Part 17

and while, with gay and hilarious nature, frank but somewhat eccentrical manners and unequaled powers of conversation, united with some infirmity of temper, his expressions and conduct in the earlier half of his life were often the subject of severe criticism; yet in the long period of from forty to fifty years, in which he moved "in the high places of the world," no one denied him the gifts of most extraordinary talents and unswerving integrity and truthfulness. Even in the particular in which complaint had been made--an imputed hauteur and exclusiveness--his disposition was either mellowed by time, or, what is more probable, his character came to be better appreciated from being better understood; and for years before the sad eclipse which obscured his usefulness no man enjoyed more of the general confidence and favor of the people, as none had possessed in a higher degree their admiration.

Transferred to the more extended field of jurisprudence administered in the courts of the United States, and afterwards to the Senate of the nation, he took rank with the first advocates, jurisprudents, and debaters of the Union; and the purity of his morals, the elevation of his character, his readiness and accomplishments as a conversationalist, the gayety and vivacity of his manners, rendered him a general favorite with old and young, the grave and gay, in the brilliant society of the metropolis.

George Edmund Badger was born in New Bern, North Carolina, on the 17th of April, 1795. His father, Thomas Badger, Esq., the son of Edmund and Lucretia Badger, was a native of Connecticut, and his birth is recorded to have taken place at Windham, in that State, on the 27th of June, 1766. Having received a good education, he came early in manhood to New Bern, and thence to Spring Hill, in the county of Lenoir, where for some time he taught school, but was then probably a student of the law, and was in due time admitted to the practice in this State. Fixing his residence in New Bern, he early rose to distinction as a practitioner, and appears in the published reports as one of the leading counsellors in the courts of that riding, and in the Supreme Court of the State, from 1792 till his death, which occurred from yellow fever, while in attendance on a court at Washington, in Beaufort county, on the 10th of October, 1799.

The traditions of the profession and of intelligent persons of his acquaintance represent him as a man of determined character and great intellectual and professional ability, and leave the question in doubt whether at the same period of life he was more than equaled by his son. The late Peter Browne, himself one of the first lawyers and men of letters of his time in North Carolina, a contemporary at the bar of the senior Badger, spoke of him, before the entrance of his son into public life, as one of the ablest men he had ever known, and especially as possessing a power to fascinate and control masses of men in the most remarkable degree--a power, he added, which the son might exert with similar effect, if he would.

His mother, by name Lydia Cogdell, was the daughter of Colonel Richard Cogdell, of New Bern, a gentleman of much consideration under the provincial rule in North Carolina, and an active and bold leader in the movement of the Revolution. As early as August, 1775, his name appears second on the list of the committee of safety for New Bern district, appointed by the first Congress of the province (that of Alexander Gaston being at the head). Lydia Cogdell was a person of singular vigor of mind and character, well fitted to encounter the cares and trials of her early widowhood. Her husband had experienced that which has been said to be the common lot of the profession in this country, "to work hard, live well and die poor," and left her with but little fortune to rear three children, of whom George was the eldest and the only son.

According to her narrative, he manifested no fondness for books, and made little progress in learning till about seven years of age. At that period she placed in his hands Goldsmith's _Animated Nature_. He was delighted with its perusal, and she never found it necessary to stimulate his thirst for knowledge afterwards. His preparatory course was taken in his native town of New Bern, and at the age of fifteen he entered Yale College. There he passed through the studies of the freshman and the sophomore classes, when his education, so far as it depended on schools, was brought to a close. A relative, a man of fortune, at the North, who had hitherto furnished the means for his college expenses (his own patrimony being wholly insufficient), and from whose bounty he had hoped to pass on to graduation, suddenly withdrew his support and left him to his own exertions. Of the motives of this unexpected arrest in his college career, on which so much might have depended, it is useless, now at least, to speculate or inquire. But it will be a source of gratification to his friends to be assured that it was attributable to no demerit in our student. True, his contemporaries at Yale differ widely in their estimation of his capacities while there. The Northern students, who belonged to a different society, regarded him as a frolicsome youth, averse to mathematics, and fond of novel-reading, who gave no indications of superior endowments. On the other hand, a college classmate (Thomas P. Devereux, Esq., of Halifax) and member of the same society, who knew him intimately throughout life, and was five and twenty years associated with him at the bar, affirms that "he was beyond dispute the first boy of his class, composed of seventy individuals, many of them afterwards distinguished men." He was not, says this friend, "a hard student of the prescribed course. Perhaps I ought to add that he was remiss in his college duties, but he was eager for information to a most wonderful degree, and among his fellow-students he exhibited the same intellectual superiority we have seen him so steadily maintain among men." To the same source I am indebted for the following observations concerning his elocution, which I repeat for the advantage and encouragement of the young. "I think," he remarks, "that the thousands who listened to the fluency with which Mr. Badger spoke, the clearness of his enunciation, the exact accuracy of his sentences and the carefulness of their formation--the right words always in the right places--will be surprised to learn that in his youthful attempts in debate he was almost a stammerer. I have heard him say he owed exemption from downright stuttering to his father, whom he remembered with affection, though under five years of age at the time of his decease, who would not permit him to speak while he hesitated in the least, but required him to stand by his side perfectly silent, until he had collected himself and arranged his thoughts. He, himself, often asserted that any one could speak fluently who thought clearly and did not lose his presence of mind."

