MEMOIR OF JUDGE A. P. BUTLER.

BY JUDGE A. P. ALDRICH.

Great lawyers do not, generally, live in history unless their contemporaries chronicle their performances. They are men of thought and speech, who electrify an audience, give unwearied study and preparation to a case, make great arguments which live in the memories of those who hear them, and die with the generation. The triumph of success is their only reward. The great labor, the constant thought, the day and night study that helps them to produce the severe logic, the magnificent burst of eloquence, the argument that convinces the mind and electrifies the jury and the audience, pass away with the occasion, and only live in the memories of those who heard them, and can be no more reproduced. He could not do it himself, because the inspiration is gone; and no reporter can do it, because he could only write the words, but never give a picture of the man as he stood, glorified in his burning eloquence.

We know that Legare, and Preston, and Hayne, and Petigru, and Butler, the subject of this memoir, were great lawyers, but where are their speeches? Their triumphs are traditions; the men who heard them, tell you of their success, give you an idea of their splendid eloquence; but who can repeat a single speech, or make you realize the effect produced by one of their magnificent orations? I repeat, I doubt if any of them could have done it himself. I have written many a speech which all would recognize as the speech delivered, but many passages have been changed in the inspiration of the moment, impossible for me to recall.

We can say he made a grand speech in such a case, he convinced the court and jury in such a case, he electrified the audience on such an occasion; but who can tell what he said, or who can describe how he said it?

Such is the glory of the great lawyer; he lives by tradition, but his grand performances make no part of history. Some splendid sentence, some bright flash of wit, some sharp repartee, may come down in the memories of men; but the perfect conception

the great speech, the magnificent triumph of art and eloquence— these are forever lost. The dulcet tones, the pleading, persuasive words, the bitter invective, the rich eloquence in which all were clothed, can never be reproduced.

I have been thinking a long time of writing a memoir of my friend, Judge Butler, one of the grandest advocates who ever lived in South Carolina; but the material out of which to write is so scant that it has deterred me from the attempt. And more than this, I had not the time or the heart to venture it in all these long years of mortification and misrule. Whenever I turned my mind to the subject I felt that his spirit chafed to think that honor was paid to him while his beloved South Carolina writhed under foreign and servile rule, for he was as ardent a patriot as ever rejoiced in God's blessed sunlight. And so I would tie up the bundle of the few sketches I had collected, and wait for better days. Now those days have come; how am I to make posterity understand and appreciate the splendid performance which made Judge Butler a marked man among the great men who have adorned the history of the State?

I know he

was a great lawyer; I know he was one of the most impassioned orators who ever addressed a jury or an audience; I have heard him charge a jury with all the learning and acuteness of the most accomplished judge. He was not a case judge, but a lawyer who dealt with principles, who never needed a case except to illustrate the principle.

But when I come to record what he has done I cannot find it. I am not satisfied; it lives only in memory, it has its impress; we all, who knew him, feel it; we all know it, but there is no record. And so it is with Preston, and Legare, and Hayne, and Petigru, and all of our great lawyers; they achieved grand success and are dead-that is all we can say.

Judge Butler's opinions, in the South Carolina Reports, give you a correct idea of the man; they are tame, lifeless things compared with his speeches or his charges. Now and then you see a flash which gives you a faint conception of what he was; but how far short do they fall of the reality of the scholar, the advocate, the orator, as he stood forth in life and strong manhood, clothed in the full armor of his grand gifts of eloquence, action, pathos, and convincing argument! No pen picture can paint the man as he lived and acted; from a meagre, faint

are dead and gone; and he has left no record of his great triumphs as an advocate and a lawyer. I do not know that I can give a better idea of what I mean than by a quotation from one of his own letters to Mrs. Hayne, the mother of his second wife:

"There is a wisdom in the dispensations of God far beyond our conception. The developments of tomorrow only dispel the flattering or distressing fallacies of today. Man, in the proudest exhibition of his earthly nature, is but an evanescent creation, leaving an impression on the memory of a few. It is only in the fulfilment of the unknown but wise designs of Providence that he assimilates himself to Divine dignity."

AS A LEGISLATOR

His career was equally successful; but here, as at the bar, his fame is only traditionary,-there is no record. In 1824 he was elected to the House of Representatives from Edgefield, and immediately took a high stand. In 1827-28 he was appointed one of the committee to impeach Judge James, which was successfully done, and which proves that Judge Butler had impressed himself on the House.

This painful duty was well performed, and, so far as I can see, it was the only case in which he preserved the notes of his argument. I doubt not it was the most painful duty of his life, for a kinder heart never beat in human bosom. He commenced by saying: "The impeachment is conducted in sorrow"; and I feel sure, from his notes of argument, he paid a splendid tribute to the military character and services of the impeached, for I find these sentences: "It has been their painful duty to arraign before this august tribunal an old, infirm man, high in station and endeared to us by many recollections; a man who has many claims to our gratitude." "It is to be conducted against a soldier of the Revolution; it is to be conducted against a man who has a name with which all that is gallant is associated," * * * "and who has reflected upon him the fame of a general who deserves to be considered the shield of South Carolina." And so on, throughout the notes of his argument, are these ejaculations thrown out. No wonder, as a contemporary writes, "he more than once whispered to his friend who was counsel for

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