The power of
convincing intelligent men always depends largely and mainly on
soundness of judgment in the selection of positions.
convincing intelligent men always depends largely and mainly on
soundness of judgment in the selection of positions.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 - Cal to Chr
, Le Yin (ch.
xviii.
).
The Great God has conferred on the inferior people a moral
sense, compliance with which would show their nature invariably
right. -SHOO KING, Announcement of T'ang (ch. ii. ).
Confucius said: "There are three things which the superior
man guards against. In youth when the physical powers are not
yet settled, he guards against lust. When he is strong and the
physical powers are full of vigor, he guards against quarrelsome-
ness. When he is old and the animal powers are decayed, he
guards against covetousness. "-CONFUCIAN AN. , Ke She (ch. vii. ).
-
He who stops short where stopping short is not allowable, will
stop short in everything. He who behaves shabbily to those
whom he ought to treat well, will behave shabbily to all. -MEN-
CIUS, Tsin Sin (pt. i. , ch. xliv. ).
Men are partial where they feel affection and love; partial
where they despise and dislike; partial where they stand in awe
and reverence; partial where they feel sorrow and compassion;
partial where they are arrogant and rude. Thus it is that there
are few men in the world who love and at the same time know
the bad qualities of the object of their love, or who hate and
yet know the excellences of the object of their hatred. - THE
GREAT LEARNING (ch. viii. ).
Heaven's plan in the production of mankind is this: that they
who are first informed should instruct those who are later in
being informed, and they who first apprehend principles should
instruct those who are slower to do so. I am one of Heaven's
people who first apprehended. I will take these principles and
instruct this people in them. - MENCIUS, Wan Chang (pt. i. , ch.
vii. ).
From The Proverbial Philosophy of Confucius': copyrighted 1895, by Forster
H. Jennings; G. P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers
## p. 3649 (#637) ###########################################
3649
RUFUS CHOATE
(1799-1859)
BY ALBERT STICKNEY
UFUS CHOATE, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of
advocates who have appeared at the English or American
bar, was one of the most remarkable products of what is
ordinarily considered hard, prosaic, matter-of-fact New England. He
was a man quite apart from the ordinary race of lawyers or New-
Englanders. He was as different from the typical New-Englander as
was Hawthorne or Emerson. He had the imagination of a poet; and
to his imagination, singular as it may seem,
was largely due his success in handling ques-
tions of fact before juries.
He was born of good old English stock,
in the southeastern part of the town of
Ipswich, in the county of Essex and State
of Massachusetts, on the first day of Octo-
ber, 1799.
His ancestors had lived in Essex
County from a very early date in its history
and had filled important public positions.
He was born and bred in sight of the sea,
and his love for it stayed with him through
life. One of his most eloquent addresses
was on The Romance of the Sea. ' And in
his last illness at Halifax, his keenest pleas-
ure was to watch the ships sailing in front of his windows. Drop-
ping into sleep on one occasion, a few days before his death, he
said to his attendant, "If a schooner or sloop goes by, don't disturb
me; but if there is a square-rigged vessel, wake me. "
Mr. Choate had the ordinary education then given in New Eng-
land to young men who had a love of learning. He began with the
district school; from there he went to the academy at Hampton,
New Hampshire; and later he entered Dartmouth College, where he
graduated the first scholar in his class, in 1819. It is hard to find
an accurate standard of comparison between the scholarship of that
period and that of the present. No doubt, in our New England
colleges of to-day there is a larger number of young men who have
a considerable store of knowledge on many subjects of classical
learning. But it is very doubtful if the graduates of Harvard and
RUFUS CHOATE
VI-229
## p. 3650 (#638) ###########################################
3650
RUFUS CHOATE
Yale of to-day are able to read the standard classic authors at the
day of their graduation, with the ease and accuracy of Mr. Choate
at the end of his active professional career in the year 1859. His
continued devotion to the classics is shown by the following extract
from his journal in the year 1844, while he was a member of
Congress:-
"1. Some professional work must be done every day.
Recent
experiences suggest that I ought to be more familiar with evidence and
Cowen's Phillips; therefore, daily for half an hour, I will thumb conscien-
tiously. When I come home again, in the intervals of actual employment, my
recent methods of reading, accompanying the reports with the composition of
arguments upon the points adjudged, may be properly resumed.
"2. In my Greek, Latin, and French readings — Odyssey, Thucydides,
Tacitus, Juvenal, and some French orator or critic-I need make no change.
So, too, Milton, Johnson, Burke- semper in manu-ut mos est.
To my
Greek I ought to add a page a day of Crosby's Grammar, and the practice of
parsing every word in my few lines of Homer. On Sunday, the Greek Testa-
ment, and Septuagint, and French. This, and the oration of the Crown,
which I will completely master, translate, annotate, and commit, will be
enough in this kind. If not, I will add a translation of a sentence or two
from Tacitus. »
A similar extract from his journal under the date of December
15th, 1844, reads:
"I begin a great work,- Thucydides, in Bloomfield's new edition,— with
the intention of understanding a difficult and learning something from an
instructive writer,- something for the more and more complicated, interior,
inter-State American politics.
"With Thucydides, I shall read Wachsmuth with historical references aud
verifications. Schomann on the Assemblies of the Athenians, especially, I am
to meditate, and master Danier's Horace, Ode 1, 11th to 14th line, translation
and notes, -a pocket edition to be always in pocket. "
Throughout his life Mr. Choate kept up his classical studies. Few
of the graduates of our leading colleges to-day carry from Com-
mencement a training which makes the study of the Greek and Latin
authors either easy or pleasant. Mr. Choate, like nearly every law-
yer who has ever distinguished himself at the English bar, was a
monument to the value of the study of the classics as a mere means
of training for the active practical work of a lawyer.
Mr. Choate studied law at Cambridge in the Harvard Law School.
Nearly a year he spent at Washington in the office of Mr. Wirt, then
Attorney-General of the United States. This was in 1821. There-
after he was admitted to the bar, in September, 1823. He opened his
office in Salem, but soon removed to Danvers, where he practiced for
four or five years.
## p. 3651 (#639) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3651
During these earliest years of his professional life he had the
fortune which many other brilliant men in his profession have expe-
rienced, that of waiting and hoping. During his first two or three
years, it is said, he was so despondent as to his chances of profes-
sional success that he seriously contemplated abandoning the law. In
time he got his opportunity to show the stuff of which he was made.
His first professional efforts were in petty cases before justices of
the peace. Very soon however his great ability, with his untiring
industry and his intense devotion to any cause in his hands, brought
the reputation which he deserved, and reputation brought clients.
In 1828 he removed to Salem. The Essex bar was one of great
ability. Mr. Choate at once became a leader. Among his contem-
poraries at that bar was Caleb Cushing. Mr. Choate at first had
many criminal cases. In the year 1830 he was, with Mr. Webster,
one of the counsel for the prosecution in the celebrated White murder
case.
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
In 1830 he was elected to Congress as a member of the House of
Representatives, at the age of thirty-one years. At once he laid out
a course of study which was to fit him for the duties of his public
life. An extract from it reads as follows:-
:-
«Nov. 4, 1830.
« Facienda ad munus nuper impositum.
"1. Pers. quals. [personal qualities], Memory, Daily Food, and Cowper
dum ambulo. Voice, Manner, Exercitationes diurnæ.
«2. Current politics in papers. 1. Cum Notulis, daily,- Geog. , &c. 2.
Annual Reg. , Past Intelligencers, &c.
"4. Civil History of U. States-in Pitkin and original sources.
5. Exam. of Pending Questions: Tariff, Pub. Lands, Indians, Nullifica-
tions.
❝6. Am. and Brit. Eloquence,- Writing, Practice. »
Then follow in his manuscript upwards of twenty pages of close
writing, consisting of memoranda and statements, drawn from a mul-
titude of sources, on the subjects laid down by him at the beginning
as the ones to be investigated.
In Congress he found himself in competition with many men of
marked ability. Among the members of Congress then from Massa-
chusetts were Mr. Webster in the Senate; and in the House, John
Quincy Adams, Edward Everett, Nathan Appleton, George N. Briggs,
and John Davis. In the Senate, from other States, were Peleg
Sprague from Maine, one of the ablest jurists this country has pro-
duced; Samuel Prentiss, Mr. Marcy, Mr. Dallas, Mr. Clayton, Mr.
Clay, and Mr. Benton. In the House were James M. Wayne, Mr.
McDuffie, Mr. Polk, Mr. Corwin, and Mr. Verplanck.
## p. 3652 (#640) ###########################################
3652
RUFUS CHOATE
Among men of this calibre Mr. Choate at once, with ease, took
rank as one of the first. He made but two speeches during the
session; but these gave him a position which he ever afterwards held
among the most eloquent and convincing speakers in public life.
In April 1833 Mr. Choate was re-elected to Congress. At this
session he made a speech on the removal of the public deposits by
President Jackson from the Bank of the United States. The follow-
ing incident shows his power as an orator:—
Benjamin Hardin was then a member from Kentucky, of the
House of Representatives; and was himself intending to speak on
the same side of the question with Mr. Choate. In such cases, Mr.
