Men of Vermont : an illustrated biographical history of Vermonters and sons of Vermont, Part 19

Author: Ullery, Jacob G., comp; Davenport, Charles H; Huse, Hiram Augustus, 1843-1902; Fuller, Levi Knight, 1841-1896
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Brattleboro, Vt. : Transcript Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 842

USA > Vermont > Men of Vermont : an illustrated biographical history of Vermonters and sons of Vermont > Part 19

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Though he came to the state after her formative period was well advanced, he be- came prominent in her affairs before the period of independent statehood had passed, and he was with Tichenor, Bradley, Chip- man and Ira Allen one of the commission- ers to settle and close the controversy be- tween Vermont and New York. He was on terms of personal friendship with Washing- ton and on the visit of Lafayette to America was selected as the fittest man in the state, because of these associations, to deliver the address of welcome. He was interested in many movements for the intellectual and moral betterment of his time, and in close relations with the best minds of his day. He was president of the Vermont Coloniza- tion Society, the first president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, pronounc- ing its first oration, a trustee of Dartmouth College, a pecuniary benefactor of the Uni- versity of Vermont, elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary member of several other literary institutions. Both Harvard and the Univer- sity of Vermont conferred the degree of LL. D. on him.

All around he ranked with his great po- litical antagonist, Nathaniel Niles, as intel- lectually the most versatile man Vermont has contained. He was an exemplary Chris- tian of the orthodox faith, and a constant attendant at church. One secret of his varied attainments was his close economy of time. It is said that he was never seen idle in his waking moments. Whenever there was an intermission of labor, it was improved with book and pencil. His thought powers were brought into training so that he could deal thoroughly and systematically with one subject after another as they came before him-now a problem of constitutional law, then one about the construction of the hog- pen, and anon one about the machinery in the woolen mill-and come out superior to difficulty in every one. He was punctual to

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the uttermost in business matters. Two anecdotes illustrate this : One night he happened to remember that he had not paid a note due to a townsman that day, and he routed out his hostler, hitched up and drove to the townsman's house with the money before the hour of midnight had arrived. "You need not have bothered," remarked the creditor, "to-morrow would have answered just as well." " Did I not promise to pay it to-day ?" was Judge Paine's response in his quick, nervous style. The late Hon. Daniel Baldwin tells another : Once Judge Paine called on him for a loan of $1,000 for a few days, until he could get a remittance from Washington for his salary, which he had been expecting for some time. Baldwin, who was a merchant, said he could spare it until a certain day, when he would have to take it to Boston to buy goods with. On the appointed day Judge Paine came hurrying to Baldwin just before time for the stage to leave and explained that he had waited for his Washington remittance until the day before, but not receiving it he had gone to Woodstock, forty miles distant, rid- ing all night, and making a journey of eighty miles to procure it and return to fulfill his promise.

Judge Paine married, June 7, 1790, Sarah, daughter of John Porter, a lawyer of Ply- mouth, N. H. She was a woman of culti- vated mind, engaging manners and lofty character, and the result was a brainy fam- ily of children. There were four sons, three of whom graduated at Harvard, and one at Dartmouth. Martin, the eldest, was a dis- tinguished physician at Montreal and New York, one of the founders of the Medical Department of the University of New York, where he for years held a professor's chair, and the author of various medical works, es- pecially some aimed at materialistic ideas, which attracted much attention in both Eu- rope and America. The second son, Elijah, was a judge of the Supreme Court of New York, rendering the notable decision sus- taining the constitutionality of the statute that freed slaves when brought by the owner into the state, and a law writer of reputa- tion, associated in the making of Wheaton's reports and the United States Circuit reports that bear his name. Gov. Charles Paine was the third son, and the fourth, George, also a lawyer, died in his twenty-ninth year at Mar- sellon, Ohio. One of the judge's descend- ants married into the Bonaparte family in Baltimore.

Walton describes Judge Paine as a "tall, well-proportioned gentleman, dressed in the style of President Washington, of a grave countenance and dignified bearing, scornful to none but affable to all." His daughter, Mrs. John Paine, says he "had a command-

ing personal appearance, a well proportioned frame of six feet in height, with a physiognomy of the Roman cast and a corresponding vigor of mind. Though sternly dignified he was as gentle as a woman and was loved and venerated by his children."

