USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Families of the Wyoming Valley: biographical, genealogical and historical. Sketches of the bench and bar of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, vol. I > Part 25
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On April 13, 1861, Fort Sumter surrendered to General Beau- regard, and on April 15 President Lincoln issued his proclama-
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tion declaring a number of the states of the union in rebellion and calling upon the states which had not seceded for seventy- five thousand men. On the receipt of the news at the town of Clarion a private meeting was held at the law office of Campbell & Lamberton, to consult what was best to be done. At the in- stance of Mr. Lamberton a public meeting was at once called. He prepared the resolutions and addressed it, taking the ground that the time for enlisting men to sustain the federal government had come and moved for the appointment of a permanent com-
mittee of enlistment. The committee was appointed and. Mr. Lamberton was placed at the head of it. He and others held meetings in different parts of Clarion county, addressing the peo- ple in favor of enlisting troops to sustain the supremacy of the federal laws. Before long a company recruited from the hardy lumbermen of the Clarion river was ready to march under Captain William Lemon, which Mr. Lamberton organized and accon- panied to the camp at Pittsburgh. This was the first company recruited in the upper Allegheny valley. On April 28, 1861, Captain Lemon's company was mustered in, and served through- out the war as Company H, Thirty-seventh regiment. Captain Lemon was afterwards appointed lieutenant-colonel. So efficient had the work of the committee been that, by the early days of September, Clarion county, then with a voting population of about four thousand, had over ten companies, numbering over one thousand men, in the field ; the president judge of the district and a graduate of West Point, Hon. John S. McCalmount, resid- ing at Clarion, having resigned his office to command a regiment (Tenth reserves, Thirty-ninth Pennsylvania volunteers).
In the summer of 1861 Mr. Lamberton was presented by the democratic convention of Clarion county for the position of state senator by a large majority over all competitors combined. Later, in the district convention of the counties of Clarion, Jefferson, Elk, and Forest, he was nominated for senator on the first ballot. His republican opponent was the late Samuel M. Fox, of Foxburg, a large landholder and a wealthy and popular man. Although there was some division of sentiment regarding the war, Mr. Lamberton made no concealment of his views during the canvass. In reply to a letter from prominent citizens ad-
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dressed to him, he, on September 13, 1861, in a public letter said : " It is well known to you, gentlemen, that until the commence- ment of hostilities between the general government and those now in armed rebellion, I was persistently for a peaceful arrange- ment, upon honorable terms, between the two sections of the country ; but when hostile cannon thundered around Fort Sum- ter and caused the flag of our country, the symbol of its power and authority, to be lowered in defeat, and from an official source came the threat that a hostile flag should float over the capitol at Washington, I could not, and did not, hesitate how to choose ; I was unmistakably on the side of the constitutional government of the country. The issue was plain ; the government had either to overthrow them and execute the laws, or they would over- throw it and subvert the laws. Besides, gentlemen, in deciding that issue we are to solve the grand problem of man's capacity for self-government for all future time. Acting under the im- pulse of duty I gave public utterance to these sentiments in different parts of the country, and our democratic brethren, with- out stopping to enquire what party administered our government, gallantly vied with men of all parties as to who should do most for its preservation."
At the ensuing election in October Mr. Lamberton was elected from that district to the senate of Pennsylvania for the years 1862, 1863, and 1864. The senate of Pennsylvania contained during this time many able men. William A. Wallace, late United States senator, Hiester Clymer, William Hopkins, A. K. McClure, John P. Penny, Morrow B. Lowry, Benjamin Champ- neys, Winthrop W. Ketcham, George Landon, and many others ; . and the legislation during the pendency of the civil war was mostly concerning the engrossing topics of the time, and the debates were of a highly interesting, exciting, and often of an acrimonious character. Although the youngest member of the senate, Mr. Lamberton at once took an active and leading part in the legislation and debates, and at all times sustained the govern- ment in every proper measure for the support of the federal arms and the restoration of the union under the constitution.
At the election of United States senator during the session of 1863, Mr. Lamberton placed in nomination Hon. George W.
