USA > South Carolina > Biographical sketches of the bench and bar of South Carolina, vol. II > Part 27
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He was admitted to the Bar on the 9th January, 1809. His reputation for talents, learning, and oratorical powers in col- lege, and during his study of the law, prepared the people to take him by the hand and assist him in his ascent at the Bar.
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"Few young men," says Mr. Courtenay, "ever entered on the practice with more flattering success. He enjoyed the friendship of some of the most eminent gentlemen of the Charleston Bar, who kindly allowed him to appear with them in any of the important cases entrusted to their care, and thus aided him by their learning and experience."
Mr. Crafts committed the same mistake which I and many other young men fell into, and are still committing; he sought a seat in the Legislature, before he was ripened by ex . perience. I recollect to have seen him, in the House of Repre- sentative, in 1811 ; he must, therefore, have been elected in October, 1810, in a little over a year from his admission to the Bar. From early experience, (for I was elected first to the Legislature, in October, 1816, a little more than a year from my admission to the Bar,) and from an observation of more than forty years since, I can say that no lawyer ought to be a representative sooner than twenty-five years of age. He will have little experience to build upon, even then, but he will be better prepared to do justice to himself and his constituents, than when he has just fledged his wings for the trials of the Forum.
Mr. Crafts experienced a fate similar to mine ; he was not returned at the succeeding election (1812) ; but in 1813 he returned to the State House. How long he remained a mem- ber, I cannot say; possibly only for that term, though it is possible he was elected again in 1814; for I see he was engaged in the debate on the proposition to suspend rather than discontinue the Free Schools, and that, according to my recollection, was in 1814.
In 1816 and 1817, he was not in the Legislature. Between 1818 and 1822, he was elected a Senator from Charleston ; and it was, in that period, that the Lunatic Asylum was projected by Mr. Farrow, of Spartanburgh, and which he united with Mr. Crafts' project of the School for the Deaf and Dumb, and thus the first appropriation of $50,000 for the Lunatic Asylum, and a School for the Deaf and Dumb, was carried by their united efforts.
After a quarantine of four years, very much to my benefit,
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I returned to the Legislature. Mr. Crafts was then in the Senate He prepared the petition of Peter Horriss, the Cat- awba Indian, which I transcribe from 2d Lossing's Pictorial History, p. 655, note 1, as follows : " I am one of the linger- ing survivors of an almost extinguished race. Our graves will soon be our only habitations. I am one of the few stalks which still remain in the field when the tempest of the Revo- lution has passed. I fought against the British for your sake. The British have disappeared, and you are free ; yet from me have the British taken nothing ; nor have I gained anything by their defeat. I pursued the deer for subsistence ; the deer are disappearing, and I must starve. God ordained me for the forest, and my ambition is the shade. But the strength of my arm decays, and my feet fail me in the chase. The hand which fought for your liberties, is now open for your relief. In my youth I bled in battle that you might be inde- pendent; let not my heart in my old age bleed for the want of your commisseration." A pension of $60 was the result.
It is certainly as appropriately in character with the peti- tioner, as anything which was ever written. On the 19th of June, 1828, Mr. Crafts was married in Boston to a cousin, on his paternal side. This connection was a great blessing to his after-life.
Mr. Crafts, before and after this, delivered many beautiful and characteristic orations, wrote many pieces of poetry and essays, chaste and admirable in sentiment and execution. They cannot, however, be referred to in detail here ; they will be found in a volume, now, I presume, generally out of print, entitled " Crafts' Works." How much better for the young would it be, that such a work should be in the hands of our children, instead of the trash in poetry and prose which is now flooding the land.
I have no recollection of Mr. Crafts in the State House after 1823.
He died at Lebanon Springs, N. Y., 23rd September, 1826, in the fortieth year of his age. Thus early was this child of genius called away from earth.
His life, short as it was, had not been spent in vain. In
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every walk of life which he had tried, he had been found useful, as well as brilliant. I have little doubt, if instead of seeking political distinction, he had brought the powers of his noble mind to the severer duties of the law, he would have stood, if not first, among the very first, at the Charleston Bar. His unrivalled powers of oratory, combined with his poetic imagination, chastened by the stern usages of legal argument, would have won for him any distinction, and broken down the barriers of party, which often barred his advancement. For Mr. Crafts was a Federalist, and in opposition to the war measures, and this often stood in his way.
