USA > Missouri > The history of the bench and bar of Missouri : With reminiscences of the prominent lawyers of the past, and a record of the law's leaders of the present > Part 18
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James Carr was born in Pennsylvania in 1825; graduated at the Louisville Law School in 1852, and removed to Monroe County, Missouri, and opened a law office. He remained there till January, 1863, when he was inade general attorney for the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Company and removed to Hannibal. In 1878 he resigned and moved to St. Louis. While attorney for the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Company he won many suits, both in the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of the State, and did much to mould judicial opinion in corporation cases. He was well versed in the principles of law, and industrious and accurate in all his work. His pertinacity in presenting his views and his imperturbable manner were remarkable. He was a man of strict honor and integrity, reserved and dignified in manner, with strong affection for his friends. He ranked very high in Masonic circles. On December 25, 1891, he died in St. Louis. .
These are some of the inen who have given character to the St. Louis Bar. There are others whose merits entitle them to mention, but the limit of our space is reached. They have helped to distinguish our bar, and to give it the reputation it bears throughout the United States, as one composed of educated lawyers, clear thinkers and progressive men. A retrospective glance at the names of those who have passed beyond, will show that at no period of its history from its earliest days to the present has the "Old Bar of St. Louis " been without members who were conspicuous for their learning, ability, courage, industry and eloquence. The hardships and necessities of frontier life, the vicissitudes and emergencies of war in a border State, often the theater of battle, and the consequent differ- ences of opinion and thought, and the consideration of the momentous questions growing out of these events liave all tended to make our people broad and comprehensive, quick in thought and perception, yet conservative in action and tolerant as to the rights and opin-
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ions of others. In business, in statesmanship and in all practical questions St. Louis has never lagged behind the other cities of the Union, and to-day our city stands at the fore front of solidity and progress. To a large extent the bar moulds public opinion everywhere. In all public measures, in legislation for the good of the commonwealth, the people natur- ally turn to the lawyers for advice, and just in proportion as the lawyers of any community are high minded, true, unselfish, wise and progressive will that community flourish. To the Old Bar of St. Louis our city owes much for its present prosperity. As the population of our country increases and new questions of political economy press upon us, problems as intricate as those heretofore inet will have to be solved. New relations will continually arise and new conditions will demand new thought and action. The welfare of 100 million or 150 million people struggling for wealth or existence presents more difficult questions, even in this country of matchless resources, than the comfort and happiness of 65 million. Facilities for "getting a living " are decreased as the number demanding that living are increased. The relations of a sparsely settled population with each other are less complex than those of a country with a dense population. New wants, new methods of life, new tastes, new environment in a republic inean new struggles, new anxieties, new demands, new plans for relief, new patriotism on the part of those whose humanitarian instincts and natural leadership of men force them to the front. In the decades that have passed the lawyers of the country have stood ever ready to share tlie responsibilities and burdens which the exigencies of events have cast upon our people; and the Old Bar of St. Louis contributed men who were able and willing to do their part, and who won for that bar a National reputa- tion. May the present bar of St. Louis, and those who come after us, be as ready to aid in the solution of all public questions with the same courage and manhood and ability as those who have gone, and always make the Bar of St. Louis as famous as the Old.
December 27, 1897.
RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE ROSWELL M. FIELD.
BY MELVIN L. GRAY.
R OSWELL M. FIELD was born in Newfane, Vt., February 22, 1807, and was the
son of Martin Field and Esther S. Kellogg Field. His father was a graduate of Williams College and a lawyer of high standing in the region where he lived. For inany years he was State's Attorney of his county, often represented his town in the Legislature of his State, and was also Major General of the First Division of the Vermont militia. He was eminent in his profession and had a large and lucrative practice. He was learned also in the sciences, especially in geology, mineralogy and chemistry, and was a skillful per- former on the violin. The mother of Mr. Roswell M. Field was a woman of superior education and illustrated in her life the virtues of the highest type of New England woman- hood. The influence of such parents could not fail to stimulate and develop in their children the noblest qualities of culture and refinement.