CHIPMAN, NATHANIEL .- One of the most eminent jurists and statesmen of his time, United States senator for one term, a Federal judge and a judge of the Supreme Court of the state for many years. He was also of Salisbury, Conn., origin, being born there, Nov. 15, 1752, the son of Samuel and Hannah Chipman and one of a family of six sons, of whom two were physicians, and four lawyers, and nearly all men of eminence. He graduated from Yale, in 1777, served for a time as lieutenant in the Revolution, fought at Monmouth and was at Valley Forge through a part of that winter of destitution and suffer- ing, but resigned because of poverty, and completed his study of the law. Admitted to the bar in March, 1779, he came to Ver- mont, settled in 'Tinmouth, where his father had preceded him, and where in addition to his professional duties he took the manage- ment of the farm and built a forge for the manufacture of bar iron. There was a most promising field for lawyers in those days and he and young Bradley, espousing the side of the new state with ardor, rapidly and almost simultaneously came to the front as leaders. Chipman, however, became a member of the "young party," opposing Governor Chitten- den and his administration and seeking to clear the way of the fathers for a generation of younger men. The " fathers " were indeed at that time only men of middle life and many of them of less, but the contingent of younger and ambitious men, as is almost in- variably the case, viewed their ascendency with impatience.

But Chipman was too candid and just- minded a man to carry this party feeling to unreasonable lengths, and several times at critical junctures he rendered the Governor and his associates important service. One of these was at Windsor when knowledge of the intrigue with Canada was exploded be- fore the Legislature and he helped the Gover- nor and Ira Allen to concoct the hasty de- ception which bridged the affair over. He was frequently in confidential relations with the Governor and wrote out many of the lat- ter's letters and state papers. He was a man of great and resourceful shrewdness in legislative and political management. It was his idea that stayed the paper money flood when the Legislature was overwhelm- ing in favor of such an issue. Coming to Rutland, where the Legislature was in ses- sion in 1786, he found such a bill, with another making specified articles a legal

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tender for debt, on the point of passage, and seeing after looking the ground over and consulting with various members, that there was no hope of defeating the bill on a straight issue, he prepared the amendment, which made the enactment conditional on the approval of the voters of the state and to go into effect only after it had been submitted to a vote of the electors. Then the ques- tion was fought out at the next election and the result was the rejecting of the bill by a vote of more than four to one.

And it is not too much to say that Ver- mont's exceptional prosperity above any part of the Union in the next thirty years, and its freedom from troubles like Shay's rebellion in Massachusetts that afflicted so many parts of the country, and came so near reducing things to a state of anarchy, was the result of this referendum scheme. It was, considering the times, a measure of ex- traordinary wisdom, and even yet its lesson has not been fully learned, that where dema- gogues and agitators with their plausible fallacies are bringing on disaster the safest defense is a reference to the original source of power, the people. It cannot be said, of course, that the people will always be right, especially on new problems before they have been fully discussed and sifted. But they are more apt to be right than any other source of authority. This is the bottom princi- pal of democracy as against monarchy or oligarchy. Especially is it true, in a repre- sentative government where leaders con- stantly figure that the way of popularity and power lies in pandering to the selfishness and meaner passions of mankind, that an occasional direct application of the ozone of genuine popular thought is necessary. The politicians of Vermont then believed as did the politicians of other states, while the times were hard and debt burdens were op- pressive, that the people would be pleased with a measure of inflation. The error was shown by an appeal to the people in Vermont ; if it had been in the other states they would have escaped some severe experiences. An- other notable case like it in political history was in Ohio in 1875, when the wave of Green- backism was at its highest, men of all parties were bending before it, the Democrats had made it their chief issue, with the idea that success lay that way, and the Republicans feared to face the issue. Gen. Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican candidate for Govern- or, insisted that there should be no faltering, but the canvass should be fought out on that question before the people, and the result was a signal victory for sound money against all the calculations of the time servers. It was this act of clear-viewed courage that made General Hayes his party's candidate for

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President the next year. It is always the safest course.

