devoted the year 1829, his services were still demanded by clients
in the higher courts, and his reputation at the bar suffered no
eclipse. Upon the death of Chief Justice Taylor, in this year, the
executive appointment of a successor was conferred on a gentleman
of merited eminence in the profession, and of a singularly pure
and elevated character; but the sentiment of the majority of the
profession, as well as public opinion, had made choice of Mr.
Ruffin for the permanent office, and he was elected a Judge of the
Supreme Court at the session of the Legislature in the autumn of
1829. In 1833, upon the demise of Chief Justice Henderson, he was
elevated to the Chief Justiceship, in which he won that fame which
will longest endure because it is incorporated in the judicial
literature of the country, and is coextensive with the study and
administration of our system of law.
Of Mr. Ruffin's arguments at the bar no memorials have been
preserved save the imperfect briefs contained in the causes that
have been reported. His nature was ardent, his manner of speech
earnest and often vehement in tone and gesticulation. Though
versed in _belles-lettres_, and with tastes to relish eloquent
declamation, it was a field into which he did not often, if at
all, adventure. His reliance was upon logic; not upon rhetoric;
and even his illustrations were drawn from things practical rather
than ideal. Analyzing and thoroughly comprehending his cause, he
held it up plainly to the view of others, and with a searching
incisive criticism exposed and dissipated the weak points in that
of his adversary; and all this in a vigorous, terse and manly
English, every word of which told. Few advocates ever equaled him
in presenting so much of solid thought in the same number of words,
or in disentangling complicated facts or elucidating abstruse
learning so as to make the demonstration complete to the minds
of his hearers. These capacities he doubtless gained by severe
culture, a part of which, as I learned from an early student in
his office, resulted from his daily habit of going carefully over
the demonstration of a theorem in mathematics. Thus habituated
to abstract and exact reasoning, he delighted in the approach to
exactness in the reasoning of the law, and no student could more
truly say of his professional investigations: _Labor ipse est
voluptas_. The accuracy thus attained in his studies gave him great
eminence as a pleader in causes both at law and in equity; and the
office of framing the pleadings was usually conceded to him by his
colleagues in the causes in which they were associated. It also gave
him rank among the great counsellors of the time whose opinions
were not the result of cramming for an occasion, or a fortunate
authority, but the well considered reflections of gifted minds
imbued with law as a science. The full development of his forensic
character does not appear to have been manifested until after his
return to the bar subsequently to his first service on the bench.
But from this period till his second retirement, in 1825, he had
hardly a rival in the bar of the Supreme Court of the State or the
Circuit Court of the United States, except Archibald Henderson and
Gaston, and he had a command of the practice in all the State courts
he attended. As a Judge of the Superior Courts he exhibited equal
aptitude as for the practice at the bar. With an energy that pressed
the business forward, a quickness rarely equaled in perceiving and
comprehending facts, patient and industrious habits of labor, and a
spirit of command which suffered no time to be lost, he dispatched
causes with expedition, but with no indecent haste. Whilst he
presided it was rare that any cause before a jury ever occupied more
than a single day, and none is remembered that extended beyond two.
He dismissed a suit brought to test a wager at the cost of both
parties, and remarked that it was on account of leniency that he did
not imprison them.
In administering the criminal law, in which the extent of punishment
generally depended on the discretion of the judge, his sentences
were such as to inspire evil-doers with terror, but eminently
tended to give protection to society and confidence to honest and
law-abiding men.
His accession to the bench of the Supreme Court was a source
of general satisfaction to the profession, and to the people
of the State, by whom his enlightened labors in the circuits
had been witnessed with admiration and pride. He at once took a
conspicuous part in the proceedings of this high tribunal, and for
the twenty-three years that he continuously sat there, probably
delivered a greater number of the opinions than any judge with
whom, in all this long career, he was associated. These opinions
are found through more than twenty-five volumes of the Reports, and
form the bulk of our judicial literature for a full generation.
They have been cited with approbation in the American courts,
State and national, by eminent legal authors, and in the judicial
deliberations of Westminster Hall; and the North Carolina lawyer who
can invoke one of them as a case in point with his own generally
considers that he is possessed of an impenetrable shield. It has
been rare in England that a judge or advocate has reached high
distinction in the courts both of common law and equity. The student
of the judicial arguments of Chief Justice Ruffin will be at a loss
to determine in which of these branches of legal science he most
excelled. To the votary of the common law, fresh from the perusal
of the black letter of the times of the Tudors and early Stuarts,
and captivated with its artificial refinements and technical
distinctions, he would appear to have pursued his professional
education upon the intimation of Butler, in his reminiscences, that
"he is the best lawyer, and will succeed best in his profession,
who best understands Coke upon Littleton"; or, advancing to the
modern ages of greater enlightenment and freer intercourse among
nations, that he had made a specialty of the law of contracts, bills
of exchange and commercial law generally; whilst his expositions
of equity causes will satisfy any impartial critic that he was at
least equally a proficient and master of the principles and practice
of the jurisprudence of the English Chancery, and would induce
the belief that, like Sir Samuel Romilly or Sir William Grant,
his practice at the bar had been confined to this branch of the
profession.