At the age of eleven years R. M. Field entered the Middlebury College, Vermont, and graduated at the age of fifteen. He then studied law and was admitted to practice at the early age of eighteen years, and practiced in his native county until 1839, when he removed to and settled in St. Louis. While in Vermont, he twice represented his native town in the Legislature of the State, was for four years consecutively the State's Attorney of Wind- ham County and was regarded as one of the most brilliant and promising young men of the Green Mountain State. Special pleas drawn by him in the case of Torrey vs. Field, reported in the Tenth Volume of Vermont Reports, were pronounced by Judge Story mas- terpieces of special pleading.
Soon after his settlement in St. Louis he formed a partnership in the practice of law with Myron Leslie, also from Vermont, and a man of great ability and a thoroughly trained lawyer. The firm at once took high rank with the ablest attorneys of the city, among whom were Hamilton R. Gamble, afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court and Provisional Governor of the State during the Civil War; Henry S. Geyer, who succeeded Thomas H. Benton in the United States Senate; Edward Bates, Attorney General of the United States during President Lincoln's first term; Josiah Spalding, Trusten Polk, Montgomery Blair, Thomas T. Gantt and others.
Mr. Field was of a retiring disposition, and during his partnership with Mr. Leslie seldom tried cases in court, but did the office business and prepared cases for trial. At that time there was a large amount of litigation growing out of Spanish and French grants and concessions of land, and the acts of Congress for the settlement of the same, and Mr. Field not only made himself familiar with these acts of Congress, but also studied the Spanish and French languages, so that he could not only read these grants and concessions in the original documents, but could also read in the original the Spanish and French laws applicable thereto. He also mastered the German language, and was able to read and
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speak it with correctness and fluency. By his early education he was proficient in both the Greek and Latin and kept up his familiarity with those languages during life, having a special love and admiration for the works of Horace. After a few years, his partnership with Mr. Leslie terminated and then Mr. Field went into the courts and engaged in the trial of cases, both before juries and the court, and was at once regarded as the peer of the ablest members of the bar, both as an advocate and in the discussion and application of the principles of the law. He was employed in numerous and important cases involving titles to land under French and Spanish grants, and his thorough knowledge of the laws affect- ing those titles, was of the highest benefit to his clients and contributed largely to the proper settlement of the intricate principles involved in that knotty problem. For several years he acted as attorney of the St. Louis School Board and was instrumental in obtaining possession of many tracts of land for the public schools. He brought and tried in the United States Circuit Court the celebrated Dred Scott case, which on appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States was there argued by Montgomery Blair, then resident in Washington. On the outbreak of the Civil War he was a loyal supporter of the govern- ment and an active co-laborer with Lyon, Blair, Glover and others, in retaining Missouri in the Union. He was tendered the position of Judge of the Supreme Court of the State, which he declined, preferring the freedom and independence of private citizenship to official station.
Mr. Field married in May, 1848, Miss Frances Reed, a native of Vermont, then resid- ing in St. Louis-a most estimable lady, who died in November, 1856, leaving two sons, Eugene and Roswell M., Jr., whom Mr. Field sent to Amherst, Mass., to be reared by a niece, Miss Mary F. French. These sons when grown became journalists, in which pro- fession both have exhibited great ability and established reputations of a high order, and both have become authors. The elder, Eugene, unfortunately cut off in his prime, has acquired a national reputation as the "children's poet" and writer of humorous and pathetic sketches, and the two brothers, following their father in a love of the Odes of Horace, jointly translated them under the name of "Echoes from the Sabine Farin." Roswell, the younger, has published a volume of sketches entitled "In the Sunflower Land."
