USA > Wisconsin > History of the bench and bar of Wisconsin, Vol. II > Part 39
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Judge Vilas came to the state when all our public interests and institu- tions were in their infancy, and took at once an earnest and active part "in their development and extension. Particularly was he a friend of the cause of popular education, and stood stoutly and faithfully by the interests of our state university in the days when it was a feeble institu- tion and in sore need of wise and efficient friends."
J. C. Gregory said:
"For more than twenty years I was the near neighbor, the profes- sional, political and personal friend of the late Judge Vilas. In all that time scarcely a day passed, unless hindered by sickness or absence, that we were not together in the closest and most friendly intercourse. It can therefore be safely said, I knew him well; and in this public place I desire to bear testimony to his unflinching integrity in public and private affairs, his sound judgment, his strong, exhaustive reasoning powers, which laid hold of all subjects worthy of his attention, ascer- taining truth and rejecting error, and, having thus established his po- sition, holding it with power, courage and persistence actually sublime.
"His mature judgment upon almost any subject challenged my highest respect. His loyalty to his convictions and his fidelity to his friends were marked characteristics of his strong nature. His was a broad, generous home.
"He was a devoted and affectionate husband and father. His so- ciety was attractive, not only on account of the solidity of his judgment and the breadth of his information, but for his keen appreciation and wonderful power of illustration by appropriate anecdote and story. I look back on the many years of our close intercourse with sincere pleasure, only with regret that it is forever terminated here. .
Mr. Chief Justice Ryan said, in reply: "By far the greater part of Judge Vilas' professional life was spent in Vermont. There he ac- quired his chief professional distinction. When he came to Wiscon- sin, he had already reached middle life. He brought with him a con- siderable fortune, the reward of his professional career in Vermont, the care of which, as I understand it, was his principal occupation here. Like other men of advanced years and of ample means, he practiced his profession here very much as the diversion of an old lawyer, though
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all he did was done with the ability which had distinguished him in Vermont. This is evidenced by the unanimous testimony of his fellows of the Dane county bar. For myself, I never was so happy as to meet him at the bar. I know of him as a lawyer only by tradition. I became acquainted with him soon after his coming to Wisconsin, and during the last years of his life was intimate with him. I think I may, there- fore, venture to say that I knew him as a man well, and as a man he always had my profound respect and confidence.
"Vermont has been long distinguished for its very able bench and bar; and a gentleman who occupied Judge Vilas' position there must have been a lawyer of no ordinary learning and ability, capable of tak- ing high rank at any bar. A lawyer bequeaths to posterity few and comparatively insignificant traces of his work; and his memory is apt to die out utterly, except with his own profession. The Vermont re- ports contain the only abiding memorials of Judge Vilas as a lawyer. Those, and the kindly and respectful memory of his contemporaries, are all that are left of Judge Vilas' professional life. It is the fate of eminent lawyers to win a great reputation during life, and to be soon forgotten after death. In half a century from now we will all be for- gotten, with hardly a trace left of our life-work; none outside of the professional.
"The public offices held by Judge Vilas in Vermont and Wisconsin bear the highest evidence to his general reputation. It was undoubted- ly very high and very just. He was a somewhat peculiar man, exhibit- ing in his life more of the fortiter in re than of the suaviter in modo. His integrity was of the very highest order. It governed his daily life, not merely in pecuniary transactions, but in all the duties of life alike. He was punctilious in keeping all his engagements of every nature, and he exacted of others the like fidelity, without, perhaps, sufficient patience with the lax and unpunctual. He was said to be fond of money. If so, his scrupulous and graceful fidelity in the discharge of all his obliga- tions, great and small, is all the more honorable. No man ever lost a dollar by him.
"Public office to him signified public duty. He brought the same intelligence, the same conscientiousness, to public as to private duties.
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He performed the functions of all his offices with like zeal and accuracy, as if they concerned his private interests, involved his private fortune.