During his chief-justiceship it cannot fail to be remarked that
there was a great advance in the accuracy of pleadings in equity
cases, and in general extension of the knowledge of equity practice
throughout the circuits. And the precision and propriety of entries
in every species of procedure were brought to a high state of
perfection, mainly by his investigations and labors, in conjunction
with those of that most worthy gentleman, and modest but able
lawyer, Edmund B. Freeman, Esq., late Clerk of the Supreme Court,
whose virtues and public usefulness, connected as he was for so many
years in close and friendly association with the immediate subject
of our remarks, now likewise gone down beyond the horizon, I am
gratified the opportunity serves to commemorate.
Judge Ruffin's conversancy with political ethics, public law, and
English and American history seems to have assigned to him the task
of delivering the opinions on constitutional questions which have
attracted most general attention. That delivered by him in the case
of _Hoke_ vs. _Henderson_, in which it was held that the Legislature
could not, by a sentence of its own in the form of an enactment,
divest a citizen of property, even in a public office, because the
proceeding was an exercise of judicial power, received the high
encomium of Kent and other authors on constitutional law; and I
happened personally to witness that it was the main authority relied
on by Mr. Reverdy Johnson, in the argument for the second time in
_Ex parte Garland_, which involved the power of Congress, by a test
oath, to exclude lawyers from the practice in the Supreme Court of
the United States for having participated in civil war against the
government; and in which, its reasoning on the negative side of the
question, was sustained by that august tribunal.
The singular felicity and aptitude with which he denuded his
judgments of all extraneous matter, and expounded the principles
of the case in hand, usually citing authority only to uphold what
had been demonstrated without it, is the most striking feature of
his numerous opinions. His style of writing was elevated and worthy
of the themes he discussed. His language was well selected, and
exhibited a critical acquaintance with English philology. A marked
characteristic in his writings, as it was also in his conversation,
was the frequent, dextrous, and strikingly appropriate use he made
of the brief words of our language, usually of Saxon derivation.
In the autumn of 1852, while in the zenith of his reputation, and
not yet pressed with the weight of years, Chief Justice Ruffin
resigned his office and retired, as he supposed forever, from the
professional employments he had so long and with so much renown
pursued. But on the death of his successor and friend, Chief Justice
Nash, in December, 1858, he was called by the almost unanimous vote
of the General Assembly, then in session, to fill the vacancy, and
sat again as a Judge of the Supreme Court until the autumn of 1859,
when failing health rendered his labors irksome, and he took his
final leave of judicial life. Six years of rest in his rural home
had induced nothing of rust or desuetude: he wore the ermine as
naturally and gracefully as if he had never been divested of its
folds; his judicial arguments at this time evince all that vigor of
thought and freshness and copiousness of learning which had prompted
an old admirer to say of him that he was a "born lawyer." It is
not improbable that this preservation in full panoply was, in some
degree, aided by the circumstance that in a desire to be useful in
any sphere for which he was fitted, he had accepted the office of
a justice of the peace in the county of Alamance, in which he then
resided, and had held the County Courts with the lay justices during
this period. Though near ten years later, and when he had passed
the age of eighty, in a matter of seizure, under the revenue laws,
in which he took some interest for a friend, in the Circuit Court
of the United States, a branch of practice to which he had not been
habituated by experience, I had occasion to observe that he was
as ready with his pen in framing the pleadings, without books of
authority or precedent, as any proctor in a court of admiralty.
At an early period he became the proprietor of an estate on Dan
River, in Rockingham, on which he established a plantation at once,
and gave personal direction to its profitable cultivation from
that time until near the time of his death. Carrying his family to
Raleigh for a sojourn of twelve months, upon assuming the presidency
of a bank, as already stated, he removed thence to Haw River, in
Alamance, in 1830, and there, under his own eye, carried on the
operations of a planter with success until the year 1866, when
the results of the war deprived him of laborers and he sold the
estate and removed again to Hillsborough. The law has been said
by some of its old authors to be a jealous mistress, and to allow
no rival in the attentions of its votary. Chief Justice Ruffin,
however, while diligently performing the duties of his great office,
and keeping up with the labors of his contemporaries, Lyndhurst,
Brougham, Tenterden, and Denman, in England, and the numerous courts
exercising like jurisdictions in America, found leisure to manage
his farm at home as well as to give direction to that in Rockingham.
