Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/357

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The Green Bag.

man, and Gen. Daniel McCook, who was killed at Kenesaw Mountain. General Ewing at once took rank as a leader at the bar of the struggling Terri tory. He was also particularly active in the "Free State" troubles; and when the State was admitted into the Union, elected its first Chief-Justice at the remarkably youth ful age of twenty-nine. This exalted posi tion he filled with distinction for two years, when the military spirit he had rightfully in herited from his soldier ancestors impelled him to take up the sword in defence of the Union. During the war he as ably distin guished himself in the profession of arms as he had before, and has since in the profes sion of law. At the close of the war General Ewing returned to Ohio, the State of his nativity, where he soon became conspicuous in na tional and State politics. He was a mem ber of the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1873-74, in which body he took a leading part. He was a member of the Lower House of Congress in its forty-fifth and fortysixth sessions, having been elected as a De mocrat. Retiring from public life in 1882, he has devoted himself assiduously to the practice of his chosen profession in the city of New York, where he enjoys a lucrative business. Gentlemanly and dignified in his bearing, a very prince in personal appearance, a for cible speaker, endowed with great social qualities, he has a host of admirers, who are attached to him " with hooks of steel." He has delivered many addresses before literary societies and bar associations, but the one he presented to the legal fraternity of the State of Kansas at the meeting of their association, in Topeka on the 7th of January, 1890, on "Judicial Reforms," is regarded as one of his best efforts. The opening para graphs, in which he deals in personal remi niscences are here quoted, where he was inspired by the occasion, and an opportunity afforded for the development of his natural eloquence, and is a fair example of his impressiveness : —

"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Kansas Bar Association; Ladies and Gentlemen : Thirty years ago I had the honor to be chosen by the people of Kansas Chief-Justice of the then pro posed State; and when in the year following, after her long struggle and rude rebuffs, Kansas was admitted to be a State in the Union, I presided at the first term of the Supreme Court held near the spot where we are now assembled. How changed the scene! A splendid city rises now, with its temples, electric railways, flashing lights, and elegant mansions, where scarcely a graded street cut the primeval sward, or crushed the ten drils of the wild strawberries and the blue bells as they rode in the wind and sunlight on the un broken waves of the prairie. . . . "Of the first members of the Supreme Court all are living and here present, — Samuel A. King man, Lawrence D. Bailey,1 and myself. Brothers, I greet you! I am rejoiced to see how few are the wrinkles time has written on your brows. If we had not been comparatively your.oJters then( we probably would not all be here to-nignt. But of the bar, nearly half will nevermore answer the call of the docket. Sam Stinson, the brightest and wittiest of all; Billy McDowell, Perry, Holman, Gamble, Helm, Ruggles, Carpenter, Parrott, Purkins, Havens, — a majority of these were younger than either of us three, but they are all gone forever from the scenes of their forensic struggles. "There was Governor Shannon, too, who in his prime, as a proslavery partisan, lived through the political blizzard in Kansas, and then passed the long evening of his days here in the serene and successful practice of his profession. There, too, was Dan McCook, my partner and friend — God bless his patriotic and daring spirit! — who went to glory in the wild storm at Kenesaw. And there, too, was Ben Monroe, the equally noble and gallant Southron, who fell mortally wounded at Donelson, fighting for what he believed to be the right, — both companions at the bar, — fast friends and bosom cronies until the war broke out, when 1 Since the history of the Supreme Court of Kansas was sent to the editor of the " Green Bag," ex-Associate Justice Lawrence Dudley Bailey has passed away. He died at his old home, Lawrence, Kan., on the 5th of October, 1891, aged seventy-two. Judge Bailey's death is the second, only, of those who have served on the Supreme Dench of Kansas, since the organization of the Court, — a period of thirty-one years