"Judge Vilas had great energy and activity of mind and of life. He was gifted with rare soundness and felicity of judgment. He was, in all respects, essentially a strong man. He made little allowance for the weakness of others; and was perhaps overbearing at their occasion- al shortcomings. But if he was too exacting, the fault-if fault it were -was atoned by his high integrity of character, fulfilling to others all that he exacted of them. He was pre-eminently a just man.
"Such men have not always kindly dispositions. But, notwithstand- ing his occasional peremptory manner, Judge Vilas was essentially a kind-hearted man. Not to speak of the estimation in which he was held by his own, his old neighbors-many of whom felt his helpful hand- bear witness to the goodness of his disposition.
"Cornelia's jewels are proverbial. It is a happy thing for Judge Vilas' memory that he has left behind him inheritors of his name, who honor him in adorning the profession. They are his best monument. To this living praise, we can add words only."
WILLIAM F. VILAS .*
An enumeration of those men of the present generation who have won honor and public recognition for themselves and at the same time have honored the state to which they belong, would be incomplete without prominent reference to the one whose name is given above. In the field, at the bar, in the halls of legislation, on the rostrum and in the councils of state, Colonel Vilas has been for years a large force.
William Freeman Vilas was born in Chelsea, Orange county, Ver- mont, July 9, 1840. He was a lad of about eleven when his father, . Judge Levi B. Vilas, came west with his family to make his home at Madison. The subject of this sketch early entered the university of Wisconsin, where he graduated with the highest honors of his class,
*This sketch is from the Columbian Biographical Dictionary, Wisconsin vol- ume, published in 1895. Its authorship is not known to the editor of this work, else the writer's name would be given. A few modifications of the language have been made. The paragraph concerning the editorship of the second edition of the Wiscon- sin reports and the concluding paragraph have been added.
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in 1858, at the age of eighteen. The year after graduation he went to the Albany law school, where for a year-the full duration then of the law course-he diligently and intelligently pursued the studies of the profession he had chosen. He took his diploma at that institution in 1860, and returned to Madison, where he entered upon the practice of law as a partner of Charles T. Wakeley, to whom was joined later his brother, Hon. Eleazer Wakeley, a lawyer of high ability, formerly United States territorial judge and afterward judge of the United States district court in Nebraska. Under such favorable auspices, thoroughly trained and equipped for the struggle, and imbued with an ardent love for his profession, the young lawyer's progress was rapid and satisfac- tory. In his twentieth year he argued his first case in the supreme court of the state. He speedily established himself in the esteem of his brethren on the bench and at the bar, and readily gained the confidence and good will of clients. He had, however, just entered upon his career when the civil war broke out, and it must certainly have cost him a struggle to abandon his profession and the alluring prospects of suc- cess which a just ambition held out to him. No unworthier sentiment could have caused him to hesitate, nor could that long control his con- duct. He had served in the old Governor's Guard, had been a captain of a zouave company, and when the real need came in 1862, when the raising of needed regiments began to be an uphill business, he started to raise a company for the twenty-third regiment. In a war meeting held in the state capitol, he made a speech full of patriotic fire and that magnetic eloquence for which he has since become famous. He ap- pealed to the young men to go with him. With clear reason he dis- closed the wrong of secession, its wickedness, its inexcusableness, and the duty of all, irrespective of politics or party affiliations, to unite in suppressing armed rebellion by armed force. His speech electrified all, and in a few days he filled his company, had it accepted and was mus- tered in as the senior captain. But, lest any jealousy should be engen- dered, he offered to waive his seniority, but his brother officers, cap- tured by the generous and manly spirit of the young captain, insisted that he should keep his seniority, which he had fairly earned by report- ing his company first full in complement of men. Entering the service
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he was soon promoted as major and then to the lieutenant colonelcy, and during a considerable part of his service, in the absence of his highly esteemed colonel, Guppy, he was in command of the regiment. He served under General Grant in the army of the Tennessee, and in the brilliant campaign that ended in the siege and fall of Vicksburg he led the regiment in several battles and skirmishes, and in the rapid marches and movements that enabled Grant to work out the superb strategy of that campaign. When the Vicksburg campaign had ended, his regi- ment was sent to New Orleans, and the confederacy was overthrown in that quarter. Colonel Vilas, seeing only a prospect for a long period of inaction, resigned and came home, as his father, who had become in- volved in heavy and threatening litigation, desired his assistance in defending it.
