History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 157

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992

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In spite of so much of his time having been given to matters outside of his profession, he yet, in the in- tervals when he could attend to it, had a large prac- tice, and had his health not been broken down by his ardnous labors in other fields, he was yet young enough to have won a yet higher distinction than he had already achieved. For he was now only just past forty years of age, a period when most of those who have won great professional renown were fairly established in the road leading to it. But his health had been injured beyond all hope of recovery After a vain effort to recruit it by a voyage to England, in

1 In his letter from New York, Sept. 2, 1776, he writes confidentially to his wife concerning the unexpected attitude of various persons of their acquaintance toward the dangerous questions of the day. We in- sert the following from this letter as containing a compliment to the Tilghmaos: " When I look round, and see how few of the numbers who talked so largely of death and honor are around me, and that those who are here are those from it was least suspected (as the Tilghmans, etc.), I am lost in wonder and surprise." This is a very high compliment to a family who had been so opposed to open rupture, but who, when it must come, devoted themselves to their country's cause with the same faithfulness that had characterized them in all other concerns thereto- fore. Of Tench Tilghman especially, brother of the chief justice, Wash- ington was extremely fond.

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1784, he returned, and died March 5, 1785, at his resi- denee, Chestnut Street, below Fourth. He died at the age of forty-four years.

Not very long after the beginning of Joseph Reed's professional life, upon his settlement in Philadelphia, a young man, a native of Connecticut, came to his office, and began the study of the law. He was less than ten years younger than his preceptor, and was the first of a name that was destined to become emi- nently distinguished in the legal profession. This was Jared Ingersoll. After admission to the bar of Philadelphia he made a voyage to Europe, where he spent several years, partly in studies and partly in journeying for the purposes of learning manners, eustoms, and institutions of various nations. He returned when about the age of twenty-nine years and began the practice. The culture that he had gained by extended travel, the freedom from haste with which he had gone to his profession, were of invaluable service to him in his subsequent career. The lessons he had gotten at the Inner Temple, the study he had made of whatever was peculiar and striking in the public transactions of foreign peoples, the case, the deliberation, the polish that had become his own, came speedily to be remarked when he eame to the bar, and it was but a short time before he was regarded as one of the most prominent of the young men at the bar that for fifty years had been the ablest and most distinguished in the United States. The man who is uncommonly accomplished in the various gifts which adorn a gentleman, whether in professional or social life, if he has delicacy and modesty along with these, carries with him a charm that it is beautiful to contemplate. Cultivated as In- gersoll had become, by his studies while abroad, of other things besides those pertaining to his profession, yet when he at length settled down to it, he seemed to have no other ambition than the rewards which single devotion to it would obtain for one competent for all of its behests. So he abstained from politics and everything else that would interfere with this devotion. Not in the office of Joseph Reed, not in his chambers at the Inner Temple had he been a closer student of law than during the whole course of his long professional life. It is eurious to see, as we sometimes do, what power there is often in a man who either has not uncommon ardor, or who has schooled himself into the knowledge of how to sup- press it. We have seen something of this in the life of Judge Washington. Jared Ingersoll was like that illustrious judge in this respect. He was a man whose forte was persuasion. No advocate of his time was

A man of a temper like Mr. Ingersoll, if unusual aeci- dents do not hinder, lasts a long time. The periods of revolution and war bear with especial heaviness upon the bar, which needs peace for its continuous successful progress. Men that, in 1776, were rich, or living in the promise of riches, met great changes during the seven years of war that followed, and his superior, if any was his equal, in this power of |those others which were spent in endeavors to recover persuasion, a power which the old rhetoricians de- fined eloquence to be. Without exalting to an undue degree the conduct of his own elients, he was as far from derogating from that of his adversary, except on occasions where it seemed flagrantly wrong. He argued for his client with ealm, sincere appeals to

