreme Court and that he then resolved to struggle for the place so vacated-that of the acknowledged leader of the bar of the United States.

In the autobiographical sketch already referred to, Chief Justice Taney wrote: "I have heard almost all the great advocates of the United States, both of the past and present generation, but I have seen none equal Pinkney. He was a profound lawyer in every department of the science, as well as a powerful and eloquent debater. He always saw the strongest point in his case and he put forth his whole strength to sup- port it by analogies from other branches of the law. * * There was one defect in his mode of speaking. His voice and manner and intonation did not appear to be natural, but studied and artificial. * * His style was metaphorical, but by no means turgid.

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And, although on some occasions, I thought it too ornate and his metaphors too gorgeous for a legal argument, yet it was impossible not to listen to them with pleas- ure. They were always introduced at the right time and at the right place, and seemed to grow out of the subject of which he was speaking and to illustrate it. He was fastidiously correct in his language, in its grammatical arrangement, in the grace- ful flow and harmony of the sentence, and in the correct and exact pronunciation of every word. His arguments were syllogisms and his points clearly stated and carefully kept separate in the discussion. He came to every case fully prepared with his argument and authorities arranged and no temptation could induce him to speak in a case, great or small, unless he had time to prepare for it; and he argued every one as carefully as if his reputation depended upon that speech."

Pinkney was born at Annapolis on March 17th, 1764, and was called to the bar in 1786. Two years later he was a member of the House of Delegates from Harford county. Soon afterwards he removed to Annapolis and became a member of the Ex- ecutive Council, in 1792. He at once achieved a leading position at the bar. His profound legal learning as well as his feli- city of diction is shown by his argument in the case of Martindale vs. Troop, 3 H. & McH., 270, which was made when he was twenty-nine years of age. In 1796, Pink- ney was appointed by President Washing- ton a commissioner on the part of the United States to England under Jay's treaty and he lived in London for eight years-till August, 1804. In 1806, he was accredited as Minister Extraordinary to England and

occupied that post, which was so important during the Napoleonic wars and the depre- dations on American commerce, until June, 18II. In asking President Madison to re- call him from London, he wrote: "The compensation, as it is oddly called, allotted by the Government to the maintenance of its representatives abroad is a pittance which no economy, however rigid or even mean, can render adequate."

In September, 1811, soon after his return from England, Pinkney was elected to the Senate of Maryland, and in the following December he was appointed Attorney Gen- eral of the United States. This office he resigned in 1814 when an act of Congress · was passed requiring the Attorney General to reside in Washington, because he was unwilling to give up his large and lucrative practice in the Courts of Baltimore City. During the war with England, Pinkney be- came the major of a regiment of volunteers and fought at the battle of Bladensburg, where he was severely wounded. In 1816, he was appointed Minister to Russia and Special Envoy to Naples. He went first to Naples to demand indemnity for losses in- flicted upon American commerce and then to St. Petersburg, where he resided for two years. This ended his diplomatic service. He returned to the practice of law in 1818, but only four years of life were left to him. In 1819 he was elected to the United States Senate and in February of the next year, made his famous speech on the Missouri Compromise, which is printed in the Life of Pinkney, by Henry Wheaton, reporter of the Supreme Court. He died on Feb- ruary 25, 1822, at the age of fifty-eight. It will thus be seen that Pinkney's career at the bar embraced about thirty-four years,

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of which fifteen. were spent in diplomatic service abroad, so that his real professional work was done in considerably less than twenty years. Speaking once in regard to his frequent and prolonged absences, Pink- ney said: "There are those among my friends who wonder that I will go abroad, however honorable the service. They know not how I toil at the bar; they know not all my anxious days and sleepless nights. I must breathe awhile; the bow forever bent will break." He was always, however, abroad, as well as at home, a hard student, notwithstanding his desire to shine as a man of fashion. "Commend me," said Wirt, "to such a fellow as Pinkney, who sacrifices at the altar of professional ambition all his love of ease and pleasure and even that strong tendency to repose, to which his age, his corpulence, and the ample honors he has already won must conspire so power- fully to dispose him." Pinkney was thus a good example of the infinitus labor et quoti- diana meditatio which are absolutely neces- sary to the making of a great lawyer. His manners and habits were such as led some people to suppose that he was affected and artificial, but those were only what were usual among foreign diplomats, while in his pronunciation and style, he followed the ex- amples which had been set him by Erskine and Sheridan and the great leaders of the English bar.

