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RUFUS CHOATE.

VIII.

IT is well known that when Professor Webster was charged with the murder of Dr. Parkman, Mr. Choate declined to act as his counsel. The case attracted universal attention, and every development in it was watched with eagerness. Mr. Choate's refusal to defend excited profound surprise, and even disappointment in professional circles, and much conjecture was indulged in as to the reasons which withheld him from participation in a trial for which he was peculiarly fitted, and which was regarded as one of his best opportunities for distinction. But nothing has been done hitherto to bring to light his motives. All that Professor Brown says in his Life, is that he, "for reasons which he judged satisfactory, declined." This excited rather than satisfied curiosity.

Whatever reasons may have existed for silence on the subject having passed away, it seems now proper, as due to Mr. Choate's memory, that all doubt should, if possible, be removed. Entertaining this view, Mr. Edward Ellerton Pratt, Mr. Choate's sonin-law, and the Hon. Otis P. Lord, Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, an intimate personal and professional friend of Mr. Choate, have kindly furnished the following statements for this

use:

Mr. Pratt says: "Mr. Franklin Dexter, one of the leaders of the bar of New England, was greatly interested in Professor Webster's case, believed that he was innocent, and was persistently earnest that Mr. Choate should defend him on that ground. The Hon. Charles Sumner, also holding that view, urged Mr. Choate to undertake the defense, as he expressed it, 'in the interest of humanity,' and was quite angry with him for refusing. At that time the testimony taken before the coroner was known; that taken by the grand jury by whom the indictment had been found, was not publicly known. question of the Professor's guilt or innocence was the absorbing topic, and the excitement in all classes of society was intense.

The

"Mr. Dexter was determined to secure Mr. Choate's services, and, after much study of the case, called upon him by appointment, one evening, to lay before him what he called its merits. Mr. Choate listened to him, as a juror might have done, for nearly three hours, and, as he afterward told me, it was one of the most vigorous and persuasive arguments he had ever heard. That estimate may well be accepted, when we remember Mr. Dexter's admitted ability, his friendship for Professor Webster, and his belief that if Mr. Choate could be secured as counsel, the accused man might be saved.

"The argument, which had been listened to without question or interruption, having closed, Mr.

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Choate walked up and down his library several times, and then, pausing before Mr. Dexter, who was keenly observing him, said, 'Brother Dexter, how do you answer this question, and this?' I cannot state the points thus presented, but my general recollection is that those questions presented inherent difficulties underlying the defense. Mr. Dexter, as if transfixed, sat musing deeply, his head bent upon his hand, for several minutes, and, finally, as if hopeless of finding an answer, and seeking relief, he rose suddenly and said, 'Brother Choate, have you read — 's book? If not, do so, and you will find it charming. Mr. Choate accepted his changed mood, parted from him soon after with a kindly expression of interest, and the subject was never alluded to afterward between them.

"I had these details partly from Mrs. Choate and partly from Mr. Dexter. The time which has elapsed since then is so long, nearly thirty years, that I can only give this general statement."

Judge Lord says:

"I had a conversation with Mr. Choate on this subject. It was more than twenty years ago, and, of course, it is impossible to reproduce precisely his language, but the interview was substantially this: I said to Mr. Choate: 'Is it true that you refused to defend Professor Webster?' to which his reply was, not in direct terms, but by implication, that he did not absolutely refuse, but that they did not want him. Pausing for a while, he added: 'There was but one way to try that case. When the attorney-general was opening his case to the jury, and came to the discussion of the identity of the remains found in the furnace with those of Dr. Parkman, the prisoner's counsel should have arisen, and, begging pardon for the interruption, should have said, substantially, that in a case of this importance, of course, counsel had no right to concede any point, or make any admission, or fail to require proof,' and then have added: 'But we desire the attorneygeneral to understand, upon the question of these remains, that the struggle will not be there! But, assumming that Dr. Parkman came to his death within the laboratory on that day, we desire the government to show whether it was by visitation of God, or whether, in an attack made by the deceased upon the prisoner, the act was done in self-defense, or whether it was the result of a violent altercation. Possibly the idea of murder may be suggested, but not with more reason than apoplexy, or other form of sudden death. As the prisoner himself cannot speak, the real controversy will probably be narrowed to the alternatives of justifiable homicide, in selfdefense, and manslaughter by reason of sudden altercation.'

