USA > Pennsylvania > A biographical album of prominent Pennsylvanians, v. 1 > Part 11
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96
SIMON CAMERON.
This extended and truly remarkable voyage for one of his years was not attended by any unfavorable consequences to his health, for upon his return his step was as elastic, and his mind as active and vigorous, as they were when he left his native shores some months previous to undertake a journey that many a much younger man would have hesitated to enter upon.
His record has been a long and honorable one, and it may be truthfully said of him as of few men, that his name will live as long as the world shall stand.
WILLIAM H. EGLE. FRANK A. BURR.
A
HON. BENJ H. BREWSTER.
BENJAMIN HARRIS BREWSTER.
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H ON. BENJAMIN H. BREWSTER, late Attorney-General of the United States, was born in Salem county, N. J., on October 14, 1816. Ile was the eldest son of Francis E. and Maria Hampton Brewster, and on both sides was related to the Carrolls, Ilarrises, Duvals, Newcombs, Westcots, Carpenters, Elmers, and others of the principal families in Southern New Jersey. Both of his grandfathers were surgeons in the Revolutionary Army, and owners of landed estate in New Jersey. His father removed from Salem county to Phila- delphia, and achieved eminence at the bar of that city, acquiring a large and lucrative practice. His son, after receiving all the educational facilities afforded by the leading private schools of the city, was sent to Princeton College, where he graduated in 1834. He then entered upon the study of law as a student in the office of Eli K. Price. Four years later he was admitted to practice, being at that time about twenty-two years of age. He immediately assumed a promi- nent place in his profession, although those were the days of Binney, Sergeant, Meredith, and other great lawyers, who spread the fame of the bar of Philadel- phia far and wide. Mr. Brewster continued to rise rapidly, and for more than thirty years held a place in the front rank of Philadelphia lawyers. It has been said that no member of that bar of the present day had so extended a reputation, and no one had been oftener summoned abroad to argue important cases.
Mr. Brewster's inclination for public life was first evinced in 1846, when, at the age of thirty years, he was appointed by President Polk to be Commissioner to adjudicate the claims of the Cherokee Indians against the United States. Upon the successful termination of this employment, Mr. Brewster resumed the practice of his profession in Philadelphia, and held no publie office again until 1867, when he was appointed Attorney-General of Pennsylvania by Governor Geary, which position he held until 1869, when he resigned. Whilst holding that office he corrected the abuse of remitting sentences in the criminal courts, by means of which, unknown to the people, convicts were let loose from their cells before the expiration of their terms of imprisonment. He also put an end to the Gettys- burg lottery, which he deemed to be a scheme to defraud the public under the pretext of helping the soldiers' orphans.
Upon his resignation of the office of Attorney-General of the State, he once more returned to his private practice, which was very extensive and lucrative. He was in great demand as a campaign orator, and was frequently heard on National topics. In the ante-bellum days Mr. Brewster was a Democrat in his political opinions ; but on the breaking out of the Rebellion, in 1861, he became most zealous in the support of the Government, and his powerful appeals to the loyalty of the people in those exciting times will long be remembered. Thence- forth he was a Republican, although he never was an active politician. In 1876
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BENJAMIN H. BREWSTER.
he was placed at the head of the Republican Electoral Ticket in this State, and cast his vote in the Electoral College for Hayes and Wheeler.
During the whole of his professional career up to this time Mr. Brewster had confined his practice almost exclusively to cases in the civil courts, seldom appearing at the bar as counsel in a criminal case. In September, 1877, how- ever, he consented to have his name presented to the Republican City Conven- tion, which was to nominate a candidate for District Attorney, upon which officer the prosecution of criminal suits devolves. There were three other can- didates before the convention-ex-City Solicitor C. H. T. Collis, Judge M. Russel Thayer and George S. Graham, the present incumbent of the position. For two terms the Democrats had had possession of this important office, and Mr. Brewster's adherents hoped that his high reputation would, if he was nominated, at last turn the tide. The convention was a boisterous one, and the struggle over the nomination was fierce and bitter. Before the balloting began Collis and Graham withdrew, and the result was Mr. Brewster's defeat, the vote standing forty-seven for him to a hundred and forty-three for Judge Thayer. The can- didacy of the latter was futile, however, for Henry S. Hagert, the Democratic candidate, was elected by a small majority. Before the election was held, Mr. Brewster was nominated by the so-called United Labor party, and, although he declined the nomination in consequence of the written pledge that he had given the Republican convention, his name was printed on the Labor Party's tickets, and four thousand five hundred and seven votes were cast for him at the polls. If he had received the Republican nomination, he would have been elected.
