The bench and bar of New-York. Containing biographical sketches of eminent judges, and lawyers of the New-York bar, incidents of the important trials in which they were engaged, and anecdotes connected with their professional, political and judicial career, Part 16

Author: Proctor, L. B. (Lucien Brock), 1830-1900. cn
Publication date: 1870
Publisher: New York, Diossy & company
Number of Pages: 812


USA > New York > The bench and bar of New-York. Containing biographical sketches of eminent judges, and lawyers of the New-York bar, incidents of the important trials in which they were engaged, and anecdotes connected with their professional, political and judicial career > Part 16


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In the fall of 1837 he was induced to make Hor- nellsville his future residence, where he soon took a high position among the able and distinguished law- yers by whom he was surrounded, and controlled a large and lucrative practice.


One of his earliest business relations was a part- nership with the late John Baldwin, whose legal abil- ities and keen wit distinguished him throughout western New York, and whom Mr. Hawley always held in high esteem, not only for his learning and talents, but for his incorruptible integrity and gener- osity. So keen was this singular man's sense of honor, that he could not be induced to embark in the conduct of a cause in which he believed there was real dishonesty. Of course, like all lawyers, he was frequently induced to defend or prosecute an action by imposition.


One day, while in company with Mr. Hawley, and while both partners were engaged in their office, a man who had been charged with stealing flour came in for the purpose of retaining one of them to defend him. He stated his case, and urged his innocence with much earnestness. After listening patiently to him, Mr. Baldwin said, quite sharply :


"Do you really pretend, sir, that you are not guilty of this crime ?"


"I do, so help me God," said the man.


Mr. Baldwin was at this time quite lame.


" Hawley," said he, abruptly turning to him, "kick that damned rascal out of the office ! he lies in his speech and in his looks. See there," he con-


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tinued, pointing to marks of flour still adhering to the sleeves of the man's coat, "he's got the marks of petit larceny stamped on his clothes !"


The man gave one glance at the marks of his guilt, and, without saying another word, left the office. He went, however, to another law firm, was defended by them, but he was convicted.


The partnership of Hawley & Baldwin continued only about one year, when it was dissolved. The practice of Mr. Hawley continued to increase. With unceasing labor and industry, he devoted himself to his clients, and thus attained the front rank of his pro- fession, and acquired considerable wealth.


In January, 1846, he was appointed by Governor Wright first judge of Steuben county. Many years previous to this, Mr. Wright had made his acquaint- ance, and, regarding him as a high minded, honor- able and able lawyer, he tendered him this position as a mark of his esteem and confidence. The appoint- ment gave great satisfaction to the people of Steuben county, for with them the judge was always a favor- ite, and he possessed many qualifications for a suc- cessful judicial officer.


Mild, amiable and courteous, yet firm, decided, dignified and impartial, it is not saying too much of him, that he lost nothing, when compared with his learned and able predecessors. Receiving, however, the position when the second State Constitution was about to be succeeded by the new one of 1846, he held it but a little over a year, and Hon. David Mc- Master took his place by election, Mr. Hawley being a candidate for Senator in the twenty-fifth Senatorial district of the State.


He was elected in the fall of 1847. John Young was then governor, Hamilton Fish lieutenant-gov- ernor and president of the Senate. Though that accomplished and able statesman did not agree with Mr. Hawley in politics, yet, on the entrance of the latter into the Senate, a warm and lasting friendship


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commenced between those gentlemen, and Mr. Haw- ley was honored with the second position on the Com- mittee of Ways and Means, while his name appeared on other important Senate committees during his term.


He was never what might be called a successful politician. Those qualities which in him were most to be admired, unfitted him for the schemes and prac- tices of mere politicians. He was too honest and di- rect to enter into all their plots and counter-plots ; and though, in some cases, the end proposed might be approved by him, yet his soul abhorred the means by which those ends were sought to be obtained.


On the 19th of February, 1848, he delivered a speech in the Senate on certain resolutions instructing the Senators and Representatives in Congress from this State to vote for the prohibition of slavery in New Mexico, whose entrance into the Union was then an- ticipated. This speech added much to his reputation. It was calm, direct and statesman-like-it was re- garded as one of the ablest delivered in the Senate during that winter.


