Hugh Blair Grigsby - Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell

H >> Hugh Blair Grigsby >> Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell

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Those who heard even his latest speeches at the bar have almost all
passed away. It was thirty-four years ago that I heard him for the first
time in public. At a meeting of the citizens of Norfolk, held in the
Town Hall, to give expression to their feelings on the occasion of the
death of Jefferson, which occurred on the Fourth of July, 1826, he was
called to the chair, and, before taking it, addressed the large assembly
for twenty-five or thirty minutes, on the character of the great man
whose death they had met to commemorate. He was at that time a senator
of the United States, and in the height of his fame; and to hear him
speak was then a great novelty, which attracted hundreds to the hall.
Though then a youth of nineteen, I can recall his manner and the outline
of his speech. He seemed to speak as a man of fine personal appearance
accustomed to public speaking and of a good address, who was deeply
impressed by the solemnity of his theme, might be expected to speak. His
voice was a volume of sweet, full, natural sound, unmarked by any
artistic training or modulation, and such as would flow from a well-bred
man in animated recitation; and his gestures were those which rose
spontaneously and unconsciously with the thought, and were wholly
unstudied; thus presenting an obvious contrast to the manner and action
of his friend Randolph, whose every attitude, the slightest motion of
whose finger, the faintest intonation of whose voice, whose every smile
and frown, natural as they seemed, were the deliberate reflection of the
closet.

Three years later, in the Virginia Convention of 1829, I heard all that
he uttered in committee and in the body; and his manner was such as I
have just described it to be. Although he had full command of the whole
armory of parliamentary warfare, he had none of that violent
gesticulation or loud intonation which fashion or taste has lately
introduced among us, but which would not be tolerated a moment in the
British House of Commons. His first speech, which was in support of his
own resolution proposing a method of procedure in the discussion of the
Constitution, though fine and effective, was delivered under somewhat
unfavorable circumstances. He stood some distance from the Chair and on
a line with it, so that he was compelled to face the audience instead of
the Speaker, and to pitch his voice to a key that could be heard
throughout the length of the hall and the crowded galleries, and an
occasional hoarseness, the result of overstraining, was apparent during
his speech. He mentioned this circumstance to me as we left the hall, as
the first intimation he had of having lost that control of his voice
which had hitherto been equal to every occasion. But when he followed
Mr. Monroe, he happened to be in a better position on the floor; and his
voice retained its usual fulness, and was pleasing to the ear. And
afterwards in the Baptist church, to which the Convention adjourned, in
his speech on the election of Governor, his voice was fresh and musical;
and in the grand debate on the judiciary tenure, when the debaters were
near each other and the Chair, he spoke with full command of his voice,
and with great animation. In fine, his manner, including the management
of his voice and gesture, approached nearer the English model of
debating than that which has been gradually gaining ground in this
country, and was most appropriate to his style of thought and
discussion.

Tazewell, with all his intercourse with the world, with all his habits
of speaking, and with all his marvellous endowments, was a remarkably
modest man. His modesty may unfold a clew to the explanation of his
whole career. He said himself that he never rose to make a speech
without serious trepidation. In the cochineal case, it was obvious to
the court and to the spectators. I have seen him, when he had been
speaking ten minutes, not fully assured. It was only when personal
danger, as in a memorable criminal case, in which even brave men were
for a time appalled, was present, that his trepidation disappeared, and
he became fearless and defiant.

