USA > New Mexico > Men of our day; or, biographical sketches of patriots, orators, statemen, generals, reformers, financiers and merchants, now on the stage of action > Part 36
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Anecdotes innumerable are told of his audacity, and quickness
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of retort. Upon one of his first cases being called into court he said, in the usual way, "Let notice be given !" "In what paper ?" asked the aged clerk of the court, a strenuous Whig. "In the Lowell Advertiser," was the reply; the Advertiser being a Jackson paper, never mentioned in a Lowell court; of whose mere existence, few there present would confess a knowledge. "The Lowell Advertiser?" said the clerk with disdainful non- chalance, "I don't know such a paper." "Pray, Mr. Clerk," said young Butler, "do not interrupt the proceedings of the Court ; for if you begin to tell us what you don't know, there will be no time for any thing else." So, at a later date, and not long after the execution of Professor Webster, of Harvard College, for the murder of Dr. Parkman, when he was examining a professor of that college as a witness, and was "badgering" him in his usual not very respectful manner, the opposing counsel appealed to the court, reminding them that the witness was an educated gentleman "and a Harvard professor." Butler contemptuously replied "I am aware of it, your Honor; we hung one of them the other day."
In the very recent impeachment trial, the Hon. Fernando Wood, of New York, received one of those seathing replies which Butler can strike out instantaneously at "a white heat." Mr. Wood undertook to protest to the "replication" entered before the Court of Impeachment, on the ground that he, as one of "the people of the United States" in whose name it was made, objected to it. General Butler immediately turned upon him with-"The representatives of the people usually represent them, but the gentleman (Mr. Wood) has not even the merit of origin- ality in his objection. The form is one that has been used 500 years, lacking eight. The objection was made to it once before, and only once, when the people of England, smarting under the usurpation and tyranny of Charles I., not having any provision
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in their Constitution as we have, by which that tyrant could be brought to justice outside of their Constitution, and in a per- fectly legal manner, as I understand and believe, brought Charles to justice. When proclamation was made that they were pro- ceeding in the name of all the people of England, one of the ad- herents rose and said, 'No, all the people do not consent to it,' so that the gentleman has at least a precedent for what he has done; and I wish we could follow out the precedent in this House, because the Court inquired who made that objection, and tried to find the offender for the purpose of punishing him [laugh- ter]; but as he concealed himself he could not be found, and he afterward turned out to be a woman [laughter], the wife of General Fairfax, who ratted on that occasion from the rest of the Com- mons." And, then, in reply to some strictures in which Wood had indulged concerning an implied lack of courtesy on the part of the House Managers-he quietly remarked that he " hoped the House would not receive any lectures or suggestions upon propriety of language, or propriety of conduct, from the gentleman who stands as yet under its censure for a violation of all parliament- ary rules ;" an allusion to an event of only a few weeks previous occurrence, which effectually "squelched" the impertinent leader of the " Mozart Democracy."
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HON. WILLIAM D. KELLEY.
HE Republican party is the legitimate heir of the old Federal and Whig parties-the parties of Washington and Webster-which, in the ancient and mediaval pe- riods of the Republic, as they may be termed, illustrated the sentiment and the idea of nationality as opposed to the heresy of State sovereignty.
There is, nevertheless, flowing in the veins of this great Re- publican organization much of the best blood of the old Demo- cratic party. The men who adopted the political teachings of Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the inspirer of the ordinance of 1789, who heartily believed the great American doctrines of the freedom and equality of all men, and the power and duty of the nation to protect the na- tional domain from the pollution of human slavery, passed, by a natural transition, into the Republican ranks when the Demo- cratic party abandoned the faith of its fathers, and became the embodiment of a "creed outworn."
Among the men of the Democratic party who earliest sepa- rated from "its decaying forms," and contributed to organize a new party, in the light of truth and reason, on the basis of inherent, inalienable right, was the subject of this sketch- WILLIAM DARRAH KELLEY.
