Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell Part 5

Sharp is the only member of the bar now living who was a student in the office of Mr. Tazewell, and who saw him closely while engaged in the two or three last years of his practice at the bar.

The mortal career of our celebrated townsman, LITTLETON WALLER TAZEWELL, closed on Sunday morning, at 11 o'clock. He was emphatically one of the great men of his age, and a just memorial of his life will, no doubt, be specially prepared in due season. Meantime, we will note, that he was born in the city of Williamsburg, where his father, Judge Tazewell, of the Court of Appeals, subsequently resided, on the 17th of December, 1774. After finis.h.i.+ng his education at William and Mary College, he commenced his study of the law, partly under the care of his grandfather, Mr. Waller, and the late Mr. Wickham, of Richmond. He was distinguished at once at the bar as scientifically acquainted with his profession, the principles of which he drew, not from the labor-saving indexes of the present day, but from the pure and almost sacred writings of c.o.ke and Mansfield. Such wells of truth were not sounded except by great intellectual efforts, and it is chiefly owing to the necessity which then existed of making such efforts, that we boast of the great lawyers of past times.

In a short time after his appearance in the courts he was elected to the Legislature, and was one of its members in the great session of '98, when the resolutions prepared by Mr. Madison were introduced. The next year he represented the Williamsburg District in Congress, being successor to Judge Marshall in that body, and was present during the stormy period of Mr. Jefferson's election to the Presidency over Burr.

Few statesmen have more truly appreciated the grandeur of Mr.

Jefferson's teachings than did the subject of this notice.

He declined a reelection to Congress, and came to Norfolk in 1802, then a place of extensive foreign commerce, and soon entered upon a large and important practice. During the same year he married a daughter of the late Col. Nivison, and from that time to the present continued to reside among us. With the exception of the interrupting years of the war of 1813-14, and of a short period, during which he represented this city in the Legislature on a special occasion, he practised his profession with the honor and success that were to have been expected from one who was, while yet a young man, p.r.o.nounced by Judge Marshall and Judge Roane to be unsurpa.s.sed, if equalled, by any compet.i.tor of his day. It was indeed hard to speak in measured terms of a lawyer who, though a resident of a provincial town, was consulted, at the same time, (1819,) by London merchants on the "custom of London," and by the priests of Rome on the canon law.

At the earnest solicitation of Mr. Monroe, he reluctantly accepted the appointment of one of the commissioners under the Florida treaty,--being united in that duty with Mr. King and the late Hugh Lawson White; and after that work was done, he withdrew from the practice of law to the privacy which he so much, perhaps too much, loved.

In 1825 he was elected by the General a.s.sembly a Senator of the United States over some distinguished compet.i.tors, and soon after taking his seat was called upon to discuss the celebrated Piracy bill of Mr.

Monroe's administration; and in a speech on that measure, which he defeated, displayed such extraordinary resources of argument and learning as threw all his a.s.sociates of that epoch in the shade, and established his own reputation as the greatest debater of his age.

He was a prominent member of the Convention of Virginia in 1829-30, where his compeers were Chief Justice Marshall, John Randolph, Watkins Leigh, Taylor, Upshur, and others of that brilliant a.s.sembly. He was at the same time a Senator from Virginia in Congress; and was in nothing behind the great personages of the Senate, where sat Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, save only in his invincible desire and love of retirement.

In 1833-4 he resigned his seat in the Senate of the United States, and soon after, and almost without his knowledge, he was elected Governor of Virginia, the duties of which office he actively and faithfully performed until his resignation, which took place before the expiration of his term.

From that time he has continued in private life--but not uselessly, for he has been consulted from all parts of the Union on almost all subjects; and by his intimate acquaintances, his opinions have been regarded as oracular inspirations. He has also attended with care to his private duties, and these, with his correspondence, have chiefly occupied his later years.

It has been the subject of deep regret that one possessing such colossal powers should have been so unwilling to exert them. There is but one instance in history of a really great man seeking an obscurity which he could not win,--the case of Chief Justice Wilmot, of England. But Mr.

Tazewell had the right to judge and decide for himself, and that he preferred private to public life is rather to be lamented than complained of. Nor must it be supposed that this preference was the effect of indolence. On the contrary, he was, in his way, a laborious man, and it may be that the leisure of his latter years may have been productive of important fruits in literature and science to those who have survived him.

We will not, and need not, dwell upon the private relations of Mr.