known principles for the guidance of transactions among men, and the knowledge that all men-judges and juries-had of his eandor, his integrity, his learning, and ability, made him pre-eminently suc- cessful. In his relations with the bar, he was a model of that sort of deportment which, among lawyers who are gentlemen, is one of the chief glories of the profession. Never was there at the Philadelphia bar a lawyer who better understood the amenities of professional life, or practiced them with more con- stancy and ease. Yet he was very powerful as an advocate. He studied the case of his adversaries with the same care as he studied his own. He saw with extraordinary quickness whatever points in his adver- saries' cases were weak, and when he saw them, he attacked them with just the force that was necessary, and no more, to overcome them. It has been said of him that in this respect, and in that of defending weak points in his own cases, he was the first man of his time at the bar. He had a very large practice in the Circuit Court of the United States, in which he was pre-eminently successful in winning cases.

The case in which Mr. Ingersoll was, perhaps, most successful in the display of his extraordinary powers was that in which, along with Mr. A. J. Dallas, he appeared in the Senate of the United States in defense of William Blount, a senator of the United States from Tennessee, who was impeached for conduct alleged to have been committed by him for the purpose of alienating the various tribes of Indians from the treaties entered into between them and the government. Mr. Adams, then President (1797), gave the impulsion to the impeachment by an alarming message to both Houses, wherein he offered his opinion that the country was in peril from various internal schemes, at the same time accom- panying his message with documents, among which was a letter written by Senator Blount on the 21st of April of that year. The letter, if not obviously de- signed for the purposes of which it was suspected, was eminently imprudent and unbecoming a senator of the United States. The speech of Mr. Ingersoll on the trial of the impeachment has been con- sidered one of the very best specimens of forensic eloquence that the whole country has given.

from the effects of war, and besides in organizing a new régime under which to live after the attainment of independence. When these were over the most, how- ever prosperous they had been before, were now to begin life over again, and at middle age renew, or try to renew, the strength as the struggle of young man-

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hood. It is notable of the bar of the country how successful were these efforts among them. It was a noble sight to see men of forty and upwards going back to their professions and taking them up where they had left them nearly ten years before and prose- cuting them with the cheerful energy of men of twenty-five and thirty. But men of the class that led the bar in the latter part of the last century were such as had not gone into the profession merely or mainly for the sake of pecuniary rewards. Such men, therefore, when the period of peace came, could afford to be cheerful, and content themselves with what rewards were to follow industry and genius in the time that was left wherein to employ them.

aside these harmless memorials of former times, sub- sequent generations had not left with them so much of that dignity of deportment that was contemporary with them.

Mr. Binney, in his sketches of the " Leaders of the Old Bar," speaks with great earnestness in relation to the power of Jared Ingersoll before a jury. He says, --

" His professional character, fairly and not partially described, is that of a very sound and well-read lawyer, and a most consummate advocate. Though he was strong as a lawyer in learning, and la the accomplish- ments which assist the application of it, his great forte was at the bar, in the face of an intelligent jury, and, indeed, of any jury, and second only to that was his power with the court. In his full vigor, which continued for nearly twenty years after the year 1797, I regard him as having been, without comparison, the most efficient manager of an im- portant jury trial among all the ablo men who were then at the bar of Philadelphia."

