USA > Vermont > Orleans County > Biography of the bar of Orleans county, Vermont > Part 2
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ORLEANS COUNTY, VERMONT.
ciples and practices he esteemed so highly as to refer to them with approbation in a reported opinion he gave from the bench of the supreme court), and to hear their venerable minister, Rev. David Goodwillie, whom he held in high estimation, preach. The next morning the sheriff from Barnet arrested him at his residence in Peacham and took him to Barnet, to be tried upon a charge of vio- lating the law of the state by traveling on the Sabbath in prosecu- tion of his secular affairs.
Arraigned before a sage Scotch Presbyterian justice, he called for a jury, and by exercising his right to challenge, he got a number of Presbyterians on the jury, knowing they were strict observers of the Sabbath. Having produced his testimony, he freely admitted that he went home from court on the Sabbath, but in his defence he said, 'The court at Guildhall sat so late on Saturday I had not time to go home that evening. The next morning I found that "there was no public worship in the town of W., where I lodged on Saturday night. It being my custom to attend church on Sabbath, I came to Barnet to worship with the Presbyterians, whom I know to be sound in the faith and right in practice, and to hear their intelligent and pious pastor preach. But I was disappointed, for when I came to their church door I found that their worthy minis- ter was officiating out of town that day. I was then half way home, and instead of returning to the place whence I came that morning, I went home, knowing my residence was in a better place than the wicked town of W., where there is no church, no clergy- man, no public worship, no Sabbath and no religion.' The court having heard his witnesses and defence, immediately withdrew the action and discharged him from arrest. He then generously enter- tained the court and company at his own expense."
GEN. SETH CUSHMAN.
By WM. HEYWOOD.
G EN. CUSHMAN'S family have all passed away, and it is so long since he died that I cannot get the particulars as to many of the incidents of his life. I was well acquainted with him for about fifteen years preceding his death. I have lately seen the headstone at Gen. Cushman's grave in the burying ground in the
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southerly part of Guildhall, and it has upon it this inscription : " Gen. Seth Cushman, died 18th March, 1845, aged 63 years." It is known that he was born in Connecticut, but I do not know in what town. I have been told by him that he begun the practice of the law when quite young. I do not know with whom he studied law. He told me that he was a student for a time in the law school at Litchfield, Conn., which once had a great reputation, but does not now exist. Gen. Cushman must have resided at Guildhall about forty years, and for most of that time was in the practice of his profession. His father, Judge Isaac Cushman, resided on a large farm in the southerly part of Guildhall, and I think that Gen. Cushman went into practice at the village about the time that his father moved to the town, and most likely came there on account of the residence of his father in town. His mother was a sister of Elijah Paine, United States District Judge of Vermont. Gen. Cushman got his military title in the militia. He was, however, in the army a short time in the war of 1812, and had a commission in a regimental staff. I do not know what the office was. He had a good deal of ambition for military display. About the time of the election of Gen. Jackson to the presidency, Gen. Cushman had the expectation that he should have some government office, and he moved to Montpelier, where he lived about a year. But the patronage did not come, and he moved back to Guildhall. During the anti-masonic excitement in Vermont, there were seven trials to elect a representative in congress for the fifth district, and Gen. Cushman was a candidate for several of the first trials on the side opposed to anti-masonry, and he came near being elected ; but on the seventh trial Gen. Cahoon of Lyndon was elected.
Besides in his own county, Gen. Cushman attended the courts in Caledonia and Orleans counties in Vermont, and in Coos county in New Hampshire. He was usually engaged in all the important trials. He was a man of remarkable forensic talents. He was not a deep student of the law. He was too stirring and active in his habits to sit down and study books, but his knowledge was, as it were, intuitive and sufficient to manage a trial skillfully. I never knew a lawyer of more resources. His perceptions were quick. Almost without an effort he would understand a case, and I have known him to sit down to a jury trial without previous instruction, and gain a knowledge of it as the trial went along, and render as
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good service as though he had before known all about it. He was an accomplished and eloquent advocate. It was remarkable that he could not write an article for a newspaper or anything else very well, but when he spoke, as in addressing a jury or a court, he was a master of language, and what he said would read well, and much better than what he could deliberately write.