Tazewell, in all of which he had no superior; and although for many years he has been a stranger upon our streets, yet we feel that even in a social point of view we have sustained a loss which cannot be repaired. There is great sadness in our city, which pervades all its ranks, and which even those who never saw him deeply feel. We add no more than to offer our unaffected sympathy to his family.

DESCRIPTION OF MR. TAZEWELL, BY THE LATE WILLIAM WIRT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES.

This sketch of Mr. Tazewell is taken from the twenty-fourth number of the OLD BACHELOR, a name given to a series of papers written in imitation of The Spectator, The Rambler, and their successors, and designed to improve the morals and elevate the taste of the community.

They appeared in the Richmond Enquirer during the years 1813-14, and were republished in duodecimo in the latter year. Mr. Tazewell is represented as a youth of twenty-two, under the name of Sidney; Gen.

Taylor under that of Herbert; the late Judge Parker under that of Alfred; the late Francis W. Gilmer under that of Galen I believe; and I suspect Mr. Wirt himself is the Old Bachelor of the piece. But, for various reasons, I shall only present Mr. Tazewell as he appears in the character of Sidney. As Mr. Wirt was Clerk of the House of Delegates for three years of the time during which Mr. Tazewell was a member of the body, he must have known personally Mr. Tazewell in his twenty-second or third year; and although the sketch was written fourteen or fifteen years later, it may have been drawn from actual life.

"On the night of the arrival of the young friends mentioned in my former number, Alfred, whose signal had drawn them to the parlor, where they were first met by Rosalie and myself, performed the part of master of ceremonies by giving us a mutual introduction, which he did in the following terms:

"'My friends, this is Dr. Cecil, the benevolent censor of the age; and this is my sister Rosalie. This, sir,' addressing me, 'is the son of a man whom I have often heard you admire, Mr. Sidney;' presenting a spare young man of good figure, whose face seemed formed on the finest model of antiquity, and whose large eye, of a soft deep blue, habitually expanded, as if looking upon a wide and boundless surface, might well be called an _eye of ocean_. He advanced with mild and graceful composure, and saluted me with an una.s.suming modesty and politeness, blended at the same time with a manly firmness, simplicity, and dignity, which gave me the presentiment that he was a superior character."

After describing a conversation in which Van Tromp, Reynolds, Herbert, and Sidney took part, the narrative continues:

"But Sidney's appeared to be the master-spirit; cool, collected, firm, vigorous, and self-balanced, he stood, like an eagle upon the rocks of Norway's coast, defying with equal composure the storm that raved and rent the atmosphere above, and the surging element that towered and dashed and roared below.

"This young man was really a prodigy. He was only two-and-twenty years of age; yet his information seemed already to be universal. He spoke on every science and every art like one of its ablest professors. There was no broken lumber nor useless trash in his mind. The materials were all of the best sort, and in the highest order. The stores of his knowledge had been collected with so much reflection and hypothetical application, and arranged in his memory with so much skill and method, that he would call them into use at a moment's warning; and there was no point which he wished to ill.u.s.trate by a.n.a.logy, or support by a precedent, for which his memory did not supply him at once with the happiest materials.

"There were one or two important particulars in which he had a manifest and striking advantage over the generality of young men. Where, for instance, Herbert, Reynolds, and Van Tromp had, through indolence or hurry, pa.s.sed over the Gordian knots which had occurred in the course of their studies, Sidney seems to have stopped, and sitten deliberately and patiently down, resolved not to cut but to untie them before he rose, so as not only to make himself master of the knowledge which they concealed, but to discover also how the knot came to be tied; whether it arose from the unavoidable difficulty of the subject, or from the want of care or of intellectual strength in the author. Thus he trained and practised his mind to grapple with difficulties and to subdue them; and thus he gave to his penetration a point of adamant which no difficulty could stop or turn aside.

"But, besides this temper of superior hardihood and vigor with which he thus endued his mind, there was this further advantage from this process: that his knowledge was much superior both in quant.i.ty and accuracy. Sidney's course of study had resembled a cloudless day in which all was light and every object visible, whether on hill, plain, or in dale; whereas theirs resembled a coruscation by night, in which only the most prominent objects are seen, and that, too, only by sudden and transient glimpses. And hence, I remarked, that very often in the course of their conversation, when they were under the eclipse of one of those Gordian knots, lost in valleys, shade, and darkness, Sidney was in broad and perfect day.