Hardin's rule was to listen to no other speaker before speaking him-
self. Consequently when Mr. Choate began speaking, Mr. Hardin
started to leave the House. He waited however for a moment to
listen to a few sentences from Mr. Choate, and with this result, as
told in his own words:-"The member from Massachusetts rose to
speak, and in accordance with my custom I took my hat to leave,
lingering a moment just to notice the tone of his voice and the
manner of his speech. But that moment was fatal to my resolution.
I became charmed by the music of his voice, and was captivated by
the power of his eloquence, and found myself wholly unable to
move until the last word of his beautiful speech had been uttered. "
men.
At the close of this session Mr. Choate resigned his seat in Con-
gress and went to Boston, there to follow the practice of his profes-
sion. At the Boston bar he met a remarkably brilliant group of
There were Jeremiah Mason, whom Mr. Webster is said to
have considered the strongest man that he ever met in any legal
contest; Franklin Dexter; Chief Justice Shaw (then at the bar); Judges
Wilde, Hoar, and Thomas, afterwards of the Massachusetts Supreme
Court; Mr. Fletcher, Judge Benjamin R. Curtis, Sidney Bartlett.
Richard H. Dana, William D. Sohier, Henry W. Paine, Edward D.
Sohier, with others whose names are now almost forgotten. These
men formed a bar the like of which has seldom if ever been assem-
bled in any one jurisdiction. Here too Mr. Choate at once came to
the front. With every talent which could make a man a great advo-
cate, with a marvelous memory, a keen logical intellect, a sound
legal judgment, he had now acquired a large professional experience
and a very complete professional training. As has been seen, he had
a thorough classical training,- that is, of the kind best fitted to his
needs. His professional studies before beginning his professional
practice had been the best then attainable; very possibly, for him,
they were quite as good as can be had at any of the law schools of
to-day. His range of reading and information was extremely wide.
He had had several years of experience at Washington in Congress.
-
## p. 3653 (#641) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3653
And ever since leaving the law school his mere professional studies
had been most severe. It is hard to see how any man could be
better equipped for professional practice than Mr. Choate was at this
time.
His success at the Boston bar was phenomenal. He was in a con-
test with giants. Mr. Webster alone could be deemed to dispute
with Mr. Choate the place of supremacy. The general verdict has
been that for pure intellectual power Mr. Webster was the superior.
But it may well be doubted whether as an all-round advocate Mr.
Choate did not carry off the palm. The common idea of Mr. Choate
has been that his marvelous eloquence was his great source of
strength and success in his forensic contests. This is an error.
Eloquent he undoubtedly was; few men have ever been more so.
But unless in frontier communities, eloquence alone has never com-
manded great success at the bar-if indeed it has ever existed-
without strong logical power and sound judgment.
The power of
convincing intelligent men always depends largely and mainly on
soundness of judgment in the selection of positions. Especially is this
so in the profession of the law. There have been, no doubt, many
instances where men of eloquence have captivated juries by appeals
to passion or prejudice. But in the vast majority of cases, success
as an advocate cannot be had without sound judgment in the selec
tion of positions, coupled with the power of clear logical statement.
Mr. Choate was no exception to this rule. Mr. Henry W. Paine, one
of the leaders of the Boston bar in Mr. Choate's time,- himself one
of the most logical of men,- once said that he did not care to hear
Mr. Choate address a jury, but to hear him argue a bill of exceptions
before the full bench of the Supreme Court was one of the greatest
intellectual treats. With the ordinary twelve men in a jury-box Mr.
Choate was a wizard. His knowledge of human nature, his wide and
deep sympathies, his imagination, his power of statement, with his
rich musical voice and his wonderful fascination of manner, made
him a charmer of men and a master in the great art of winning
verdicts. So far as the writer is able to form an opinion, there has
never been at the English or American bar a man who has been his
equal in his sway over juries. Comparisons are often condemned, but
they are at times useful. Comparing Mr. Choate with Mr. Webster,
it must be conceded that Mr. Webster might at times carry a jury
against Mr. Choate by his force of intellect and the tremendous
power of his personal presence. Mr. O'Conor once said that he did
not consider Mr. Webster an eloquent man. "Mr. Webster," he said,
<< was an intellectual giant. But he never impressed me as being an
eloquent man. " The general judgment is that Mr. Webster had
eloquence of a very high order. But Mr. Choate was a magician.
## p. 3654 (#642) ###########################################
3654
RUFUS CHOATE
With any opponent of his time except Mr. Webster, he was irresistible
before juries. Mr. Justice Catron of the United States Court is
reported to have said of Mr. Choate, "I have heard the most eminent
advocates, but he surpasses them all. " His success came from a
rare combination of eloquence, sound logical judgment, and great
powers of personal fascination.
In another respect the common opinion of Mr. Choate must be
corrected. His great powers of persuasion and conviction undoubtedly
gave him some victories which were not deserved by the mere merits
of his cases. From this fact there went abroad the impression that
he was a man without principle, and that his ethical standards were
not high in his selection and conduct of cases. This impression is
quite contrary to the judgment of the competent. The impression
was due largely to his success in the celebrated defense of Tirrell.
Tirrell was indicted for the murder of a woman named Bickford, with
whom Tirrell had long associated, who was found dead in a house of
ill-repute. At about the hour when the woman lost her life, either
by her own hand or by that of Tirrell, the house caught fire. The
cause of the fire was not proved. Tirrell had been in her company
the preceding evening, and articles of clothing belonging to him.
were found in the morning in her room. Many circumstances seemed
to indicate that the woman had been killed by Tirrell. He was also
indicted for arson in setting fire to the house. In addition to other
facts proved by the defense, it was shown by reputable witnesses
that Tirrell had from his youth been subject to somnambulism; and
one of the positions taken by Mr. Choate for the defense was that
the killing, if done by Tirrell at all, was done by him while uncon-
scious, in a condition of somnambulism. Tirrell was tried under
both indictments and was acquitted on both. The indictment for
murder was tried before Justices Wilde, Dewey, and Hubbard. The
indictment for arson was tried before Chief Justice Shaw and Justices
Wilde and Dewey. The foreman of the jury stated that the defense
of somnambulism received no weight in the deliberations of the jury.
The judgment of the profession has been that the verdicts were the
only ones which could properly have been rendered on the evidence.
In the arson case the charge to the jury was by Chief Justice Shaw,
and was strongly in favor of the defense. No doubt the defense was
extremely able and ingenious. But the criticisms against Mr. Choate
for his conduct of those cases, in the opinion of those members of
the profession best qualified to judge, have been held to be without
good foundation. Lawyers—that is, reputable ones-do not manu-
facture evidence, nor are they the witnesses who testify to facts.
The severe tests of cross-examination usually elicit the truth. No
one ever charged Mr. Choate with manufacturing evidence.
And no
## p. 3655 (#643) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3655
lawyer of good judgment, so far as the writer is aware, has ever
charged him with practices which were not in keeping with the very
highest professional standards.
In the space here allotted, any attempt to give an adequate idea
of Mr. Choate's professional and public work is quite out of the
question. In addition to the conduct of an unusually large profes-
sional practice he did a large amount of literary work, mainly in the
delivery of lectures, which at that time in New England were almost
a part of the public system of education. Throughout his life he
took an active part in politics. He attended the Whig convention at
Baltimore in 1852, where General Scott received his nomination for
the Presidency, and where Mr. Choate made one of the most elo-
quent speeches of his life in his effort to secure the nomination for
Mr. Webster.
Mr. Choate finally killed himself by overwork. Though a man of
great physical strength and remarkable vitality, no constitution could
stand the strain of his intense labors in the different lines of law,
literature, and politics. His magnificent physique finally broke down.
He died on July 13th, 1859, being not quite sixty years. His death
was an important public event. In the public press, at many public
meetings throughout the country, and by public men of the highest
distinction, his death was treated as a public misfortune.
In his day
he rendered distinguished public services. He had the capacities
and the interests which fitted him to be a great statesman. Had
it not been for our system of short terms, and rotation in office,
Mr. Choate would probably have remained in public life from the
time of his entry into Congress, would have been a most valuable
public servant, and would have left a great reputatio as a states-
man. As it was, he left, so far as now appears, only the ephemeral
reputation of a great advocate.
This scanty sketch can best be closed by a quotation from the
address of Richard H. Dana at the meeting of the Boston bar held
just after Mr. Choate's death. That extract will show the judgment
of Mr. Choate which was held by the giants among whom he lived
and of whom he was the leader:
-
«The wine of life is drawn. The golden bowl is broken. ' The age of
miracles has passed. The day of inspiration is over. The Great Conqueror,
unseen and irresistible, has broken into our temple and has carried off the
vessels of gold, the vessels of silver, the precious stones, the jewels, and the
ivory; and like the priests of the temple of Jerusalem after the invasion from
Babylon, we must content ourselves as we can with vessels of wood and of
stone and of iron.