He was very successful in criminal defences. I recollect that in a very important jury trial he and Judge John Mattocks were engaged in the defence, and Gen. Cushman made the opening argument. After he had closed, Judge Mattocks got up and said that Gen. Cushman had argued the case so well that he should do best not to weaken the effect of it by anything that he could say, and sat down. Gen. Cushman considered this a great compliment, as Judge Mattocks was an able lawyer.
Gen. Cushman was a man of handsome presence and of gentle- manly manners. He was kind to and always ready to aid the younger members of the profession, and used to encourage them to go forward and argue their cases. He was a man of deep sympa- thies. He would aid a poor man, with no expectation of pay, with as much zeal as though he was sure of a large fee. His only care, in money matters, was to get it to use, and what he could earn went without much heed for the future. He was genial to and with his friends, and was kind and indulgent in his family, Guild- hall was and is yet a small village, and a very narrow field for an able lawyer with the talents of Gen. Cushman. He had the ability to have distinguished himself in a much greater field. But he had failings which were a clog upon his success.
A year before his death he had a paralytic shock. And though he soon got up so as to be about the village, it was sad to see the man, once so able, a wreck of what he once was. At last he died suddenly of a second paralytic attack.
He was a man in many ways to be admired. There are many who imitate his vices, and have not the excuse of his strong and excitable passions, and whose defects are not relieved by his talents or genial qualities. But I must heed the maxim that I shall wish to have charitably applied not long hence in my case : De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
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JAMES BELL.
VERMONT HISTORICAL GAZETTEER.
AMES BELL was born in Lyme, N. H., in December, 1776.
J John Austin, of pure Norman extraction, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, invented the tulip-shaped bell, for which he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and took the name of Bell. He was a staunch Presbyterian, and during the religious controversy was obliged to flee, and went to the North of Ireland. From thence a large fam- ily of brothers emigrated to the United States, and settled in vari- ous parts of the Union. James, the second son, settled in New Hampshire, from whom the subject of the following sketch de- scended.
Not far from 1800 he went to reside in Hardwick, Vt., and was married to Lucy Dean of Hardwick, Mass., in 1801. Soon after this he became entangled with a lawyer, for whom he had done business as a deputy sheriff. A legal quarrel arose which lasted for years ; litigation stripped him of his property and threatened to ruin him. The struggles of that season of his life required more courage than to fight with physical giants. The inevitable priva- tions of the early settlers ; the scarcity of provisions when the clearings were small and shaded by the thick forests which encir- cled them, so that the grain which had struggled through the sum- mer was likely to be nipped by untimely frosts ; the fearful drain upon pecuniary means and the excitement attendant upon litiga- tion ; the wants of a young family of children, whom he tenderly loved ; the pain to think that he had made the sharer of his trials a woman who had seen better days-a woman of the strictest princi- ples ambitious, and who must have been almost more than human to be always patient under the allotment of fortune, was enough to tempt a less buoyant spirit to do as another was advised to do when sorely tried. Still he never yielded, but rather pressed onward. The "divinity that shapes our ends" used this rough hewing as a means of showing to himself and others the talents that were in him. He became too poor to employ counsel, and was obliged to defend himself and plead his own causes, and soon displayed wit and a native eloquence which in those primitive times were more than a match for his mere legal antagonist. He eventually drove him from the field, and was ever afterward engaged in legal busi-
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ness, though not admitted to the bar for a number of years after.
He settled in Walden in 1804 or 1805. In 1810 he commenced the farm where he ever after lived. The place was entirely wild, and the first tree fallen was the foundation log on which his cabin was erected. In 1815 he was elected to the State Legislature, after having had conferred on him the office of justice of the peace, captain of militia, etc., which honors in those days were not with- out significance. He was again elected to the legislature in 1818, and was a member of that body for ten years in succession. He was an eloquent debater, and few men had more influence in the house. Few were there whose political sway was felt more through- out the state than Mr. Bell. At the time that Mr. Bell was admit- ted to the bar of Caledonia county, it was composed of a constel- ation of many of the first order of talents, among whom he was received as a peer, and in mother wit surpassed, perhaps, any one of them. Intellectual sport he enjoyed from the foundations of his being, and his irrepressible laughter was genial and sparkling as the bursting forth of sunshine. He, moreover, had an immense persuasive influence with a jury ; his sympathies being strong, he intuitively hit upon those points which would sway them in the di- rection he wished. The man was the man in his esteem, whatever the texture of his coat might be; his client's wrongs were his own wrongs, and he defended him with a zeal and enthusiasm that never flagged till his point was gained. He was a hard man to face, for perhaps when his legal antagonist had finished a labored plea and thought his mountain stood strong, a few playful sallies from Bell, or a stroke or two of the scalpel of satire directed to the weak points of his argument, and he would find the whole structure tumbling about his ears. .