"Having said this, he added: 'But Professor Webster would not listen to any such defense as that,' accompanying the statement with language

tending to show that the proposed defense was rejected both by the accused and his friends and advisers.

"He then said that the only difficulty in that defense was to explain the subsequent conduct of Dr. Webster, and proceeded with a remarkable and subtle analysis of the motives of men, and the influences which govern their conduct, to show that the whole course of the accused after the death could be explained by a single mistake as to the expediency of disclosing what had happened instantly; that hesitation, or irresolution, or the decision: 'I will not disclose this,' adhered to for a brief half hour, might, by the closing in of circumstances around him, have compelled all that followed. Having concealed the occurrence, he was obliged to dispose of the remains, and would do so in the manner suggested, and with the facilities afforded by his professional position. He concluded: 'It would have been impossible to convict Dr. Webster of murder with that admission.'

"I suggested to him that the possession of his note by Dr. Webster, as paid, was an awkward fact. He said: 'Yes, but it might seem to become a necessity after his first false step of concealment.' He added: | 'Dr. Parkman was known to have been at the hospital. When, how soon, and under what circumstances, and to explain what statements made by him, he thought it expedient to say he had paid the note, or to obtain the possession of it would never appear. It was simply an incident, whose force could be parried, if he could obtain credit for the position that the concealment was a sudden and impulsive afterthought which took possession of and controlled him in all his subsequent conduct.""

We have in these statements the desired testimony touching Mr. Choate's attitude in respect to that most important case. It is apparent from them that, while accepting the theory that a lawyer is not at liberty to withhold his services absolutely in a criminal case, he yet did not think him bound to go into court contrary to his own conscientious convictions to assert what he does not believe to be true, or to take a line of defense which he conceives to be futile or unjust. His refusal to appear, as explained by these gentlemen, is consistent with the practice which, as a humane man and self-sacrificing counselor, he exemplified throughout life, and is in keeping with the doctrine of an advocate's duty as asserted by Erskine and others.

J. N.

After this lapse of time, we think ourselves fortunate in being able to present the recollections of two venerable men who were classmates of Mr. Choate at Dartmouth-the Hon. H. K. Oliver, Mayor of Salem, and Dr. W. C. Boyden, of Beverly, Mass. J. N.

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DEAR SIR-Your favor of the 26th of July brings vividly to my mind's eye

The face, the form, the man so true,

That the heart leaps enraptured at the view,

of my valued-above-price, and beloved college friend, the late Rufus Choate, whose marvelous mental endowments and intellectual power of grasp and retention were the wonder and admiration of us all at Dartmouth. Your note so quickened my mind's eye that it again sees his manly and attractive figure and strangely winning face,-and my mind's ear, that it again hears his deeply-resonant, sweet-toned and impressive voice, wakening many a reminiscence of his gentleness of temper and disposition, his warm sympathies, his innate sense of right, his refined courtesy, his completeness as a gentleman, his love of all that was beautiful in life, in nature and in art, his attraction in person, voice and manner, his wonderful mental gifts, his marvelous memory, his thoroughness and exactness as a scholar, and the symmetrical finish of him in all that makes a good and great man.

My first acquaintance with him dates from the month of August, 1816, when he then being at the beginning of his Sophomore year—I joined the Junior class at Dartmouth College. I had passed my first two years at Harvard, entering in 1814, a youngling of not quite fourteen years of age. My father, Rev. Daniel Oliver (D. C. 1785), then of Boston, intended me for a clergyman of his own denomination, a Calvinist of the severer type, but becoming uneasy at the alleged tendency of Harvard toward Unitarianism, and probably feeling the pressure of the greater expense thereat, transferred me to Hanover. I relinquished my old associations at Harvard with deepest regret, having formed many strong attachments to both officers and classmates, and many close friendships with lads of my own age. These were all sundered, and I confess that, when removed so great a distance from home, (a stagejourney then of two days, though now accomplished in five hours), and thrown among entire strangers, the most intense and depressing nostalgia possessed and tormented me. But the transplanted roots after awhile found genial soil, and, under kindnesses without number, began to feed from the new earth. A few weeks domiciled me among my new associates, while efforts at creating favorable impressions, both personal and scholarly, and the excitement attending the fact of the existence at Hanover, at one and the same time (1816-17), of a "Dartmouth College" with its corps of teachers and over a hundred students, and a "Dartmouth University," with its duet of teachers and its corporal's guard of students, helped me to think less of home and more

of surroundings and duty, and I gradually became pensiveness of tone, in marked contrast, not seldom self-reliant and settled down to my work.