He made known to President Dwight the reception of the letter announcing the withdrawal of the patronage by which he had been thus far supported, and the _res angusta domi_ which caused him to bid adieu to Yale when reaching the portion of her curriculum by which his expanding mind would have been most profited, and left with the regrets and kind wishes of that venerable divine and instructor. In after years when he had established a character, his _alma mater_ honored herself by volunteering a degree to her barely risen junior, and enrolling his name among her sons with whom he should have graduated in 1813, as, at a later period, she acknowledged his still higher advancement in liberal learning, by conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws.

He appears to have indulged in no unavailing grief at the freak of fortune which blasted his hopes of a collegiate education, but returning home, though but little over seventeen years of age, betook himself at once to the study of the law. His legal preceptor was his maternal cousin, Hon. John Stanly, of New Bern, who as an advocate, a statesman, a parliamentarian, a wit and adept in conversation, is one of the historical characters of North Carolina; and, who, viewing him as I did, from the gallery of the House of Commons in my boyhood, impressed me as an orator of more graceful and elegant manner and action, according to my conception of the Ciceronian standard, than any public speaker it has ever been my fortune to hear.

Mr. Badger was granted a license to practice law in the County Courts in the summer of 1814, and, according to the usual probation, in the Superior Courts in 1815; the Judges of the Supreme Court consenting to relax the ordinary rule and overlook his nonage, by reason of the narrowness of his fortune and the dependence of his mother and sisters upon his exertions for their support. The war with England raging in the former year, and an invasion of the State being threatened by the British forces under Admiral Cockburn, then hovering on our coasts, Governor Hawkins called out the militia, and himself took the field, in an expedition for the defense of New Bern and Beaufort. In this expedition Mr. Badger served as aid-de-camp to General Calvin Jones, of Wake, with rank of major; but the alarm soon ceasing, with the retirement of the enemy the soldier was again resolved into the youthful barrister. A vacancy occurring in the office of solicitor to prosecute the pleas of the State in that riding, about this time, he was introduced to public notice by the temporary appointment from the judge, and made one circuit in that capacity.

In 1816, the year of his majority, he was returned a member of the House of Commons from the town of New Bern; and whatever advantages he may have lost by his retirement from college (and they were doubtless many and important), it may well be questioned whether any of the more fortunate youths he had left behind in the classic shades of Yale were, by this time, better fitted to play a distinguished part in a deliberative assembly or a court of justice. Profiting by the instruction, the conversation, the intercourse, and the example of that accomplished gentleman, Mr. Stanly, and his compeers, Gaston, Edward Graham, Moses Mordecai, and others, whom he met at the bar or in society, but above all by his own profound study, he not only gained great attainments in the law, but (what is now I fear becoming rare), a familiar acquaintance with the classic authors of English literature, and with the arts of rhetoric and composition. He wrote and spoke our language with a readiness, force, precision, and propriety, the more remarkable because equally as conspicuous in jocose and trifling conversation (in which he freely indulged) as in public address. As a critic, whether under the inspiration of a "good or bad natured muse," he has had few peers among the judges of "English undefiled." His appearance in the Legislature was the advent of a new star above the horizon, somewhat erratic and peculiar in its orbit, but effulgent even in its irregularities, and shining with a splendor not unworthy of the oldest and greatest lights of the firmament.

Tradition furnishes anecdotes of many encounters, during the session, of gladiatorial skill, in which his love of pleasantry and the _gaudia certaminis_ involved him with the late Attorney-General Drew, a son of genius and of Erin, and others, with various success: but it assures us that this, his first and last session in the General Assembly, closed with a profound impression and universal acknowledgment of his genius, culture, and high promise for the future.

