USA > South Carolina > Biographical sketches of the bench and bar of South Carolina, vol. I > Part 30
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cers and stores to Malta. He was from Blairburn, in the Parish of Culross, about four miles from the residence of Mr. King's family. As soon as he learned Mr. King's disappoint- ment, in missing the convoy for India, he immediately offered him a passage to Malta, telling him, that if he found a situa- tion there that was agreeable to him he might accept it; and that if, in this, he was disappointed, he could certainly return to England in time for the next convoy for India. This kind offer he promptly accepted. To have the pleasure of seeing the famous fortresses of Gibraltar and La Valette, with which Drinkwater and Vertot had made him well acquainted, was an inducement not to be resisted. From his limited means he laid in a few books for the voyage, and soon found himself on board of the Castle of Hull, in a large convoy, bound for Malta. They anchored two or three days in Gibraltar roads, and he had the satisfaction of examining the fortifications and curiosities of the place. On arriving at Malta, the cargo was speedily discharged. A return cargo for the ship could not be immediately obtained. Mr. King went on shore to private lodgings. On diligent inquiry, he found that he could obtain no situation that would be acceptable to him. After consider- able delay, the ship, early in September, went to Sicily, to take in a cargo of sulphur. There Mr. King remained on shore, superintending the shipping of the cargo. In the first week of October, the ship, fully loaded, returned to Malta, and there found a number of vessels awaiting a convoy to protect them for England. Nelson was then watching the French fleet lying in Toulon, and a fitting convoy was not ready. At last, in the beginning of January, 1805, the fleet of merchantmen, that had been collecting and detained for three or four months in the harbor of La Valette, sailed for England under the escort of the Arrow, sloop-of-war, and the Acheron, bomb- ketch. They were most unfortuate. After contending against strong westerly winds, they were attacked by two powerful French frigates that had got out of Toulon. The Arrow and Acheron were captured and destroyed, and the convoy dis- persed. The Castle of Hull, a dull sailer, with a short crew, and a few carronades, was left to take care of herself, and,
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after striving for a month longer, with no success, against the continued adverse winds, was captured-after a very unequal contest-by a Spanish privateer, and, on the 4th March, 1805, carried into Malaga. The captors behaved generously to their prisoners. Private property was respected. The ship and cargo were lawful prize. On being landed, the gentlemen on their parole were allowed to seek lodgings in the city. The sailors were conducted to the Moro Castle. As soon as he was settled in lodgings, Mr. King began to study the Spanish language, and, with his knowledge of Latin, soon made con- siderable progress in it. He took much interest in examining the objects of curiosity in and around Malaga. In the course of his excursions he formed some very interesting acquaint- ances: one of them was a highly intelligent Irish Catholic clergyman, who, with heroic Christian courage, had remained in Malaga to tend and console the sick and shrive the dying, during the whole terrible summer of 1804, when the yellow fever spread death and desolation through the city, and, in two or three months, carried off upwards of twenty thousand of the inhabitants and drove hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his brethren to the mountains for safety. Another was Mr. George Hill, an English merchant, who had long resided in Spain, and who, on the renewal of the war between England, and France and Spain, after the rupture of the peace of Amiens, had entered into partnership with George Loung, a gentleman of Boston, by whom principally the business was conducted, and by whom it was continued long after Mr. Hill's death. These gentlemen then resided together; and Mr. King, while waiting to be exchanged as a prisoner of war, was frequently at their house. In April, 1805, the English prisoners in Malaga were twice shipped in a cartel, to be carried to Gibraltar-only about seventy or eighty miles distant- to be exchanged; and twice were they driven back to Malaga. Soon after their second return, the French fleet, from Toulon, passed down the Mediterranean, towards Cadiz. The English authorities at Gibraltar, to embarrass the equipment of the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, suspended the exchange of prisoners. Spain immediately retaliated, and sent orders to her seaports,