Of those whose sympathy and active kindness helped to lift me out of my slough of despond, I recall many a now departed friend, but none with more earnest gratitude than him of whom I write, at whose room, in the house of Prof. Ebenezer Adams, I was a frequent visitor.

He was a member of the class (1819), next below my own (1818), and about a year older than myself, but of an almost incredible maturity of mind. Being from my own State, and from the county in which I was born (though reared in Boston), he encouraged me by considerate and timely sympathies, and stimulated me, as he did all of us, by his unyielding pertinacity at study, his success in work, his richness of attainment and his brilliancy of scholarship. Yet such was the simplicity of his character, his manifest unconsciousness of superiority, his freedom of intercourse with us all, his exuberance of friendly grasp, his genial outflow in companionship, -- "medicines that he gave us to make us love him," — that each of us, delighted by his finish as a man, charmed by his consummateness as a scholar, and drawn to him by the loveliness of his disposition, the purity and strength of his moral influence, was at all times ready to exclaim, like the shepherd in Virgil's Eclogue:

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"Non equidem invideo, miror magis!”

A passage describing Cicero has often come to my memory when I have thought of Choate: Quum eas artes disceret, quibus ætas puerilis solet ad humanitatem informari, ingenium ejus ita illuxit, ut eum æquales e scholâ redeuntes, medium, tanquam regem circumstantes, domum deducereat; imo, eorum parentes, pueri famá commoti, in ludum literarium ventitabant, ut eum viserent." Him we looked upon as "facile princeps inter principes," no man in either of the classes then in college, being even named with him in rate of scholarship. In fact, we did not count him in at all in rating scholarship, but set him apart, and above us all, as on a pedestal by himself, "himself his only parallel."

His persistent method of study seemed to the rest of us to have crystallized into an abiding habit, definite in manner and form, and determinate in purpose and result. I have often seen him, when I called at his room, in the act of delving at his books. His large and well-shaped head usually rested upon his hands, his elbows upon the table, he often passing the fingers of both hands through the profuse growth of his dark, curly hair. His eyes were also dark, with a mild, yet penetrating look, always, as I remember, having a suggestion of sadness, as did, at all times, the dark features of his expressive face, giving out a peculiar look, whieh enchained one's attention and interest by its very

with many a sudden playful or witty utterance (he, all the while, gentle and in quiet repose), which flashed out in surcharge of unharming humor, with no effervescence of laughter, nor uproar of boisterous merriment.

There was a custom in our day, of assignment, by the president, on each alternate Wednesday evening, in chapel, after prayers, of subject-themes to two or three members of the senior and junior classes alternately, the essays thereon to be read in chapel on the next Wednesday fortnight. These readings were open to the general public, and ordinarily there was plenty of room. But when it was Choate's turn, the chapel was crowded to repletion, the gentlemen and ladies and even the youth of the village, flocking to hear the brilliant essayist, led captive by his grasp of the subject, his eloquent diction, his beautiful imagery and the charm of his profuse illustration, all set forth with a fertility of language that showed his ready command of an unsurpassed range of words, and of unsurpassed skill in their usance. At times, and always at the appropriate and fitting time, his sense of humor unconsciously operative, perhaps even to himself, yet none the less animate, (quiet and gentle it always was), lighted up his features with an infectious smile as he set forth some absurdity in a manner so luminous and palpable, that the air of the chapel, usually still and solemn, seemed to undulate with the soft murmuring of a restrained merriment. And yet no man whom I ever knew was more tender in feeling, or had in him less of the assailant spirit of ridicule, or more of affluent charity and good will to all mankind, he seeming to delight in making men happy, and so keeping them. If the phrase be permissible, his humor was characterized by a sort of stately dignity, which, while it fitted the occasion and the object, most felicitously illustrated his intent, yet had nothing in it of harshness. It lacerated no one's feelings, nor provoked fretful retort or acrimonious repartee.

