LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF THE HON. DANIEL DEWEY BARNARD, LL.D.* DANIEL DEWEY BARNARD was born in For some years following the first estabMassachusetts, in Berkshire county, where lishment of the family in Western New his parents, at the time, had their tem-York, the county was too new to maintain porary residence. His mother, still liv- good schools, and the boy Daniel was set ing, is of the family of Deweys, natives at work upon the farm; but being of a of Berkshire county, a family not undistin- delicate, almost sickly, constitution, his guished in the State of Massachusetts and natural genius inclined him to reading and elsewhere. The late Daniel Dewey, a the composition of essays for pastime Judge of the Supreme Court of that State, and occupation. While yet very young, and father of the present Judge Dewey, for want of better employment, his father was the brother of Mrs. Barnard, and from placed him in the Clerk's office of the him her son took his name. The father of county, at Canandaigua, where he remained the subject of the present sketch was a for two years. At the age of fourteen, he native of Hartford, Connecticut. He serv- began to act as Deputy Clerk of the ed through the war of the Revolution, county, having often full charge of the principally in the commissary department, business of the office, and sometimes offiunder Commissary-general Wadsworth. ciating in that capacity in court. After He held no commission, but had, by cour- this he was sent back to New England for tesy as a staff officer, the rank and title of his education, and fitted for college at Major. He was third in descent from the Lenox Academy, Berkshire county, Massafirst of that name in this country. His chusetts, then a celebrated school, under grandfather, who was a man of good educa- the charge of an eccentric genius, of the tion and good family, and a Puritan, emi- name of Gleason. After a year spent at grated from England and settled in Hart- Lenox, he entered as a sophomore at Willford, while he was yet young, about 1720. iams College, and in 1818 took the deA son, the father of Daniel D. Barnard, gree of Bachelor of Arts. In general resided in Hartford until the year 1809, scholarship he did not fall behind any of when he removed, with his family, to the his classmates, though, as it happened, his then county of Ontario in New York. companions were none of them remarkable Here he fixed his residence on a beautiful for brilliancy of parts. At this, the romanfarm already under cultivation, though at tic period of life, a turn for poetry and that time nearly surrounded by the prime- revery discovered in him that quality of val forests. imagination and sentiment, without which, perhaps, no man has ever become eminent in the world of letters, or of law; and prompted by the natural instinct, he composed dramatic pieces which were represented in due form by his classmates, at their exhibition. He also delivered a poem at the commencement, when the honors of good scholarship were assigned him. This gentleman was, for many years, in Ontario county, and afterwards in Monroe, when that county was established, a magistrate and judge. He maintained the reputation of a man of strong sense and invincible integrity. He died much respected and beloved, about a year ago, at an age exceeding ninety years. The portrait, which accompanies this number, was taken, by permission, from a very excellent Daguerreotype likeness in the possession of Mr. Barnard We have prevailed upon that gentleman to allow us to give our readers the following account of his life and public services, believing that we could not more gratify them than by presenting them with this full account of our most valued contributor and counsellor; such being the true and sole relation in which he stands to this Journal.-ED. A life of study and seclusion produced | ber of that (the twentieth) Congress, but its usual effects. His health declined and he was by no means the least active. On compelled him for a time to abandon the noted "D'Auterive Claim," which, inbooks; but soon recovering, he turned volving a point of slavery, was the subject again to the law, and began a course of a very exciting debate, he delivered his which he pursued without guidance maiden speech. or aid, though at that time he performed the duties of sole clerk in an office in Rochester, New York, where a large amount of common business had to be transacted. In the last years of his clerkship the business of the office, owing to peculiar circumstances, devolved almost entirely upon himself, and he managed it, for the most part, ex gratia, in court, as well as out. He also found employment on his private account in the inferior courts, and before arbitrators and referees. In this way he began the advocacy of causes some time before he was admitted to the bar, which was a great practical advantage. In 1824, he took out a counsellor's license, having been already admitted an attorney of the Supreme Court in 1821. He now passed immediately into an extensive practice, being employed in the trial of causes both at home and in neighboring counties. In the county courts and at the Oyer and Terminer, he found abundant occupation, as an advocate, before receiving his counsellor's license, and on one occasion before that time, was allowed to try a cause at the Jefferson county circuit, before Judge Platt. He appeared at the bar of the Supreme Court as soon as he had taken the degree of counsellor. In 1826, he was made district attorney for the county of Monroe, and held that office until his election to