The
Vol. III.
No. 4.
Green
BOSTON.
Bag
April, 189 1.
LUTHER MARTIN. Bv Eugene L. DlDIER. THE early legal annals of this country were enriched by few names more bril liant than that of Luther Martin, the famous Attorney-General of Maryland, and the ac knowledged head of the American Bar, from the time of the Revolution to the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century. This remarkable man was born in 1744, at New Brunswick, New Jersey. His father was a small farmer, with a large family, Luther being the third of nine children. The boy was saved from a life of manual labor and coarse rustic associations by dis playing a precocity of talents, which deter mined his father to give to the genius of the family all the advantages of a university education. At the age of thirteen he en tered Princeton College, where he soon attracted attention by the possession of two qualities which are rarely found in the same person, — great talents and great industry. His college career was so remarkably bril liant that after a hundred and forty years it is still one of the most cherished traditions of Nassau Hall. After a residence of five years, he graduated with the highest honors in a class of thirty-five. When Luther Martin returned to his hum ble country-home, flushed with his college laurels, he saw it was no place for him, un less he was willing to bury his talents in the ground and remain a village rustic all his life. Such a sacrifice of his talents was im possible. His ambition had been fired by the fame of Demosthenes and Cicero, and he resolved to seek distinction at the bar, 20
which at that time was the only field open to aspiring young men. Accordingly, two days after leaving college, he mounted his horse and rode away from his father's house to seek his fortune in the South. He car ried in his saddle-bags all his worldly pos sessions, which (except a small tract of land that he deeded to his two elder brothers in grateful recognition of their kindness in as suming his share of the labor of the farm while he was at college) consisted of a few favorite books and a small supply of cloth ing. His pocket contained scarcely suffi cient money to furnish him with food and lodging for his journey. It should be men tioned to Luther Martin's credit that he always felt a deep sense of gratitude to his parents for giving him a liberal education, thus opening for him a career of honor and distinction. Years afterward he said they had given " a patrimony for which my heart beats toward them a more grateful remem brance than had they bestowed upon me the gold of Peru or the gems of Golconda." He taught a country school at Queenstown, on the eastern shore of Maryland, for several years, thus supporting himself while pursuing his legal studies. He had a long and desperate struggle with poverty, and but for the kind friends he made during this period of pecuniary distress, his life would have been intolerable. Among these early friends was Solomon Wright, a distinguished lawyer, who was afterward the Chief-Judge of the Court of Appeals of Maryland. This gentleman invited the struggling young