At this time, the question of slavery in the Terri- tories began to be one of great and absorbing interest. The relations of parties began to change. The great questions which, since the organization of the govern- ment, had divided the country, were now nearly all set- tled, and hence the cohesive power which held parties together, was losing its strength in the new issues that were being formed.


A spirit began to sweep over the land, bearing things onward, with a terrible velocity, towards the crisis through which the nation has passed, and men learned that in party, as in material organizations, a destructive and recuperative energy is ever active, and decay or growth is determined by the relative in- tensity of these antagonistic forces.


Judge Hawley was a delegate from this State to the Democratic National Convention, which assembled


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at Baltimore on the 22nd of May, 1848, "at which two delegations from the State of New York pre- sented themselves for admission ; one of which was known as the Free Soil Radical or Barnburner delega- tion, under the guide of the late Samuel Young, and that of the Conservatives or Hunkers, who were under the lead of Daniel S. Dickinson." Mr. Hawley iden- tified himself with the former.


In the language of Mr. Greeley : "The conven- tion attempted to split the difference by admitting both, and giving each half the vote to which the State was entitled ; this the Barnburners rejected, leaving the convention, and refusing to be bound by its conclusions. The great body of them united in the Free Soil movement, which culminated in a Na- tional Convention, held at Buffalo, August 9, 1848, in which Martin Van Buren was nominated for Presi- dent, and Charles Francis Adams for Vice-Presi- dent."


Judge Hawley was also a delegate to the Buffalo Convention, and entered ardently into all its proceed- ings. He was one of the committee who introduced those resolutions, whose essential elements were after- wards adopted by the Republican party. On the in- troduction of those resolutions, he delivered a speech, the very sentiments of which, in after years, he reiter- ated in a Republican State Convention.


"This convention," said he, "is to give the nation a new testament, a new order of things. It is the ax laid at the root of slavery, as a progressive institution. There are to be great and powerful objects thrown in our way, it is true, but patriots must struggle against great obstacles. Timid, small men shrink before them. Dead fish, Mr. Chairman, can swim down stream, but it requires a live and active fish to go up the current."


John Van Buren followed the judge, in a speech in support of these resolutions. A warm friendship had, for many years, existed between him and


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Hawley. It was renewed at this convention, with the political faith which they had adopted. A few years after this, the former renounced this faith, but the latter continued in it through life; at first a Free Soil Democrat, then a Republican. After Mr. Hawley united with the Republicans, Mr. Van Buren ac- cepted an inviatation to address a Democratic mass meeting at Hornellsville. Soon after his arrival in that village, Judge Hawley called upon him. The usual formalities of their meeting being over, Mr. Van Buren said :


"Judge, I am sorry to learn that you have de- serted the faith of your fathers, and wandered after strange gods. How is this ?"


"I have adhered only to the faith which you so eloquently exhorted us to maintain, at the time of your conversion and mine, at Buffalo, a few years ago. Do you not remember, that you told us that you felt as though your load of sins were gone ? How is that, Mr. Van Buren ?" said the judge.


"Well, Judge, I thought I felt just so then, and it was worth something to have that feeling ; besides, you know, as they said at the time, Dad was then under the hay," said Mr. Van Buren, laughing.


After retiring from the Senate, Judge Hawley never again sought for official position, but confined himself exclusively to his profession ; and, although fortunate in his financial matters, he continued to practice until within a short period of his death. At the September Steuben circuit for 1868, held at Corning, he ap- peared and conducted a very important action for di- vorce, brought by a lady against her husband. There appeared no diminution in his fine mental powers, and he stood at the bar, as he had for years, an able and powerful competitor, though his health had been for some time declining. He always loved the detail of practice, and delighted in the contests of the forum. Like a perfectly disciplined soldier, whose delight is in the precision of military drill, he


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viewed all proceedings at the bar, all minutiæ of practice with deep interest, and his large experience . enabled him to easily detect incongruities and errors which occurred in pleading, practice, and on trial. Few lawyers were more perfect in their preparation of a case for trial or argument than he. His papers always exhibited, what a correct system of pleading demands, a brief philosophic statement of legally de- duced facts, from the circumstances attendant upon the matter complained of, a proper denial of which contains the statements of the opposite party's de- fense, governed by the same rules, and which forms the issue to be tried by a jury. Like many of the older lawyers, he disliked the Code, preferring the mathematical precision of the old practice, which, though incumbered by some useless words, was adopted by such minds as Barron, Coke and Mans- field, and admired by all the great lawyers of Eng- land and America. But this did not deter him from acquiring a perfect understanding of the new practice.