Few, if any, of the times in which he lived, were entitled to precedence over Mr. Crafts, in the graces of oratory. He was called to the Bar before the year 1820, when the writer of this sketch first remembers him; and at once took rank as an eloquent and accomplished speaker. In person, he was tall and slim, and of erect and dignified stature. His features were delicate, but prominent, and his hair thin and glossy black. His eyes were remarkable, being deeply set in his head, where they shone, dark as jet, with intense brilliancy. Mr. Crafts possessed not only the finest oratorical action, but a voice whose tones and depth gave him much power over an audience. His eloquence was not so overpowering and vehement, as distinguished for the suada of Ennius, the Iadis of the Greeks, which enabled him to appropriate more exclu- sively than any of his cotemporaries the fame of the orator who was said to be
"Suadaque medulla."
It was his habit to write out portions of his speeches at the Bar, on small scraps of paper, a practice pursued by Mr. Webster, and by which he became accustomed to the use of the most beautiful and choice language, and to the most graceful arrangement of it. His speeches in the Courts, and his orations on public occasions, were full to repletion, with the finest language and sentiment, and yet in simplicity and clearness strictly consistent with nature. He was a perfect Latin and Greek scholar; and from the fertile fields of these schools drew the amplest embellishments of his own oratory.
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He was, too, a poet of no inferior ability, though confining his efforts in this branch of literature to songs, monodies and burlesques, which he threw off without much regard for per- manent fame. About the time of the advent of the sea-ser- pent, he wrote a jeu d'esprit, in dramatic verse, upon this topic, which had at the time considerable celebrity.
Mr. Crafts was a favorite in cases requiring appeals to the passions, and fine displays of wit. He possessed the happy faculty of adapting his language and sentiments, rich as they were in literary illustration and learned quotation, to the capacities and taste of his audience; who heard his orations with invariable delight, for they were ever full of the dignity of elocution, of pathos, wit, and pleasantry. In the Court of Chancery, which is no very exciting school of oratory; and where a single Judge, one or two Solicitors deeply emersed in Equity demurrers, and a yawning Master, form the entire audience, his speeches were exceedingly interesting and ex- citing; for no one more clearly understood the principles of Equity, or could define them with more clear reasoning, or more classic or apt illustration. We remember to have heard him before Chancellor Thompson, in that Court, on a ques- tion of alimony, in a case where the husband was distinguised for the variety of his conquests under the banners of Venus; in which he introduced, with fine effect, a verse from Virgil's Æneid:
" Freed from his keepers, thus with broken reins, The wanton courser prances over the plains ; Or, in the pride of youth, o'erleaps the mounds, And snuffs the females in forbidden grounds."
Though capable of exerting the powers of the most severe irony, Mr. Crafts was too kind to use this weapon, except to reprove crime or give a pleasant turn to his arguments. He had great distinction as a criminal lawyer; for though among his cotemporaries he did not have the credit of being a student, his speeches had the effect of all that labor could pro- duce: they carried the audience. He had quite a retentive memory, and a manner so easy as to dispel suspicion of artifice and preparation; and yet few men arranged their speeches with more thoughtfulness. He made a most power-
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ful and eloquent speech in the case of Tooey, who was tried, convicted, and executed for the murder of Mr. Gadsden-an affair which caused very great excitement in Charleston. The circumstances of this affair were of a character to make a brief recital of them a pardonable digression. As was usual on St. Patrick's Day, a volunteer company, the " Irish Volunteers," of which Tooey was a member, had a dinner. At night, Mr. Gadsden, passing the door of the house where the celebration took place, just at the moment when a crowd emerged from it, was fatally stabbed with a bayonet by Tooey. Tooey es- caped, and afterwards was taken, tried, and executed.
