History of Oneida County, New York : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 55

Author: Durant, Samuel W
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Philadelphia : Everts & Fariss
Number of Pages: 920

USA > New York > Oneida County > History of Oneida County, New York : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 55

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At this term of the Oncida Common Pleas, in May, 1798, first occurs among the public records the name of Jonas Platt. He had come to the county of Oneida in the year 1791, and established himself in the village of Whitesboro', seven years after Hugh White had penetrated the wilderness and planted his log cabin on the banks of the Mohawk. He was the clerk of the Oneida Common Pleas, but his duties as such could not have been very oucrous at that early day, for I notice that not a single cause was tried during this session of the court, nor, indeed, until the month of September following. I find. no tra- ditional record of any special eminence acquired by Jonas Platt as an advocate, but he must have risen rapidly in the practice of his profession, and acquired a strong hold upon the public confidence, for in 1809 he was elected to the State Senate by the Federalists from the old western dis- trict, as it was called, and which had previously been strongly Republican ; and in 1810 he was nominated as a candidate for Governor of the State, and ran in opposition to Daniel D. Tompkins, whose superior popularity, however, defeated him. In 1814 he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of the State, and took his seat by the side of those eminent men, Smith Thompson, Ambrose Spencer, and Win. W. Van Ness. He continued in this office until 1821, when, in common with his distinguished colleagues, he was legislated out of office by the operation of the new

constitution of that year. The record of what he did while occupying this honorable position is well known to lawyers, and his opinions, which are always respectable, but never brilliant nor distinguished for any depth of learning, will be found scattered through Johnson's Reports, from the eleventh to the twentieth and closing volume. It was said of him by Governor Clinton that he reversed the well- known maxim, for he was "fortiter in modo, suaviter in re." But this was the sarcasm of a personal and political enemy ; and though there may have been a grain of truth in it, it was, after all, a gross exaggeration. Judge Platt was a finished gentleman, and dispensed for many years a grace- ful hospitality at his well-known residence in Whitesboro'. He had a high sense of personal honor, and although natu- rally of quick and keen sensibilities, he acquired a perfect control over his temper, and never allowed himself to be betrayed into a passionate or even an uncourteous expres- sion. He carried his courtesy at times almost beyond the bounds required by the conventionalities of ordinary life, and a retort or a rebuke from his lips was conveyed in terms that had the similitude of, and might have almost been mistaken for, a compliment.

On his retirement from the bench, Judge Platt resumed the practice of his profession, at first in this county, and then in the city of New York, and ultimately closed his life at Plattsburgh, from which place, if I am not mistaken, he originally came. Something of a cloud passed over h's fair fame after his removal to New York, occasioned by his action as an arbitrator in what was known as the matter of the Greek frigates. I am not aware that the judgment which he, in common with his colleagues, rendered was ever seri- ously impugned, but the compensation they awarded them- selves was stigmatized as unjust and even extortionate. My recollection is that it was some $1500 or $2000 apiece,-a compensation which, in our day, and especially in the city of New York, where counsel-fees of $10,000 and even $20,000 for the trial and argument of a cause are by no means un- usual, and the sum of $1500 is unblushingly demanded for answering a single question, would be deemed, perhaps, ridiculously small. At that time, however, it looked large, and even exorbitant, and, combined with sympathy for the Greeks, led to comments which were quite uncompliment- ary, and evoked a public sentiment under which even his high reputation for integrity suffered. Let us believe, as I truly do, that this odium was undeserved, and that any sus- picion of his want of personal probity was entirely un- founded ; and regret that the last days of a man of honor, integrity, and Christian sincerity were to any degree embit- tered by the shade thus unhappily and undeservedly cast upon them.

At this term of the Common Pleas, of which I have spoken (May, 1798); there were admitted to the bar, be- sides Judge Platt, and two or three others who never ac- quired special standing in the courts, Thomas R. Gold, Joseph Kirkland, Erastus Clark, and Nathan Williams, of each of whom I shall have a few words to say.

