Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/370

 364 Southern Historical Society Papers.

His great grandfather was Judge Richard Parker, who presided in one of the eastern circuits of Virginia, and died in 1813 at the advanced age of eighty-four. The first Judge Richard Parker had five sons in the Revolutionary army. William Parker, grandfather of the present Judge Parker, was a farmer, and he makes the only break in the line of judges in four generations.

Judge Parker served one term in Congress in 1848. The jailer having Brown in charge proposed to bring him into court under a guard of soldiers ; Judge Parker replied that he would not permit armed men in any court of justice over which he presided, and directed the jailer to select four or five men of courage and repute who would see that not a hair of his head was touched.

In conclusion, we append the following extract from the speech made by Hon. D. W. Voorhees in defense of Cooke, one of the parties who was connected and executed with John Brown:

" The mission on which I have visited your State is to me and to those who are with me one full of the bitterness and poison of calamity and grief. The high, the sacred, the holy duty of private friendship for a family fondly beloved by all who have ever witnessed their illustrations of the purest social virtues, commands, and alone com- mands my presence here. And while they are overwhelmed by the terrible blow which has fallen upon them through the action of the misguided young man at the bar, yet I speak their sentiments as well as my own, when I say that one gratification, pure and unal- loyed, has been afforded us since our melancholy arrival in your midst. It has been -to witness the progress of this court from day to day, surrounded by all that is calculated to bias the minds of men, but pursuing with calmness, with dignity and impartiality the true course of the law and the even pathway of justice. I would not be true to the dictates of my own heart and judgment did I not bear voluntary and emphatic witness to the wisdom and patient kindness of his Honor on the bench; the manly and generous spirit which has characterized the counsel for the prosecution ; the true, devoted and highly professional manner of the local counsel here for the defense; the scrupulous truthfulness of the witnesses who have testified, and the decorum and justness of the jurors, who have acted their parts from the first hour of this court to the present time. I speak in the hear- ing of the country. An important and memorable page in history is being written. Let it not be omitted that Virginia has thrown around a band of deluded men, who invaded her soil with treason and mur- der, all the safeguards of her constitution and laws, and placed them