This brief outline of the life and character of Mr. R. M. Field, deceased, cannot be better closed than to insert portions of the resolutions of the St. Louis Bar, adopted at the time of his death: "For nearly thirty years Mr. Field has occupied a leading place in the profession of the law in this city, endowed with talents of the highest order and enriched with various and profound learning, not only in the science of jurisprudence but in mathe- inatics, metaphysics and classical studies. His active and disciplined inind enabled him to inaster and elucidate the most abstract questions which arise in the application of legal principles to the complicated affairs of life. In considering such questions he evinced a proficiency and force which indicated for him a place in the front rank of his profession.
* * His learning was accurate, various and profound, his judgment sure and cool, his illustration of his views felicitous and forcible, his logic keen, vigilant and honest; he dis- liked technicalities and fine drawn reasonings; he assumed, when advocating a legal pro- position, the broadest and most solid basis which it was possible for him to occupy, and brought to the support of his views every fact and argument which could be legitimately summoned to their aid. There has been for many years 110 lawyer of this bar whose opinions carried greater weight, and there was none whose advocacy of a cause gave more confident assurance of a successful issue. Mr. Field's proficiency in other walks of learning
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would have rendered him remarkable, if he had been unacquainted with jurisprudence. It was the accuracy, no less than the extent of his knowledge, which was distinguishing, and his scholarship was critical and exact. *
* His integrity was, during the whole time of his sojourn with us, without a tarnish or suspicion. He has left behind a reputation which his children ought to regard as their most precious inheritance."
On presentation of the resolutions of the bar to the Supreme Court of the State, Judge Wagner, in behalf of that court, responded in the highest terms of commendation, and among other things said: "When he gave the great energies and powers of his mind to a cause, he exhausted all the learning to be had on the subject. He studied law as a science and delighted to examine its harmonious structure and explore its philosophic principles. So deeply was he imbued with its true spirit, and so great was his reverence for its excel- lencies, that he maintained them with the most jealous regard and would sooner have failed in success than have won a case by trenching upon a sound legal rule. He * adorned every circle in which he moved, and so beautiful was his life, in all its relations, that he won and enjoyed the esteem and regard of all who knew him. * * It is fit and proper that the death of such a man should be marked by all the honors which we can pay to his memory."
St. Louis, Mo., January, 1898.
CONTEMPORARY BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
ELMER B. ADAMS,
SAINT LOUIS.
THE transmission of hereditary traits and characteristics is one of the laws of Nature through which, by extended punishment for violation of her laws, as well as by reward for obedience, working through many generations, the perfect man of the future is being created. He is to be the suin of transmitted and selected excellencies. The scintal- lant genius which oftimes astonishes the world is perhaps not transmittable from father to son. The records of the race 'seem to prove this. But is it not possible that such erratic genius is more or less of an accident, an exception to Nature's law, and that in her refusal to transmit such peculiarities she merely expresses a tendency to return to normal condi- tions? Nature in the creation of genius may make a grand coup, and finding it impossible to maintain such extaordinary effort for any length of time, in the endeavor to right herself, ofttime reacts to a place below the level. But there is a difference between genius and the highest natural ability, and whatever may be the laws governing genius, which is said to be nearly allied to insanity, it is an established fact that nobility of character and highly organ- ized mental powers are traits governed by well defined laws of development. Virility of intellect is a trait that will persist through many succeeding generations, notwithstanding the avatic tendency of certain individuals of the group. "Blood will tell," is a homely saying, the truth of which cannot be disputed; but such blood fixes the relationship of him in whose veins it flows, to the Aristocracy of Brains and not to that of Position. When it tells that its possessor can justly lay claim to the result of right living and the cultivation of the intellectual and higher traits of mind and soul long persisted in, it tells the only story worth telling; when it tells only of exclusive position, originally unearned and long occupied, it tells nothing of consequence.
That strength of mind and endowment of character persist and are transmittable, is a fact attested by the great Adams family. Its power to transmit and increase its ener- gies of mind and soul, has been manifested hundreds of times, and it is perhaps the most notable example of the history of the race of the sustaining power of good blood. Since the time Sir John Ap Adam was summoned to Parliament, about 1296 or 1307, and "came out of the marches of Wales," his numerous descendants have manifested their vigor of intellect, their strong and fearless character and their talent as leaders of men in almost every generation.
