Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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CHIEF JUSTICE E. B. GARY (Continued from page one) tice, and he still occupies that high office. His has been a successful life. We often hear and read of the secret of success. This is a misleading and in appropriate phrase. There is nothing hidden nor mysterious about it. The cause is plain to anyone who will look for it. Success is a plant of slow growth which requires constant and most careful nursing. The price of j success is the proper phrase. A man I makes up his mind to reach a certain I goal; it may be far off, the road may be a rough and thorny one, and pro gress may be by painful steps and slow; but he trains himself by educa tion, he devotes all his powers to the attainment of his aim; and in the end he succeeds. That was the case with Eugene Gary; he paid the price, he succeeded; and like all truly success ful men he deserved success. Let us now look back and trace his course from boyhood, and see what was the price he paid. It was in February, 1869, that I first saw young Eugene Gary. I had opened a classical school in his native town, Cokesbury. He and his two younger brothers came on the open ing day. He was in his fifteenth year. I remember well how he looked, a tall lad. slight in build, his pale com plexicn made to look more pale by the intense blackness of his hair. For three years he was one of my school boys. Of the thirty or forty lads who were his schoolfellows, it is pleasant t>> remember that they all did good work, that they all behaved uncom monly well, that several of them could not be surpassed for diligence and progress in their studies, and) none surpassed Eugene Gary. Regu lar in attendance, he showed each morning that the lessons appointed for study at home had been thorough !v ]pj?rnt. If he had a fault, it was that he was more of a student than a schoolboy; he seemed to have no great liking for the active sports and games of his school-fellows. It is to me a most gratifying re flection that so many of those school boys turned out so well in after life., Eugene Gary is not the only one who has attained to high and honor able position. From that group of Jads there came a United States Sen ator, a Governor of the State, a Lieutenant Governor, a Chief Justice, two Circuit Judges, a member of Congress, a Speaker of the House, a President of the Senate, several mem bers of the Senate and the House, be sides lawyers, physicians and busi men suprftssful in their various callings. It is a record to be proud of, not unworthy to be placed beside the record of Dr. Waddell's school at Wellington, so famous in the history of Abbeville County. Eugene Gary went straight from the school to the University of South Carolina, from which in due time he was graduated. With his course there I am not familiar, but I am sure he was a most diligent student, that he "lived the laborious days," and burn ed the midnight oil. After his graduation he read law in the office of his uncle, Gen. Mart Gary, at Edgefield, and was admitted to the Bar in his 2f2nd year. He im mediately opened an office and "hung out his shingle" as an attorney at law at Abbeville Court House, and began the practice of his chosen profession. His determination to join the Ab beville Bar showed that the young lawyer had a brave heart. That Bar at that time had no superior in the State, and only one, or jierhaps two that could match it. Armistead Burt; Thos. C. Perrin; Gen. McGowan, (af terwards Associate Justice), Thomas Thomson, (afterwards Circuit Judge) Edward Noble; Wm. H. Parker, W. A. Lee; James S. Cothran, (afterwards Circuit Judge); these are the names of the men who then composed the Abbeville Bar, all of them lawyers of many years' experience and of large nractice. It was a Bar that not onlv controlled the business of Abbeville County, but had a large share in the litigation of all the upper and sur rounding counties. At that time Abbeville County was one of the largest, most populous, and most influential counties in the State. It was a model county, in size and shape, and its people were proud of its history. The formation of new counties reduced old Abbeville in in fluence as well as in size. But Abbeville was old Abbeville still, during the eighteen years in which Eugene Gary practiced law at its Bar. The same qualities that had distinguished him as a schoolboy, made him successful as a lawyer; he was diligent in business, faithful to the interests of his clients, alwayr ( well-prepared and ready for trial ol his cases in Court. It is not strange, therefore, that he built up an excel lent practice. At this point I may state that Eu gene Gary married young, in 1877., Good taste forbids that I should say | more than this?that he was most fortunate in his marriage. In the ex pressive language of Holy Writ, he "obtained favour of the Lord." We have already seen that in 