He was born in the Northern Liberties of Philadelphia, on the 12th of April, 1814. His grandfather, Major John Kelley
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was a native of Salem county, New Jersey, and served through- out the Revolution as an officer of the Continental line. The son of this Revolutionary officer, and the father of the subject of this memoir-David Kelley-removed from New Jersey to Philadelphia, where he married a lady of Bucks county, Penn- sylvania -- Miss Hannah Darrah. The cloud of financial em. barrassment, which, at the close of the war of 1812, darkened the horizon, cast its deep shadow over the fortunes of Mr. Kel- ley ; and by his death, in 1816, his widow was left, without an estate, to support and educate a dependent family of four chil- dren, the youngest of whom-William-was but two years of age. Mrs. Kelley struggled nobly and well to fulfil this great trust, and lived to witness the consummation of her most ambi- tious hopes in the prosperity and advancement of her distin- guished son.
At eleven years of age, it became necessary that William should earn his own living. He accordingly left school, and became an errand boy in a book store, then a copy-reader in the office of the " Philadelphia Inquirer" newspaper, and finally an apprentice to Messrs. Rickards & Dubosq, manufacturing jewel- lers, of Philadelphia. He attained his freedom in the spring of 1834. This was the era of the removal of the deposits from the United States Bank; and Mr. Kelley's first experience in political leadership was gained in encouraging and organizing the resistance of the Democratic workingmen to the tyrannous demands of the Whig capitalists of Philadelphia. The stand he took on this question rendered it difficult for him to obtain employment in his native city. He accordingly removed to Boston, and at once secured a situation in the establishment of Messrs. Clark and Curry. In Boston, the spirit of New England culture took deep hold upon his nature. While laboring with characteristic industry in the most difficult branch of his trade --
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the art of enamelling -- and achieving a high reputation as a skilful aud tasteful workman, he improved his scholarship by solitary study ; and his contributions to the newspapers of the day, and written and extemporaneous lectures and addresses before public audiences, established his reputation as a writer and speaker of ability and power, in association even with such men as Bancroft, Brownson, Alexander H. Everett, Channing and Emerson.
In 1839, he returned to Philadelphia, and entered, as a stu- dent of law, the office of Colonel James Page, a local leader of the Democratic party, and the postmaster of Philadelphia. On April 17, 1841, he was admitted to the bar of the several courts of his native city. His advancement in the profession was im- mediate and rapid ; while, in every political canvass, local and national, his stirring addresses attracted large audiences, and rendered him one of the most conspicuous figures in the Demo- cratic party. In January, 1845, he was appointed by the attor- ney-general of the State-Hon. John K. Kane-to conduct, in connection with Francis Wharton, Esq., who has since become celebrated as a writer on criminal law, the pleas of the Com- monwealth in the courts of Philadelphia. In March, 1846, Governor Shunk appointed Mr. Kelley a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, a tribunal whose jurisdiction was co-extensive with the common law, chancery and ecclesiastical courts of England. In 1851, he was elected to the same bench, under the new Constitution of the State, upon an independent ticket, in defiance of the attempted proscription of the Democratic party organization, which was embittered against him for his course in the contested election case of Reed and Kneass. This was a triumphant vindication by the people of the justice and integ- rity of his action in that cause.
But Judge Kelley did not confine himself to the topics of his
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profession or to the discussion of political questions. The pro- tection of the weak and down-trodden, the reformation of the ignorant and vicious, and the promotion of education, have ever found in him an eloquent and powerful advocate. His re- markable powers of oratory, give additional effect to his chaste and polished style, and few public speakers have proved so effective. We offer the following passages from an address of his before the Linnæan society of Pennsylvania college, Gettys- burg, on the "Characteristics of the Age," delivered over twenty years ago, as giving an idea of the felicity and beauty of his style, as a writer. The earnestness and the clear ringing tones of the orator are wanting to give it full effect.
