USA > Wisconsin > History of the bench and bar of Wisconsin, Vol. I > Part 37
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In personal appearance his distinguishing characteristics were polished manners, mild, courteous and dignified demeanor, respect and kindly feeling toward others; an air of conscious strength entirely un- mixed with anything like self-conceit or arrogance; an erect and well- formed figure, which in early years gave him an appearance of manly beauty; an intellectual face, high and fully exposed forehead, dark, lus- ' trous eyes, with ever-varying expression, with firmness and energy indi- cated in every feature and in every movement.
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Moses M. Strong, the author of the preceding paragraph, has written thus: "For nearly three-and-thirty years Jonathan E. Arnold was a leader of the Wisconsin bar. For all that time he discharged a large measure of its duties, wore a large share of its honors; a prominent figure among the distinguished lawyers of the territory and state. His eloquent voice has filled, his professional labors have adorned, many of the court rooms of the state. For over a quarter of a century he has filled a large place in the public view; known of all men as a lawyer of fine talents, thorough training, untiring energy, singular address, bold, yet prudent, of remarkable force always, tenderly pathetic at times; of rare eloquence whenever the occasion inspired it. Eminent as he was for professional ability, he was perhaps even more distinguished for his professional character. He was every inch a lawyer, thoroughly profes- sional in mind and habit. He was remarkable for his professional bear- ing, a living model of professional esprit de corps. He was no wayward genius, occasionally exciting wonder or admiration. He was a man of disciplined and practiced talent, always efficient, bringing to every cause the just measure of ability it needed or admitted. He was singu- larly self-reliant; his powers were always in singular self-command. He never forgot himself or the occasion. Always great, he was greatest in jury trials. He was a study of professional dignity. Nothing dis- tracted him, nothing disturbed him. He never wasted a word or a gesture. His conduct of a cause seemed like a great piece of accom- plished acting, and at times he may have seemed artificial, but his efforts were always earnest and thorough. Weighty in thought, chaste in language, graceful in manner, he habitually illustrated his own con- ceptions of professional carriage."
It is said of Mr. Arnold in Reed's Bench and Bar that "his was a strong character, and his leading characteristics seem to have been that he was gentle as a child and gentlemanly in all his daily deportment toward court and bar. He told the court nothing he did not believe in regard to the law. He commenced his argument slow and dull, fired up to the eloquence of the best lawyers of New England's best days, and in a large majority of cases carried court and jury with him. He never
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smiled or joked while guarding his client's interests in court, but, like Rufus Choate, acted as though a religious duty was upon him, and the interests in his hands were too sacred for him to forget for a moment. even to look to the right or left. He never permitted a client to go to law with him for advocate, unless he believed and had good faith that the law was in favor of his client. He was one of the most modest of men. He was honest in his charges against clients, often telling them that he had done them no good, and charging accordingly. He treated all men well, the humblest as well as the richest. He seemed to know all the law intuitively and believed in equity, and was great and grand in intellect and the richness and accomplishments of legal education and legal lore. He feared no man and bullied no man."
Mr. Arnold's reputation as a lawyer was much extended by his man- agement of two murder cases, which gave him opportunities to demon- strate his power as a criminal lawyer and show the possession of those peculiar gifts for which he afterwards won such renown. One of these was the Ross-Radcliffe trial in 1851. The case was apparently one of cold-blooded murder for the sole purpose of robbery. One David Ross. whose wife had died, turned all his possessions into money, preparatory to leaving Milwaukee. This sum of several hundred dollars he con- cealed about his person in a belt. During the Sabbath day he was often seen in company with one Radcliffe, a man of little character, and in the evening was found in the street in a dying condition. The money was gone, while the wounds upon his person showed that he had been attacked and beaten into insensibility. Many points of evidence pointed to Radcliffe, while the prosecutor, A. R. R. Butler, assisted by the skill of E. G. Ryan, wove about him a network of proof from which it seemed there was no possibility of escape. Mr. Arnold appeared for the defense, assisted by A. D. Smith. The contest waged by these giants was one of the most thrilling and stubborn ever seen in the state up to that time, fifteen days passing before the final issue was taken from the hands of counsel and given into that of the jury. The result was less of a sur- prise to those who had watched the skill with which Mr. Arnold had directed his course toward those in the box than to the general public.
