Vol. XI.
No. 7.
BOSTON.
July, 1899.
GEORGE WOOD, LL.D. By the late A. Oakey Hall. GEORGE WOOD was born of Quaker parentage in historic Burlington, New Jersey, in 1789, and came to its bar during the hubbub of our naval war, selecting New Brunswick as his locale of practice. His first prestige in his remarkable career of pro fessional fame came from his participation in what is legally known as the Henderson cause eelebre during the years twenties. A case that embodied theological and sec tarian strife among the denomination of the Friends, and involving property claims be tween Hicksites and Orthodox Quakers. This was at the era when Samuel Hansox Cox ( father of the late Episcopal Bishop, Arthur Cleveland Coxe ) astounded his fel low-Quakers by quitting them and becoming a Presbyterian divine and simultaneously publishing a ponderous volume against them, entitled " Quakerism not Christianity," and which the library of the New York His torical Society possesses as now a curiosity, George Wood in simplicity of appearance, dignity of carriage and demeanor, gentleness of disposition and as lover of peace amid litigation ( a very eomponere lites man ) rather than of bitter contentions, preserved evidences of his Quaker lineage throughout his long career. He, unlike many youthful attornies, shunned the hustle and bustle of nisi prius: and early selected the specialty of briefs and arguments in baneo, which ever afterwards continued to be his great special ty, and therein winning for himself most
unexampled renown. But in 183 I, finding that this specialty offered more scope in the adjacent city of New York, he then removed to New York City but still retained his con nection with the legal procedures of his native State. I did not come to the New York bar until two decades later, and I recall him as possessing an unshaven face, which a sculptor might have placed for its expression upon a bust intended to represent Benevolence; leonine eyes as seen when the jungle monarch is in repose; a voice which was richly persuasive; and a presence that could have served as model for a statue representing such dignity as the late Chief Justice Shaw had. Yet the first impression George Wood made upqn an observer who was ignorant of his identity and prestige, would be one perhaps unfavor able to his mental calibre. A bar anecdote long current at the na tional capitol will illustrate this. Daniel Webster, taking interest in an argument that his fellow-senator and legal comrade, William C. Preston of South Carolina, was about to make in the Federal Supreme Court, casually asked the latter, "Who will be your legal opponent?" When Preston rather flippantly answered, "Oh, a sleepylooking New York lawyer named George Wood! " Webster who had already met the latter in court rejoined, " Well, Preston don't wake him up if you wish to win." "Wood's fame" ( as once said Chief Jus