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that the prisoners, who, on their parole, had been left to the restriction of their own honor, should be forthwith put into confinement. The gentlemen who had given their parole, which they had not violated, considered themselves absolved from it by this unusual, and, as they thought, unjustifiable act. They received a friendly intimation of what was ordered against them. They nearly all lodged together in a large hotel, usually frequented by English and Americans. They found their landlord and his assistants well disposed to aid them, and, on the afternoon of the very day on which the order was received, before the public authority came to the hotel to execute it, they, with only three exceptions, had found the means of concealment and escape, chiefly in American vessels then in Malaga. Their friends found the means of preventing any very strict inquiry after them. Two of the exceptions were Captain Bream, who with his wife, an American lady near her confinement, had been captured in his ship by a letter of marque, and brought into Malaga. Her situation prevented her from being removed-Spanish gallantry could not think of sending a lady in her condition to the Moro Castle-and her husband was permitted to remain with her. They had, that very day, hired unoccupied private apartments, and liad carried thither the trunks of all their fellow-lodgers The other exception was Mr. King. He had spent the day, and dined with, Messrs. Hill and Loung. In the evening, when quite unconscious of what had happened, he was about to return home, he borrowed from Mr. Hill the travels of John Davis in America; and when he returned to his lodgings the inmates of the hotel were as much surprised to see him as if he had fallen from the clouds. They informed him what had happened-that Captain Bream had carried his luggage with the rest to his new quarters, and assured him that if the authorities found him they would certainly put him under arrest. They told him where Captain Bream had gone, and advised him not to visit his new lodgings until late in the evening. He followed this advice, and, at a late hour that night, called on Captain Bream. There, to his delight and surprise, he found his good friend, Mr. Hill, sitting with Capt.
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Bream and his lady, and anxiously inquiring for him. He insisted on carrying him to his house; and there he remained until he took his passage for the United States. In the mean- time he occupied himself with the study of Spanish and the translation of documents in that language into English, and in occasional excursions around Malaga, in company with Mr. Hill or some other friend. It was difficult for him to obtain a direct conveyance to England, and, on the 13th of September, 1805, he took his passage in the Sally, John Warren, master, bound for Charleston, South Carolina. Captain Warren acted towards him rather as a brother than as a stranger. From the day that they sailed he began a journal of the voyage, and kept a regular log-book of the vessel's progress. Every day, at 12 o'clock, when the sun was visible, he had the use of the mate's quadrant, made his observation and computation at the same time with the captain, and then compared the result. The voyage was passed very agreeably, and added something of value to his knowledge of nautical affairs. On Sunday, the 17th of November, 1805, he arrived and landed in Charleston. Captain Warren carried him to his own boarding-house. He was engaged to be married, on his return, to a daughter of his landlady. He invited Mr. King to be one of his groomsmen, and commissioned him to request the Rev. Dr. George Buist, the Pastor of the only Presbyterian Church, then in Charles- ton, to perform the ceremony. In executing that commission, he had his first interview with Dr. Buist, with whom his rela- tions soon became very intimate. In the situation of his finances, and before he could well determine what he might ultimately do, it was necessary to find, if possible, some con- genial and profitable employment. After consulting such friends as he had then made in Charleston, he, in the begin- ning of 1806, opened a school with a few scholars, and gave himself, with his usual diligence, to his new occupation. His prospects were not brilliant. He knew the value of patience and perseverance. In the time not bestowed on his school he devoted himself to his favorite studies. To him they were a never-failing source of peace and enjoyment. Occasionally he amused himself with giving a local habitation to his pre-
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dominating feelings. In that spirit he wrote a few verses and communicated them, under the signature of a Wanderer, to the editor of the Courier. Without publishing them, he, in his next morning's paper, asked an interview with their author. That interview took place. The verses, with a few remarks on them from the editor, appeared next morning in the Courier. They, at the time, produced some sensation. On the day on which they were published, Dr. Buist obtained from the editor the name of their author. He was rather surprised to find he was the young groomsman with whom he was acquainted. He sought an interview with him, and at once proposed to him an engagement, which he accepted, as an assistant teacher in the College of Charleston. The distin- guished gentlemen, then trustees of that institution, had recently elected Dr. Buist principal-as the officer was then designated-with the full right and authority to select all the teachers, and to regulate and govern the establishment as had been done by the Right Reverend Bishop Smith, the first principal. On the first of March, 1806, Mr. King entered on the duties assigned to him in the college with great assiduity. He soon acquired much influence with his pupils and fellow- teachers, and the entire confidence of the principal. He felt it was time to