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The verdict was one of acquittal. It was upon its announcement that Judge Hubbell, who sat upon the bench and was himself convinced that blood lay upon the hands of Radcliffe, was surprised out of his judicial calm and, fixing his eyes upon the foreman, asked, with surprise, "Is that your verdict?" "It is," was the answer. "Then may God have mercy on your souls!" said the judge .*
In 1852 another case, of greater sensational interest, occurred, which gave an additional opportunity to Mr. Arnold to display his capacity as a criminal lawyer. October 14, as John M. W. Lace, a member of the Milwaukee fire department, stood on Wisconsin street, he was ap- proached by Mary Anne Wheeler, who drew a pistol and shot him dead. The girl was arrested, admitted the shooting, and in defense declared that Lace had been the cause of her ruin. Mr. Arnold was engaged for the defense, and although he was assisted by William Abbey of Cleve- land, Ohio, and W. H. Tucker of Sandusky, Ohio,-the state in which
*In ch. 32 of the History of Milwaukee County Joshua Stark says of this trial that it was conducted on both sides with extraordinary zeal and ability. The cir- cumstances of the crime and the great ability of the counsel employed attracted uni- versal attention. Public interest was intense. Crowds thronged the court house eager to hear. Mr. Ryan had been in the city but about three years and the occasion spurred him to extraordinary effort. Messrs. Arnold and Smith fully appreciated the intellectual power and great skill opposed to them, and the difficulties of their de- fense, and were alert and energetic to secure every possible advantage. The trial had lasted nearly two weeks when the testimony was closed. The desire of the people to hear the addresses of counsel to the jury was so great that Judge Hubbell ad- journed the court to the largest public hall in the city for the "summing up," and here for two days the public listened with "bated breath" to the elaborate and elo- quent pleas of the counsel. The scene was highly dramatic. The hall was equipped as a theater, and the main floor and gallery would seat about fifteen hundred persons. The court, judge, jury, prisoner, officers and attorneys occupied the stage, and the play went on. The facts and circumstances showing guilt were grouped and linked together on one side with masterly skill, and the counsel for the accused were defied to break the chain. On the other side, the uncertainty of circumstantial evidence and the danger of convicting the innocent were pressed with burning eloquence upon the hearts of the jury. Both Arnold and Smith were able and eloquent. Their ini- passioned appeals to the jury were successful, aided, perhaps, by the very vehemence and persistence of the prosecution. The jury acquitted the prisoner, to the surprise and indignation of the judge, whose comment on the verdict was: "May God have mercy on your consciences." One of the jury, William K. Wilson, felt the rebuke as a personal insult, and became, in 1863, the willing accuser of Judge Hubbell to the assembly of the state, when proceedings were lodged for his impeachment."
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the parents of the girl resided-it was upon his shoulders that the main labor devolved, and it was due to his skill and management that she was acquitted. The only ground in which the defense could have any hope lay in a moral justification because of the relations of the two, and the wrong that had been done. But strong as this might possibly be as a matter of sentiment or even of justice, it constituted no defense in law. At that day the plea of "moral" or "emotional" insanity was a novelty in the west, and it may be questioned whether the books then in use recognized it .; If this be wrong, the grounds upon which the plea could be used were meager and the materials out of which insanity of that kind could be constructed were very slight. Mr. Arnold decided upon a bold stroke. His real defense, as set forth indirectly in every phase and turn of the trial, was the broad one that the girl had been justified in the murder, and that by the shedding of Lace's blood alone could atonement be made for the outrage put upon her. To fasten this thought in the conscience of the jury and yet afford a legal reason for a verdict of ac- quittal, was the task he set himself to perform. In his opening address. in the examination of witnesses, in his powerful closing plea, and in all possible legitimate ways, from first to last, he kept this object in view with consummate skill, and drove his purpose home with power and
J. H. Kennedy is the author of the account of the two trials for murder given in the text. though the language is varied somewhat. He says that the defense in this case attracted world-wide attention, and was even cited as an example in the course of a debate in the English parliament. Vol. 6. Magazine of Western History, pages 174-176.