"I would not disparage the value of the 'little learning' which enables a man to read and write his mother tongue with facility. When 'commerce is king,' the ability to do this is little less than essential to the physical well-being of the citizen. Under such government the receipt-book peaceably enough performs a large share of the functions of the embattled wall and armed retainers of the days when force was law. But to rise above the commercial value of these slender attainments, he who can read the language of Shakspeare and Milton, John- son and Addison, Shelley and Wordsworth, has the key to the collected wisdom of his race. The farms around his workshop, the property of others, present to his view a landscape which is his, and to him belongs every airy nothing to which poet ever gave habitation or name. The sages of the most remote past obey his call as counsellors and friends; and in the company of prophet and apostle he may approach the presence of the Most High. The value of such a gift is inestimable. Wisdom and justice would make it the certain heritage of every child born in the commonwealth.
* " The spirit of commerce is essentially selfish. Voyages are projected for profit. The merchant, whose liberal gifts surprise the world, chaffers in his bargains. Not for man is a family
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of' brethren, therefore, are the blessing of this age. They are the gifts of a common Father, but they come not, like light and dew, insensibly to all. They mark the achievements of our race, and manifest the master-spirit of the age, but hitherto they have been felt but slightly by the masses of mankind. Wealth increases , but its aggregation into few hands takes place with ever-growing rapidity. The comforts of life abound; but when the markets of the world are glutted, hunger is in the home of the artisan. Over-production causes the legitimate effects of famine. The ingenuity of political economists is vainly taxed for the means of preventing the accumulation of surplus mate- rial and fabrics. And while warehouse and granary groan with repletion, heartless theory points to the laboring popula- tion reduced to want and pauperism, and with dogmatic empha- sis, inquires if the increase of population cannot be legally restrained ? The state of the market shows that there are more men than commerce requires, and a just system of economy would adapt the supply to the demand !
* * *
"Ancient philosophy did not recognize utility as an aim. It contemned, as mechanical and degrading, the discovery or in- vention that improved man's physical condition. Socrates invented no steam-engine or spinning-jenny. The soul was his constant study. Regardless of his own estate, he cared not for the material comfort of others. Indifferent to the world him- self, he sought to raise his disciples above it. A disputatious idler and a scoffer at utility, he fashioned Plato and swayed the world for centuries. Our philosophy comes from Bacon. It only deals with the wants of man and uses of nature. The body is the object of its solicitude. Earth is the field of its hopes. Time bounds its horizon. Fruit, material fruit-the multiplication of the means of temporal enjoyment-was the end Lord Bacon had in view, when, denouncing the schools, he gave his theories to the world. Time and experience have vindicated his methods. But have they not also shown, that a system whic.' offers no sanetion to virtue and no restraints to vice, whose only instruments are the senses, and whose only
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subject is material law, may impart to a world the vices which made the wisest also the meanest of mankind."
In August, 1856, Judge Kelley was nominated, while absent from home, as the Republican candidate for Congress from the fourth Congressional district of Pennsylvania. He was not elected ; for the Republican idea had made at that day but feeble impression in Philadelphia, and the party was without means or organization. During that canvass he made his first great Republican address on Slavery in the Territories, in Spring Garden Hall, Philadelphia. Motives of delicacy prompted him to resign his judicial office immediately after the election, and he returned, after a term of nine years and nine months on the bench, to the private practice of his profession. In October 1860 he was elected on the Republican ticket to the seat in Congress to which he has been three times since returned by his constituents. On his return from the special session of Congress which convened on July 4th 1861, he participated as counsel for the Government, in the prosecution of the pirates of the rebel privateer, "Jeff Davis," and made a brilliant closing argument in that great State trial.
In Congress he has spoken at length upon every national topic ; and, in most instances, he has borne the standard of his party, and planted it far in advance, holding it with firm and steady hand, until his friends occupied the position.
As early as January 7th, 1862, he detected the fatal errors of the military policy of McClellan, and warned the country of the incompetency of that officer, in an impromptu reply to the speech of Vallandigham, on the Trent case. On the 16th of January, 1865, he vindicated, in an elaborate speech, the justice and necessity of impartial suffrage as a fundamental condition of the restoration of Republican Governments in the rebel States. On the 22d of June, 1865, in an address on " the Safe.
