Memoir of John Howe Peyton Part 17

BY

WILLIAM FRAZIER, A. M., OF YALE.

"My personal acquaintance with Mr. Peyton," says Mr. Frazier in the History of Augusta County, "commenced in October, 1824, when I entered upon the practice of my profession at the Staunton bar. He was then, as I learn from his biography, in his fifty-seventh year, and from that circ.u.mstance only, it might be inferred he had pa.s.sed his climatric.

Certainly nothing in his physical appearance or his forensic display betokened a decay of power, bodily or mentally.

"Yet having ama.s.sed a handsome fortune, he established himself in a beautiful home, surrounded by a large and interesting family, and he felt himself ent.i.tled to some relaxation from the arduous demands of his profession--or at least from its drudgery. He, therefore, relegated to the younger members of the bar all minor causes, in the matter of taking depositions and the like vacation duties. But for ten years following the date of my introduction to him, there was hardly an important or celebrated cause tried at the Staunton bar, whether in the State Courts or the United States Courts, without the aid and illumination of his splendid intellect; whilst also in Albemarle, Rockbridge and Bath counties, he largely partic.i.p.ated in the like weighty causes.

"In the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, his reputation throughout the State enlarged the theatre of his professional service much beyond that of his local circuit.

"I wish it were in my power to give a just and discriminating a.n.a.lysis of his processes in the investigation and conduct of a great cause, or even a fair description of his style of forensic argument. This much may be safely said: that he seized, by apparent intuition, upon the strong and dominating points in a case, not infrequently finding those, or some of them, buried out of sight from a scrutiny less searching than his, beneath a ma.s.s of irrelevant or conflicting testimony.

"Having thus entrenched himself in one, or a few strong positions, his array of the facts was so masterly, his presentation of them so luminous, and his arguments from them so logical, that he rarely failed to carry the tribunal with him safely and irresistibly to his conclusions. Discarding thus the minor points and less material phases of the cause from his examination and discussion, or dismissing them in a few rapid, searching sentences, his debate was conspicuous for its compactness and logical order. Accordingly, his speeches did not ordinarily exceed one hour, and even in the most complex and voluminous causes they rarely went beyond two hours. I can recall but one occasion in which he consumed nearly three hours. His style was fluent, but not of that fluency which comes of redundant words and phrases, for I have never listened to one so terse and vigorous. I think it can be said there was hardly a superfluous word, and every sentence bore upon the conclusion aimed at. It was, therefore, never a weariness to hear this great advocate, and the promiscuous audience followed his argument, his sarcasm or his invective, with as much apparent interest as did court and jury.

"It has been written of him that he was equally versed and at home in every department of the profession (unless admiralty and maritime law be excepted) but I think it was as a common law lawyer that he excelled, and that it was in the common law he found his chief delight. He was perfectly conversant with the principles of the Feudal law and immemorial usages of England as expounded by Littleton, c.o.ke, Bacon, and all the fathers and great interpreters of English jurisprudence.

"Having come to the Bar while special pleading was yet a legal science and carefully practiced system, and before popular and not too well informed legislatures sought to 'simplify' the practice of the law by Statutes of Jeofails, he was, without doubt, one of the most practiced and expert special pleaders of his time. His naturally astute and logical mind, finding its expression through the channels of a terse and luminous style, caused his pleadings in all their stages to be master pieces of art.

"His fame as a prosecutor of the pleas of the Commonwealth has never been surpa.s.sed, if equaled, in Virginia. On this field he achieved triumphs of the most brilliant kind. His pride in his profession, and the great principles of right and justice underlying it, no less his inborn contempt for chicanery and fraud, not to speak of crime in its grosser forms, combined to make him a terror to evil doers. Some critics, even among the profession, sometimes were disposed to censure him as too harsh and unrelenting towards the prisoner at the bar, but if every circuit throughout our land possessed at this day so able, fearless and conscientious a prosecutor as did the Augusta and the surrounding circuit at that happier day in our history, perhaps we might find less cause to deplore the depreciation of the public morals, which so painfully invest the present era.

"It would be a halting and very defective sketch of this eminent jurist which failed to speak of his striking originality. Negatively speaking, there were little or no common-place and hum-drum in his forensic arguments, his debates in the Senate or his addresses from the hustings to his const.i.tuents. In a positive sense, his speeches, at least on great occasions, and when his powers were thoroughly roused, rarely failed to be marked by some flash of genius. I recall a conversation just after the close of a protracted and laborious term of the Augusta Circuit Court, in which the late Judge Lucas P. Thompson and Gen.