Of Thomas R. Gold I have been able to obtain but few memorials of a personal nature; but his public acts and character are well known, and made him, in his day, a man of power and of repute. He was among the carly settlers,

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having emigrated to this county from New England, where he was born and educated, and established himself at Whites- town in 1792. His habits of industry were incessant and untiring, and continued to the very close of his life ; and this he illustrated as well in his public as in his private life, for there was no more diligent member of Congress, or of the State Senate, of both which bodies he was a member, nor one more capable of mastering a subject or defending a measure on which he had set his heart. His reputation at the bar was high, not so much for ease of address or eloquence of speech as for keen logic, sharp analysis, and learned mastery of cases. He argued more causes, as the record I think shows, in the old Supreme Court, than any lawyer in central New York. He died before either his physical or mental vigor had become impaired, and in the full flow of the practice of his profession, from which, by diligent and honorable effort, he had been able to secure what in that day was deemed a handsome fortune.

Some years before his death General Theodore Sill be- came his partner, and the name of Gold & Sill was as fre- quent, and became as renowned in the courts, as any of the great mercantile firms that flourished in the city. Under the shadow of Gold's greater reputation, Sill did not stand out so prominently before the public as he probably would have done if left to make his unaided and unpiloted way in his profession. But he was a man of very considerable attainments as a lawyer, and as a member of the Legisla- ture at different periods, from the county of Oneida, he commanded confidence and respect. He was very urbane in his manners and courtly in his address, affecting perhaps a little of the style of a gentleman of the old school. He spoke persuasively to a jury whenever he was called to make an appeal on a question of fact, leaving to his distinguished and experienced partner the task of grappling with the court whenever any tough question of law presented itself. In the latter part of his life a shadow came over him, and he retired from public view and the exercise of his profes- sion ; and a gifted man passed away with little done com- pared with what he had the capacity to achieve and the community a right to expect and demand.

Of General Joseph Kirkland, the next upon the list, my heart would prompt me to say many a kind and pleasant word, since for the memory of no man that ever lived in Oneida County do I cherish higher sentiments of venera- tion and esteem. But propriety seems to dictate that in speaking of him I should use, as I mainly shall, the words of others. He came to the county of Oneida, from his native State of Connecticut, about the year 1794, and located in the village of New Hartford. It is well known that the points of most importance at that day were the two settlements of Whitestown and New Hartford, and be- tween them there was an active, and for aught I know a generous, rivalry for business enterprises and social and political influence. It is a curious fact also, to show how time and external causes, combining with individual enter- prise, change the aspect of things and turn the current of trade and population, that General Kirkland made two re- moves to and fro from New Hartford to Utica, until he finally made up his mind that Utica would ultimately be the larger and the busier place, and so at last rested from

his migrations and cast his ultimate lot in this city in the year 1812. From that time until his death in 1844 he remained a tenant of the same house he had built, was en- gaged in almost every local enterprise of public improve- ment or private benevolence, represented the county in Congress and in the State Legislature, and was the first mayor, when Utica took its place among the cities of the State.

