Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/20

 The Green Bag.

VOL. XII. No. i.

BOSTON.

JANUARY, 1900.

HENRY A. WISE OF VIRGINIA. BY EDMUND S. SPALDING.

IT would be a matter of surprise, perhaps, if it were traced, to find how many of our statesmen had stepped from the practice of law to the career of politics. Yet the power of clearly stating a position, of giving reasons for holding it, and of defending it against opposition, which the lawyer has cultivated and exhibited, naturally gives his party confidence that he will exercise the same essential qualifications in the office he may hold. That the lawyer should be tempted by the gratifying sense of popu larity, by the wish to obtain certain favorite political objects which his election may forward, to say nothing of the stimulus of patriotism which may be among his higher motives, does not leave the change always unaccountable. It is not less a subject of regret, oftentimes, when the abilities and studies of a man have fitted him for suc cess in so noble a profession as the law that he should relinquish it for a career depen dent on the breath of the multitude, liable to comparative chances and changes, ex posed to the use of petty motives and ignoble means, and often ending in bitter disappointment. Henry Alexander Wise started in the profession of law, which his father had practiced, but he is remembered chiefly as a statesman. He was born in Drummondtown, Va., Dec. 2, 1806. He had the mis fortune to lose his father and mother before he was eight years old. John Wise, the progenitor of the family in America, settled in Virginia in 1635, and was a man of per sonal consideration in ability and character.

To perpetuate the family name, he called his first two sons John and Johannes for distinction lest the other should die; and for six succeeding generations the eldest son was John. On the mother's side the Cropper family was one well known, and she was a person of personal attraction and great decision of character. In the family of two aunts, Henry A. Wise had a kind, happy home, and a fond care which indulgently left him free to roam, and follow the impulses of a somewhat way ward will. He was educated at the college at Washington, Penn. He was heard in after life to express great indebtedness to the president, Dr. Andrew Wylie, who brought him, he said, " a wild, reckless, and neglected orphan, a self-willed boy, to love honor, truth, and wisdom, to strive to be virtuous for virtue's sake; not to imitate, but to be really, what can elevate one." In all the debating clubs of the college he showed a decided talent for extemporaneous speaking and skill in debates. Although not inclined to exact scholarship, he divided first honors with another student at his graduation. He entered the law school at Winchester, Va. At one time he fell into the tempta tion of gambling. One night he had spent hour after hour hazarding a half-year's al lowance, winning and losing. At the dawn of morning he went back to the tavern where his rooms were, and he was met at the head of the stairs by Mrs. Tucker, wife of Judge Tucker, the principal of the Law School, saying, as she came from her room,