USA > New York > Orange County > The history of Orange County, New York > Part 43
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Judge Wilkin's interest in the young men who grew up about him never
William hillenton
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deserted him. He welcomed their advances, he reciprocated their esteem, he enjoyed their companionship. His reminiscences of the older bar were lively and entertaining, his sense of humor keen, his exultation in life and all its activities throbbing and intense. He was not ready to go when the summons came and he made no hypocritical pretense of resignation to it. His was a life so full of promise and performance, passion and power, persuasiveness and preëminence that well may we exclaim with the poet : "But what rich life-what energy and glow ! Cordial to friend and chivalrous to for! Concede all foibles harshness would reprove, And what choice attributes remain to love."
If James N. Pronk had given the thought and attention to his own inter- ests that he gave to the interests of the public and to the development of his city he would have died wealthy and famous. In his early manhood when, as the only lawyer in Middletown, except Judge Wilkin, he acquired a large practice, he quickly accumulated a fortune sufficient to enable him 10 build and wholly pay for what still remains the finest store and office block in Middletown. He had nothing to do then, in order to a successful life, but to take his ease and accept such work as he might enjoy. But this was not his nature. He simply could not take his case. He was possessed by the desire to originate and carry forward every public enter- prise that might benefit the town. He lived plainly and simply, had no personal indulgences, spent nothing upon himself, denied himself every pleasure in order that he might give himself wholly to the service of the public. Every pleasure indeed except that of friends anl books. lle loved the society of congenial spirits and he dwelt much among books. But he was not selfish even in this. Instead of putting the books He bought into his own library he put them into a public library. He estoh- lished the Lyceum, the fine circulating library of which gave to Milole- town its first literary impetus. In connection with this he organize I de- bates in which the ablest men of the community discussed every moral. social and political question of the day. These debates brought out the native talent and debating powers of many men who otherwise might have been silent, notable among them Israel O. Beattie, whose with in- formation, keen reasoning and sparkling wit are well remembere I bv those who know how naturally his distinguished son. Judge John J Beattie, comes by these qualities.
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Moreover, Mr. Pronk brought to the platform of the Lyceum the foremost intellects of his time-Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Horace Greeley, Edward H. Chapin, Theodore L. Cuyler and many others. I well remember when, a few years ago at Mohonk, Judge Beattie and I introduced ourselves to Dr. Cuyler and mentioned Middle- town, he at once exclaimed : "How's my old friend Pronk?" though they had not met for forty years and he had not heard of his death.
The great mistake of Mr. Pronk's life was when he mortgaged his fine building, on the income of which he might easily have lived, in order to establish what became the passion and the idol of his life, Hillside Cemetery. But was it a mistake? Is it not success, after all, to live in lasting institutions? This cemetery is to-day the most beautiful resting place of the dead in Orange County. Over this sacred spot where he himself was laid, broods ever the sentiment inscribed over the tomb in St. Paul's Cathedral of Sir Christopher Wren, its architect-"If you would behold his monument look about you." (Si monumentum quacris circum- spice. )
Younger than any of the lawyers thus far considered, but entering upon his professional life while theirs was still active, and dying prema- turely before the close of those careers with which his own was strictly contemporaneous, was William F. O'Neill. Perhaps no career was ever more of a surprise to the public and to the profession than that of Mr. O'Neill. From Winfield, Gedney and Fullerton with their distinguished lineage, family influence, county connections, social position, superior education, wide culture, courtly address and imposing presence much was expected and expectation was always satisfied. But here was a young man, who coming from Monticello to study law in Middletown with Judge Groo and entering upon his career without any of these advan- tages, boldly flung himself into the courts to try conclusions with the ablest of Orange County's advocates and began at once to captivate juries and to win his cases. Small in stature, unimpressive in appearance, de- ficient in culture, unformed in style, averse to application, trying his cases with very inadequate preparation, the lawyers were puzzled at first to know the secret of his immediate and enormous success at the bar. It lay, as they soon learned, in his faculty of making the jury think that he always happened to be on the right side. It was like the case of the juror who was descanting enthusiastically upon the magnificent, unrivaled
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powers of Brougham as an advocate. "But," said a bystander, "I see that you always give the verdict to Scarlett." "Scarlett, O yes," said the juror. "Well, you see Scarlett is always on the right side."