In private life, Mr. Crafts was noted for his social virtues. His house was the centre of attraction to literary persons, who loved to share a hospitality, dispensed with judicious liberal- ity, and seasoned with the most fluent and elegant conversa- tion. He married Miss Holmes, of Boston; in which place, or near which, he died, while on a visit with his lady, about 1826 or '7. He was not successful as a politician ; for though holding possession of the popular affections, he was never able to control party influences, so necessary to success. From the fact of having edited the Courier, he was accused of favoring the anti-war party of 1812; an odium which many patriotic and noble South Carolinians have incurred, because too judicious to suffer themselves to be swept under the vortex of revolutionary folly. Mr. Crafts was, par excellence, a conservatist; ardently attached to the Union of the States, and to the institutions our ancestors had so intimately blended with the glory and prosperity of the nation. In the last canvass in which he was engaged before his death, he contested the Senatorship for Charleston District with General Geddes. After an excit- ing canvass, the validity of the election was settled in favor of Mr. Crafts, by vote of the State Senate.
Mr. Crafts was one of the most eloquent speakers ever known in South Carolina. His style of oratory was rare, because rarely in one person is found so many of the accom- plishments of an orator. "An audience," says Cicero, in his Brutus, "is either flushed with joy, or, overwhelmed with grief. It smiles or weeps, it loves or hates, it scorns or envies ;
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and, in short, is alternately seized with the various emotions of pity, shame, remorse, resentment, wonder, hope and fear; as it is influenced by the language, the sentiments, and the action of the speaker." Such was the power of Mr. Crafts over every audience he addressed; whether in his less studied forensic efforts, or in those beautiful orations which he spoke upon the festival days of his country's history.
Mr. Crafts was the son of a highly respected merchant. He left no child. A brother, Thomas, died before him, and his wife and two sisters were all who remained of his family.
The late Rev. Samuel Gilman, in his memoir of Mr. Crafts, makes some selections from his published works, which we here append :
" His 'Eulogy on the Rev. James Dewar Simons,' is, to this day, alluded to much more frequently than any of his other orations, and is regarded indeed as a kind of landmark to his reputation-a proof of how much deeper are the impressions made upon the heart, than those upon the merely intellectual faculties. On repeatedly perusing this celebrated eulogy, we have missed discerning in it that peculiar stamp of originality and literary excellence, which we have generally held in view, as a standard in the compilation of the present volume. For much of the effect with which it was received and remembered, it must, we think, have been indebted to the nature of the occasion, to the imposing night-solemnities of the surrounding funeral scenery, and to the fond and glowing, but undoubtedly correct delineations, presented by so engaging a speaker, of a most amiable, and extensively beloved and admired young clergyman. The reflections are, on the whole, very obvious, and the principal interest belong- ing to the production is not at all of a general description. We have deemed it proper to state these reasons for omitting the performance in question, as an apology to many readers, who, we believe, were expecting its insertion. Yet in justice to them, to the author, to the subject, and to our own feelings, we cannot resist transcribing one or two impressive and characteristic extracts. This is the exordium :
" Death has been among us, my friends, and has left a
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melancholy chasm. He has torn his victim from the heart of society, and from the altar of the living God. He has triumphed over the blushing honors of youth, the towering flight of genius, and the sacred ardor of devotion. Virtue, philanthropy, religion, are bereaved, and in tears. Death, terrible and insatiate, hath been among us, and we are met to pay him tribute.
" O, thou destroyer of human hope and happiness ! was there no head, frosted by time, and bowed with cares, to which thy marble pillow could have yielded rest? Was there no heart-broken sufferer to seek refuge from his woes in thy cheerless habitation ? Was there no insulated being, whose crimes or miseries would have made thee welcome ! who had lived without a friend, and could die without a mourner ?
" These, alas, could give no celebrity to thy conquests, for they fall, unheeded as the zephyr. Thy trophies are the gathered glories of learning, the withered hopes of usefulness, the tears of sorrowing innocence, the soul-appalling cries of the widow and the orphan. Thou deliglitest to break our happiness into fragments, and to tear our hearts asunder. We know that thou art dreadful, and unsparing, and relent- less-else our departed friend would have continued with us. His tomb would have been where our hopes had placed it- far distant in the vale of years. Still would his manly and generous affections warm and delight the social circle-still would his pure and spotless manners invite the praise and imitation of our youth-still would he fill that sacred desk, with its appropriate virtues-still would his impressive elo- quence illustrate the sacred truths of Christianity, with the countenance of an angel and the fervency of a saint-still would he be the assiduous servant of religion-the golden cord of connubial affection would gain strength and beauty from time-and still his children would call him father. Vain and deceitful illusion !