After that memorable campaign Mr. Brewster ceased to take an active part in political affairs. His name, however, was before the Legislature during the five weeks struggle over the United States Senatorship in the early part of 1881, and on several occasions his election as a compromise candidate seemed imminent. Toward the close of the same year, after the death of President Garfield, he was formally retained by Attorney-General MacVeagh to assist in the prosecution of the Star Route frauds. This led directly to his promotion to the office of Attorney-General of the United States, as successor to Mr. MacVeagh, in which position he gave general satisfaction to all outside of Star Route circles, and it was rightly taken as an indication that President Arthur was determined to pursue the Star Route prosecutions with vigor. Mr. Brewster's name was sent to the Senate on December 16, 1881. Three days later the nomination was unani- mously confirmed by the Senate, and on January 3, 1882, Mr. Brewster assumed charge of the Department of Justice. The appointment was made the occasion of a testimonial to Mr. Brewster by the members of the Philadelphia Bar, who entertained him at a banquet at the Aldine Hotel on the evening of July 12th. The affair was a very brilliant and enjoyable one. The guest of the evening, however, spoke only a few moments. In the course of his remarks he said, sig- nificantly : " I have entered the office with honor, and with God's help I will leave it without disgrace."
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BENJAMIN II. BREWSTER.
To this pledge Mr. Brewster remained faithful during his term of office at Washington, which ended only when Mr. Arthur retired from the Presidency, in March, 1885. As stated above, he had become associated with the Government counsel in the Star Route prosecutions in September of the preceding year, and he pushed them forward with all possible vigor. When the first cases finally came to trial, Mr. Brewster, in his closing argument in September, 1882, made one of the finest and most notable of the forensic efforts of his long career at the bar. His singularities of appearance, dress and methods kept the interest alive even when the argument grew dry. His eccentricities of manner were never more marked, but they added to the picturesqueness and force of his speech. The ultimate outcome of the trials was a practical miscarriage of justice, but the Attorney-General did his full duty from first to last. The other matters in which he was concerned were chiefly of the routine character which fall within the lines of the office.
After Mr. Brewster's retirement from the Attorney-Generalship, he left Wash- ington, where he and his wife had been for over three years among the most prominent figures in social circles, and again took up his residence in Philadel- phia. He did not, however, become as active at the bar as he had been in the past, and he virtually retired from the practice of his profession. In September of that year he sold his splendid law library, which contained all the standard works and reports and many rare volumes, to the University of Pennsylvania, for $18,000, a sum far below its cost. His desire in so doing was to preserve intact the collection, to the formation of which he had given much time and money, and which had become one of the finest and most complete in America.
Mr. Brewster was a learned man on many subjects besides the law, especially on ecclesiastical history, and some of his most noted literary efforts were his- torical sketches of famous pontiffs and saints. His lectures on ecclesiastical history, delivered for charitable purposes, attracted a great deal of attention. One of his finest efforts in this line was a lecture on Gregory VII., or Hildebrand, the despot of the church, who made the haughty Emperor of the Germans crawl before him in the snow; another was his discourse on Thomas A'Becket. IIe was remarkably familiar with the writings of the most noted ancient and modern authors, and his private conversation, not less than his public efforts, was enriched and enlivened by the most apt illustrations and quotations. The charm of his voice and manner was as marked as his discourse. Among the most remarkable of his public orations was one delivered at a meeting of excursionists held near Fort Harker on the Pacific Railroad in 1867 ; a speech in the Cooper Institute during the campaign of 1868; a lecture at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, on Frederick the Great; and his matchless addresses at the laying of the corner- stone of the new Public Buildings, and on Pennsylvania Day at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876.
Mr. Brewster, though he held public office, was never a place-hunter, and had but little respect for those who sought high positions for selfish ends. Ile
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BENJAMIN H. BREWSTER.
claimed that the highest public distinctions in this country have no attraction for right-minded men, unless they are the unsought reward of personal worth, dig- nity of character, mental ability and a blameless life.
