USA > Ohio > Bench and bar of Ohio; a compendium of history and biography, Vol. II > Part 11
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W w Boynton
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Judge Hale decided to accept, and tendering his resignation as judge of the Fourth District, he came to Cleveland, and the firm of Boynton & Hale was formed. Their practice was a very extensive one. They were interested in many of the most important cases tried in this county. In 1888 the firm became Boynton, Hale & Horr, continuing so until Judge Hale was elected to the Circuit Court Bench, when it continued as Boynton & Horr. January 1, 1897, Judge Boynton retired from the firm and he is now devoting himself to the trial of special cases, and assisting other lawyers in the trial of causes involving important legal questions. Few men at the Ohio Bar are better suited and equipped for this character of practice. His long experience acquired on the Bench and from his active general practice, coupled with an extraordinary legal mind, makes him to-day an acknowledged leader at the Bar. Judge Boynton has always been a great student, devoted to his profes- sion ; has a wonderful memory, a quick mind, a thorough knowledge of the law, and the faculty of recalling the particular decision applicable to the ques- tion at issue. These qualifications make him especially happy in the trial of cases. He is indeed a great advocate. His management of the trial of a cause is superb; like a great general, he is quick to see the weak points and to reinforce them before it is too late. As a man, jurist and lawyer he is free from those fixed prejudices which so frequently keep the brilliant down. Loyal to his friends, just in his dealings, he commands the respect and confi- dence of all. In politics he is a Republican, always taking an active interest in questions affecting the good and welfare of the people. In 1865, '66 and '67 he was a member of the Ohio legislature and it was he that offered the resolution to strike the word " white " from the provision of the State Consti- tution regulating the right of elective franchise. The resolution met defeat in the House on the first vote. A similar resolution was afterwards introduced in the Senate, and passed, came back to the House and after a bitter fight was adopted and went before the people at the ensuing State election, and the Democrats on this issue defeated the Republicans by more than 40,000 majority. It was this more than anything else that sent Allen G. Thurman to the United States Senate. Shortly afterwards Congress amended the Consti- tution, and the question of franchise was settled for all time. Judge Boynton married Betsey A. Terrill, who was born in Ohio, but of an old Con- necticut family. They have never had any children. Mrs. Boynton is living.
FRANKLIN T. BACKUS, Cleveland. It is a common reflection that the fame of great lawyers is of fleeting duration. Unless elevated to high judicial station or made conspicuous by distinguished political service, the mere lawyer -no matter how learned or accomplished-dies, and the memory of his great. deeds and eminent services soon fades away and is forgotten. Ohio has had her proportion of great lawyers, and her most prominent sons have taken their rewards in the highest honors of the nation. We recall a goodly
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assembly of these men : Justice John McLean, a model of judicial dignity and learning; his noble presence, benignant countenance and gracious manners won for him the regard of all who came within his influence. There was Thomas Ewing, towering above all his fellows in height, breadth and intellectual power, the undisputed head of the legal profession in our State. Here was Corwin, that genius whose silver tongue, unrivalled powers as an orator and statesman, made him the idol of the people. Here was the grand and graceful person of Henry Stanbery, tall as a cedar, dignified, courteous in manner, a face remarkable for refinement and manly beauty. From Lancaster came Hocking H. Hunter, a pattern of judicial integrity, beloved and honored by all who knew him, for his abilities and virtues. From Cincinnati, Judge Walker, Judge Storer and Salmon P. Chase, who closed his great and useful career as Chief Justice of the United States. The members of the Bar of Cuyahoga, at the time Mr. Backus came to Cleveland, held high rank with their brethren throughout the State. It is only necessary to name Sherlock J. Andrews, Moses Kelly, Horace Foote, Charles Stetson, Samuel B. Prentiss, Samuel Williamson, Henry B. Payne and Thomas Bolton, to realize how strong was the intellectual and moral force of the Cleveland Bar. These men, with many others worthy to be named with them, were for nearly forty years leaders of the profession. They were men of liberal education, careful training, great industry, and remarkable in any age for talents and varied learning. They all won high distinction as lawyers and citizens. It was in 