Wholly free was he also from any self-complacent ostentation of conscious superiority in talent or acquirement over his college mates, so free that I doubt whether he himself thought that any such superiority existed, manifest though it was to all the rest of us, and we so often ourselves manifesting our sense of it, that one would suppose that he himself could not have failed to find it out. But neither in college nor in the after-life, so far as I know, did he give token of any such cognition. To us his companionship was a benediction of constant influence, illustrated by both act and word; and we sought his society as we would seek for a haven of agreeable repose, of comfort and relief, no one feeling dwarfed by either his bearing, his demeanor, his acts or his words, but, on the contrary, encouraged

and incited to individual better trying and better building, the members of the Fraternity, then in doing.

session, hearing the crash of axes and crowbars calde ego memini, nam eorum fui pars― rushed to the rescue and made prisoners of the whole crowd,

Dean and Carter until they pledged their honor to us captors that they would "never do so again." They were then escorted to their homes, each by a trio of collegians, I, small chap as I was, being one, so honored, I suppose, because, having first rushed to the library from the Fraternity room, I had announced the cause of the disturbing noise. Neither the names of those two professors, nor that of Allen, president of the new university, will be found in the Triennial Government Catalogue of Dartmouth, they being unrecognized interlopers. In fact, the whole creation of the university was a political trick and unsubstantial fraud, "a thing of shreds and patches," which, at the bidding of the Supreme Court of the United States, after Webster's great argument, like the ghost of poor lost Creusa,

tenues recessit in auras,

nec post oculis est reddita nostris,

the "unsubstantial pageant faded," and "not a rack behind."

As I said, I was not of his class, that more intimate association blessing the class of 1819; yet his influence, both personal and as a scholar, was opera-sending home the “ignobile vulgus," but imprisoning tive with every member of the seven classes that enjoyed a college life with him- an influence that, seeming but small in his earlier college life, assumed, before the end of the first year, a power and reach far beyond that of any other member of college. His preparation had been a little imperfect, and he did not, therefore, give then the real impress of what he was, of what he was to be, and what he soon became. Having once taken root, and feeling the power and strength of the wider instruction under which his own power and strength were being evoked, he grew with marvelous rapidity. His facility at concentrating his mind upon any given subject, and acquiring all that was to be acquired about such subject, fairly exhausted it, being something which to the rest of us was without parallel, and in every department of study rapidly putting him far in advance of his fellows. The general standard by which scholarship among us was to be measured, received from him a positive and most noticeable elevation by what he achieved, excellence rising to a higher grade, and mediocrity becoming less esteemed. This influence was felt among both officials and undergraduates, and it began to be realized that the old rule of the arithmetics, that "more required more," was making men work harder and with more of a will, and that a decided new departure had been taken, never thereafter to be ignored, and from which there was to be no retrogression. And yet the hindrances that, in our time, impeded both teachers and taught, were of the most perplexing, aggravating and discouraging nature. President Wheelock and the board of trustees had got together by the ears, the issue of their contest bringing him to grief and to deposition from his office. A new president, Rev. Francis Brown, was elected, and time was required for him to get well into harness, and to make the college feel the power and push of that healthful influence which he afterward so admirably and efficiently exerted. Never was college official more beloved and revered. The new rival institution created by the State legislature, had been duly inaugurated, had been put into possession of the college seal, the college library, its only building and its only chapel. We lads had looked out for the two libraries of the college societies, the Fraternity and the Social Friends, and quickly and safely removed them from the college buildings to private quarters; and when Professors Dean and Carter, of the university, with a horde of village roughs, knowing nothing of such removal, broke into the library room of the Social Friends, in the second story of the southern end of the college

But it was a disturbing element for a couple of years, and could not but occupy our thoughts and conversation, and unfavorably affect our studyings and the methods and thoroughness of our instructings. I remember well the poverty of our illustrative apparatus, and the ingenious devices to which Prof. Adams was compelled to resort, to supplement its incompleteness. Not seldom was he constrained to leave to our imaginations the practical demonstration of some principle in natural philosophy. So, too, were we without the college library, which, though then small, had nevertheless many valuable books of reference, which would greatly have helped us over and through many a difficult passage in our classics. As for recitation rooms and a chapel, we got them in the village wherever we could. The whole situation was a tangle of embarrassments; and if there ever was an actual "pursuit of knowledge under difficulties," it was at Dartmouth College at the period 1815-1818, when Choate was an undergraduate.

But the extraordinary state of affairs itself, the sympathy of the college instructors toward the struggling and loyal students, and the sympathy of the students toward faithful, zealous and self-sacrificing teachers, generated a spirit of the most earnest, and therefore successful, industry, and I have always believed that the good order, the persistent obedience, the thoughtful fidelity to work, and the unbroken friendship which characterized the intercourse of teachers and taught, supplemented by the strong religious influence which then pervaded the institution, were all ministrations which helped to

turn our then evil into great good for us all. Our successors at the college can never realize the weight of the troubles that embarrassed and impeded us, nor the joy when those troubles passed away. May they, in her prosperity, be as faithful to her, as were we in her deepest adversity.

