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THE GREEN BAG
MARTIN VAN BUREN, THE LAWYER BY ADRIAN H. JOLINE THE name of Martin Van Buren has the loftiest positions in the commonwealth. been obscured and his fame as a The fallacy of this judgment has been ad lawyer has been dimmed by the persistent mirably demonstrated by our fellow-lawyer, injustice of posterity. Nothing is more un Edward M. Shepard, in his masterly biog fair than the judgment of an indifferent raphy of Van Buren which many compe public concerning a man who did not carry tent critics regard as the best of the Amer his success to a dramatic climax. The ican Statesmen Series. majority of us have no time to waste in the But we are not concerned at present with appreciation of men who have suffered Martin Van Buren, Senator of the United defeat; and Van Buren, after a life of States, Governor, Secretary of State, Vicetriumphs, was defeated at the end. The President, and President: we are dealing career which goes on from victory to victory, only with Martin Van Buren, counsellor at and terminates at the supreme moment— law, who was at twenty-six Surrogate of the career of such men as Lincoln, Garfield his County, at thirty a member of the highest and McKinley—is secure and the decision appellate court of his State, at thirty-three of the world gives to them the crown of Attorney-General of New York; and until immortality. It was not the fortune of his election as Governor one of the busiest Van Buren to preserve his hold upon the and most prosperous members of the bar. imagination of succeeding generations. From 1828 until his death in 1862 he gave Few men of the present comprehend the no time to the law. To him who looks truth that Martin Van Buren was a great upon a professional life as an ideal one, it lawyer in the days when lawyers needed may be permitted to regret that he bar something more than a copy of the Code, tered for the uncertain and illusive rewards Abbott's Forms, and the latest edition of of politics the glorious years which might White on Corporations to qualify them for have been given to the noble work of an successful practice; when it was not neces able, independent, high-minded and con sary to search through hundreds upon hun scientious advocate. Is the memory of the dreds of volumes in order to ascertain in politician, often obscured by erroneous how many different ways the courts have opinion, but lasting in a sense, better than decided the same question; but when the memory of the great lawyer? In later original thought and creative genius were generations the fame of such men as George requisite for leadership in the battles of Wood, Charles O'Conor, William Curtis the bar. People think of him as a politician Noyes, and Nicholas Hill will surely be of no who was styled "The Kinderhook Fox" and less value than that of the men who "The Little Magician"; supposed to be wandered from the law into the benighted cunning and devious in his methods; who, regions of politics. as they are inclined to believe, reached the Van Buren was the son of a farmer of highest place in the land by adroit manipula moderate means, and he had neither the tion and sedulous self-seeking. They regard benefits nor the disadvantages of a college him as one who was, in the vernacular, a education. When at fourteen he left the skilful wirepuller; master of the arts by Kinderhook Academy, he began the study which the people are often deceived into of the law with Francis Silvester, who is promoting a charlatan, a trickster, and a almost invariably styled in sketches of shallow and plausible manager of men, to Van Buren, as "a respectable lawyer of