1836 that Mr. Franklin T. Backus came to Cleveland and began the study of law. He brought his fortune with him in a fine, manly person, a most engag- ing countenance, a clear, discriminating mind, ambition for success, persistent industry, a stainless character, the best education Yale College could give, inflexible honesty, which, through a long and active life, was never questioned, and talents of superior order. He was born in Lee, Berkshire county, Massa- chusetts, May 16, 1813. While Mr. Backus was quite young his father removed to Lansing, New York, where he soon died, leaving the widow and several children with but scanty means for support. His parents were of the Puritan race, and young Backus was carefully trained in the religious faith of his ancestors. He early took upon himself the hardy labors of the farm that he might aid his mother in her necessities, and he often spoke of this period of his life, when he laid the foundation of that vigorous constitution which in after years enabled him to bear the greatest mental toil with endurance that seemed to know no limit. But as the youth grew toward manhood his early desire for knowledge became the mastering passion of his life, and he deter- mined to acquire a thorough classical education. In a comparatively brief period he fitted himself for the Junior year and entered this class in Yale Col- lege, after a careful examination, in 1834. He graduated two years afterwards with so much distinction that he was at once tendered the position of assistant professor of mathematics in that institution. For a time after his arrival in Cleveland, Mr. Backus supported himself by teaching a classical school, and soon afterwards entered himself law student in the office of Bolton & Kelly.
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He was called to the Bar in 1839, and almost at once attracted the attention of the public, and entered upon that successful practice which became larger and wider until the close of his useful, honorable life. In 1841 he was elected prosecuting attorney of the county, was re-elected and served with special ability, gaining the esteem of the public and the Bar. In 1846 he was elected a Whig member of the Ohio House of Representatives. In 1848 he was elected to the State Senate, where his unusual talents, force of character and fitness for the position, made him prominently named as a suitable candidate for the Senate of the United States. He was afterwards nominated, both for member of Congress and judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, by the Repub- lican party, and failed of election only because of the non-success of his party in those years. In 1840 he made a law partnership with Honorable J. P. Bishop, which continued fifteen years. On the election of the latter to the Bench, Mr. Backus became the partner of Judge Rufus P. Ranney, the eminent lawyer and jurist, and the firm of Ranney, Backus & Noble became widely known and respected as any in the State. Afterwards he was a partner of Mr. Estep, and continued in this relation to the time of his death. The high standing Mr. Backus held in the esteem of the people as a lawyer was indicated by his being chosen once by the Whig party and once by the Republican party as a candidate for Supreme Judge. In 1861 he was appointed by Governor Denison a delegate to the peace conference, which met at Washington on the 4th of February. His associates were Salmon P. Chase, Thomas Ewing, William Groesbeck, Reuben Hitchcock, V. B. Horton and Christopher P. Wolcott, the latter being appointed to take the place of John C. Wright, who died soon after reaching Washington. In 1864 Mr. Backus, who for years had been a distinguished leader of the Republican party, became dissatisfied with the administration in regard to the management of the war, and greatly to the distress of his immediate friends, gave his support to General Mcclellan for the Presidency. In 1866 he was one of the delegates to the National Convention at Philadelphia to form a new party. In 1868 he was the nominee of the Democratic party for for Congress in the Cuyahoga district, but was of course defeated. Per- haps no higher tribute can be paid to the memory of Mr. Backus, and prove the genuine respect all men had for his integrity of personal character and pure life, than the fact that while Mr. Backus changed his political associ- ates, and gave his great influence to the party he so long had opposed, and at a time when party spirit was the most bitter ever known in modern times, no man was found to doubt his absolute good faith in pursuing the line he regarded as right, and that he was acting from the most conscientious sense of duty and honor. It was evident from the time Mr. Backus came to the Bar that he was destined to achieve success and distinction. He was a man of warm, generous impulses, of pleasing address, quiet, unostentatious manners, persevering application, a man who could wait as well as work. He had an ardent love for his profession, a mind trained to close, patient study and pro- found reflection. His industry was tireless. He was not a genius, and leaned