Mr. Brewster was one of the best known and familiar figures on the streets of Philadelphia. His features had been sadly marred by a terrible accident which befel him in childhood. The accounts of the origin of this life disfigurement have been numerous and varied. The facts as they have been related by Mr. Brewster himself are these: When a child in frocks his apron caught fire from a stove, and he screamed in fright. Although his mother was attracted by his cries, she did not hurry to the scene on account of the impression that the chil- dren were quarrelling. When she did reach the scene of the accident the future great lawyer was writhing in spasms on the floor. He was picked up and wrapped in a fur mat. The flames burned a hole in the mat, and for many years it was kept in Mr. Brewster's house as a mournful relic. The disfigurement which resulted had doubtless much to do with the eccentricities of dress and manner for which he was remarkable through life. Year by year in carly life his dress had become more noticeable for its peculiarity, until it finally settled down to the picturesque pattern with which his fellow-townsmen were familiar in later days. He wore almost invariably a light-colored coat, with a vest of velvet, cut low so as to expose a shirt front of the finest cambrie ruffles, and below his per- feetly cut pantaloons were seen the old-fashioned gaiter tops of perfect white. He wore a standing collar, a black stock, ruffled cuffs and a white fur beaver hat, and always displayed an old-fashioned fob chain, with a heavy gold seal attached. Notwithstanding the fact that his costumes were of antique styles, Mr. Brewster could not be called anything but a well-dressed man.
For many years he lived in the plain but comfortable and luxuriantly furnished house on Walnut street above Seventh, where he had his office. Shortly after his retirement from the Cabinet he removed to a house on Twelfth street below Walnut, where he continued to reside until the time of his death, which occurred there carly in the morning of April 4, 1888. He had been troubled for a long time with a complication of organic diseases, but his condition had not been considered alarming until some ten days prior to his death, the immediate cause of which was uræmia, or blood poisoning, resulting from paralysis of the kidneys and inflammation of the bladder. He was twice married. His first wife was a lady of foreign birth, Elizabeth Myerbach de Reinfeldts, to whom he was wedded in 1857, and who died in 1868. His second wife, to whom he was married in 1870, and who died in March, 1886, was a daughter of the late IIon. Robert J. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury under President Polk. While Mr. Brewster was Attorney-General, in President Arthur's Cabinet, Mrs. Brewster was one of the accepted leaders of Washington society, in which she was very popular, not less for her great beauty and generous hospitality, than from her true womanly qualities. By her he had one child, a son, born in 1872, who bears his father's namc. C. R. D.
HON. DANIEL AGNEW.
DANIEL AGNEW.
T IIE outbreak of the rebellion found the Supreme Court of the United States, most of the State Supreme Courts, and by far the larger number of the lower courts, Federal and State, in the hands of those whose political training inclined them to excuse, if not to approve, the cause of those who were seeking to betray the Union to its destruction. The Pennsylvania bench was no excep- tion to this rule. The majority of its Supreme Court were as little able as Presi- dent Buchanan then seemed to be, to find any law or precedent to justify national self-preservation or to authorize the suppression of a gigantic rebellion. One of this majority, Judge George W. Woodward, when the dissolution of the Union seemed imminent in 1861, declared, " If the Union is to be divided, I want the line of separation to run north of Pennsylvania." Later, this same Judge was very properly chosen to formulate the decision of the Democratic majority of the court which disfranchised the Pennsylvania soldiers in the field. These and kin- dred acts so highly recommended Judge Woodward to his party that in the criti- cal days of 1863, when the cause of the Union was trembling in the balance, he was selected to contest the re-election of Governor Andrew G. Curtin. Chief- Justice Lowrie, who was in entire accord with his colleague on the bench, Judge Woodward, and the author of a then recent decision of the State Supreme Court, declaring the national draft law unconstitutional, was a candidate for re-election. In selecting a candidate to run against Chief-Justice Lowrie, the Republicans or Union men looked for a jurist of high, legal attainments, who was firm in his convictions and of approved loyalty. All this and much more they found in Judge Agnew, of the Seventeenth Judicial District, whose services to the Union cause had made his name well known throughout the State. The ticket thus composed of Andrew G. Curtin for Governor and Daniel Agnew for Supreme Judge proved too strong for the opposition, and carried the State in October by 15,000 majority. By virtue of this popular decision Pennsylvania's great War Governor was retained in the position he had filled so worthily and well, and the State Supreme Court received an infusion of fresh blood, new thought, intense energy, and high patriotic impulse, which at that time it sadly needed. Judge Agnew's accession brought that court into harmony with the Union sentiment of the State and added immediately and in a marked degree to its strength and influence as a judicial body.
