THADDEUS STevens as a cOUNTRY LAWYER Paper read before the Pennsylvania Par Association, By Hon. W. U. HFNSEL, of Lancaster, Pa. Mr. President, Ladies and G. Hemen of the Penylcarda State Bar Association: I come neither to "bury Caesar, nor to praise him." I shall not ask you to follow this n's career in the field where he achieved his real eminenc, as less pernat you to exact from me approval of or encoun se nan Lis work as a statesman and pub, however been shaped or influenced . or his character as a lawy r. a brief sketch of his career years at the "country Bar.'.. the privilege to somewhat e cation of your proceedings. ay have 10 n Civil War s born i ...tion, and experi His life stretched from the have written, no page is his; nor sh. rmy. THADDEUS STEVENS AS A COUNTRY LAWYER Paper read before the Pennsylvania Bar Association, By Hon. W. U. HENSEL, of Lancaster, Pa. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Pennsylvania State Bar Association: I come neither to "bury Caesar, nor to praise him." I shall not ask you to follow this man's career in the field where he achieved his real eminence, much less permit you to exact from me approval of or encomium upon his work as a statesman and publicist, however much it may have been shaped or influenced by his education, his experience or his character as a lawyer. I shall content myself with a brief sketch of his career as a practitioner for two score years at the "country Bar," and I reserve, with your consent, the privilege to somewhat enlarge this paper in the publication of your proceedings. His life stretched from the days when the skies were reddened by the first torches of the French Revolution to the time when the embers of the great American Civil War were cooling into ashes. Thaddeus Stevens was born in the first term of George Washington's administration, and he died in the last year of Andrew Johnson's. His experience was not exceptionally extended, but it was stormy. While it lasted most of the history of American jurisprudence was written, but he did not enrich it with any material contribution. In the great volume which the Marshalls and Websters, and our own Gibson and Tilghman, Binney and Sergeant, and a thousand other leaders of the profession have written, no page is his; nor shall I make bold to hang his portrait in the gallery of great American lawyers. But the fact that he was a Pennsylvanian of first rank, and that before he entered the field of national politics, and long before he became the parliamentary leader of a triumphant party, he had rapidly risen to the front as a trial lawyer, and the observation that so little of his work is recorded in the permanent annals of Bench and Bar, make sufficient apology for a brief recognition by an association one of whose most agreeable and useful purposes is to prepare and perpetuate the history and biography of our profession in Pennsylvania. His struggle-or, rather, that of his widowed mother, for her lame boy, the youngest and favorite-to get an education, his escapades at Burlington and graduation from Dartmouth, his choice of the law and beginning the study of it under Judge Mattocks in his native State; his unexplained venture from Peacham, Vermont, to York, Pennsylvania; his engagement there as a teacher in an academy of which Queen Anne was a patroness (and where young Stevens prepared for college the maternal grandfather of Associate Justice J. Hay Brown); how, outside of any law school, or even of any lawyer's office he pursued his studies diligently under David Casset, one of the leaders of the local Bar, are all matters of familiar history. His admission was characteristic of the practice of his time. It may have been "infra dig." in the York of that day to combine the study of a learned profession with selfsupport as a school teacher; his alien Yankee ways or caustic tongue may have won him personal enemies. Whatever prevented his application for admission there, it is certain he rode horseback to Bel Air, the seat of the adjoining county of Harford, in Maryland, and presented himself, an entire stranger, on Monday, August 26, 1816, for membership at a Bar, where, if the gate did not stand open, its latch was loose. The Judges sitting were Theodoric Bland and Zebulon Hollingsworth. They, together with Joseph Hopper Nicholson, Chief Judge, constituted the Judges of |