Mr. O'Neill was a natural verdict getter. He never went over the heads of the jury. He talked with them on their own plane of thought, sentiment and experience. Juries liked him personally. They felt inter- ested in his success. I remember a trial in which he obtained a verdict of $2,000 against the village of Port Jervis for a woman who had fallen upon a defective sidewalk, but who did not appear to have been much in- jured. After the verdict, one of the jurors, Coe Goble, of Greenville, asked me what I thought of the verdict, to which I replied that they prob- ably gave as much as the evidence justified, since she did not seem to be hurt much. "Well," said Goble, "it was this way-we thought the woman ought to have $1,000 and we thought Billy ought to have $1.000."
This familiar, affectionate reference to him as "Billy" indicates his place as a popular idol. Indeed the boyishness of his appearance and stature seemed to help him. People who saw him for the first time and who had not expected much from him, went out of the court-room saying. "Did you see how little Billy O'Neill laid him out ?"
Mr. O'Neill made negligence cases a specialty, an ! he became known far and wide as a negligence lawyer. Those who deprecate the rise of the negligence lawyer and the increase in negligence cases during the last forty years fail to make sufficient allowance for those changed conditions in the business of the world under which its various currents of capital and industry converge in one swollen stream of corporate enterprise and control. This tends, on the one hand, to encourage professional alertness in protecting the individual from corporate greed or neglect and, on the other hand, to create extreme devotion to corporate interests secking the aid of professional skill and judgment. While the zeal of attorneys in behalf of corporations is rarely condemned it is somewhat the fashion to deprecate the negligence lawyer who takes the case of a client against a corporation upon a contingent fee. As the client is usually destitute it is difficult to see how his case is to be presented at all unless the attorney takes his chances upon success. As courts and juries must determine that the claim is a worthy one before it can succeed. the whole criticism seems to resolve itself into the position that worthy causes an 1 clients should be deprived of a hearing. This feeling can be well un'er-tool on the part
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of corporations constantly compelled to pay damages on account of their carelessness, but the expression of it comes with poor grace from lawyers who receive large retainers and liberal fees from wealthy clients. It is at least as fair to a client to wait for compensation until the work is done as it is to insist on a retainer before any work at all is done. It is notice- able that the criticism upon the contingent fee at the conclusion of the case comes usually from the lawyer who expects a large fee at the begin- ning of the case.
It is simple truth and justice to say that human life and limb are safer to-day in Orange County because that sturdy fighter and dangerous oppo- nent, William F. O'Neill, caring not whether his client was poor or rich, never allowed a case of negligence, once brought to his attention, to pass unchallenged and unpresented to a court of justice. And if his example and his influence have encouraged others, as indeed they have, in the same path of professional honor and public duty, then he, too, has not lived in vain.
The advent of Mr. O'Neill was coincident with the rise of a new gen- eration of advocates who were confronted at first with a supremacy in the older bar which never could have been ousted by superior talent. It yielded at last to the only rivals it could not resist, decay and death, even as now the lawyers I am about to name will soon surrender to a still later generation their coveted place and prominence in the courts. I say about to name because, notwithstanding the considerations which suggest the omission of any reference to the living, it seems to be inartistic and it ought to be unnecessary to break off a narrative in the middle because some of its characters are still living. Caution and delicacy may indeed discourage, if not wholly forbid such unstinted praise as may be properly bestowed upon a finished, rounded career, far removed from possible mar- ring by some late and regrettable error. But, on the other hand, the opinion of his contemporaries by one who has freely mingled with them and frequently been pitted against them ought to be accurate, and, if accurate, then interesting and valuable. How we would all enjoy now Winfield's own characterization of Samuel J. Wilkin and William F. Sharpe, his partner; of Benjamin F. Duryea and Joseph W. Gott, the senior ; of David F. Gedney and Stephen W. Fullerton. There are his- tories of our own times and this is one of them. Let me proceed then, diffidently, indeed, but still unflinchingly, to perform the task assigned to
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me before the subjects and the generation chiefly interested in them have all alike passed away; appealing to the judgment of those still able to decide, upon the candor, fairness and impartiality of the estimates. In- deel, if we wait until all contemporaries have passed away, who is left to determine whether the estimates are just?
