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Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions, Volumes 1 and 2, a non-fiction book by Slason Thompson |
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Volume 1 - Chapter 3. The Dred Scott Case |
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_ VOLUME I CHAPTER III. THE DRED SCOTT CASE Vermont's loss was Missouri's gain. The young lawyer, who had been admitted to the bar of his native state at the age of eighteen, was fully equipped to match his learning, wit, and persuasive manners against such men as Benton, Gamble, and Bates, who were the leaders of the Missouri bar when, in 1839, Roswell Field took up his residence in St. Louis. Now it was that his familiarity and facility with French, German, and Spanish stood him in good stead and, combined with his solid legal attainments, speedily won for him the rank of the ablest lawyer in his adopted state. But Roswell Field brought from Vermont something more than an exceptional legal equipment and the familiarity with the languages that is necessary to a mastery of the intricate old Spanish and French claims which were plastered over Missouri in those early days. He had inherited through his mother, from her grim old Puritan ancestors, the positive opinions and unquenchable sense of duty that constitute the far-famed New England conscience. He was born with a repugnance to slavery, whether of the will or of the body, and grew to manhood in the days when the question of the extension of negro slavery to the states and territories was the subject of fierce debate throughout the union. He had fixed convictions on the subject when he left Newfane, and he carried them with him to the farther bank of the Mississippi. It is to the uncompromising New England conscience of Roswell Field that his countrymen owe the institution of the proceedings that finally developed into the Dred Scott case, in which the question of the legal status of a negro was passed upon by the Supreme Court of the United States. This is very properly regarded as the most celebrated of the many important cases adjudicated by our highest tribunal, for not only did it settle the status of Dred Scott temporarily, but the decision handed down by Chief Justice Taney is the great classic of a great bench. It denied the legal existence of the African race as persons in American society and in constitutional law, and also denied the supremacy of Congress over the territories and the constitutionality of the "Missouri Compromise." Four years of civil war were necessary to overrule this sweeping opinion of Chief Justice Taney's, which is still referred to with awe and veneration by a large minority, if not by a majority, of the legal profession. To Roswell Field belongs the honor of instituting the original action for Dred Scott, without fee or expectation of compensation. The details of this celebrated case, after it got into the United States courts, are a part of the history of our country. What I am about to relate is scarcely known outside of the old Court House and Hall of Records in St. Louis. Dred Scott was a negro slave of Dr. Emerson, a surgeon in the United States Army, then stationed in Missouri. Dr. Emerson took Scott with him when, in 1834, he moved to Illinois, a free state, and subsequently to Fort Snelling, Wis. This territory, being north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes, was free soil under the Missouri Compromise of 1820. At Fort Snelling, Scott married a colored woman who had also been taken as a slave from Missouri. When Dr. Emerson returned to Missouri he brought Dred Scott, his wife, and child with him. The case came to the attention of Roswell Field, and at once enlisted all his human sympathy and great legal ability. His first petition to the Circuit Court for the County of St. Louis is too important and unique a human document not to be preserved in full. It reads: Your petitioner, a man of color, respectfully represents that sometime in the year 1835 your petitioner was purchased as a slave by one John Emerson, since deceased, who afterwards, to wit, about the year 1836 or 1839, conveyed your petitioner from the State of Missouri to Fort Snelling, a fort then occupied by the troops of the United States, and under the jurisdiction of the United States, situated in the territory ceded by France to the United States under the name of Louisiana, lying North of 36 degrees and 30 minutes North latitude, not included within the limits of the State of Missouri; and resided and continued to reside at said Fort Snelling for upwards of one year, and holding your petitioner in slavery at said Fort during all that time; in violation of the act of Congress of March 6th, 1820, entitled "An act to authorize the people of Missouri Territory to form a constitution and State government and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original states and to prohibit slavery in certain territories." Having obtained the desired leave to sue from Judge Alexander Hamilton, Roswell Field procured Joseph Charless, one of the leading citizens of St. Louis, to execute the necessary bond for costs. Then he lost no time in filing the following complaint, which I have no doubt Eugene Field would have mortgaged many weeks' salary to number among his most precious possessions. He would have cherished it above the Gladstone axe, for, while that felled mighty oaks, this brief document laid the axe at the root of a deadly upas-tree which threatened the destruction of a free republic. I offer no apology for its insertion here: STATE OF MISSOURI, ) COUNTY OF ST. LOUIS) ss. With this brief and bald complaint for trespass to the person and false imprisonment was begun a long and stubbornly fought litigation, extending over ten years, and which was destined to end in Chief Justice Taney declaring: They [negroes] had for more than a century before [the Declaration of Independence] been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it. From the beginning of his connection with this case Roswell Field contended for the broad principle enunciated by Lord Mansfield that "Slavery is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law." He consented to a discontinuance of the original action because of the variance of the complaint from the subsequently discovered facts. In the second suit Dred Scott and his family were declared free by the local court, but the judgment was reversed on appeal to the Supreme Court of the state. Judge Gamble, in dissenting from the opinion of the majority of the Court, held that "In Missouri it has been recognized from the beginning of the Government as a