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guards of Personal Liberty," at Concert Hall, Philadelphia, he criticised the policy of reconstruction foreshadowed by Presi dent Johnson in his North Carolina proclamation, and indicated a plan of action, in respect to the rebel States, which has been since substantially embodied in the reconstruction acts of Congress. In his speech on "Protection to American Labor," delivered in the House of Representatives, on the 31st of January, 1866, he indicated a financial policy, in reference to the payment of the public debt, which Congress has fully adopted in the repeal of the cotton tax, and the modification of the duties on manufactured products. In connection with these remarkable speeches, may be mentioned his speech of the 27th of February, 1866, on "the Constitutional Regulation of Suf- frage." Two of Judge Kelley's speeches in Congress-that of January 16th, 1865, on Suffrage, and that of January 31st, 1866, on Labor-have had more extensive circulation than the speeches of any other American statesman. More than half a million copies of each have been printed and distributed.
At the first session of the XXXIXth Congress, Judge Kelley introduced the bill, which was afterwards passed with certain modifications, to secure the right of suffrage to the colored population of the District of Columbia.
On the evening of the 22d of February, 1868, he spoke in favor of the impeachment of the President, and more recently participated in the debate in the House of Representatives on the resolution of Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, to prohibit hereditary exclusion from the right of suffrage, and defended the position taken by him in his more extended speech, two years before, on the Constitutional Regulation of Suffrage.
We have not space even to mention the numerous speeches and addresses of Judge Kelley in and out of Congress. He has addressed his fellow citizens from the lakes to the gulf.
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In the spring of 1867, he visited the Southern States, and in a series of addresses at New Orleans, Montgomery, and other cities, spoke earnest and eloquent words of hope and encourage- ment to the people of the South. The noble wisdom and tender humanity which pervade these speeches, stamp them as the production of a statesman and philanthropist. They were words of friendly counsel, which the people of the South would do well to heed.
A comprehensive, national character, and a generous, in- tense, all-embracing humanity, have always characterized Judge Kelley's political opinions. He saw, in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, conclusive evidence that the Democratic party had become sectional; and he left it. He found that Democracy, which once had meant civil and religious liberty, equality, justice, advancement, the greatest good of the greatest number, had come to mean proscription of opinion, aristocracy, tyranny, disorder, slavery ; and he abandoned it.
He is therefore one of the fathers of the National Republican party. The sincerity and earnestness of his convictions would always gain for him the attention of the House of Repre- sentatives, if it were not commanded by the striking and en- gaging peculiarities of his eloquence. He appears with equal advantage in impromptu reply, and in elaborately prepared address. His vehement declamation, delivered in tones of voice marvellously rich and powerful, thrills, on occasions, the members upon the floor, and the listeners in the galleries; as when, on the memorable night of the 22d of February, he exclaimed :-
"Sir, the bloody and untilled fields of the ten unreconstructed States, the unsheeted ghosts of the two thousand murdered negroes in Texas, cry, if the dead ever invoke vengeance, for the punishment of Andrew Johnson."
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Judge Kelley is altogether the most considerable public character whom Philadelphia has ever sent to the national councils. She has too few of such men-men of progressive ideas, commanding talents, and national fame; and when one has served her, as Judge Kelley has, through eight years of eventful history, it becomes her duty, as a just comm' nity, to cherish and honor him.
HON. JOHN A. BINGHAM,
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM OHIO.
MONG the most active and efficient members of the House of Representatives is MR. BINGHAM, of Ohio. Slight in form, of mercurial temperament, quick, nervous, sometimes irascible, he yet secures the attention of the House, when he speaks, by his brilliant oratory, his sharp, cutting sarcasms, and the evident earnestness with which he advocates his side of a question. At times a little erratic, and not always a safe leader, he yet wins converts to his views by his skilful rhetoric, and his adroit manner of putting his posi- tions. A logician, in the highest sense of the word, he is not ; his inclination is rather to the rhetorical and diffuse, though, at times, he makes a clear and connected argument. He is regarded as an able lawyer, and as especially skilful in cross- examining witnesses, and in the numerous trials he has con- ducted, he has exhibited this skill in a marked degree; though in the impeachment trial, he was distanced by his colleague, General Butler, who has perhaps, in that special field of legal practice, no superior in the United States.