Congress in 1827. In the fall of 1826, Mr. Barnard was put in nomination for Congress, and in 1827 elected by the Republican party, in whose principles he was educated. His district included the present Monroe and Livingston counties. The nomination and election were unsought and unexpected by Mr. Barnard, and his acceptance withdrew him, while yet a young man and lately married, from a lucrative practice in the law. But those were times when an election to the House carried with it weight of dignity and importance; and for a young man an honorable seemed better than a merely lucrative position in the State. He was called the youngest mem On this occasion the best minds of the House had engaged earnestly in the discussion, that had run on through several weeks. Edward Livingston, Randolph, Everett, M'Duffie, Barbour, and others, advocated the claim. Northern men, on the contrary, through a natural repugnance, opposed the claim. When it came from the Committee of the Whole, the bill was ordered, by a decided vote, to be engrossed for a third reading, and the question was about to be taken on its passage, when, under the feeling of fear and embarrassment that attends the first effort of a modest man, Mr. Barnard took the floor against it. The claim was for the value of a slave whom D'Auterive sent to perform labor in throwing up defences in the face of the public enemy in time of war, when he was disabled by the fire of the enemy. Mr. Barnard resisted the claim on no narrow or technical ground, and certainly not on the ground of any prejudice or feeling of hostility toward the South. The question was one of the gravest public import, though presented in the shape of a private claim, and he rested his opposition on grounds of public and universal law. "The slave had no country, nor was he bound to defend his master's country. To the master belonged, indeed, the services, but not the person or the life of the slave. These the master had no right to offer to the country, nor had the country any right to demand or accept them, to be exposed or sacrificed in its defence." The speech was a close argument, without any effort at rhetoric or ornament. It made a strong impression, and had its effect towards defeating the claim, which was finally abandoned. The great measure of the first session of the twentieth Congress was the celebrated Tariff or Woollens Bill of 1828. Mr. Barnard took part in defence of the protective principle, and in exposition of the insidious efforts then making by some of its professed friends to defeat the measure. The late Silas Wright led in this attempt, and Mr. B.'s principal effort in the debate was aimed mainly at him; ! nor did it fall without effect. After an interval of several days, he attempted a reply, which gained him no credit. Mr. Barnard's speech was caused to be published in a pamphlet for general circulation, a practice not as common at that period as it has since become. One of the great debates of the next session arose on a bill for the preservation and repair of the Cumberland Road. It opened the whole question of internal improvements by the General Government. Mr. Barnard entered into the debate in an elaborate argument on the question of power, confining himself chiefly, however, to a view of the peculiar grounds on which rested the power over the Cumberland Road. He was strongly in favor of the exercise of this power by the General Government. This speech indicates the views he was thus early accustomed to take of the General Government and its Constitutional powers and duties. They were broad and comprehensive, yet guarded and well-defined. In the conclusion of this speech, he commented strongly on the spirit of hostility to all exercise of a beneficent power by the General Government, manifested by the party that was just about entering into power, after a shameful victory over the wise and blameless administration of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. Reference was made particularly to Mr. Stevenson, (the Speaker,) to Mr. Buchanan and his modern Democracy, and to Mr. Randolph, who had declared in the debate that "the only mistake Virginia ever made on the subject of the Constitution was in adopting it!" In allusion to what had passed in debate and to the party tactics and maaceuvres which had been employed in the recent Presidential canvass, Mr. Barnard held the language, at the close of his emarks, of severity and grave rebuke. The two years of Mr. B.'s service in Congress at this period were the last two ears of Mr. Adams's administration. He aw much to approve and admire in that dministration, and little to condemn. It vas truly republican, and was conducted n the strictest and purest principles of epublican policy. Many of his political associates and a large portion of the party to which he was attached joined the unrighteous crusade against it. He could not follow them. On his return home in June, at the close of the first session of the twentieth Congress, a meeting of true Republicans was called, which brought together vast numbers of citizens, in the open air, at the court-house in Rochester. The venerable NATHANIEL ROCHESTER presided. Mr. Barnard alone addressed the meeting. Resolutions were adopted in favor of the administration of Mr. Adams, and of his re-election, and expressing strong disapprobation of "that class of politicians who would lower the high standard of moral excellence and intellectual attainments hitherto considered indispensable in a Chief Magistrate." The effect of this meeting was marked and decided in that county and district, and was afterward