A lawyer of extensive practice, and fine legal abilities, relates, that some years ago, Judge Haw- ley commenced an action which involved a very difficult and doubtful question of law. The papers required the most minute circumspection and re- search. They were brought to this lawyer for the purpose of interposing a defense. At first, he did not believe that papers could be prepared, suffi- cient in form, detail, and substance to sustain such an action, and he anticipated an easy victory. But on examination, he was surprised to find in the papers, a firm and substantial foundation for the cause of action ; every objection being anticipated, and every point fully fortified. They were, in fact, the result of labori- ous study, the offspring of an accomplished. legal mind. The action was settled ; but the papers remain in the lawyer's office, and have since been used as valuable precedents.


Judge Hawley's character did not escape censure.


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There were points in it which naturally drew upon him enmity, and even hatred.


As an enemy, he was bitter and uncompromising, and not without a love of revenge.


As a friend, he was sincere and undeviating. Un- pretending and easy in his manners, with pleasant, even fine, conversational powers, he was an attractive companion. There was a sunny humor in his manner, that drew the young as well as the old to him, and which disguised his faults. In person, he was slightly above the medium hight, well proportioned and erect. As a speaker, he was calm, temperate, and logical. He knew how to enliven a dry theme, with a proper play of the imagination, and thus give relief to the fatigue of close attention. In the argument of a purely legal question, at special or general term, he avoided all florid language, and sought perspicuity and con- ciseness of expression.


In his domestic relations, he was a kind husband, an indulgent and liberal father. As a citizen, he was public spirited, sedulous to advance the interests of the community in which he lived, and reasonably active in all projects of public improvement. The spontaneous tribute of the members of the bar, and the public generally to him, sufficiently attests the high estimation in which he was held, and the general sorrow which followed him to the tomb was not only honorable to him but to the community. He died on the 9th of February, 1869, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. Some years previous to his death, Mr. Haw- ley united with the Episcopal Church at Hornellsville ; and he continued in the unobtrusive and meek ob- servance of religious duties until his death. Without parade or ostentation, he approached the Mercy Seat, asking in spirit and sincerity, that God would be mer- ciful to him a sinner. To live religiously, he did not think himself called upon to give up the proper pur- suits and gratifications of human nature. His views of the true excellence of a human being were large


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and generous, and hence, instead of that contracted and repulsive character, which has often been identi- fied with piety, he entertained the loftiest conception of the infinite Father, whom he approached with lowly reverence, satisfied if he could but touch the hem of his garment, instead of worshiping with impious as- surance and canting zeal. Such was William M. Hawley.


Fngd by A . H. Pat bre


Your Friend Alvan Stewart


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each distinguished at the bar for fearlessly advocating grand, but at the time, unpopular principles of liberty. Mr. Otis, in 1778, before the Supreme Colonial Court of Massachusetts, in his great plea in opposition to the edict of assistance, instituted by the British govern- ment-a speech which Mr. Adams pronounced "a flame of fire, at the delivery of which, American inde- pendence was born." Mr. Stewart, in 1845, before the highest tribunal of a sovereign State, boldly con- tending against a system established by the usage of years, and sustained by the chivalry of a nation ; in a plea replete with great, lofty, original ideas of hu- man liberty, sparkling with condensed brilliancy, ap- plying the constitution and the laws to the rights of man, expressive with meaning and animation-" com- ing warm from his soul and faithful to its fires." May it not be said that the spirit of the emancipation proc- lamation then leaped from the lips of Alvan Stewart ?