A case of this kind occurred once, when he was attending court in a neighboring state, where he was a stranger. The counsel on the other side was a man of pretension, wealthy, influential, and much of an egotist. He made a great effort for his client, repre- sented the wrongs he had suffered as without a parallel, labored to excite the sympathy by the presentation of arguments drawn from no very apparent facts, and worked himself up to a very high point of commiseration for his much-abused client, and sat down. Mr. Bell arose with a very solemn face, but a queer twinkle of the eye, and said he thought they would all feel it a privilege to join in sing-
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ing "Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound." He struck the old minor tune in which the words were then sung, and sung the verse through. The speech of his opponent, in the minds of those pres- ent, was upon the poise between the pathetic and ridiculous-the ridicule flashed upon them, and the house was in a roar. When the merriment subsided he went on with his plea. The advocate who preceded him had indulged in invidious remarks, not only in reference to Mr. Bell, but to the Vermont bar generally, and Mr. Bell mentioned that he had been both surprised and pained at the ungentlemanly and narrow allusions which had been made by one who had the honor of belonging to one of the most liberal profes- sions in the world ; and the man afterwards ingenuously said that he never was so used up.
In 1832 Mr. Bell made a public profession of religion, and joined the Congregational church in Hardwick, and was ever after a con- scientious and constant attendant at the sanctuary when his health permitted. He was a lover of freedom, and a hater of oppression. Well do we remember his relating the following anecdote :
He was standing in front of the capitol at Washington, when a gang of slaves manacled together and driven by their keeper, passed by. When they came opposite the capitol they struck up " Hail, Columbia," and the refrain was kept up until their voices were lost in the distance.
He said : "What a satire upon our brays of freedom was that music from those unconscious wretches! Oh, how I longed to stand upon the floor of that house and say what I wanted to say." He was an earnest temperance advocate. During the political and other conflicts of his manhood he was a firm, warm friend, and a most whole-souled despiser of those he disliked ; but, as age ad- vanced, and the tumults of life receded, the affections became pre- dominant, and embraced all. His sportiveness almost went with him to the grave.
After he was so infirm that his step was almost as uncertain as an infant's, he said to some one, alluding to his infirmities, that there was one thing he could do as quick as ever. "And what is that ?" said the person addressed. "I can fall down as quick as ever I could !" was the answer.
He was chosen a member of the council of censors in 1848, which was the last public service in which he engaged. There is
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but one sketch of any of his public efforts remaining. That was reported by S. B. Colby, Esq., of Montpelier, and which we take the liberty to insert in this article.
"Orleans County, December Term, A. D. 1847. Brother Bell has made one of his great speeches to-day in defence of Mrs. Han- nah Parker, on trial for the murder of her own child. I have never heard or felt a deeper pathos than the tones of his voice bore to the heart, as he stood up in the dignity of old age, his tall, majestic form over-leaning all the modern members of the bar (as if he had come from some superior physical generation of men) tremulous, slightly, with emotions that seemed thronging up from the long past, as the old advocate yielded for a moment to the effect of early associations, and introduced himself and his fallen brethren, whom his eye missed from their wonted seats, as it glanced along the vacant places inside the bar. He said :
May it please Your Honor and Gentlemen of the Jury :
I stood among giants, though not of them ; my comrades of the bar have fallen. Fletcher! the untiring and laborious counselor, the persuasive advocate, the unyielding combatant, is where ? Eternity echoes, here ! Cushman, the courtly and eloquent lawyer, the kind and feeling man, the polished and social companion and friend, where now is he? The world unseen alone can say.