The Hon. Thomas Ruffin, the speaker of the House of Commons, who had been first appointed a judge of the Superior Court during this session, discovering in Mr. Badger a congenial spirit, alike emulous with himself of liberal culture and professional distinction, invited him to take his briefs and pursue the practice in Orange. The acceptance of this proposition carried him to Hillsborough as his place of residence for the next two or three years, during which, having married the daughter of Hon. James Turner, of Warren, he transferred his home to Warrenton; thence he moved to Louisburg, where he continued to reside until his retirement from the bench in 1825, when he removed to Raleigh, and there abode during the residue of his life.

How well he maintained his professional character in the new field of his practice is observed in the fact that, with but little of what is known as personal popularity, he was elected a judge of the Superior Court by the Legislature in its session of 1820, at the age of twenty-five. In this office he rode the circuits four years with admitted ability, candor and impartiality, evading no question and no duty; but he was sometimes thought to err from quickness of temper and too great readiness to assume responsibility. His courtesy to the profession won him general esteem. The people, though sometimes murmuring at the severity of a sentence or a supposed arbitrary or whimsical order, regarded with equal wonder the promptness and force with which he discussed questions of law with the veterans of the bar, and the intelligent, amusing and instructive conversation with which he habitually entertained his acquaintances and associates.

I mention a single case in his administration of the law as illustrative both of the firm and impartial hand with which he dealt out justice and the jealous care with which the judiciary of North Carolina has ever protected and maintained the rights of the weak against the strong and influential. A citizen of great fortune, and advanced age, who had represented his county in earlier years in both Houses of the Legislature, having also numerous and influential connections, charged a free-negro with larceny of his property, had him brought by warrant before a justice of the peace, prevailed on the justice to try and convict him of the offense charged, and to sentence him to punishment by stripes, which were inflicted--a proceeding allowable by law, provided the offender had been a slave. But here the culprit was a freeman, and by the Constitution entitled to public trial in open court before a jury of the country. The prosecutor, with the justice and constable, was arraigned before the Superior Court for this violation of law, and their guilt being established, Judge Badger, who happened to preside at this term, was strongly inclined to imprison the principal defendant, and was only deterred by reason of his (said defendant's) age and state of health; but, announcing that this was omitted from that cause only, sentenced him to a fine of twelve hundred dollars, the justice of the peace to fifty, and the constable to ten dollars, the differences being made on account of their several grades of intelligence and consequent criminality, as well as of ability to pay.

From the time of his return to the bar and location at Raleigh, until the access of disease which suddenly, and, as it proved, finally arrested his course, he devoted his time to the practice of his profession, with the exception of a few months, occasioned by his appointment by Harrison and his continuation by Tyler as Secretary of the Navy, and such further interruption as was produced by his occupation of a seat in the Senate of the United States from 1846 to 1855. During his forensic career he was, at different times, proposed by executive nomination for the bench of the Supreme Court, both of his own State and of the United States; but the spirit of party exacted a denial of his confirmation, though no man doubted his eminent qualification.

If it be true, as remarked by Pinkney, in one of his familiar letters, published by Wheaton, that "the bar is not a place to acquire or preserve a false or a fraudulent reputation for talents," it was eminently so in his case. He had an intrepid and self-reliant mind, which, disdaining artifice, timidity or caution, struck out into the open field of controversy with the daring of conscious power, and shunned no adversary not clad in the panoply of truth; was as ready to challenge the authority of Mansfield or Denman, Rosyln or Eldon, if found deflecting from the paths of principle or precedent, as that of meaner names. If, from want of opportunity or inclination, he had failed to master the mathematics of numbers, he made himself proficient in the mathematics of life (as our law, from the exactness of rule at which it aims, has been not inaptly denominated), and by a rigorous logic was prompt to expose whatever could not bear the test of reason. Yet, it was a logic free from the pedantry of the schools, apparently not derived from books, and accompanied by a rapidity of mental action, which gave to it the appearance of intuition. Whether in analysis or synthetical reasoning, in dealing with facts before juries or the most intricate questions of law before courts, these faculties were equally conspicuous, and attended, when occasion called for their use, with powers of humor, sarcasm, and ridicule hardly inferior to those of ratiocination. Added to all this, there was a lucidness of arrangement, an exact grammatical accuracy in every sentence, a forcible and graceful style which, independent of a clear and distinct enunciation, a melodious voice and engaging manner, imparted even to his extemporaneous arguments the charms of polished composition.