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for success on none of the arts or tricks by which popular applause is some- times gained ; but slowly, logically, with methodical labor and painstaking diligence, pushed himself to the very front rank of the Bar of Ohio. The firmness of his character, love of truth, rigid honesty, and the trust all men had in the purity of his life, gave him vast influence with court juries. The cause of his client was a solemn trust. He gave to it all he had of learning, influence and power. Neither his health, comfort nor inconvenience was allowed to interfere with what he regarded as his first duty. Courteous, genial and kindly at the Bar, treating his brethren with unaffected friendship of manner; yet if he felt his client was unjustly treated by Bench or lawyer, the sleeping lion was aroused on the instant. At once the quiet, modest man bristled at all points, like a warrior ready for battle; and his weapons of offense and defense were ready at the moment. In the preparation of his case nothing escaped his scrutiny. The law and facts were fully known to him. If he lacked the faculty of brevity and conciseness in his argument, he never left his case until he had demonstrated every point, answered as far as possible every objection. When he concluded an argument the whole field had been actually explored. The judge had been told the law, the jury the evidence and the facts. Over juries he had great influence, not because he was brilliant, magnetic or eloquent, but from the confidence they placed in the integrity of the man. They thought his love of justice was superior to his desire for success, that he tried to do right, that he never sought to gain his causes by practicing in any manner deceit or art, but always appealed to their sense of justice and fair dealing. Juries are often carried away by the charms of a silver tongue, but the great success Mr. Backus achieved as a jury lawyer came from his sound sense, patient study, real candor, a belief in the worth of a man, his powers of persuasion, indomitable will and exhaustive knowledge of the subject before him. No man could look at Mr. Backus for a moment without realizing that he was a man of great natural intellectual powers. But he owed all his success in life to honest industry and hard work. His memory was tenacious, and in after years the stores of knowledge he had acquired as a student became a mine of useful wealth. That which he knew he knew thoroughly. He was wise in all departments of the law ; as a safe, prudent, sound counsellor he had no superior. All classes of society trusted him alike. As Judge Ranney said of him, "he was more resorted to for advice in important matters than any other member of the Bar in Cleveland." For many years he had the most lucrative practice in the county. In the later years of his life he was the leading lawyer in all special matters where the vast interests of railroads were concerned, and he had much to do in fixing the principles of the law which have since governed the courts in our State in regard to these great corporations. Those who attended the trial many years ago of Brooks, who was prosecuted for murder, for placing obstructions upon a railroad track, whereby a train was wrecked and persons killed, and heard Mr. Backus, in his remarkable speech, sum up the law and the facts against the prisoner, felt that a master of the criminal law was addressing the jury. As
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he welded with invincible logic the links in the chain of guilt around the prisoner ; as he took circumstance after circumstance, slight and delicate in themselves alone, fitting thiem together with the highest skill and mathemat- ical certainty, there was a feeling all over the court room that the doom of the prisoner was fixed as fate. The judge was deeply moved and profoundly interested. The jury scarcely stirred, so absorbed was their attention. As the waning day brought almost twilight gloom into the court room, as the crowded audience listened with painful silence to every word that was spoken, as Mr. Backus, solemn, earnest, in the prime of his vigorous powers, crushed the hopes of the prisoner, darkness did indeed seem to settle upon the miser- able man, and the hope he had relied on-that no eye had seen his crime and no confidant shared his guilt-faded away, and he saw the awful doom of the outcast and murderer to be his own. The jury found the defendant guilty of murder in the second degree, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life. He lived to extreme old age, a solitary, aimless, hopeless being, dying years after Mr. Backus had been buried from our sight. This trial gave Mr. Backus special distinction. His wonderful knowledge of the minutest facts, his famili- arity with all the criminal law applicable to the case and the evidence, the ability he displayed in