William J. Groo is older than the lawyers who came to the bar in the late sixties, but he falls naturally in this group, because he came to Orange County in 1866, when he at once took a foremost place among its trial lawyers, his reputation having preceded him. He had already become a leader of the bar of Sullivan County, where in 1856 he was elected ] it- district attorney. This leadership was, in itself, evidence of great ability. for he had to win his spurs against such intellectual giants as General Niven, Judge Bush, Senator Low and James L. Stewart. It is not strange. then, that in him Winfield, Gedney and Fullerton found a match for all their powers and an equal in all the arts and accomplishments of the advocate. His perfect self-possession, his readiness in retort, his firm grasp of the points in controversy, his unfailing memory enabling him to marshal the testimony with crushing effect, his severe logic, his scathing denunciation, his intrepid spirit, and, above all, hi- moral earnestness combined to make him a dreaded and formidable adversary.
Judge Groo (for he acquired the title through his election as special county judge of Orange County in the year 1868) has carried this quality of moral earnestness, which so largely contributed to his success at the bar, into all the interests and relations of life. He early esponsed the cause of temperance and has long been one of the most prominent mem- bers of the prohibition party, which at different times has bestowed upon him its complimentary but unsubstantial nomination for governor and judge of the Court of Appeals. He has always insisted that the absolute prohibition of the sale of liquors in the State of New York is not only a righteous and necessary reform, but an entirely feasible one. The re- markable strength of this movement in the South, followed as it has been by recent prohibitory legislation in several of the States, is one of the cheering rewards for unselfish, life-long devotion to principle which he i. permitted to enjoy in his declining years. There is no doubt whatever that his sacrifices in behalf of this cause seriously interfered with his later eminence at the bar. for such eminence, even when once achieved. can be maintained only by sedulous, unrelaxed devotion; by steady, un-
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qualified, undivided allegiance to that most exacting of all masters-the law.
This consecration to higher duties and nobler aims than those involved in mere professional success does not, however, constitute the sole reason why Judge Groo ceased to be a familiar and prominent figure in the courts of Orange County. This was due primarily to the removal of his office to New York, where he continued to win many notable legal triumphs until failing health compelled him to retire from active practice. His dignified and honorable repose is divided between his home in Mid- dletown and his summer retreat in his native county of Sullivan at Groo- ville, so named in honor of one of his Revolutionary ancestors.
Though Lewis E. Carr has transferred his professional activities to a wider field, yet he acquired and developed in Orange County those tran- scendent qualities as a trial lawyer which have since, in nearly every county of the State, excited the astonishment of the bar and the admira- tion of the courts. From the very first he produced a profound impres- sion upon Winfield, Gedney and Fullerton, with whom he engaged in vigorous, courageous contest at a time when it was difficult, indeed, to stand up against their powerful and almost irresistible influence. But it was when he came to be associated with them in some most important trials that they were even more impressed with his knowledge of funda- mental principles, his wisdom in consultation, his mature and unerring judgment. Judge Gedney once remarked in a public tribute to Mr. Carr in his early life that it was possible to gain a far more accurate measure- ment of a lawyer's real ability through association with him than in opposition to him. He added that it was after enjoying such opportunities to become acquainted with Mr. Carr that he was the better able to express admiration of his surpassing talents as well as confidence in his brilliant future. Mr. Carr has since then enjoyed many honors and some supreme triumphs, but it is doubtful that any encomium has ever given him deeper pleasure than this now amply verified prediction by so competent an au- thority.
