JANUARY 8, 1895
At the opening of the term, January 8, 1895, an oil portrait of the Honorable Alpheus Felch, formerly a member of the Court, was presented upon behalf of the Calhoun County Bar, the following proceedings being had thereon:
Remarks of Hon. Herbert E. Winsor:
The Court please: I feel that the bar of Calhoun county are to-day appropriately recognizing “the fitness of things.” Since 1846, our predecessors have been in the possession of a portrait of one of Michigan’s distinguished sons. To-day we transfer it to this Court, where it may take its appropriate place upon the walls of this room.
This portrait represents one of the pioneer jurists of our State, and an age and work not of the present. To me has been delegated the pleasing duty of connecting the past with the present, and presenting to you at this time, in the form of a letter, the remarks of the oldest living member of our local bar, and the sole survivor of the contributors who procured the portrait at so early a day.
Nothing would have pleased the aged president of our bar association more than to be present to-day, and add his word in person at this time, and to renew again his old acquaintance with this honored jurist, Governor Felch; but time has worked its change upon him, and with regret he is compelled to remain at his home, and to delegate to others what to him would be at pleasure, and I, in his stead, read to you his letter conveying his good wishes, together with the portrait, with all of its past remembrances.
Mr. Winsor then read the following letter:
To the Honorable Judges of the Supreme Court of the State of Michigan:
A half century ago, members of the Calhoun County Bar procured by contribution a portrait painted by a talented artist, Joseph A. Haskell, of Judge ALPHEUS FELCH, then presiding judge of our circuit court. The picture was then framed and hung in the circuit courtroom at Marshall, and has remained in the court-house ever since.
I believe that I am the sole survivor of those who contributed to purchase said portrait. It was not a partisan affair, and so spoken of at the time. It has been known that the Judges of the Supreme Court would be glad to receive and care for this portrait, and believing it was a proper thing to send it to the Supreme Court room, to be hung among the portraits of our jurists known to fame, determined me, as president of the Calhoun County Bar Association and the sole survivor of the original contributors, on calling a meeting of the bar to take action the matter.
The meeting was called and held, with full attendance. Because of a suggestion that a question might arise as to the rights of the said sole survivor, I have transferred all my right, title, and interest in said portrait to the active members of the Calhoun County Bar; whereupon, on motion, it was voted unanimously that “this portrait of Judge ALPHEUS FELCH be, and the same is hereby transferred to the State of Michigan, to be Supreme Court room and to be under the supervision the Supreme Court.”
It was also voted that I should present this portrait at the opening of said Supreme Court, at the next term thereof, at Lansing. I acknowledged the compliment paid me and the honor conferred by their selection. But advanced years makes it imprudent to do so in person. I therefore communicate to your honors in writing, and transfer this portrait to your care and keeping.
Yours truly,
WM. H. Brown,
President of Calhoun County Bar Association.
Marshall, January 4, 1895.
Remarks of Hon. CLEMENT SMITH:
May it please the Court:
The first term of court I held in Calhoun county as judge of the Fifth circuit, my attention was attracted by a portrait upon the walls of the probate court room, and, upon inquiry of Judge Ingersoll, I learned that it had been painted about 50 years, and was the portrait of Judge ALPHEUS FELCH, of Ann Arbor. He also said to me that Judge Hooker, then Chief Justice of this Court, had suggested that the Supreme Court would be pleased to have the care of it as the property of the State. To the bar of that county it seemed a very proper thing to do, and the matter was talked over by them, and in consultation with the Honorable William H. Brown, the survivor of the bar that procured the portrait, they decided, with his concurrence, to present the same to this Commonwealth, to be placed upon the walls of this courtroom with the portraits of the eminent men who have had so much to do in making the law of the State; and I have been selected by the bar to formally present the same to you, the honored Court of the State, as trustees of the same for the use and benefit of our loved State.
I regret very much that the writer of the letter just read felt that his health would not permit him to present this portrait to you in person. It would have been a pleasure to me, as well as to your honors, to have him present, and to listen to the dignified and scholarly address he would make in its presentation; but he is not far away from the milestone reached by the subject of the portrait, and prefers his books and papers and his quiet room rather than the scenes of conflict in the courtroom, so pleasant to him in the active days of his middle life.