"With such broken phrases as these, Mr. Chairman, perhaps not altogether
just to the living, we endeavor to express the emotions natural to this hour of
## p. 3656 (#644) ###########################################
3656
RUFUS CHOATE
our bereavement. Talent, industry, eloquence, and learning, there are still,
and always will be, at the bar of Boston. But if I say that the age of mira-
cles has passed, that the day of inspiration is over, if I cannot realize that
in this place where we now are, the cloth of gold was spread, and a banquet
set fit for the gods,— I know, sir, you will excuse it. Any one who has lived
with him and now survives him, will excuse it;-any one who like the youth
in Wordsworth's Ode,-
-
(by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended,
At length
perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day. >»
It will also tend to secure justice to Mr. Choate's memory, if
there be here recorded the statement by Judge Benjamin R. Curtis
of the judgment of the men of Mr. Choate's own profession, as to the
moral standards by which Mr. Choate was governed in his practice.
Judge Curtis said in his address at the same meeting of the Boston
Bar:-
"I desire, therefore, on this occasion and in this presence, to declare our
appreciation of the injustice which would be done to this great and eloquent
advocate by attributing to him any want of loyalty to truth, or any deference
to wrong, because he employed all his great powers and attainments, and
used to the utmost his consummate skill and eloquence, in exhibiting and
enforcing the comparative merits of one side of the cases in which he acted.
In doing so he but did his duty. If other people did theirs, the administra-
tion of justice was secured. »
West listiny
Stickney
## p. 3657 (#645) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3657
All the citations are from 'Addresses and Orations of Rufus Choate': copy-
righted 1878, by Little, Brown and Company
THE PURITAN IN SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS LIFE
From Address Delivered at the Ipswich Centennial, 1834
TURN
URN first now for a moment to the old English Puritans, the
fathers of our fathers, of whom came, of whom were, plant-
ers of Ipswich, of Massachusetts, of New England,— of
whom came, of whom were, our own Ward, Parker, and Salton-
stall, and Wise, Norton, and Rogers, and Appleton, and Cobbet,
and Winthrop,- and see whether they were likely to be the
founders of a race of freemen or slaves. Remember then, the
true, noblest, the least questioned, least questionable, praise of
these men is this: that for a hundred years they were the sole
depositaries of the sacred fire of liberty in England after it had
gone out in every other bosom,- that they saved at its last
gasp the English Constitution, which the Tudors and the first
two Stuarts were rapidly changing into just such a gloomy des-
potism as they saw in France and Spain,- and wrought into it
every particle of freedom which it now possesses,- that when
they first took their seats in the House of Commons, in the
early part of the reign of Elizabeth, they found it the cringing
and ready tool of the throne, and that they reanimated it, remod-
eled it, reasserted its privileges, restored it to its constitutional
rank, drew back to it the old power of making laws, redressing
wrongs, and imposing taxes, and thus again rebuilt and opened
what an Englishman called "the chosen temple of liberty," an
English House of Commons,- that they abridged the tremen-
dous power of the crown and defined it, and when at last
Charles Stuart resorted to arms to restore the despotism they
had partially overthrown, that they met him on a hundred fields.
of battle, and buried, after a sharp and long struggle, crown
and mitre and the headless trunk of the king himself beneath
the foundations of a civil and religious commonwealth. This
praise all the historians of England - Whig and Tory, Protes-
tant and Catholic, Hume, Hallam, Lingard, and all-award to
the Puritans. By what causes this spirit of liberty had been
breathed into the masculine, enthusiastic, austere, resolute char-
acter of this extraordinary body of men, in such intensity as to
mark them off from all the rest of the people of England, I
cannot here and now particularly consider. It is a thrilling and
-
## p. 3658 (#646) ###########################################
3658
RUFUS CHOATE
awful history of the Puritans in England, from their first emerg-
ing above the general level of Protestants, in the time of Henry
VIII. and Edward VI. , until they were driven by hundreds and
thousands to these shores; but I must pass it over. It was just
when the nobler and grander traits - the enthusiasm and piety
and hardihood and energy-of Puritanism had attained the high-
est point of exaltation to which, in England, it ever mounted up,
and the love of liberty had grown to be the great master-passion
that fired and guided all the rest,-it was just then that our
portion of its disciples, filled with the undiluted spirit, glowing
with the intensest fervors of Protestantism and republicanism.
together, came hither, and in that elevated and holy and re-
solved frame began to build the civil and religious structures
which you see around you.
Trace now their story a little farther onward through the
Colonial period to the War of Independence, to admire with me.
the providential agreement of circumstances by which that spirit
of liberty which brought them hither was strengthened and re-
inforced; until at length, instructed by wisdom, tempered by vir-
tue, and influenced by injuries, by anger and grief and conscious
worth and the sense of violated right, it burst forth here and
wrought the wonders of the Revolution. I have thought that if
one had the power to place a youthful and forming people like
the Northern colonists, in whom the love of freedom was already
vehement and healthful, in a situation the most propitious for
the growth and perfection of that sacred sentiment, he could
hardly select a fairer field for so interesting an experiment than
the actual condition of our fathers for the hundred and fifty
years after their arrival, to the War of the Revolution.
They had freedom enough to teach them its value and to
refresh and elevate their spirits, wearied, not despondent, from
the contentions and trials of England. They were just so far
short of perfect freedom that instead of reposing for a moment
in the mere fruition of what they had, they were kept emulous
and eager for more, looking all the while up and aspiring to rise
to a loftier height, to breathe a purer air, and bask in a brighter
beam. Compared with the condition of England down to 1688,
-compared with that of the larger part of the continent of
Europe down to our Revolution,- theirs was a privileged and
liberal condition. The necessaries of freedom, if I may say
so, its plainer food and homelier garments and humbler habita-
-
## p. 3659 (#647) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3659
tions, were theirs. Its luxuries and refinements, its festivals,
its lettered and social glory, its loftier port and prouder look and
richer graces, were the growth of a later day; these came in
with independence. Here was liberty enough to make them love
it for itself, and to fill them with those lofty and kindred senti-
ments which are at once its fruit and its nutriment and safe-
guard in the soul of man. But their liberty was still incomplete,
and it was constantly in danger from England; and these two
circumstances had a powerful effect in increasing that love and
confirming those sentiments. It was a condition precisely adapted
to keep liberty, as a subject of thought and feeling and desire,
every moment in mind. Every moment they were comparing
what they had possessed with what they wanted and had a right
to; they calculated by the rule of three, if a fractional part of
freedom came to so much, what would express the power and
value of the whole number! They were restive and impatient
and ill at ease; a galling wakefulness possessed their faculties
like a spell. Had they been wholly slaves, they had lain still
and slept. Had they been wholly free, that eager hope, that
fond desire, that longing after a great, distant, yet practicable
good, would have given way to the placidity and luxury and
carelessness of complete enjoyment; and that energy and whole-
some agitation of mind would have gone down like an ebb-tide.
As it was, the whole vast body of waters all over its surface,
down to its sunless, utmost depths, was heaved and shaken and
purified by a spirit that moved above it and through it and gave
it no rest, though the moon waned and the winds were in their
caves; they were like the disciples of the old and bitter philoso-
phy of paganism, who had been initiated into one stage of the
greater mysteries, and who had come to the door, closed, and
written over with strange characters, which led up to another.
They had tasted of truth, and they burned for a fuller draught;
a partial revelation of that which shall be hereafter had dawned;
and their hearts throbbed eager, yet not without apprehension,
to look upon the glories of the perfect day. Some of the mys-
tery of God, of Nature, of Man, of the Universe, had been
unfolded; might they by prayer, by abstinence, by virtue, by
retirement, by contemplation, entitle themselves to read another
page in the clasped and awful volume?
-
## p. 3660 (#648) ###########################################
3660
RUFUS CHOATE
THE NEW-ENGLANDER'S CHARACTER
From Address Delivered at the Ipswich Centennial, 1834
I
HOLD it to have been a great thing, in the first place, that we
had among us, at that awful moment when the public mind
was meditating the question of submission to the tea tax, or
resistance by arms, and at the more awful moment of the first
appeal to arms, that we had some among us who personally
knew what war was. Washington, Putnam, Stark, Gates, Pres-
cott, Montgomery, were soldiers already. So were hundreds of
others of humbler rank, but not yet forgotten by the people whom
they helped to save, who mustered to the camp of our first
Revolutionary armies. These all had tasted a soldier's life.
They had seen fire, they had felt the thrilling sensations, the
quickened flow of blood to and from the heart, the mingled
apprehension and hope, the hot haste, the burning thirst, the
feverish ture of battle, which he who has not felt is uncon-
scious of one-half of the capacities and energies of his nature;
which he who has felt, I am told, never forgets. They had slept
in the woods on the withered leaves or the snow, and awoke to
breakfast upon birch-bark and the tender tops of willow-trees.
They had kept guard on the outposts on many a stormy night,
knowing perfectly that the thicket half a pistol-shot off was full
of French and Indian riflemen.
I say it was something that we had such men among us.
They helped discipline our raw first levies. They knew what an
army is, and what it needs, and how to provide for it. They
could take that young volunteer of sixteen by the hand, sent by
an Ipswich mother, who after looking upon her son equipped
for battle from which he might not return, Spartan-like, bid him.
go and behave like a man—and many, many such shouldered a
musket for Lexington and Bunker Hill - and assure him from
their own personal knowledge that after the first fire he never
would know fear again, even that of the last onset. But the
long and peculiar wars of New England had done more than to
furnish a few such officers and soldiers as these.