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Woodward, and, at his request, subsequently withdrew it, when he gave his support in caucus and in joint convention to Hon. Charles R. Buckalew.
Mr. Lamberton's three years in the senate comprehended the greater part of the war period, and were marked by the most exciting and important events in the history of the country. The conduct of men then occupying civil positions, especially those in the legislative halls of the state and nation, was almost as closely scrutinized as that of our officers in the field, and accordingly as they acquitted themselves of their almost equally grave responsibilities will their characters and capacities be measured in history. To democrats thus situated they were. especially trying years. The urgent necessities of a vigorous prosecution of the war were made to mask the rashest of appeals to demagoguery and fanaticism, and to excuse the most violent assaults upon the constitution and popular rights. Democrats placing themselves in antagonism to these wrongs, laid them - selves constantly liable to be falsely adjudged guilty of sympathy with armed rebellion. The people were to a large extent blinded, excusably perhaps by the excitements and dangers of the great national exigency. The lip service of the deep-designing but loud-professing hypocrite was frequently mistaken for patriotism and rewarded with unstinted plaudits and honors, while the really patriotic caution of those who saw in the necessities of the hour, none for departure from the wise inhibitions of the fundamental law, were as often looked upon as evidencing a trea- sonable lack of faith in, and fealty to, the union. It required true bravery in those days to sustain public men in devotion to the constitution and democratic teachings; the favor of the masses could be so cheaply bought by departure from them.
Mr. Lamberton, as we have seen, was first for a peaceful ad- justment, by compromise and conciliation, of the grave issues then pending. When the firing on the flag at Sumter rendered this impossible, he was for war; not to subjugate, but to re-unite. His speeches and votes in the senate of the state all conformed to the belief that " the union and the constitution were one and inseparable," and that to save the first in a condition worth saving the other must be religiously preserved. He supported every
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measure looking to a proper prosecution of the war and the doing by Pennsylvania of its full share of that great work, as also of all measures intended to secure to the soldiers proper compensation, full meed of praise, and all their rights as citizens. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania having decided that the law granting the right of suffrage to the soldiers from the state in the field, and its exercise by them, was not in accordance with the organic law, he voted for an amendment to the constitution establishing the right. The currency at the time being greatly depreciated, he voted and spoke earnestly for resolutions request- ing congress to pay the soldiers in coin or its equivalent. He voted to pay pensions to the widows and minor children of deceased soldiers, and favored the bringing home of the sick and wounded of the Pennsylvania quota for treatment in hos- pitals within the state. He offered a resolution instructing the finance committee to bring in a bill authorizing the governor to have struck and presented to General Meade a suitable medal in . gold and such other suitable testimonials as should be agreed upon, for presentation to each other officer, non-commissioned officer and private, who had "wrought for this commonwealth deliverance from rebel invasion on the sanguinary and victorious field of Gettysburg." Mr. Johnson, of Lycoming, moved to amend this resolution by instructing the committee to " inquire into the expediency of such action." Mr. Lamberton spoke twice against this amendment, calling attention to his having himself introduced a bill to the same effect earlier in the session, which had been put to sleep in the committee on federal relations, and pleading eloquently that this doing of justice to brave men be not made a party question. The amendment, however, was adopted, and, as the committee never reported, the project fell. Subsequently General Meade, having said that he had a quarrel with the democracy of Pennsylvania because he had been told that they had refused to recognize the services of the Pennsyl- vania soldiers in resisting Lee's invasion of our state, had his mind disabused of that erroneous understanding by being shown this resolution and the proceedings had thereon.
