yeremiah Sullivan Black. for he earnestly believed, as he said in the close of his speech in the Kentucky case, — "It is not from the exercise of despotic power, nor yet from the headlong passions of a raging people, that we will learn our duty to one another. When the Prophet Elijah stood on the mountain side to look for some token of the divine will, he did not see it in the tempest or the earth quake or the fire, but he heard it in the ' still, small voice ' which reached his ears after those had passed by. We have had the storm of political debate; we have felt the earthquake shock of civil war; we have seen the fire of legislative persecution. They are passed and gone; and now, if we do not hearken to the still small voice which speaks to our consciences in the articulate words of the Constitution from the graves of our fathers, then we are without a guide, without God, and without hope in the world." The Milligan case (4 Wallace, 2) involved the right of trial by jury. The defendants, private citizens of the State of Indiana, had been condemned to death for treason, by a military commission, convened in Indian apolis, in October, 1864, by General Hovey. Nine days before the time fixed for their execution the petition of the prisoners for their discharge was heard by the Circuit Court; and that jurisdiction, being divided, certified it to the United States Supreme Court. With Judge Black, for the prisoners, were David Dudley Field, Joseph E. MacDonald, and James A. Garfield. For the Gov ernment appeared Attorney-General Speed, Mr. Stanberry, arid Gen. Benjamin F. Butler. With little time for preparation, and arguing the case without note, memorandum, or ref erence to any authority before him, Judge Black made the great speech of his life. It was one that ranks with the best forensic efforts of any age. All the circumstances of the case, the most intense prejudices of the time, the political bias of the court, and even the worthlessness of the individuals involved were against the probable success of the cause. But this most powerful plea
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for the sacred right of trial by jury prevailed. It remains forever to the student of our law and politics " a most comprehensive expo sition of the fundamental principles upon which the law of civil liberty depends." The decision of the court burns brightly as a lighthouse on a rocky coast. Yet in his famous "open letter" to Gar field, Judge Black modestly referred to Mr. Garfield's speech in the Milligan case as the "eloquent and powerful" plea that demon strated the supremacy of the Constitution, and said : " You closed with that grand peroration on the goddess of Liberty which if spoken at Athens in the best days of her fierce democratic would have ' shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece.'" Of this most attractive personality, this pic turesque figure and towering genius, in a Com monwealth that has had none of more striking originality, many characteristic stories are told, illustrating his ready wit, simplicity of character, versatility of resources, and withal, the gentleness of disposition that usually accompanies true greatness. Born and grow ing to manhood on a farm, he never lost his fondness for rural life. Several agricultural addresses, preserved among his papers, show a most exquisite taste for outdoor nature. With what force and beauty he recurs to a familiar figure when, referring to Senator Carpenter's felicity of diction, despite his Latin and Greek had all faded out of memory, he says : " A language (or any kind of literature) though forgotten enriches the mind as a crop of clover ploughed down fer tilizes the soil." In his dying days, unable to look out upon the rich landscape that spread about his home, he bade those who watched by his bedside tell him of the green fields as the cloud shadows swept across the hillsides. He was pronounced in his opinions about New England fanaticism and Puritan intol erance. He was wont to call it the " dirty stripe woven into the whole warp and woof of their history." I once heard him say,