tracing the motives, the conduct and the thousand little circumstances that went to make the guilt of the prisoner, won for him deserved commendation. Perhaps never in the history of our courts did an advocate have so grand an opportunity of displaying those high qualities of mind and heart as did Mr. Backus in the trial of the Oberlin rescuers. The slave law then dominated the Republic, and the courts of the United States were specially active in obeying its demands. In these cases the government was pushing with all its mighty power the prosecution of the prisoners, and had given orders to secure their conviction by all means known to the law. These Oberlin prisoners were not of the criminal class-they were men patri- otic, educated, humane. They had assisted a panting fugitive to escape his pursuers, and their crime was to be punished with the penalties of the law. We can do no better than to quote from an article written some years ago by the present writer, in regard to these trials :
" I well remember when the Oberlin rescue cases were on trial, and the attempt was made by the government to try all the prisoners before the same jury that had just convicted one of the defendants. Then to me Mr. Backus displayed those high qualities of the lawyer and advocate which made the celebrated lawyers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the idols of the down-trodden populace. In these days we can scarcely understand the courage necessary in an advocate, who was resisting being crushed, and opposed by all the powers of a great and mighty government. But Mr. Backus was equal to the occasion. No more could judge or marshal or pros- ecutor shake the firmness of that iron-hearted man than kingly power could overwhelm and silence the noble Brougham, when before the parliament of Great Britain he defended, with consummate skill, learning, firmness and ability, the cause of the unfortunate and deeply injured Queen Caroline of England. There he stood, in the prime and vigor of his splendid manhood, almost single-handed, fearless and undismayed-inspiring courage in the
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weakest heart and making the government tremble for the success of its prosecution, betraying great discretion and circumspection, and finally com- pelling the court to give a new jury and the semblance of a fair trial to the parties."
Perhaps the most striking feature in the character of Mr. Backus was the moral courage of the man-the firmness at all times and under all circum- stances to act as his convictions of right and duty urged him. He was eminently conservative, and bred a lawyer; he held " the Constitution and the laws, made in pursuance thereof," as his chart and compass. Hence came differences of opinion with the political party he had so long served, and the severing of almost fraternal ties that had so long bound him to his political associates. But if he felt he was right, neither the applause nor the frowns of men, his dearest, interests, his personal happiness nor ambition's hopes, were allowed to stand for a moment in the way of duty. He was of that class of men who in early days preferred the block and the executioner to the sacrifice of principle and dearest convictions. He was outspoken in his views of duty -despised all dissimulation-but no more loyal heart or sincere lover of his country ever lived or died. The hearty, cordial, upright nature of the man had made him widely honored and beloved in the city where he was best known. Confidence was given him as a matter of course, and his faithfulness and sincerity were never doubted. His word and bond were alike inviolable. There was something grand in the quiet, unobtrusive way he won the regard and esteem of his fellow men. Simple in all his habits, caring nothing for wealth as a means of personal gratification or display, doing good with a lavish but unseen hand, devoted to his friends, free from guile, and always ready to assist the young and deserving, he had become, at the time of his death, a central figure in the community, and his death was regarded as a great public as well as private calamity. In 1842 Mr. Backus was married to Miss Lucy Mygatt, daughter of the late George Mygatt. Into the home circle, so shattered and destroyed by his early and untimely death, we will not attempt to penetrate. It is enough to say that his sweet and tender nature bloomed in new beauty by his own fireside. There in the peace of domestic life he found his truest and highest happiness, and the richness of his nature, his cultivated intellect, delight in ministering to the happiness of others, made him the idol of the household. His belief in the Christian religion was clear and unclouded and his life testified to the soundness of his faith. He bore with unfaltering patience his last painful illness, and on the 14th day of May, 1870, he departed this life, mourned as few are mourned, crowned with affection of all who knew him
" God's finger touched him and he slept."
R. C. PARSONS.
.