Nothing more surely attests the eminence which Mr. Carr has attained in the State than the recognition of it by the Assembly of the State of New York in inviting him to pronounce in its chamber the eulogy upon its beloved speaker, S. Frederick Nixon, upon the memorial occasion dignified by the attendance of the Governor, the Senate and the judges of
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the Court of Appeals. In that august presence Mr. Carr, defending the prerogatives of the State, said :
"However much we take pride in the nation's greatness and power we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in some way, not easy to understand. the Federal Government of which we constitute no mean part, has been steadily encroaching upon the province of the State, and year by year the waves of its rising power are biting away some part of the shore on which our feet should rest. Preservation of the rights of the State, as the framers of the Constitution intended und provided, is as essential to the safety, security and perpetuity of the sisterhood of States as the armies that carry and defend the flag and the navies that patrol the sea and protect our harbors against the dangers of attack. Our State is an empire in and of itself. Dominion over it and control of its price- less interests are all our own, save to the narrow extent they were ex- pressly yielded to give needed strength and requisite power for the pro- tection of the whole."
This extract gives some idea of the force and clearness which charac- terize all Mr. Carr's public utterances, but no extract can give any concep- tion of his extraordinary powers as an advocate. The assembly indeed had already enjoyed an unusual opportunity to witness their display. for Mr. Carr was easily the most conspicuous and imposing figure in a public trial of great importance conducted before it, in which he made the prin- cipal and prevailing argument. But it is perhaps in the appellate courts that Mr. Carr's abilities find their most congenial field of exercise. There his ready command of all the resources of a trained, vigorous and richly stored intellect enables him to discuss every proposition pro- pounded by the court, or advance l by his opponent, with a breadth of rea- soning. a fertility of illustration, an array of authority which never fail to arou-e admiration and delight. Indeed in every argument or trial in which he engages he organizes from the outset an intellectual duel. One who is not prepared to cope with him on equal terms, or with a cause so strong that it overcomes the intellectual handicap, will find it prudent not to enter the lists with him.
When Mr. Carr resided in Port Jervis before going to Albany, where he is the general counsel for the Delaware and Hudson Company and where he is called as senior counsel into many important cases not at all en- nected with railroad litigation, such was his devotion to his profession that
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it was only in exciting political campaigns that he could yield himself to the demands of the platform. But in Albany so insistent and repeated have been the demands upon him that he has been compelled to yield more frequently, until now his reputation is firmly established as a platform speaker of rare attractiveness. A fair example of his after-dinner oratory may be found, in fit company and enduring form, in the book entitled "Modern Eloquence," edited by Speaker Thomas B. Reed ; it being a re- sponse, at the banquet of the State Bar Association, in which, with a fine blending of humor and seriousness, he commends that recent revival of an ancient custom which has done so much already to revive and promote the dignity of the bench-the wearing by judges of the robe of office.
The Orange County Bar has contributed to the bar of the State many gifted sons of whom it has been, indeed, proud-Ogden Hoffman, William H. Seward, William Fullerton and others-but it has never contributed one of whose character, ability and fame it is more justly and universally proud than it is of the character, ability and fame of Lewis E. Carr.
Henry Bacon is now, indisputably, the leader of the Orange County Bar. His career has been marked by a singleness of devotion to his pro- fession rarely equaled. It was interrupted at one time by his service for five years in the House of Representatives, in the debates of which he bore an honorable part, impressing himself most favorably upon the leaders of his own party and those of the opposition. But his heart was all the time in the law, which lie keenly enjoys as a science and reveres as a master. Returning to Goshen at the expiration of his congressional service he threw himself with renewed ardor into the practice of his pro- fession to which he has since applied himself with undeviating purpose, persistency and power. The position of leadership now held by him is the natural, inevitable and only consistent result of high endeavor and unfal- tering purpose united to intellectual gifts and legal qualifications of a superior order. Mr. Bacon has the legal instinct. He is not content until he has penetrated to the heart of the mystery. He revels in a perplexing and complicated case. He loves to unravel its intricacies and explore its mazes.