At the beginning of the session of 1864 the democrats were placed in a false position on many questions affecting the soldier
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by a tie in the senate. The whole number of senators elected was thirty-three, of whom sixteen were democrats and seventeen republicans, but General Harry White, of Indiana, one of the seventeen, was a prisoner of war in Richmond at the time, and, of course, could not attend. Senator Penny, of Allegheny, who had been elected speaker at the close of the preceding session, insisted, contrary to all precedent, upon continuing in the speaker's chair. For six weeks there was a deadlock, when Mr. Penny, (a successor to General White having in the meantime been elected), resigned and broke it. During these six weeks it was the habit of the republicans to introduce measures affecting the war and the soldiers which the democrats, under other circumstances, would have unitedly supported, but which, as things were, they could not vote for without, as they believed, violating the sanc- tity of their oaths and establishing a dangerous precedent. They felt bound, as they read the law, to resist all affirmative legisla- tion of any kind or character, so long as the republicans insisted . upon retaining Mr. Penny as speaker, though they were without a majority of the senators present. During the debate which this peculiar situation of affairs provoked, Mr. Lamberton spoke at length and vigorously in defense of the democratic attitude, and promising that the democrats would "go farther than the republicans dared go in behalf of the brave soldiers, scarred and weather-beaten, standing as a living battlement between the rebels and our homes, if they would but remove, as they could, the blocks from the wheels of legislation and permit a lawful organization."
It is not out of place here to mention the fact that in the demo- cratic district represented by Mr. Lamberton, three out of the five counties paid no bounties, and the fourth paid but a small amount, yet when the draft was made two of them were found to have more than their quota already in the field, while the whole district was short of its quota only one hundred and twenty-nine men. From Clarion county, if not from all, the soldiers in the field from this district gave a majority of their votes to the democratic candidate for president in the canvass of 1864.
At other times than during this deadlock Mr. Lamberton showed that, while earnestly in favor of the suppression of the
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rebellion, he was equally earnest for the maintenance of the reserved rights of the states and the inalienable rights of the people : habeas corpus, trial by jury, liberty of the press, freedom of speech, sanctity of personal liberty, and security of private property. On March 6, 1863, a resolution came up for consider- ation which tendered the use of the senate chamber to ex- President Andrew Johnson, then "military governor of Tennes- see," and Governor Wright, of Indiana. An exciting debate ensued taking a wide range and involving the issues, purposes, and conduct of the war. Mr. Lamberton offered an amendment inviting General McClellan to visit the capital to address the legislature. This amendment he supported in a lengthy speech, which was subsequently reported in full in the Harrisburg Patriot, and highly commended in an editorial in the same issue of that paper. The speech was a powerful arraignment of the men who had perverted the war, as the democrats then believed, from an effort to preserve the union and constitution, to one for abolition and subjugation, and a grand tribute to the great soldier, McClel- lan. It was interrupted by the radical Lowry, of Erie, who charged that it was a speech better fitted to be delivered in Rich- mond than in the senate of Pennsylvania. Mr. Lamberton re- torted that he could well afford to be abused in such a cause by one who had counseled the payment of a premium for murder, whereupon Lowry, in fiery language, virtually repeated his notor- ious Pittsburgh harangue of two years previous, in which he said that if he were commander-in-chief he would " confiscate every rebel's property, whether upon two legs or four, and give to the slave who brought his master's scalp one hundred and sixty acres of his master's plantation."
Mr. Lamberton's votes on financial and economic questions seem always to have been measured by an undeviating loyalty to the best interests of the state and the soundest of general principles. He voted always to keep full faith with the public creditors, and maintain and preserve the fair fame of the state, by paying, as did Massachusetts, the interest on the public debt in specie or its equivalent, as provided by the laws under which the loans were negotiated. He was also with those senators who were against the scheme of the Pennsylvania railroad, by which
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that corporation finally confirmed the repeal of the tonnage taxes effected in the legislature of 1861, and, to use the language of Judge Black, " transferred to their own pockets an inconceivable sum justly due to the state," which, the judge continued, " was business rich to them and profitable beyond the dreams of ava- rice, while to the swindled taxpayers it was proportionately disastrous."
Examining Mr. Lamberton's senatorial record under the added light of the experiences which the intervening nearly quarter of a century has brought us, we are in justice compelled to the con- clusion that it was a record true to the principles of the demo- cratic party and the constitution, and evidencing an intelligent appreciation of the dangers, and patriotic devotion to the necessities, of the time.
