Benjamin McClung, of Newburgh, obtained, early in his practice, a foremost position at the bar of the county. One of his first and most notable victories, which attracted wide attention at the time, was won in a proceeding instituted by him in 1892 to require the registry board of the town of Highlands to strike from the register the names of over a hundred soldiers quartered at West Point, who claimed the right to vote in the village of Highland Falls, adjoining the Government reservation. Mr. McClung took the position that the West Point reservation is not a part of the territory of the State of New York; that upon the cession of the territory by the State the general government became invested with exclusive jurisdiction over it and that persons resident within it are not entitled to vote. Mr. McClung, notwithstanding the limited time at his disposal, upon the very eve of an exciting election, made a most exhaustive and convincing argument, collating all the authorities and relying chiefly upon the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Fort Leavenworth Railroad Company vs. Lowe, which involved the character of Government property at Fort Leavenworth. Though he was opposed by such eminent counsel as Judge Hirschberg, Walter C. Anthony and Howard Thornton, his argument was sustained by the court and the law upon the subject was finally established in this State.
His stubborn defense a few years ago of an unpopular client will be long remembered. So strong was the public sentiment against his client and so thoroughly had the court room been surcharged with this sentiment that it was impossible for Mr. McClung to prevent his client's conviction of the offense of receiving stolen property, knowing it to be stolen. But, nothing daunted, Mr. McClung procured a stay of the sentence, reversed the conviction on appeal, and on the second trial cleared his client triumphantly, the court saying that the proof for the prosecution did not make the slightest progress toward fastening guilt upon the defendant. This case affords a striking illustration of the dangers that often surround innocent men in the artificially superheated atmosphere of a court room created by an excited and credulous public opinion eager for a victim. Had it not been for Mr. McClung's steadfast, stalwart and fearless exertions in this case, in the face of much hostile criticism, an absolutely innocent man, as subsequently ascertained by the court, would have been consigned to the ignominy of a term in State prison. Mr. McClung's action in thus stemming the tide of adverse, powerful and malignant influences bent upon crushing and ruining his client cannot be overestimated. It attests his place at the Orange County bar not merely for intellectual ability but for that moral courage which constitutes the very highest attribute, the noblest equipment of the advocate.
That Mr. McClung's manly, independent and intrepid character is understood and admired by the public was strikingly shown in the fall of 1907 by his election to the office of mayor of the city of Newburgh by a majority of over five hundred votes, overcoming an adverse majority of about five hundred usually cast in that city against the candidate of his party. The people evidently believed that Mr. McClung is imbued with the idea that a municipal corporation is, in its last analysis, simply a business corporation in which each taxpayer is a stockholder, the aldermen its directors and the mayor its business manager.
Mr. McClung has already shown that this confidence in his character and aims is well founded. He may be relied upon to give the people a purely business administration unfettered by political obligations and uninfluenced by the desire to build up a personal machine or to reward a band of hungry parasites.
Henry Kohl, of Newburgh, now the partner of Mr. McClung, is also a fighter. His tastes and his sympathies incline him to espouse the weaker cause, and he is often assigned by the court to defend those who are unable to employ counsel. I remember a notable case in which he was thus assigned arising out of the killing of a motorman by the alleged criminal negligence of another motorman in causing a collision. The indictment was for manslaughter and the trolley company refused to give any assistance to the accused motorman, who languished several months in the county jail while his case was being tossed back and forth between the supreme and county courts. Mr. Kohl took hold of the case and so stoutly convinced several jurors that the fault was that of the company in not providing the motorman with proper appliances that a disagreement was secured and the motorman discharged on his own recognizance. This illustrates the quality of Mr. Kohl's work—earnest, strong, enthusiastic, courageous, loyal. Nothing dismays him. The more able and astute his opponent, the better he is satisfied, since it proportionately increases his credit in beating him, as he always expects to do, and frequently does.
Mr. Kohl is a verdict getter. His recent success in getting a verdict for $9,000 in a negligence case was a gratifying one, while he also recently secured a favorable settlement in a case against the city growing out of the fall of a tree in a high wind, causing the death of a young lady. The lawyers who start in to try a case against Henry Kohl know that in him they will find an opponent equipped at every point and with every art to sway a jury and to save his client. He has forged his way ahead until now he is in the front rank of Orange County's trial lawyers.
J. Bradley Scott, of Newburgh, is the son of that noble lawyer. David A. Scott, whose precious legacy of an honorable name is guarded well by the son, who came to the bar several years after his father's death. He has developed far more fondness for the trial of cases than his father had and has already achieved a distinct standing as a trial lawyer. His recent success before the appellate courts, in the case involving the right of a soda water establishment to refuse to furnish soda water upon request to a colored person, has attracted great attention. The case involves grave questions and far-reaching consequences. Mr. Scott's broad, powerful and convincing argument in it shows that he inherits not only the good name but also the fine intellectual, discriminating qualities of his distinguished father.
George H. Decker, of Middletown, is the dean of its trial lawyers. He is the one first asked upon every public occasion to voice its spirit, or its purpose, filling in this respect the part so often taken by Mr. Winfield, who was, by the way, until his death, always one of Mr. Decker's warmest friends and admirers.
Possessed of a highly sensitive, responsive nature, a poetic, imaginative temperament, an exquisitely nervous organization, his fibre is almost too fine for the buffetings and shocks of the court room. While his brilliant mind, his legal attainments and his oratorical powers have always been exhibited in the court room to great advantage and with marked success, yet he has often declined conflicts in which, if he had entered upon them, not he, but his opponent, would have had occasion to regret it. Mr. Decker has always placed a far more modest estimate upon his own abilities than he should have done, and a far lower estimate than that of the public, by which he is unreservedly admired and respected.
Mr. Decker's gifts as a public speaker, his scholarly tastes and his literary attainments are never shown to greater advantage than upon the lecture platform, from which he has often instructed and delighted a cultured audience. His recent series of brilliant lectures upon Edgar Allan Poe will be long remembered.