Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/744

This page needs to be proofread.
710
STORY
STORY

its Historical Effects" (1884); "The Prospective Advance of Christian Missions" iissr,>: -Forty Years of Pastoral Life" (Brooklyn. 1Ssii); and "The Broader Range and Outlook' of the Modern College Training" (1887).


STORY. George Henry, artist, b. in New Haven. Conn., 22 Jan.. 1*35.' When ho was fifteen years of age he apprenticed himself to a wood- carver for three years. At the expiration of this terra he was a pupil under Charles Hine for three years. He then studied in Europe for one year, after which he went to Portland. Me., where, in 1859, he gained the state medal. He painted for two years in Washington, D. C.. then one year in Cuba, and since then has resided in New York. In 1875 he was elected an associate of the National academy. His portraits include those of Salmon P. Chase, Howell Cobb, Whitelaw Reid, and Gov. Partino and family, of Cuba. Among his genre pieces are " The Testy Old Squire " ; " The Fisher- men " (1886) ; " Sunday Morning." " Clock-Tink- ers." and " Twenty Thousand Majority."


STORY, Joseph, jurist, b. in Marblehead, Mass., 18 Sept., 1779 ; d. in Cambridge. Mass., 10 Sept., 1845. His father, Dr. Elisha Story, was one of the " Boston tea-party," and subsequently a surgeon in the Revolutionary army. In his boyhood the son manifested unusual powers of observation and an intense craving for knowledge. In 1798 he was graduated at Harvard, delivering the poem at the commencement exercises, and, choosing the law for his profession, studied under Samuel Sewall and Samuel Putnam. In 1801 he began practice in Salem, and prepared and published a " Selection of Pleadings in Civil Actions "(Salem, 1805). He pub- i lished also "The Power of Solitude, with Fugitive Poems" (1804), a literary venture which he afterward deeply regretted. Becoming interested in feudal- ism, lie made a profound study of the old black- letter law of England, and mastered the intricate and technical rules which govern the law of real property. Rising rapidly to eminence, he was soon retained in important cases, and took rank with the leaders of the New England bar. In 1805 he was elected a representative of Salem in the legis- lature, where he was a vigorous and accomplished debater, and be- came the acknowl- edged leader of the Republican party. Though Democrat- ic in his political views, he was never a slave to party, and on questions of national politics Was of tllr school of Washington and Marshall. In 1808, in opposition to Christopher Gore, then at the zenith of his fame, Story defended the em- bargo as the only measure short of a

declaration of war

which the administration could have adopted with- out submitting to ignominious restrictions on American commerce by the belligerent powers. In the same year he was elected a representative to congress, where, in opposition to the administra- tion, he labored to procure a repeal of the embargo, on the ground that it was expedient onh as s tem- porary, not as a permanent, measure, and that its continuance would be disastrous to New England. When the embargo was finally repealed. President Jefferson attributed that result to Story, whom he styled "a pseudo-Republican." Another measure that Story advocated in opposition to the adminis- tration was an increase of the navy.

On his return home, he was re-elected to the Massachusetts house of representatives, and in 1811 became its speaker. In November of the same year, at the early age of thirty-two, Story was appointed by President Madison an associate justice of the supreme court of the United States. His circuit embraced four states Maine, New Hump-hire. Massachusetts, and Rhode Island and his judicial duties were onerous in the extreme. Among the questions that came before him for adjudication were curious and perplexing ones of admiralty law, of the law of salvage, and that of marine insurance, also of prize law, the principles of all which, now clearly defined, were then un- settled and imperfectly understood. Of the law relating to these subjects, and of the patent law, lie was in a great measure the creator. He also divided with Chancellor Kent the honor of having founded the American system of equity juris- prudence. In 1819 he denounced the slave-trade, still carried on in the ports of New England, so vehemently in his charges to the grand juries that he greatly contributed to its extinction. Though denounced by the press as deserving " to be hurled from the bench," he redelivered the charge, and in the case of " La jeune Eugenie," branded the traffic in a masterly judgment as a violation of the law of nations. In the same year he gave his opinion in the celebrated Dartmouth college case, which is one of his best. When the Missouri com- promise was agitating the country his feeling on the subject was so strong that he took part in a public meeting at S.-dcm to protest against that measure. In 1820 he made, in the convention called to revise the constitution of Massachusetts, a powerful and brilliant speech, the best, he afterward thought, that he ever made, in opposition to a motion that the legislature should have authority to diminish the salaries of the judges of the supreme court. In 1829. when Nathan Dane founded a professorship of law at Harvard, he was elected to fill it, in accordance with the stipulation of ile founder, and delivered an able and polished inaugural discourse. He now removed to Cam- bridge, where he resided for the rest of his life. The school, hitherto unsuccessful, now attracted students from all parts of the land. The number rose from one, the only student in attendance the year before, to thirty, to one hundred and twenty in 1842. and to one hundred and fifty-six in 1844. The annual salary that Story received during his professional life was $1,000. As a teacher of law Judge Story has had few if any equals. His v,-i-t acquirement, extraordinary fluency, sympathy with learners, and personal magnetism, eminently fitted him for that office. His familiar bearing toward " the boys," as he called the students, his frankness and abandon, his bubbling humor, his merry and contagious laugh, and his inexhaustible fund of incident and anecdote, with which he gave piquancy and zest to the driest themes, won for him not only the attention but the love of his pupils, whose professional careers, after they left the school, he watched with fatherly interest. He conducted his lectures as conversational exercises on the text-books, and two or three times a week held moot-courts in the library. His manner when lecturing was that of an enthusiast rather than that of a professional teacher.