They had
formed that public sentiment upon the subject of war which
re-united all the armies, fought all the battles, and won all the
glory of the Revolution. The truth is that war in some form or
another had been, from the first, one of the usages, one of the
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RUFUS CHOATE
3661
habits, of colonial life. It had been felt from the first to be
just as necessary as planting or reaping to be as likely to
break out every day and every night as a thunder-shower in
summer, and to break out as suddenly. There have been
nations who boasted that their rivers or mountains never saw
―
the smoke of an enemy's camp. Here the war-whoop awoke
the sleep of the cradle; it startled the dying man on his pil-
low; it summoned young and old from the meeting-house, from
the burial, and from the bridal ceremony, to the strife of death.
The consequence was that the steady, composed, and reflecting
courage which belongs to all the English race grew into a lead-
ing characteristic of New England; and a public sentiment was
formed, pervading young and old and both sexes, which declared
it lawful, necessary, and honorable to risk life and to shed
blood for a great cause, for our family, for our fires, for our
God, for our country, for our religion. In such a cause it
declared that the voice of God himself commanded to the field.
The courage of New England was the "courage of conscience. »
It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of
war for itself. It would not have hurried her sons to the Nile,
or the foot of the Pyramids, or across the great raging sea of
snows which rolled from Smolensko to Moscow, to set the stars
of glory upon the glowing brow of ambition. But it was a
courage which at Lexington, at Bunker Hill, at Bennington,
and at Saratoga, had power to brace the spirit for the patriot's
fight, and gloriously roll back the tide of menaced war from
their homes, the soil of their birth, the graves of their fathers,
and the everlasting hills of their freedom.
OF THE AMERICAN BAR
From the Address before the Cambridge Law School, 1845
SOME
OMETHING such has, in all the past periods of our history, been
one of the functions of the American bar. To vindicate
the true interpretation of the charters of the colonies, to
advise what forms of polity, what systems of jurisprudence,
what degree and what mode of liberty these charters per-
mitted, to detect and expose that long succession of infringe-
ment which grew at last to the Stamp Act and Tea Tax, and
compelled us to turn from broken charters to national independ-
## p. 3662 (#650) ###########################################
3662
RUFUS CHOATE
ence, to conduct the transcendent controversy which preceded.
the Revolution, that grand appeal to the reason of civilization,-
this was the work of our first generation of lawyers: to con-
struct the American constitutions: the higher praise of the
second generation. I claim it in part for the sobriety and learn-
ing of the American bar; for the professional instinct towards
the past; for the professional appreciation of order, forms, obe-
dience, restraints; for the more than professional, the profound
and wide intimacy with the history of all liberty, classical,
mediæval, and above all, of English liberty,-I claim it in part
for the American bar that, springing into existence by revolu-
tion, revolution, which more than anything and all things
lacerates and discomposes the popular mind,-justifying that
revolution only on a strong principle of natural right, with not
one single element or agent of monarchy or aristocracy on our
soil or in our blood,-I claim it for the bar that the constitu-
tions of America so nobly closed the series of our victories!
These constitutions owe to the bar more than their terse and
exact expression and systematic arrangements: they owe to it
in part, too, their elements of permanence; their felicitous recon-
ciliation of universal and intense liberty with forms to enshrine
and regulations to restrain it; their Anglo-Saxon sobriety and
gravity conveyed in the genuine idiom, suggestive of the grand-
est civil achievements of that unequaled race. To interpret
these constitutions, to administer and maintain them, this is the
office of our age of the profession. Herein have we somewhat
wherein to glory; hereby we come into the class and share in
the dignity of founders of States, of restorers of States, of pre-
servers of States.
I said and I repeat that while lawyers, and because we are
lawyers, we are statesmen. We are by profession statesmen.
And who may measure the value of this department of public
duty? Doubtless in statesmanship there are many mansions,
and large variety of conspicuous service. Doubtless to have
wisely decided the question of war or peace,-to have adjusted
by a skillful negotiation a thousand miles of unsettled boundary-
line, to have laid the corner-stone of some vast policy whereby
the currency is corrected, the finances enriched, the measure of
industrial fame filled,- are large achievements. And yet I do
not know that I can point to one achievement of this depart-
ment of American statesmanship which can take rank for its
## p. 3663 (#651) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3663
consequences of good above that single decision of the Supreme
Court which adjudged that an act of legislature contrary to the
Constitution is void, and that the judicial department is clothed
with the power to ascertain the repugnancy and to pronounce
the legal conclusion. That the framers of the Constitution
intended this should be so is certain; but to have asserted it
against the Congress and the Executive,- to have vindicated it
by that easy yet adamantine demonstration than which the
reasonings of the mathematics show nothing surer,-to have
inscribed this vast truth of conservatism on the public mind, so
that no demagogue, not in the last stage of intoxication, denies
it, this is an achievement of statesmanship of which a thousand
years may not exhaust or reveal all the good.
―
DANIEL WEBSTER
From Eulogy delivered at Dartmouth College, 1853
So
COMETIMES it has seemed to me that to enable one to appre-
ciate with accuracy, as a psychological speculation, the
intrinsic and absolute volume and texture of that brain,
the real rate and measure of those abilities,-it was better
not to see or hear him, unless you could see or hear him fre-
quently, and in various modes of exhibition; for undoubtedly
there was something in his countenance and bearing so express-
ive of command, something even in his conversational lan-
guage when saying "Parva summisse et modica temperate,” so
exquisitely plausible, embodying the likeness at least of a rich
truth, the forms at least of a large generalization, in an epithet,
an antithesis,—a pointed phrase,- a broad and peremptory
thesis, and something in his grander forthputting, when roused
by a great subject or occasion exciting his reason and touching
his moral sentiments and his heart, so difficult to be resisted,
approaching so near, going so far beyond, the higher style of
man, that although it left you a very good witness of his power
of influencing others, you were not in the best condition imme-
diately to pronounce on the quality or the source of the in-
fluence. You saw the flash and heard the peal, and felt the
admiration and fear; but from what region it was launched, and
by what divinity, and from what Olympian seat, you could not
certainly yet tell. To do that you must, if you saw him at all,
-
## p. 3664 (#652) ###########################################
3664
RUFUS CHOATE
see him many times; compare him with himself and with others;
follow his dazzling career from his father's house; observe from
what competitors he won those laurels; study his discourses,-
study them by the side of those of other great men of this coun-
try and time, and of other countries and times, conspicuous in
the same fields of mental achievement,- look through the crys-
tal water of the style down to the golden sands of the thought;
analyze and contrast intellectual power somewhat; consider what
kind and what quantity of it has been held by students of mind
needful in order to great eminence in the higher mathematics,
or metaphysics, or reason of the law; what capacity to analyze,
through and through, to the primordial elements of the truths of
that science; yet what wisdom and sobriety, in order to control
the wantonness and shun the absurdities of a mere scholastic
logic, by systematizing ideas, and combining them, and repress-
ing one by another, thus producing, not a collection of intense
and conflicting paradoxes, but a code, scientifically coherent
and practically useful, consider what description and what
quantity of mind have been held needful by students of mind in
order to conspicuous eminence - long maintained-in statesman-
ship; that great practical science, that great philosophical art,
whose ends are the existence, happiness, and honor of a nation;
whose truths are to be drawn from the widest survey of man,-
of social man,- of the particular race and particular community
for which a government is to be made or kept, or a policy to be
provided; "philosophy in action," demanding at once or afford-
ing place for the highest speculative genius and the most skillful
conduct of men and of affairs; and finally consider what degree
and kind of mental power has been found to be required in
order to influence the reason of an audience and a nation by
speech,- not magnetizing the mere nervous or emotional nature
by an effort of that nature, but operating on reason by reason
-a great reputation in forensic and deliberative eloquence,
maintained and advancing for a lifetime, it is thus that we
come to be sure that his intellectual power was as real and as
uniform as its very happiest particular display had been impos-
ing and remarkable.
―
-
—
## p. 3665 (#653) ###########################################
3665
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
347-407)
(A. D.
BY JOHN MALONE
STRONG Soldier of the Cross and from good fighting stock
was that John of Antioch who, among the people that were
first of the earth to bear the name of Christian, was called
Chrysostom "mouth of gold. " His father Secundus, who died about
the time of Chrysostom's birth, was a military commander in Syria
under Constantine and Constantius II. John was born at Antioch,
A. D. 347, when the Eastern Empire and the City of Constantine
were new. His young mother Arethusa, a Christian, then but twenty
years of age, devoted herself to widowhood and the education of her
son in the city of his birth. The youth's early years were passed
under her careful guidance, and at the age of twenty he entered on
the study of oratory and philosophy under the celebrated Libanius.
In 369 he became a baptized Christian and reader in the house of
Melitius the bishop. The unhappy reigns of Valens and Valentin-
ian, when neo-paganism in the West and in the Gothic settlement in
the East began to work the Empire's fall, saw John devoted to an
ascetic life, after the example of the monks and hermits who shel-
tered in the mountains about the gay and queenly city of his birth.