Briscoe G. Baldwin bore the leading parts. The last named was paying generous tribute to Mr. Peyton's force and originality. Judge Thompson remarked, that he had never seen Mr. Peyton go through a cause, deeply interesting and moving him, in which he did not utter some view or sentiment illuminated by genius, or, at the least, some ill.u.s.tration marked by a bold originality, and he instanced two causes, tried at the late term, one a civil suit and a very heavy will case, in which he made a novel and searching application of a familiar fable of aesop. I forbear to give its details, because both the critic and his subject have pa.s.sed from earth.

"In the same cause, three signatures were to be identified and proved, that of the testator and also of the two attesting witnesses, all three having died since their attestation. Many witnesses were called to prove the genuineness of the three names. Opposing counsel sought to badger the witnesses, by urging them to specify what peculiar marks there were in the handwriting and signatures, whereby they could speak positively as to their ident.i.ty and genuineness. This, of course, for the most part they could not do, and in the argument of the cause before the jury, the same counsel strove to throw discredit and contempt upon those witnesses (all men of good character) for their failure and inability so to describe the quality and the peculiar marks and the calligraphy of the signers as to show they were familiar with their handwriting. In his reply to those sallies of his opponents, Mr. Peyton swept away the whole airy fabric by a single happy ill.u.s.tration:

"'Gentlemen,' he said, 'you have often been a.s.sembled in crowds upon some public or festive occasion. Your hats have been thrown pell-mell in a ma.s.s with perhaps a hundred other hats, all having a general resemblance. Suppose you had attempted to describe your hat to a friend or servant, so that he might go and pick it out for you. It has as many points, for description as a written signature--its color, height of crown, width of band, lining, &c. Do you think that a friend or servant could, by any possibility, have picked out your hat for you? And yet when you went yourself, the moment your eye would light upon it, you instantly recognize it among a hundred or five hundred hats. Familiarity with it has stamped its picture on your mind, and the moment you see it, the hat fills and fits the picture in your mind, as perfectly as the same hat fits your head.'

"The jury were evidently won, and gave full credence to the ridiculed witnesses.

"The other instance during the same term (cited by Judge Thompson,) occurred in the celebrated prosecution of Naaman Roberts for forgery--in forging the name of Col. Adam d.i.c.kinson to a bond for $600.00.

"The body of the bond was confessedly the handwriting of the prisoner at the bar. That was admitted. The signature was a tolerably successful attempt at imitating the peculiar handwriting of Adam d.i.c.kinson. But no expert could look at the whole paper and fail to see a general resemblance between the body of the instrument and the signature, raising a strong conviction in the mind that both proceeded from the same hand.

"The defense strongly insisted upon excluding the body of the instrument from the view of the witness, by covering it with paper or turning it down, and so confining the view to the signature only--upon the familiar doctrine of the law of evidence forbidding a comparison of various handwritings of the party as a ground for an opinion upon the ident.i.ty, or genuineness of the disputed writing. And this point was ably and elaborately argued by the prisoner's counsel.

"The learned prosecutor met it thus:

"'Gentlemen, this is one entire instrument, not two or more brought into comparison. Let me ask each one of you, when you meet your friend, or when you meet a stranger, in seeking to identify him; what do you look at? Not his nose, though that is the most prominent feature of the human face; not at his mouth, his chin, his cheek; no, you look him straight in the eye, so aptly called "the window of the soul," you look him in the eye, but at the same time you see his whole face. Now put a mask on that face, leaving only the eyes visible, as the learned counsel would have you mask the face of this bond, leaving to your view only the fatal signature. If that human face, so masked, was the face of your bosom friend, could you for a moment identify him, even though permitted to look in at those windows of his soul? No; he would be as strange to you as this accursed bond has ever been strange to that worthy gentleman, Col. Adam d.i.c.kinson, but a glance at whose face traces the guilty authors.h.i.+p direct to the prisoner at the bar.'

"This most striking ill.u.s.tration seemed to thrill the whole audience, as it virtually carried the jury.

"Mr. Peyton never was a politician. His taste and predilection lay not in that direction. But no man was better informed of the course of public affairs, or had a keener insight into the character or motives of public men. Once, and so far as I knew, once only, did he partic.i.p.ate in the debates of a Presidential canva.s.s. It was the memorable one of 1840, and the speech was delivered from the Albemarle hustings. His a.n.a.lysis of the political character of Martin Van Buren, and his delineation of his public career from his desertion of DeWitt Clinton, down to his obsequious ingratiation with Andrew Jackson, was incisive and masterly and all the more powerful and impressive because p.r.o.nounced in a judicial rather than a partisan temper. Competent judges, long familiar with the very able harangues and debates on that rostrum, declared it one of the ablest that had been listened to by any Albemarle audience.

