The History of Orange County New York

by Unknown

But his splendid gifts and varied powers could not be restricted in their exercise to the energies of the law and the graces of literature. Equally fitted to shine in society or among scholars, in pulpit or press, on the rostrum or in the forum; always facile princeps as poet or preacher, essayist or journalist, publicist or philanthropist, advocate or orator, his un-approached range and versatility mark him indisputably as the Admirable Crichton of his land and age.

During the period covered by Mr. Marsh's impressive eulogy upon the character and attainments of his friend Stephen W. Fullerton, the Orange County bar was enriched by the weight, the influence and the learning of a group of lawyers whose temperament disinclined them to the fierce excitements, the rude conflicts, the temporary triumphs of the forum. Foremost among them was Eugene A. Brewster, who, though he personally argued his cases with great ability and success before the appellate courts, where reason and reserve count for more than fervor and fluency, was unskilled in the art of swaying a jury against its will or snatching a verdict against the evidence. Mr. Brewster's warm admiration for his great preceptor, Judge John W. Brown, may have unconsciously influenced his bearing, but his moral and intellectual equipment was entirely his own. This embraced a deep sense of the responsibility resting upon every lawyer to sustain the honor and dignity of an ancient and honorable profession. He scrupulously maintained throughout a busy and active career the high ideals with which he started out. His aim was to ascertain the truth, not to circumvent it; to apply the law, not to evade it; to draw from the fountains of justice, not to pollute them. He enjoyed the respect of the courts, of his brethren and of the public because of his character as well as his ability, his virtues as well as his talents. His whole life was a steady influence working for honesty in the moral fibre of the community; a persistent power making for righteousness; a never-failing light guiding to the path of safety and of honor. In him were incarnated those conserving principles, those formative influences, those stimulating ideals, those ennobling traditions which impart dignity to human life, strength to human character, stability to human society.

David A. Scott was another eminent member of the same group. As surrogate of the county for two terms his administration was distinguished by an unusual display of those qualities of breadth, wisdom, patience, knowledge of human nature and capacity for affairs so peculiarly requisite in a probate judge exercising jurisdiction over the saddest controversies, disclosures and scenes ever presented for adjudication—contested wills, disputed claims, angry accountings, recrimination between brother and sister, calumniation of the dead, sordid passions and petty avarice disrupting old friendships and family ties. In calming these dissensions whenever possible and in deciding them whenever necessary Judge Scott manifested that happy blending of tact, temper, common sense, sound judgment, practical sagacity and professional learning so essential in the office of surrogate. I say judge because the title surrogate is a most unfortunate one. The office is known in other commonwealths as that of probate judge. People are so influenced by mere names that if such were the title here the claims of an able surrogate to public respect would be more fully understood. When it is considered that once in every generation the entire wealth of the county, including vast fortunes amassed elsewhere by those who die residing in it, is administered upon in this court and that nearly all the intricate and perplexing questions involved in its distribution are passed upon by the surrogate, it will readily be seen that the duties and responsibilities of this office are among the most important, extensive and onerous that can devolve upon judicial officers.

It is now nearly fifty years since David A. Scott entered upon the duties of this office. There are those who still remember the dignity and grace with which he discharged them. It is forty years since he laid them down. One year after the close of his second official term and one year after Judge Michael H. Hirschberg had been admitted to the bar, they entered into a partnership under the name of Scott & Hirschberg, which continued until Mr. Scott's death. What this long, close association meant to the younger member of the firm he alone fully knows. Surely he would be the last to repel the suggestion that it doubtless profoundly influenced a character still sensitive and impressionable when the intimacy began. Indeed he himself bore affectionate testimony to this impress when, in the court proceedings, held to honor his dead friend's memory, he said: "For more than twenty-one years we have labored together side by side in the perfect intimacy and union of the partnership relation, and realizing how very much I am indebted to his precepts, his example and his support; with only sweet and grateful memories of that connection now remaining, wholly unalloyed by even the momentary shadow of doubt or distrust, and un-vexed by even an occasional suggestion of discord or dissension—indeed one long and unbroken period of harmonious intercourse, of joint and cheerful endeavor, and of undisturbed confidence and esteem, I deem it a duty no less than a privilege to add my humble meed of praise to the chorus of eulogy which I am sure will greet his memory to-day."

In closing his tribute Judge Hirschberg said, with the heartfelt concurrence of the entire bar:

"And so passed away forever an honorable lawyer, a faithful friend, a loving father, an estimable citizen, a good man. We will all miss his familiar form, his friendly greeting, and his kindly presence. Let his virtues be commemorated in the records of the court. Let the sweet and wholesome fragrance of his memory remain, to inspire lawyers, living and to come, to emulate his upright deeds, and to con the lasting lessons of his pure and simple life."

And now as we pause in the contemplation of this fine and beautiful character there rises before the mind another figure associated with the days of Winfield and Gedney in Goshen; of Fullerton, Brewster and Scott in Newburgh—the figure of James G. Graham. It is difficult to classify him in either group to which reference has been made. A constitution naturally delicate led him to shrink from the strife and turmoil of sharply contested trials and to prefer the seclusion of his office and his library. Yet no lawyer of the period under consideration approached him in the kind of oratory adapted to public and ceremonious occasions. Indeed James G. Graham stands in a group or class alone. None but himself could be his counterpart, for he was compacted of every creature's best. In serenity he was equal to Scott, in strength to Winfield. In counsel he was as wise as Brewster, in speech as gifted as Gedney. While in vigor of expression he may be compared to Winfield and in felicity of style to Gedney, yet he excelled them both in a certain tender grace, a poetic touch, a romantic spell, an iridescent play of fancy and sentiment which were the spontaneous reflection of an ardent, imaginative, spiritual temperament, united to and controlled by exquisite literary taste.