It has been remarkable in the history of Pennsyl- vania that party polities, purely as party politics, have had less to do with nominations to offices con- Like the Ingersolls, the family of Dallas have he- come illustrious on the theatre of the law. Alex- ander James Dallas, who in his double role of lawyer and statesman combined as much talent as perhaps any man of his day, was a native of the island of Jamaica, where he was born in 1759. His father, Robert Charles Dallas, had emigrated from Scotland. His first studies were carried on at Kensington, near London, where his father had gone mainly for the purpose of obtaining for his children opportunities superior to what could be obtained at home. His father having died, leaving his estates in Jamaica somewhat embarrassed, and his mother having mar- ried again (with Capt. Sutherland, of the British navy), Alexander, thrown upon his own resources, even at the early age of fifteen, determined to adopt the profession of a lawyer, and entered his name at the Temple. But further reflection led him to enter the counting-room of an uncle by marriage, a mer- chant in London. At the end of two years, this relative having ceased business, the youth quitted London, and sojourning with his family, who then resided in Devonshire, he devoted himself to such readings as in his opinion would be best suited to qualify him for the career he had chosen. At the age of twenty-one he married Arabella Marice, daughter of Maj. George Smith, of the British army. After a brief sojourn in the West Indies, whither he had emigrated after his marriage, he finally set sail for the United States. Here he arrived in the year 1783. As soon as he had passed the time two years) which, unreasonably enough, had been prescribed by the courts, of the residence in the State of applicants for admission to the bar, he entered upon the practice. In this interval, besides what business employment he could obtain, he devoted some of his time to the assistance of Lewis Hallam in his efforts to lift the drama from the low standing it had hitherto oc- cupied, and contributed liberally with his pen in the way of addresses, prologues, epilogues, and detached dramatic pieces. The time requisite to sojourn having elapsed, he was admitted to the Supreme Court in nected with the judicial administration of the law than in any other State of the Union. A remark- able example of this sort was the case of the ap- pointment, in 1811, by Governor Snyder to the post of attorney-general of that State. Governor Snyder was at the head of the Democratic party in the State, and it behooved him to nominate to that office a man known to be competent for its duties. He would gladly have appointed Mr. Dallas, but that gentleman had already the United States district attorneyship, which he would not have exchanged for the other. It so happened that among the others of the bar belonging to that party there was not one who could be acknowledged generally to be fully fit for the position. Mr. Ingersoll, therefore, was en- tirely taken by surprise when one day he received a commission to that office from the Governor. The surprise was none the less, because he had been sounded, without his own knowledge of such inten- tions, on the part of those whom the Governor sent for this purpose, and who had found, upon his own frank, unsuspicious admission, that it was an office that he would be willing to accept, if tendered. Im- mediately upon his admission, the blank in the com- mission, which was in the hands of the Governor's friends in Philadelphia, signed by him, was filled with Ingersoll's name, and put into his hands. This position he held from 1811 to 1816, when he resigned. In 1820 he was appointed judge of the District Court for the city and county of Philadelphia. This posi- tion he held until 1822, when, on the 31st of October, he died, being then seventy-three years old. He was among the last of those that wore such dress as was common to the profession then, consisting usually of a drab body-coat and small-clothes, with silk stock- ings, and shoes with buckles. It was getting to be the end of professional dressing, a habit of long an- tiquity, that the older members of the bar had not the heart to depart from, notwithstanding the changes that new times had brought, and the occasional smile that would be bestowed upon remaining fondness for old manners. It would have been well if, in casting 1785. Yet he did not forsake the field of letters, as

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will be seen by referring to the chapter on literature, especially in connection with Francis Hopkinson in the management of the Columbian Magazine and other literary periodicals.

Mr. Dallas, with all the ardor of his Scottish blood, soon became identified with the interests of the country he had adopted, its literature, its general concerns, especially its politics. His uncommonly versatile genius, the rapidity with which he worked, the self-disputed, laborious pursuits of his boyhood and youth, his tall, stalwart, vigorous, healthy body, his goodly manners, his ardent temper, his intrepid courage, all combined to fit him for important dis- tinguished work in a country great in resources and full of great possibilities. The new form of govern- ment for Pennsylvania went into operation in 1790, when he had been a resident five years, time enough for such a man to fully comprehend its ele- ments, and its needs. This same year, the first vol- ume of his "Reports of Pennsylvania Cases" was published, destined to be followed by three others, and to become and to con- tinue one of the most val- nable contributions ever made to the law library. Henceforth, the name of no man in Pennsylvania was more conspicuous. The following contains a brief summary of his pub- lic actions hereafter, taken from a contribution to the Sunday Dispatch of Jan- uary, 1875, by Thompson Westcott. After mention- ing some of the events in the life of Mr. Dallas pre- ceding the publication of these Reports, he says,-

