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THE GREEN BAG

those. In many of the cases no counsel were named, so that Crittenden had even a larger percentage of the contested cases than the above figures would indicate. At this time too the bar of the state was singularly able, numbering among its old members Clay, Bledsoe, Rowan, Harclin, Chapeye, Caperton, Guthrie, Wickliffe, Denny, and others of equal renown, which makes the feat all the more surprising. He was moreover engaged in many trial cases in which he was attended by uniform and brilliant success. In 1827 he was appointed District Attorney of the United States for Kentucky by President Adams, and in 1829 the same President nominated him to succeed Judge Trimble in the Supreme Court of the United States. A partisan Senate refused to act on it, however, and the nomination was never confirmed. About this time he was engaged as counsel together with Clay to defend Charles Wickliffe on a charge of murder. The killing had been brought about entirely by politics and this made Clay's interest the more intense', as the father of Wickliffe was one of his staunchest friends. The speech of Crittenden was great, but accord ing to the popular voice Clay was the hero of the occasion, the "Old Sage" being at his best. An acquittal was the result. It is a pity that these speeches were not preserved, as their effect was electrical, and in all probability they embodied more of the persuasive eloquence of which Crittenden and Clay were capable than do their more formal addresses in Congress and before popular assemblies. On one occasion he defended a man by the name of Coins, who was charged with murder. There had for some time been bitter feeling between the prisoner and the man he had killed and each day saw the bitterness increased until Goins heard that his life was threatened. This put him on the alert and thenceforward he found himself constantly dogged. Whenever he turned a corner there stood his enemy.

Coming out of his house very early one morning he beheld the tormentor standing on the opposite side of the street. Thor oughly enraged he seized a cudgel and running the man down literally beat him to death. The defense relied upon was that a man had not only the right to live but to be happy, and in his address to the jury Crittenden pictured the unutterable horrors and torments to which the prisoner had been exposed. " There had been no moment day or night free from the appre hension of sudden and violent death. He could not enter his own home at night without finding this, his enemy, skulking around the corner; he could not leave his wife and child, with the sunrise, to go to his daily work,without seeing this terror before his door. Was it any wonder that he had been driven to frenzy and to a deed of blood by such a life?" The public feeling was at first strongly against Goins, but when his mental agonies had been pictured by the master hand of Crittenden a revul sion of feeling took place and he was acquitted with public approval. In 1842 he was associated as principal counsel with the wonderful " Tom " Marshall (whom many competent critics consider as the greatest of American orators) in the defense of Monroe Edwards in New York City. Both Marshall and Crittenden being " out siders " it was deemed best to engage the services of some of the members of the New York bar as well, and among those so engaged was Wm. M. Evarts, then at the outset of his great career. In after life he met Mrs. Coleman, the daughter of Crittenden, in Washington, and being told of her plan to write a biography of her father he encouraged her in the work, and speaking of the Monroe Edwards trial he said: "Mrs. C6leman, I shall never forget that trial in connection with your father. I was a young man on the thresh old of my professional career, and your father's reputation was firmly and widely established as a lawyer and a 'statesman.