correct position in law that a master who takes his slave to reside in a state or territory where slavery is prohibited thereby emancipates his slave." The subsequent sale of Dred Scott to a citizen of New York named Sandford afforded Roswell Field the opportunity to renew the fight for Scott's freedom in the United States Circuit Court at St. Louis. The case was tried in May, 1854, and it was again declared that Scott and his family "were negro slaves, the lawful property of Sandford." Roswell Field immediately appealed by writ of error to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the appeal was first argued early in 1856, and a second time in December of the same year. Mr. Field's connection with the case ended when he prepared the papers on appeal and sent his brief to Montgomery Blair, with whom was associated for Scott on the second hearing George Ticknor Curtis. Both of these eminent lawyers emulated the example of Eugene Field's father, who for nearly nine years had devoted a large share of his time and energy to the fight of a penniless negro slave for liberty. Looking back now it is almost impossible to realize how the issue in this case stirred the nation to its depth. It was first argued while the country was in the throes of the fierce Fremont-Buchanan campaign, and it was believed that the second hearing was ordered by a pro-slavery court after Buchanan's election, to permit more time in which to formulate the extraordinary decision at which the majority of the court arrived. The decision was political rather than judicial, and challenged the attention of the people beyond any act of the Supreme Court before or since. The Civil War was virtually an appeal from the judgment of Chief Justice Taney and his associates to the God of Battles. It must not be thought that a single case, although the most celebrated in the annals of American jurisprudence, was Roswell Field's sole claim to the title of leader of the Missouri bar during his lifetime. The records of the Superior Court of that state bear interesting and convincing testimony to the exceptional brilliancy of Eugene Field's father, while the tributes to his memory, by his brothers at the bar and the judges before whom he appeared, prove that in all the relations of life he fulfilled the promise of ability and genius given in his graduation from college at an age when most boys are entering a preparatory school. Before dismissing Roswell Field to take up the story of his son's career, I wish to quote a few passages from a brief memoir which is preserved in the history of Newfane, as throwing direct hereditary light on the peculiar character, fascinating personality, and entertaining genius of his son. As I may hereafter have occasion to refer to Eugene Field's political convictions, let us begin these quotations with one as to his father's politics: "In the dark days of the Rebellion, during the years 1861 and 1862, when the friends of the Union in St. Louis and Missouri felt that they were in imminent danger of being drawn from their homes and of having their estates confiscated by rebels and traitors, General Lyon, General Blair, and R.M. Field were among the calm, loyal, and patriotic men who influenced public action and saved the city and state." Those of my readers who knew the son will recognize much that captivated them in this description of the father: "In his social relations he was a genial and entertaining companion, unsurpassed in conversational powers, delighting in witty and sarcastic observations and epigrammatic sentences. He was elegant in his manners and bland and refined in his deportment. He was a skilful musician and passionately fond of children, and it was his wont in early life to gather them in groups about him and beguile them by the hour with the music of the flute or violin. He was actually devoid of all ambition for power and place, and uniformly declined all offers of advancement to the highest judicial honors of the state." From the lips of Samuel Knox, of the St. Louis bar, we have this testimony as to the remarkable extent and versatility of Roswell M. Field's talents: "Uniting great industry and acquirements with the most brilliant wit and genius, well and accurately informed on all subjects, both in science and art; endowed with a memory that retained whatever it received, with quick and clear perceptions, the choicest, most felicitous, and forcible language in which to clothe his thoughts, no one could doubt his meaning or withhold the tribute of wonder at his power." To clinch the evidence as to the source from which Eugene Field derived pretty nearly everything that won for him such meed of fame as fell to his lot, let me quote from an interview with Melvin L. Gray, his guardian and foster-father, printed in the Helena Independent, September 6th, 1895, shortly before his idol's death: "If I had never believed in the influence of heredity before, I would now, after having known Eugene Field and his father before him. The father was a lawyer of wonderful ability, but he was particularly distinguished by his keen wit, his intense appreciation of the humorous side of life, and his fondness for rare first editions of literary works. He was a profound student, and found much time to cultivate the fairer qualities that some lawyers neglect in the busy round of their profession. Eugene is not a lawyer, but he has his father's tastes, his father's keen wit, and much of the same fineness of character and literary ability." "Another point of similarity is found in Eugene's neglect of financial matters. In his youth the father was equally negligent, although he did subsequently grow more thrifty, and when he died left the boys a little patrimony. As executor I apportioned the money as directed. Both the boys spent it freely while it lasted." I find no trace in the father of what, all through life, was the pre-eminent characteristic of Eugene, the inveterate painstaking, mirth-compelling practical-joker. But in Brattleboro, Newfane, and throughout Vermont everybody says, "That's jest like his uncle Charles Kellogg. There was never such another for jest foolin'. He'd rather play a hoax on the parson that would embarrass him in the face of his congregation than eat." When they were boys, it was Charles that led Roswell into all kinds of mischief. "Uncle Charles Kellogg"--they always give him the benefit of the second name in Brattleboro--had a reputation for wit and never-ending badinage throughout the neighborhood that still survives and leaves no room to question whence Eugene inherited his unquenchable passion "for jest foolin'." _ |
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