Part 27

In the summer of 1825, upon the resignation of Judge Badger, Mr. Ruffin again accepted the appointment of Judge of the Superior Courts. His recent successes had relieved him of embarrassment, and supplied him a competent fortune; his health demanded relaxation and rest; and he considered his duties to his family, now quite numerous, required more of his presence at home than was consistent with the very active life he was leading. He therefore relinquished his great emoluments at the bar for the inadequate salary then paid to a judge, and virtually closed his career as an advocate. By the bar and the public he was welcomed back on the circuits, and for the three following years he administered the law with such universal approbation that it was generally understood he would be appointed to the bench of the Supreme Court.

The reputation he had established by this time, however, did not merely assign him capabilities as a lawyer, but ascribed to him every qualification of a thorough man of affairs. It was conceded, at least, that he could teach bankers banking and merchants the science of accounts.

In the autumn of 1828 the stockholders of the old State Bank of North Carolina, at the head of whom were William Polk, Peter Browne, and Duncan Cameron, owing to the great embarrassment of the affairs of the institution, involving disfavor with the public and threats of judicial proceedings for a forfeiture of its charter, prevailed on him to take the presidency of the bank, with a salary increased to the procurement of his acceptance, and with the privilege on his part to practise his profession in the city of Raleigh. In twelve months, with characteristic energy, mastering the affairs of the bank with a true talent for finance, making available its assets and providing for its liabilities, and inspiring confidence by the general faith in his abilities and high purpose to do right, he effectually redeemed the institution, and prepared the way to close out in credit the remaining term of its charter.

At this period, also, another place of high political eminence was at his choice, but was promptly declined. A vacancy having happened in the Senate of the United States by the appointment of Governor Branch to the head of the Navy Department, and Hon. Bartlett Yancey, who had been the general favorite for the succession, having recently died, Mr. Ruffin was earnestly solicited to accept a candidacy for this position, with every assurance of success. But his desire was, as he himself expressed it among his friends, after the labor and attention he had bestowed upon his profession, to go down to posterity as a lawyer. Irrespective, therefore, of his domestic interests, and the care and attention due to his family, of which no man ever had a truer or warmer conception, he could not be diverted from his chosen line of life by the attractions of even the highest political distinction.

While assiduously employed in the affairs of the bank, to which was devoted the year 1829, his services were still demanded by clients in the higher courts, and his reputation at the bar suffered no eclipse. Upon the death of Chief Justice Taylor, in this year, the executive appointment of a successor was conferred on a gentleman of merited eminence in the profession, and of a singularly pure and elevated character; but the sentiment of the majority of the profession, as well as public opinion, had made choice of Mr. Ruffin for the permanent office, and he was elected a Judge of the Supreme Court at the session of the Legislature in the autumn of 1829. In 1833, upon the demise of Chief Justice Henderson, he was elevated to the Chief Justiceship, in which he won that fame which will longest endure because it is incorporated in the judicial literature of the country, and is coextensive with the study and administration of our system of law.

Of Mr. Ruffin's arguments at the bar no memorials have been preserved save the imperfect briefs contained in the causes that have been reported. His nature was ardent, his manner of speech earnest and often vehement in tone and gesticulation. Though versed in _belles-lettres_, and with tastes to relish eloquent declamation, it was a field into which he did not often, if at all, adventure. His reliance was upon logic; not upon rhetoric; and even his illustrations were drawn from things practical rather than ideal. Analyzing and thoroughly comprehending his cause, he held it up plainly to the view of others, and with a searching incisive criticism exposed and dissipated the weak points in that of his adversary; and all this in a vigorous, terse and manly English, every word of which told. Few advocates ever equaled him in presenting so much of solid thought in the same number of words, or in disentangling complicated facts or elucidating abstruse learning so as to make the demonstration complete to the minds of his hearers. These capacities he doubtless gained by severe culture, a part of which, as I learned from an early student in his office, resulted from his daily habit of going carefully over the demonstration of a theorem in mathematics. Thus habituated to abstract and exact reasoning, he delighted in the approach to exactness in the reasoning of the law, and no student could more truly say of his professional investigations: _Labor ipse est voluptas_. The accuracy thus attained in his studies gave him great eminence as a pleader in causes both at law and in equity; and the office of framing the pleadings was usually conceded to him by his colleagues in the causes in which they were associated. It also gave him rank among the great counsellors of the time whose opinions were not the result of cramming for an occasion, or a fortunate authority, but the well considered reflections of gifted minds imbued with law as a science. The full development of his forensic character does not appear to have been manifested until after his return to the bar subsequently to his first service on the bench. But from this period till his second retirement, in 1825, he had hardly a rival in the bar of the Supreme Court of the State or the Circuit Court of the United States, except Archibald Henderson and Gaston, and he had a command of the practice in all the State courts he attended. As a Judge of the Superior Courts he exhibited equal aptitude as for the practice at the bar. With an energy that pressed the business forward, a quickness rarely equaled in perceiving and comprehending facts, patient and industrious habits of labor, and a spirit of command which suffered no time to be lost, he dispatched causes with expedition, but with no indecent haste. Whilst he presided it was rare that any cause before a jury ever occupied more than a single day, and none is remembered that extended beyond two. He dismissed a suit brought to test a wager at the cost of both parties, and remarked that it was on account of leniency that he did not imprison them.

