Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/396

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��HISTOKY OF EICHLAND COUNTY.

��and, probably, has never had his superior in this circuit.

" Off' the bench, in the practice of the pro- fession, Judge Parker and Judge Stewart were still more opposite in their characteristics. Parker was essentially an office lawyer, and a very superior one, but had no special ability before a jury. He stammered in his utterance, and had none of the gifts of oratory.

" Judge Stewart, on the other hand, was a mighty man before a jury. The sweep and power of his eloquence was overwhelming, and carried everything before it. His large, portly and commanding presence was of itself suffi- cient to hold the attention of the jury, but, in addition, he had all the best qualities of a great jur}' lawyer.

" His ph3'sical endurance seemed inexhaust- ible, and he was apparently as fresh at the end of a trial as at the beginning. As a jury law- yer. Judge Stewart has never been surpassed at the Mansfield bar.

"Next to Parker and Stewart in age, and fully their peers in mental abilit}^, came Thomas W. Bartley and Jacob Brinkerhofl". They were rivals, and alwtiys pitted against each other. Bartley was the most persistent man among them. He was not as fine an orator as either Stewart or Brinkerhoff, nor as well read as Par- ker, but he had the tenacity of a l)ull-dog, and an industry that was endless and tireless. These qualities made him a very dangerous antagonist. He deservedly stood in the front rank of Ohio lawyers.

" Judge Brinkerhoff", Bartley's most frequent antagonist, was the most brilliant man of this whole legal galaxy, and the most attractive speaker. At repartee, he was as quick, sharp, and bright as lightning, but he lacked the ten- acity of Bartley and the ponderous weight of Stewart. Juries were delighted with Brinker- hoff" and detested Bartley ; the former was brief, brilliant and beautiful ; the latter, dry, tedious and harsh. Brinkerhoff" rarely spoke over an

��hour; Bartley rarely spoke less than three hours, and sometimes, as in the Welch murder trial, he held on three days. The result was they were very evenly matched. If either pre- dominated in the crucible of success it was Bartley's pertinacity. In fact, Bartley could never be considered vanquished until the ver- dict was returned, judgment entered, execution issued and returned satisfied.

" Brinkerhoff" was a man of more general cult- ure, perhaps, than any of his competitors, as he read everything and remembered everything. Perhaps it does not become me as his kinsman to say it, yet I think the general judgment of his cotemporaries will bear me out in saying that he was, in all respects, a model lawyer and a model man. He was brilliant, scholarly and thoroughly honest.

" A little incident I remember is a fair index of his whole life. When I was a student in his office, he was politically under a cloud. He was a Free-Soil Democrat, and for this was tabooed by his party and despised bj^ the Whigs. I was riding with him one day, and suggested the propriety of supporting his party in all that was good, leaving the slavery ques- tion for a more propitious period in the future. His reply was, ' I cannot play Hamlet with Ham- let left out. I am a Democrat, but it seems to me that opposition to slavery is the heart of Democracy. I know I am down politically, and probably I shall always remain down, but the time will come when my children, or my grandchildren, will remember me with more honor on that account than for anything else in my histor}'.'

" Samuel J. Kirkwood was just coming into prominence, and gave great promise ; but he took a notion to go to Iowa in 1855, and did not, therefore, rise to his true eminence at the Mansfield bar. The fact that he has since been twice Governor, and is now in the United States Senate, is a sufficient indication of the metal he is made of

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