Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/133

Rh of-war " Lexington " in 1827. and, after a three- years' cruise, returned to this country. He was on the sloop-of-war " Boston " in the Mediterranean, was promoted lieutenant on 9 Feb., 1837, and was attached to the receiving-ship "Ohio" at Boston. Mass., in 1843. On 14 Sept., 1845, he became com- mander, and on 10 July, 1800, he was made com- modore on the retired list.

PRENTISS, Samuel, physician, b. in Stoning- ton. Conn., in 1759; d. in Northfield, Mass., in 1818. He was the son of Col. Samuel Prentiss, who served in the Revolutionary war. After re- ceiving a good education, he studied medicine, and entered the Revolutionary army as assistant sur- geon. After the war he went to Worcester, Mass., and afterward to Northfield, where he gained a large practice, and for many years was the princi- pal operator in the vicinity. He was made a fel- low ul' the Massachusetts medical society in 1810. His son, Samuel, jurist, b. in Stonington, Conn., 31 March, 1782; d. in Montpelier, Vt., 15 .Ian.. IN57. si udieil law. was ail in it ted to the liar in l- s l>'.'. ami began to practise in Montpelier in 1803, soon acquiring a reputation for eloquence and integrity, lie served in the legislature in 1824 '5, and in 1829 was elected chief justice of the supreme court of Vermont. He was then chosen to the U. S. senate as a Whig, serving from 5 Dec., 1831. till 11 April, 1842, when he resigned. During his term he ef- I'eeied the passage of a bill against duelling in the District of Columbia. In 1842 he was appointed judge of the U. S. district court of Vermont, which office he held until his death. Another son, John Holmes, journalist, b. in Worcester, Mass., 17 April, 1784; d. in Cooperstown, N. Y., 26 June, 1801, learned the printer's trade, and, settling in Cooperstown, N. Y., established there, in 1808, " The Freeman's Journal," which he conducted until 1849. He was elected a representative to congress as a Democrat, serving from 4 Sept., 1837, till 3 March, 1841. The second Samuel's son, Theodore, lawyer, b. in Montpelier, Vt., 10 Sept., 1818, entered the University of Vermont in 1838, but, owing to impaired health, left in the same year, and travelled in the south. He studied law under his father, was admitted to the bar in 1844, and in 1845 removed to Watertown, Wis. He was a member of the convention of 1846, acting as chairman of the committee on the acts of congress for the admission of the state, and reported the article upon that subject, which, after a single amendment that he suggested, was adopted. He was also a member of the State constitutional con- vention of 1847-'8. Mr. Prentiss served in the Wisconsin legislature, and was three times elected mayor of Watertown.

PRENTISS, Sergeant Smith, orator, b. in Portland, Me., 30 Sept.. 1808 ; d. at Longwood, near Natchez, Miss., 1 July. 1S50. In his boyhood he was remarkable for his mental sprightliness, and for the keen appetite with which he devoured all the books on which he could lay his hand. He was a cripple all his life, and could walk until his ninth year only with crutches; but afterward he required but a cane. At the age of fifteen he en- tered the junior class of Bowdoin, where he was graduated in 1826. In 1827 he went to Natchez, Miss., in the vicinity of which he taught in a pri- vate family, and read law. In 1829 he was ad- mitted to the bar, and removed to Vicksburg. where he rose to the front rank in reputation and the extent of his practice. In 1835 Mr. Prentiss was elected as a representative to the legislature of Mississippi, in which he made several speeches that were remarkable for wit, sarcasm, and argumenta- tive power. In 1837 he was elected to the lower house of congress, and, finding his seat preoccu- pied by Col. Claiborne, the Democratic candidate at the election, he vindicated his claim in a speech nearly three days long, which established his repu- tation as one of the ablest parliamentary orators in the coun- try. His claim hav- ing been rejected by the casting vote of the speaker, James K. Polk, he went back to Mississippi, and after a vigorous canvass of the state was again elected by a large majority, liis principal speech at this session was made against the sub-treasury bill. In 1838 he visited his native city, and while there accepted an invitation to attend the public dinner to be given in July to Daniel Webster in Faneuil hall. His speech on this occasion was declared many years afterward by Edward Everett to have been " the most wonderful specimen of a sententious fluency which I have ever witnessed." Mr. Webster, when asked by Mr. Everett if he had ever heard anything like it, replied, "Never, except from Mr." Prentiss himself." In 1839, on his way home from Washington, he stayed a week in Kentucky, and defended his friend, Judge Wilkinson, who had been charged with murder, in a speech that was a masterpiece of forensic eloquence. In 1840 he canvassed the state of Mississippi as candidate for presidential elector, making a series of speeches that severely taxed his physical strength. During the next four years he delivered many speeches, marked by extraordinary energy and elevation of tone, against the repudiation by that state of its bonded debt. In 1845. regarding the state as " disgraced and degraded " by that act, he began the study of the civil law. and removed to New Orleans, La., where, in 1850, a fatal disease closed his brilliant and brief career. As an orator Mr. Prentiss had a gift akin to that of the Italian improvisatore. When addressing a large assemblage of men, he experienced an electrical excitement, at times " almost maddening," and he seemed to himself to be rather spoken from than speaking. New thoughts came rushing into his mind unbidden, which surprised himself as much as his hearers, and which, he said, "he could no more reproduce when the excitement was over than he could make a world." The printed reports of his speeches are hardly more than skeletons, giving little idea of his eloq'uence. His manner of speaking was at once natural and dramatic, and he combined in a remarkable degree logical power with intense passion, keen wit, pathos, and a vivid imagination. At the bar his chief characteristics were his mastery of his subject, his readiness, adroitness, fertility of resources, and absolute command of all his mental stores. In a jury trial, to give him the concluding address was nearly equivalent to giving him the verdict. With all" his readiness he was indefatigable in his legal studies, and spared no labor on his cases. A legal acquaintance who knew him well said that his forte was best seen in the analysis of a point of law. or the discussion of a constitutional question. "His style then became terse, simple, severe, exhibiting a mental discipline