In administering the criminal law, in which the extent of punishment generally depended on the discretion of the judge, his sentences were such as to inspire evil-doers with terror, but eminently tended to give protection to society and confidence to honest and law-abiding men.

His accession to the bench of the Supreme Court was a source of general satisfaction to the profession, and to the people of the State, by whom his enlightened labors in the circuits had been witnessed with admiration and pride. He at once took a conspicuous part in the proceedings of this high tribunal, and for the twenty-three years that he continuously sat there, probably delivered a greater number of the opinions than any judge with whom, in all this long career, he was associated. These opinions are found through more than twenty-five volumes of the Reports, and form the bulk of our judicial literature for a full generation. They have been cited with approbation in the American courts, State and national, by eminent legal authors, and in the judicial deliberations of Westminster Hall; and the North Carolina lawyer who can invoke one of them as a case in point with his own generally considers that he is possessed of an impenetrable shield. It has been rare in England that a judge or advocate has reached high distinction in the courts both of common law and equity. The student of the judicial arguments of Chief Justice Ruffin will be at a loss to determine in which of these branches of legal science he most excelled. To the votary of the common law, fresh from the perusal of the black letter of the times of the Tudors and early Stuarts, and captivated with its artificial refinements and technical distinctions, he would appear to have pursued his professional education upon the intimation of Butler, in his reminiscences, that "he is the best lawyer, and will succeed best in his profession, who best understands Coke upon Littleton"; or, advancing to the modern ages of greater enlightenment and freer intercourse among nations, that he had made a specialty of the law of contracts, bills of exchange and commercial law generally; whilst his expositions of equity causes will satisfy any impartial critic that he was at least equally a proficient and master of the principles and practice of the jurisprudence of the English Chancery, and would induce the belief that, like Sir Samuel Romilly or Sir William Grant, his practice at the bar had been confined to this branch of the profession.

During his chief-justiceship it cannot fail to be remarked that there was a great advance in the accuracy of pleadings in equity cases, and in general extension of the knowledge of equity practice throughout the circuits. And the precision and propriety of entries in every species of procedure were brought to a high state of perfection, mainly by his investigations and labors, in conjunction with those of that most worthy gentleman, and modest but able lawyer, Edmund B. Freeman, Esq., late Clerk of the Supreme Court, whose virtues and public usefulness, connected as he was for so many years in close and friendly association with the immediate subject of our remarks, now likewise gone down beyond the horizon, I am gratified the opportunity serves to commemorate.

Judge Ruffin's conversancy with political ethics, public law, and English and American history seems to have assigned to him the task of delivering the opinions on constitutional questions which have attracted most general attention. That delivered by him in the case of _Hoke_ vs. _Henderson_, in which it was held that the Legislature could not, by a sentence of its own in the form of an enactment, divest a citizen of property, even in a public office, because the proceeding was an exercise of judicial power, received the high encomium of Kent and other authors on constitutional law; and I happened personally to witness that it was the main authority relied on by Mr. Reverdy Johnson, in the argument for the second time in _Ex parte Garland_, which involved the power of Congress, by a test oath, to exclude lawyers from the practice in the Supreme Court of the United States for having participated in civil war against the government; and in which, its reasoning on the negative side of the question, was sustained by that august tribunal.

The singular felicity and aptitude with which he denuded his judgments of all extraneous matter, and expounded the principles of the case in hand, usually citing authority only to uphold what had been demonstrated without it, is the most striking feature of his numerous opinions. His style of writing was elevated and worthy of the themes he discussed. His language was well selected, and exhibited a critical acquaintance with English philology. A marked characteristic in his writings, as it was also in his conversation, was the frequent, dextrous, and strikingly appropriate use he made of the brief words of our language, usually of Saxon derivation.