"Of his services in the Virginia Senate, I need only say, what every one would naturally expect, they were most valuable from their enlightened conservatism in the prevention of crude and vicious legislation. In the last session of his first term in the Senate, a vigorous effort was made for the pa.s.sage of a stay-law rather than an increase of taxation.

"It hardly needs to be said that he opposed the former and sustained the latter measure with all the vigor of his honest and manly nature. Nor could he ever have looked with any patience upon that brood of enactments since his day--the stay of executions, homestead exemptions, limitations upon sales of property, _et id omne genus_, professedly pa.s.sed in the interest of the poor and the laboring man, yet in fact more detrimental to that cla.s.s than any other, and most damaging to the State abroad.

"Let me say, in conclusion, that the person and figure of Mr. Peyton were fine and commanding. His carriage was always erect, his head well poised on his shoulders, while his ample chest gave token of great vitality. On rising to address court or jury, there was something more than commonly impressive in his personal presence and whether clad in 'Virginia home-spun,' or English blue broadcloth with gold b.u.t.tons, (and I have often seen him in both), whenever you saw him b.u.t.ton his coat across his breast and slowly raise his spectacles to rest them on the lofty crown, you might confidently expect an intellectual treat of no mean order.

"There never was a broader contrast presented in the same person than that between Howe Peyton, the lawyer, the public prosecutor, or even the Senatorial candidate amongst the people, and the same individual in his own home. Here in the midst of his family, or surrounded by friends, the rigor of his manner relaxed, and he was the model of an affectionate husband and father, and the most genial of companions. He was 'given to hospitality,' and there was no mansion in all this favored region where it was more generously and elegantly dispensed, through many years, than at 'Montgomery Hall.'"

SKETCH OF JOHN HOWE PEYTON,

BY

JUDGE JOHN H. McCUE, B. L., UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.

One of the truest tests of the greatness of a man is very often the impression, I think, which, without intending, he makes upon the minds of the young with whom he may come in contact. There are few of us who do not remember having met, in our earlier days, with men whose presence filled us with respect and awe, before even, perhaps, we had learned their names and reputations, and who, in after years, seemed to stand out from amid our youthful recollections, apart and distinct from the memories of other men--men who, unconsciously, stamp their individuality not only upon our minds, but who often serve, though we may not perceive it, as models upon which our own conduct is, or ought to be, moulded, and the impress of whose attributes and virtues serve as standards by which we judge of other men. The impressions I have of John Howe Peyton are those which I formed when a youth, but they were such as to stamp him, not only as an able and good man, but as a great man in the truest acceptation of the term. When a boy at the school at Waynesboro, Augusta county, of the Rev. James C. Wilson, D. D., a famous criminal trial was progressing in the Circuit Superior Court at Staunton. Mr. Peyton was the prosecutor, and was regarded as the ablest prosecuting attorney then, or who had ever been, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Everybody was talking of this trial, in which, for various reasons, not necessary to be here detailed, the community was deeply interested. Shortly after, as I remember, I saw standing, in the porch of the hotel at Waynesboro, a gentleman of splendid form, broad shoulders and extended chest, with a magnificent head which was carried erect, and which might be aptly compared to that of Daniel Webster. His eyes were large and bright, his features straight, finely chiseled, forming a face of Grecian lineaments and expression. I did not then know who he was. The idea formed on my youthful mind was that he must be a great and famous man. I inquired respecting him, and was told that he was Mr. Howe Peyton, the famous lawyer and prosecutor. I had often heard my father speak of Mr. Peyton as one of the great lawyers of Virginia, then having her Johnson, Wickham, Tazewell, Baldwin, Sheffey, Wirt, Leigh, Tucker, Stannard, and other eminent men, who were his contemporaries. I had never seen Mr.

Peyton until now. There was something, however, in the n.o.ble and dignified appearance and bearing of the man now standing before me, that at once arrested attention and impressed the beholder. The opinion formed by me of his greatness was afterwards, upon a better acquaintance, fully justified.

I knew little of Mr. Peyton personally until after I entered the University of Virginia, with his son, John Lewis Peyton, in 1842, both of us members of the law cla.s.s under the late Henry St. George Tucker.