He never received, either in life or in death, the public recognition due to his splendid gifts and exalted character. He was ever generous in his own praise of substantial worth. His tributes to his departed brethren were marked by peculiar elevation of thought and tenderness of sentiment. A work professing to be history, seeking to readjust the balances in which the superficial judgment of contemporaries is corrected by the tardy recognition of posterity, should not fail to register the star of James G. Graham in that brilliant constellation from which Marsh and Winfield, Gedney and Fullerton, Brewster and Scott shed undying refulgence upon the traditions and memories of the Orange County bar. Let a garland of affectionate, reverent homage entwine the memory of one who never failed himself to lay a chaplet of rosemary upon the grave of friendship.

To this period also belongs Abram S. Cassedy. Admitted to practice just fifty years ago, his rise from the time that he settled in Newburgh was so rapid that he came into professional relations with the members of both groups which have been considered, though they were all admitted to the bar several years before. Indeed he belonged to both groups. He was emphatically what is meant by the expression "an all-'round lawyer." He could work patiently and assiduously in his office drawing contracts and giving counsel and then proceed to the courtroom to try his cases. His knowledge of the law commanded the respect of the courts, while his earnestness and sincerity produced a favorable impression upon juries. He was essentially a man of affairs, equally at home in the bank directors' meeting, the common council, the mayor's office and the board of education. He was corporation counsel of his city and district attorney of the county. He was the executor of large estates and the trustee of great interests, one of the most important of his transactions being his sale of the West Shore Railroad for the sum of $22,000,000, and his distribution of the fund. In all the positions that he occupied and all the capacities that he filled he was animated by the very highest ideals of professional honor and personal probity. In many ways the influence of his life and the force of his example have been more persistent and abiding in Newburgh than in the case of lawyers whose fame has been exclusively in the courts. His interesting and stainless career affords a striking illustration of the results which may be accomplished by an acute and active mind concentrated upon one leading object and directed in its energies by a simple, sincere, straightforward, undeviating devotion to the noblest standards of public duty and private honor.

Looming large and masterful in the second group of lawyers, the friend and associate of Winfield, Gedney and Fullerton, who always valued highly his legal opinions and who frequently were influenced by them, though he distrusted his own ability to cope with them in court, comes the figure of John G. Wilkin. Twice elected county judge, the first time in 1851 and the second time in 1883, the interval between these elections was marked by the presence and the power of his persistent, aggressive, dominating, yet at the same time winning, gracious, picturesque personality. Born to command, the exciting times in which he lived, covering the most painful period of our national history, tended to develop his natural powers of leadership. He had a talent for friendship. His absolute devotion to his friends in times of adversity and defeat confirmed a leadership which, however, was constantly challenged by those who, because they could not control him, sought to crush him. He tasted many a time the bitter truth of Joubert's epigram that a man who by the same act creates a friend and an enemy plays a losing game, because revenge is a stronger principle than gratitude. But Judge Wilkin never knew that he had lost. He never accepted defeat. Like his old friend Halstead Sweet, who always began the day after election to prepare for the next election, the hour of Judge Wilkin's defeat was the most dangerous one for his enemies. In the case of such a character, deeply implanted with the love of power for its own sake as well as for its rewards, it was inevitable that it should pass through many periods of storm and trial. But if Judge Wilkin perforce bent to the storm he never quailed before it. The deepest trial of his life was one that he never foresaw. This was the failure in 1884 of the Middletown National Bank of which he was the attorney and nominally the vice-president. This failure, which was precipitated by the unsuspected acts of the president in giving up to a grain shipper who had acquired a hypnotic control over his mind, two hundred thousand dollars' worth of bills of lading without the payment of the drafts to which the bills of lading were attached, came to Judge Wilkin with all the force of a cruel and crushing accident. The spirit which no opposition could daunt recoiled for a moment under the stab of treachery. But only for a moment. Quickly recovering himself—though deeply pained and humiliated that such a disaster should come to an institution with which he was connected and especially to friends who might have been influenced by his name—the strength, the courage, the manliness of his royal character were never more strikingly exemplified, were never shown to greater advantage than at this very time. He never flinched from any obligation which this or any other relation, business, political, social or professional entailed upon him. His devotion to his clients, his determination to relieve them from the consequences of their own folly or imprudence was absolute and fearless, never taking any note of whether they could have avoided the plight they were in. If they were in trouble through no fault of their own, of course anybody would be glad to help them. But if they were in trouble through their own fault the very addition to their troubles which this reflection caused them only created a double claim upon Judge Wilkin's sympathies and energy. This is the spirit of the true lawyer, who, when appealed to in distress, has no more right to arrogate to himself the functions of court and jury and decree that his client must take his punishment than a physician has to refuse to cure a disease which his patient has incurred through a violation of the laws of health or morality.