At the end of his career in the United States Senate, Judge Trumbull became a member of the Chicago Bar. He was thereafter continuously, and up to the time of his death, engaged in the active and laborious practice of his profession. The great place that he had held in the councils of the nation, the influence that he had exerted upon national legislation, and the esteem in which he was held by the lawyers and the statesmen of the country, entitled him to a lofty mien; but as is well known to us all who had the privilege of his acquaintance at the bar, while his demeanor was grave it was also modest, and his manner was marked by a gentleness that was most grateful to everybody with whom he came in contact. His sincerity and honesty in the presentation of his case, his respectful demeanor to any court in which he was engaged in a legal contest, constituted him a model that the lawyers of our bar might well imitate. He was in practice at the bar forty-four years after he ceased to be a judge of the supreme court of this state.... He was preëminently the grand old man of this country. In his intercourse with his fellow citizens he was a quiet, sincere, frank, honest American gentleman. Lyman Trumbull was one of the very great men of the nation.
Eulogistic remarks were made also by Senator John M. Palmer, ex-Senator James R. Doolittle, and Judge Henry W. Blodgett. Mr. Doolittle said that of the sixty-six members of the United States Senate who were there when Secession began, only four were then living. They were Harlan, of Iowa, Rice, of Minnesota, Clingman, of North Carolina, and himself (Doolittle).
Trumbull's forte was that of a political debater well grounded in the law. Here he stood in the very front rank, both as a Senator addressing his equals and as an orator on the hustings. He was always ready to discuss the questions which he was required to face. He had a logical mind, and the ability to think quickly and to choose the right words to express his ideas. He never wasted words in ornament or display. He never lost his balance when addressing the Senate, or a public audience. He had perfect self-possession. He never stood in awe of any other debater or hesitated to reply promptly to question or challenge. Nor did he ever lose his dignity in debate. Once he came near to calling Sumner a falsifier, when the latter had described him as recreant to the principles of human liberty; but he restrained himself in time to avoid an infraction of the rules of the Senate. And he afterwards came to the defense of Sumner when the latter was deposed, by his more subservient colleagues, from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations. On this occasion Sumner came forward holding out both hands, and with tears in his eyes thanked him for his generosity.
His rare forensic gifts would have been unavailing without confidence in the justice of his cause, and a clear conscience which shone in his face and pervaded him through and through. Although not endowed with oratorical graces he grasped the attention of his audience at once, and he never failed to convince his hearers that he had an eye single to the public good. It was hard for him to separate himself from the Republican party in 1871-72, but he considered it a duty that he owed to the country to expose the rottenness then pervading the national administration. He did not have General Grant in mind when he moved the investigation of custom-house frauds in New York. He did not aim at him directly or indirectly, but at the system which had grown up before his election. Grant's mental make-up was such that he considered any fault-finding with federal office-holders a reproach to himself, as the head of the Government, and accordingly braced himself against it; and this habit grew on him through the whole eight years of his presidency. Yet Trumbull uttered no reproach against him during the campaign of 1872, or later.
It was commonly said that Trumbull's nature was cold and unsympathetic. This was a mannerism merely. He did not carry his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, but he was an affectionate husband and father and grandfather, most generous to his parents, brothers, and sisters, and one of the most unselfish men I ever knew. His poor constituents, who were often stranded in Washington, needing help to get home, seldom applied to him for assistance in vain, and this kind of drain was pretty severe during his whole senatorial service. He was fond of little children. He was often seen playing croquet with his own and others in Washington City. Mr. Morris St. P. Thomas, a member of the Chicago Bar who shared Trumbull's office during his later years, says that he never knew a warmer-hearted man than Trumbull. He was kindness and consideration itself to the people in his office. He was never cross or short, and every young man there always felt that he could go into the judge's room whenever he liked, and sit down and tell him his troubles. Once it devolved upon Mr. Thomas to engage a stenographer for the office. Of the several applicants the best was an unprepossessing, hump-backed girl. "I told the judge about her—that she was the ablest applicant, but very unprepossessing in appearance." "Why," said he, at once, "that's the very reason to take her, poor girl!" And they kept her for years.[133]
In short, he was a high-minded, kind-hearted, courteous gentleman, without ostentation and without guile. In business affairs he was punctual, accurate, and spotless. He never borrowed money, never bought anything that he could not pay cash for, never gave a promissory note in his life, not even in the purchase of real estate where deferred payments are customary. The best blood of New England coursed in his veins and he never dishonored it, in either private or public life.
It is perhaps too early to assign to Trumbull his proper place in the roll of statesmen of the Civil War period. Those who come after us and can look back one hundred years, instead of fifty, will doubtless have a better perspective and a clearer vision than those who lived with the actors of that momentous struggle. Some things, however, we may be sure of. One is that the man who drew the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States and all places under the jurisdiction thereof, will never be forgotten as long as the love of liberty survives in this land. Not that the Thirteenth Amendment would not have been passed and incorporated in our system even if Lyman Trumbull had not been a Senator, or if he had never been born. It was a consequence of the taking-up of arms against the Union in 1861 that slavery should come to an end somehow. All that Lincoln did, all that Trumbull did, all that Congress did, was to seize the occasion to give direction to certain irresistible forces then called into existence for blessing or cursing mankind. There were different ways of bringing slavery to an end. That of constitutional amendment was the best of all because it removed the subject-matter from the field of dispute at once and forever. Lincoln paved the way for it. He prepared the public mind for it by his two proclamations of emancipation. Trumbull and Congress and the state legislatures did the rest.
It may be fairly said that Trumbull took the lead in putting an end to arbitrary arrests in the loyal states where the courts of justice were open, and in prescribing the process of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. This was a difficult problem to handle and it cost Trumbull some popularity, since the loyal spirit of the North was very touchy on the subject of Copperheads and easily inflamed against anybody who was accused of sympathy with them. The law finally passed seems now to be altogether just, and well suited to be put in practice again if occasion for it should arise.
Trumbull's place as one of the "Seven Traitors" who voted not guilty on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson is now universally considered a proud position, and I think that that of his neighbor and friend, James R. Doolittle, of Wisconsin, who earned the title of traitor a year or two earlier, is entitled to a place in the same Valhalla. Both are deserving of monuments at the hands of their respective states.