SAMUEL SUMNER WILDE 1789

In his Alumni of Dartmouth College Dr. Chapman concludes an account of the events in the life of Samuel Sumner Wilde of the class of 1789, in which was included the statement that he was a judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, by saying that he resigned the office "after holding it with spotless reputation and distinguished ability for the long period of thirty-five years".

Long tenure of high office does not of itself render one distinguished, except as anything unusual attracts attention, but when coupled with strong qualities and excellence of administration it justifies lasting remembrance. The record of Judge Wilde, with its exhibition of great gifts and high character, long displayed in public service, places him among the worthies of the College. It is an unhappy fact that as an institution grows in age and increases in numbers its earlier members lose their contemporary prominence and tend to be forgotten. But because the living are in evidence, and because greatness, except in a few cases, is limited by the reach of memory, it is well for each generation occasionally to recall those who have rendered unusual service in their time. Among such Judge Wilde will hold a place, and it is only to be regretted that more definite memorials of his work are not at hand.

Wilde was a Massachusetts lad, born in Taunton, February 5, 1771. His father was Daniel Wilde and his mother whose maiden name was Ann Sumner, was the daughter of the Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives at the time of the passage of the Stamp Act. As might have been expected, the influence of the boy's home was strongly of the Puritan type and doubtless had to do with the development of the strong religious character of his manhood. Under whom he prepared for college I do not know, or what influences brought him to Dartmouth; but then, as now, Massachusetts sent many students to Dartmouth and Wilde was one of seven Massachusetts boys who helped to make up the twenty-four members of the class graduated in 1789.

In the almost total lack of college records for that time we have no information as to his college career, except that he was a member of the newly organized Phi Beta Kappa society, when membership did not depend wholly, as now, upon scholarship; but when it implied both scholarly attainments and good comradeship and that his assignment for the graduating exercises at Commencement was a "poetical dialogue with his classmate, Josiah Dunham, a brilliant student, later a valiant champion of President John Wheelock.

Wilde was among the youngest in his class, being not much older on completing his college course, at the age of eighteen and a half, than many on entering college. His college associations are unknown, except as they may be inferred from the membership of the Phi Beta Kappa, which includes several names of men prominent in their time. In his own class, besides Dunham just mentioned, were Martin Chittenden, afterward very prominent in Vermont as judge, member of Congress, and governor for ten years, and Samuel Dinsmoor, who was governor of New Hampshire and also its representative in Congress. In the class of 1790 were William Eaton, who, as brigadier general, led the United States campaign against Tripoli, and Mills Olcott, long treasurer and trustee of the College, and who developed the falls of the Connecticut below Hanover, which still bear his name; while in the class of 1791 was Dudley Chase, who for four years was the chief justice of the supreme court of Vermont, and for two terms a United States senator from that State.

After graduation Wilde returned to his home in Taunton, where he began the study of law in the office of David L. .Barnes, afterward judge of the United States district court of Rhode Island, and also with Judge Paddleford, and was admitted to the bar of Bristol county in 1792. In the same year he married Eunice Cobb of Taunton. Nine children were born to them, but she died June 6, 1826.

At the time of Wilde's admission to the bar, Maine was under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts; and perhaps with the feeling that a newer section of the country offered to a young lawyer greater opportunities to identify himself with its expanding interests and consequently a wider sphere of action, he soon removed to Maine to the town of Waldoboro, where he began the practice of law; but two years later he took up his residence in Warren, both towns being in the county of Lincoln. Five years later he again changed his home to Hallowell in Kennebec county.

Wilde brought to his profession not only an uncommon interest in the study of law as a science, but also uncommon abilities for its practice. According to his contemporaries he became deeply versed in the various branches of the law, especially in common law and equity, and his success as a practitioner kept pace with his progress as a student of law. Success came to him abundantly. In a later estimate of his career in Maine a contemporary lawyer said of him: "Having no superior at the bar and, indeed, no equal, he immediately entered upon a successful practice, which continued to expand from year to year as long as he lived there."