His mother's grief and loneliness brought him back from his cave to
an energetic career as an outspoken preacher of God's Word and the
eternal profit of good stout-hearted workaday well-doing.
The Great God has conferred on the inferior people a moral
sense, compliance with which would show their nature invariably
right. -SHOO KING, Announcement of T'ang (ch. ii. ).
Confucius said: "There are three things which the superior
man guards against. In youth when the physical powers are not
yet settled, he guards against lust. When he is strong and the
physical powers are full of vigor, he guards against quarrelsome-
ness. When he is old and the animal powers are decayed, he
guards against covetousness. "-CONFUCIAN AN. , Ke She (ch. vii. ).
-
He who stops short where stopping short is not allowable, will
stop short in everything. He who behaves shabbily to those
whom he ought to treat well, will behave shabbily to all. -MEN-
CIUS, Tsin Sin (pt. i. , ch. xliv. ).
Men are partial where they feel affection and love; partial
where they despise and dislike; partial where they stand in awe
and reverence; partial where they feel sorrow and compassion;
partial where they are arrogant and rude. Thus it is that there
are few men in the world who love and at the same time know
the bad qualities of the object of their love, or who hate and
yet know the excellences of the object of their hatred. - THE
GREAT LEARNING (ch. viii. ).
Heaven's plan in the production of mankind is this: that they
who are first informed should instruct those who are later in
being informed, and they who first apprehend principles should
instruct those who are slower to do so. I am one of Heaven's
people who first apprehended. I will take these principles and
instruct this people in them. - MENCIUS, Wan Chang (pt. i. , ch.
vii. ).
From The Proverbial Philosophy of Confucius': copyrighted 1895, by Forster
H. Jennings; G. P. Putnam's Sons, Publishers
## p. 3649 (#637) ###########################################
3649
RUFUS CHOATE
(1799-1859)
BY ALBERT STICKNEY
UFUS CHOATE, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of
advocates who have appeared at the English or American
bar, was one of the most remarkable products of what is
ordinarily considered hard, prosaic, matter-of-fact New England. He
was a man quite apart from the ordinary race of lawyers or New-
Englanders. He was as different from the typical New-Englander as
was Hawthorne or Emerson. He had the imagination of a poet; and
to his imagination, singular as it may seem,
was largely due his success in handling ques-
tions of fact before juries.
He was born of good old English stock,
in the southeastern part of the town of
Ipswich, in the county of Essex and State
of Massachusetts, on the first day of Octo-
ber, 1799.
His ancestors had lived in Essex
County from a very early date in its history
and had filled important public positions.
He was born and bred in sight of the sea,
and his love for it stayed with him through
life. One of his most eloquent addresses
was on The Romance of the Sea. ' And in
his last illness at Halifax, his keenest pleas-
ure was to watch the ships sailing in front of his windows. Drop-
ping into sleep on one occasion, a few days before his death, he
said to his attendant, "If a schooner or sloop goes by, don't disturb
me; but if there is a square-rigged vessel, wake me. "
Mr. Choate had the ordinary education then given in New Eng-
land to young men who had a love of learning. He began with the
district school; from there he went to the academy at Hampton,
New Hampshire; and later he entered Dartmouth College, where he
graduated the first scholar in his class, in 1819. It is hard to find
an accurate standard of comparison between the scholarship of that
period and that of the present. No doubt, in our New England
colleges of to-day there is a larger number of young men who have
a considerable store of knowledge on many subjects of classical
learning. But it is very doubtful if the graduates of Harvard and
RUFUS CHOATE
VI-229
## p. 3650 (#638) ###########################################
3650
RUFUS CHOATE
Yale of to-day are able to read the standard classic authors at the
day of their graduation, with the ease and accuracy of Mr. Choate
at the end of his active professional career in the year 1859. His
continued devotion to the classics is shown by the following extract
from his journal in the year 1844, while he was a member of
Congress:-
"1. Some professional work must be done every day.
Recent
experiences suggest that I ought to be more familiar with evidence and
Cowen's Phillips; therefore, daily for half an hour, I will thumb conscien-
tiously. When I come home again, in the intervals of actual employment, my
recent methods of reading, accompanying the reports with the composition of
arguments upon the points adjudged, may be properly resumed.
"2. In my Greek, Latin, and French readings — Odyssey, Thucydides,
Tacitus, Juvenal, and some French orator or critic-I need make no change.
So, too, Milton, Johnson, Burke- semper in manu-ut mos est.
To my
Greek I ought to add a page a day of Crosby's Grammar, and the practice of
parsing every word in my few lines of Homer. On Sunday, the Greek Testa-
ment, and Septuagint, and French. This, and the oration of the Crown,
which I will completely master, translate, annotate, and commit, will be
enough in this kind. If not, I will add a translation of a sentence or two
from Tacitus. »
A similar extract from his journal under the date of December
15th, 1844, reads:
"I begin a great work,- Thucydides, in Bloomfield's new edition,— with
the intention of understanding a difficult and learning something from an
instructive writer,- something for the more and more complicated, interior,
inter-State American politics.
"With Thucydides, I shall read Wachsmuth with historical references aud
verifications. Schomann on the Assemblies of the Athenians, especially, I am
to meditate, and master Danier's Horace, Ode 1, 11th to 14th line, translation
and notes, -a pocket edition to be always in pocket. "
Throughout his life Mr. Choate kept up his classical studies. Few
of the graduates of our leading colleges to-day carry from Com-
mencement a training which makes the study of the Greek and Latin
authors either easy or pleasant. Mr. Choate, like nearly every law-
yer who has ever distinguished himself at the English bar, was a
monument to the value of the study of the classics as a mere means
of training for the active practical work of a lawyer.
Mr. Choate studied law at Cambridge in the Harvard Law School.
Nearly a year he spent at Washington in the office of Mr. Wirt, then
Attorney-General of the United States. This was in 1821. There-
after he was admitted to the bar, in September, 1823. He opened his
office in Salem, but soon removed to Danvers, where he practiced for
four or five years.
## p. 3651 (#639) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3651
During these earliest years of his professional life he had the
fortune which many other brilliant men in his profession have expe-
rienced, that of waiting and hoping. During his first two or three
years, it is said, he was so despondent as to his chances of profes-
sional success that he seriously contemplated abandoning the law. In
time he got his opportunity to show the stuff of which he was made.
His first professional efforts were in petty cases before justices of
the peace. Very soon however his great ability, with his untiring
industry and his intense devotion to any cause in his hands, brought
the reputation which he deserved, and reputation brought clients.
In 1828 he removed to Salem. The Essex bar was one of great
ability. Mr. Choate at once became a leader. Among his contem-
poraries at that bar was Caleb Cushing. Mr. Choate at first had
many criminal cases. In the year 1830 he was, with Mr. Webster,
one of the counsel for the prosecution in the celebrated White murder
case.
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
In 1830 he was elected to Congress as a member of the House of
Representatives, at the age of thirty-one years. At once he laid out
a course of study which was to fit him for the duties of his public
life. An extract from it reads as follows:-
:-
«Nov. 4, 1830.
« Facienda ad munus nuper impositum.
"1. Pers. quals. [personal qualities], Memory, Daily Food, and Cowper
dum ambulo. Voice, Manner, Exercitationes diurnæ.
«2. Current politics in papers. 1. Cum Notulis, daily,- Geog. , &c. 2.
Annual Reg. , Past Intelligencers, &c.
"4. Civil History of U. States-in Pitkin and original sources.
5. Exam. of Pending Questions: Tariff, Pub. Lands, Indians, Nullifica-
tions.
❝6. Am. and Brit. Eloquence,- Writing, Practice. »
Then follow in his manuscript upwards of twenty pages of close
writing, consisting of memoranda and statements, drawn from a mul-
titude of sources, on the subjects laid down by him at the beginning
as the ones to be investigated.
In Congress he found himself in competition with many men of
marked ability. Among the members of Congress then from Massa-
chusetts were Mr. Webster in the Senate; and in the House, John
Quincy Adams, Edward Everett, Nathan Appleton, George N. Briggs,
and John Davis. In the Senate, from other States, were Peleg
Sprague from Maine, one of the ablest jurists this country has pro-
duced; Samuel Prentiss, Mr. Marcy, Mr. Dallas, Mr. Clayton, Mr.
Clay, and Mr. Benton. In the House were James M. Wayne, Mr.
McDuffie, Mr. Polk, Mr. Corwin, and Mr. Verplanck.
## p. 3652 (#640) ###########################################
3652
RUFUS CHOATE
Among men of this calibre Mr. Choate at once, with ease, took
rank as one of the first. He made but two speeches during the
session; but these gave him a position which he ever afterwards held
among the most eloquent and convincing speakers in public life.
In April 1833 Mr. Choate was re-elected to Congress. At this
session he made a speech on the removal of the public deposits by
President Jackson from the Bank of the United States. The follow-
ing incident shows his power as an orator:—
Benjamin Hardin was then a member from Kentucky, of the
House of Representatives; and was himself intending to speak on
the same side of the question with Mr. Choate. In such cases, Mr.