Chief Justice Taney, in the extract above quoted, speaks of Pinkney's gorgeous meta- phors. Nowhere in his opulent imagina- tion and Asiatic magnificence of diction better seen than in his argument in the case of the Nereide, 9 Cr., 388. In delivering the opinion of the Court in that case, Chief Justice Marshall said: "With a pencil

dipped in the most vivid colors and guided by the hand of a master, a splendid portrait has been drawn, exhibiting this vessel and her freighter as forming a single figure composed of the most discordant materials of peace and war. So exquisite was the skill of the artist, so dazzling the garb in which the figure was presented that it required the exercise of that cold, investigating fac- ulty which ought always to belong to those who sit on this bench to discover its only imperfection-its want of resemblance."

Edward Coote Pinkney, the seventh child of William Pinkney, was born in London in 1802 and died in Baltimore in 1828. He was admitted to the bar, but never engaged in active practice. He is best remembered as the author of a poem in five stanzas called "A Health," beginning-

" I fill this cup To one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex, The seeming paragon."

The chief contemporaries of Pinkney were Harper, Wirt, Meredith and Winder. Robert Goodloe Harper came to Baltimore from South Carolina about 1800 after his marriage with a daughter of Charles Car- roll, of Carrollton, and soon became and remained one of the most distinguished law- yers, as well as a useful and public-spirited citizen of the State. He was born in Vir- ginia in 1765; served in Congress as a rep- resentative from South Carolina; was a United States Senator from Maryland in 1816, and died in 1825.

William H. Winder was born in Somerset county, Maryland, in 1775, and came to Baltimore in 1802. During the war of 1812 he was in command of the American Army

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at the battle of Bladensburg. At the time of his death, in 1824, at the age of forty- nine, his practice is said to have been the largest in the State.

David Hoffman (born in 1784, died in 1854) was the author of a Course of Legal Study, published in 1817-a very useful work in its day-and was a Professor of Law in the University of Maryland.

Jonathan Meredith was born in Philadel- phia in 1784; was admitted to the Baltimore Bar in 1806, and died in 1872. Ex-Gov. William Pinkney Whyte said of him in an address made in 1897 to the State Bar Asso- ciation: "Jonathan Meredith was another and distinct type. He had been the friend of Luther Martin, Harper, Wirt, Pinkney, and had met them in many forensic battles. The ability he displayed in the impeachment trial of Judge Peck, in which he was the as- sociate of Mr. Wirt, won him a national reputation He was a lawyer who had studied thoroughly the law relating to com- merce and finance, and was the retained counsel of many of the insurance compan- ies and banks. He was one of the old time professional men. He was thoroughly versed in the best English literature, was familiar with Shakespeare and the poets, and with his perfect diction and knowledge of the law, he was an orator of the most pol- ished and eloquent type of his day. He was one of the most attractive conversa- tionalists, and the most charming and gra- cious companion, alike to young and old. He had mastered the most difficult questions of jurisprudence, and presented them with clearness and precision. He was prepared for his profession in the most careful and finished style."

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Author: Shepherd, Henry Elliott, 1844-1929, ed. 4n Publication date: 1898 Publisher: [Uniontown? Pa.] S.B. Nelson Number of Pages: 1344

Author: Shepherd, Henry Elliott, 1844-1929, ed. 4n
Publication date: 1898
Publisher: [Uniontown? Pa.] S.B. Nelson
Number of Pages: 1344