Mr. Dodd is my authority for this story: Ex-Governor Daniel Haines, the Justice of the Supreme Court who held the Essex Circuit, was a man of strict views, and Mr. Cortlandt Parker, the Prosecutor of the Pleas, was discharging his important duties with a force and efficiency worthy of national issues and a wider stage, and so, what with the austerity of the Judge and the zeal of the Prosecutor, the way of the transgressor was growing hard, and it was getting to be common talk among the rounders and hangers-on at the courthouse that if a man was indicted he might as well plead guilty at once and save the county the expense of a trial. Some malefactor, with more money or spirit than the others, paid Governor Pennington a good fee and instructed him to fight. The Governor had been informed of the current gossip, and thought he would see what he could make out of it. So he told the jury in his most impressive manner, that a man is taken to be innocent until he is proved to be guilty; that this is the palladium of our liberties; and that he feared that this precious, fundamental right was not sufficiently borne in mind, even in the courthouse of the county of Essex, and that it was too much assumed that conviction ought to follow indictment. At this point Judge Haines, with a flushed face and his eyes shining brightly through his gold-rimmed spectacles, interrupted the Governor, and said that he had heard the remarks of the distinguished counsel with much surprise and regret; that they conveyed an imputation upon the Court itself—an intimation that he was derelict in his duty toward an important class of suitors, the defendants in criminal cases, and that he desired to know and now asked counsel to state from what persons he heard these strictures upon the Court. Governor Pennington, with his usual urbanity, bowed and said: “It is mainly from the criminals themselves.” This answer occasioned such a sudden revulsion of thought and feeling as to discompose the Judge and convulse the Bar.

It is now just seventy years since Mr. Dodd went to Trenton to hear and see Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate in the case of Charles Goodyear against Horace H. Day, pending in the Circuit Court of the United States before Judge Grier of the Supreme Court, and a District Judge. There is probably now no living member of the Bench or Bar of New Jersey who attended that trial even as a spectator. As to this case I quote briefly from Mr. Choate’s “Commemorative Discourse” on Webster, delivered at Dartmouth College on July 27, 1852:

“The professional life of Mr. Webster began in the spring of 1805. It may not be said to have ended until he died; but I do not know that it happened to him to appear in Court, for the trial of a cause, after his argument of the Goodyear patent for improvements in the preparation of India-rubber, in Trenton, in March, 1852. There I saw him and last heard him. The thirty-four years which had elapsed since, a member of this College, at home for health, I first saw and heard him in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in the county of Essex, defending Jackman, accused of the robbery of Goodrich, had in almost all things changed him. The raven hair, the vigorous, full frame and firm tread, the eminent but severe beauty of the countenance, not yet sealed with the middle age of man, the exuberant demonstration of all sorts of power, which so marked him at first—for these, as once they were, I explored in vain. Yet how far higher was the interest that attended him now: his sixty-nine years robed, as it were, with honor and with love, with associations of great service done to the State, and of great fame gathered and safe; and then the perfect mastery of the cause in its legal and scientific principles, and in all its facts; the admirable clearness and order in which his propositions were advanced successively; the power, the occasional high ethical tone, the appropriate eloquence, by which they were made probable and persuasive to the judicial reason—these announced the leader of the American bar, with every faculty and every accomplishment, by which he had won that proud title, wholly unimpaired; the eye not dim nor the natural force abated.”

Mr. Webster represented Goodyear, Mr. Choate represented Day. The injunction which Goodyear applied for was granted. Day surrendered his license, transferred his factory and machinery to a representative of Goodyear, and agreed to retire from the business for the sum of $350,000, and counsel fees amounting to $21,000 additional, which amounts were paid. Mr. Webster’s retainer was $15,000.

Mr. Dodd liked to talk about this case. Mr. Webster and Mr. Choate each spoke for two days, or parts of two days. Chancellor Green is said to have called Mr. Choate’s argument the finest that he ever heard in Court. Lawyers came from all over the State to attend the trial. Mr. Dodd said that at times Mr. Choate would seem “to go up like a balloon.” One who has heard or even read Choate knows how at times he would seem to lift himself and his audience on the rushing wings of his magical oratory.

One of the junior counsel for Day had made some impression by dwelling on the hardships of operatives if the injunction should be granted. The day was getting late and Judge Grier suggested to Mr. Webster, who was to speak next, that the Court adjourn until the next day. Mr. Webster assented, but said: “There is one thing that I wish to say now. If Mr. Day’s operatives are likely to be distressed, it will be because of his own default, of his own breach of faith, of his own repudiation of his own solemn contract, under his own hand and seal,” and, as he said it, his voice deepened and his eyes flashed, and the courtroom rang as with a peal of mellow thunder. Mr. Dodd came out of Court with ex-Chancellor Halsted who said: “Well, Amzi, the old lion has given his first growl.”

The case is reported in 10 Federal Cases, page 638, Case No. 5569.

In a footnote is this extract from Mr. Webster’s argument. It is interesting, for it shows him at his very best and is not generally known. His biographer, Mr. G. T. Curtis, speaks of this argument as one of the most remarkable and interesting of his forensic efforts.

“I believe,” said Mr. Webster, “that the man who sits at this table, Charles Goodyear, is to go down to posterity in the history of the Arts in this country, in that great class of inventors at the head of which stands Robert Fulton, in which class stand the names of Whitney and of Morse, and in which class will stand ‘non post long intervallo’ the humble name of Charles Goodyear. Notwithstanding all the difficulties he encountered he went on. If there was reproach he bore it. If poverty, he suffered under it; but he went on, and these people followed him from step to step, from 1834 to 1839, or until a later period when his invention was completed, and then they opened their eyes with astonishment. They then saw that what they had been treating with ridicule was sublime; that what they had made the subject of reproach was the exercise of great inventive genius; that what they had laughed at was the perseverance of a man of talent with great perceptive faculties, which had brought out a wonder as much to their astonishment as if another sun had arisen in the hemisphere above. He says of his cell in the debtors’ jail that ‘it is as good a lodging as he may expect this side the grave’; he hopes his friends will come and see him on the subject of India rubber manufacture; and then he speaks of his family and of his wife. He had but two objects, his family and his discovery. In all his distress and in all his trials his wife was willing to participate in his sufferings, and endure everything, and hope everything; she was willing to be poor; she was willing to go to prison, if it was necessary, when he went to prison; she was willing to share with him everything; and that was his solace. May it please your honors, there is nothing upon the earth that can compare with the faithful attachment of a wife; no creature who, for the object of her love, is so indomitable, so persevering, so ready to suffer and to die. Under the most depressing circumstances woman’s weakness becomes mighty power; her timidity becomes fearless courage; all her shrinking and sinking passes away, and her spirit acquires the firmness of marble—adamantine firmness, when circumstances drive her to put forth all her energies under the inspiration of her affections. Mr. Goodyear survived all this, and I am sure he would go through the same suffering ten times again for the same consolation. He carried on his experiments perseveringly, and with success, and obtained a patent in 1844 for his great invention.”

There is a spirited report of the same case in 2 Wallace Jr., where, at pages 294 and 295, are some turns of thought and expression very characteristic of Mr. Webster.