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 52
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As the Code of Practice of 1849 had not then been in force long enough for construction, it was a wide open question as to what might be pleaded as a counter-claim. Hamp Gray, a lawyer by aspiration only, brought suit in a Justice Court for a kettle borrowed and dam- aged in use. Hughes defended, and filed a counter-claim for damage done to defendant's pasture by plaintiff's goose and gander trespassing thereon. "Hamp" and "Reece" argued this question of practice two days before the 'Squire, "Hamp" relying on Chitty, borrowed from Heard; and "Reece " on the words of the statute, illustrated by "the works of nature." The jury hung. The Justice resigned rather than re-try the case, and Gray quit the practice of law in disgust.
Col. Aldea A. Glasscock, in 1840, came liere from Virginia, was enrolled and for years practiced in a modest way and died within my own ineinory. He was of patriarchal appear- ance and was considered a seer in liis neighborhood. He farmed and attended court from his farm. This seems to have been quite common in those days. A. M. Barrett, for many years a member of our bar and who died here in 1862, George Heard, James L. English, W. H. Field, Reece Hughes and others lived on and managed fine farms while in practice. How they did it, one has never been able to find out. Certainly it could not be done now by an attorney in full practice. The inoffensiveness of Colonel Glasscock and his reputa- tion for fairness is illustrated by the observation of Jim Winston, who once belonged to the Pettis County bar, and who canvassed the State on foot for Governor, and who was other- wise the laziest man in the State. One hot day in August, he was dozing on a lounge in his office at Georgetown when applied to to attend a case in a Justice's Court. "How far is it?" inquired Winston. "About twelve miles," said the client. "Whew! Long ways to walk this weather," sighed Winston. "Who's on the other side?" "Colonel Glass- cock," was the reply. "Well, then, you don't need me," said Winston, "the Colonel is a discreet old man, and he'll do justice to both sides."
Prior to the coming of George G. Vest (1853) and John F. Philips (1856) probably the strongest lawyer at our local bar, except Mr. Heard, was James L. English. He came here a Philadelphia bred lawyer and achieved an honorable and growing place at the bar,
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until, caught by the gold fever in 1849, he crossed the Plains to California and, having acquired a fortune and high rank as a lawyer in Sacramento, died there not long since.
In the 'fifties our bar grew in strength and prominence. Aspiring and brilliant young men settled here who speedily, with experience and study, became more and more self- reliant and successful. In those days came to Pettis County Col. Thomas F. Houston, a scholarly and wealthy inan from North Carolina, and allied by blood and marriage to some of the best families of South Carolina. Educated for the bar, he seemed to prefer the more peaceful and independent pursuit of a planter, and opening a magnificent plantation where Houstonia now stands, still lives there a respected and useful citizen, never having gone into active and general practice.
In those days also came Col. W. H. Field and opened a large and splendid farm. He was of ample fortune, one of the leading attorneys of Louisville, Kentucky, whose health failed liim and who sought in the calm retirement of rural life to regain what he had lost in the brilliant, but dangerously exacting, successes of the forum. He built an elegant country mansion, dispensed there a bounteous hospitality, educated and settled his children, attended court at Georgetown occasionally in cases of importance and met during the war a most cruel and unhappy fate, being murdered under circumstances of unusual distress and barbarity. He was a man of correct life, noble presence, six feet two inches in lieight, of even temper and polished manners, and an orator, graced not only with a fine voice, a lofty diction and a most impressive style, but with those mental gifts and moral qualities without which mere oratory becomes as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. He inade everyone feel, who saw and heard him, that the good lawyer, scholar and gentleman are inseparable. Those who knew him, love and praise him to this day. His son, Richard Field, of Lexington, for many years and up to 1896 the Judge of our circuit, yet presides in the Sixth Circuit and is, in all his bearing and characteristics, a worthy son of a dis- tinguished father.