1893 he was honoured with a seat on the Supreme Bench as Associate Justice; and that in 1912 he was chosen to be Chief Justice,?a well-merited pro sx+isvvt rt>Aol lio Viorl aimorl of. 1I1U HUH y H1C 5^/ai UV ilMV* M4W1VVI M? | when he began to read law with his uncle. He still holds that high office, the highest and most responsible of fice in the commonwealth, second only to the Chief-Justiceship of the United States, held in honour not only in South Carolina, but in all her sister states. The Supreme Court of South Carolina has long attracted the at tention and gained the respect and confidence of Judges and lawyers and textwriters in America and in the old country. Its decision on the prin | ciples of the common law, and of commercial law, and upon the doc trines of equity jurisprudence, are cited with approval, and many of them as leading cases, in all the courts of the United States and in the /?aii*4 nf Wpcfmi'nQfpr TTfill. I well remember how high was the esti mation in which our Supreme Court reports were held by Judge Dillon and Judge Cooley, those learned Judges and standard text-writers. In conversation with me they both show ed they were familiar with our law Reports and referred to some of our leading cases in terms of highest praise, naming even the Chancellors or the Justices who had written the opinions they spoke of. It .is excellent to reflect that our Supreme Court has a traditional rep utation for its great learning, judicial ability, and the wisdom and sound ness of its opinions,?a reputation of ' which the Bench and the Bar and the l State at large have good reason to be I J Tx 1J a. L- *4 proua. it wouiu iioi ue piuyzi uui ? iu necessary, for me to pass upon the merits of the incumbent Chief Jus tice and Associate Justices. It is enough to say tha?, judging from the frequency with which their opinions are cited as authority in all the Am erican Courts and included with com mendation in the volumes of leading cases, they are doing their important work in a manner worthy of the best traditions of our Supreme Court. And yet it ^ould not be an of fense against the canons of good taste to say that Chief Justice Gary | is a learned Judge. His whole life since boyhood has been spent in lay ing up stores of legal knowledge, of which his numerous opinions afford ample proof. They also show that he is endowed with the judicial cast of mind, and possesses the analytical fac ulty to discern the real points at is-1 sue. They manifest his intimate ac quaintance with precedents and apt ness in applying them. Whether pass ing upon statute law or the common law, the lex scripta or the lex non icripta, or upon -the fundamental principles of law and equity, his de cisions are marked by clearness, con ciseness, and freedom from technic ality; and greatly to the satisfaction of the members of the Bar, those de cisions, excepting in rare instances, are brief. This quality of brevity is j much to be comnended; all the more so because it is more rarely found in /^nnlcslnnc nf PAiirfc than fnrmorlv There has been a perceptible length ening during the last forty or fifty years. Compare a volume of the Unit ed States Supreme Court reports of j !the year 1800 with a volume of the) | year 1900, and you will find a great i difference in the length of the decis ions. In the former they are, with very few exceptions, brief and to the | point; in the latter they are nearly j all too long and elaborate. This re grettable change may be due to the mn/^nr-n ViaVlifr nf tin or f A fl I 0 ? I stenographer. There is no doubt that. | when Justices wrote their opinions; J with their own hand, the patience and I pen-labour encouraged concentration j of thought, conciseness, and conden sation. As little doubt is there that ] the habit of dictating to a stenogra- j ! pher tends to diffusiveness and elab-: j oration and long-drawn-out argumen- j tation. j As to Chief Justice Gary, I see in j the man of 1920 the boy that I knew in 1869,?the boy who was without doubt the father of that man. The same qualities are manifest in the ' Chief Justice which I remarked in the 1 schoolboy; he is, just as the boy was, i a hard worker, painstaking, diligent; in business, impatient of delay, eager I! to finish his task and have "a clean | slate/' This accounts for the celerity 1 with which he dispatches the business, < of the Court during term time, and I' the promptness with which he hands down the opinions in the cases as-11 signed to him. No suiter can complain j; of ''the law's delays" when the opin- j i ion in his case is to be written by j < Chief Justice Gary. Onerous though his labours are as j1 Chief Justice, he still finds time for j respite from those labours in other! studies than the strictly legal. Studi- j1 ous by nature and habit, he takes his j I recreation in much reading of gener al literature, history seemine to be his favorite branch, if we are to judge i by several of his