TRIBUTES TO JUDGE MANNING AND CHIEF-JUSTICE WAITE, AT THE annual Jfleettng of tlje trustees OF THE PEABODY EDUCATION FUND, New York, 3 October, 1888. CAMBRIDGE: JOHN WILSON AND SON. SInfbersftj $ress. 1888. Reprinted from the Proceedings, ioo Copies. TRIBUTES At the Annual Meeting of the Trustees of the Peabody Education Fund, the Chairman, the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, LL.D., after some remarks of a business character, proceeded as follows : — It will not be forgotten that on the first day of our last Annual Meeting, Oct. 5, 1887, our Associate-Trustee, the Hon. Thomas C. Manning of Louisiana, was with us. He had just returned on leave from his post as United States Minister to Mexico, and we all observed with sincere regret that his health seemed to be seriously impaired. He remained with us during that day’s session, and exhibited his usual intelligent interest in our proceed- ings ; but he was not well enough to be with us on the following day, being confined to his chamber under the care of a physician. His illness proved to be fatal, and he died in this hotel on the nth of October, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Born and educated in North Carolina, Judge Manning removed to Louisiana in 1855 and established his resi- dence at Alexandria, on Red River, where he pursued the profession of law until his death. He was unanimously p 5970 4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE TRUSTEES [Oct. elected a member of this Board in the place of the lamented Gen. Richard Taylor, on the 19th of Febru- ary, 1880, and had thus been associated with our work for more than seven years. During several of those years he was a member of our Executive Committee, and he was always an attentive, and valuable member of the Board. He rendered especial service, as you will remember, in con- nection with the defaulted bonds of Mississippi and Florida, and received the formal thanks of the Trustees for his efforts in 1882. His Address to the Legislature of Missis- sippi, and his various Reports and Letters on the subject of these bonds, occupy many interesting pages of our new volume of Proceedings. Judge Manning was an able and accomplished jurist, and had been for several years the Chief-Justice of the State of Louisiana. We shall all remember him as a most amiable and agreeable man, for whose death we could not fail to feel an acute personal sorrow. His funeral was attended by as many of the members of our Board as were within reach, and our Associate, Bishop Whipple, officiated on the occa- sion. I venture to ask the Bishop, in company Vith Mr. Courtenay and Mr. Drexel, to prepare a minute for our records, expressing our sense of Judge Manning’s character and services, and our regret for his loss. But we miss from our meeting this morning one who has died more recently, and who had been one of our most important members for a longer term. The Hon. Morrison R. Waite, Chief- Justice of the United States, was elected one of our Trustees in October, 1874, and had thus been a member of this Board for nearly fourteen years. During that whole period there has been no one on whom 1 888 .] OF THE PEABODY EDUCATION FUND. 5 we have all relied more for wise counsel and cordial co- operation. No one, certainly, took a deeper or more in- telligent interest in our proceedings. The stated day of our Annual Meeting was fixed for the first Wednesday of October at his own suggestion and request, so that his ju- dicial duties at Washington or on his circuit might never interfere with his attendance here ; and I believe he never failed to be with us during his whole membership, except in the single year ( 1 88 1) when his health had taken him to Europe. He was always on one of our standing commit- tees, and for some years past he was on both of them. He was also a member of the special Committee of Three, with Mr. Stuart and Mr. Evarts, and gave his signature and hearty assent to the able and admirable Report by which the proposal of a still much needed National Aid for the education of the colored population of the Southern States was originally urged upon Congress. His signature to that Report left little pretence for constitutional cavils about the measure. He was also one of the original Trustees of the Slater Fund, which is, as you all know, especially and exclusively devoted to the education of the colored race. He was thus brought into intimate acquain- tance with the need and the duty of doing something ex- ceptional for that race. Had his views, and those of the other members of the Committee and of the Board, been sanctioned and carried out by Congress in 1880, there would now be far less to fear than there is from the grow- ing illiteracy of our colored voters. Great, however, as the loss of Judge Waite is to this Board and to each one of us individually, it has, I need not say, far wider relations. The death of a Chief-Justice of the United States can never fail to be a subject of more than 6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE TRUSTEES [Oct. common concern to the whole country. I recall