Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/199

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174
The Green Bag.

less commander. The young private was much abashed when he found the man was really the general, as he had claimed to be, and on the next day, when called out before his division drawn up in a hollow square, he was full of fear and trembling; but the de monstration was for the purpose of giving to General Taylor an opportunity of publicly commending him for the strict discharge of his duty. Returning from the army after the treaty of peace, he began the study of law, and was admitted to practice. He married about this time. After practising law in his native county for some months, he determined to emigrate. He had inherited a comfortable patrimony, and his wife had considerable property. Gathering their possessions to gether, they removed to Winchester, Frank lin County, Tenn. He took up the practice of his profession, and had signal success. He was a State Senator in the General Assembly of 1827. This Legislature created the courts of chancery, providing for the election of two chancellors. Judge Green was elected by the Legislature as the Chan cellor for the Eastern District, and he served until 1831, when he was elected a judge of the Supreme Court. He, and his associate, Chancellor Cook, compiled the rules of chan cery practice that prevail in the State to-day, practically unchanged. Having become judge of the Supreme Court in 1831, he continued to serve until 1853, making his term twenty-two years. This period of service has been surpassed by only one other incumbent of the office. Peter Turney, lately Chief-Justice, and now Gover nor of Tennessee, was on the bench for twenty-three' years. It so happened that both these men were from the same county, — Franklin. When Judge Green was elected chancellor, he induced Hopkins L. Turney, afterward a United States Senator from Tennessee, to remove from an adjoining county to Winchester, to take charge of his very large practice which he was about to relinquish. Governor Turney, the son of

Hopkins L. Turney, was then an infant, but he was destined to fill honorably for many years the position that Judge Green was soon to assume. Judge Green was a most remarkable man physically. He was six feet six inches tall. He was not graceful, and as an advocate it was his deep earnestness that gave him a peculiar power. His manner was grave, and his voice thunderous, forcing the earnest attention of his hearers. Hon. Edwin H. Ewing, writing of him as a judge, said : — "Without polished learning or extensive tech nical knowledge of his profession, he wrote well, and seldom, if ever, made a technical mistake. But he loved especially to deal, like Mansfield, with the great and broad principles of the law; he searched for the deep foundations on which the structure stands; he analyzed, with an acutencss and vigor seldom equalled, the most complex propositions, and eliminated the truth, genuine and naked, however hidden by perplexing fallacies."

Fearing that age might impair his useful ness as a judge, he resigned his seat on the bench in December, 1852, and accepted a professorship in the Law Department of Cumberland University at Lebanon. He was a most devout man, and was a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, under the patronage of which the university was; and his high sense of religious duty doubtless influenced him in taking this step. Judge Abram Caruthers was associated with him in the Law School, and by their efforts it was put at the head of such institutions. Among its graduates are to be found many of the distinguished lawyers of the South west. Judge Green died at Lebanon on March 30, 1866. William Bruce Turley was born in Alex andria, Va., in the year 1800. He was principally of English extraction, though there was in him a strain of both Irish and Huguenot blood. His parents removed to Davidson County, Tenn., in 1808, settling near Nashville. He entered the University