published addresses j i on historical subjects. In more than j1 one of those addresses he has present-) ed most admirably the case of the |! Southern Confederacy, a subject j( which even at this late day receives j: scant justice at the hands of North era wirters. He has delivered a num ber of excellent addresses to law stu-11 dents, and even those addresses ha7^ I a historical tendency;; as also have j! those he has made at the dedication! of new court houses. A notable ad- | dress on Legal Ethics, which he de livered before the South Carolina bar , Association was deservedly compli- j raented by Judge Alton B. Parker of New York, who was in the audience. He rose and congratulated South Carolina on having at the head of her Judiciary one who could produce so admirable a paper. The Chief Justice has alsto been a frequent contributor of articles to Law Journals. He is said to have writ ten at least eighteen hundred opin ions, before writing which he had to listen with close attention to nearly four thousand arguments of opposing counsel. Add to this the labour in preparing numerous public addresses and contributions to various journals, is it surprising that his predecessor, the late Chief Justice Mclver, him self a hard worker, said that Chief Justice Gary was the hardest working man he ever knew? In 1915 the degree of L. L. D. was conferred upon him by the Univer sity of South Carolina. Having given this outline sketch of Eueene Blackburn Gary, let me now look up his pedigree. It is a pedigree to be proud of. He comes of good stock on both the paternal and ma ternal side of his family. Both the Garya and the Blackburns have a clear claim of descent from early pre-Rev olutionary settlers. The Garys are first heard of in Virginia. The first identified Gary ancestor of our Chief Justice is Charles Gary, who had come with others of the same family name from Virginia and settled .in Carolina, in what is now called Newberry Coun ty. There we find him in 1767. The Blackburns, his mother's fam ily, are descendants of William Black burn, who was killed in the battle of King's Mountain fighting against the j UiltlOit. But it is through the Porters, the family of his grandmother, Mrs. Thomas R. Gary, that the Chief Jus tice can go furthest back in tracing his descent. That venerable lady?I knew her well?was the lineal des cendant of John Witherspoon, a Pres byterian minister, born in Scotland in 1670, who, after having lived in Ulster, in the North of Ireland, came to Carolina in 1734, and made his home in the Williamsburg settlement. He was a descendant of John Knox, j the great Scottish Reformer. He was a brother-in-law of another John Witherspoon, the illustrious divine, j the president of Princeton College, \ one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He did more than merely sign. There was in the Con gress a manifest and natural hesita- | tion to "put their necks in a halter" by signing it, when John Witherspoon came to the front and carried the j day. "For myself", he said, "al-1 though these grey hairs must soon! descend into the sepulchre, I would ' infinitely rather they should descend ,| thither byfthe hand of the public ex-ji ecutioner, than desert at this crisis' I the sacred cause of my country." On the appeal of that Scotchman the j Declaration was signed. j It thus appears that Chief Justice Gary has reason to be proud of his ancestry. They were all of that ex-j cellent stock, usually called Anglo Saxon, which furnished the Southern I colonies with a notable population, from whom have descended the bulk of our present day Southerners, who, being the descendants of those that1 made America, are the living embod iments of pure and true Americanism. Our Northern and Western friends have long boasted the marvellous power of the 'melting-pot* to assimi late and transform into good Ameri cans all the peoples of the earth. That was before the Great War. The melt ing-pot is not so highly thought of now. They would be glad to empty it and get rid of some millions of "un desirables" who decline to be Ameri canized. Fortunately for the South, there has been no such flood of for eign immigrants hither as to require the use of that pot,. In South Caro lina, for example, among the early settlers were three colonies of Hu guenots and one of Hollanders all of ;hem most desirable as fellow-citizens. | They have long ago been entirely absorbed and assimilated in our An erlo-Saxon Donulation. Long may the South continue to be the home of true Americanism, the guardian and pre server of liberty and independence, of personal liberty and State inde pendence and self-government. Proud of his ancestry, Chief Jus tice Gary has no reason to be ashamT ed of his immediate kith and kin, but quite to the contrary. His father, Dr. Frank F. Gary, was a physician emi nent in his- profession. So was his grandfather, Dr. Thomas R. Gary. His uncle, Thomas P. Gary, was Bri gade Surgeon