And this, not in the ineffective manner which has attended like
efforts of some professional men, but with present profit and
improvement of the estates. From early life he appeared to have
conceived a fondness for agriculture, including horticulture and the
growing of fruit-trees and flowers, which his home in the country
seemed to have been selected to indulge. Here, for thirty-five years
during the recesses of his courts, he found recreation in these
pursuits and in the rearing of domestic animals; the result of which
was the most encouraging success in orchards, grapery, garden,
cereals, flocks and herds. Combining a knowledge of the general
principles of science, with fine powers of observation, and the
suggestions of the most approved agricultural periodicals, he was
prepared to avail himself in practice of the highest intelligence
in the art. It was therefore no empty compliment to a great jurist
and leading citizen when the Agricultural Society of North Carolina,
in 1854, elected him to its presidency after his retirement from
the bench. He was continued in this distinguished position for six
years, when declining health demanded his retirement; and at no time
have the interests of the Society been more prosperous, its public
exhibitions more spirited; and it may be added that on no occasion
did he ever manifest more satisfaction than in the reunions of its
members.
The liberal hospitality that he dispensed throughout life was a
most conspicuous feature in the period thus devoted to practical
agriculture. His nature was eminently social, his acquaintance in
his high position extensive, his dwelling near one of the great
highways of travel through the State in the old modes of conveyance,
easy of access, and the exuberance of his farm, garden, orchards
and domestic comforts were never more agreeably dispensed than when
ministered to the gratification of his friends under his own roof.
The cordiality and ease with which he did the honors of an
entertainer in an old-fashioned Southern mansion is among the
pleasant recollections of not a few between the Potomac and the
Mississippi. It was here, indeed, surrounded by a family worthy
of the care and affection he bestowed upon them, relaxed from the
severe studies and anxieties of official life, in unreserved and
cheerful intercourse, that, after all, he appeared most favorably.
By his industry, frugality and aptitude for the management of
property, he accumulated in a long life an estate more ample than
usually falls to the lot of a member of the profession in this
State; and although much reduced by the consequences of the civil
war, it was still competent to the comfort of his large family.
Judge Ruffin was, until superseded by the changes made in 1868, the
oldest trustee of the University of the State, and always one of
the most efficient and active members of the board. For more than
half a century on terms of intimate intercourse with its Presidents,
Caldwell and Swain, and the leading Professors, Mitchell, Phillips
and their associates, he was their ready counsellor and friend in
any emergency; whether in making appeals to the Legislature in
behalf of the institution for support and assistance in its seasons
of adversity, or in enforcing discipline and maintaining order,
advancing the standard of education or cheering the labors both of
the faculty and students. His criterion of a collegiate education
was high, and he illustrated by his own example the rewards of
diligent and faithful study. He retained a better acquaintance with
the dead languages than any of his compeers we have named except
Gaston, Murphy, and Taylor. In ethics, history, and the standard
British classics his knowledge was profound. In science and in
natural history, more especially in chemistry, and those departments
pertaining to agriculture, horticulture, pomology and the like,
his attainments were very considerable, as they were also in works
of _belles-lettres_, poetry, taste and fiction, at least down to
the end of the novels of Scott and Cooper. He worthily received
the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of North
Carolina in 1834, and the like honor is believed to have been
subsequently conferred by his alma mater at Princeton.
His style and manner in conversation, in which he took great
delight and bore a distinguished part in all companies, abounded
in pleasantry, but exhibited the same wide range of thought
and information as his public performances, and was full of
entertainment and instruction to the young. His temperament was
mercurial, his actions quick and energetic, and his whole bearing
in the farthest possible degree removed from sloth, inertness, and
despondency. In political sentiment he accorded with the school of
Jefferson, and for more than forty years was a constant reader of
the _Richmond Inquirer_, the editor of which, Mr. Ritchie, was his
relative, though no one entertained a more exalted reverence for
the character, abilities, and patriotism of Marshall, with whom he
cherished a familiar acquaintance while in practice before him at
the bar, and after his own elevation to the bench. Later in life he
formed a like kind and admiring acquaintance with Chancellor Kent.
In the winter of 1861 the Legislature of North Carolina, having
acceded to the proposition of Virginia, on the approach of the
late rupture between the States of the Union, to assemble a body
of delegates in the City of Washington to consider and recommend
terms of reconciliation, Judge Ruffin was appointed one of the
members in the "Peace Conference," and is understood to have taken
a conspicuous part in its deliberations and debates. We have the
testimony of General Scott, in his autobiography, already quoted,
that his counsels in that assembly were altogether pacific.