In 1864 Mr. Lamberton represented his congressional district as a delegate to the democratic national convention, which nom- inated General George B. McClellan for president ; over which another candidate for president subsequently, Horatio Seymour, presided, and of which another candidate afterwards, Samuel J. Tilden, was a conspicuous member. Mr. Lamberton, at the ex- piration of his term, determined to retire from public life and devote himself to his profession and business. . His law business having become scattered during his term in the senate, Mr. Lamberton determined to seek a wider and more lucrative field for professional pursuits, and selected Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne county, as his future home.
The winter of 1864-65 he spent in Philadelphia engaged in some real estate enterprises, and after the close of the war and in the fall of 1865 removed to Wilkes-Barre, where he was ad- mitted a member of the Luzerne county bar, November 20, 1865, and opened a law office. In the summer of 1867 he visited Europe with the late Chief Justice George W. Woodward and other friends, making the regulation tour. During their absence Judge Woodward was elected to congress, the news of which they got from the pilot three hundred miles off Sandy Hook. Mr. Lamberton returned to his office and profession and steadily applied himself to the practice of law. In the winter of 1867-68 he became one of the originators of the Miners' Savings Bank, of
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Wilkes-Barre; was an original incorporator, and for fifteen years was an active director, except for a short interval, when he was a director of the Wilkes-Barre Deposit and Savings Bank. The Miners' Savings Bank has become one of the most prosperous. institutions of the city of Wilkes-Barre.
In 1868, at the earnest solicitation of the democratic state committee, he reluctantly took charge of the canvass in Luzerne county with such efficiency that, at the state election preceding the presidential election, there was cast a democratic majority in the county of over thirty-five hundred. In 1872 he was sent as delegate to the democratic state convention at Reading, and was one of the committee of thirty-three, which selected fourteen del- egates-at-large to the constitutional convention. After thirteen were chosen, by a vigorous five minutes' speech he succeeded in having his friend, Hon. George W. Woodward, named for the fourteenth man, and then by resolution Judges Black and Wood- ward were placed at the head of the ticket.
.Mr. Lamberton was chosen as a delegate to the democratic national convention which met at Baltimore in 1872, and was named as a member of the committee on credentials from Penn- sylvania. In 1874 he took an active interest in the election of his friend, Hon. William A. Wallace, to the United States senate.
In 1876, at the invitation of the democratic state committee, Mr. Lamberton took the stump in Pennsylvania for the demo- cratic candidates, Tilden and Hendricks, speaking at Allentown, , Easton, Bethlehem, Lock Haven, Williamsport, Reading, and Carlisle. His speech at the latter place, urging peace and recon- ciliation as the true road to public prosperity, was reported and printed in the public papers of the day.
In 1877, without solicitation, the democratic county convention of Luzerne county presented his name for justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in the following terms : "Resolved, That the Hon. C. L. Lamberton, of Wilkes-Barre, is hereby recom- mended to the ensuing state democratic convention for the office of judge of the Supreme Court, and the delegates from this county are respectfully requested to use all honorable means to secure his nomination."
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The Luserne Leader, in a complimentary article, said truly, "this recommendation came without the knowledge of Mr. Lam- berton and was probably as much of a surprise to him as it was gratifying." Throughout the state it was favorably received by the democratic press. But Mr. Lamberton was not a candidate for that or any other office, and when the state convention met, before the balloting commenced, Hon. W. S. Stenger, the president of the convention, read the following letter :
" WILKES-BARRE, August 21, 1877. " To the President of the Democratic State Convention :
' "SIR : The late democratic county convention of Luzerne unan- imously presented my name as a candidate for the nomination for justice of the Supreme Court. This high compliment was unsolicited, but is most gratefully appreciated. As the sentiments of the democratic party and the profession unmistakably point to a distinguished jurist in another part of the state, I beg leave to withdraw my name from your consideration. Thanking my friends throughout the state for the many expressions of their kindness towards me,
"I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, "CHARLES L. LAMBERTON."
It was well known to Mr. Lamberton's friends that he was not a candidate, but was warmly in favor of the nomination of his friend, Hon. John Trunkey, the nominee of the convention, and was giving him all the aid he could, which was well known and appreciated by Judge Trunkey, who wrote him on September 3, 1877 : " Accept my acknowledgments for the friendly aid you gave in securing me the nomination, of which I have heard from several sources."