A. I. Dallas

" These cases not only contained the judgments and arguments before tho Supreme Court, but many cases disposed of before the Revolution. They carried the Reports from 1790-when the first volume was pub- lished-to 1807. They contained decisions of the Supreme Court, High Court of Errors and Appeals, and of the Courts of Common Pleas and of the United States in Pennsylvania. Mi. Dallas soon became prominent in politics. He was appointed Secretary of the Commonwealth of Penn- sylvania Jan. 19, 1791, and held that office until April 28, 1801. At this time he was appointed by Mi. Jefferson attorney of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and was appointed in July, of the same year, by Governor McKean, recorder of the city of Philadel- phin, He resigned the latter office in 1802; but he held the office of district attorney until 1813, when he was succeeded by Richard Peters, Jr. In October, 1814, he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, and, on the 13th of March, 181., also assumed the duties of the Secretary of War, which, together with those of Secretary of the Treasury, he discharged until he resigned in November, IsIG, and re- turned to the practice of his profession."

All cabinet offices he had declined when first offered to him. On the relinquishment of the secretaryship of the treasury, in 1813, by Mr. Gallatin, who, with Mr. Bayard, had gone to St. Petersburg to join John Quincy Adams in the embassy to the emperor of Russia, who had proposed to exert his good offices in behalf of peace with Great Britain, this position was offered to Mr. Dallas, and at the same time that of attorney-general that had lately been made vacant by the resignation of William Pinckney, with per- mission to Mr. Dallas to choose for himself which of the two he would accept. Both these he declined in a letter to Hon. W. Jones, Secretary of the Navy (then acting also in Mr. Gallatin's place), 3d Feb- ruary, 1814. But he was afterward prevailed on to

forego his aversion to a "permanent residence in Washington."

There is much that is touching in the cheerful- ness with which Mr. Dal- las in approaching old age submitted to the neces- sity of retiring from all business except profes- sional, and devoting him- self to the recruiting of his fortune, which had been much impaired by his long service in public life, where salaries are, as they always have been in our country, so inadequate to the service required. In the fair, affectionate, most tasteful memoir of Mr. Dallas, by his sou George Mifflin Dallas, in the work entitled, "Life and Writings of A. J. Dallas" (J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1871), is recorded this brief account of his illness and death. After referring to his having been subject for many years to sudden attacks, con- ceived to have arisen from internal injuries received when he once had come near being drowned in the river Thames, he says, " While occupied in arguing an important suit at Trenton, before the then Governor and ex officio Chancellor of New Jersey, Mahlon Dick- erson, he became conscious of the approach of his old and implacable enemy ; asked a short delay, but was obliged to proceed; and concluding his address, hur- riedly drove to his home in Philadelphia, and on the night of his arrival, the 16th January, 1817, died tran- quilly, while his two sons watched, unaware of the crisis, at his bedside."

David Paul Brown, always so fond of bestowing

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generous praise upon those of his profession who were deserving, says of him among many other things, " Mr. Dallas was a man of the most fascinating and courtly manners, and of the most impressive and dignified personal appearance. Hedressed with great taste, ordinarily in a suit of olive-brown, with small clothes and top-boots. He had an abundance of hair, which he always wore powdered and gathered into a bag-cue. In everything he did, he was the embodi- ment of gracefulness. He never lost sight of what was due to himself or others." . .. "As nearly all the leading lawyers of the bar were Federalists, his position was at times rendered uncomfortable, if not disagreeable, and the very refinement of his sensibili- ties increased the penalties to which he was subjected. But even this could not deprive him of his self-re- liance or of the force required in the conscientious and inflexible discharge of his duty.