Resuming practice, he was soon in the front rank of his profession in the state. Unlike many who returned from stirring scenes of camp and field to the duties of civil life, he seemed to begin where he left off when he entered the army, and, in the same line of progressive develop- ment, he pressed zealously forward in his professional career. What- ever he had to do he did thoroughly and well, relying not merely nor mainly upon his undoubted talents, but never failing in diligent, in- telligent and systematic preparation.
He early formed habits of industry, without which all professional success must be illusive and disappointing. He never made the mis- take that many do who have the gift of eloquence. He never went into the trial unprepared. He knew all about his case, all about the law in it; he knew where it was weak and to be guarded and where was the true point of attack of his adversary.
He was married in 1866, and soon after established his beautiful home amid a grove of oaks a short distance from the city, where he could enjoy his evenings in the seclusion of his library, undisturbed by anxious clients or the numerous distractions of town life. There, for twelve years, he habitually devoted his evenings until a late hour of the night to study and reading-mainly in the line of his profession. Yet, notwithstanding the engrossing character of his professional studies, he found time to wander into the domain of general literature,
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history, politics, science, poetry, belles-lettres and the higher class of fiction, and in such fields to accomplish what would be for an ordinary man an immense amount of labor. Such was the result of the excellent use made by him of all his opportunities, his natural gifts, his courage and aptitude for legal controversy and his sound business sense and quick perceptions, that it is not too much to say that at the age of thirty he was the peer of any member of the then brilliant bar at the capital of the state. This early success neither tempted him to forego his efforts for further triumphs nor filled the measure of his ambition. He rather redoubled his exertions, nor did he thus seem to tax but rather to call forth his power. In every line of professional labor-in the office, at the pleader's desk, in the nisi prius courtroom, before the courts of last resort in equity, in law or in bankruptcy matters, he was instant, zealous, bold, untiring and generally successful. In his argu- ments in court he has always been more intent on impressing the jury with his views of the case than with his ability as a talker, and in con- sequence has seldom failed to convince them. His clientage, which was considerable at an early period of his professional career, constantly increased, until he had a flood of important business.
Besides giving his attention to the matters which thus came to him, Colonel Vilas, in connection with Colonel Edwin E. Bryant, for some years his law partner, prepared a new edition of volumes 1, 2, 4, 6-20, inclusive, Wisconsin reports, with notes. These were published. in · 1872, 1873, 1874 and 1875. He, also, before becoming a member of President Cleveland's cabinet, was a member of the faculty of the uni- versity college of law, and delivered lectures with such regularity as his business permitted.
In 1875 Colonel Vilas, associated with David Taylor and J. P. C. Cottrill, was appointed by the justices of the supreme court upon a commission to revise the statutes of Wisconsin. With painstaking assiduity and protracted labor, they rearranged, rewrote, condensed, classified and codified the whole body of general statute laws. The work was admirably done and accepted by the legislature in 1878.
Politically Colonel Vilas has always been a steadfast democrat and has ever stood by the banners of his party, aiding with a liberal hand,
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wise counsel and brave words of hope and cheer, even during the days of gloom when the prospects of the party were shrouded in darkness.