JOHN A. BINGHAM was born in Mercer county, Pennsylvania, in 1815. Having received a good academical education, he spent two years in a printing office, and then entered Franklin college, Ohio, but owing to ill health, did not complete his collegiate course. He subsequently studied law, and was admitted to the
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bar, in Ohio. In 1845, he was appointed attorney for he State, in Tuscarawas county, Ohio, and retained the position till 1849. He devoted himself sedulously to his profession for several years, at Cadiz, the county seat of Harrison county, to which he had removed, and in 1854, was elected a Representative in Congress, from the sixteenth district of Ohio. During his first term (1855-7) he was a member of the Committee on Elections, and made a report on the Illinois contested cases, which was adopted. He was also a member of other important committees. Mr. Bingham was re-elected to the XXXVth, XXXVIth, XXXVIIth, XXXIXth, and XLth Congresses, and has there- fore had eleven years of service in the House of Representatives, though not a member of the XXXVIIIth Congress (1863-65). He is classed with the Radical Republicans, and has shown himself as strongly opposed to slavery as any member of the House. He has always had a prominent place on important committees-being a member of the Judiciary Committee, the Committee on Military Affairs, Freedmen, Reconstruction, etc. He was chairman of the Managers of the House, in the impeach- ment of Judge Humphreys, in May, 1862.
In 1863, he was appointed United States district judge, for the southern district of Florida, but declined the appointment ; early, in 1864, he was appointed judge advocate in the Union army, and later, in the same year, solicitor of the Court of Claims. He was assistant judge advocate in the trial of the conspirators, for the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, in 1865, and conducted the trial with great ability. Some charges made by General Butler in regard to this trial, led to a bitter controversy between them, but this was finally adjusted, and the parties reconciled. In the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, February 22, to May 26, 1868, Mr. Bingham was chairman of the Managers of the House of Representatives, and conducted
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the trial wisn decided ability. His address in summing up the evidence was felicitous and brilliant, as well as impressive.
Mr. Bingham's health is by no means vigorous, and this may have imparted to his face a stern and somewhat sad expression, which has led his friends to speak of him as the best natured, but crossest looking man in the House.
HON. JAMES F. WILSON,
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM IOWA.
N able, clear-headed lawyer, of cool, calm, judicial mind and sterling patriotism, is the Representative from the first Congressional district of Iowa. The West has sent very few Representatives of higher talent or greater ability and disposition for usefulness, to Congress within the last twenty years. Although a comparatively young man, (he has not yet seen his fortieth birthday,) the House leans upon him, confides in him, and places him in its positions of great responsibility, and it never finds itself disappointed.
JAMES F. WILSON was born at Newark, Ohio, October 19, 1828; received in that city, which, for years, has been famous for its good schools, a very thorough academic education, and then commenced the study of the law, and was admitted to the Licking county bar, about 1849 ; in 1853, he removed to Fair- field, Iowa, where he speedily took a high rank in his profes- sion. In 1856, though but twenty-eight years old, he was chosen a member of the convention to revise the State Consti- tution, and acquitted himself with honor there. In 1857, he was appointed, by the governor of the State, Assistant Com- missioner of the Des Moines River Improvement. The same year he was elected to the Legislature, and became at once a leader in the House. In 1859, he was chosen State Senator, and re-elected in 1861, when he was made President of the Senate.
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In this position, at the outbreak of the war, he manifested so much patriotism, and so clear a comprehension of what was the duty of Iowa in aiding in the suppression of the rebellion, as to attract the attention of the people of that eminently loyal State, and rendered great service to the cause. When General Samuel R. Curtis, the Representative of the first district in Congress, resigned his seat, to take command of Iowa troops for the war, Mr. Wilson was promptly chosen to serve out the remainder of his term, and has since been re-elected to the XXXVIIIth, XXXIXth and XLth Congresses, and will probably be continued there till a vacancy in the Senate shall cause him to be trans- ferred to that body.
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