"It was owing, too, as I believe, to the ever-wakeful, intense, and ardent action of the mind, as well as the collateral meditation and study with which he had read, that his memory appeared to have possessed a faculty of discriminating among the subjects offered to its retention, and rejecting the inc.u.mbrance of what was worthless, to have seized and holden with indissoluble tenacity everything that was useful, _together with all its roots and ramifications_. He seems to have examined the historical incidents with which he had met, with all that 'large, sound, round-about sense,' as Mr. Locke calls it, which was necessary to combine with it all its causes and consequences, and render it practically useful to the purposes of life. I was several times struck with the superior advantages which he derived from these details of relative and antecedent with which he had recorded in his memory historical facts. His fellow-students were acquainted with all the prominent incidents of history; but not having examined them in all their bearings, as they had read, and impressed them, _with all their relations of cause and effect_, on their minds, it turned out that they frequently attempted to borrow aid from historical incidents, which Sidney, from his more intimate knowledge and mastery of the subjects, was able to seize and drive back upon them like routed elephants upon their own army.

"He surpa.s.sed them, too, in those powers which are derived from mathematical study; the power of keeping continually in the mind's eye, without winking or wavering, the distant proposition which is to be proven; of advancing to it by steady steps on the shortest route; and bearing up, with the strength of Atlas, the most extended and ponderous chain of logical deductions. Such was the habitual steadiness and strength of his mind, that, unlike his fellow-students, I never saw him lose sight, for an instant, of the point in debate, much less s.h.i.+ft that point to something else; in advancing to it, I never saw him take one devious step; nor did I ever see him at any moment oppressed or entangled by the concatenation of his argument, or indicate even that he was at all sensible of its weight.

"That there may have been something in the original organization of his mind or temperament of his character, that qualified him, in a preeminent degree, for cool, dispa.s.sionate, profound, and vigorous exertion, I will not take upon me to deny; but that he owed much more of his excellence to that secret and persevering labor to which he had so n.o.bly submitted, and by which he had given additional tone and power to his mind itself, I am perfectly convinced. His mind did, now, indeed, appear in itself the superior one; it had such a power of compression and expansion, of versatility and strength, that it seemed capable of anything and everything that he pleased. It was astonis.h.i.+ng with what rapidity and effect he would s.h.i.+ft the color, shape, and att.i.tude of the same object as the emergencies of his argument required. With what closeness and unanswerable cogency he would maintain truth! and with what illusion and almost irrefutable sophistry he would disguise and metamorphose error! At the first sound of the trumpet he could draw a larger body of forces into the field in favor of an erroneous position than his adversaries could in favor of a correct one; and even when on the wrong side, which he seemed just as willing to be as he was to be on the right, he was generally astute enough to drive his adversaries into straits and keep the field himself in token of victory. Indeed the spirit of enterprise and the consciousness of his strength led him generally to prefer the wrong side to the right, and to support error with more vivacity and appearance of enjoyment than he did truth. His fault seemed to consist in the abuse of his strength; in that laxity of colloquial morals (if I may use the phrase) of which I have, just spoken, and which led him to triumph, with equal pleasure, in every victory, right or wrong.

"There was, however, something still more unfortunate in this bold and commanding character, but which I believe I should never have discovered had I not endeavored to take the place of the public towards him, and judge of him as I have seen them judge of others: I mean an apparent frigidity of manner which I feared the world would consider as the evidence of a cold and sordid heart.

"The man who is in possession of such talents as Sidney's, is in possession of a most dangerous gift; and it behoves him to walk before the public with a circ.u.mspection proportionate to the superiority of those talents. Exorbitant power, whether intellectual or political, naturally begets distrust and jealousy in the good as well as envy in the wicked; and it requires on the part of its possessor a constant display, not only of the most scrupulous integrity and sacred purity on every occasion, great or small; but a constant display also of the most disinterested generosity and public spirit, to give such a character even fair play before the world. People must be satisfied that such an one will not abuse his power to their injury, and sacrifice their interests to his own; but that the strong and native tendency of his character is to disregard his own interests entirely when drawn into collision with theirs, before they will forgive him his superiority, and trust themselves in his hands. To such a character, any appearance or suspicion of coldness, or indifference towards the public good, and much more any appearance or suspicion of uncommon devotion to self, however fallacious such appearance or suspicion may be, is political death, without the hope of resurrection. Such a character must lose sight of self altogether, compared with the public, or the public will be very apt to lose sight of him, or seeing, not to trust him. As to Sidney, knowing him as I do, I know that those appearances of which I have spoken are entirely fallacious; that his laxity in conversation is only sportiveness; that his attention to his own interests does not surpa.s.s the bounds of ordinary prudence; that, on a proper occasion, no man is more charitable, generous, or munificent; none more alive to the misfortunes and even solicitudes of a virtuous sufferer; that his apparent coldness is the effect only of mental abstraction and of judicious caution and reflection; and, in part, of that strong and exhausting flame with which his friends.h.i.+p burns for those whom he grapples to his heart. But the world at large can never have that knowledge of him that I have; and, therefore, though I know that he looks upon mankind with an eye of benevolence, and upon his country with the spirit of a patriot; and though, in addition to this, he is certainly capable of any and every thing that demands fidelity, zeal, energy, industry the most unrelaxing, and talents the most transcendent; yet much I fear his country will never know him well enough to do him justice, or to profit herself of his powers."