His success rested upon the foundations of knowledge of law and of the facts of each case, and upon ability in pleading. He never allowed himself to come to the trial of a case without familiarizing himself with its details as well as with the law pertaining to it, and in its presentation he "spoke for the cause and not for any general effect". Being the master of his case he had a powerful hold upon a jury, with which he was always effective, first by the simplicity of his exposition and then by his manner, which with great clearness and distinctness of enunciation, was, while never emotional, "generally brief, energetic and rapid". He was, according to the one quoted above, "the most popular advocate who has ever grown up in Maine".

It is not surprising that with such qualities he commanded a practice that grew with his reputation, and that he soon came to be regarded as one of the leaders of the bar. Without making a comparison of ability, one finds a striking similarity between the bar of New Hampshire and the bar of Maine in the early part of the last century, in that each was headed by a remarkable trio of lawyers. In New Hampshire Jeremiah Smith, Jeremiah Mason and Daniel Webster were undoubtedly in the first rank, one or more of them being sought as counsel in every important case, sometimes working together, but more often pitted against each other; in Maine Samuel S. Wilde, Prentiss Mellen and Benjamin Orr, a graduate of Dartmouth, were rivals in leadership, but, like their New Hampshire brethren, superior to others. Mellen was more often the opponent of Wilde, being an advocate of hardly less repute, characterized as "ardent, earnest, rapid and impulsive", while Wilde was "cool, collected, ingenious and impressive".

Perhaps it was these characteristics of Wilde that in 1815, when a vacancy occurred on the bench of the supreme court, for which both Wilde and Mellen were aspirants, led Governor Strong to appoint Wilde to the place. Mellen s ability was later recognized by his election to the United States Senate, and still later by his appointment as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Maine.

Wilde, though a strong Federalist, was never a seeker for office, and yet he represented the town of Warren in the legislature in 1798-1799; in 1800 and again in 1808 he was appointed presidential elector, and in 1814 he was a member of the Executive Council, and also, in that year, a delegate to the Hartford Convention, and in 1819 he was a member of the convention that drew up the new constitution for the State of Maine on its separation from Massachusetts.

In 1820, when Maine assumed independent jurisdiction as a state, Judge Wilde, as a magistrate of a Massachusetts court with a Massachusetts commission, felt it desirable to have a residence within that commonwealth, and accordingly removed to Newburyport. Here he resided until 1831, when he moved to Boston, taking up his residence on Beacon Hill, on Hancock Street, in the second house on the left as one turns down from Mt. Vernon Street, and there he spent the remainder of his life.

Judge Wilde's judicial career as a member of the Massachusetts Supreme Court extended from 1815 to November 5, 1850, when he resigned at the age of seventy-nine. Its long extent of over thirty-five years was exceeded by that of but one judge in the history of the court, — the first Samuel Sewall, who served thirty-six years from 1692 to 1728, — and it was as honorable as it was long. It is no uncommon thing, when one closes a service of unusual length, for his associates to express their appreciation of the service and their regret at its termination. This was done by the Massachusetts bar a few days after the resignation of Judge Wilde and repeated with additional emphasis on his death five years later. Such resolutions are often as notable for their omissions as for what they include. Often they have to be read between the lines, and the reader must consider what is not said fully as much as what is said. Both of the utterances of the bar are full and clear, leaving no room for uncertainty or fancied omission. They give no balanced praise for either the judge or the man.

The first essential in a judge is fairmindedness, a sense of justice; he must also know the law and be able to interpret its spirit as well as apply its form, and, further, he must couch his decisions in terms free from ambiguity and support them by pertinent and cogent reasoning. His character as a man must support his acts, as a judge by candor, courtesy, and a humane spirit in the conduct of his court, as well as by personal probity and uprightness in private life.

The resolutions of the bar concerning Judge Wilde are very remarkable for the personal feeling which pervades them. There is nothing perfunctory about them. They cover all the points of official and private life that could properly be introduced, There is no conscious omission, no apparent reservation. They were introduced by Benjamin Rand, a prominent lawyer, in a speech of considerable length, in which he declared that the bar had witnessed "with admiration the promptness, the untiring assiduity, the fidelity, the impartiality, the devotedness to the public service, and the great learning and ability which the eminent judge had at all times manifested". After dwelling upon his extraordinary knowledge of the common law, by which he had rendered peculiar service in the practice of the courts, and his equal mastery in other fields of law, he called attention to the esteem of the bar for the "exemplary chasteness of his style, the neatness and conciseness of his judicial opinions, unembarrassed by any useless parade of learning, the clearness and logical precision' of his reasoning and the almost invariable accuracy of his conclusions."