Hardin's rule was to listen to no other speaker before speaking him-
self. Consequently when Mr. Choate began speaking, Mr. Hardin
started to leave the House. He waited however for a moment to
listen to a few sentences from Mr. Choate, and with this result, as
told in his own words:-"The member from Massachusetts rose to
speak, and in accordance with my custom I took my hat to leave,
lingering a moment just to notice the tone of his voice and the
manner of his speech. But that moment was fatal to my resolution.
I became charmed by the music of his voice, and was captivated by
the power of his eloquence, and found myself wholly unable to
move until the last word of his beautiful speech had been uttered. "
men.
At the close of this session Mr. Choate resigned his seat in Con-
gress and went to Boston, there to follow the practice of his profes-
sion. At the Boston bar he met a remarkably brilliant group of
There were Jeremiah Mason, whom Mr. Webster is said to
have considered the strongest man that he ever met in any legal
contest; Franklin Dexter; Chief Justice Shaw (then at the bar); Judges
Wilde, Hoar, and Thomas, afterwards of the Massachusetts Supreme
Court; Mr. Fletcher, Judge Benjamin R. Curtis, Sidney Bartlett.
Richard H. Dana, William D. Sohier, Henry W. Paine, Edward D.
Sohier, with others whose names are now almost forgotten. These
men formed a bar the like of which has seldom if ever been assem-
bled in any one jurisdiction. Here too Mr. Choate at once came to
the front. With every talent which could make a man a great advo-
cate, with a marvelous memory, a keen logical intellect, a sound
legal judgment, he had now acquired a large professional experience
and a very complete professional training. As has been seen, he had
a thorough classical training,- that is, of the kind best fitted to his
needs. His professional studies before beginning his professional
practice had been the best then attainable; very possibly, for him,
they were quite as good as can be had at any of the law schools of
to-day. His range of reading and information was extremely wide.
He had had several years of experience at Washington in Congress.
-
## p. 3653 (#641) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3653
And ever since leaving the law school his mere professional studies
had been most severe. It is hard to see how any man could be
better equipped for professional practice than Mr. Choate was at this
time.
His success at the Boston bar was phenomenal. He was in a con-
test with giants. Mr. Webster alone could be deemed to dispute
with Mr. Choate the place of supremacy. The general verdict has
been that for pure intellectual power Mr. Webster was the superior.
But it may well be doubted whether as an all-round advocate Mr.
Choate did not carry off the palm. The common idea of Mr. Choate
has been that his marvelous eloquence was his great source of
strength and success in his forensic contests. This is an error.
Eloquent he undoubtedly was; few men have ever been more so.
But unless in frontier communities, eloquence alone has never com-
manded great success at the bar-if indeed it has ever existed-
without strong logical power and sound judgment.
The power of
convincing intelligent men always depends largely and mainly on
soundness of judgment in the selection of positions. Especially is this
so in the profession of the law. There have been, no doubt, many
instances where men of eloquence have captivated juries by appeals
to passion or prejudice. But in the vast majority of cases, success
as an advocate cannot be had without sound judgment in the selec
tion of positions, coupled with the power of clear logical statement.
Mr. Choate was no exception to this rule. Mr. Henry W. Paine, one
of the leaders of the Boston bar in Mr. Choate's time,- himself one
of the most logical of men,- once said that he did not care to hear
Mr. Choate address a jury, but to hear him argue a bill of exceptions
before the full bench of the Supreme Court was one of the greatest
intellectual treats. With the ordinary twelve men in a jury-box Mr.
Choate was a wizard. His knowledge of human nature, his wide and
deep sympathies, his imagination, his power of statement, with his
rich musical voice and his wonderful fascination of manner, made
him a charmer of men and a master in the great art of winning
verdicts. So far as the writer is able to form an opinion, there has
never been at the English or American bar a man who has been his
equal in his sway over juries. Comparisons are often condemned, but
they are at times useful. Comparing Mr. Choate with Mr. Webster,
it must be conceded that Mr. Webster might at times carry a jury
against Mr. Choate by his force of intellect and the tremendous
power of his personal presence. Mr. O'Conor once said that he did
not consider Mr. Webster an eloquent man. "Mr. Webster," he said,
<< was an intellectual giant. But he never impressed me as being an
eloquent man. " The general judgment is that Mr. Webster had
eloquence of a very high order. But Mr. Choate was a magician.
## p. 3654 (#642) ###########################################
3654
RUFUS CHOATE
With any opponent of his time except Mr. Webster, he was irresistible
before juries. Mr. Justice Catron of the United States Court is
reported to have said of Mr. Choate, "I have heard the most eminent
advocates, but he surpasses them all. " His success came from a
rare combination of eloquence, sound logical judgment, and great
powers of personal fascination.
In another respect the common opinion of Mr. Choate must be
corrected. His great powers of persuasion and conviction undoubtedly
gave him some victories which were not deserved by the mere merits
of his cases. From this fact there went abroad the impression that
he was a man without principle, and that his ethical standards were
not high in his selection and conduct of cases. This impression is
quite contrary to the judgment of the competent. The impression
was due largely to his success in the celebrated defense of Tirrell.
Tirrell was indicted for the murder of a woman named Bickford, with
whom Tirrell had long associated, who was found dead in a house of
ill-repute. At about the hour when the woman lost her life, either
by her own hand or by that of Tirrell, the house caught fire. The
cause of the fire was not proved. Tirrell had been in her company
the preceding evening, and articles of clothing belonging to him.
were found in the morning in her room. Many circumstances seemed
to indicate that the woman had been killed by Tirrell. He was also
indicted for arson in setting fire to the house. In addition to other
facts proved by the defense, it was shown by reputable witnesses
that Tirrell had from his youth been subject to somnambulism; and
one of the positions taken by Mr. Choate for the defense was that
the killing, if done by Tirrell at all, was done by him while uncon-
scious, in a condition of somnambulism. Tirrell was tried under
both indictments and was acquitted on both. The indictment for
murder was tried before Justices Wilde, Dewey, and Hubbard. The
indictment for arson was tried before Chief Justice Shaw and Justices
Wilde and Dewey. The foreman of the jury stated that the defense
of somnambulism received no weight in the deliberations of the jury.
The judgment of the profession has been that the verdicts were the
only ones which could properly have been rendered on the evidence.
In the arson case the charge to the jury was by Chief Justice Shaw,
and was strongly in favor of the defense. No doubt the defense was
extremely able and ingenious. But the criticisms against Mr. Choate
for his conduct of those cases, in the opinion of those members of
the profession best qualified to judge, have been held to be without
good foundation. Lawyers—that is, reputable ones-do not manu-
facture evidence, nor are they the witnesses who testify to facts.
The severe tests of cross-examination usually elicit the truth. No
one ever charged Mr. Choate with manufacturing evidence.
And no
## p. 3655 (#643) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3655
lawyer of good judgment, so far as the writer is aware, has ever
charged him with practices which were not in keeping with the very
highest professional standards.
In the space here allotted, any attempt to give an adequate idea
of Mr. Choate's professional and public work is quite out of the
question. In addition to the conduct of an unusually large profes-
sional practice he did a large amount of literary work, mainly in the
delivery of lectures, which at that time in New England were almost
a part of the public system of education. Throughout his life he
took an active part in politics. He attended the Whig convention at
Baltimore in 1852, where General Scott received his nomination for
the Presidency, and where Mr. Choate made one of the most elo-
quent speeches of his life in his effort to secure the nomination for
Mr. Webster.
Mr. Choate finally killed himself by overwork. Though a man of
great physical strength and remarkable vitality, no constitution could
stand the strain of his intense labors in the different lines of law,
literature, and politics. His magnificent physique finally broke down.
He died on July 13th, 1859, being not quite sixty years. His death
was an important public event. In the public press, at many public
meetings throughout the country, and by public men of the highest
distinction, his death was treated as a public misfortune.
In his day
he rendered distinguished public services. He had the capacities
and the interests which fitted him to be a great statesman. Had
it not been for our system of short terms, and rotation in office,
Mr. Choate would probably have remained in public life from the
time of his entry into Congress, would have been a most valuable
public servant, and would have left a great reputatio as a states-
man. As it was, he left, so far as now appears, only the ephemeral
reputation of a great advocate.
This scanty sketch can best be closed by a quotation from the
address of Richard H. Dana at the meeting of the Boston bar held
just after Mr. Choate's death. That extract will show the judgment
of Mr. Choate which was held by the giants among whom he lived
and of whom he was the leader:
-
«The wine of life is drawn. The golden bowl is broken. ' The age of
miracles has passed. The day of inspiration is over. The Great Conqueror,
unseen and irresistible, has broken into our temple and has carried off the
vessels of gold, the vessels of silver, the precious stones, the jewels, and the
ivory; and like the priests of the temple of Jerusalem after the invasion from
Babylon, we must content ourselves as we can with vessels of wood and of
stone and of iron.