determine on a profession or employment for life. Dr. Buist wished him to study divinity, and to dedicate himself to the church. After much anxious consideration, he concluded to study law, and to pursue that profession. Early in 1807, George Warren Cross, Esq., a member of the Bar, with whom, through a friend, he had become acquainted, hearing of his determination, spontaneously and kindly volun- teered to enter his name, as a student, in his office. This offer was thankfully accepted. As the law of the State then stood for the admission of attorneys to the Bar, the shortest period of study was three years in the office, and under the direction of a regular practicing attorney, with a special proviso, that no person should be admitted "unless he shall have served a regular and diligent clerkship in the office of a practicing attorney of this State, for and during the period of one year, immediately preceding his application to be admitted." In
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the summer of 1807, Mr. King was attacked by the yellow fever. He passed safely through the ordeal and speedily recovered from its effects. In August, 1808, Dr. Buist died. The Honorable Langdon Cheves, then a member of his con- gregation, wrote and published an able and touching obituary of him. Mr. King, not aware, before its publication, of the gratifying offering of Mr. Cheves, had prepared an humble tribute for the occasion. Some of the Doctor's friends saw it, and they required that it too should be published. Soon after, for the next commencement of the college, he wrote an address on the loss sustained by that institution, which was admirably delivered by the young gentleman to whom it was assigned. The college exercises were continued under the instructors selected by Dr. Buist, and on the same terms as before his death, until the vacation of December, 1809. At that time, one of the principal instructors opened a school on his own account. Mr. King felt it necessary to comply strictly with the letter of the law, and to spend the next year, preparatory to his application for admission, in "a regular and diligent clerk- ship" in Colonel Cross's office. He therefore relinquished his room in the college buildings, and hired rooms in a private house. The venerable and able Dr. S. F. O'Gallagher agreed with the committee of the trustees to superintend the school until the appointment of a head master; and the college, with competent teachers, in the beginning of January, 1810, was opened under his auspices. The years and infirmities of that good and learned man pressed so heavily on him, that he soon desired to resign the office, and the Rev. Dr. E. D. Rattoone was temporarily appointed principal. On the 10th of May he died, and the trustees immediately applied to Mr. King to take the situation until the end of the year. He was anxious to do anything in his power to serve the institution, but he was apprehensive that his acceptance of this proposal might disable him to comply with the legal requisition of serving a diligent clerkship in the office of a practicing attorney for one year immediately preceding his application for admission. He submitted his difficulty to the committee. They promptly assured him that, should that difficulty occur, the trustees
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would endeavor to procure an Act of the Legislature for his admission. He asked time to consider. They acquiesced. He desired to meet the wishes of the board. He consulted two of his friends, then at the head of the Bar; and they advised him-in uniformity with his own wishes-to acquiesce in the proposition of the board. This acquiescence he immediately communicated to the committee, and, without delay, occupied the rooms in the college building usually allotted to the prin- cipal, and entered on the duties of the office. He never was employed more to his satisfaction. His labors were more of a pleasure than a burden to him. He has considered the six or seven months then spent in that college as probably the most useful period of his life. Some two or three months after he entered on these duties, the Honorable Timothy Ford, a trustee, and the Secretary of the Board, made an overture to him, whether, if the board would guarantee to him a salary of $3,000 a year, and the use of the rooms which he then occu- pied, he would continue to hold his office in the college, and relinquish his intention of applying for admission to the Bar. He asked, and was allowed time, to consider this important overture. It came to him from gentlemen for whom he enter- tained the profoundest respect. He felt that to accept it would bind him to a vocation in which, if successful, he could per- haps do more good than in any other; and from his education, and tastes, and habits, derive the highest improvement and enjoyment. But he had witnessed the fluctuations of popular favor, and the uncertainties and difficulties too often attendant on some of the best educational institutions of our country, and he longed to vindicate, if possible, for himself a position which would leave him free to follow the unbiased dictates of his own judgment. He felt deeply that, under Providence, the determination which he had then to make would most proba- bly influence and fashion his future destiny. After full deliberation, he respectfully declined the overture.