Mattocks lives, thank God; but is withdrawn from professional toil, from the clash of mind on mind, the combat of intellect and wit, the flashing humor and grave debates of the court room, to the graceful retreat of domestic life. I am alone, an old tree, stripped of its foliage, and tottering beneath the rude storms of seventy winters ; but lately prostrate at the verge of the grave, I thought my race was run ; never again did I expect to be heard in defence of the unfortunate accused. But heaven has spared me, another monument of his mercy, and I rejoice in the opportunity of uttering, perhaps, my last public breath in defence of the poor, weak, imbecile prisoner at the bar.
Gentlemen, she is a mother. She is charged with the murder of her own child. She is arraigned here a friendless stranger. She is without means to reward counsel, and has not the intelli- gence, as I have the sorry occasion to know, to dictate to her coun- sel a single fact relating to her case. I have come to her defence
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without hope of reward; for she has nothing to give but thick, dark poverty, and of that, too, I have had more than enough. But it gives me pleasure to say that the stringent hardships of her case have won her friends among strangers, and the warm sympathies which have been extended to my client, and the ready and useful aid I have received during this protracted trial from various mem- bers of the bar, strongly indicate the great hearts and good minds of my departed brothers, have left their influence upon these, their successors."
Soon after Mr. Bell's return from court he received the following from Mattocks :
PEACHAM, January 16th, 1847.
BROTHER BELL :-- In the Watchman I have just seen a specimen of your speech in the murder case. It is worthy of being inserted in the next edition of " Elegant Extracts in Prose." Sir, you are the last of the Mohicans and the greatest, and when you die (which I fear will be soon, for from the account I hear of your effort in the cause of humanity it was all but a superhuman brightening before death), the tribe will be extinct. You have justly called our two lamented friends giants, and with the discrimination of a reviewer, have given to each the distinguishing traits of excellence ; and although your introducing me with them was gratuitous, it was kind, and the traits you have given me I owe to your generosity. You say " I was not of them ; " this was a fiction, used in an unlawyerlike manner to prevent self-commendation, unless, indeed, you meant as Paul might have said, that he was not of the prophets, because he was a head and shoulders above them. I am proud that you have sustained and surpassed the old school of lawyers. Sir, you are the Nestor of the bar, and may be truly called the " Old man eloquent."
I am, sir, with the greatest respect,
Your friend and humble servant,
JOHN MATTOCKS.
N. B. I reserve the all-important part of this letter to stand by itself. Let us hold fast to our hope in Christ. We near the brink.
Bell survived his friend a few years, encompassed with infirmity, and died of paralysis April 17th, 1852.
ISAAC FLETCHER.
By HON. ISAAC F. REDFIELD.
TN attempting to combine, in a connected narrative, some of the leading incidents in the life of Gen. Fletcher, I have, I trust, been influenced more by a desire to do justice to an eminent instance of self-made excellence, in literary and professional pur-
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suits, and thereby to countenance and encourage the friendless and fortuneless adventurer in that field, than by any wish to gratify feelings of friendship, kindly remembrance, or grateful affection, either in myself or others ; although, I confess, this last considera- tion has not been without its weight with me. Nor do I feel that my position, in this attempt, requires of me to subscribe implicitly to the necessity of the maxim-nil de mortuis nisi bonum. It will be my endeavor, so far as I shall speak of his course of life, his principles and his character, to speak, as nearly as I shall know, the plain, simple truth.
Gen. Fletcher was born, of respectable parents, in Dunstable, Mass., on the twenty-second day of November, 1784. His father was of the substantial class of farmers of that day, which, it will be remembered, equalled, if not excelled, almost all others in the essentials of prosperity and comfort, including competency of worldly possessions, health of body, sobriety and independence. The father continued to a green old age, and had but just put off the harness, so to speak, when his son was called to join him in the silent congregation. His mother, whose maiden name was Cum- mings, was always delicate and feeble, and survived the birth of her son but some twelve or fourteen years. She seems to have been a woman of gentleness and refinement of feeling, as well as of deli- cacy of physical constitutition, and these qualities of the mother seem to have been early developed and matured in the son.