Nor was the modesty of Tazewell confined to the bar. It pervaded his
whole life; and when his fame was coextensive with the Union, and when
his presence inspired awe in companies of able men, a close observer
could detect in his tones or in his manner that he was not wholly at
ease. It was only when the ice of a gathering party was fairly broken,
that he was thoroughly self-possessed. Like Judge Marshall, he had a
profound sense of respect for the female sex; and his attentions to
women were rendered with a delicacy and a gallantry that were enhanced
by the reflection that such a man was not wholly at ease in approaching
them. And nobly did woman repay his courtesy and his affection. As I
dwell upon this aspect of his life, the image of her who was the bride
of his youth, the partaker of his splendid fame, and the delight of his
declining years, rises before me. I behold her as she moved in that
happy household, bestowing not a thought upon herself, but intent on
making others happy. I see her as she enters the room in which her
husband is discoursing on learned topics to those who are grouped around
him, and I see him pause as that "ocean-eye" rests benignantly and
affectionately upon her. I shall never forget the moment when
thirty-five years ago I saw her in her own house for the first time; how
cordially she pressed my hand; how kindly she talked to an orphan boy of
a father he had never known; and how soon she put an awkward youth of
seventeen at his ease. The characteristic grace of that admirable woman
was her love of domestic life. With her the throne of human felicity was
the family altar. Life with her, as it ever was with those elder
Virginia matrons whom she resembled, was too serious a business for pomp
and show. Had she been inspired with a passion for display, had she
coveted the fleeting honors of a residence at a foreign court, or in the
metropolis of our own country, a single word from her lips would have
obtained all she wished. But her heart, like a true Virginia mother as
she was, was in the midst of her family; and though she properly
appreciated the talents of her husband, and was willing that they should
be exerted in the public service, she knew him well, and believed that
he would be happier in his own home than when he was beset with public
cares, or galled by those tortures with which ambition wrings its
victims. And when her last day had come, and the union of more than half
a century had been dissolved, and her husband had seen her beloved
remains put away in that solitary tomb by the sea, the charm of life was
lost to him; and he calmly awaited the hour when he should be laid by
her side. Nor did the generous care of woman cease with her death. When
his hour was come, and he was placed beside her, his daughters, who had
tended him for years with unceasing devotion, were borne in almost a
dying state from his tomb.

He was keenly alive to the pleasures of friendship; and he maintained
his affection for his early schoolmates unbroken to the last. His
reverence for Mr. Wythe passed all words. Randolph loved him through
life; and Tazewell reciprocated his affection with equal warmth. The
tide of his affection for John Wickham from his childhood flowed full
and strong. The relations which existed between them could be seen in
the letter I read some time ago, and were earnest, tender, and
affectionate. The affection which Tazewell cherished for Wickham,
kindled, as we have seen, over the spelling-book and the Latin grammar,
and showing itself in tears in his sixty-fifth year, grew with his
growth, and was enhanced by that elevated sense of appreciation with
which each regarded the other. It was pleasing to see them together when
the descending shadows of age were upon them, and when each had
performed those deeds which are now deemed the greatest of their lives.
It would be hard to say whether they stood to each other in the relation
of father and son, of brothers, or of equals. Wickham was eleven years
older than Tazewell, and had taught him to read. It was evident Mr.
Tazewell regarded Mr. Wickham with the greatest deference. It was,
however, something more than the deference with which one eminent man
advanced in life would show to another eminent man still more advanced;
it was the deference of the warmest friendship to an individual who not
only reciprocated the feelings of affection, but who possessed all the
moral and intellectual qualities that can adorn human nature. He
considered Mr. Wickham not only the most accomplished lawyer this
country ever produced, but the wisest man he ever knew. I have heard him
say that the speech of Mr. Wickham on the doctrine of treason in Burr's
trial would have been pronounced new and able in Westminster Hall; and
that it was the greatest forensic effort of the American bar. Tazewell's
abiding affection for Wickham was such, that he drew upon it in favor
even of his young friends. When, at one-and-twenty, I took my seat in
the House of Delegates, and, not dreaming of mixing in society, was
preparing for a course of study during the long winter nights, one of
the first calls I received was from Mr. Wickham. With me his name had
passed into history. His great speech, which I had read and studied as I
had read and studied the speeches of Chatham and of Burke, was made in
the year I was born. But I soon found that he was a living and breathing
man. His gentle kindness, his incomparable address, his charming talk,
and his cordial hospitality pressed upon me, assured me that his heart
still glowed with its ancient kindness: and when I recall the hours
which I spent at his elegant home; when I recollect the names of
Marshall, Leigh, Johnson, Stanard, Harvie, and others whom I have seen
at his hospitable board; when I recall that living galaxy of beauty
which flashed in his thronged halls, and of which the sweetest and the
brightest were his own household stars,--now, alas! extinct and gone;
and his own noble presence and demeanor, which drew from the spoiled and
fastidious poet Moore the expression of his admiration and applause, it
is with feelings of deep and tender regard, and of grateful veneration,
that I offer this tribute to his memory.