While he devoted himself zealously to his duties in the college, he gave all his time, not engrossed by these duties, to his legal studies. His habit in studying was to read with the utmost attention, and endeavor to imprint on his memory the
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important definitions and principles that occurred in every writer on law which he read. After thus spending a limited time, he would shut his book and walk about for exercise, meditating, with all the concentration of thought of which he was capable, on what he had just read; and then he would return to his desk, and task his memory to write a brief synopsis of all he wished to remember; and then he closed his self-imposed task by comparing his synopsis with the original. We have heard him say, that he believed that this exercise had been of the greatest benefit to him. During the summer, too, of 1810, three of his most intimate friends, Charles Fraser, Thomas Smith Grimké, and John Gadsden-all recently admitted to the Bar-on five days in every week, came to his rooms in the college for an hour or two, and considered ques- tions of law chosen at one meeting, to be discussed at the next. Some one or other, and sometimes all three, of these gentlemen came well prepared to examine and illustrate the question of the day; and Mr. King had the full benefit of their research and ability. His Saturdays were dedicated to a diligent attendance at Colonel Cross's law office. Early in 1809, by the exertions, chiefly, of the able and ardent inquirer, Charles Dewar Simons, a number of the young gentlemen of Charles- ton, desirous of improving themselves and of promoting a love of science among their fellow-citizens, associated themselves together under the name of the Charleston Philosophical Society, and agreed to lecture successively on such scientific subject as was most familiar to the member adopting it. After the lapse of half a century, it is probably impossible to remember the names of all the gentlemen associated in this society. Robert Y. Hayne, then a student of law, was secre- tary. On the 1st of February, 1810-the anniversary of the society-Samuel Prioleau, then recently admitted to the Bar, delivered, in the Hall of the South Carolina Society, the anni- versary oration before the citizens of Charleston. He and John Gadsden, Thomas S. Grimké, Dr. Benjamin Simons, and other members whose names cannot be recalled, delivered lectures on subjects selected by themselves, to large audiences. Mr. King delivered three or four lectures on astronomy. Mr.
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C. D. Simons was ever willing and ready to supply any department which no other member could be found to under- take. The society continued active until 1811, when he was elected Professor of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy in the South Carolina College. He went to reside in Columbia, and the Charleston Philosophical Society ceased. In 1812 he perished in Hogaboo Swamp. Had he been spared to his native State, he might have done for her in science, what has been done for her in politics, by John Caldwell Calhoun.
In 1813, one of South Carolina's most gifted sons, the ven- erated Stephen Elliott, originated another association under the name of the Literary and Philosophical Society. That society, too, since the lamented death of its founder, has gone sadly to decay. Had the knowledge and wisdom of one great man been able to endow it with immortality, it could not have died. When South Carolina erects a monument-an Athenæum, a Calhounæum-to her departed worthies, the bust of Stephen Elliott will hold no middle place.