Mr. Peyton, at that time Commonwealth's Attorney for Albemarle, and the other counties composing the circuit of Judge Thompson, when in Charlottesville attending the court, sojourned at the residence of his brother-in-law, John Cochran, Esq., now (1879) surviving in his 86th year. Upon these occasions, at his request, his son and myself spent much time with him. Mr. Peyton manifested a deep interest, naturally, in the progress of his son, and in my own, because of his warm and intimate friends.h.i.+p for my father. It was during the frequent conversations which it pleased him to hold with us, that I learned to appreciate the great powers of his mind, not perhaps as to its capacity, but more especially as to the wonderful faculty he possessed of simplifying and rendering clear the most abstruse subjects. And in this perhaps, as much as in anything else lay the secret of his success as a lawyer. He could take, for instance, the most difficult point of law, and in a few well chosen, pithy sentences, place it clearly and forcibly before the minds of his hearers. As an ill.u.s.tration, I remember, shortly after we had commenced the study of law in the junior department, he made special inquiry as to our progress, examined us upon what we had gone over, and inquired the subject of our next lecture. We replied that it was "Uses and Trusts,"

frankly confessing that although we had read the text, we still felt ignorant of the subject. He then said, "Listen to me boys;" and went into a dissertation upon the intricate and difficult subject, and in a conversation of perhaps two hours, gave us a history, accurate in chronology, minute in detail, profound and clear, as an exposition of the whole science, and this without reference to book or note, thus indicating the profoundest learning, and rendering the subject so clear to our minds that when we went to the review the whole field seemed to be laid open before us. In this simple way he demonstrated not only his power before courts and juries, but likewise the rare ability he possessed to impart to others, in the clearest and most comprehensive manner, what he knew and what had heretofore seemed to them insuperably difficult.

It was one of the noticeable traits of his character that he was ever anxious to impart information and knowledge to the young, to encourage and advance them. He rarely lost an opportunity of instructing, and this, in such an easy, unaffected, conversational style that it both captivated and instructed the mind. In the many conversations with his son and myself, during this, and the next succeeding term at the University, seemed to be his constant desire to communicate to us a historic and philosophic knowledge, and to lead us insensibly into the deep delights of history and literature. In this connection, I must say that after a longer and more extended acquaintance with Mr. Peyton I learned to regard him as a man of the profoundest learning, not only in the great principles and science of the common law, but also in general history and literature; and he expressed himself with more precision, condensation, vigor, and beauty of language than any man I have ever known. I never heard Mr. Peyton speak at the bar or on the hustings.

From what I know, and have heard of him, his conception of a great subject and mode of expression were as clear, distinct and demonstrative as that of Edmund Burke. Judge Tucker who had known him intimately for over forty years, once said to me: "I regard Mr. Peyton as one of the profoundest and most learned of lawyers." During one of my summer vacations I visited his son John L. Peyton at Montgomery Hall. I had formed an intimate friends.h.i.+p with him which yet continues. On this visit I was a witness and subject of the splendid hospitality of Mr.

Peyton and his amiable and accomplished wife. One morning shortly after sun rise John Lewis Peyton and myself leaving our chamber, strolled into the park-like grounds admiring the venerable and wide-spreading oaks and beautiful scenery. On the porch in front of his office which contained his law and miscellaneous library was the dignified figure of Mr. Peyton seated in his accustomed arm chair, book in hand and a long pipe in his mouth. (He was much addicted to the Virginia weed.) On our approach he rose, and politely exchanging with us the morning salutations, bade us be seated. He then said: "I am looking over, for a second time, the first volume of Allison's History of Europe. Though it has faults of style, and is marred by political prejudices, it is the most remarkable historical work of the country."

The book was closed, his finger between the leaves. In this att.i.tude he proceeded, as was a habit with him, upon a disquisition upon the value and importance of historical study. "It instructed," said he, "the young whose destiny it might be, in time to guard the rights or secure the welfare of the community." He declared in general terms that the object of history, the great object, was to make men wiser in themselves and better members of society. By recalling the past it opened up a wider field for observation and reflection than any personal experience could do, and thus prepared a man to act and advise in present contingencies.

He continued in this vein for a half hour, ill.u.s.trating his views by reference to ancient, medieval, and modern history, displaying a soundness of view and extent of research, a manliness of principle, an accuracy of learning, and a vigor of style surpa.s.sing anything I have ever heard.

