CHAPTER II
LAW, BUSINESS, AND LETTERS
Columbia Law School—Impressions of the faculty—I begin law practice—Early partnerships—A $10,000 fee—Founding of the Young Men's Hebrew Association in 1874—The "dissipations" of a law partner—The Hepburn Committee on railway rates; my partner Simon Sterne represents the Chamber of Commerce—On the bridle-path with Joseph H. Choate—I become a member of L. Straus & Sons, manufacturers and importers—My marriage to Miss Sarah Lavanburg—My début in politics—The Cleveland-Blaine campaign—The "rum, Romanism, and rebellion" episode—"Origin of the Republican Form of Government," my first book—Recommended as minister to Turkey; Henry Ward Beecher writes the President—Cleveland nominates me minister to Turkey.
Columbia Law School in 1871 was at Lafayette Place. The course covered two years, at the end of which a successful examination entitled a student to admission to the bar without a further State examination, and for those who gave serious attention to the course it was an easy matter to pass this finishing examination.
Particularly worthy of mention with regard to the school are Professors Theodore W. Dwight and Francis Lieber. Professor Dwight, the able director of the school at that time, well deserved his great reputation as the most distinguished teacher of law in the country. He was not only a master of his subject, but had a marvelous gift for imparting his great knowledge.
Professor Lieber, whose lectures we attended once a week, taught us political science. He was a Prussian veteran who fought in the Battle of Waterloo. At the close of the Napoleonic Wars he had returned to his studies in Berlin, and thereafter was arrested several times for his outspoken liberal views. After frequent persecution and even imprisonment, he fled to England, and in 1827 came to America.
He was author of many books on legal and political matters, among them "Civil Liberty and Self-Government," which was adopted as a textbook in several of our universities. In 1863 he prepared "Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States, in the Field," which Lincoln promulgated as Order No. 100 of the War Department. It was a masterly piece of work, embodying advanced humanitarian principles, and it later formed the basis of several European codes.
As a rule, egotism and real merit negate one another rather than coördinate; Lieber was the exception. He had both, and combined them to a marked degree, sometimes in a manner that afforded amusement to his students. For instance, he referred continuously to "my Civil Liberty" as a book of extraordinary erudition, new in its field and the last word on the matter. He was so full of his subject that he was apt to lose himself and stray off, with his distinctly German accent, into the vast field of his profound philosophical and historical knowledge. A veritable encyclopædia of information, he was really more of an expounder than a teacher. As his course was optional, those who came to listen came to learn, and we received a larger view of the function of law in civil society than we derived from all our studies of municipal law.