Salve Dartmuthensis mater! Salve quoque quisque frater! Alma mater quam amamus — Cujus nomen celebramus. Cujus gloria cordi cuique,

Cujus laudes sunt ubique.

But to return: Graduating in 1818, I left Choate behind me as Senior, he graduating in 1819, with the valedictory, an address which verified to the full his pre-eminent power of scholarship, the breadth and extent of his fields of reading and of thought, his comprehensive grasp of fact and power of statement, and the magnetism of his oratory, passages in it not only eliciting the most demonstrative applause, but moving hearts in sympathy and many an eye to tears.

He served afterward, though I think but a single year, as tutor, and then commenced a course of study at the Law School at Cambridge, continuing it in the office at Washington of Mr. Wirt, AttorneyGeneral of the United States. His fidelity in study and his purity of life when an undergraduate, characterized him while preparing for his life profession. I lost sight of him mainly during these years, having myself elected and entered upon the work of a teacher in the Public Latin School of this city. He, however, reappeared in our neighborhood, opening his office in Danvers, that portion of the town now called Peabody, it being practically a suburb of Salem. Here, though under the discouragements that always attend early professional life, he laid the foundation of his future success, by a fidelity in small things, which proved his fitness to be entrusted with the conduct of greater. Our avocations lying in different fields, I met him but occasionally, yet there was always beaming forth from him the same genial and friendly recognition that had so often made me happy in college, and I always have considered it, and shall always continue to consider it, as one of the highest happinesses and privileges of a not short life, that I was permitted, for so many years, to enjoy the good will and the friendship of so good, so pure, so noble a man as Rufus Choate. Very truly yours, HENRY K. OLIVER, D. C. et H. C., 1818.

Dr. Boyden says of Mr. Choate: "We entered college together in 1815. He was between fifteen and sixteen years of age, very youthful and engaging in appearance, modest and unpretentious in manner. He had been fitted for college in a rather desultory way, his preliminary studies with the minister, the doctor and the schoolmaster,

having been interrupted by seasons of work on his father's farm. He had spent a short time at Hampton Academy just before coming to Dartmouth. Several students, fresh from Andover, entered at the same time. They were more fully prepared than he, and, at the start, showed to better advantage in their recitations. But, by and by, some of these began to fall from their first estate, and it was remarked about the same time, that 'that young Choate in the corner, recited remarkably well.' Before the end of the first term he was the acknowl

edged leader of the class, and he maintained that position until graduation, without apparent difficulty. No one pretented to rival him, nor did he invite comparison. He paid little attention to the proficiency of his fellow students. His talk was of eminent scholars of other countries and of former times, and they seemed the objects of his emulation. One European scholar being mentioned as having committed to memory the Greek primitives, Choate seems to have accepted the suggestion as a valuable one. A few weeks afterward I was in his room, and he asked me to hear him recite. I took a book and listened to him, page after page, in the Greek primitives, repeated without ostentation, but merely, to all appearance, to test himself.

"He did not limit his studies to the curriculum. After the first year he read a great deal beyond the prescribed course, especially in Cicero, of whose works he thus went over several, and took up besides some of the Greek authors.

He neglected athletic exercises almost entirely. His chief relaxations from study were of a social character. He would get half a dozen of the students in his room, and, refreshments being obtained, would give himself up with them to having a 'good time.'

"In the public exercises of the college he attracted much attention. If he had an oration to deliver, the audience was always eager to hear it, and generally was rewarded by a masterly effort.

"As we adopted different professions, he the law and I medicine, I had few opportunities of witnessing the displays of his maturer powers, much to my regret. But our personal intimacy was very great, and continued through life.

"I had, from the first, no doubt that he would strive for and attain the foremost rank in his profession. When he commenced practice in Salem, we had two or three old lawyers, of whom Mr. Thorndyke was one. I said to him, 'Mr. Choate is not in the Superior Court yet' (his time not having expired in the Common Pleas), 'but I know him very well, and he will be at the head of the Essex bar as soon as he can get there.' The old lawyer looked at me with surprise and incredulity, but I had the pleasure of hearing him, before many years had elapsed, admit the fulfillment of my prophecy.

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