In the autumn of 1852, while in the zenith of his reputation, and not yet pressed with the weight of years, Chief Justice Ruffin resigned his office and retired, as he supposed forever, from the professional employments he had so long and with so much renown pursued. But on the death of his successor and friend, Chief Justice Nash, in December, 1858, he was called by the almost unanimous vote of the General Assembly, then in session, to fill the vacancy, and sat again as a Judge of the Supreme Court until the autumn of 1859, when failing health rendered his labors irksome, and he took his final leave of judicial life. Six years of rest in his rural home had induced nothing of rust or desuetude: he wore the ermine as naturally and gracefully as if he had never been divested of its folds; his judicial arguments at this time evince all that vigor of thought and freshness and copiousness of learning which had prompted an old admirer to say of him that he was a "born lawyer." It is not improbable that this preservation in full panoply was, in some degree, aided by the circumstance that in a desire to be useful in any sphere for which he was fitted, he had accepted the office of a justice of the peace in the county of Alamance, in which he then resided, and had held the County Courts with the lay justices during this period. Though near ten years later, and when he had passed the age of eighty, in a matter of seizure, under the revenue laws, in which he took some interest for a friend, in the Circuit Court of the United States, a branch of practice to which he had not been habituated by experience, I had occasion to observe that he was as ready with his pen in framing the pleadings, without books of authority or precedent, as any proctor in a court of admiralty.

At an early period he became the proprietor of an estate on Dan River, in Rockingham, on which he established a plantation at once, and gave personal direction to its profitable cultivation from that time until near the time of his death. Carrying his family to Raleigh for a sojourn of twelve months, upon assuming the presidency of a bank, as already stated, he removed thence to Haw River, in Alamance, in 1830, and there, under his own eye, carried on the operations of a planter with success until the year 1866, when the results of the war deprived him of laborers and he sold the estate and removed again to Hillsborough. The law has been said by some of its old authors to be a jealous mistress, and to allow no rival in the attentions of its votary. Chief Justice Ruffin, however, while diligently performing the duties of his great office, and keeping up with the labors of his contemporaries, Lyndhurst, Brougham, Tenterden, and Denman, in England, and the numerous courts exercising like jurisdictions in America, found leisure to manage his farm at home as well as to give direction to that in Rockingham. And this, not in the ineffective manner which has attended like efforts of some professional men, but with present profit and improvement of the estates. From early life he appeared to have conceived a fondness for agriculture, including horticulture and the growing of fruit-trees and flowers, which his home in the country seemed to have been selected to indulge. Here, for thirty-five years during the recesses of his courts, he found recreation in these pursuits and in the rearing of domestic animals; the result of which was the most encouraging success in orchards, grapery, garden, cereals, flocks and herds. Combining a knowledge of the general principles of science, with fine powers of observation, and the suggestions of the most approved agricultural periodicals, he was prepared to avail himself in practice of the highest intelligence in the art. It was therefore no empty compliment to a great jurist and leading citizen when the Agricultural Society of North Carolina, in 1854, elected him to its presidency after his retirement from the bench. He was continued in this distinguished position for six years, when declining health demanded his retirement; and at no time have the interests of the Society been more prosperous, its public exhibitions more spirited; and it may be added that on no occasion did he ever manifest more satisfaction than in the reunions of its members.

The liberal hospitality that he dispensed throughout life was a most conspicuous feature in the period thus devoted to practical agriculture. His nature was eminently social, his acquaintance in his high position extensive, his dwelling near one of the great highways of travel through the State in the old modes of conveyance, easy of access, and the exuberance of his farm, garden, orchards and domestic comforts were never more agreeably dispensed than when ministered to the gratification of his friends under his own roof.

The cordiality and ease with which he did the honors of an entertainer in an old-fashioned Southern mansion is among the pleasant recollections of not a few between the Potomac and the Mississippi. It was here, indeed, surrounded by a family worthy of the care and affection he bestowed upon them, relaxed from the severe studies and anxieties of official life, in unreserved and cheerful intercourse, that, after all, he appeared most favorably.

By his industry, frugality and aptitude for the management of property, he accumulated in a long life an estate more ample than usually falls to the lot of a member of the profession in this State; and although much reduced by the consequences of the civil war, it was still competent to the comfort of his large family.