He was accused of extravagance and ultraism-of being a disorganizer, a disseminator of incendiary principles-an enthusiast, dealing in dangerous, but useless speculations-a fanatic-charged with behold- ing objects in a sort of prismatic view-and dealing with distorted relations of things ; all these matters were, doubtless, sincerely believed of him.


It is a strange feature in our nature, that those who first uphold great and startling truths-truths destined for the amelioration of mankind, destined to live on from age to age, in increased beauty and splendor, are always assailed for their extravagance, their ido- syncrasies-follies, or fanaticism ; confirming the say- ing of the great Scotch philosopher, that the attempt to do good to society, is the hardest of all tasks.


Mr. Stewart did not belong to that class of men who never enter into extravagances, because they are so buttressed up with the opinions of others, on all sides, that they cannot, or dare not, move much either one way or the other; who are so slightly moved with any kind of reasoning that they remain


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at equal distance from truth and error, making slight progress in either direction. These are persons whom the world calls men of good judgment, and so they are; they can always be elected to office, they can glide into the Legislature of their State, leap into Congress from some hobby ; can rail vociferously at error with the multitude, but stand passive before any evil, no matter how stupendous, rather than heroically rebuke it single-handed and alone.


Alvan Stewart belonged to that class who fear- lessly strike at mighty wrongs, regardless alike of censure or praise ; whose blows indelibly mark the page of history ; whose fame, perhaps, unsung in life, is caught by the historic muse and given to im- mortality.


Alvan Stewart was born at South Granville, Wash- ington county, New York, September 1st, 1790.


His father, Uriel Stewart, was a farmer in moder- ate circumstances. In the year 1795 he removed to Westfield, Chittenden county, Vermont. There, Al- van attended the common district school. Being naturally studious, at the early age of seventeen he was qualified for a teacher ; and in the autumn of 1808, he commenced the duties, pleasures and labors of teaching, devoting his leisure hours to the study of medicine and anatomy. In the spring of 1809 he closed his school, determined to acquire a liberal edu- cation. Receiving but little aid from his father, he was compelled to divide his time between teaching and preparation for college. Having passed a satis- factory examination, he was admitted to the Univer- sity at Burlington, Vermont.


His was a mind susceptible to impressions, and he easily received instruction ; therefore, with the dili- gence and studious industry which he possessed, he , soon became one of the most thorough and method- , ical students in college. In the languages, in rhetoric and eloquence, he was highly distinguished. This, it is true, is but a common characteristic, and can be


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said of most ambitious and promising students ; but, as has been said of him, "the morals of the young collegian passed the ordeal of college life without yielding to the temptations and to the vices which are, perhaps, inseparable from any place, and he left the institution with unsullied purity of sentiment and manners."


The character thus early formed, Mr. Stewart re- tained through life.


He graduated with honor, and delivered the Greek oration at commencement.


While in college, one of the literary societies to which he belonged, was permitted to give a public dramatic entertainment, provided the piece to be rep- resented was the original production of one of the members of the society, and founded on some highly moral circumstance or event, and "its language such as will comport with the high morality of this uni- versity, with due respect to religion." All the stu- dents were greatly elated with the thoughts of wit- nessing a drama as part of the closing exercises of the year, but the condition that it must be entirely orig- inal, for a time was supposed to amount to an inter- dict of the promised pleasure. In this emergency, Alvan Stewart was applied to for relief; he was re- quested to write the drama or comedy, from the fact that as an actor in the dialogues which were often spoken in the college, he exhibited histrionic powers of no common order ; it was therefore supposed, and justly too, that he, of all the students, could most ex- cel in dramatic composition. Without hesitation he commenced, and finished a comedy entitled "Eccle- siastical Imposition." It was subjected to the in- spection and criticism of the faculty ; some sarcastic sentences against the clergy in general, some sly thrusts at one of the clerical professors in the institu- tion who was particularly disagreeable to the students, were erased, and the piece was pronounced entirely proper to be performed.