Judge Agnew is a Pennsylvanian only by adoption and a life-long residence. He was born in Trenton, N. J., January 5th, 1809, and while yet a lad his parents came to Western Pennsylvania, on their way to the State of Mississippi, and after a brief sojourn in Butler county, settled in Pittsburgh. There young Daniel lived, increasing in wisdom and stature until the dawning period of manhood, when he left the parental roof to go a little farther west and grow up with Beaver county.
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102
DANIEL AGNEW.
His father, James Agnew, M. D., was a native of Princeton, N. J., and graduated at its college in 1795. He studied medicine with Dr. McLean, the father of President McLean ; took his degree in medicine at the University of Pennsylva- nia in ISoo, and remained a year in Philadelphia under Dr. Benjamin Rush. His mother, Sarah B. Howell, was the eldest daughter of Governor Richard Howell, of New Jersey, who was a major of the New Jersey Continental line in the army of the Revolution. His paternal grandfather, Daniel Agnew, came from the County Antrim, in the north of Ireland, in the year 1764, and settled in New Jersey. On his mother's side he belonged to the Howells of Caerfille, in Wales. The father of the future Chief-Justice was for a time uncertain where he should permanently pitch his tent. . The century was just opening; a new country was all before him where to choose, and he was embarrassed by this wide range of choice. He first practised his profession for several years in Trenton, New Jer- sey, and then went to Mississippi in 1810. He returned in 1813, riding on horse- back all the way from Natchez to Princeton, through the Indian country then known as the " wilderness. In the following October he started on his return journey to Mississippi with his family, intending to remain during the winter at the house of John L. Glaser, the owner of a furnace in Butler county, whose wife was a sister of Mrs. Agnew. But Mrs. Agnew, becoming alarmed at the wildness of the West and the dangers of navigation, then made in arks or flat-boats, declined to make the voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi, and the whole party came to a halt in Butler county. It was through this circumstance that Mississippi lost and Pennsylvania gained Daniel Agnew as one of its citizens. The family were not unrepresented in Mississippi, however. Mrs. Agnew's brother established himself there, and her niece, Varina Howell, Judge Agnew's first cousin, is the present wife of the ex-Confederate chieftain, Mr. Jefferson Davis.
Daniel Agnew was educated at the Western University, in Pittsburgh, and studied law under llenry Baldwin and W. W. Fetterman. He was admitted to practice in the spring of 1829, and opened an office in Pittsburgh. Not succeeding as he wished, he went to Beaver in the fall of the same year, intending to return in a year or two. Ile soon created a practice, however, which once gained by a young lawyer is not lightly to be given up, and this fact, in connection with another, decided him to remain in Beaver permanently. The other potent influence on his decision was a Miss Elizabeth Moore, daughter of General Robert Moore, a leading lawyer and Representative in Congress, who had lately died. In the abundant leisure afforded by a law practice still in the future, he wooed and won this lady, who has now shared his joys and sorrows, his honors and his cares, for fifty years, and still lives, no less hale and hearty than the Judge himself, rejoicing in the more constant companionship which the termination of her husband's long engrossing public duties now brings to her. Land titles were unsettled in that western country, and in the extensive litigation growing out of this circumstance, young Agnew early had a chance to show what he was made of, and he was prompt to improve it. Ile soon gained a high standing as a land lawyer, and with it a large practice.
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DANIEL AGNEW.
His first service to the State at large was in 1837, as a member of the Consti- tutional Convention which in that and the year following sat in Harrisburg and Philadelphia, forming a series of amendments to the constitution of 1790, and which subsequently became a part of it. Mr. Agnew drew up the amendment offered by his colleague, John Dickey, as to the appointment and tenure of the judiciary, known as Dickey's Amendment, afterwards modified by the amend- ment of 1850.