On one occasion, in a case of indictment for blasphemy, the question had been raised whether the Christian religion was a part of the common law, with a suggestion that if it was, it might be altered by statute, Mr. Badger volunteered an argument for the cause of religion and sound morality. It so happened that, as he opened his case, a venerable citizen of the State, of great intelligence, entered the court-room to speak a word to the reporter, expecting immediately to retire. He was, however, so fascinated with the manner of the speaker, the splendor of his diction, the copiousness of his theological and legal learning, the force and clearness of his arguments and the precision with which they were stated, that he sat down and heard him to the close, observing, as he withdrew, "what folly ever to have made him a judge, he ought to have been a bishop."

Literature, whose office it is to preserve the results of learning, knowledge, and fancy, has made so little progress among us that there has not been much effort to save from oblivion the discussions at the bar or in the deliberative assemblies of the State--the chief theatres of public intellectual exertion besides the pulpit. Had Mr. Badger been studious of posthumous fame and bestowed half the time in reporting his speeches in the more important of his causes on the circuit, which Cicero recommended and practiced in the preparation of his orations, the result would have been a most interesting contribution to American rhetorical literature. There are occasions enough within the recollection of many, who were present, in Wake, Orange, Granville, Halifax, and elsewhere, when his utterances, even if printed as delivered, would have formed a volume of no less interest than the speeches of Wirt or Emmet, Erskine or Curran, as well as afforded insight into events, crimes, transactions of business, and the state of society of our times, such as the muse of history derives from the records of courts of justice.

Two causes in the Circuit Court of the United States, in the days of Chief Justice Marshall, are especially remembered as being the themes of his most admired arguments, and in which he overcame the preconceived opinions of the great Judge, though impressed and supported by the acknowledged abilities, learning and persuasiveness of Gaston. These were the cases of _Whitaker_ vs. _Freeman_, an action for libel in twenty-five different counts, and _Lattimer_ vs. _Poteat_, one of a series of cases in ejectment, to recover immense bodies of land in the western counties, claimed by the citizens of Northern States under purchases from speculators who, it was alleged, had made their entries and procured grants before the extinction of the title of the Cherokee Indians, in violation of law; the defendants claiming under grants from the State made after the admitted cession of the Indian title; and Mr. Badger was retained by the State to defend their interests. This latter case, involving the relations of North Carolina while a separate sovereignty, and afterwards of the United States with the Cherokee Indians, as regulated by sundry treaties, the location of several lines of partition between them and the whites, but removed further and further west as the population of the superior race increased and emigration advanced, surveys partially or wholly made to establish these lines through a mountainous, and in many parts, an impervious country, imputed frauds in transgressing those lines and entries without actual survey, was of exceeding volume and complication in its facts, and occupied a week in the trial. The argument, running through four days, was said to be the most elaborate on both sides ever made in the State in a jury trial. It resulted in a verdict and judgment for the defendants, which was afterwards affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States. After the trial, Judge Marshall, in the simplicity and candor of his great character, observed to the then Governor of the State, "At the close of Mr. Gaston's opening argument, I thought he had as good a case as I ever saw put to a jury, but Mr. Badger had not spoken two hours before he satisfied me that no one of his [Gaston's] positions could be maintained."

To this instance of _laudatus a laudato viro_ I deem it not improper to add a few others from sources only less eminent: Chief Justice Henderson declared in my presence that "To take up a string of cases, run through them, extract the principle contained in each, and discriminate the points in which they differed from each other, or from the case in hand, I have never seen a man equal to George Badger."

Judge Seawell remarked of him: "Badger is an elementary man," and, continuing in his peculiar and racy style, "he goes to first principles; he finds the corners of his survey and then runs out the boundaries, while others hunt along the lines. The difference between him and myself is, that when I take up a book I read slowly, pausing at the end of each sentence, and when I have reached the bottom of the page I must stop and go back to see whether I fully comprehend the author's meaning, while he reads it off like a novel, and by the time he gets to the bottom of the page or the end of the treatise he has in his mind not only all that the author has taught, but a great deal that the author never knew."

Chief Justice Ruffin, yet surviving in honorable retirement from the labors of the profession, whose early appreciation of the faculties of Mr. Badger we have already noticed, and before whom as a Judge of the Supreme Court, he was in full practice for twenty-three years, affirmed to me, since the death of Mr. Badger, that in dialectic skill and argument he excelled any individual with whom he had ever been acquainted, not even excepting Chief Justice Marshall himself, for that he possessed the faculty of imagination and the capacity for illustration which Judge Marshall had not.