Mr. Stark, in the work referred to in the preceding note, says that Mr. Arnold's defense was temporary or emotional insanity. There was little evidence in its sup- port. Repeated offers were made by him to prove that the victim had, at some time previous to the homicide, ill-treated and grossly slandered the accused, but the evi- dence was rejected. Mr. Arnold's object was gained, however, since his offers gave him the opportunity, allowed by the court, for the repeated recital in the hear- ing of the jury of the story of gross wrong and insult, in terms designed and well fitted to excite sympathy for the accused. and to arouse strong prejudice against her assumed traducer. This being effected, it was only necessary to invent a pretext for her acquittal. With wonderful ingenuity, Mr. Arnold framed and induced the court to give instructions so artfully drawn as to open the way for the verdict he desired. and then, with great skill and pathos, pictured to the jury the mental distress which, at the instant of the homicide, he maintained was madness.
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vigor. The trial commenced May 16th, 1853, with Judge Howe pre- siding. In opening for the defense, Mr. Arnold made an earnest and eloquent speech. These sentences are significant: "I have always sup- posed, from what little I have known of myself, that I was a poor hand to work without some material; that I was a poor hand to set up a sham defense and seriously and earnestly to urge it upon a court or jury. I do not feel competent to do it. I have neither the ability nor the inclin- ation, and if I did not believe in my heart and before my God that the defense which I shall undertake to establish here is genuine and is well founded, I would take my seat and permit this woman to go to your hands."
The following extracts from his closing argument may serve to show its tenor and power :
It has been supposed by some that the fear of death was im- planted in the consciousness of man in order to restrain him from the exercise of that larger share of power with which he is endowed. But all other animals upon our globe have been created with limited capac- ities and limited spheres of action. Their power is present. It does not extend beyond themselves, and hence the fear of present bodily pain has been supposed to be sufficient to restrain them within their legitimate spheres. But for man, with a body framed for vigorous ex- ertion in every clime, with a mind unlimited in capacities and unceasing in effort-for man, whose power extends not only to the present but through future generations, some stronger restraint has been necessary than the fear of present pain. It consists of the terrors of that un- known region to which we are all rapidly hastening. A well-spent life, the affections, the sorrows, the tears of those we love, may persuade us of our merit; the principles of proud philosophy may sustain, the hopes of divine religion may console us; but still nature will assert its domin- ion, and we instinctively shudder at the silence and the gloom of the grave. There sensuality, ambition, malice, revenge, all passion, is laid low in the dust. There the tenderest earthly ties are snapped asunder forever. There Alexander left his worlds unconquered and Crœsus parted with his gold. There Bacon forgot his learning and Newton descended from the skies. There friend is unlocked from the arm of friend, brother from the arm of brother. There the father takes the last look at the body of his cherished son. There the doting mother, day by day and night by night, moistens with her tears the clod that em- braces her darling infant in its bosom.
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We say that the victim of seduction, with slander upon her good name, with her character robbed from her, with her hopes blasted, under disgrace, infamy, desertion, betrayal, bleeding at every pore of head and heart, in a sudden, overwhelming impulse of derangement, upon meeting her seducer, took his life and avenged her wrongs be- fore God and man. There with her own right hand hath she gotten herself the victory! And Lace! Let no tears be shed over his grave. By his conduct, by his vices, by his crimes, he had excluded himself from the protection of the law and from the protection of all cultivated society; had shown himself to be a man no longer worthy of the confi- dence and the respect of men or the love of woman-and I say here for myself that it will be justified! It is justified in the judgment of the world; in the judgment of all men who have a heart beneath their breasts, who are men of honor or of courage, who reverence the female sex, who love the mother that bore them, and who love their wives, their sisters and their daughters. It is justified that her timely arm, which had clung around his neck in love, should itself be the instrument that in an instant should send his damned and coward soul-to heaven or hell!
