Daniel IV.
Voorhees as Lawyer and Orator.
is replete with magnificent flights of oratory. Voorhees, however, was not always suc cessful in defense, as one might hastily infer from the citation of the cases mentioned. In the case of the State against Nancy Clem, tried at Indianapolis for the murder of one Young, he met his match. There had been two convictions and both reversed by the Supreme Court, before Voorhees came into the case. His colleague was Major Jona than W. Gordon, a man of high oratorical ability and a master of technicalities in the trial of a criminal case. But on the other side of the case was Benjamin Harrison, a man more than a match for Voorhees in the conduct of the case. Mrs. Clem was con victed a third time, when the case was again reversed, and thereafter the prosecution abandoned. Mr. Voorhees was employed to defend William McKee, one of the participants in the great whisky conspiracy in St. Louis, in 1876. McKee was convicted, but received only a six months' sentence. Senator Voorhees was leading counsel for Hallett Kilbourne in his case against JohnG. Thompson. Kilbourne had refused to answer certain questions asked him by a committee of the National House of Representatives, was adjudged in contempt by the House, and imprisoned. He was released, pursuant to a decision of the Supreme Court, upon a writ of habeas corpus sued out in his in terest. He then, in 1883, sued Thompson, who was the Sergeant-at-Arms, for damages. The first trial resulted in a verdict of $ioo,000; which was set aside by the Court, be cause too great in amount. The second trial resulted in a verdict of $60,000; and this was set aside for the same reason. On the third trial there was a verdict of $37,500, when the court informed counsel that, if they would remit $17,500, the plaintiff could have judgment for the remainder. This was
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done. The case involved a discussion of per sonal liberty, and the right of the individual to be free in his person and papers from search. It was one that greatly appealed to Senator Voorhees' sympathy. The great size of the verdicts was largely due to his addresses, which Senator were Voorhees' the closing great speeches speeches to the jury. were delivered in defense of persons charged with having committed crimes; and in these in stances he was strongest where the out raged defendant had taken the law into his own hands to right a wrong inflicted upon him or upon his family, such as the case of Miss Harris, Harry Crawford Black, or Captain Johnson. In Congress he always stood in the very front ranks as an orator, both in the House and in the Senate. Voorhees was an ultra-Democrat. He was at war with Lincoln's administration; and he made many bitter speeches against it and necessary measures adopted during the War of the Rebellion. He rather belonged to the branch of the party led by Vallandigham of Ohio; but his timidity held him back from the extreme measures adopted and language used on public occasions by Vallandigham. It was repeatedly charged in public and private that he was a rebel sympathizer, and was connected with a trea sonable secret order called " The Knights of the Golden Circle." If Senator Voorhees had been heartily in sympathy with the administration, and the cause of the North, he would have been a much greater power on the rostrum during that period. In the House during the War of the Rebellion, he led a forlorn hope in the ranks of the mi nority against an overwhelming majority, opposing many of the great war measures that it was indispensably necessary to adopt. Senator Hendricks occupied a similar posi tion in the Senate at the same time. Never theless, a speech he delivered on May 21,