In speaking of his personal and professional character, I adopt the words of Judge Jones, in his valuable work on the history of Oneida County, when I say, " he was distin- guished for much dignity and decision of character, pos- sessed a fair share of talent and learning as a lawyer, united with great industry and perseverance in his profession. He. was a man of the strictest integrity and honor, and although rigid and unyielding in his views and the actions consequent upon them, he shared largely in the respect and confidence of the community." When I first began to know him intimately, about the year 1822, he had in a good measure retired from the active duties of his profession, which he had devolved upon his son Charles, a young, ambitious, and rising lawyer, who subsequently became one of the leading members of the bar of Oneida not only, but of the State. The last case, so far as I know, that General Kirkland ever tried, and the only forensic effort of his before a jury that I ever witnessed, was in September, 1823, at the Oneida Common Pleas, in a case that had some features that marked it as peculiar. It was an action of slander brought by a colored man by the name of John Mitchell, who had been openly and noisily accused of theft. John had been " Professor of dust and ashes" at Hamilton College during a part of my colle- giate course, and was especially gifted in putting a shine upon boots that rivaled his own ebony skin. I was inter -. ested in him personally not only, but anxious to see how a black man would fare at the hands of a jury where his op- ponent was a white man. Such a suit was, perhaps, a little hazardous, for those were not the days of the Fifteenth Amendment, and the American of African descent had not become the " man and brother" that we now recognize, sinee the immortal declaration of the honored and lamented Lin- colo. Young counselor Kirkland felt that he needed the weight of his father to put into the black man's scale, and the general yielded to the call without hesitation. The trial came on. No justification of the words was attempted, but it was evidently thought that the case could be sneered out of court, and that it was quite a piece of presumption for a negro to suppose that he had character or standing enough in the community to be slandered. This roused the general, for he had a supreme contempt for anything mean, and sneaking, and unmanly, and he rose and ad- dressed the jury with a power and energy that showed that age had not extinguished the glowing fire of earlier days. He reminded them that in this country all men were equal before the law, and adopting the sentiment, though not the language, of Curran's splendid burst, he said that no matter what complexion the God of nature had chosen to impose upon any of his creatures, they had, notwithstanding, God- given rights, which could not be denied without peril to all other rights, and bringing deep discredit upon any body of men that should dare to withhold or venture to trifle with

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them. The jury were impressed with the evident sincerity and earnestness of the advocate, and a respectable verdict was rendered, teaching at least one citizen of Oneida County that " the black man had some rights which a white man was bound to respect."

Of Nathan Williams and Erastus Clark, the remaining two who were admitted to practice in the Oncida Common Pleas in 1798, I should have had much more to say had . not the task fallen into other and more diligent hands in the full sketches of these well-known men contained in the interesting lectures of Dr. Bagg, which are, I trust, at no distant day to be given to the expectant public. I concur fully in the estimate formed by those whose opinions he quoted, in respect to the standing, public services, and private worth of both these excellent men. Of the former it was truly said that " every part of his life was filled up with something that made his memory dear to his friends and honored by his country." I began the practice of the. law while he was presiding as the first circuit judge under the constitution of 1821, and was frequently brought into close contact with and pleasant relations to him. Although his manner was a little formal, and his expression may have seemed at times austere, he never was, within any experience I ever had, repellant or severe. To all young men he was especially indulgent, and uncommonly patient in listening to their crudities, and helping them, if he could, out of their difficulties; or, if he decided against them, accompanying it with such gentle emollients as might more easily break the fall, which his clear eye and calm judgment saw must inevitably come. Such conduct in a judge is eminently soothing and encouraging to a young advocate, and creates a tie of sympathy between bench and bar that blends in a happy union, respect, affection, and confidenee.

Erastus Clark I had intended for one of my stock char- acters, and had stored away several piquant anecdotes with which to lighten the somewhat heavy work of my lecture. But having been anticipated in this quarter, I must content myself by saying that Mr. Clark was a classical scholar of a high order, a student of history, accurate, extensive and pro- found, and a sound and elear-headed lawyer, not successful as an advocate, but most invaluable as a counselor, and a man of striking force and originality both in thought and action. We may easily believe all this, for we have for many years had the privilege of seeing and knowing his lineal descend- ant bearing the same name,-the present recorder of the city of Utica. And yet I am not quite content that he should have the whole credit of even so good a thing as that, for should not half the honor be shared by that mother who is characterized as "a lady of extreme gen- tleness and sweetness of disposition"? She was indeed all that and more, for she possessed great strength of mind, was well read in all the standard literature of the day, and capable of forming, as well as maintaining, an intelligent opinion on any topic that called into play the faculties of reasoning or of judgment. She had, too, a quiet wit of her own, which I will illustrate by an anec- dote that will well exemplify the character of both parties. Mr. Clark was an inveterate enemy to everything that had the appearance of affectation, and a deadly opponent to all

shams in profession or practice. One day a lady came on a visit to the house who abounded, even to overflowing, in all the airs and graces that are palmed off upon society as the art of being agreeable, while essentially insineere and empty. Mr. Clark endured the visitation as well as he could, but exhibited great uneasiness until it was over, but no sooner was the door closed than he exclaimed to his wife, " Well, I should say that woman had the polites the natural way." " My dear," said his wife, with her blandest smile, " wouldn't it be worth your while to try the experi- ment of inoculation ?"'