The trial was concluded May 26, and resulted in a disagreement. The second trial began June 5, and resulted in a verdict of "not guilty. by reason of insanity." The Milwaukee Sentinel of the following day said: Mr. Arnold bore the brunt of the fight, and proved himself . throughout a consummate tactician and most successful advocate. His whole plan of operations-the real attack made under a feigned issue- his admirable opening and summing-up in the first trial and the far-sur- passing effort at the second trial, enhanced his reputation as one of the first criminal lawyers of the west. His closing effort in behalf of the prisoner on Saturday afternoon was compact, logical, well-arranged, earnest and at times most impassioned.
JAMES S. BROWN.
James S. Brown was born at Hampton, Maine, in February, 1824, and improved the educational advantages afforded him. At the age of sixteen he went to Cincinnati, entered an office, pursued the study of the law and was admitted to the bar before he attained his majority. He began practice in Milwaukee in 1844, and in 1845 was appointed prose- cuting attorney of Milwaukee county; his discharge of the duties of
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that office for several years was creditable to him and satisfactory to the public. Upon the formation of the state government he was chosen attorney general, and served as such until January, 1850. In 1861 he was elected mayor of Milwaukee, and in 1862 was chosen a member of the thirty-eighth Congress; he was defeated for re-election in 1864 by Halbert E. Paine, the republican candidate. His health failed in the later years of his life, and the end came April 16, 1878.
It was the opinion of the late Moses M. Strong that "Mr. Brown was far more than an ordinary lawyer," and that it was "within the truth to say that so long as he continued in active practice he had few equals in his profession within the limits of Wisconsin. His education, schol- astic and legal, was excellent. He possessed a bright intellect and spark- ling genius, and had great versatility of powers. As an advocate before a jury he was logical and persuasive. He convinced by his argument and persuaded by his eloquence, which oftentimes was of a high order. His cases were always well prepared, and he was always careful and painstaking in all his professional business. In the supreme court, in which he had an extensive practice, his briefs were always clear and comprehensive, and presented the points of the case and the arguments in support of them in a forcible and logical manner."
MATTHEW H. CARPENTER.
On the 22d of December, 1824, at Moretown, Washington county, Vermont, a son was born to the wife of an eminent lawyer and citizen of prominence, and the parents, as if the spirit of prophecy were upon them, named the child after the great English jurist. Matthew Hale Carpenter. When the boy had reached the age of eleven years his mother died, and Paul Dillingham, afterward governor of the state, having charged himself with his education, Matthew became a member of his family at Waterbury.
In 1843 John Mattocks, being then the representative to Congress from that district, procured for young Carpenter an appointment as cadet in the military academy at West Point. It opens a curious field for speculation to reflect what might have been his career if he had per-
Malt . It Carpentry HAN MATTHEW H 'ABFENTER,
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severed in the profession thus chosen for him. He was a classmate in the academy of General Fitz John Porter and others who attained prom- inence in the war of the rebellion, and it is not inconceivable that he might have proved to have the making of a great captain in him; but it is not altogether easy to think of him as leading a fierce onset at Chickamauga or storming an angle of the entrenchments in the wilder- ness. At all events the possibility of that spectacle was denied us by a weakness of the eyes which made it necessary for him to resign his cadetship at the expiration of his second year.
Returning to Waterbury in the summer of 1845, he entered upon the study of the law in the office of Mr. Dillingham, and two years later was admitted to the bar at Montpelier. Soon after he removed to Bos- ton and finished his studies in the office of Rufus Choate. It is known that he enjoyed in a peculiar degree the intimacy of Mr. Choate, and the formative influence of that incomparable lawyer upon his admiring disciple is by no means difficult to discern.