person- ally and vividly the emotions everywhere manifested at the death of the illustrious John Marshall in 1835, in the eigh- tieth year of his age, after thirty-four years of service in the exalted office to which he had been appointed by Presi- dent John Adams. To him, and to his providentially pro- tracted life, we owe pre-eminently the continuity and con- sistency of our great judicial system, and the uniformity and authority of the constructions and decisions of our supreme national tribunal. Most happily he was suc- ceeded by an eminent jurist, who was destined to live to a still greater age in full possession of his faculties, and to die in his eighty-seventh year, after a service as Chief- Justice of twenty-eight years. The brief administrations of that office by John Jay and Oliver Ellsworth and Salmon P. Chase will always be remembered with respect ; but we cannot be too grateful to God for the striking pro- longation of the lives and services of John Marshall and Roger B. Taney, covering together as they do more than half of the entire history of our constitutional existence to this day. Indeed, at the time of Chief-Justice Taney’s death, in 1864, they covered hardly less than four-fifths of it. The influence and importance of the long official terms of two such men in succession, in preventing any conflict- ing constructions of our Constitution and laws, can never be over-estimated. It had been earnestly hoped and believed that in our lamented associate the Supreme Court had once more secured a Chief who was to renew the associations of his two great predecessors in being privileged to preside over it for another period of at least a quarter of a century. Coming to the office without the prestige of many, or per- 1 888 .] OF THE PEABODY EDUCATION FUND. 7 haps of any, of those whom he followed, he had won, year by year and every year, the increasing respect and con- fidence of the whole country, and the warm regard and affection of all who knew him. The eldest son of a Chief- Justice of Connecticut, with whom, after graduating at Yale College in 1837, he studied law at his home in Lyme, in that State, he had soon removed to Ohio and estab- lished himself in the practice of his profession at Maumee City, and afterward, in 1850, at Toledo. A member of the Ohio Legislature in 1849, an( * President of the Constitu- tional Convention of that State in 1873, his reputation might have remained local but for the excellent service which he rendered to the whole country as one of the counsel of the United States at the memorable Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration. He had no ambition for public life, and repelled all political overtures. The great office in which he died came to him unsought, and most unex- pectedly to himself and others. But he rose at once to its requisitions, and proved himself, as was well said in the Senate, “a worthy successor in the great line of chief- justices.” He was able, impartial, of consummate good sense and good temper, and of unsullied integrity and purity. Happy in his domestic life and social surroundings, of robust frame and active habits, and of a genial, sunny disposition, the cares and labors of his office seemed always to sit lightly upon him; and at least another decade of years and usefulness might have been confidently predicted for him. But a cold caught at an evening reception, and rashly neglected in a too resolute and persistent discharge of judicial duty, had assumed a serious character before he or others were aware of it ; and the whole country was taken by surprise and deeply shocked by the announce- 8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE TRUSTEES [Oct. ment of his sudden death at Washington, on the morning of the 23d of March last, in the seventy-second year of his age, and in the fifteenth year of his service as Chief- Justice. Imposing services were held in the Capitol by the two branches of Congress, before the removal of his remains to Toledo, whither they were accompanied by the Asso- ciate-Justices of the Supreme Court. But nowhere was his unexpected and deeply lamented death the subject of more immediate and impressive notice than in Charleston, S. C., where in the United States Circuit Court, on the very day after his death, most affectionate tributes were paid to his memory by the District Judge and other officers of the court, and by the most distinguished members of the Charleston Bar. The Chief- Justice, by his assignment to the Charleston Circuit, had repeatedly been called on to pre- side in that court, and had won the regard and respect of all with whom he had been associated there. His first visit was during “ the Era of Reconstruction,” and his earliest work was to preside at the trial of the famous “ Election Cases.” “ With everything preceding his com- ing,” said one of the members (Maj. T. G. Barker) of the Charleston Bar, “to prejudice him against us, who will not remember the impression of fairness and of kindliness which, from the outset, his conduct on the Bench and in private created upon all the members of our Bar and upon the whole community ? Rising, with the ease which came from a heart full of loving-kindness and a spirit of justice and truth, above all the prejudices which would naturally have controlled him, he at once won the confidence and admiration of the Bar, and the trust of those who, falsely accused, stood before him for their trial.” 