in the Confederate army, as, indeed, his father, Dr. Frank Gary, had also been. The South Caro lina Garys seem to have had a family predilection and aptitude for the medical profession, manifested first by two sons of th& ancester, Charles Gary, already mentioned, and show 111^ ill UUUII OUWVtVUU?5 gVIIVAWVtVMt I In the last and the present genera tion, however, they seem to have tak en to law rather than to medicine. Martin Witherspoon Gary (mark his historical middle name) the uncle already referred to, was a leading lawyer in Edgefield, although he is better known as Major General "Mart" Gary, one of the most fa mous and gallant of the cavalry com manders in the Confederate army. Another unce, William T. Gary, who had served as Major in that army, was afterwards a lawyer and a Cir cuit Judge in Augusta, Georgia. An other uncle, S. M. G. Gary, was a lawyer in Ocala, Florida. Then come the two brothers and three first COU3-' SF That is ioh( a wagoi B that is what yc as a Farm \ for you?c best bu in it < oul The S ins of the Chief Justice, all lawyers in South Carolina. The two brothers, Ernest Gary, (deceased), and Frank B. Gary, were both Circuit Judges, at the same time Eugene Gary was Chief Justice. It was the extraordinary, the unparall eled fortune of their mother to see her three sons all honored with seats on the Judicial Bench. No wonder she was proud of her boys. She lived to a great age, dying in Abbeville in 1918. Before his election to the Bench, Judge Frank Gary had served an "un expired term" as United States Sena tor. Of the three cousins, the oldest, John Gary Evans, was Governor of the State, was a Major in the army during the war with Spain, and was placed in charge of the city of Havana after peace was declared. His father N. G. Evans, who was an officer in the United States army before the Civil War, became the gallant General "Shanks" Evans of the Confederate army. South Carolina awarded him a sword and a medal in token of his bravery and success in battle. The foregoing paragraphs concern ing the Gary family abundantly tes tify that the Chief Justice comes of a good breed. This is a cause of pleas ant reflection not only for himself but for the people of South Carolina who have honoured him so highly, and whom he has served and still serves so well and faithfully. The man who has reason to be proud of his ancestry is also the man who desires to leave an honored name to posterity. I wish I could finish this without adding a note of sadness. But a sketch of Chief Justice Gary could not be complete without a reference! i. i J Ua i XO trie great iuas turn ucicovciucui i*%> suffered during the Great War, in the death of his only son, who bore his own name, Eugene Blackburn Gary. True to the traditions of his family, when war was declared young Gary,! twenty-seven years of age, at once answered his country's call. Some slight trouble with his eyes twice caused him to be unsuccessful in his eager efforts to join an officers train ing corps, but his persistence brought success on his third effort. After the proper training, he sailed for France as a private in a mutur-trucft. cuuipuuy On the ocean passage he contracted influenza, followed by bronchial pneu monia, and died in the American Hos it you want wh i?and when yo ! A 11 >u get. In such an Nagon the best is no tnd that is why the Ba y. The quality you md you will get the se t of it. So, when y are in the market for f-ViR hpsf waonn mony can buy, call on tark Vehic pital at Brest on the very day after landing in France. Dying thus, young Eugene Gary gave his life to his,, country as fully and patriotically ?s if he had fallen on the field of battle. We thus see that Chief Justice Gary has repaid his State and his country for the honours they have abundantly bestowed on him,?he has given his son, his only son. V LONG CANE NEWS V \ 1% Mr. and Mrs. C. P. Cropper and Mrs. W. D. Beauford and daughter, Miss Linnie, motored to Green wood Tuesday. Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Botts moved into their new home Tuesday on the plantation with Mr. W. D. Beauferd where they will farm this coming year. Miss Annie Davis, of' Ninety-Six is here on business. Mr. J. D. Cromer and son, C. P. Cromer, motered to Greenwood Tuesday on business. z Mr. and Mrs. Bonner Haddon and children 3pent Sunday with Mrs. J. D. Miller. Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Cromer were visitors in Greenwood Saturday. Miss Estelle Finley visited reia tive? in the city Saturday. Misses Ethel, Rebecca and Alma Botts were shopping in the city last Saturday. The Rock Spring School cloned Thursday, December 23, for Christ mas holidays. The pupils gave their teacher a gold brooch far a Christ mas present. Mr. W. D. Beaurord and Mr. Charlie Botts were business visitors, in Greenwood Monday. . ? and Wre OViorlift Rotts W&T& c/ CM u buy a V important item >ne too good in is your need is Tvice uu le Co. L