It is proper to correct here a false charge brought against Judge Agnew by political enemies : that he voted in the Convention to insert the word " white" in the article upon elections. On the question of insertion, he voted always against it; but after failing in that, voted for the section as a whole, on account of other most important amendments intended to prevent fraudulent voting. .
In June, 1851, he was appointed by Governor Johnston President Judge of the Seventeenth District, then composed of Beaver, Butler, Mercer and Lawrence counties. In the following October the people confirmed the appointment, elect- ing him for a term of ten years. In 1861 he was re-elected without opposition at the call of the members of the bar of all parties.
He did not, however, consider that his duties as Judge superseded his duties as a citizen, and when the rebellion broke out, he became known at once as an ardent and active supporter of the Union cause. The Virginia Pan-Handle made Beaver a border county, and brought the atmosphere and spirit of secession into its very midst. A Committee of Public Safety of one hundred members was appointed, and Judge Agnew made its Chairman. Later, he was a zealous par- ticipant in the formation and maintenance of the Christian Commission. As a judge, all his energies were bent to preserve peace and order, and to check the budding treason, which had the temerity to show its head in the Seventeenth Judicial District. Other judges, even such as were in sympathy with the Lincoln Administration, were in doubt and perplexity as to their proper course in regard to the new issue which was suddenly sprung upon them. Judge Agnew, how- ever, never hesitated. In him sound learning and sound sense went hand in hand; and he found no difficulty in making the eternal principles which underlie all law apply to every time and every emergency. He was the first of the State judges to take cognizance of the aiders and abettors of rebellion around him, and enforce the necessity of obedience and the paramount duty of loyalty to the government. In May, 1861, more than four years before President Johnson talked of making treason odious, Judge Agnew instructed the grand jurors of Lawrence county that treason was a crime, and all who had any part or lot in it were criminals before the law. In this charge he combated with overwhelming conclusiveness the doctrines held by the Northern allies of rebellion that aid to the enemies of the United States, which the Constitution defines to be treason, meant foreign enemies only. He instructed the Grand Jury that where a body of men were actually assembled for the purpose of effecting by force a treasona- ble purpose, all those who perform a part, however minute or however remote
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DANIEL AGNEW.
from the scene of action, were actually leagued in the general conspiracy, and were to be considered traitors. ·
These were words fitly spoken and nobly spoken, at a time when treason was noisy and aggressive, and our leading public men were still under the delusion that it might be put down by soft words and gentle dalliance. Had other Northern judges everywhere displayed the same spirit, the progress of our arms would not have been so often obstructed and the war prolonged by a disheartening and demoralizing fire in the rear. In answer to those who denied the power of the government to maintain itself against domestic assaults, he wrote and de- livered a careful and elaborate address on the "National Constitution in its adaptation to a state of war." This address was so timely and so strong, breathing such a lofty spirit of patriotism, and evidently drawn from such rich stores of legal knowledge, that it at once invited public attention to its author, whose fame had been before confined to Western Pennsylvania. By special request of the members of the Legislature Judge Agnew repeated this address in Harrisburg in February, 1863. Secretary Stanton called for a copy of it, and the Union League, of this city, determined to scatter it free-handed. Two large editions of it were published by the League, and when Chief-Justice Lowrie's term in the Supreme Court was about to expire, the author of the address, while absent in the West, and without an effort on his part, was nominated by the Republicans to succeed him, and elected in October, 1863.
As a member of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Judge Agnew was early called to make a practical application of the doctrines, of which, as a citizen and judge of a lower court, he had been a zealous advocate. A majority of the bench, consisting of Chief-Justice Lowrie and Judges Thompson and Woodward, had pronounced against the constitutionality of the draft law. Judges Strong and Reed dissented. The question came up again immediately after Judge Agnew's accession to the bench, and, as the senior members of the court were evenly divided, it devolved on this new judge to decide the question, and his first opinion as Supreme judge was in affirmation of the constitutionality of the draft law (see 9th Wright, 306). He thoroughly believed in the right of the government to suppress insurrection and to enforce obedience to its laws.
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