He attended the national conventions of his party as a delegate in 1876, 1880, 1884 and 1892. He was on the stump, speaking for the cause in Wisconsin and other states. Possessed of oratorical ability second to none, he was a powerful factor in the political campaigns, and with a degree of earnestness that carried conviction, he pleaded the cause of democracy. He did not seek political advancement. His devotion to his profession, as well as his own tastes and inclinations, ' prevented him from participating in a personal struggle for office, and in 1879 and in 1883 he refused to accept the democratic nomination for governor of the state. Although he desired to keep out of public life, he rendered much public service-once as trustee of the soldiers' or- phans' home, when that institution was in existence, and for a con- siderable period as regent of the state university, of which institution he has always been a firm friend. While acting as one of the board of regents, an action was brought by a student to test the question whether the charge of a few dollars per year as incidental fees could be made under the statutory provisions that tuition shall be free. The question involved was one of vital importance to the university, then struggling along with scant income. The regents employed Colonel Vilas for the defense. He fought it out, and as a lawyer, he might have charged a large fee, but he declined to render a bill, taking the ground that he as a regent could not, with propriety, make a charge for services, though rendered professionally as a lawyer. He won the case, thus augmenting permanently the revenues of the institution some ten thousand to twenty thousand dollars per annum. In 1885 he was a member of the assembly, and while acting in that capacity was instrumental in securing the passage of the largest appropriation bill in aid of the state university that had ever up to that time been passed.
Although Colonel Vilas repeatedly refused high political honors, he nevertheless became more and more conspicuous in national politics. His great natural ability, ripe knowledge, oratorical powers and great personal popularity with the people of his state made his name a power that exerted its influence throughout the land, and when President
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Cleveland, on the 5th of March, 1885, announced the names of those whom he had selected to serve as his assistants and advisors in the dis- charge of his duties, he not only conferred a high honor upon Wisconsin and the entire west, but tendered a fitting testimonial to the worth of one who for years had fought the battles of democracy without thought of self or of personal ambition, by appointing Colonel Vilas postmaster general. At that time he was a member of the legislature and the ses- sion was more than half served out. He asked for an apportionment of salary so that he could refund enough of the salary already drawn to leave due part to the member elected to succeed him. The legislature ' appropriated the full five hundred dollars to his successor, and took the ground that Colonel Vilas was entitled to all the money he had drawn. But he could not agree to this action, and returned the salary into the state treasury, preferring to forego all that he had earned than retain a smaller part which he deemed unearned. At the head of the postoffice department of the government, Colonel Vilas gave personal attention to. every feature of the business of his department. His practical mind soon devised means for bettering the service, and the methods he -de- signed and introduced are now followed in every one of the sixty thousand postoffices now serving the people. Though the senate was republican during his service at the head of the postoffice department, they invariably adopted Colonel Vilas' recommendations and freely gave every dollar that he asked for the service. On one occasion the postoffice committees of both houses adopted his estimate to a cent, for every one of the items in the appropriation for the postal service, aggregating about fifty-seven millions, explaining in their report that this unusual course was taken only after the most searching examina- tion, and the bill passed Congress.
When he mastered this vast department, that reaches into every nook and neighborhood of our vast domain, affecting by its efficiency or inefficiency every business and every home, the President, in Jan- uary, 1888, called him to another field. The interior department is one that represents a field of multitudinous details and demands at its head a man of broad mentality, discernment and a capacity for handling not only affairs of great importance, but, as already intimated, embracing
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extreme minutiae, and to this exacting post Colonel Vilas was called, and that he came fully enforced for gaining the mastery of the onerous duties thereby devolving, need not be said in this connection. Among other things this incumbency demanded the investigation of hundreds of Indian treaties, accounting with several hundred bands and tribes, the carrying out of a policy of humane care to lift up the Indian in civilization and save him from that extermination from which he can escape only by being raised from his savage state. Colonel Vilas grasped these with a capacity for mental labor such as few men possess -he patiently considered everything. His decisions in land cases, prepared when multitudinous matters demanded his attention, are now quoted from the bench as soundest expositions of land laws, applied in doubtful cases. Very few of them have been reversed by the courts. His rulings corrected much that was loose and laggard in the land office, brushed away much that was merely technical, aimed to do speedy and exact justice to settlers and to settle on a basis of equity and fairness many questions long delayed, which involved the hopes and homes of thousands of poor people on the frontier. The judicial work of the department was two years behind when he took hold, but when he laid down his portfolio in 1889, the large arrearage of un- finished business was well nigh closed. With a few more months of service it would have been brought up to date. His report as secretary of the interior was a compendium. It exhibited perfect knowledge and familiarity with the great conglomeration of bureaus and their bewilder- ing dependencies, and of the laws and policies guiding, as essential to wise guidance of them all. President Cleveland, in his message of that year, speaks of it as "an able and interesting report."