' For him no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care ;
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Nor climb his knee the envied kiss to share.' "
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Towards the conclusion, occurs the following passage, glid- ing with a certain Attic rapidity, and closely crowded with rhetorical beauties.
" If some ingenious youth, marking the gloom which per- vades our city, should inquire what dread calamity has damped the public feeling-why our churches are clad in mourning, 'and woman's eye is wet, man's cheek is pale'-tell him that these are the sorrows which embalm the virtuous. These are the sensibilities which honor the living and the dead ; these are the signs which speak the bleeding heart. And if he ask what aged benefactor of the land has fallen into the grave ? What time-struck, venerable head has bowed beneath the scythe of death ? Tell him, the object of our mourning was a youth, like himself, who, by the excellence of his disposi- tion, and the purity of his life, had conciliated universal esteem, and had rendered essential services to the cause of religion ; that his days, though short, had been full of chari- table actions ; that his perpetual aim was to enlighten, and reform, and save mankind; that we mourn not for him, but for ourselves. We know that he was innocent; we believe that he is happy. We weep for the community. Tell him, this is the godlike influence of virtue; and if he would thus live, and thus die-and, if he would be thus canonized in the affections of men-let him follow the bright example of our friend-let him keep himself unspotted from the world-let him devote his talents to the service of God-let him cling around, and support the tottering edifice of religion, and the prayers of the pious shall ascend for him ; he shall live in honor, and if, (which, Heaven avert !) he should be thus early called from this mortal scene, the gracious drops of pity shall bedew his urn, and he, too, shall be welcomed by the angels to the mansions of eternal joy."
In the year 1817, he delivered the annual address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Harvard College. It is true, an awful weight was imposed upon him, not only by public expectation, but also by his succession to the rostrum, from which Buckminster, Dehon, and others of the same mint, had stretched out a fostering, forming, and guiding hand over the
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young literature of our country. The subject selected by Mr. Crafts was, The influence of moral causes over national character. Whether it was too abstract for his image-loving mind to cope with, or he was too impatient to give it that deliberate consideration which such a subject required, it must be confessed, that he did not entirely come round it. There are, certainly, about the composition, many marks of effort, and of a consciousness on the part of the author that he had much to accomplish. The paragraphs are all brilliant, and the sentences all pointed. No common talent could have been employed in its production. It was delivered in the speaker's best style. But as he proceeded, the audience continued rather to be expecting than receiving the whole of their anti- cipated gratification. Neither was his subject precisely announced, nor was it clearly developed in the course of discussion. Bead after bead dropped glittering, yet unthread- ed from his hand. With much elegant common-place were mingled many valuable and beautiful reflections ; yet no stranger to William Crafts, then present, would have known of what he was capable, had it not been for his affecting, his unrivalled peroration.
Tidings had just been received from Charleston, announ- cing the premature decease of Bishop Dehon, by the fever of the climate. Few names were so dear as his to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, or even to the country at large. And it was an affecting coincidence of events, which brought Mr. Crafts, his townsman, his parishioner, his friend, his associate in some of the higher gifts of genius, to proclaim the account of his death, on the spot, where but a few years before, the de- ceased himself had impressed every hearer with feelings of profound admiration. How vividly Mr. Crafts felt the whole interest of his position, and how happily he discharged the duty it involved, will be manifest from the following extract, which is inserted with the greater pleasure, as for reasons above suggested, the entire oration is omitted from our selec- tion.
" Gentlemen of the Phi Beta Kappa Society,-When, in connection with the pleasure of revisiting, after a long inter-
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val, the scenes of my boyhood, and the land of my ancestors, I contemplated the danger and difficulty of addressing this fraternity of scholars and critics, I shrunk intuitively from a feast, where the sword of Damocles was suspended over me. Political pursuits had estranged me from the path of letters ; and, to recall me, was only to show how far I had wandered. But I knew that I could rely on the hospitality of Massachu- setts-I thought that I could rely on the hospitality of letters- and, rescuing something from indolence and something from ambition, I came, with the feelings of the Prodigal Son, to ask forgiveness of the Muses.
