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CHARLES O'CONOR.

[Charles O'Conor was born in the city of New York, 1804. His early educational advantages consisted of two months in a public school, after which he was apprenticed to a turpentine manufacturer. One year later he was placed in a law office as clerk, and there, at the age of fifteen, he began to study law. In 1824, after many privations, he was admitted to the bar, and from that time until within a few years of his death he devoted himself assiduously to his profession. In 1848 he was the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor of New York. Throughout the Civil War he sympathized with the southern states, and at its conclusion became counsel for Jefferson Davis when the latter was indicted for treason. From 1871 he was associated with Mr. Evarts for several years in the prosecution of the Tweed ring in the city of New York. He steadily declined compensation for such labors. In 1872 he was nominated for president, in the face of his absolute refusal, by the section of the Democratic party opposed to Horace Greeley. In 1881 he took up his residence on the island of Nantucket, where he died in 1884.]

Among the many self-made men who have risen to eminence at the bar, Charles O'Conor was one of the most remarkable. With scarcely any education, without any extraordinary mental gifts, with an austerity of manner which precluded popularity, he nevertheless forced his way into the front rank of the profession. When asked to what he attributed his success, he replied in one word, "Study." He did not consider that he had any particular aptitude for the law, and often said he had no doubt that, with the same industry, he would have met with the same measure of success in any walk of life. At all events, industry was the keynote of his career. In the preparation of a case, as he said in the Forrest divorce case, he never left "a stone unturned under which there crept a living thing." His arguments are the embodiment of thorough-going and genuine legal acumen and logic. No loophole is left for evasion; no room for escape. He goes directly at a point with straightforward, persistent force. His mind was solid, rather than brilliant; active, rather than imaginative. He was a close, but not a rapid, thinker; an exact, but not an ardent, reasoner.

Some idea of the extent of his professional labors may be gathered from the fact that the seventy-nine octavo volumes of briefs and arguments, and seven volumes of opinions, which he bequeathed to the New York Law Institute, are the records of little more than half his career,-from 1849. The reports of his cases in New York state alone are distributed through more than two hundred and fifty volumes of reports.

O'Conor was certainly a very learned lawyer. "He was, in my judgment and to my perception," Mr. Evarts once said, "the most accomplished lawyer in the learning of the profession of our bar. Indeed, I cannot be mistaken in saying that he was entitled to pre-eminence in this department of learning among his contemporaries in this country." And Mr. Carter, once his professional associate, says of him that "he could have stepped into Westminster Hall and argued a special demurrer with success against Sergeant Williams." Moreover, his learning was ever ready for the occasion. While his forte was undoubtedly the argument of appeals, he won some notable triumphs before juries. Benjamin R. Curtis considered his management of the Forrest divorce case one of the masterpieces of forensic strategy. His close attention to the smallest details, and the foresight and acuteness with which he anticipated the most remote possibilities, may be observed to advantage in his great will cases, and again in the Lemmon slave. case. He was counsel in the Parish, Mason, Jumel, and all the great will cases of his time. In corporation law he enjoyed an immense practice. He was active in the North American Trust. & Banking Company litigation, and in the later stages of the long litigation over the Schuyler forgeries of New York & New Haven railroad bonds he persuaded the New York court of appeals to withdraw somewhat from their former decision. At Washington he was counsel for Tilden before the electoral commission in 1876; in the court of claims he argued the case of the owners of the brig Armstrong; and one of his celebrated cases in the supreme court of the United States was the great Almaden mine case, in which his fee was $50,000. His pro-slavery convictions were enlisted in the case of the slave Jack. Two of his cases, which occupied a large measure of public attention, were the Forrest divorce case and the Tweed case, both of which involved him in unfortunate and unnecessary controversies.

O'Conor was successful among contemporaries with far greater

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special endowments, because he was a better all-around lawyer than any of them. Without the eloquence of Hoffman, or the wit and humor of Brady, he had, in place of those special qualities, a power of withering sarcasm. Although he was never a reading man, he habitually employed a lucid and forcible style. His statement of a case was always a model of precision. "The great lawyer," he said, "is not the one who knows the most law, but who understands what the point involved is." He was highly, gratified with the reply made by one of the judges of the court of appeals when asked what he thought of O'Conor's arguments: "O'Conor does not argue his cases; he states them." His great arguments have a value apart from the occasion because of his habit of explaining the reason of legal and equitable rules by reference to their history and the foundations upon which they rest.