There have been few truly great men who were not noted for their courtesy and hospitality. Both of these traits Mr. Peyton possessed in a high degree. His manner to his son and myself was most courteous and ever of such a nature as to impress us with the idea, if possible, that we were men entering upon the great theatre of life, with the prospect before us of attaining eminence in our profession, of rendering ourselves useful to the State, and of service to society. There was something in the appearance and manner of the man, when you first come into his presence and under his influence, before he had uttered any thing more than the ordinary salutations, that convinced you at once that you were in no ordinary presence, and upon closer intimacy, that you felt that you were under the influence and power of _a great man_; _a master spirit_. In public, in his intercourse with men generally as I have seen him, there was a hauteur, a dignity and ever a majesty that repelled rather than attracted men. At his own fireside, that feeling was entirely dispelled, and the boy even was drawn to him, listened to and talked to him, as though he were his equal. Such were the warm sympathies, tender feelings, the affectionate nature of this, to the world, reserved and haughty man.

Mr. Peyton, as a legislator and Senator, representing Rockbridge and Augusta, made his mark as one of the leading Statesmen of Virginia, stamping his genius and learning upon the statute laws of the State, establis.h.i.+ng for himself such a reputation as would have placed him, had he been a member of the Senate of the United States by the side of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. But his love for home and family, devotion to his profession, and natural fondness for rural pursuits, suppressed all desire for public life and extended reputation. He was fond of horses, dogs, and the occupations of the country gentleman. Had he desired and entered public life, his reputation would have been national, and he, a noted character in history. It is well here to say, that Mr. Peyton had been thoroughly trained, not only in cla.s.sical and mathematical schools of the country in early youth, but was also a graduate, with the degree of Master of Arts, of Princeton College, where his great abilities were early and fully manifested and recognized by the erudite and eminent men under whose charge that inst.i.tution of learning was then conducted.

Mr. Peyton--then a young man--was a member of the lower house of the Legislature of Virginia in 1808, 1809 and 1810, from the county of Stafford, and wrote and offered a series of resolutions, as chairman of a committee, raised upon certain resolutions adopted by the Legislature of the State of Pennsylvania, and communicated by the Governor of that State to Governor Tyler (afterwards President of the United States) with reference to an amendment to the Const.i.tution, so as to prevent a collision between the State Governments, and the Government of the Union, as to their judicial departments, which preamble and resolutions, drawn by Mr. Peyton, were adopted unanimously by both branches of the Legislature. This important State paper can be seen in the Works of Daniel Webster, vol. III., pages 352, 353, and 354. So able and important were these resolutions at the time, as to attract the attention of the leading Statesmen of the country, and guide the other States in the adoption of similar resolutions, thus overthrowing the effort of Pennsylvania to establish a separate and distinct judicial department as arbiter between the Federal and State Governments.

In the great discussion between Daniel Webster and General Hayne, of South Carolina, Mr. Webster, in his second speech in reply to Mr. Hayne, referred to and quoted the preamble and resolution spoken of, as conclusive of that question as to admit of no further discussion.

Mr. Webster was so much struck with Mr. Peyton's resolutions, that he wished to know something of their author. Meeting Daniel Sheffey, long one of the representatives in the Lower House of Congress from Virginia, the following conversation, in substance, occurred. Mr. W. asked:

"Do you know a gentleman in Virginia by the name of Peyton, the author of some resolutions in the House of Delegates in 1810, on the subject of a conflict between the government of the Union and the State governments."

"Yes," replied Mr. Sheffey, "he lives in Staunton, and is the leader of the bar in the circuit."

"I am not surprised to learn it," rejoined Mr. Webster.

"Is he a speaker," said Mr. Webster.

"Not in a popular sense," replied Sheffey. "He is not a florid speaker, indulges in no meretricious display of rhetoric, but thoroughly armed in the strength of his knowledge, research and cultivated ability, without any effort to display it, he possesses gigantic power, and by it he has risen to the head of the profession. And he is not only a great, but a good man."

"It is a misfortune to your people and the country that such a man should not have been sent to Was.h.i.+ngton long ago," said Mr. Webster. "He would have maintained Virginia's proud intellectual supremacy, and by the soundness of his views enhanced her influence."[26]

[26] In 1851-52, Mr. Webster then Secretary of State, dispatched his son, John Lewis Peyton, to Europe and expressed a wish to have him permanently in the diplomatic service.

At the death of Judge Stuart, in 1830, the vacancy occasioned by the death of that jurist, Lucas P. Thompson, of Amherst county, then a young man who had distinguished himself in the Const.i.tutional Convention of 1829 and 1830, became a candidate for the office of Judge. Mr. Peyton was brought forward by his friends. Thompson had made himself popular on the basis question, and was regarded as one of the most rising young men of his contemporaries. He was the junior of Mr. Peyton. My father, at that time, was a member of the House of Delegates from Augusta county.

The contest for Judge came off. My father, the ardent advocate of Mr.