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The Green Bag
language is of that florid, glowing and
there such large and literary sarcasm or such beautiful figures of speech. It is said that one juryman was able, forty years later, at the age of ninety-seven, to repeat it almost verbatim. Never
descriptive quality always so effective
were irony and sarcasm made so beauti
in a trial.
ful or used so eflectively as in this
speech. This is, indeed, in the fullest sense a great speech. His retorts to the strictures of opposing counsel
are models of their kind,
and the
The famous description of
Blennerhassett’s Isle is one of the gems of American oratory and has gone into history as a masterpiece of descriptive power. The sketch which Wirt drew in this speech of the character and ambi tions of Burr, though ridiculed in many a jest by that unfortunate man, has be come the accepted version. Wirt was one of those few great American orators whose highest ambitions were centred
on his work at the bar.
In this respect
he strongly resembled his great rival,
Pinkney. His taste was not always so delicate and correct as that of the Mary lander, nor was his grasp of the philoso
phy of the law so abstruse or thorough. yet in some of the graces of oratory he was superior.
After Wirt's speech many years inter
speech, while few can read his appeal to
that jury as Kentuckians without fore~ seeing the inevitable verdict of not guilty. It was, indeed, just such a speech as would have the greatest effect
upon a cultivated popular audience. Light and spontaneous, it thrills the senses with delight. The color and glow of rhetoric is there without its labor and
afiectations.
In many respects it is the
greatest of Prentiss’s speeches, and in all events will rank among the first half
dozen of the kind ever delivered in America. It differs from Wirt's speech in the Burr trial as the flood differs from the placid stream. To employ Pope's figure further, Wirt’s speech is the river within bounds flowing through beau teous woodlands and many a green and
evned before another truly great speech was reported, although many had been
pleasant sward, reflecting the over-hang ing boughs, the blue skies and the fleecy
delivered.
clouds, self-contained, easy, buoyant, sinuous and graceful. Prentiss’s, on the other hand was the raging flood, sublime in its strength and impetuosity, rolling
In 1840 a stenographer reported the
celebrated murder trial of Judge Wilkin son at Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
It was
graced by the eloquence of the famous
its fervid energies in a tumbling torrent
Judge Rowan, of Ben Hardin, one of the
to the sea and leaving no part of its
best trial lawyers the country has pro duced, and of the brilliant and meteoric
journey untouched by its triumphant force. If Wirt could have fashioned the sleeping marble into a mimicry of life
Sergeant S. Prentiss. Though Hardin's speech was a masterpiece of oratory and argument, it was made under the vast disadvantage of being on the wrong side of the case, while that of Prentiss was undoubtedly the universal favorite of
the occasion.
On this occasion Prentiss
outshone himself in a brilliant speech, shot to the core with that vivid power and color which he alone seemed able to impart to spoken words. Never was
more real than that of Angelo, Prentiss could have made the white cold figures glow with real life and warmth.
Combining much of the fiery and dash ing qualities of Prentiss with the more subdued beauties of Wirt, and adding to them an original sarcasm and humor, racy and irresistible is Thomas F. Mar
shall’s speech in defense of Matt F. Ward. It is in this argument that, in