Judge Ruffin was, until superseded by the changes made in 1868, the oldest trustee of the University of the State, and always one of the most efficient and active members of the board. For more than half a century on terms of intimate intercourse with its Presidents, Caldwell and Swain, and the leading Professors, Mitchell, Phillips and their associates, he was their ready counsellor and friend in any emergency; whether in making appeals to the Legislature in behalf of the institution for support and assistance in its seasons of adversity, or in enforcing discipline and maintaining order, advancing the standard of education or cheering the labors both of the faculty and students. His criterion of a collegiate education was high, and he illustrated by his own example the rewards of diligent and faithful study. He retained a better acquaintance with the dead languages than any of his compeers we have named except Gaston, Murphy, and Taylor. In ethics, history, and the standard British classics his knowledge was profound. In science and in natural history, more especially in chemistry, and those departments pertaining to agriculture, horticulture, pomology and the like, his attainments were very considerable, as they were also in works of _belles-lettres_, poetry, taste and fiction, at least down to the end of the novels of Scott and Cooper. He worthily received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of North Carolina in 1834, and the like honor is believed to have been subsequently conferred by his alma mater at Princeton.

His style and manner in conversation, in which he took great delight and bore a distinguished part in all companies, abounded in pleasantry, but exhibited the same wide range of thought and information as his public performances, and was full of entertainment and instruction to the young. His temperament was mercurial, his actions quick and energetic, and his whole bearing in the farthest possible degree removed from sloth, inertness, and despondency. In political sentiment he accorded with the school of Jefferson, and for more than forty years was a constant reader of the _Richmond Inquirer_, the editor of which, Mr. Ritchie, was his relative, though no one entertained a more exalted reverence for the character, abilities, and patriotism of Marshall, with whom he cherished a familiar acquaintance while in practice before him at the bar, and after his own elevation to the bench. Later in life he formed a like kind and admiring acquaintance with Chancellor Kent.

In the winter of 1861 the Legislature of North Carolina, having acceded to the proposition of Virginia, on the approach of the late rupture between the States of the Union, to assemble a body of delegates in the City of Washington to consider and recommend terms of reconciliation, Judge Ruffin was appointed one of the members in the "Peace Conference," and is understood to have taken a conspicuous part in its deliberations and debates. We have the testimony of General Scott, in his autobiography, already quoted, that his counsels in that assembly were altogether pacific. President Buchanan, in his work in defense of his action in that important crisis, makes assertion of the same fact. After the failure of the efforts at adjustment, and the war, in his opinion, had become a necessity, Judge Ruffin accepted a seat in the State Convention of 1861, and threw into its support all the zeal and energy of his earnest and ardent temper; one of his sons, a grandson, and other near connections taking part in the dangers and privations of its camps and battle-fields. When defeat came he yielded an honest submission and acquiescence, and renewed in perfect good faith his allegiance to the government of the United States. Too far advanced in years to be longer active in affairs, his chief concern in regard to the public interests thenceforward was for the conservation of the public weal, and that the violent convulsion, of which we had felt the shock, and the change, might be permitted to pass without any serious disturbance of the great and essential principles of freedom and right which it had been the favorite study of his life to understand and illustrate.

With the close of the war, his farm about his mansion having experienced the desolation of an army encampment, and its system of labor being abolished, he felt unequal to the enterprise of its resuscitation and culture, and therefore disposed of his estate and again took up his abode in Hillsborough. Here, in occasional occupation as a referee of legal controversies, in directing the assiduous culture of his garden and grounds, in desultory reading, in which he now and then recurred to his old favorites among the novels of Scott, in the duties of hospitality and the converse of friends, in the bosom of his family, he passed the evening of his days. In the sense of imbecility or decrepitude he never grew old, but was blessed with the enjoyment of a remarkable intellectual vigor and fine flow of spirits almost till his dissolution. And, in anticipation of death, in his last illness he laid an injunction on his physician to administer to him no anodyne which should deprive him of consciousness, as he did not wish to die in a state of insensibility.

On the 15th of January, 1870, after an illness of but four days, though he had been an invalid from an affection of the lungs for a year or more, he breathed his last, in the eighty-third year of his age. His end was resigned and peaceful, and in the consolation of an enlightened and humble Christian faith. For more than forty years a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church, he was one of its most active members in the State, and more than once represented the Diocese in the Triennial Conventions of the Union.

The venerable companion of his life, a bride when not yet fifteen, a wife for more than sixty years, yet survives to receive the gratitude and affection of a numerous posterity and the reverence and esteem of troops of friends.