In May, 1878, in company with Mrs. Lamberton, he went to Europe, traveled through Great Britain, central and western Eu- rope, spending the winter at Rome and in the south of France at Nice, returning in the spring of 1879. He did not resume the practice of law, and his last two cases in the Supreme Court he argued at the Luzerne county term for 1880, one, Honor v. Al- brighton, Roberts & Co., an important case, involving for the first time the construction of the new mine ventilation law; and the other, Church's Appeal, litigation involving a large and valua-
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ble property, and in which Mr. Lamberton had been of counsel for thirteen years.
In 1880 Mr. Lamberton took part in the presidential canvass, speaking in Philadelphia, Chester, Danville, Pottstown, and Al- toona, upon invitation of the democratic state central committee, and with Senator William A. Wallace at Youngstown, Ohio, and at Sharon, Pennsylvania. His speech at Altoona was reported for the Harrisburg Patriot, and the state committee circulated a large edition of it as a campaign document, and the late Judge Black, both by letter and orally on more than one occasion, pro- nounced it the ablest speech of the campaign he had seen up to that time.
In 1881 Mr. Lamberton, accompanied by Mrs. Lamberton, re- turned to Europe, visiting Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and the valley of the Engadine, sailing for home in November of the same year ; in 1882 traveled in this country, and in the summer of 1883 went abroad again, accompanied by Mrs. Lamberton, traveling through Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Russia.
On September 28, 1863, by Rev. Dr. Hoes, Mr. Lamberton was married to Miss Anna De Witt, of Kingston, Ulster county, New York, daughter of Colonel Jacob Hasbrouck De Witt and Sarah Ann De Witt, both of whom are now deceased. Mr. and Mrs. Lamberton have no children.
From a memorial, published some years since, of Rev. Thomas De Witt, D. D., late of New York city, we extract * " De Witt is a very ancient name in Holland, and many men of note for wisdom and statesmanship, for boldness in war and fortitude in disaster, bore the honorable name. Macauley tells of John De Witt, the grand pensionary of the province of Holland, ' whose ability, firmness, and integrity raised him to unrivalled authority in its municipal councils.' Before his memorable death occurred one branch of the De Witt family had emigrated to America. ‘Tjerck Claezen (thought to be a son of Nicholas) De Witt, who was born in 1620, came to New York in 1656.' An exact list of his descendants for nearly two hundred and fifty years may be found in the American Genealogical Reviewe for December, 1874, edited by Mr. Charles Moore. The grand- father of Dr. De Witt (and of his brother, Colonel J. H. De Witt)
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was Egbert, the seventh child of Andries, and his father, Thomas, was the seventh son of Egbert. He had nine sons and but one daughter, Mary, his tenth and last child, who married, in 1756, General James Clinton, and was the mother of the distinguished statesman De Witt Clinton. Several of Egbert's sons were sol- diers and officers in the revolutionary army. Thomas, the father of Dr. De Witt (and of Colonel De Witt), went in his early youth to join the American forces in Canada at the time of Wolfe's victory over the French and the surrender of Canada to the British. When the struggle to throw off the dominion of the mother coun- try began, he at once entered the continental service, soon ob- tained a commission as captain (and was subsequently pro- moted), and did not lay down his arms until the close of the war. In 1775 he again went into Canada, and was present in December of that year at the death of Montgomery, in the attack on Quebec. He was afterwards with Colonel Marinus Willet on the Mohawk, and at the siege of Fort Stanwix. In 1782 he married Miss Elsie Hasbrouck, a descendant of one of the old French Huguenot families, who, when persecuted for their Protestantism, had fled, first to Germany, afterwards to Holland, and finally emigrated to America about the middle of the seventeenth century."
From a biographical sketch of Colonel Jacob H. De Witt, in a re- cent history of Ulster county, we take the following : " The ‘ Ges- lachten von Dordrecht' in the Royal library at the Hague gives the descent of the De Witt family in an unbroken line from the year 1295 to September 8, 1639, (and the ' Wapen' book of the 'Seven Provinces' continues it until 1756)."
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