Mr. Chipman was also Governor Chitten- den's coadjutor in the pressing to passage of that extraordinary measure of good sense in law, the quieting act, which is explained in the sketch of Governor Chittenden. Chip- man represented Tinmouth in the General Assembly in 1784-'85. In 1786 he was elected assistant judge of the superior court being the first lawyer to be placed on the bench in Vermont. In 1789 he was elected chief justice and held the office for two years. He also had the decisive part in the negotiations which finally closed the contro- versy with New York and brought about Vermont's admission to the Union. He was a friend of Alexander Hamilton and in 1 788 opened a correspondence with that great leader, which finally ended in Hamilton's espousing the cause of Vermont or throwing all his power and influence into an argu- ment for an adjustment. Daniel Chipman says that the two men had an interview at Albany that winter, in which they agreed on the mode of settlement that was afterward adopted by the two states. When finally the consent of the New York Legislature was secured Chipman was appointed one of the commissioners for Vermont to determine the terms of settlement. He had always been fearful that the Vermont claims, and so land titles under Vermont authority, would fail to stand the test of law if they should ever be brought to adjudication, and so was not only solicitous for agreement with New York but that all these questions be disposed of in the agreement, as was done. He was a member of the commission that deter- mined the boundary between the two states.

In the convention at Bennington to pass on the act of union and adopt the Federal Constitution, Chipman was the "Colossus of the debate," as Jefferson said of Adams in the Congress that adopted the Declaration of Independence. There was then a strong feeling for the continued independence of Vermont ; her prosperity had for several years been the envy of her neighbors ; her own taxes were very light, and she had no share to bear of the burdens which the Rev- olution had left upon the rest of the country ; her population was fast increasing and her values steadily mounting upward ; she had gone safely through difficulties which seemed impossible of parallel, had shown her ability to take care of herself, was in a situation where it was an obiect for all sides to culti- vate her friendship, had established a stable and smooth-working system of her own- and many were the men who argued that there was nothing to be gained by hitching the state to the federal system. Probably consent would have been positively refused

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in the latter years of the old confederation, but the vigor and hopefulness which the new government under the constitution showed was very attractive to men of Chipman's views. Still the result seemed very doubtful when the convention at Bennington assem- bled, and under the leadership of Daniel Buck the arguments against nion were speciously presented. Chipman made a speech of magnificent logic and eloquence, portraying the possibilities of political devel- opment in art, literature, science, industry and commerce, that were contained in the proposed connection, discussing and analyz- ing the new constitution in comparison with the best the world had seen. It was master- ful as an argument and with the support of Bradley and Niles and others, it carried such conviction that the ratification was agreed to by a vote of 105 to 4. January 18, 1791, he was appointed with Lewis R. Mor- ris commissioner to attend Congress and negotiate for the admission of the state into the Union.

Immediately after the admission Presi- dent Washington appointed Chipman United States judge for the district of Ver- mont, a position which he resigned in I793. But three years later, in 1796, he was again elected chief justice and in 1797 elected senator to succeed Tichenor, serving from 1797 to 1803. At the expiration of his term he returned to Vermont and resumed the practice of law with ever increasing fame. But he was not above serving the public in the humbler capacity and for the meagre pay of a legislator because he had been a United States judge and senator and he again represented Tinmouth, in the Leg- islature in 1806,-'7-'8-'9-'II.

In March, 1813, he was elected one of the council of censors, a body chosen once in seven years to review the constitution and recommend admendments. The ideas for which he stood then have some of them had to be adopted since and others must be to overcome evils that remain in our system. He always advocated amending the constitu- tion to create a Senate as a co-ordinate branch of the Legislature, to take the power of election of judges from the Legislature and provide for appointment during good behav- ior and also to constitute a court of chan- cery distinct from the courts of law. He made and published a great argument then for the independence of the judiciary, re- viewing the constitutions and practice of all the states, and applying most cogently the lessons of history and of the methods of other countries. But in spite of this luminous showing the old method of election at each session still survives, a relic of distorted and misapplied democracy, a method that combines the vices of both the appointive

and elective systems without the merits of either. It is simply wonderful that the re- sults of it have not been more evil.