Having spoken of "his kindness, his equanimity, his strict impartiality to us all", and having called attention anew to his legal knowledge and his efficiency on the bench,'he called the bar to testify to "his unsullied purity, to the amenity, frankness and unaffected simplicity of his manners, his remarkable colloquial powers, the kindness and sincerity of his heart, the warmth and cordiality of his attachments, virtues as conspicuous in his private life as have been his learning and ability on the bench".

The resolutions, which more than confirmed the words of the one who introduced them, are such a remarkable testimonial, and exhibit such a clear picture of their subject, that it is worth while to quote a considerable part of them. After referring to the great length of his judicial service they declare, "That the judicial labors of Mr. Justice Wilde have contributed in an eminent degree to settle and enrich the jurisprudence of the commonwealth, to invest the supreme magistracy with respect and law with reverence, to establish justice, restrain crime, and ascertain, vindicate and assure the civil rights and liberties of the people".

In reviewing his services they dwelt again with admiration upon "the rapidity as well as the soundness of his perception of legal truth, the fidelity, quickness and capaciousness of his memory, the sagacity, firmness and kindness of heart, the habits of despatch and the instantaneous command of law, with which he presided over the trial by'jury, his absolute and remarkable impartiality toward all the practisers before him, too just and too manly for antipathies or favoritism, and, to sum all up, his devotion to every duty of his office, which seemed to gain strength to the last hour of judicial life, and to which all his tastes and all his enjoyments were kept ever subordinated .

"We see him retire from our presence with emotions of filial love, sorrow and esteem, we recall with deepest sensibility the long series of his kind acts, by which our inexperience was assisted and our emulation of youthful distinction was called forth, and we would now convey to him, with our whole hearts, our most earnest wishes that his virtuous and venerable age may be prolonged and be happy, that it may be soothed by the retrospect of a life of great duties well done, by the enjoyment of that judicial fame which follows unsought".

On the death of Judge Wilde, which occurred June 22, 1855, the bar again, almost as a work of supererogation, except as the expression of genuine feeling, under the lead of George S. Hilliard, reaffirmed its former resolutions as its "best considered opinions", which became more sure by every recurrence to the written opinions given by Judge Wilde and by every "recollection of the particular incidents and the noble aggregate of that strenuous, brilliant and upright judicial life", and added the assurance of a complete harmony in the public and private life of the Judge.

"If", said they, "he loved'the law it was because by it truth and justice were maintained. Simple in his tastes, of industrious habits, of a cheerful spirit, of warm domestic affections and strong religious faith, he never lost his interest in life and nothing but his body grew old. He was frank, direct, courageous, and of unalloyed simplicity, caring as little to conceal what he was as to affect what he was not His long and valuable life was crowned by a serene and beautiful old age, brought to a close by a touch so gentle as to leave more of gratitude than grief in the hearts of those who stood by his side."

A more perfect tribute it would be hard to find, or one that more fully carries conviction. Contemporaries may misjudge the value of a man's work, but they seldom mistake his character, and in the case of Judge Wilde the man and his work seem to be in harmony. His worth as a man gives validity to the testimony of his judicial eminence. There is not a dissonant note in the record. His appearance corresponded with his mind. Of large and powerful frame he had, said one, "the face which belongs to the office". A daguerreotype, taken late in life, exhibits a man with a high forehead a crown of somewhat unruly white hair, clear eyes with a glance at once searching and benevolent, more ready to smile than to rebuke, a large but well shaped nose, a firm but not severe mouth, a rounded chin, and, in general, a freedom from lines and wrinkles that bespeaks a placid mind.

Judge Wilde's service was longer than is given to most men, for he was a practising lawyer for twenty-four years and a judge for thirty-five, and from his youth he was constantly engaged in duties of the first moment to society. If not among the "first three", he deserves a lasting memory among the sons of Dartmouth.