John Pierce came from Indiana, a college man of rare brilliance, quaint and original. His drollery and rare humor greatly annoyed the more sedate lawyers, and on one occasion cheated Brother Heard out of a verdict. Heard sued for a breach of warranty of the sound- ness of a horse. In his petition he alleged that the horse "sickened and died on plaintiff's hands." Pierce, before the jury, with indescribable countenance and impressive earnest- ness, among other things, said: "Gentlemen of the jury, is there a particle of evidence to show that the horse died on plaintiff's hands? How could a 1,200-pound horse die on a man's hands? What was the man's hands doing under the horse? Why didn't he pull his hands out? Can you tell, gentlemen, whether this suit is for the death of the horse or for mashing plaintiff's hands? The court has instructed you that unless you find that the allegations of the petition are sustained by the evidence, you must find for the defendant. The evidence shows that the horse died lying on the ground in the stable lot, while the defendant was gathering corn in a field, and, I presume, had his hands with him; and, therefore, the horse didn't die on his hands, as the petition charges; and the court tells you in this instruction you must find for the defendant." And so the jury did find. Pierce disappeared in the black smoke of war.
At these times came also George G. Vest, a young man fresh from Kentucky, of a dashing, fiery and untamed spirit, a dazzling power of wit and ridicule, knowing by instinct every nook and cranny of the mind and soul where the springs of influence lie in a Mis- sourian, he began in the modest town of Georgetown what proved a National career.
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Stories are still told of his early triumphs at the bar. He speedily grew out of his adopted home and environments, formed a partnership with Joseph L. Stephens, of Boonville, and there sprang into instant prominence at a bar, then as strong and distinguished as any in the State - a bar dominated by a Stephens, a Draffin, a Hayden, an Adams and a Muir. Espousing the cause of the South, representing the State in the Confederate Senate, return- ing to Sedalia when his flag went down in defeat, he at once and easily resumed his old place at the fore-front in the law and in politics, and now in his seat in the United States Senate, he is far and away the best equipped and readiest debater of his party, and is deservedly nearer and dearer to the heart of a Missouri Democrat than any man now alive.
In these years also came John F. Philips, a Missourian born, to Georgetown (he was then a youth fresh from a Kentucky college), and thenceforth for thirty years he belonged to our bar. As I remember him in the prime of his power and zenitli of his fame as a prac- titioner, it seemed to me then, and seems to me now, he was the most formidable lawyer I ever knew. His was the undaunted courage that sustained a cause and hovered on the dangerous fringe of the fore-front of a legal battle. A scholar, a soldier, a statesman and a jurist, he was divinely gifted with the genius of toil, he neglected nothing which contributes to success, and whether his client was poor or rich, weak or powerful, whether liis fee was little or big, it seemed to make no difference to him -he was always apparently at his best. Happy the man and cause that had him for an attorney; for he took both client and cause on his shoulders, as Æneas did his father of old, and bore them to safety. He took to the bar the stern earnestness of his Presbyterian faith; he had the gift of speedily getting the current and drift of a cause to set in his way. If his antagonist groped and drifted, he never did, but always presented a live, working hypothesis and theory which, seemingly plausible and right, "plucked the flower, safety, from the nettle, danger." He had a knack of read- ing law to a Judge when making an argument, and so neatly selecting and opening a volume, · locating the page and passage and dovetailing his reading of it into his own suggestions, that to one listening, it seemed impossible to tell where the lawyer left off and the author commenced. To this day there is current in Central Missouri many a biting epigram, many a sprightly incident and stirring episode of this celebrated inan, whose well-rounded and inspiring life challenges admiration. His services as a soldier and at the bar, in Congress and on the Federal Bench, will entitle his life to receive a much inore extended notice in the History of Bench and Bar of Missouri than the scope of this article will allow.
To Pettis County from Kentucky in 1858 came a classmate of John F. Philips-Charles A. Hardin- and these two men formed a partnership which continued until broken by the war. Hardin, full of promise and of fine lineage, returned to his native State, and casting his lot there, was promoted ultimately to the bench and still lives an honored citizen of that historic commonwealth. His brother was the Democratic candidate for Governor of Kentucky in the late dramatic campaign. He was small in stature, swarthy and wiry, with raven liair and piercing black eyes. He was an omnivorous reader, ornate in style, and possessed of much of that power of oratory and invective characteristic of his family. He was abstracted in his thoughts, so that nothing could disturb his medita- tions. In the consultation room, or in a trial in the court room, he was as apt to turn to his partner or nearest neighbor to ask something about Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, Julius Cæsar or Napoleon Bonaparte as of the case in liand.