Chipman was chosen chief justice of the state in 1813, receiving a majority of seven- teen, where his party, the Federalists, had the lead by only one or two on joint ballot. lle was however displaced in 1815 when the Democrats, or Republicans as they then generally called themselves, returned to power.

This was his last public position. He had for many years been an associate justice on the supreme bench, and had four times left the practice of law to take a seat on the bench. In 1816 he was appointed profes- sor of law in Middlebury College, and gave a course of lectures that attracted much at- tention, and held the chair until 1843.

During the nullification times he wrote and published a very strong pamphlet against the Calhoun doctrine, more than matching in its vise-like logic the argument of the able South Carolinian.

Judge Chipman died Feb. 13, 1843, from congestion and inflammation of the lungs, aged ninety-one years. The last twenty-five years of his life were the golden period, where in well earned retirement, except for such law business as he chose to undertake, he enjoy- ed in rural pursuits his books, his friendship and correspondence with some of the most cultivated men of his time, and he was re- garded by his neighbors and brethren of the profession almost as a patriarch.

His measurement as a lawyer and a judge will best be given by Mr. Huse in his de- partment of this work. We will only allude to one of his methods as a judge, his habit of giving in his charges a summary of the testi- mony of each witness, instructing the jury as to the points on which it bore, clearing away immaterial matter and laying before the jury a compact and lucid statement of the whole case in all its bearings, while in- structing them upon the law of it. He had a clear and discriminating mind, compre- hensive in its grasp, and steadily analytic in its processes. He was cautious in forming his opinions, proceeding entirely without prejudice or bias, conscious that he had done so, and therefore positive and em- phatic when he had reached a conclusion.

In 1793 he published a small work entitled "Sketches of the Principles of Government " and also a volume of " Reports and Disserta- tion" containing reports of cases decided while he was chief justice, with dissertation on the statute adopting the common law of England, the statute of offsets, on negotiable notes and on the statute of conveyances. In 1796, he was appointed one of a committee to revise the statutes of Vermont and the re- vised laws of 1797 were written by him. In

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1833 he published " Principles of Govern- ment, a treatise on free institutions including the Constitution of the United States," which contained parts of his 1796 work.

CHASE, DUDLEY .- Speaker of the state Assembly for five years, twice United States senator, and four years chief justice of the state Supreme Court, was of a brainy family, being a brother of Bishop Philander Chase of Ohio, founder of Kenyon and Jobilee colleges, and the uncle of Salmon P. Chase, the great Republican statesman and chief justice.

Dudley Chase was born at Cornish, N. H., Dec. 30, 1771, the son of Deacon Dudley Chase, and one of a numerous family of eight sons and six daughters. His youth was passed in pioneer privations at Cornish and Sutton, Mass., but he succeeded in ob- taining a college education, graduating at Dartmouth in 1791. He studied law with Hon. Lot Hall at Westminster, and in the early nineties settled at Randolph. He was state's attorney for Orange county for eight years from 1803 to 1811 inclusive. He was a member of the constitutional conventions of 1814 and 1822. He represented Randolph in the Legislature from 1805 to 1812 in- clusive, and for the last five years he was speaker of the House, closing the service with such popularity that he was immediately elected United States senator to succeed Stephen R. Bradley.

He was elected for a full term of six years, but he resigned his seat in 1817 to accept an election as chief justice of the Supreme Court of the state. He was re-elected to that post each year until 1821 when he re- tired to return to the practice of law, but was sent to the Legislature in 1823-'24 and again won such popularity that he was in 1825 again elected to the United States Senate. At the close of his term in 1831 he retired finally to private life, devoting his attention to farming and gardening, of which he was exceedingly fond. A little of the scattering and disorganized opposition to Governor Galusha in 1819 centered about him, giving him 618 of the 2,618 votes cast against Galusha for Governor.

