Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/479

 442

Choate ' to this letter and tell that lawyer to send me a hundred dollars." He re mained with Choate some years, only leav ing to go to Beloit, Wisconsin, with a strong letter of recommendation from Choate and a guaranty from him of payment to Little, Brown & Co., for all the books Carpenter might order. Arrived at Beloit with seventyfive cents in his pocket, Matt rented an office on credit, unpacked a library larger than had ever been seen in the town, and after borrowing fifty cents to pay for paint ing his name on his shingle, the penniless young attorney started on his professional career. From that time to his death, though stricken with blindness lasting several years, and encountering and surmounting constant obstacles, Carpenter ever went upwards and onwards till an untimely death, in 1881, closed his eloquent lips forever. To review in detail the important litigation in which he was engaged would fill a volume. From the justice's courts of Wisconsin, through the State and Federal Courts of that State, he hewed his way, till in 1862 he argued his first case in the Supreme Court of the United States, the theatre of his greatest professional triumphs. A letter written home by him from the chamber of that august tribunal on the day of his first, appearance casts a vivid light on the charming person ality of the man : — "Supreme Court Room, Friday, 12 o'clock, M. "My Darling Babies : "The gravest and most dignified body of men on earth is just now before me. A squeaking voice from Jersey is enlightening the court. Yet my thought is over the prairie and my heart with you, dear, precious pair, who are to me more than courts or oratory, and more than sovereignty or power, dearer than the ruddy drops that visit my heart. I am well and shall write you more at length when I get rested. Matt." The late Justice Miller thus describes the impression produced upon the judges of the Supreme Court at that time. The case was a complicated railroad receivership, and after

elaborate argument by distinguished counsel opposing him, who utterly failed to get the facts of the case in the minds of the court, as Carpenter, who had appeared before me in Wisconsin when on the circuit, rose to make his argument, I said to him, " Mr. Carpenter, can't you tell the court what this case is all about." He then proceeded to marshal in serried array, the complicated facts of the case, taking three-quarters of an hour to the statement of the facts. The law he covered in five minutes. As we were exchanging our robes for our overcoats in the little room appointed for that purpose, Judge Grier addressing me said, " Brother Miller, who is that Mr. Carpenter who has come down from your circuit? I want to know him, for I have heard nothing equal to his effort to-day since Mr. Webster was before us." The test oath cases, the McCardle case, the Belknap impeachment, his argument before the Electoral Commission, Bradwell v. State of Illinois, the slaughter-house cases, Northwestern University v. People of Illinois, and his numerous battles with corporations, particularly railroad corpora tions, are some among the many important cases in which his deep legal learning, his matchless oratory and his fearlessness as an advocate shone out. Ever affable and courteous, he was always aggressive and fearless, he exemplified the old oath of an English barrister, "To present nothing to the court in falsehood, but to make war for his client." Another letter from the Su preme Court chamber in Washington to his wife during the argument of the MacCardle case, reveals the man more than reams of my feeble descriptive generalities could do : — "Tuesday, March 3, 1868. "Dear Girl : "Yours of 27th received, and I am greatly relieved, as I was beginning to be anxious, it had been so long since I had heard from you. "I spoke two and a half hours to-day, and did as well as I expected or hoped to do. I am