Contemporaneous with Mr. Hardin was Curtis Field, a bright but rather erratic man, who married the daughter of John H. Jones, a wealthy freighter across the Plains, and
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went to and disappeared in the western mountain country, as the stormy war period approached.
Contemporaneous again with these men, and coming from the Gulf States of the South, was William C. Ford who, an irrepressible and eccentric lawyer with a long head, too full of odds and ends to have room left for the faculty of discrimination, was caught and whirled southward by the rush of events in 1860, fought in the Southern Army, was speedily "reconstructed " and appeared in a negro Legislature in Mississippi, drifted to Philadelphia and married a rich widow, who ultimately renounced the alliance and cut in two the said bonds of matrimony, and thus buffeted by ill fortune, drifted West and into the Confederate Home at Higginsville. Here, standing on his personal rights as guaran- teed to him by the great charter of King John and otherwise, as a broken soldier and veteran lawyer should (so he with deep feeling told me himself), he whimsically denied the jurisdiction of the Governor of that charitable home, on certain rules of detail, and- drifted again. When I saw him a year ago he said he was on the road to Bland's district to acquire a residence and run for Congress on the Republican ticket. He told me he wanted, and was hunting, a good place to practice law in; not an ambitious and pushing place where clients were so brisk and plentiful that they roused and feed lawyers before the cock crew in the morning watch, not a country so fat and luxuriant with clover that the cows' distended udders dripped rich milk on the road to the farm yard of an evening for the milking (such as Horace, or was it Virgil? saw with his mind's eye and wrote of with his poetical pen), but a quiet, sedate, moderate place where he could earn, say, five dollars a week and have spring chicken in season, which latter, he found, mightily tickled his experienced and ancient palate. Incidentally, the interview cost me a silver dollar and then this relic of the old Pettis bar drifted once inore as aimless as a derelict in mid- ocean, still seeking and wanting-what, heaven help him, he will never find-a good place for a poor, broken, old lawyer to practice law.
In 1859 young Philips took a fancy to Chan. P. Townsley, a wheelwright and carriage- maker at Georgetown, and persuaded him to study law. His genial and witty nature marked him for something better than his young life. A law book was a new world to him and while he read with avidity, lie saw fun in everything, sketched inany a picture and wrote many a humorous observation on the margin of the old law books of his preceptor, attained a bent of mind looking to practical results as a lawyer and was elevated in 1868 by a contested election to the Circuit Bench, where he presided with dignity and fairness, displaying marvelous aptness and discrimination, until ousted by an adverse decision in favor of William T. Wood, long the eminent Judge of our circuit. Judge Townsley is now an editor at Great Bend, Kansas.
Shortly before the war, the failure to get the Pacific Railroad, then building, grievously wounded Georgetown, and the Civil War coming on, killed the town outright. The war made it possible and needful to move the county seat to Sedalia, which was done. The bar was necessarily broken up and scattered; George Heard, alone, stood it out and preserved its existence. Sedalia being the Western terminus of the railroad, a military depot and a scene of warlike activity, the courts languished because the bayonet and the demurrer have ever looked askance at each other among English speaking people. With peace, a new era dawned for our bar and a growing, aspiring city early attracted the profession. Thc conditions that followed the war started throughout all the channels of trade and commerce a rivalry, contention and greed that aroused every energy and ambition and strife of man.
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Colonel Philips laid down his sword and took up his law books again and clients swarming about, he formed a partnership with Senator Vest and the two, with Russell Hicks, then of St. Louis. The old, one story, two-roomed frame house, off of a business street on the North side of the Court House Square, still stands where these great lawyers officed and planned their victories.
Russell Hicks, born in New York, was from 1856 to 1859 Judge of this circuit, and then came from Jackson County. It is said of him that he was wholly self-educated and a sound lawyer in his prime. His voice, personal appearance, mental traits and manners were brusque, dogmatic and otherwise peculiar and he is remembered and spoken of to this late day with interest. His profound respect for the ancient landmarks of the law inade his conservatism salient. The last time I ever heard him in the court house he was discussing a question of real estate law, arising out of some of the modern married woman's statutory enabling acts, against a liberal interpretation of which he delivered a savage philippic.
