Some Virginia Lawyers of the Past and Present. his students were R. M. T. Hunter, Alex. H. H. Stuart and General Robert Toombs of Georgia. In 1830 he resigned to be come judge of the fifth Virginia circuit. He published a number of valuable law books, among them a " Digest of the Law of Real Property " and a work on " Law of Executors." Harvard College conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. " As a judge," it was said of him, " he resolved the most complex case into its simple and essential facts and applied the law with painstaking dili gence." " His high Christian character and devotion to duty left his name to the profession, crowned with the fame which ever rests upon the memory of a con scientious, impartial and able administra tor of justice among men." He died in 1862, beloved and honored by all who knew him. He was the grandfather of Judge Lunsford L. JAMES M. Lewis of the Virginia Court of Appeals. Chapman Johnson was a great logician. Starting with primordial principles, he moved with majestic tread and with great deliberation to his almost irresistible con clusion. So subtle was his induction that it required great acuteness in his antagonist to detect his departure from the right line of reasoning in the successive stages of his argument, and in the United States Bank v. Steenbergen, so successful was his power ful argument as to disturb the balance of the judgment of Judge Smith, who pre-
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sided at the trial. His celebrated antagon ist, General Walter Jones, watching with impatience his triumphant march, with an acumen of which he was master, said to one of his colleagues : " He is a great sophist. It is impossible to answer by following him; he can only be met by reversing his reason ing and by proving his conclusions, final and successive, to be errors, because contrary to established decisions and to principles settled by authority. This will prove the radical fallacy in his reasoning, which can not be well exposed by following his steps." Mr. Johnson was truly a powerful advocate, very learn ed, and preeminent among the lawyers of his day. Of some of the prominent lawyers who were contempo raries of Mr. John son, or immediately followed him, Mr. Tucker has this to say : — "John Robertson, MASON. a most subtle and acute thinker and for ceful advocate; John R. Cooke, well named in Winchester, the ' Law's Goliath,' whose genius for statement of a case was such that President Allen said no argument was needed to sustain it; R. Travcrs Daniel, the brilliant Sheridan of the Virginia bar; James Lyons, bold, elo quent, aggressive and full of resources, native and acquired, as an advocate before juries and courts, and withal a splendid gentleman, whose generous nature and free hospitality so many of us recall with affection; John B. Young, semper paratus, and a formidable though fair foeman; that strongest scion of