I need not say to you that I esteem it a compliment and an honor to have been selected by so excellent a bar as the bar of Calhoun to do so pleasant a service as this. It seems to me the proper place for this portrait is on the walls of the temple of justice and the individual members of the bar, with that sense of justice and propriety which they have in full measure, have, without a dissenting voice, given up the right and claim they have in it, and the pleasure they had in seeing it in their own courthouse, and by their generous act have made it the property of the State, that it may be known more generally how this honored citizen of the State looked more than 50 years ago, when he was a Judge of this Court.
The life of Judge FELCH has been remarkable. He was upon the Bench of the Supreme Court of the State nearly 20 years before the war. He was governor of the State in 1846. He was a United States Senator from this State from 1847 to 1853. When the war of 1861 came upon us he was older than a majority of this Court are today, and yet he is still with us, active in many ways, and in the full possession of his mental faculties.
But a few months ago, one of America’s many great writers, who had lived to see his eighty-fourth birthday, in writing of his poem, “The Last Leaf” said, substantially, he was one of the very last of the leaves which still cling to the bough of life that budded in the spring of the nineteenth century, and was almost half way up the steep incline which leads towards the base of the new century, so near to which he had already climbed. How applicable to the subject of this portrait presented to you here to-day are these words, and it is seldom that they could be so fully applied as to our distinguished and honored citizen.
Judge FELCH has filled many places of honor and trust, and has always filled them well. It must be a feeling of gratification to him to look back over such an eventful life, so full of honors, and feel that he has been a faithful servant of the people, and that no blot has marred his years of faithful public service; but to me, standing here in the presence of this Court I respect and honor, and in looking into the faces of the portraits of the men who have honored the Bench of the highest court of the State as but few states have been honored, it seems that the strongest element of this man of strength is his life of purity and loyalty to home and citizenship, and, were I to single him out as the model for the youth of to-day, I would not dwell so much upon his official life as I would upon his private life, as a husband, as a father, as a friend, as a citizen, and I would hold that life before the youth and say, “See the splendid consummation of the years of life of sobriety, of honesty, and of good habits, and learn the lesson it teaches.”
But a few months ago, in his home city, there were gathered many of his friends to do him honor on the ninetieth anniversary of his birth. Among them were some of the friends of his early manhood. It must have been gratifying to him to meet them in that way.
It must be a source of strength to him, in his declining years, to look back over his life, woven as they are, not only in the history of this the State of his adoption, but of this loved country of ours, and know and feel, as he has a right to, that not a stain rests upon his character as a private citizen or in public life, and that none know him but to love and honor him, and that he stand, today, as was well said by his friend of more than 50 years, the Honorable G. V. N. Lothrop, “to the rising generation an inspiring model of the true citizen, statesman, and patriot.”
I cannot but feel that this act of generosity on the part of the Calhoun County Bar, in presenting to you his portrait, to be placed here among these honored and loved faces, will bring to his heart and thought another evidence of the regard with which he is held by those who know and love him, and that it will touch a responsive chord in his breast as has no other act tending to show to him the honor and respect which we all have for him.
And now, may it please your honors, in behalf of the bar of Calhoun county, I present to you, for the State of Michigan, this portrait of the Honorable ALPHEUS FELCH.