SKETCH OF FRANCIS WALKER GILMER.

As the graphic portraiture of Mr. Wirt represents Mr. Tazewell in youth, so the annexed sketch by Mr. Gilmer represents him as he was about to retire from the bar. Mr. Gilmer himself was one of the most brilliant young men Virginia ever produced. That Mr. Jefferson selected him to choose in England the first professors of the University of Virginia--an office which he performed with eminent skill and judgment--is a proof of the estimate which was placed upon his talents by the first men of the age.

The sketch of Mr. Tazewell is taken from a small volume of Mr. Gilmer's productions, published in Baltimore in 1828, page 35.

"I hardly know what apology to make to LITTLETON W. TAZEWELL, of Norfolk, for dragging his name from the obscurity which he seems to court, but is unable to win. He has shrunk from the great national amphitheatre, the Olympic games, where it is the glory of Mr. Pinkney to challenge and to conquer, to an obscure sea-port town. But, more confident in his powers than he is himself, I do not fear a comparison with this veteran of the bar of the Supreme Court. His person may be a little above the ordinary height, well-proportioned, and having the appearance of great capacity to endure fatigue. His complexion is swarthy, his muscles relaxed as from intense thought long continued. His features are all finely developed. His eyes are large, full, and of a dark blue color, shaded by thick black brows a little raised, as if looking on a vast expanse of distant prospect. A manner firm, manly, dignified, and free. _Vox permanens verum subrauca_; its tremulous and occasionally interrupted accents give unusual tenderness to its tones.

But it is neither the Ciceronian person, nor the Chatham face, nor the voice of Antony, that we are to admire in Mr. Tazewell. It is the great and clear comprehension; the freshness and rapidity with which every thing luxuriates on the generous soil of his mind, which is further removed from even occasional sterility than in any one I have known.

This soil has no succession of seasons; the sun which warms it is never for a moment obscured by cloud or eclipse; there reigns a bright, a genial, a perpetual summer. His perceptions are as intuitive and as strong as those of Judge Marshall. He has as much intrepidity of intellect as Mr. Pinkney, and great boldness; but no insolence, no exultation of manner. He wants only ambition to make him rival, nay, perhaps even to surpa.s.s the accomplished champion of the federal bar.

His fault is subtlety, and a provoking minuteness of detail in his argument. He sometimes shows legal and rhetorical artifice where there is not the least occasion for either. These defects, however, have been acquired in the long habit of addressing subordinate tribunals, where his genius riots in its strength, and are so little connected with the original organization of his mind as to be easily cured.

"There is something absolutely painful in reflecting on the destiny of this extraordinary man. Endowed with the best and most various gifts I ever knew concur in any individual; possessing a vast fund of information, and indefatigable in whatever he undertakes; he has a thousand times exhibited talents equal to any occasion, and is still unknown to the world, and, until lately, was almost unheard of beyond the limits of his native State. One may easily reconcile to his philanthropy that "some mute, inglorious Milton" may rest in every neglected grove, because it requires a strong effort of imagination to suppose the clod of the valley ever to have been "pregnant with celestial fire;" but we have not this comfort to allay our mortification, when we see talents of the purest and brightest ray, united to the n.o.blest qualities of the human heart, emitting their l.u.s.tre in broad daylight, and to the public eye, unnoticed or forgotten.

The sentiment which it excites in one is not so much sympathy with the object as regret for the public loss in not appreciating the rarest gifts of Providence to man. The individual himself seems too elevated to permit a vulgar pity. The world is too contemptible in his eyes to render its praise or its censure matter of interest. Perhaps there is something in this public indifference even congenial to one conscious of the inexhaustible resources and the unconquerable power of his mind. The eagle loves the awful solitude of her sublime cliffs, which remove her far from the importunate chattering and impertinent intrusion of magpies and daws; but it is truly a misfortune to the country that the imperial bird should sleep on her lonely eyrie, and leave the supreme dominion to region kites and mousing owls.