A fact not generally known is that our own Elmer B. Adams, the United States District Judge of St. Louis, is a member of this most noble house of the Aristocracy of Talent. Not many biographical sketches of Judge Adams have been published, but those which are in print do not mention the fact that he comes from that New England family which has given the republic two Presidents, many statesmen, eminent judges, lawyers and mnen notable in all the walks of life. Judge Adams is modest, but the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, published at Boston in 1852, traces his ancestry to that Henry
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Adams of Braintree, Mass., who virtually planted the family name in America, and who according to the inscription placed on his tombstone by his great-great-grandson, John Adams, second President of the United States, " took his flight from the Dragon Persecu- tion, in Devonshire, England, and alighted with eight sons, near Mount Wollaston." He died at Braintree in 1646. One of these eight sons was the patriot Samuel Adams, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. From Henry of Braintree, to his son Edward of Medfield (Mass.), who had seven sons; to his second son, John, to his son Obediah, to his son Nathan, to his son Issacher, to his son Jarvis, to his son Elmer B., are the successive steps by which the descent is traced from Henry of Braintree, to the subject of this biography.
Jarvis Adams married Eunice Mitchell, likewise a member of an old and notable New England family, and at Pomfret, Windsor County, Vermont, their son Elmer B. was born, October 27, 1842. The latter was given a thorough education, preparing for college at Kimball Union Academy at Meriden, New Hampshire. He was ready to enter Yale in 1861, and spent four years at that great institution, graduating in the class of 1865. Through interest in the condition of the South as it lay prostrate after four years of bloody war, he became connected with a number of wealthy and philanthropic citizens of New York and Philadel- phia who were devoted to the high purpose of educating the children of that class called the "poor whites " of the South. The young collegian had the enthusiasm of youth and gave promise that he would be another of the long line who would reflect credit on the name of Adams, and after he left college he was selected by this generous group of citizens to act as their correspondent and active executive officer in this field. In this capacity he traveled over various parts of the South, and established a system of free schools (for white children) in Atlanta and Milledgeville, Georgia, erected school houses, employed teachers and disbursed the funds entrusted to his charge. It was through such initial efforts as these that the principle of free schools was popularized in the South and given a beginning.
Before leaving home the matter of a profession had been discussed, and the law, for whose requirements the Adams family have shown such fitness and which they have so eminently graced, was given the preference. Leastways, at the end of a year he returned to his Northern home, and entered the office of Governor P. T. Washburn and C. P. Marsh at Woodstock, Vermont. In 1867 he entered the Law Department of Harvard Univer- sity, and after taking a course of lectures there was admitted to the bar in Verinont in 1868.
The ycar 1868 was about the period when the unsettling influences of the great war began to be first manifest in the enormous tide of emigration that flowed westward and spread over that wide and undeveloped stretch of country west of the Mississippi. Although the name Adams in New England was considered an evidence of ability in the law, and illade success easy, the young man, with characteristic Americanism, desired not to profit by such adventitious circumstances. Certain besides that his strength and ability would win him a higher reward in that illimitable field where everything was possible-the great West- he began to make preparations to discover what it held for the young lawyer vigor- ous, enthusiastic and well versed in a knowledge of the law's theories. In the same year he was licensed as an attorney, Mr. Adams reached St. Louis. He at once opened an office and became a candidate for public favor. The city was just starting upon that period of phenomenal growth which followed the war, and as trade was brisk, and all the manifold influences of change and transfer were working to create a great city, litigation of all kinds
Shower BAdany
Shown BAdany
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was active. The young lawyer received his share of business from the beginning, which began to grow to a disproportionate share as the impression gathered strength that the young Vermonter was the possessor of legal attainments which entitled him to rank at a bar which was then, as it has always been, noted for its practitioners of learning and ability. Possessing also a genial and social temperament and many graces of mind and person, he rapidly made friends in his new home, many of whom have now become warm admirers as well as friends.