Contemporaneous with the firm of Philips, Vest & Hicks, was the firm of Heard & Son -George Heard and John T. Heard, his son. John T. Heard inherited the delightful affability and urbanity of his father, soon wearied of the sharp contentions of a fighting, active barrister, and successfully turned his attention to business and politics. He was for many years, first a Senator in the Legislature and then a Congressman, and is now a man in the zenith of a prosperous business career, living in easy circumstances in an elegant home, one of the best known and liked citizens of this State.
In these days Foster P. Wright, also an ex-Judge, came here and located. He was a inan of meager form, tall, as memory serves me, with stooped shoulders, an inclination to wear an ancient high hat and with many other amusing peculiarities of dress and speech. He, as well as Russell Hicks, is long since dead. Judge Wright was an honest inan. The old lawyers always spoke of him with respect and told of a time when he was considered an excellent pleader and close lawyer. Age and financial distress broke him down, finally, and he died poor, but still in the harness. The older reports abundantly attest his standing and activity at the bar.
John S. Cochran came here from the East in those years and at one time occupied the benchi in the then existing Commnon Pleas Court. He was slight of frame, of a splenetic and unhappy temperament and after a stormy and restless citizenship of a few years, went back to Ohio or West Virginia.
Dating early after the war was the firm of Crandall & Sinnett, both sturdy, aggressive, honorable inen and successful ones. Henry C. Sinnett was a inan of quiet, studious habits, grave demeanor, old-fashioned gravity of speech and conservative notions, but very sensi- tive, withal, and well informed, with little humor and with a fine sense of personal dignity and honor. Having fairly earned the comforts of life, he finally becaine cautious and rather shunned than courted the fierce excitement of a hot battle. He died unexpectedly of an insidious disease and in the prime of his manhood, lamented by his brethren. The senior member of the firm, Orestes A. Crandall, was indeed a self-made man and self-educated lawyer and, while at the bar for twenty years, a dangerous, pertinacious fighter, full of bristling combativeness and ingenious resources- a man of whom it might be said that defeat but spurred him on to fight his best when the odds were heaviest and the outlook darkest. Years ago he left his profession for the more lucrative one of a financier and gave the entire labors of his keen inind to founding, building and supervising one of the strongest
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financial institutions of Central Missouri. He is an accomplished geologist, a bent of taste acquired by his early experience as a gold hunter in California, and a man of unique and attractive independence of views.
No review of our bar during the years in hand would be complete which left out W. W. S. Snoddy, who from 1865 to 1886 lived in Sedalia and practiced law here. He was a large and rather ungainly man, of fierce military aspect, an untiring but unsystematic worker, unfortunate and grotesque in some of his traits, unliked and feared. Nevertheless, he was a ready and versatile lawyer, well grounded in the principles of the law, quick and effective in repartee, and to him are credited some of the smartest things said and the inost eccentric and ludicrous things done by any Sedalia lawyer. Lacking the inoral stamina and personal honor essential to permanent success at the bar, lie left us to swell the constituents of Jerry Simpson in bleeding Kansas. When brother Sinnett, annoyed by the dodging of a hostile witness, said to him in deep, measured, chiest tones: "Now, sir, I will proceed to wind you up," quick as a flash Snoddy was on his feet with an explosive objection. "I object, if the Court please," said he, "to winding our witness up unless the Court orders Sinnett to let him run down again. It is unsafe to the witness and unfair to us, as we want to use him again ourselves." His readiness was illustrated by a reply lie made to Judge Wood. The case of Flagg versus Keeny was on, and Snoddy appeared for Keeny. Keeny was deaf as a post and brought with him for use into court an immense ear trumpet which, in the heat and drowsiness of the day, the good old Judge, lıalf asleep, did not notice, even when Keeny took the stand and held his trumpet by his side. Keeny was repeatedly told by the Court to turn his face toward the jury, but paying no attention to the admonition, he gazed with the parchment face of a deaf man directly in front of him and away from the jury, when in tones of irritation, the Court said (having a fine for contempt in his mind), "Colonel Snoddy, what is this witness' name? " Like all echo came the quick reply, "I don't know, your Honor, unless its Gabriel - I see he has lis horn." Snoddy formed a partnership with U. F. Short and the firm namne, Snoddy & Short, was invariably and with droll absent-mindedness called "Shoddy and Snort " by Judge Wood.