The question has often been asked whether Mr. Tazewell was fond of
literature and had the elements of a literary man. His early
opportunities were not favorable for acquiring a profound knowledge of
classical learning. In his day Latin and Greek, the foundation of all
true taste in letters, were not taught in William and Mary at all,
except in the grammar school. That Tazewell knew enough of Latin to
translate easily a Latin author, and even to write the language
grammatically, is certain; but that he never rose to that excellence in
those tongues to which his old tutor Mr. Wythe attained is equally
certain. But of English literature he had drunk deeply. He had Bacon,
Locke, Burke, Pope, Shakspeare, Swift, Hume, Gibbon, Johnson, Gillies,
Addison, and Roscoe, within three feet of his elbow for the last forty
years of his life. In English political history, such as might be
gathered from the ordinary historians, and from such books as Baker's
Chronicle and Rushworth, he was profoundly skilled. The history of the
law from the days of Magna Charta to the passage of the reform bill of
Earl Grey's administration, was the study of his whole professional and
public life. He not only knew every leading event, every great statute,
but he had the minutest details at command, and was always pleased to
descant upon a British statute, or on an epoch of British legislation.
The excellent volumes of Lord Chancellor Campbell have made a knowledge
of the history of the law an easy accomplishment; but Tazewell never
read them, and drew his information from the original sources. In the
history of Virginia he was, without exception, the greatest proficient
of his time. Whatever was told by Smith, Beverly, Keith, Stith, and Burk
with his continuators, or by Hening in the statutes at large, or in the
journals of the House of Burgesses and of the House of Delegates, or
could be gathered from the living voice for eighty years, he knew
intimately and could recall at a moment's notice. In respect of the
political history of the United States from the adoption of the federal
constitution to the day of his death, his knowledge was accurate, ready,
and profound. Indeed, if we except the first five years of the federal
constitution, it may be said that his actions were a part of that
history. He had discussed, in the House of Delegates, the leading
measures of the Washington and Adams administrations, and sixty years
ago he sate at a stormy period in the House of Representatives of the
United States.

But the excellence of Mr. Tazewell consisted not so much in knowing the
acts and thoughts of other men, as in the philosophy which he drew from
the great facts in all history. He was not in the German, or even in the
English sense, a reader of many books; but there was hardly a topic of
literature or history which he had not studied, and respecting which he
had not elaborated a theory of his own. Even in law he was more apt to
work out a question which required a solution than to turn to the books
of reports. Neither at the bar nor in the senate was he fond of quoting
authorities; but such as he did quote were of the highest merit, and he
made them do him yeoman service. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and
Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses were favorite books with him. He
thought the report of John Quincy Adams on weights and measures one of
the ablest works in political literature.

The tendency of his mind and character was wholly practical. Common
sense was his polar star. He must be judged not as a scholar or a lawyer
or a statesman merely, but as a man of business who was required to
accomplish a given purpose. If that purpose was to be accomplished by
writing, he took up his pen; if by speech, he rose at the bar and
pleaded the case, or in the senate and made a speech. But when the end
was attained he thought no more about the means which he had used in
attaining it, whether by writing or speaking, than the carpenter who has
finished a house thinks of the scaffolding by which he was enabled to
complete it. Hence Mr. Tazewell never corrected a speech for the press,
if we except two instances; and his greatest speeches are either wholly
lost, or exist in the merest outline. But, looking to the result, he was
almost invariably successful, at least in the sphere in which he acted;
and on the attainment of his purpose forgot the means by which he
reached it. If his speeches such as they are, his reports on public
questions, his legal opinions, his essays and tracts on political and
historical topics, and his private letters, were collected together, the
variety of his powers and his singular abilities would strike every
reader; and that his works ought to be preserved in volumes is a matter
of public interest and is due to his memory.