Mr. Bacon has in the past twenty years tried more cases than any lawyer in the county. He is retained in nearly every important trial. His mani- fest knowledge of every principle of the law involved in the case always commands the respect of the court and of the bar. In presenting his
Att. Secen
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views to the jury he relies upon logic rather than eloquence, upon con- secutive force of argument rather than the art of persuasion. In the celebrated case of Magar vs. Hammond his opening address to the jury upon the second trial was a masterpiece of elo x. coherent, cumulative and convincing statement.
Mr. Bacon is never more interested than when he is confronted with some grave question of constitutional construction. His attack upon the constitutionality of the drainage law, which was declared invalid by the Court of Appeals upon the arguments advanced by him, and in which he was opposed by the eminent advocate John G. Milburn, will be long re- membered.
All lawyers are true to their clients, but Mr. Bacon's inflexibility in the assertion of defense of his client's rights is uncompromising to the last degree. It has even been said that, in his zeal an I ardor, he is willing to trample upon all the ties of private friendship and all the claims of per- sonal courtesy. But no client was ever heard to complain of this and, after all, the fact remains that no lawyer can serve his clients with abso- lute fidelity without, at times, wounding his neighbors and his friends. An honest lawyer can know no one but his client and him crucifiol. His standard of morality and manners, of duty and decorum is expressed in the sentiment, "Stop pursuing my client and I have no further quarrel with you." Mr. Bacon typifies this spirit and embodies this principle in his professional life more strikingly than any lawyer who has ever practiced at the bar of Orange County.
On the other hand, Mr. Bacon's social gifts and graces are in the high: est degree winning and attractive. One would never suspect, in the velvet palm that greets him at his threshold, the iron hand that crushed him but the day before in court. One would never recognize in the beaming. graceful host the hard-headed lawyer who, with stern, unflinching pur- pose, will destroy him to-morrow. United in marriage to the brilliant and accomplished daughter of one of America's purest and noblest statesmen. Samuel J. Randall, his home is a center of charming, courtly and gracion- hospitality dispensed with lavish, refined and unaffected generosity. Mr. Bacon is the only lawyer in Orange County who has ever both recognized and fulfilled his social duty to his brethren of the bar by throwing open his home to them in receptions intended to bring the judges and the lawyers together in social relations. In olden days and in other counties
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this custom once prevailed. Possibly it is because Orange County labors under the misfortune of being a half-shire county-a calamity to any bar for the reason, besides many others, that it effectually destroys the possi- bility of having a suitable court house-that a spirit of comradeship among its lawyers has never grown up. It is noticeable that in counties where the legal interests converge in one central county seat the brotherly spirit is more active. But, however that may be, Mr. Bacon is entitled to the grateful acknowledgment of his efforts to suspend the asperities of professional conflict in the solvent of social converse. In this, as in every other respect, his leadership of the bar is supreme.
Walter C. Anthony preceded Mr. Bacon a few months in their student life with Judge Gedney at Goshen. No one has painted so perfect and beautiful a picture as he of those halcyon days in that country law of- fice. In his memorial tribute he said :
"But of all the delightful hours spent with Judge Gedney I recall, with most pleasure, our afternoon talks at the office. As the day was wearing late and he began to make preparations to leave, he usually seemed to want to draw me into conversation. Frequently it took the form of an examination as to those branches of the law which I was then reading upon. Occasionally he would draw me into the discussion of some legal question, in which he would maintain an opinion opposed to that which I expressed, and in which after combatting me, with all his ingenuity and acuteness and frequently discomfiting me, he would in the end explain the whole question and point out the errors of either side of the argu- ment. At times some event of the day's work would be used as a founda- tion for an explanation of the legal questions involved. In whatever way the conversation was begun his evident purpose was that it should be profitable to me in connection with the studies I was pursuing; and when that end had been accomplished our conversation would wander on 'at its own sweet will,' touching on many and varied themes which all developed new beauties and suggestiveness beneath the light of his varied learning and fertile fancy. Is it to be wondered at that I recall them with a chastened delight? Judge Gedney was then in the very prime of his re- markable powers. His mind was a storehouse of varied and interesting knowledge, and his conversational and descriptive skill were not only very great, but quite unique.
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