" And I wish that I had not been afflicted with a more melancholy errand. It was my misfortune to apprise his relatives of the death of one of our brethren,* who, not many years since, in this place, so much more appropriate for him- self than me, addressed and delighted you. I need not name him, who was distinguished in yonder seminary for his early talents and virtues ; and who employed the learning he there acquired, in the service of religion, in reclaiming the sinful, in confirming the pious, in convincing the sceptical, and in soothing the mourner. I need not name that pure and spot- less man, whose example illustrated all the precepts he so eloquently uttered. Cut down in the midst of his days from the object of universal love, he has become, alas ! the object of universal lamentation.
" He sleeps, by his own request, under the altar, where he ministered-in life, as in death, adhering to the church. The sun shines not on his grave, nor is it wet with the morning or the evening dew. But innocence kneels upon it-purity bathes it in tears-and the recollections of the sleeping saint mingle with the praises of the living God. Oh ! how danger- ous it is to be eminent. The oak, whose roots descend to the world below, while its summit towers to the world above, falls with its giant branches, the victim of the storm. The osier shakes, and bends, and totters, and rises and triumphs
* The Right Rev. Theodore Dehon, Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina.
,
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in obscurity, And yet, who of you would owe his safety to his insignificance ?
" Beneath that living osier not an insect can escape the sun. Beneath that fallen oak the vegetable world was wont to flourish-the ivy clung around its trunk-the birds built their nests among its branches, and from its summit saw and welcomed the morning sun-the beasts fled to it for refuge from the tempest-and man himself was refreshed in its shade, and learned from its fruit the laws of nature. Oh! how delightful it is to be eminent! To win the race of usefulness- to live in the beams of well-earned praise-and walk in the zodiac among the stars.
" Fame, with its perils and delights, my brothers, must be ours. Welcome its rocky precipice! Welcome its amaran- thine garlands ! We must wear them on our brow-we must leave them on our grave. We must, we will, fill our lives with acts of usefulness, and crown them with deeds of honor ; and, when we die, there will be tears on the cheek of innocence, and sighs from the bosom of virtue. and the young will wish to resemble, and the aged will lament to lose us."
No person present on that occasion can ever forget the electrical emotions produced by the delivery of these pas- sages, particularly of the last, in which the orator's voice arose to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, while exclaiming-" We must, we will, fill our lives with acts of usefulness, and crown them with deeds of honor "-and then again sank fromn one musical, sweet, and melancholy cadence to another, until it reached a murmur, which the deepening silence alone of the multitude rendered audible, as he uttered-" and when we die, there will be tears on the cheek of innocence, and sighs from the bosom of virtue, and the young will wish to resemble, and the aged will lament to lose us."
In conclusion, we add the beautiful eulogy pronounced by the late Edward S. Courtenay, by invitation of the " Palmetto Society :"
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Eulogy on the Honorable William Crafts, delivered before the Palmetto Society, in the Second Independent Church, by E. S. Courtenay, Esq. Published at their Request. 1826.
To dwell upon and to perpetuate the memory of departed worth is softly pleasing, though it saddens the soul. Such was the theme of Ossian as he struck the harp, in praise of departed merit. But the feeling which prompted this senti- ment is not peculiar to the venerable bard. It is the voice of nature, which is heard and obeyed by both savage and civ- ilized man! In every age, and in every clime the same dis- position has prevailed, to preserve the memory of the illus- trious dead. In the manner of effecting this purpose only have mankind differed. In the early stages of society the grass tufted mound, or rude stone, served to mark the spot which contained the remains of the sage, the bard or the warrior, and to keep alive the flame of gratitude, which their exploits while living had elicited. In later days, superstition lent its aid to enthusiasm, and the ideal heaven of the Greeks and Romans, became peopled with the departed sages, and patriots of their respective countries. Happy are we, who live an age, blessed by the lights of Revelation, by a faith which, while it forbids religious homage to any but the one true God, informs us that, though the body of man returns to the dust, and is seen no more, the spirit which animated it once, liveth forever. A faith which, by the example of its Founder, teaches us, that it is not improper to mourn over the tombs of departed friends : "Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus." Death is at all times terrible, and his conquests painful to men, whether his victim is selected from the aged, who have outlived all the charms and attractions of life, or from the wretched, who have known naught but sorrow on the earth. The yet open grave of even the vilest felon, cannot be viewed with indif- ference; it excites sensations which philosophy in vain at- tempts to conquer, which religion alone enables us to support. But most dreadful is death when his victim is taken from among those highly gifted few, whose intellects have shone forth the beacon lights of society, who were intended by Pro-
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