1 888 .] OF THE PEABODY EDUCATION FUND. 9 “ Of tranquil spirit, sensitive conscience, and large hu- manity,” said the venerable Ex-Judge Bryan on the same occasion, “he brought to the judgment seat, and to the authority of his pre-eminent position, a mind above the bias of party or section, and wholly devoted to truth. He could be just to his opponents, even to his enemies; and he could not be otherwise. This was his mission; and it was the happiness of the whole country that it was, and that he had the strength every way to fill it. Fortunate, indeed, that there was a man who, amidst the furious passions which rent the country and shook the land, could hold in his steady and equal hand the balances of Justice undisturbed/' No tribute would have been more highly prized by our lamented friend than this. Chief-Justice Waite was a devout member of the Prot- estant Episcopal Church. I remember being with him at least once, perhaps more than once, at the Triennial Con- vention of that Church. Nor can I forget how kindly he always reserved a seat for me, when I was in Washing- ton of late years, in his pew at the Church of the Epiphany in that city, of which, I believe, he was a vestryman. He was rarely absent from his own seat. Let me ask Ex- President Hayes, with Mr. Evarts and Governor Porter, to prepare a minute for our records on the death of the Chief-Justice. IO PROCEEDINGS OF THE TRUSTEES [Oct. Bishop Whipple, for the Committee appointed by the Chairman, reported the following Resolution on the death of Judge Manning, which was duly passed : — Resolved , That we place on record our grateful remem- brance of the valuable services of our late lamented col- league, the Hon. Thomas C. Manning, of Louisiana. He will be remembered by us for his uniform courtesy, his high sense of honor, and fidelity to duty. We tender our heartfelt sympathy to his bereaved family. Mr. Evarts, for the Committee appointed by the Chairman, reported a minute on the death of Chief- Justice Waite, which was unanimously adopted, as follows : — The public loss suffered by the death of the Chief -Justice of the United States has been deplored throughout the country, with every demonstration of respect for his exalted character, and a profound sense of his great public services. The pro- fession of the law, whether represented on the bench or at the bar, have united in their expression of the honor done their profession, and the service to the administration of the law, by the learning, ability, integrity, and fidelity shown in his conduct of his elevated office. Besides, upon this bereavement a universal sentiment of grief as of a personal loss, and of affection for his memory, has shown itself everywhere in the wide circles of friendship and associa- tion, in which the purity and benignity of his nature and his life had endeared men to him, in all the spheres of society in which he had been for so many years a conspicuous figure. 1 888 .] OF THE PEABODY EDUCATION FUND. I I This Board during the fourteen years of his membership has been no less impressed with these traits of the Chief-Justice’s character which the public have thus appreciated and cele- brated. Every member of this Board heartily concurs in the judicious and comprehensive estimate of the qualities of Chief- Justice Waite, in which our Chairman has portrayed to us the admirable and harmonious features of his character which have made him so valuable in the administration of the beneficent Trust of the Peabody Education Fund. Every member of this Board, as well, sympathizes with the warm spirit of affection towards our deceased Associate which our Chairman has so feelingly expressed. Indeed, we must all feel that the constant service which his presence in this Board, his coungels, his wisdom, his zeal, his watchful attentions have rendered to this great charitable enter- prise, while he has been associated in its labors, cannot be ex- aggerated. In the same proportion, his death affects us not only with grief at our bereavement, but also with concern that the important interests in our charge are hereafter to miss the participation of his active energies and his solicitous care. Whenever and wherever the noble benevolence of the Founder of this Trust for education shall be honored, and its powerful and gracious benefits shall be felt and rehearsed, the name of Chief-Justice Waite will be conspicuously remembered, and among his many claims to public and personal grateful esteem this will not be the least. The Committee request that this minute be entered in the record of this annual meeting of the Board, and that a copy be communicated by the Chairman and Secretary of the Board to the family of our lamented Associate, with an expression of our condolence in their grief and bereavement.