President Buchanan, in his work in defense of his action in that
important crisis, makes assertion of the same fact. After the
failure of the efforts at adjustment, and the war, in his opinion,
had become a necessity, Judge Ruffin accepted a seat in the State
Convention of 1861, and threw into its support all the zeal and
energy of his earnest and ardent temper; one of his sons, a
grandson, and other near connections taking part in the dangers
and privations of its camps and battle-fields. When defeat came
he yielded an honest submission and acquiescence, and renewed in
perfect good faith his allegiance to the government of the United
States. Too far advanced in years to be longer active in affairs,
his chief concern in regard to the public interests thenceforward
was for the conservation of the public weal, and that the violent
convulsion, of which we had felt the shock, and the change, might
be permitted to pass without any serious disturbance of the great
and essential principles of freedom and right which it had been the
favorite study of his life to understand and illustrate.
With the close of the war, his farm about his mansion having
experienced the desolation of an army encampment, and its system
of labor being abolished, he felt unequal to the enterprise of its
resuscitation and culture, and therefore disposed of his estate
and again took up his abode in Hillsborough. Here, in occasional
occupation as a referee of legal controversies, in directing the
assiduous culture of his garden and grounds, in desultory reading,
in which he now and then recurred to his old favorites among the
novels of Scott, in the duties of hospitality and the converse of
friends, in the bosom of his family, he passed the evening of his
days. In the sense of imbecility or decrepitude he never grew old,
but was blessed with the enjoyment of a remarkable intellectual
vigor and fine flow of spirits almost till his dissolution. And, in
anticipation of death, in his last illness he laid an injunction on
his physician to administer to him no anodyne which should deprive
him of consciousness, as he did not wish to die in a state of
insensibility.
On the 15th of January, 1870, after an illness of but four days,
though he had been an invalid from an affection of the lungs for a
year or more, he breathed his last, in the eighty-third year of his
age. His end was resigned and peaceful, and in the consolation of an
enlightened and humble Christian faith. For more than forty years a
communicant of the Protestant Episcopal Church, he was one of its
most active members in the State, and more than once represented the
Diocese in the Triennial Conventions of the Union.
The venerable companion of his life, a bride when not yet fifteen,
a wife for more than sixty years, yet survives to receive the
gratitude and affection of a numerous posterity and the reverence
and esteem of troops of friends.
This imperfect offering is a memoir, not a panegyric. It contains
not history, but _particulas historae_--scraps of history, which
it is hoped may not be without their use to the future student
of our annals, for the character we contemplate is destined to
be historical. His life was passed in public view, in the most
important public functions, in contact with the most gifted and
cultivated men of the State for half a century; it ran through two
generations of lawyers. It was given to a profession in which were
engaged many of the first minds of other States, and I can call to
recollection no judge of any State of the Union who in that period
has left behind him nobler or more numerous memorials of erudition,
diligence, and ability in the departments of the law he was called
to administer. The study of his performances will at least serve to
correct the error of opinions prevailing with many at the North,
that the intellectual activity of the South delights itself only in
politics.
It has been remarked by one of the British essayists, as "a saying
of dunces in all ages, that men of genius are unfit for business."
It is perhaps a kindred fallacy, to which pedantry and sloth have
given as much countenance on the one hand as blissful ignorance
upon the other, that high culture and erudition, as in the case of
the learned professions, are incompatible with success in practical
affairs in other departments. We have before us the life of one who
demonstrated in his own person that it is possible for a great and
profound lawyer to take a leading part and become a shining light
in practically promoting the first and greatest of the industrial
arts, and although there be no natural connection between these
occupations, that the same well directed industry, patience, and
energy which had achieved success in the one, was equal to a
like triumph in the other; whilst in high probity, in stainless
morals, in social intercourse, in the amenities of life, and the
domestic affections and duties, his example will be cherished in
the recollection of his friends, and may well be commended to the
imitation of our youth.
OPINION IN EX PARTE BRADLEY.
BY THOMAS RUFFIN.
This opinion of Judge Ruffin, taken at random to illustrate his
style, is not above his average.
His great opinions are too long and technical to be of interest to
the general reader. He thoroughly understood "the language of the
law," and used it with the utmost precision.
His discussion of the question at issue throws a side-light on times
fifty years agone, and will awaken memories in the old and inquiry
in the young.
Badger and Iredell applied to the Chief Justice for a writ of
_habeas corpus_ in behalf of William Bradley, who had been
imprisoned for assault and battery.
OPINION.
_Ruffin, C. J._ At the last term of Anson Superior Court, William
Bradley was convicted of an assault and battery, and was sentenced
to pay a fine of one dollar, and "to be imprisoned in the public
jail of Anson county for twelve months, and thereafter until the
said fine and costs should be paid." He was committed to the custody
of the sheriff of the county, and has been kept a close prisoner
ever since, but has recently tendered to the sheriff a bond with
sureties to keep within the rules of the prison (which have been
laid off by the County Court, and contain six acres), and demanded
of the sheriff to be let out of prison. This was refused by the
sheriff, upon the ground that he was required by the sentence to
keep this person within the public jail.