John to state
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JOHN C. HALE, Cleveland. Honorable John C. Hale, the presiding judge of the Eighth Circuit of the Circuit Court of Ohio, was born March 3, 1831, in the little town of Orford, New Hampshire. His father, Aaron Hale, a farmer, and his mother, Mary Kent Hale, were of English ancestry. The forefathers of both came to this country in 1638, settling in New England about the time the great reformer, Oliver Cromwell, began to assert himself in shaping the destiny of Great Britain. His ancestors can well be classed among the American pioneers, and it is from these earlier settlers of our country that the best type of American manhood to-day is to be found. The subject of this sketch obtained his early education in the district schools, and at eighteen entered the academy at Orford to prepare for college. In 1853, at the age of twenty-three, he entered Dartmouth College, graduating with honors in 1857. He immediately came west, settling in Cleveland, where he taught in the pub- lic schools. While teaching he made up his mind to select law as his profes- sion, and at once commenced his preliminary study. After three years he gave up teaching and entered the law office of S. B. & F. J. Prentiss, at that time one of the leading law firms of Cleveland. One year in this office was sufficient to enable him to be admitted to practice. He immediately removed to Elyria, in this State, where he formned a partnership with W. W. Boynton, then a rising young lawyer. This partnership continued only about one year, when it was dissolved, both partners continuing in the practice. Mr. Hale practiced alone, with the exception of his connection with one or two young men at different times whom he associated with him under a firm name to bet- ter facilitate his business, but who in reality were only employed on a salary in his office. In 1863 he was elected prosecuting attorney of Lorain county, holding the office until 1869. During this time he was register in bankruptcy for the congressional district, holding the office until the repeal of the bank- ruptcy law. He was a member of the Constitutional convention of 1872, pre- sided over by Chief Justice Waite. He enjoyed a large and lucrative busi- ness, being retained on one side or the other of almost every important case brought while he was in active practice. In 1868 Judge Boynton was elected judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and from this time Mr. Hale was admit- ted the leading practitioner at the Bar of Lorain county. In 1877 Judge Boynton was elected to the Bench of the Supreme Court of the State, and the subject of this sketch was elected to the vacancy on the Bench of the Court of Common Pleas. Thus began his judicial work which has made him so famous as a jurist in the Western Reserve. He retired from the Bench in 1883, returned to Cleveland and formed a partnership with his old law partner, Judge Boyn- ton, whose term of office as judge of the Supreme Court had expired. This partnership continued without interruption until he was elected to the Circuit Court Bench in the fall of 1892, taking office as associate judge on the 9th of February, 1893, at which time Judge Hugh J. Caldwell was presiding judge, but as Judge Caldwell was re-elected in 1894, Judge Hale became the presid- ing judge under a provision of the statutes that the judge having the shortest term to serve shall be the presiding judge of the court. Judge Hale was noted
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in college as a man of most unusual common sense, a close and diligent student. He stood well in his class, which was an able one, having many bright and intel- lectual men, a number of whom have since attained distinction in law, litera ture and politics. At the commencement in 1897 the board of trustees of Dartmouth College conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. The rare trait of common sense has been one of Judge Hale's most marked char- acteristics, which he has always applied, both as a lawyer and jurist, in all of his work. As a lawyer he is strong and forcible in the trial of cases. He is fortified by profound reading, intellectual originality and human sympathy. He is a hard worker as well as a deep thinker, and takes rank with the first lawyers in the State. In point of learning, clearness of insight and ability to grasp and apply the principles of the law he has no superiors. He is, beyond doubt, the acknowledged head of the judiciary in Cleveland. This is the com- mon verdict of the lawyers at the Bar. In politics he has always been a Republican. Judge Hale belongs to that class of good men whose veracity and uprightness make the earth wholesome. His social disposition and geni- ality of temperament have drawn about him warm friends who find his com- panionship nutritious. His fondness of children is noteworthy and is also a proof of his lovable nature. Wherever he goes in Cleveland the little ones are round about him and his kindness invites their familiarity. They recog- nize in him a gentle friend. This love of children may be intensified by the want of any upon whom paternal affection can be centered. He was married in 1859 to Carrie A. Sanborn, who is living, and there has been no issue of the marriage. He has always appreciated the institution of home, with its duties and pleasures, so much as not to require or seek membership in clubs or frater- nal societies.
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