" In his diversified and more attractive pursuits, it could not be expected that he should devote his at- tention at any time exclusively to the bar. Never- theless he enjoyed a large practice, and always main- tained his post in the first rank of the profession. His multifarious avocations did not afford him time to condense his arguments; and his style therefore was often diffuse, and somewhat redundant. He was undoubtedly less of a jurist than some of his contem- poraries, but perhaps of a more general accomplish- ment than any of them. If he had not been a lawyer, he would have been a great statesman ; and if he had not been a statesman, he would have been one of the greatest lawyers of the age."

A singular career in the history of the bar was that of Nicholas Waln, who, during the period of which we are now treating, began the practice under uncom- monly good auspices. After his preliminary educa- tion, received in Philadelphia (he was born at Fair- hill, Philadelphia County), he was admitted to the bar iu 1763, and soon afterward went to London, where he spent some time in further study at the Temple. He had been at the bar several years, when a case occurred that ended in his separation altogether from his profession. That he was a lawyer of ability, with good promise of success, appears from the fact that for several years he was the partner of William Lewis, who in some respects was the first lawyer of his time. Whether Mr. Waln was a man of uncom- monly acute sensibilities, or had not fully understood the merits of the cause that led to the action, to be mentioned presently, or felt that in his too eager pursuit he had been derelict in the duty that binds all lawyers never to overstep the limits of just dis- cussion when pleading the cause of clients, cannot now be determined. At all events, he made a resolu- tion and adhered to it for the rest of his life.

It was after he had been at the bar for some years, that having been struck with contrition, in conse- quence of his assistance in a case in which he thought his client had unjustly won the cause, he withdrew

from the practice of the law, and subsequently devoted his life and energies to the service of religion as a preacher of the Society of Friends.

William Lewis was one of the rare exceptions to what seemed almost the rule in ante-Revolutionary times, that law students and lawyers should come of good families, He was of humble birth, born upon a farm in Chester County, in 1751, and having once gone into a court-house and seen and heard the distin- guished men who were there, felt and immediately resolved to follow the instant impulse to become like them. Such a spirit will in time compass its pur- poses. He studied law with Nicholas Waln, above mentioned, and became his partner after admission to

the bar. He is a signal example of what genius and energy may do in spite of the want of preliminary advantages. Mr. Lewis had never had the facilities for cultivating the arts of forensic speaking, nor did he ever rise entirely above the roughness of voice and gesticulation that came to him in the farm-life he had led. And yet with all that roughness and sonorousness that attended the efforts of his stalwart Jungs and brain, he has been accorded the very highest place among his contemporaries and rivals in the matter of forensic eloquence. He was one who

seemed to have studied what were his possibilities, and what not, to have let these go without pain or reluctance, and make everything out of those. Wit and humor and sarcasm were with him, always abundant, and always fresh. These qualities he ein- ployed when they suited his purposes, but he eth- ployed them with the air of one who valued them little except for their temporary uses

It seems impossible for those who have risen to eminence without those facilities enjoyed by must

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others who are no higher than themselves, to fail to overrate their own unaided endeavors, and imagine that, had they enjoyed greater facilities, they would have risen unquestionably above the rest of mankind. This inferiority doubtless appears more distinctly in such men, because they have never learned the art, like those risen in all stages of life amid the best society, to concede what others perhaps feel as keenly as themselves. An instance of what with such men as Tilghman and Ingersoll could never have occurred, is told in the " Forum." "He was a proficient in commercial law, and he was particularly disposed to exhibit his knowledge before those who professed to be most familiar with its principles, usages, and cus- toms. The late Robert Morris, a thoroughbred mer- chant, on hearing Lewis discuss the commercial rela- tions between this country and Europe, at a dinner at which they were both guests, observed to the party assembled, ' that Mr. Lewis seemed as familiar with commercial affairs as if he had been head of a count- ing-house all his life.' 'Let me tell you, sir,' said Lewis, 'that a competent lawyer knows everything that a merchant does, and a great deal more.' "

Perhaps, at least, such condition of mind may be necessary to a man risen far above the expectations of his youth, in order to make him feel secure against those smiles which, if he does not see, he suspects to often lurk upon the faces of his associates.

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History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 157

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 992

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992