In a brief sketch of the incidents of his early life, drawn out by Gen. Fletcher, not many years before his death, for the sole use of his son, who was his only child, and which was not by him, in any sense, expected ever to meet the public eye, although written at a time when the state of his health doubtless admonished him that the term of his active life could not be very much protracted, he says : "From my earliest recollection, my constitution and health have been feeble, and have continued so to the present time, but yet able to endure much application, labor and fatigue." It seems by this narrative, which his son has kindly put into my hands, that just before his mother's death it was arranged that he should receive a collegiate education. " But after her decease," says Gen. Fletcher, "my father thought himself unable to defray the expense of my education, and it was given up." He now devoted himself to those avocations which are common when one proposes to become a
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farmer, which is indeed the pursuit of all others in our country, perhaps, best calculated to bring comfort and contentment, but which is not as likely to induce a deep insight into those more diffi- cult studies which enlarge and fortify the intellectual powers. The rigid economy of those days, as contrasted favorably with our own times, in some respects, is no doubt fairly illustrated by the follow- ing incident, found in the narrative alluded to : "One rule of my father's economy was, that all the money spent by his children must be earned by themselves. By the greatest industry, in raising potatoes and tobacco, I possessed myself of money enough to buy Pike's large arithmetic, and commenced the study of it, without master or assistant, during the leisure evenings I could spare. By dint of perseverance, I mastered every rule and could solve any problem in the whole book. This laid a foundation for mathemati- cal studies, which has been of use to me through life. I have ever devoted myself (when opportunity would allow), with more pleasure to the study of that science than of any other."
I cannot learn that Gen. Fletcher was, at any period of his life, fond of those athletic sports which formed so large a portion of the amusement of the young in that day. The deficiency of physical strength requisite to excel in them, and the absence of that excess- ive flow of animal spirits, which is so constantly outbreaking in the robust and hardy youth, whose health is properly cared for, might well account for this. He was not, however, reared in effeminate indulgence. His father was not a man to encourage exemption from toil and discipline, which-however it may seem to the youth- ful experimenter-is the more indispensable in proportion to the original feebleness of constitutional health. Not that a constitu- tion of extreme delicacy can be, with safety, subjected to the same process of training, which might suit one of more primitive hardi- hood, but the former must have exposure and labor and infliction, as it can endure them, in order to produce that degree of energy which is indispensable to comfort and usefulness, while the more healthful and robust will endure long without these aids. Hence it is no doubt true that the selecting of the frailest, sickliest son, for the pursuits of learning in the liberal arts and professions, because he is less fitted by nature for more laborious avocations, is almost always unfortunate. If the opposite course were pursued both classes would be made more useful, and far more sure of success
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and comfort on the last quarter of life's full term. It was no doubt, in some degree, owing to the fact that Gen. Fletcher was kept at home on his father's farm till his nineteenth year, and taught the value of time and money, and not to shrink from labor and toil and suffering even, if need be, that he was enabled to accomplish so much in after life with so little sound health.
He says : "In 1803 my father came to a resolution to suffer me to acquire a liberal education. He informed me that all he could do for me was to give me my time, and if I thought, by industry and economy, I could succeed in the attempt, I might make the experiment, but should I fail, there would always be a seat at his table and food enough, and work enough for me to do on his farm. Thus encouraged and supported by my father, I collected all my movable effects, consisting of clothes and a few books, and left home, with a fixed and determined resolution to tax my genius and industry to the utmost to acquire an education. With budget in hand I took my departure for Groton to prepare for college. At this time I was possessed of a yoke of oxen," (which, as he had before related, his father suffered him to buy, when young, in a mode similar to that by which he obtained his arithmetic), "a few sheep and other property, in all, to the amount of about one hun- dred and fifty dollars, which I converted into cash and funded, to draw upon as necessity might require. I did not feel myself able to take board near the academy, but at the distance of a mile and a half, where I could get it cheaper than in the village. I commenced fitting for college in September, 1803, and entered the Freshman class in Dartmouth College in 1804. I may as well say, once for all, my feelings suffered much, for my means were scanty and my dress and style humble."
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