Hon. John C. Patterson then made the following remarks:
May it please the Court:
I have been requested to speak on behalf of the bar of Calhoun county, the donors of this portrait of Judge FELCH. I have also been delegated by William H. Brown, the sole survivor of our pioneer bar, to speak in his stead of the men constituting our bar half a century ago, the lawyers who practiced before Judge FELCH, and who caused this picture, so faithfully portraying the features of the judge in his early manhood, as he appeared to the lawyers of Calhoun county who practiced before Judge FELCH from 1842 to 1845. For brilliant talent, for eloquent oratory and scholastic attainments, that bar has no superior in our Commonwealth. Among the distinguished practitioners of that period we recall Isaac E. Crary, our first member of Congress, a learned lawyer, educator, and statesman; J. Wright Gordon, a sound lawyer, and an able legislator and executive; Edward Bradley, a brilliant advocate and an eloquent orator; Robert Cross, afterwards of Massachusetts, a learned counselor and profound scholar; Henry W. Taylor, afterwards judge of the New York court of appeals, an erudite counselor and ripe scholar; John Van Arman, the great trial lawyer and impassioned orator, of whom it was said, “He lacked only the learning of Rufus Choate to have been his equal;” Abner Pratt, the able lawyer and aggressive politician; Benjamin F. Graves, the conscientious judge and able jurist; George Woodruff, the classical scholar and upright magistrate; William H. Brown, today the patriarch of our bar; Morton C. Wilkinson, afterwards United States Senator from Minnesota; Parsons Willard, afterwards governor of Indiana; Chauncey Shatter, late of New York City; Fenner Ferguson, David L. Johns, James S. Sanford, George C. Gibbs, Hovey K. Clark, and Horace A. Noyes. Gifted men were they, many of whose names were adorned by literary degrees conferred by the colleges of the East, —men who made for themselves professional reputations, and who have left their impress on our history. These are the men who transferred the features of Judge FELCH to the speaking canvas 50 years ago, and have transmitted them to us. These distinguished lawyers, I repeat, are the donors of this portrait, and their names should go upon the record as such. Remembering that the people are indebted to ALPHEUS FELCH, not only as Judge of the Supreme Court, but as legislator, bank commissioner, Auditor General, Governor, United States Senator, and commissioner to settle land claims under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and desiring to honor him and the distinguished pioneer bar of our county, we bring you this, our treasure of art, mellowed by the touch of time, and endeared to us by its associations and the history of the past, and transfer it to your care and keeping. Inasmuch as this portrait was painted to represent ALPHEUS FELCH as judge, and was procured by the lawyers of our county to adorn our courtroom, we ask that it shall be hung in the Supreme Court room, among the portraits of our distinguished jurists, that the lawyers of the present and of the future, as they enter this temple of justice, may see Judge FELCH, the sole survivor of our appointive State judiciary, as the pioneer lawyers of Calhoun county saw him 50 years ago.
Judge FELCH has received the most distinguished official honors, and has been the most fortunate in his associations, of any citizen of Michigan. He has been called by the people of our State to serve them in its legislative, judicial, and executive departments. Two other citizens, Governor Ransom and Governor Woodbridge, only, have received this distinction; Governor Woodbridge having served in the judicial department under our territorial government. Judge FELCH was Governor and United States Senator; William Woodbridge, Kinsley S. Bingham, and Henry P. Baldwin share this unusual honor with him. In college, among his fellow students were a large number of men whose names are now household words, and who have made rich contributions to American literature and history. Henry W. Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Luther V. Bell, George B. Cheever, Calvin E. Stowe, Sargent S. Prentiss, William Pitt Fessenden, John P. Hale, and Franklin Pierce were students with him at old Bowdoin College 70 years ago. What other college can boast of such a galaxy enrolled at any onetime? In his official life in Michigan, he was associated with Stevens T. Mason, William Woodbridge, J. Wright Gordon, John S. Barry, Isaac E. Crary, John D. Pierce, Jacob M. Howard, Charles E. Stuart, Lewis Cass, and all the sagacious builders of our State, who has “hearts to conceive, understandings to direct, and hands to execute.” In the Senate of the United States he was associated with Thomas H. Benton, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, Salmon P. Chase, William H. Seward, and Charles Sumner,—those intellectual giants who have immortalized that august body; statesmen, whose great abilities and pre-eminent fitness, not their wealth, elevated them to that high place.
The fame of FELCH, as the first citizen of Michigan, we claim as our own. What incomparable associations, what extraordinary honors, and what rich blessings have been his! All these high positions have been graced, and all these great trusts have been executed with untiring fidelity, with practical wisdom, and marked ability. A kind Providence has permitted him to enter the tenth decade of his life, and he is among us today, a distinguished representative of the bar and of the public men of our State 50 years ago.