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Stewart himself took one of the principal char- acters, in which the ludicrous was so inimitably blended with the serious and the grave, that it was almost a transparency of his own character ; "he made such sudden transitions from the play-house to the church, from pathos to comedy ; his witty speeches were so much like a merry jig from the organ loft" fol- lowing a funeral voluntary, that he kept the audi- ence in a roar of laughter, or dissolved in tears, during. his appearance before it, and his play, so far as that occasion was concerned, was a great success.


Through many hardships, struggles, and priva- tions, he at length succeeded in one of the great un- dertakings of his life, and received his bachelor's de- gree.


Seneca has said, "That a virtuous person strug- gling with misfortunes and rising above them, is an object on which the gods look down with delight." It is certainly an object on which all good men look with pleasure. It would, therefore, have been difficult to perceive which were happier, the faculty of Bur- lington University in conferring the degree upon Alvan Stewart, or Alvan Stewart in receiving it.


At the age of nineteen, he was enabled to leave college, bearing with him the respect and good will of the faculty and students ; though penniless, the world was before him, and, conscious of having made his first advance in the battle of life, his self-reliance and ambition prompted him to await its further onsets, confident of victory.


While in college, he made the acquaintance of a young Canadian gentleman, through whose influence he procured a professorship in a school of royal foun- dation, near Montreal. Here he studied, with con- siderable success, the French language.


He continued in this institution until June, 1812, when the troubles between England and the United States culminated in war. Owing to his outspoken patriotism, Mr. Stewart incurred the displeasure of


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one of the officers of the institution, which resulted in an open altercation, and he tendered his resignation ; but so valuable were his services as a teacher, that the difficulties were adjusted, and he was induced to re- main another year. At the close of the summer term, he returned home, where he passed his vacation. In the following August, on his way to resume his duties, soon after crossing the Canada line, he was arrested and taken to Montreal as a prisoner of war. Through the influence of friends, he was at length released ; but such was the condition of the country, that it was unpleasant for him to remain there, and, resigning his professorship, he again returned home.


He was now out of employment, with but a small sum of money in his possession. He endeavored to obtain the position of principal in the Plattsburgh Academy, but, not succeeding, he left his father's · house, and commenced a journey on foot, to Albany, with the hope of securing employment in that city as a teacher. The distance which he was obliged to travel was a hundred and eighty miles. With a stout heart, and inspired with hope, he reached that city in less than five days after leaving home. But there, disappointment again awaited him; he remained in the city a week, but, finding no employment, he once more set out on foot in search of a school.


He continued his journey for several days, meeting with no success. At length, with an empty purse, wearied, but not discouraged, he reached Middle- burgh, in the county of Schoharie, New York. Here he met with a singular adventure. The excitement throughout the country, occasioned by the war with England, was now at its hight. The war spirit had infused itself into all circles, and the policy of Madi- son and Tompkins, was highly popular.


There were those, however, who opposed the war ; these persons were regarded with peculiar aversion and hatred by the war party, who often charged them with giving aid and comfort to the enemy.


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On Mr. Stewart's arrival at Middleburgh, he found a large body of militia assembled there, preparing to move to Sackett's Harbor, which was then menaced by the British. The sudden appearance of a stranger at this peculiar juncture, on foot, and with no appa- rent business, created suspicion among the zealous patriots. Entirely ignorant of this, Stewart freely and readily answered all interrogatories propounded to him. In doing so, he evinced such perfect knowl- edge of the geographical situation of Canada, the disposition of the troops along the frontier; he talked so freely of the popular sentiment in the king's dominions, that his interrogators were convinced he had appeared among them in the character of a spy. When the interview ended, he was surprised at the singular conduct of the officers, a group of whom drew aside, and, from their excited manner, and the frequent glances which they directed towards him, he was convinced that he was the subject of their con- sultations. From the dark and threatening looks of the men, he was aware that he was an object of hatred or suspicion, and yet he could give no reason for this strange conduct.


He was at one of the hotels in the village, but as matters assumed such an unpleasant appearance, he proposed to seek another place of rest. Taking his bundle in his hand, he inquired for another hotel ; it was pointed out to him. To reach it, subjected him to a walk of a hundred rods ; hardly had he gained half the distance, when a file of soldiers, armed with muskets, overtook him, and he was ordered to halt.




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