I have said that Mr. Tazewell should not be considered as a mere
scholar, a mere lawyer, or a mere statesman, but in that most august of
all characters, the citizen of a commonwealth. But to show what manner
of man he was to my younger friends, let us regard him in the aspect of
a lawyer, and as he stood in the three great departments of his
profession. In criminal law he was easily the first. It was the opinion
of a gentleman, his early contemporary at the bar, who has united in
his own person in a more eminent degree than was ever before known in
Virginia the rare qualities of a writer on metaphysics, history, and
literature,--an opinion expressed to me since the death of
Tazewell,--that he was the ablest criminal lawyer of his age, and that
he would sooner confide an important criminal case to him than to any
other living man. This is but an echo of his general reputation in this
department of the law. Analyze the qualities necessary to form a great
criminal lawyer--his various power of speech, his skill in the
evisceration of facts, his tact and ability in arranging the best line
of defence possible in the case, the skill in addressing the jury, and
the skill, of a different sort, in addressing the court, his superior
generalship in the conflicting and unexpected developments during a
trial which threaten instant defeat, his fearlessness, and that perfect
self-possession which not only conceals his own fears and weaknesses,
but avails itself of the fears and weaknesses of others, and of that
deep insight into human passions, penetrating far beyond the eye, or the
ear, or the ordinary reason: count the attainments which such a man must
possess to win supremacy in such a sphere, and we must assent to the
general opinion which places supremacy in such a sphere one of the
highest achievements of human intellect and character. Then contemplate
that excellence which is shown in the conduct of civil cases as
contradistinguished from criminal--that various power here, too, of
speech, in itself the lesson of a life to learn--the skill, too, in
addressing juries and the court with equal effect; that knowledge of the
law in its innumerable doctrines, principles, and decisions, which made
the study even in Lord Coke's day the work of twenty years; the prompt
application of this learning to the rapid matter in hand; the magical
use of the faculties of the mind and the wondrous discipline which they
must have undergone, every hour, every minute demanding a stretch of
thought and an adroitness of discrimination which have justly classed
the dialectics of the bar above all the dialectics of the schools; and
the moral as well as intellectual qualities necessary in an adept in the
varying practice of municipal law; and here, too, we will yield to the
general opinion which places excellence in this single department one of
the highest achievements of mind; and then recall what such a judge as
Spencer Roane, the ablest and sternest judge of the age, and
politically hostile to Tazewell, said when Tazewell pleaded the case of
Long _vs._ Colston before the Court of Appeals. Then let us follow the
profession beyond and above the region of municipal law into the higher
walk of the Laws of Nations, and of that great practical part of those
laws, the law of admiralty. Consider what eminence is, and what it
involves, in this department which the master spirits of ancient as well
as of modern time selected as their peculiar sphere; what the talents
are that may contend with the greatest intellects of the age in that
greatest of all our gladiatorial arenas, the Supreme Court of the United
States, and what various and rare excellencies must unite in forming a
man who may stand forth and share in such generous battle, and, still
more, shall come off victorious from such a field. And when, by blending
all these characters, each great in itself, and worthy of the ambition
of the highest talents and of the longest life, into a single character,
we have made a fame which the grandest intellects of modern times might
glory in attaining, we have but one of the elements, developed during a
comparatively short period only of his career, that make up the
reputation of him whose memory we have met this day to honor.

Then, if you please, regard him as a senator, representing the
sovereignty of Virginia in our more than Amphictyonic Council. Take any
speech which he delivered during his term of service--the speech on the
Bankrupt law; the speech on the Piracy bill, which, as it was delivered
by him, and not as it appears debased and dwarfed in the report, was one
of the grandest displays of pure intellect ever made in the Senate, and
which saved the country from giving cause of war to Spain and, perhaps
and probably, from actual war; the speech on the Census, which his
colleague who sat by his side during its delivery told me gave both
Calhoun and Webster quite as much to do as was grateful to both of them;
the speech on the Admirals; the reports from the Committee on Foreign
Affairs for seven or eight years which controlled the public opinion of
the time; that consummate ability which in its grandest displays
inspired the hearer with the belief that the speaker, great as he was,
was capable of yet greater things-_par negotiis et supra_--his speeches
so settling matters that it seemed almost vain to say anything after him
for or against, and calling the remark from Webster, when Tazewell was
making one of his last speeches in the senate, "Why, Tazewell grows
greater every day." Form your notion of what must enter into the
formation of such a character, and then you have another of those
elements that make up the character of Tazewell.

Then take your model of a man who draws his sustenance from the plough,
a private citizen, who lives privately, not because he cannot obtain
office, but because, having won the highest honors, he withdraws from
the scene and leaves the glittering rewards of public service to be
divided among those who seek them. Look for his name in the newspapers,
and you will not find it from year's end to year's end; look for deep
intrigues in local politics, and you will find no finger of his in the
dirty work. Look at the ill success of those who have engaged in public
affairs, their pecuniary entanglements, their deferred hopes, their
sleepless nights, those poisoned fountains of feeling bitter as aloes
even to the eye that looks on them as they bubble; these and such things
you may find, and find easily, but not at the door of Tazewell. He is
strictly a private citizen, engaged in his private affairs, raising and
selling at fair prices in company with his neighbors his oats and corn
and potatoes, and showing to all that the highest faculties are as
practical as the lowest, and that diligence and attention always have
their reward. Without patrimony, with a moderation in taking fees
without an example in our land, living as became a gentleman of his
position in life and affairs, he yet accumulated a larger fortune than
was probably ever before accumulated by a Virginia farmer or a lawyer
beginning life without patrimony; and when wealth was obtained, living
with that modesty and simplicity so becoming to great genius and great
wealth, ever looking with just contempt on that most piteous of all
spectacles, the spectacle of lofty genius debruised and debased by the
accursed thirst for gold; and presenting in all the private relations of
life an example which may be held up for the imitation of the old and
the young. When you have combined these various characters into one
whole, you may form some general notion of what Mr. Tazewell was.