And here let me say, by way of episode, that no history of the early days of Oneida County will ever be complete that fails to make some honorable record of the intelligent, virtuous, and noble women, a score of whom I have now in my mind's eye, that were the companions of the men of those days, and who so largely contributed to give charac- ter, tone, and impulse to society which it has never lost, and which-I say it not boastingly but truthfully-has ever placed this community in the front rank in respect to all that makes social life a blessing and a power for good in every direction,-in all that makes home a comfort and a joy, and diffuses around an intellectual, an esthetic, and a moral influence of elevated character and priceless worth.

Passing now from the men of '98, and coming down to about the year 1808, we reach a period which witnessed the advent of two men every way remarkable, and who, take them all in all, must be deemed the most eminent men that ever graced the bar of Oneida, if not of the State of New York. They had more than a local-they had a national-reputation, for one of them made a dis- tinguished mark in Congress, and the other opposed his unmatched strength to that of Daniel Webster before the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington. Those men were Henry R. Storrs and Samuel L. Talcott. They both came from New England, the fertile hive of intellect and culture. The former located at Whitestown and the latter at New Hartford. Both received their school and collegiate instruction at New England seminaries ; both began their legal studies there, but finished them in the office of Mr. Gold, at Whitesboro', and about the same time were admitted to practice in the courts of the county of Oneida. I have a distinct recollection of the personal appearance, the bearing, address, tones of voice, and man- ner of delivery of each of them. When a boy I wandered into the court-house, which was then an attractive place for me, on one occasion, when I saw Talcott rising to address a jury in a case of which I learned enough to know that it was an action against a constable for unlawfully entering a man's house to serve some process upon him. The claim upon one side was that the officer had illegally broken open the door and made his entry not only uninvited, but by violence. This, of course, was controverted on the other side, and the question for the jury was which allegation was true. Talcott was for the plaintiff, and assuming that he had succeeded in proving the fact of the violent entry, he dilated in well-measured periods upon its illegality and enormity. He was a man of commanding presence, with a deep-toned, resounding voice and very impressive manner. I remember one of his sentences which struck my ear, and

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was so imbedded in my memory that I think I can repro- duce it in nearly, if not quite, the identical words employed by him : " Gentlemen," said he, " in the benign language of the common law every man's house is styled his castle ; not because it is surrounded with implements of defense or supplied with the weapons of hostility, but because the sanetity of the domestie fireside and the holy charm of the family have drawn around it a magic circle which no man shall pass with impunity." The sentiment and the lan- guage, though entirely different, remind one of the cele- brated apostrophe of Lord Chatham, when he said : " Every man's house in England is his castle. It may be poor and humble ; the winds may whistle through it ; the rains may enter ; but the king of England, with his army at his back, cannot uninvited enter it."

Talcott rose rapidly in his profession. He was engaged in nearly every important ease that was tried at the Circuit, and soon appeared at the bar of the Supreme Court, argu- ing the cases that came up for review and revision, with abundant learning and commanding power. Ere long he was elected to the office of Attorney-General of the State, and transferred his residence to the city of Albany, and never afterwards returned permanently to the county of Oneida. But with all his ability, he had striking weak- nesses, and some lamentable vices. Among the former was a foolish vanity of baving it thought that all his gifts and resources came by inspiration, and were not the fruit (as in truth they were) of careful study and laborious preparation. He had this vanity in early life, and it was exhibited on the day he graduated, when, just before he was called upon to pronounce the valedietory oration to his class, it is said that he locked himself in a room, and when found, pre- tended that he was engaged in finishing the oration which in a few moments he was called upon to deliver, and which, it need hardly be said, he had long before consumed the midnight oil upon, and which had for weeks been care- fully stored away in his memory. Over his viees we would fain draw the veil of charitable forgetfulness, were it not that they " point a moral" that should not be lost upon the younger members of the bar. Coupled with the gift of a transcendent intellect, Talcott had the fatal endowment of strong animal passions and propensities. Driven on by these physical impulses, and seduced by the attractions of social and convivial life, in which he shone with peculiar brillianey, he soon overleaped the bounds of allowable in- dulgence, and ultimately became the prey to habits of gross intoxication, of weeks' and sometimes of months' continu-