He was of attractive and winning address, portly in person, commanding in presence, well balanced mentally, with a poise of mind that fitted him admirably for judicial posi- tion, and a real kindness of heart that could not help to make him a favorite among men. He was perhaps somewhat lacking in the aggressive quality, like that of Galusha or Bradley or Niles, that makes the political leader of enduring power or that leaves per- manent impress in statesmanlike work. Still there are events and good ideas in Ver- mont history with which Dudley Chase's

name is identified. He was always earnest in advocacy of the support of district schools by a tax on the grand list so as to give poor children an equal opportunity with the rich to obtain an education. He helped in the framing in the act of 1805 regulating marriage and divorce. He was a member of the committee that fixed upon Montpe- lier for the location of the state capital. The state bank was established in 1806 on lines largely laid down by him. He was that year also a member of the legislative committee that drafted the famous "address of the Vermont Legislature" to President · Jefferson entreating him to be a candidate for a third term. He was a meniber of the committee that provided for the location of the state prison at Windsor. He supported Bradley's resolution in 1807 for a consti- tutional amendment empowering the Presi- dent to remove Supreme Court judges on address by a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate.

He died Feb. 23, 1846, at the age of seven- ty-four, after several years of declining health with fits of epilepsy. A fall in his room para- lyzed his right leg which swelled badly, be- came erysipelas, and terminated in mortifica- tion and death. His wife, whose maiden name was Olivia Brown and whom he married in 1796 when she was seventeen years old, survived him but twenty-three days. They had no children of their own, but brought up many nephews and nieces and indentur- ed boys, and of these gave a college educa- tion to not less than twelve or fifteen.

FISK, JAMES .- Judge of the Supreme Court, representative and senator in Con- gress, Universalist preacher, and a leader of the Democratic or Republican party in the state during its era of power and prosperity, was a native of Greenwich, Mass., born Oct. 4, 1763, and came to Vermont from Green- wich. Little is known of his ancestry or early youth, but his circumstances were humble and he was self-educated. His father died when he was only two years old, and he was early left to shift for himself. In 1779, at the age of sixteen he enlisted in the Revolutionary army, served for three years, then returned to Greenwich and went to work as a farm hand. He was only twenty- two years old when he was elected repre- sentative to the General Assembly of Massa- chusetts, and about this time he began to preach as a Universalist minister. He came to Barre in 1798, continued preaching occasionally, cleared a farm, and in his leisure hours studied law, opened practice and rapidly rose to eminence and influence. His alert mind, ready wit and power of prac- tical and winning argument, his poise of character and justice and kindliness of views,

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combined with his singularly genial, attract ive demeanor, qualified him to an unusual extent for leadership. The late E. P. Wal- ton says of him that " in his form, the vigor of his intellect and the brilliancy of his mind, he much resembled Aaron Burr." He was small of stature, keen-eyed, a brilliant conver- sationalist, and, as Thompson says, "really talented."

He had been in Barre only three years when he was elected one of its selectmen, and the next year was sent to the Legisla- ture, representing the town nine years, from 1800 to 1805, 180g and 1810, and in 1815. He was a useful and prolific legislator, taking an active part in the legislation for the ob- servance of the Sabbath, the taxing of liquor selling, the overhauling of the statutes for the support of the gospel, the collection of debts, proceedings in case of absconding debtors, land taxes, the forfeiture of charters, the reorganization of the judiciary system, and the regulation of marriage and divorce. He was prominent in the fight of 1804 over the law of libel, when it was proposed to do away with the old principle of privilege, " the greater the truth the greater the libel," and in criminal prosecutions to allow the respondent to plead in defence the truth of his words. He moved, as early as 1803, for the establishing of a permanent seat for the Legislature, and when the Assembly had passed the bill, before the Governor and Council had got the subject postponed, he was selected for Orange county's member of the special committee to locate the capital. He was also, in 1804, chairman of the com- mittee that endeavored to get a settlement of our northern boundary with Canada.

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Men of Vermont : an illustrated biographical history of Vermonters and sons of Vermont, Part 19

Author: Ullery, Jacob G., comp; Davenport, Charles H; Huse, Hiram Augustus, 1843-1902; Fuller, Levi Knight, 1841-1896 Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Brattleboro, Vt. : Transcript Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 842

Author: Ullery, Jacob G., comp; Davenport, Charles H; Huse, Hiram Augustus, 1843-1902; Fuller, Levi Knight, 1841-1896
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Brattleboro, Vt. : Transcript Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 842