In Columbia, in the end of November, 1810, Mr. King was, by the Judges, admitted to the Bar. They held that he had fulfilled all the requirements of the law. Immediately as his engagement in Charleston College ceased, he opened his law office. His services in the college, his lectures on astronomy, his occasional publications, the friendships which he had formed, made him well known. The Honorable John Julius Pringle-one of our most distinguished lawyers and Attorney- General-had scarcely retired from the Bar; John Ward and William L. Smith, in the front rank of the profession, were withdrawing from it; Mr. Cheves, who had possessed the largest practice in Charleston, had resigned the office of Attorney-General, and had just been elected to fulfil the remaining part of Mr. Marion's term in Congress, and a com- paratively large amount of professional business was inappro- priated, a respectable share of that business found its way to Mr. King's office. At the first sitting of the Constitutional Court-as the Appelate Court was then called-his friend, Col. Cross, gave him a part in an important commercial case before that Court. The Judges were said to have spoken favorably
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of his argument. In the same month, January, 1811, at the first Court of Sessions after his admission, he, as was then usual, volunteered for a defendant who had been an officer in the first Bank of the United States, and was, by the Attorney- General, indicted, criminaliter, for subtracting money from the bank, and concealing the subtraction, by simulated entries in the bank books. His friends had employed the venerable and learned Thomas Parker, and the powerful and impassioned Keating Lewis Simons-two of the ablest and oldest lawyers then at the Bar-to defend him; and they, with the courtesy for which we trust the Bar of South Carolina will ever be dis- tinguished, promptly assented that Mr. King should take a part in the case, and requested him, as the junior counsel, to open the defence for the accused. When he closed his argument the foreman of the jury, William Crafts-the father of the distinguished orator, William Crafts-turned to his nearest fellow-juror and said to him, in a whisper loud enough to be heard by several persons around the bar: It is very clear the defendant cannot be convicted under an indictment-he has only committed a breach of trust. From that day to the hour that Mr. King retired from the Bar, he never had cause to complain of a want of business in his profession.
Mr. King attended the Courts of Law and Equity in George- town District, and formed intimate relations with most of the gentlemen of the Bar attending these Courts. He soon acquired a fair proportion of the practice in them. It was his invariable rule to examine carefully every legal question and every case committed to him, and to leave nothing honorable undone which it was in his power to do, to secure the just success and security of his client. It was always a deep plea- sure to him to trace back to their origin the principles involved in a case, to ascertain when and how they came to be incor- porated into the law, and enforcible by a Court of Justice. He was never content with the result of his inquiries unless they enabled him to form some definite conclusion. He did not con- fine his investigations to the writers on the laws of England- multitudinous, and learned, and profound, as they are. The corpus juris civilis, and the best commentators upon it, and
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the best writers of Germany, and Holland, and Italy, and France, on the civil and canon, and especially on international maritime and commercial law, were embraced within the range of his inquiries. On these important subjects he col- lected one of the best private libraries in the Southern States. It was always equally at the service of the Bench and of his brethren of the Bar. He constantly consulted and used these authorities whenever they were applicable. To verify a quo- tation was a labor of love, and to detect an error in a translation, or the omission of a limitation to a broad generality, was no
small triumph. In admiralty and commercial cases he was much engaged. His general reading and knowledge of nauti- cal and mercantile affairs gave him great advantages in cases arising out of them. In the Equity and Admiralty Courts he had much practice. In conducting his business he combined great decision with great conciliation, addressing the Bench always with politeness and respect, he maintained with the utmost firmness the rights of his clients and of his profession. In the examination of evidence, he observed much courtesy; witnesses he treated with all due consideration; but an unwilling, a prejudiced, or a prevaricating witness had nothing to expect from his forbearance. He unhesitatingly used every honorable means to ascertain the truth. If, inadvertently, a mistake, either in law or in fact, was made in any statement likely to influence the judgment of the Court, he never per- mitted it to remain uncorrected ; and no fear of consequences ever prevented him from stating, with the fullest emphasis, any conviction of his mind-sustained by the law-or the evidence that affected the merits of the case. In performing his duty, the possible consequences to himself never weighed one feather in the scale. He feared to be wrong, and he had no other fear. Inflexible adherence to this principle was pro- bably the main ground of his success. His professional income, long, was one of the largest at our Bar. His incessant labor seriously affected his health, and made some relaxation from it indispensable. By the advice of his physician he, in the summer of 1815, made a visit to Europe; and returned, greatly benefitted by it, in time for the sitting of the Court in January,
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