Some Kentucky Lawyers of the Past and Present.
305
SOME KENTUCKY LAWYERS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT. II. BY SALLIE E. MARSHALL HARDY. GEN. JAMES S. JACKSON of Hopkinsville was a brilliant lawyer and gallant soldier. He was killed at the battle of Perryville during the Civil War. He was a member of Congress. It is said: "This Hotspur of the Union Army, like Harry Percy, waved his sword in the face of death as gaily as though a desperate battle were a dress parade and the war bugles were sound ing the strains of a ballroom." Francis Marion Bristow, father of Gen. B. F. Bristow, was a very able lawyer and a man of high character. Dr. David Morton says : "Probably no lawyer in Southern Kentucky had more followers in his profession, and, especially, many of the present generation of lawyers in Todd County received their legal training in his office." Judge H. G. Pétrie is the leading lawyer of Elkton. He is a man of great probity. It is said of him, " He is everybody's friend and all men are his. He will leave a heated discussion in a court room to pray by a sick friend." Mr. Goodnight, although still a young man, has served three terms in Congress, and is a fine lawyer. CENTRAL KENTUCKY — BARDSTOWN.
In Bardstown, in early days, most of the great legal luminaries met. Ben Hardin, Judge Rowan, John Pope, Felix Grundy, John Hayes, Charles Wickliffe and all of the renowned lawyers took part in the lively court house scenes in this beautiful little Nelson County town. Ben Hardin, the great lawyer whose achievements are fresh in the minds of all Kentuckians, although he has been dead nearly fifty years. S. S. Prentiss called him "the Achilles of the Kentucky Bar," and
said, " He is one of the ablest lawyers of this or any country." Judge Rowan, who had measured strength with him in many a hard-fought trial, said : " When Ben Hardin is on the other side I tremble for my client, for he can lay a man's faults the barest, make them look the blackest and most odious, of any man living, and it does his heart the most good." Tom Marshall said, "Hardin is a good judge of bad men." He was the terror of the criminal class of his day, and John Randolph said, " Hardin is like a kitchen knife, whetted on a brick : he cuts roughly, but he cuts deep." In the Wilkinson trial, one of the most celebrated ever tried in Kentucky, Mr. Hardin was lawyer for the plaintiff. In his speech he said : " Call a man a knave and he may for get it, but call him a fool and he will never forgive you. Call a young lady a coquette and she may pardon you; tell her she is ugly and she will hate you." He once said : "There are three things in this world very uncertain: whom a woman will marry, which horse will win the race, and how a jury will decide a case." His son-in-law, John L. Helm, was a prominent lawyer, statesman, financier, and a gentleman of the old school of incorruptible integrity. He was governor of Kentucky and president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Thomas M. Green says of him : " In practical usefulness in the development of the nat ural resources of Kentucky, he was surpassed by no other man." In one noted Meade County case, Ben Hardin was for the de fendant, and his son-in-law for the plaintiff. Gov. Charles A. Wickliffe was considered by many Ben Hardin's most formidable rival. When eighty-one years old he made his last speech in the court of appeals; it