"With such broken phrases as these, Mr. Chairman, perhaps not altogether
just to the living, we endeavor to express the emotions natural to this hour of
## p. 3656 (#644) ###########################################
3656
RUFUS CHOATE
our bereavement. Talent, industry, eloquence, and learning, there are still,
and always will be, at the bar of Boston. But if I say that the age of mira-
cles has passed, that the day of inspiration is over, if I cannot realize that
in this place where we now are, the cloth of gold was spread, and a banquet
set fit for the gods,— I know, sir, you will excuse it. Any one who has lived
with him and now survives him, will excuse it;-any one who like the youth
in Wordsworth's Ode,-
-
(by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended,
At length
perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day. >»
It will also tend to secure justice to Mr. Choate's memory, if
there be here recorded the statement by Judge Benjamin R. Curtis
of the judgment of the men of Mr. Choate's own profession, as to the
moral standards by which Mr. Choate was governed in his practice.
Judge Curtis said in his address at the same meeting of the Boston
Bar:-
"I desire, therefore, on this occasion and in this presence, to declare our
appreciation of the injustice which would be done to this great and eloquent
advocate by attributing to him any want of loyalty to truth, or any deference
to wrong, because he employed all his great powers and attainments, and
used to the utmost his consummate skill and eloquence, in exhibiting and
enforcing the comparative merits of one side of the cases in which he acted.
In doing so he but did his duty. If other people did theirs, the administra-
tion of justice was secured. »
West listiny
Stickney
## p. 3657 (#645) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3657
All the citations are from 'Addresses and Orations of Rufus Choate': copy-
righted 1878, by Little, Brown and Company
THE PURITAN IN SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS LIFE
From Address Delivered at the Ipswich Centennial, 1834
TURN
URN first now for a moment to the old English Puritans, the
fathers of our fathers, of whom came, of whom were, plant-
ers of Ipswich, of Massachusetts, of New England,— of
whom came, of whom were, our own Ward, Parker, and Salton-
stall, and Wise, Norton, and Rogers, and Appleton, and Cobbet,
and Winthrop,- and see whether they were likely to be the
founders of a race of freemen or slaves. Remember then, the
true, noblest, the least questioned, least questionable, praise of
these men is this: that for a hundred years they were the sole
depositaries of the sacred fire of liberty in England after it had
gone out in every other bosom,- that they saved at its last
gasp the English Constitution, which the Tudors and the first
two Stuarts were rapidly changing into just such a gloomy des-
potism as they saw in France and Spain,- and wrought into it
every particle of freedom which it now possesses,- that when
they first took their seats in the House of Commons, in the
early part of the reign of Elizabeth, they found it the cringing
and ready tool of the throne, and that they reanimated it, remod-
eled it, reasserted its privileges, restored it to its constitutional
rank, drew back to it the old power of making laws, redressing
wrongs, and imposing taxes, and thus again rebuilt and opened
what an Englishman called "the chosen temple of liberty," an
English House of Commons,- that they abridged the tremen-
dous power of the crown and defined it, and when at last
Charles Stuart resorted to arms to restore the despotism they
had partially overthrown, that they met him on a hundred fields.
of battle, and buried, after a sharp and long struggle, crown
and mitre and the headless trunk of the king himself beneath
the foundations of a civil and religious commonwealth. This
praise all the historians of England - Whig and Tory, Protes-
tant and Catholic, Hume, Hallam, Lingard, and all-award to
the Puritans. By what causes this spirit of liberty had been
breathed into the masculine, enthusiastic, austere, resolute char-
acter of this extraordinary body of men, in such intensity as to
mark them off from all the rest of the people of England, I
cannot here and now particularly consider. It is a thrilling and
-
## p. 3658 (#646) ###########################################
3658
RUFUS CHOATE
awful history of the Puritans in England, from their first emerg-
ing above the general level of Protestants, in the time of Henry
VIII. and Edward VI. , until they were driven by hundreds and
thousands to these shores; but I must pass it over. It was just
when the nobler and grander traits - the enthusiasm and piety
and hardihood and energy-of Puritanism had attained the high-
est point of exaltation to which, in England, it ever mounted up,
and the love of liberty had grown to be the great master-passion
that fired and guided all the rest,-it was just then that our
portion of its disciples, filled with the undiluted spirit, glowing
with the intensest fervors of Protestantism and republicanism.
together, came hither, and in that elevated and holy and re-
solved frame began to build the civil and religious structures
which you see around you.
Trace now their story a little farther onward through the
Colonial period to the War of Independence, to admire with me.
the providential agreement of circumstances by which that spirit
of liberty which brought them hither was strengthened and re-
inforced; until at length, instructed by wisdom, tempered by vir-
tue, and influenced by injuries, by anger and grief and conscious
worth and the sense of violated right, it burst forth here and
wrought the wonders of the Revolution. I have thought that if
one had the power to place a youthful and forming people like
the Northern colonists, in whom the love of freedom was already
vehement and healthful, in a situation the most propitious for
the growth and perfection of that sacred sentiment, he could
hardly select a fairer field for so interesting an experiment than
the actual condition of our fathers for the hundred and fifty
years after their arrival, to the War of the Revolution.
They had freedom enough to teach them its value and to
refresh and elevate their spirits, wearied, not despondent, from
the contentions and trials of England. They were just so far
short of perfect freedom that instead of reposing for a moment
in the mere fruition of what they had, they were kept emulous
and eager for more, looking all the while up and aspiring to rise
to a loftier height, to breathe a purer air, and bask in a brighter
beam. Compared with the condition of England down to 1688,
-compared with that of the larger part of the continent of
Europe down to our Revolution,- theirs was a privileged and
liberal condition. The necessaries of freedom, if I may say
so, its plainer food and homelier garments and humbler habita-
-
## p. 3659 (#647) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3659
tions, were theirs. Its luxuries and refinements, its festivals,
its lettered and social glory, its loftier port and prouder look and
richer graces, were the growth of a later day; these came in
with independence. Here was liberty enough to make them love
it for itself, and to fill them with those lofty and kindred senti-
ments which are at once its fruit and its nutriment and safe-
guard in the soul of man. But their liberty was still incomplete,
and it was constantly in danger from England; and these two
circumstances had a powerful effect in increasing that love and
confirming those sentiments. It was a condition precisely adapted
to keep liberty, as a subject of thought and feeling and desire,
every moment in mind. Every moment they were comparing
what they had possessed with what they wanted and had a right
to; they calculated by the rule of three, if a fractional part of
freedom came to so much, what would express the power and
value of the whole number! They were restive and impatient
and ill at ease; a galling wakefulness possessed their faculties
like a spell. Had they been wholly slaves, they had lain still
and slept. Had they been wholly free, that eager hope, that
fond desire, that longing after a great, distant, yet practicable
good, would have given way to the placidity and luxury and
carelessness of complete enjoyment; and that energy and whole-
some agitation of mind would have gone down like an ebb-tide.
As it was, the whole vast body of waters all over its surface,
down to its sunless, utmost depths, was heaved and shaken and
purified by a spirit that moved above it and through it and gave
it no rest, though the moon waned and the winds were in their
caves; they were like the disciples of the old and bitter philoso-
phy of paganism, who had been initiated into one stage of the
greater mysteries, and who had come to the door, closed, and
written over with strange characters, which led up to another.
They had tasted of truth, and they burned for a fuller draught;
a partial revelation of that which shall be hereafter had dawned;
and their hearts throbbed eager, yet not without apprehension,
to look upon the glories of the perfect day. Some of the mys-
tery of God, of Nature, of Man, of the Universe, had been
unfolded; might they by prayer, by abstinence, by virtue, by
retirement, by contemplation, entitle themselves to read another
page in the clasped and awful volume?
-
## p. 3660 (#648) ###########################################
3660
RUFUS CHOATE
THE NEW-ENGLANDER'S CHARACTER
From Address Delivered at the Ipswich Centennial, 1834
I
HOLD it to have been a great thing, in the first place, that we
had among us, at that awful moment when the public mind
was meditating the question of submission to the tea tax, or
resistance by arms, and at the more awful moment of the first
appeal to arms, that we had some among us who personally
knew what war was. Washington, Putnam, Stark, Gates, Pres-
cott, Montgomery, were soldiers already. So were hundreds of
others of humbler rank, but not yet forgotten by the people whom
they helped to save, who mustered to the camp of our first
Revolutionary armies. These all had tasted a soldier's life.
They had seen fire, they had felt the thrilling sensations, the
quickened flow of blood to and from the heart, the mingled
apprehension and hope, the hot haste, the burning thirst, the
feverish ture of battle, which he who has not felt is uncon-
scious of one-half of the capacities and energies of his nature;
which he who has felt, I am told, never forgets. They had slept
in the woods on the withered leaves or the snow, and awoke to
breakfast upon birch-bark and the tender tops of willow-trees.
They had kept guard on the outposts on many a stormy night,
knowing perfectly that the thicket half a pistol-shot off was full
of French and Indian riflemen.
I say it was something that we had such men among us.
They helped discipline our raw first levies. They knew what an
army is, and what it needs, and how to provide for it. They
could take that young volunteer of sixteen by the hand, sent by
an Ipswich mother, who after looking upon her son equipped
for battle from which he might not return, Spartan-like, bid him.
go and behave like a man—and many, many such shouldered a
musket for Lexington and Bunker Hill - and assure him from
their own personal knowledge that after the first fire he never
would know fear again, even that of the last onset. But the
long and peculiar wars of New England had done more than to
furnish a few such officers and soldiers as these.