ance. And yet such was his elasticity both of body and of mind, that when he came out of his revels he had all the seeming freshness of a renewed being, and his mental facul- ties were apparently as bright as if they had never been obseured; and awakening from the delirium of a debauch, he would stand up and measure his strength with the ablest and best in the land. One of the last occasions on which he appeared was before the Supreme Court of the United States, in what was known as the " Sailor's Snug Harbor" case. This had been preceded by a week of indulgence, so that his friends began to fear that he would be utterly unfit to stand in the presence of that high tribunal. But on the day assigned for the argument he strode into the court-

room attired with scrupuleus neatness, fresh as a bride- groom, and his imperial intellect untouched and unobseured. Beginning in a low and measured tone, he gathered strength and power as he proceeded in his masterly discourse, and for five hours or more held the breathless attention of bench, and bar, and audience, in an argument which the illustrious Marshall declared had not been equaled in that court since the days of the renowned lawyer William Pink- ney. It was an argument that Daniel Webster, his great antagonist, found it impossible, with his abundant learning and colossal intellect, to overcome, or even successfully to meet. It was the last great effort of Talcott, and from that altitude he rapidly sank, and like the sun even at high noon, in the meridian of a day that should have been flooded with glorious light, his orb went out in dismal darkness. The life of Samuel A. Talcott contains lessons of instruc- tion and of warning to young men which may well demand their thoughtful consideration. Let no young lawyer in- dulge the vain delusion that he can trust to the inspiration of genius to help him on the toilsome pathway of profes- sienal success, nor believe that he can secure the honors and enjoy the rewards of his calling by anything short of careful study, profound thought, and patient toil. Above all, let him avoid, as he would the poison of asps, dalliance with the cup, indulgence in which blunted the moral sense, obscured the fame, darkened the life, and sent to a prema- ture grave the learned and the brilliant Talcott.

Henry R. Storrs acquired, as I have said, a national reputation, and yet his solid fame will, I think, rest in good measure on the estimate formed by his contemporaries of his legal standing and achievements. In Congress he was indeed one of the most forcible debaters and eloquent ora- tors of the day, but he was vacillating and uncertain in his opinions, frequently disappointing his friends by voting in opposition to measures he had been supposed to favor, and triumphantly vindicating and maintaining in debate some vital proposition, to the fate of which he was so indifferent or so forgetful that quite as often as otherwise he would be found absent on the final vote. He sustained the Missouri Compromise, and was indeed, to a large extent, entitled to the credit (if credit it shall be deemed) of being its origi- nator and earliest and most powerful advocate. Mr. Clay acknowledged his indebtedness to him for his most invalu- able aid in carrying that measure. His vote and his advo- eaey, however, exposed him to sharp criticism at home, and the consequence was that his party dropped his name in the next congressional canvass, and it is a eurious commentary upon the fickleness of politicians, if not of the people, that two years after he was nominated by the political party to which up to that time he had always been opposed, and was returned to Congress, after an exciting contest, by a majority of less than a hundred votes over his opponent (the late Ezekiel Bacon), in a poll of many thousand votes.

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History of Oneida County, New York : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 55

Author: Durant, Samuel W Publication date: 1878 Publisher: Philadelphia : Everts & Fariss Number of Pages: 920

Author: Durant, Samuel W
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Philadelphia : Everts & Fariss
Number of Pages: 920