strongly felt in the election for President. It was in the fall of 1827 that the first attempt was made to form a political party in Western New York, on the basis of the popular excitement growing out of the abduction and probable murder of William Morgan. This movement was begun at Rochester, and some active politicians of the Republican party were the leaders in it. From its first rise Mr. B. set his face strongly against the movement. He could not see in it a ground broad enough for a great party, especially a State and national party, to act upon; and he would not allow himself to be engaged in a contest merely local, which the managers would be sure to use for their private ends. It is well known how this excitement swept over Western New York, and extended to other parts of the country. All the old party distinctions and principles were for a time broken down. There was but one political party, and that was the Anti-Masonic party. Masons generally stood aloof from it, but could say nothing and do nothing. Some of them joined it. The rest of the community almost en masse, with here and there a singular exception, seemed of one mind and one heart. The excitement was a storm-a tempest, and required some courage to face it; it was much easier to yield to it. Mr. B. was not a Mason, and had no sympathies with Ma sonry, and no one held in greater horror the crimes committed in its name; but he thought crime should be referred to the judicial tribunals, and not to political parties, and he therefore refused to become politically an Anti-Mason. But a man, at that period, in Western New York, had to be either politically an Anti-Mason, or he could be nothing politically. Nobody but an Anti-Mason could hold any local office, from that of a representative in Congress, to that of constable or postmaster. The spirit of Anti-Masonry reigned everywhere. It raged in the churches, in families, and in neighborhoods, and was everywhere supreme. Of course it was exclusive and intolerant. It not only had supreme local sway, but soon learned to look away from home to the higher offices of the State, and even of the nation, for which it felt itself entitled to furnish candidates. Before a popular sentiment so engrossing, before so raging a spirit, it was difficult for men having any political hopes to hold out with firmness. Very few did hold out very few especially of the young men, except those who were Masons. It would be difficult to name a man, not a Mason or a Jacksonian Democrat, then on the stage of action in Western New York, who has since made any figure in politics, who was not an AntiMason. They rose upon, and have risen from, Anti-Masonry. A little compliance with a little obedience to the "blessed spirit," would have given Mr. B. an advantage over most. No man of his age in Western New York was in a better position to make political profit out of Anti-Masonry. He could have taken a lead. It was the Republican party, the "Bucktail" party, the AntiJackson party, of Western New York, the party to which he belonged, that was principally swallowed up in Anti-Masonry; and when at length the Anti-Masonic organization was given up and there was a return to a broader political platform, the old party appeared in its strength, and remains at this day the invincible Whig party of the old Eighth District. But he could not give political Anti-Mahis support, and this was an offence ily forgotten or forgiven. He would ach himself to any party that had no principle broad enough for a national party to stand upon. At the election in the fall of 1828 there was no regularly nominated candidate for Congress except the Anti-Masonic. The nominee was one of the half-dozen persons who had the year before put out the first Anti-Masonic ticket ever presented. He was of course elected. A number of the most respectable gentlemen in the district addressed a letter to Mr. Barnard on the eve of the election asking him to allow them and their friends to vote for him, thus giving him a flattering, but of course unavailing, proof of their regard. close of his Congressional term he returned to his legal labors, and entered into full employment as counsel. While he was absent in Congress, the trials of some of the Morgan conspirators had been going on, and some convictions had taken place of those who first took Morgan into their custody. Mr. Barnard was retained as counsel for the defence of those who remained to be tried. The public mind had become more and more excited against the perpetrators of the outrage upon Morgan, and his murder-for it was fully believed that he had been murdered. Those who were under indictment. innocent or guilty, were in great peril. They were convicted already in the popular judgment. Special preparations were made to secure their conviction by the courts. Under a law for that purpose, s special attorney-general was created and appointed on behalf of the State for the trials. Mr. John C. Spencer accepted this office. In the end a judge of the Supreme Court was especially assigned to preside at the trials, instead of the usual cireu: judge. Trials under these formidable preparations were had in Orleans county and Niagara county. They were among the most laborious and severely contested jun trials that have ever taken place in thes country. The array of counsel was stron on both sides. In all the cases Mr. Bar ( nard held the position of leading course for the defence, in the examination of nesses and in summing up to the jury. In every case, the defence was as di cult, perhaps, as was ever known in a criminal prosecution. It was necessary |