Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/391

 356

which was in dispute, and he was assigned to protect it for the civic government. It eventually reached the United States' Su preme Court (Vick v. the Mayor and Council of Vicksburg, 3 Howard, 464), where the defendants were beaten by a majority of the judges, and Prentiss lost land and improvement, which were valued at $ 1 50,000 — his all. The Mississippi State reports between 1835 and 1845 teem with cases in which he was engaged, and in which he was generally as successful in banco as he had been at nisi prius with jurors. The State was anxious to convict a desperado named Cameron, for the murder of one Bird, a well known citizen; and later also to convict a highwayman, named Phelps. These were regarded as close cases, and Prentiss was associated with the Attorney-General. Both accused were convicted, and one of them on the slight circumstantial evidence of having in his pocket a scrap of an old printed song, of which another portion, capable of being deciphered, was found in the gun-wadding that was taken from the victim's wound. Prentiss summed up on that incident with great adroitness and power. Another of his "star" nisi prius cases hinged upon the romance of a testator, whose will was contested in the form of a now obsolete action termed devisavit vcl non. The plea against its validity was in competence, through a mind broken by habits of intoxication, and because of death bed signature; and the invalidity was sus tained by the efforts of Joseph Holt, then a visiting young Kentucky lawyer, who during the Civil War, a quarter century later, be came Judge Advocate, after having been a Cabinet Secretary. But he proved no match for Prentiss, who after an address to the jury sustained the will that gave a large fortune to the testator's early love, who had broken her engagement with him on account of his habits of intoxication, and who had married

and become a widow. She was. Prentiss' client, and relatives of the testator opposed the will, mainly upon its having been made in extremis. The following is an extract from the im passioned address of Prentiss to the jury: "Gentlemen, at the approach of death, how often the mind will disperse its clouds, and the heart, however perverted by in temperance it may have been, will recover its purity. ... In this testator's last mo ments, the remembrance of his early love shone across a dreary lapse of years; and the image on his dying eyes, of her he first loved, recalled the fond hopes of his youth, and under their vivid influence he had striven to redeem his errors by a noble generosity." It was a curious compliment to his powers of persuasion that, when the foreman of the jury, after consultation, arose to announce the verdict, he at first framed it thus : " We find for Mr. Prentiss." At the termination of his legislative life, Mr. Prentiss was elected at a special elec tion to Congress. His seat was contested on a technical ground, and he lost it by the casting vote of Speaker James K. Polk, on a tie between Whig and Democratic members. His speech, on his own behalf, was so logical and eloquent that the Senate adjourned to hear its progress; and at its close, John Ouincy Adams — the only ExPresident who ever sat in the House (al though Andrew Johnson retired from the White House to the Senate Chamber) — warmly congratulated the orator. Prentiss then went back to Vicksburg, and at the regular election was overwhelmingly returned, after he had in partisan parlance, "stumped the State," and enchanted the electors with his oratory. He made many speeches in Congress during his term of service, and these, as reported in the " Globe" (which is unusual on the average as to re ported speeches), glow in type with the true fire of oratory. While Congressman, he