Outside the domain of law, his judgment was not so sure, and the harsh traits of his character led to some unpleasant incidents. However, we know that in his private life he was generous to a fault; and in the practice of his profession, to which he devoted his intellect and tireless industry for nearly sixty years, he won the respect of all by his professional integrity.

ARGUMENT IN THE CASE OF THE BRIG OF WAR GENERAL ARMSTRONG, IN THE UNITED STATES

COURT OF CLAIMS, 1855.

On September 26, 1814, during the war between the United States and Great Britain, the American brig General Armstrong, commanded by Capt. Reid, and legally provided with letters of marque, and armed for privateering purposes, cast anchor in the port of Fayal, one of the Azores Islands, within the dominion of Portugal. On the evening of the same day, an English squadron, commanded by Commodore Lloyd, entered the same port. The General Armstrong was soon approached by some English longboats, which were hailed, and commanded to be off, and then fired upon. It was claimed that the English seamen were unarmed. The American brig then came to anchor under the guns of the castle, and applied to the Portuguese governor for protection. On the following day, Capt. Reid, overcome by superior force, abandoned and destroyed his vessel. In consequence of the failure of Portugal to prevent this violation of the neutrality of her territory, the United States presented a claim against that government for indemnity for the loss of the American brig. After long diplomatic correspondence, it was agreed in 1851 to submit the matter to arbitration. The president of the French republic (afterwards Napoleon III.) was selected as arbitrator. He rendered a decision adverse to the United States. Capt. Reid then presented a claim against the United States for $131,600, on behalf of himself and the owners, officers, and crew of the privateer. The claimants were represented by Charles O'Conor, Sam C. Reid, Jr., and Philip Phillips. Hon. Montgomery Blair, United States solicitor, represented the government. The claim was sustained.1

ARGUMENT.

May it Please the Court: The claim now presented for adjudication may be placed upon several distinct grounds. In the first place, we contend that the General Armstrong was employed by her officers and crew in the service of the United States, and against the public enemy, under such circumstances that, on being advised of the facts and of the great benefits which resulted therefrom to the country, it became the government, as a matter of equity, to adopt the act, and to indemnify the parties against the expense incurred. Our second general head embraces the following elements: The General Armstrong, while lying in the port of Fayal, was entitled to absolute protection from the Portuguese government. That protection was not afforded. In violation of the neutrality of that port, she was destroyed by the forces of a British squadron, and, for this delinquency on the part of Portugal her owners had a perfect right, by the law of nations,

'Dev. Ct. Cl. 22.

to be fully indemnified. The owners had themselves no legal capacity to prosecute this claim directly, but, on establishing its validity, they were entitled to redress through the action of their own government against that of Portugal. The United States, accordingly, investigated the claim, decided in favor of its justice, assumed the control of it, and entered upon the duty of enforcing it. Instead, however, of prosecuting it to an issue by legitimate means, the government receded from its duty in that respect, and actually extinguished the claim, whereby a right has accrued to the owners to demand compensation from the public treasury. Each step in the argument by which these conclusions are arrived at seems to us quite clear and intelligible; but the learned solicitor for the government has advanced a great variety of objections, and it is principally in answering these that we shall engage the time and attention of your honors.

The absence of precedents has been urged against us, and we have been called upon to produce from the books of the common law some instance of an action brought, a trial had, and a judgment rendered for the plaintiff upon a claim like the present. We cannot comply with this unreasonable demand; but neither can we admit that our claim should suffer on that account. The nation itself is here a defendant, responding to the claim of a private suitor for reparation of injuries sustained, a thing unparalleled in jurisprudence. The court itself is the first-born of a new judicial era. Consequently, we cannot hope to find, among the narrow rules and practical formulæ which ordinarily govern in determining mere questions of property between citizen and citizen, the lights which are to guide its judgment. As a judicial tribunal, it is not merely new in the instance; it is also new in principle. So far as concerns the power of courts to afford redress, it has heretofore been fundamental that the sovereign can do no wrong. This court was erected as a practical negative upon that vicious maxim. Henceforth our government repudiates the arrogant assumption, and consents to meet at the bar of enlightened justice every rightful claimant, how lowly soever his condition may be.

Whence is such a tribunal to extract the principles by which its action is to be governed,-by which it shall test and allow or disallow the claims which may come before it? In ordinary cases of specific rights declared by some particular statute or regulation, its path may be easy; but in those extraordinary cases which are dependent upon principles not hitherto falling within the

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