He occupied an office alone until he formed a partnership with Hon. Bradley D. Lee in 1872, an association that continued until 1879. On January of the year last named, Mr. Adams took his seat on the bench of the Circuit Court of St. Louis, to which he had been elected the previous fall. He defeated Judge David Wagner, Ex-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, for the position, and this was the first official manifestation of the high place he had won in the confidence and esteem of his fellow citizens. At the end of his six years' term he was urged to become a candidate for re-election, but declined, and entered into a partnership, in 1885, with Judge Wilbur F. Boyle and J. E. McKeighan, for private practice, the firm being one of the strongest in the State. In 1892 this firm was dissolved and Judge Adams entered a partnership with Judge Boyle, under the firm name of Boyle & Adams, which continued until he was appointed United States District Judge, by President Cleveland, in May, 1895.
Judge Adams cherishes the memory of his patriotic forefathers, and by reason of his descent is a member of the Sons of the Revolution. Neither is he forgetful of his place of nativity, and his membership in the New England Society strengthens the ties that bind him to the State wherein he was born. He is an ex-President of that body and is likewise President of the Yale Alumni Association of St. Louis.
The professional career of Judge Adams has been a pronounced success. When elected to the Bench of the St. Louis Circuit Court in 1878 he had resided in the State only ten years, and was comparatively, a young man. Yet at the time he had already achieved an enviable reputation for ability with both the bench and bar, and had secured a large and lucrative practice. His labors on the bench during the succeeding six years were arduous. At no time in its history, has that court been required to hear and determine so many difficult and complex controversies as during the period Judge Adams was one of its Judges. The close and intelligent investigation he gave to all matters assigned to the division of that court over which he presided, and the exceptional ability and fairness with which he disposed of them, won for him the highest esteem, not only of the members of the bar and of his associates on the bench, but also of the community at large.
No position can furnish to the lawyer better opportunity for extending and broad- ening his knowledge of the law, and especially, for learning to apply its rules to the varied and ever-varying conditions of social and business life, than the bench of a court of general jurisdiction located in one of the great business centers of the country. In the case of Judge Adams, all who observed the careful consideration lie gave to whatever caine before him while on the bench, were satisfied he reaped all the advantage of this character which could be derived from a judicial experience of six years in the Circuit Court of St. Louis.
Resuming active practice in 1885 he at once took a prominent place in the front rank of his profession-a position he continued to maintain without challenge for a period of ten years and until he again retired from practice to assume the duties of the office he now occupies as United States District Judge. In the legal profession, a position of this kind cannot
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be maintained for any considerable length of time by mere chance. It must be merited to be retained. The work of the lawyer is rarely protected from the scrutiny and criticism of other members of his profession. As a rule, whatever he does or advises, whether in the seclusion of his office or openly before the court, becomes the subject, sooner or later, of careful inspection, and wherever possible, of adverse attack. Hence that work and that advice which can confidently invite scrutiny or challenge and successfully resist adverse attack, must be esteemed the best work a lawyer can do, and the best advice he can give; and the lawyer by whoin such work is done and such advice given, must be entitled to rank as one of the best in his profession. But to achieve results of this kind requires not only studious and exhaustive consideration of what is desired by the client, but also a thorough appreciation of the effect, immediate or remote, the thing desired may have, if secured, upon the interest of others, and indeed upon other interests of the client himself. It may readily be seen that to meet these requirements the lawyer must possess more than mere knowledge of law, however profound that knowledge may be. Undoubtedly such knowledge is essen- tial. But it is equally important he should have a general knowledge of human nature and of business affairs, and more, that he should thoroughly understand the character of the particular individual and of the particular interests involved or to be effected by the trans- action immediately contemplated.
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