They had
formed that public sentiment upon the subject of war which
re-united all the armies, fought all the battles, and won all the
glory of the Revolution. The truth is that war in some form or
another had been, from the first, one of the usages, one of the
## p. 3661 (#649) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3661
habits, of colonial life. It had been felt from the first to be
just as necessary as planting or reaping to be as likely to
break out every day and every night as a thunder-shower in
summer, and to break out as suddenly. There have been
nations who boasted that their rivers or mountains never saw
―
the smoke of an enemy's camp. Here the war-whoop awoke
the sleep of the cradle; it startled the dying man on his pil-
low; it summoned young and old from the meeting-house, from
the burial, and from the bridal ceremony, to the strife of death.
The consequence was that the steady, composed, and reflecting
courage which belongs to all the English race grew into a lead-
ing characteristic of New England; and a public sentiment was
formed, pervading young and old and both sexes, which declared
it lawful, necessary, and honorable to risk life and to shed
blood for a great cause, for our family, for our fires, for our
God, for our country, for our religion. In such a cause it
declared that the voice of God himself commanded to the field.
The courage of New England was the "courage of conscience. »
It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of
war for itself. It would not have hurried her sons to the Nile,
or the foot of the Pyramids, or across the great raging sea of
snows which rolled from Smolensko to Moscow, to set the stars
of glory upon the glowing brow of ambition. But it was a
courage which at Lexington, at Bunker Hill, at Bennington,
and at Saratoga, had power to brace the spirit for the patriot's
fight, and gloriously roll back the tide of menaced war from
their homes, the soil of their birth, the graves of their fathers,
and the everlasting hills of their freedom.
OF THE AMERICAN BAR
From the Address before the Cambridge Law School, 1845
SOME
OMETHING such has, in all the past periods of our history, been
one of the functions of the American bar. To vindicate
the true interpretation of the charters of the colonies, to
advise what forms of polity, what systems of jurisprudence,
what degree and what mode of liberty these charters per-
mitted, to detect and expose that long succession of infringe-
ment which grew at last to the Stamp Act and Tea Tax, and
compelled us to turn from broken charters to national independ-
## p. 3662 (#650) ###########################################
3662
RUFUS CHOATE
ence, to conduct the transcendent controversy which preceded.
the Revolution, that grand appeal to the reason of civilization,-
this was the work of our first generation of lawyers: to con-
struct the American constitutions: the higher praise of the
second generation. I claim it in part for the sobriety and learn-
ing of the American bar; for the professional instinct towards
the past; for the professional appreciation of order, forms, obe-
dience, restraints; for the more than professional, the profound
and wide intimacy with the history of all liberty, classical,
mediæval, and above all, of English liberty,-I claim it in part
for the American bar that, springing into existence by revolu-
tion, revolution, which more than anything and all things
lacerates and discomposes the popular mind,-justifying that
revolution only on a strong principle of natural right, with not
one single element or agent of monarchy or aristocracy on our
soil or in our blood,-I claim it for the bar that the constitu-
tions of America so nobly closed the series of our victories!
These constitutions owe to the bar more than their terse and
exact expression and systematic arrangements: they owe to it
in part, too, their elements of permanence; their felicitous recon-
ciliation of universal and intense liberty with forms to enshrine
and regulations to restrain it; their Anglo-Saxon sobriety and
gravity conveyed in the genuine idiom, suggestive of the grand-
est civil achievements of that unequaled race. To interpret
these constitutions, to administer and maintain them, this is the
office of our age of the profession. Herein have we somewhat
wherein to glory; hereby we come into the class and share in
the dignity of founders of States, of restorers of States, of pre-
servers of States.
I said and I repeat that while lawyers, and because we are
lawyers, we are statesmen. We are by profession statesmen.
And who may measure the value of this department of public
duty? Doubtless in statesmanship there are many mansions,
and large variety of conspicuous service. Doubtless to have
wisely decided the question of war or peace,-to have adjusted
by a skillful negotiation a thousand miles of unsettled boundary-
line, to have laid the corner-stone of some vast policy whereby
the currency is corrected, the finances enriched, the measure of
industrial fame filled,- are large achievements. And yet I do
not know that I can point to one achievement of this depart-
ment of American statesmanship which can take rank for its
## p. 3663 (#651) ###########################################
RUFUS CHOATE
3663
consequences of good above that single decision of the Supreme
Court which adjudged that an act of legislature contrary to the
Constitution is void, and that the judicial department is clothed
with the power to ascertain the repugnancy and to pronounce
the legal conclusion. That the framers of the Constitution
intended this should be so is certain; but to have asserted it
against the Congress and the Executive,- to have vindicated it
by that easy yet adamantine demonstration than which the
reasonings of the mathematics show nothing surer,-to have
inscribed this vast truth of conservatism on the public mind, so
that no demagogue, not in the last stage of intoxication, denies
it, this is an achievement of statesmanship of which a thousand
years may not exhaust or reveal all the good.
―
DANIEL WEBSTER
From Eulogy delivered at Dartmouth College, 1853
So
COMETIMES it has seemed to me that to enable one to appre-
ciate with accuracy, as a psychological speculation, the
intrinsic and absolute volume and texture of that brain,
the real rate and measure of those abilities,-it was better
not to see or hear him, unless you could see or hear him fre-
quently, and in various modes of exhibition; for undoubtedly
there was something in his countenance and bearing so express-
ive of command, something even in his conversational lan-
guage when saying "Parva summisse et modica temperate,” so
exquisitely plausible, embodying the likeness at least of a rich
truth, the forms at least of a large generalization, in an epithet,
an antithesis,—a pointed phrase,- a broad and peremptory
thesis, and something in his grander forthputting, when roused
by a great subject or occasion exciting his reason and touching
his moral sentiments and his heart, so difficult to be resisted,
approaching so near, going so far beyond, the higher style of
man, that although it left you a very good witness of his power
of influencing others, you were not in the best condition imme-
diately to pronounce on the quality or the source of the in-
fluence. You saw the flash and heard the peal, and felt the
admiration and fear; but from what region it was launched, and
by what divinity, and from what Olympian seat, you could not
certainly yet tell. To do that you must, if you saw him at all,
-
## p. 3664 (#652) ###########################################
3664
RUFUS CHOATE
see him many times; compare him with himself and with others;
follow his dazzling career from his father's house; observe from
what competitors he won those laurels; study his discourses,-
study them by the side of those of other great men of this coun-
try and time, and of other countries and times, conspicuous in
the same fields of mental achievement,- look through the crys-
tal water of the style down to the golden sands of the thought;
analyze and contrast intellectual power somewhat; consider what
kind and what quantity of it has been held by students of mind
needful in order to great eminence in the higher mathematics,
or metaphysics, or reason of the law; what capacity to analyze,
through and through, to the primordial elements of the truths of
that science; yet what wisdom and sobriety, in order to control
the wantonness and shun the absurdities of a mere scholastic
logic, by systematizing ideas, and combining them, and repress-
ing one by another, thus producing, not a collection of intense
and conflicting paradoxes, but a code, scientifically coherent
and practically useful, consider what description and what
quantity of mind have been held needful by students of mind in
order to conspicuous eminence - long maintained-in statesman-
ship; that great practical science, that great philosophical art,
whose ends are the existence, happiness, and honor of a nation;
whose truths are to be drawn from the widest survey of man,-
of social man,- of the particular race and particular community
for which a government is to be made or kept, or a policy to be
provided; "philosophy in action," demanding at once or afford-
ing place for the highest speculative genius and the most skillful
conduct of men and of affairs; and finally consider what degree
and kind of mental power has been found to be required in
order to influence the reason of an audience and a nation by
speech,- not magnetizing the mere nervous or emotional nature
by an effort of that nature, but operating on reason by reason
-a great reputation in forensic and deliberative eloquence,
maintained and advancing for a lifetime, it is thus that we
come to be sure that his intellectual power was as real and as
uniform as its very happiest particular display had been impos-
ing and remarkable.
―
-
—
## p. 3665 (#653) ###########################################
3665
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
347-407)
(A. D.
BY JOHN MALONE
STRONG Soldier of the Cross and from good fighting stock
was that John of Antioch who, among the people that were
first of the earth to bear the name of Christian, was called
Chrysostom "mouth of gold. " His father Secundus, who died about
the time of Chrysostom's birth, was a military commander in Syria
under Constantine and Constantius II. John was born at Antioch,
A. D. 347, when the Eastern Empire and the City of Constantine
were new. His young mother Arethusa, a Christian, then but twenty
years of age, devoted herself to widowhood and the education of her
son in the city of his birth. The youth's early years were passed
under her careful guidance, and at the age of twenty he entered on
the study of oratory and philosophy under the celebrated Libanius.
In 369 he became a baptized Christian and reader in the house of
Melitius the bishop. The unhappy reigns of Valens and Valentin-
ian, when neo-paganism in the West and in the Gothic settlement in
the East began to work the Empire's fall, saw John devoted to an
ascetic life, after the example of the monks and hermits who shel-
tered in the mountains about the gay and queenly city of his birth.
His mother's grief and loneliness brought him back from his cave to
an energetic career as an outspoken preacher of God's Word and the
eternal profit of good stout-hearted workaday well-doing.