In the spring of 1848 Mr. Carpenter was admitted to practice by the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts, and the same year removed to Beloit, Wisconsin, where he opened an office. He was almost wholly destitute of means, and the beginning of his professional career was further embarrassed by a recurrence of the disease of his eyes, which be- came so serious as to make it necessary for him to go to New York for treatment. For over a year he was almost wholly blind, and it was two years, or thereabouts, before he could use his eyes to any practical extent.
In 1852 Mr. Carpenter was the candidate for district attorney of Rock county. The election was contested, and the case was taken to the supreme court, where it was decided in his favor. The case is a leading one in the reports, and Mr. Carpenter himself had occasion to cite it when he was arguing the cause of Bashford vs. Barstow. The appearance of Mr. Carpenter in this important cause, involving no less a question than the possession of the governorship of the state, is an evidence of the standing that he had attained when he had barely closed the third decade of his life. He was associated with eminent counsel,
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but it seems to have been left to him to project, and mainly defend the principle upon which Governor Barstow resisted the writ of quo war- ranto filed in behalf of the contestant Bashford. His position was that the three branches of the state government are co-ordinate, and that it was not competent for the supreme court to pass upon the lawfulness of the incumbency of the executive office. The decision of the court was adverse, but Mr. Carpenter's argument will none the less impress the professional reader as ingenious and powerful.
Mr. Carpenter removed to Milwaukee in 1856. He was for a num- ber of years engaged in the intricate and embarrassing litigation arising out of the construction and consolidation of certain railroads in Wis- consin, and maintained the rights of his clients with great ability and persistency. His practice was now large, and as lucrative as his rather easy financial habits could make it; and his fame was rapidly extend- ing. When a case arose that involved the determination by the supreme court of the United States of the constitutionality of the reconstruction acts, Secretary Stanton retained him as one of the counsel for the gov- ernment. His argument won for him general recognition as one of the foremost constitutional lawyers of his time, and it is scarcely ex- travagant to say that the civil governments existing to-day in eleven states of the Union rest upon the principle enunciated and supported by him on that occasion.
In 1876, for the first time, happily, in the history of the republic, a cabinet minister, in the person of W. W. Belknap, secretary of war, was impeached before the senate of the United States for high crimes and misdemeanors in office. The respondent retained for his defense Jere- miah S. Black, ex-attorney general; Montgomery M. Blair, ex-post- master general, and Mr. Carpenter. There could have been no higher compliment to Mr. Carpenter than the fact that his associates, who had stood for years in the very front rank of the American bar, resigned to him the entire management of the case, which he conducted to a suc- cessful issue.
The trial of the title to the presidency of the United States before the electoral commission, erected for the purpose by special act of Con-
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gress, was another occasion that enlisted the best professional talent in the Union. Mr. Carpenter was retained by Mr. Tilden to submit an argument in favor of counting the votes of the democratic candidates for electors in Louisiana, and he performed the duty with the ability that he never failed to bring to bear upon questions of this important and delicate character.
We have thus sketched imperfectly some of the most conspicuous appearances of Mr. Carpenter, strictly in the character of a lawyer. They by no means fairly represent the character or extent of his pro- fessional labors. From 1870 to his decease, though maintaining a resi- dence at Milwaukee, he kept an office at Washington, and practiced mainly before the supreme court of the United States; and his services were retained in very many of the most important cases that have been heard before that tribunal.
Mr. Carpenter had been a democrat from the time that he attained his majority, and in the election of 1860 supported Douglas for the presidency. Upon the attempt of the south to destroy the Union, with- out formally dissociating himself from that party, he gave his support to the war policy of the administration, and delivered a series of addresses in that behalf that were characterized by great eloquence and patriotic fervor. Subsequently he publicly affiliated with the republican party, and in 1869 was chosen to succeed James R. Doolittle in the senate of the United States.
It is not proposed to dwell upon his political career. It should be mentioned, however, that he was the author of the acts reconstructing in some respects the federal courts and enlarging their jurisdiction to the limits prescribed by the constitution. He was twice chosen presi- dent pro tempore of the senate, and presided over that body during several sessions, in discharging which duty he exhibited thorough learn- ing and aptitude as a parliamentarian.
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