"I had long been curious to see the natural vigor, fertility, and adroitness of Mr. Tazewell contrasted with the consummate art and accomplished prowess of Mr. Pinkney; and partic.i.p.ated in the public disappointment, (as I must ever deplore the cause which produced it,) when the death of Mr. Pinkney rendered it impossible, just at the moment that the contest was to take place. But a few days before Mr. Pinkney's death, (a circ.u.mstance which probably hastened it,) he had exerted himself very much in the argument of a cause of great interest to his client. Immediately the discussion was over, and while the accents of that _cycnea vox_ reverberated in the ears of all who heard the last effort of his eloquence, he began the preparation for his argument with Mr. Tazewell. His application was too intense; his strength, and health, and life, sunk under it; and they who hastened from a distance to witness the compet.i.tion, beheld antic.i.p.ated victory and triumph turned into a funeral procession: _O fallacem hominum spem, fragilemque fortunam, et inanes nostras contentiones!_"

The reader will keep in mind that this sketch by Mr. Gilmer was written nearly forty years ago, and before Mr. Tazewell appeared in the Senate of the United States.

No. IV.

EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF MR. TAZEWELL RESPECTING PUBLIC OFFICE.

Mr. Tazewell kept no copies of his letters to his friends, and I make the subjoined extracts, explanatory of his views respecting public office, wholly from those in my own possession. I may state here that when a commissioner was appointed to Kentucky, in 1823, Mr. Tazewell was consulted on the subject by some of his friends in the General a.s.sembly, and he agreed to undertake the office; but when he heard that the friends of Benjamin Watkins Leigh, his warm personal friend, desired the appointment of that distinguished jurist, he sent a peremptory withdrawal of his name, and urged the nomination of Mr. Leigh. When he believed that the arbiters of the dispute between Kentucky and Virginia would be chosen at large, he suggested the names of Jeremiah Mason of New Hamps.h.i.+re, William Hunter of Rhode Island, and Langdon Cheves of Philadelphia.

In a letter, dated January 1, 1823, he says: "I ask nothing from my country, but there is nothing she should ever require of me in vain....

As a citizen of Virginia, I hold myself bound at all times to render any aid which it may be within the compa.s.s of my poor abilities to offer in furtherance of the rights, the interests, and even the wishes of its government.... Proud as I should be at being selected as the advocate of my country's rights by the unsolicited voice of her legislature, I could not purchase even this gratification at the expense of any whom I love, esteem, or admire."

Under the date of December, 1822, he writes: "If I know myself, there is no situation within the power of government to bestow which I covet or desire, nor is there one which I would not accept, if the discharge of its duties by me was deemed necessary or useful to my country. I have no ambition to gratify, although I have duties to fulfil."

Under the date of December 9, 1824, he says: "The public interest shall never be postponed to my individual concerns, although ruin to myself may result from it."

When once asked for something like a defence of some parts of his political career, which he declined to give, he said: "There is no act of my whole life, public or private, which I regret; none that I am solicitous should not be scrutinized; none the motives or objects of which I cannot instantly explain, in a way which candor will approve."

On the 1st of December, 1824, he writes: "If I know myself, there is no office, place, or appointment within the gift of man which I wish, and none I would accept save from my native State. To her I have never felt myself at liberty to refuse myself under any circ.u.mstances, when she thought proper to call me to her side. But even from her I want nothing but that protection which she affords in common to all her citizens. My grat.i.tude would constrain me to sacrifice everything to obey her wishes." On another occasion, when his creed was called for, he wrote: "As a Virginian, I would willingly suffer this inconvenience and make this sacrifice, and much more, for Virginia; but I should feel myself unworthy of her name, if I did not scorn to stoop to the meanness of blazoning to her view my own merits, which, if they exist at all, none ought to know so well as my countrymen, or to vindicate myself against suspicions which, if without foundation, they ought not to entertain. I cannot, therefore, humiliate myself, or degrade my friends, so far as, at this time of day, and under the circ.u.mstances in which I am placed, to furnish you or any other with a confession of my political faith, to be read either in the Richmond church or elsewhere, to the end that I may propitiate its tutelary deity or his ministering priesthood; and as this seems to be the _sine qua non_ of my success, I must, therefore, beg leave to decline the nomination."

On the 6th of December, 1826, he writes: "I want no office, place, or appointment under the sun, nor will I ever have any except from the gift of my own State."