Judge FELCH is now the oldest living ex-member of the Legislature, the oldest ex-Judge of the Supreme Court, the oldest ex-Governor, and the oldest ex-United States Senator of our State. In discharging legislative duties, in wearing the judicial ermine, in wielding the executive mace, and in gracing the senatorial toga, he labored for wise legislation, for the impartial administration of justice, for the faithful execution of the laws, and for the general welfare of our country. His unspotted life as a Christian gentleman, and his unsullied name as public official, have become parts of our State history.
We are grateful to Judge FELCH, not only for his public services, but for his pure example; and as a souvenir of the times when the office sought the man, and not the man the office, we leave you his portrait. How grandly does his official life exemplify the sentiments of Lord Mansfield when he said, “I do not affect to scorn the opinion of mankind; I wish earnestly for popularity; but I will tell you how I will obtain it: I will have that popularity which follows, and not that which is run after,”—a sentiment worthy of the great man who uttered it, a sentiment that has inspired the political life of the venerable man we honor today, and which should control the lives of all ambitious men.
Chief Justice McGRATH, upon behalf of the Court, responded as follows:
Gentlemen of the Bar of Calhoun County, and Gentlemen of the Bar of Michigan:
From views heretofore freely expressed by my associates, I can safely say that the Court fully concurs in all that has been said respecting the subject of this portrait. A history of our State that omitted the part taken by Governor FELCH would be far from correct, and no portrait gallery of the public men of Michigan would be complete unless the portrait of ALPHEUS FELCH were conspicuous therein.
Governor FELCH was active in public life during the formative period of the jurisprudence of the State, and of its statutory and constitutional history. He not only took an active part in the formulation of the statutes and jurisprudence of the Commonwealth, but he was an important factor in the recognition and establishment of those fundamental principles which underlie decision, statute, and constitution. Books are, after all, but depositaries, and statutes and constitutions are but crystallizations.
Freeman, in discussing the English constitution, says of Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, and the Bill of Rights, that “none of these gave itself out as the enactment of anything new. All claimed to set forth those rights of Englishmen which were already old.”
The public career of Governor FELCH has been, perhaps, the most varied of any public man of our State. He came to the State in 1833, having been admitted to the bar in Bangor, Maine. He served as a. member of the Legislature in 1835 and 1837; was appointed bank commissioner in 1838, and served as such for two years. He afterwards served as Auditor General for a short period; was appointed as one of the Justices of this Court in 1842, and served until 1846, when he assumed the duties of Governor, to which office he had been elected, resigning that position in 1847 upon his election to the Senate of the United States, in which position he served until 1853. While Senator he was chairman of the committee on public lands. He was afterwards appointed by President Pierce as commissioner to settle Spanish and Mexican land claims. The work of the commission, of which he was president, involved many important questions and decisions, and its reports fill 40 large volumes. The work was finished in 1856, and for some years thereafter Governor FELCH was law professor at our own University, the pride of Michigan.
The public life of this distinguished gentleman is an open book. It but reflects the scholarly and Christian gentleman, the conscientious and profound lawyer, and the citizen whose life and conduct have ever been surcharged with a keen appreciation of the privileges and duties of American citizenship. These elements of character are essential to the best citizenship, and the loftiest statesmanship is the product of the best citizenship. There are many incidents of such a life worthy of mention, but it is the harmonious whole that challenges our admiration. Humboldt says that “the aim of every man should be the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole.” As Jean Paul Richter puts it, “to make as much out of one’s self as could be made out of the stuff.”
A writer has said of Alfred the Great that “no other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the virtues of the ruler and of the private man. In no other man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little alloy.” It may be truthfully said of ALPHEUS FELCH that in him have been united the virtues of the good citizen, the upright lawyer and jurist, and the faithful legislator and executive.
Those elements of character which have distinguished him as a man have characterized his entire career, have contributed to the efficiency of his service to the State, and have dignified every station that he has been called upon to fill. The influence of such a life unconsciously permeates all life. Every step in such a career has been in the direction of moral and intellectual progress, and the advancement of the highest and best interests of the State.
We gratefully accept the portrait of Governor FELCH, and tender thanks to the Bar of Calhoun County for the courtesy that has resulted in this occasion.