His head was of the clearest. Horace says of Apollo that he did not
always keep his bow bent; but Tazewell's mind was always on the stretch,
or, in a stricter sense, was never on the stretch at all. The most
intricate combination of figures he saw through at a glance; and in the
arts the most complex machinery was easily understood by him, and
readily made plain to others by his familiar explanations. Processes of
reasoning the most elaborate seemed rather the play of his mind than a
serious exercise of its powers; and in his most refined speculations he
never for a moment lost himself, or allowed the hearer to lose him. When
in a playful mood he chose to use the weapons of the sophist, the ablest
men feared the ticklish game and fought shy, and where the line lay
between truth and error it was impossible to find out; and he was
equally skilful in unravelling the sophistry of others, dissecting it
asunder with the keenest relish and with exquisite skill. When he
seriously undertook to assert and defend the truth, he was irresistible,
and it was vain to oppose him. Excessive ingenuity has been laid at his
door; but, while conceding that his long dallying with inferior courts
was likely to lead to faults in that direction, yet, if we look to the
occasions when he was charged with using it, and its effect at the time,
we may be inclined to believe that his judgment of the line of argument
to be pursued was as likely to be appropriate as that of the critic who
formed his opinion according to some abstract standard of propriety.

He was never out of tune. Call on him when you would, and you found him
self-poised and fresh. Argument or narrative followed at your command.
This part of his character was very apparent to me during the last seven
years of his life. In that interval I called to see him frequently; and,
as my own studies lay in the walks of our earlier history, the talk
usually ran, for a time at least, on the men and things of an epoch in
which the Revolution held the middle place. He seemed to have perfect
command of his stores, not by the mere effort of recollection, but of
memory and reflection combined, eliminating a truth from the facts which
concealed it. A specimen of the talk which actually occurred between us
may illustrate my remark. I would approach him and say deliberately in
his ear--for within a few years past he had become slightly deaf--"Mr.
Tazewell, Col. Richard Bland (who, by the way, died in October, 1776)
wrote tracts in the Parson's cause, a tract against the Quakers, and his
inquiry into the rights of the colonies; did he write any other
pamphlet?" Quick as thought he replied: "Yes, he wrote a tract on the
tenure of lands in Virginia, showing that they were allodial and not
held in fee. I read the tract when I was a boy; and it helped me in my
examination for a license to practise law." He had probably not recalled
this fact before for half a century: no copy of the tract is preserved;
and there was not another human being then living, I may venture to say,
who knew of the existence of such a tract; and so at times with other
facts which he recalled after the lapse of seventy years, and which he
had learned from his father or from Mr. Wythe. On the other hand, when
his earlier recollections were clearly proved to be inaccurate as to
matter of fact, as in the case of what he thought had happened at the
session of the House of Burgesses of 1765, when Henry's resolutions
against the stamp act were passed, and I placed under his eye the
discrepancy between his statement of the case and the entry on the
journals of the House, he would fight manfully in defence of his own
views, but generally ended in cases where the proof was conclusive:
"Well, sir, Mr. Wythe told me so." Dates not common or easily reached
were fixed in his memory by a kind of connexion with his own life; as
for instance, I would ask him whether he remembered the features of
Peyton Randolph? And he would answer: "No, sir; I was born in December,
1774, and he died in October, 1775, in Philadelphia, when I was not a
year old." And it was by questions such as these, which I could answer
with exact precision myself, that I ascertained not only the integrity
and worth of his memory, which we all know in aged persons retains with
freshness the incidents of youth, but his capacity of combination which,
in the degree in which he possessed it, was extremely rare in young or
old; and from the nature of my pursuits for the time in question I may
be said not only to have tested his powers of recollection, but to have
probed the depth of his knowledge in relation to the history of Virginia
and its cognate topics more effectually than it was the privilege of any
one else to do; and my admiration of his talents and of his resources
increased to the last. Let it be remembered that there was no more
reason to look for profound learning on these subjects from Mr.
Tazewell, whose life was crowded with business, than from any of his
eminent contemporaries, some of whom I knew well, but none of whom
approached him in these respects; and I have pointed out, merely for
the sake of example, a single department of knowledge only in which I
happened to take a passing interest, leaving all those untouched on
which I have heard him discourse for thirty years at least, and you will
be able to form an opinion of the nature, variety, and extent of his
acquisitions, and feel with me what a gap the death of such a man has
made in the commonwealth.

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