With the retirement of President Cleveland, Secretary Vilas laid down the onerous load of official care. Lamenting the defeat of his party and of his noble chief, whom he honored and loved and whose wisdom and perfect purity of purpose he profoundly esteemed, Colonel Vilas joyfully returned to the home he loved so well and to the freedom of private life.
The contest of 1890 forced him again into the political field. In this state, besides national questions, another issue was thrust into the can-
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vass-the Bennett law exciting great feeling. Colonel Vilas gave the subject careful attention. He saw in the law a mischievous departure from democratic principles; thought that the law needlessly and un- warrantably trenched on the most sacred grounds of personal liberty- that it thrust the rude hand of official authority into the home circle; gave affront to the feelings strongest and most sensitive in the human race-the feelings of paternal affection and religious obligation; that it wounded the pride of race and the love of mother tongue; and all this without necessity and by a law as clumsy and inapt in structure as it was, to his mind, vicious in principle. Colonel Vilas traversed the state, speaking nightly to crowded audiences, denouncing the Mckinley tariff and the Bennett law, illustrating the badness of each. The arrows of the enemy were quite generally aimed at him, but with the same intrepid ardor with which he led his regiment in battle, he bravely led the Wis- consin democracy against its political foes, and when the smoke of battle had cleared, the enemy was routed.
This political victory assured a democratic majority in the legisla- ture, and the election of a democrat to succeed Senator Spooner in the United States senate. The vital question in national affairs was tariff reform. Colonel Vilas had always been a tariff reformer and had re- peatedly condemned the system of protection. In many democratic platforms written or reported by him in the state conventions he gave forcible condemnation to the republican system of tariff extortion. During many years he chafed impatiently while the leagued protection- ists, in full control of the republican leaders, also managed to hold in leash some of the democratic chieftains and by deft management to stay all party assault upon the tariff law. Colonel Vilas regarded those laws as iniquitous. He studied them carefully and vigorously opposed them. In 1883, when democracy was nearly inert on the great question, Col- onel Vilas in a short speech before the Iroquois club at Chicago, threw down the gage of battle in premises, from which he deduced a summing up which clearly defined the position which his party must assume on this great issue.
After viewing his entire career-as a citizen, as a soldier, as a states- man and as a tariff-reform democrat-it is not surprising that the
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democrats of Wisconsin, through their representatives in the legisla- ture, selected him to guard their interests in the most important legis- lative body on the globe, which they did by electing him United States senator on the 28th of January, 1891. As a senator, Colonel Vilas dis- played the same degree of ability that characterized his entire career.
It is but just to say that Colonel Vilas proved himself to be one of the best equipped men of his generation for participation in the deliber- ations and actions of the United States senate. He is a sound, clear- minded, well-trained jurist. The limitations which are imposed by the constitution on federal powers are well understood by him. With the long line of decisions, from Marshall down, by which the constitution has been expounded, he is familiar, as are all great lawyers. He is at home in all the details of the law from the minutest points in practice to the greater topics wherein are involved a consideration of the ethics and philosophy of jurisprudence and the highest concerns of public policy. But he is not learned in the law alone. He is deeply read in history, has studied long and carefully the subjects that, to the states- man, are of deep interest, the questions of finance, political economy, sociology, and has kept abreast with the best thinking men of the age.
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