To the years in hand belongs Lucius L. Bridges. It is impossible for one who loved him to speak of this man dispassionately and without forgetting the faults of a too gen- erous disposition. Born in St. Lawrence County, New York, classically educated at Union College, serving gallantly in the war, he came to Sedalia at its close and iuntil 1889 was a commanding figure at our bar. His eye was dark, large and expressive, his features were noble, exceedingly manly and handsome, his manners free and engaging and his presence, distinguished to a marked degree. His was a gifted and royal mind, stored with the results of wide reading and observation, loving poetry, literature, music and philosophy, but looking unkindly, possibly, upon the wearing application and nagging drudgery of a hard working lawyer. He was a natural and magnetic leader of men, a political orator of established reputation and popularity, and, had his party been in dominance in Missouri, would have necessarily achieved high official distinction. As a sagacious and plausible ad- vocate before a jury, he was excellent, and such was his sagacity, his comprehensive and quick grasp of mind, that when aronscd and interested in a cause, he not only easily extorted tle admiration of bench and bar, but was to be feared. In1 1892 he ran for the office of Attorney General on the Republican ticket, was afterwards called to Washington as an
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assistant attorney in the Interior Department and now resides at Guthrie, Oklahoma, an honored attorney in that new capital.
George V. McCurdy, born and raised in this county, was called to the bar. He was early stricken with a mortal malady and died at the very threshold of his career, leaving a sweet memory behind him of a pure and gentle life. So, too, Richard P. Garrett, a man of gentle and refined ways and deeply religious life, came to the bar in 1869 with an ambi- tion and strength of will far beyond his physical powers, and soon died. These men, with W. H. H. Hill, who died young while Judge of the Criminal Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit, and Charles M. McClung, are worthy of mention here; for their lives were tliose of good men.
Shortly after the war came to Sedalia a man who at once became one of its landmarks -Asa C. Marvin, of Clinton. He had been enrolled at our bar in 1843 and, doubtless, rode this circuit. When he came here to live he had already achieved a fortune and had retired from his professional labors, but he still took a live interest in courts and lawyers. His infinite wit, excellent fancy and dry humor, made him the most companionable of inen. With the enthusiasm and energy of youth, coupled with the far-sighted business sense of age, he threw himself into public affairs, organized and pushed forward the Tebo & Neosho (now a part of the M., K. & T.) railroad, and died full of years and honors.
The space at hand does not allow a specific notice of the inany who came and went and who, for a brief time members of our bar, sought permanent relations and fortune else- where. The Pettis bar has had a modest share of official and historical honor. It furnished one United States District Attorney, James S. Botsford, who, when appointed by Grant to that office, resided here. He was in those days a safe and careful attorney and of such merit as to win a respectable and solid position in Kansas City, and has twice been honored by his party's nomination to the Supreme Bench. It furnished one United States Senator, George G. Vest, and two members of Congress, John F. Philips and John T. Heard. It furnished three good lawyers to the great railroad corporations of the State-John Montgom- ery, Jr., George P. B. Jackson and W. S. Shirk. It furnished at least one lawyer whose scholarly attainments, bred from an elegant and fortunate leisure, lias linked his name in imperishable Latin to the fossils he discovered-F. A. Sampson; it furnished at least two men who left their marks indelibly graven on the legislation and laws of this State -J. H. Bothwell and Charles E. Yeater; it furnished to the insurance corporations an industrious, zealous and successful attorney, of sound learning and wide experience-Geo. W. Barnett; it furnished to the Circuit Bench the present Judge of the Thirtiethi Circuit, a young man, university bred, of quick insight, amiable disposition, incorruptible and fearless, of growing and auspicious promise as a jurist-George F. Longan; it furnished to the old Sixth Circuit a good Judge, Chan. P. Townsley; and the friendly prophetic eye can well see other hon- ors in store.
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