APPENDIX C. REPORT OF COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO PREPARE A MEMORIAL OF THE EX-CHIEF JUSTICE, READ BY J. R. LAMAR, OF AUGUSTA. LOGAN EDWIN BLECKLEY. Jurist, philosopher, mathematician, poet. A colossal and unique figure. A born judge, whose first public utterance was a plea for the creation of the court of which he was to be an illustrious chief justice. - The constitutional amendment providing for a Supreme Court had been duly ratified in 1836, but the game of politics, with the determined hostility of those who opposed its organization, had prevailed, and, for several sessions the General Assembly met and adjourned without passing the act necessary to make the amendment effective. Living in the remote mountains of Rabun was a frail and sickly lad of thirteen - older than his years with the judicial instinct so strongly developed that he recognized the subtle principle which made the failure to act a positive wrong, and the pen which was destined to illustrate the pages of Georgia's judicial history, began its work with an article in the newspaper of an adjoining county, in which the boy joined issue with the General Assembly, and, passing all questions of expediency, maintained the proposition that the authority to create was a command to organize, and that the Legislature, in its non-action, was guilty of a positive violation of the Constitution of the State. This was not precocity, but maturity of thought, only equaled by the freshness of mind which characterized Judge Bleckley as a patriarch in years. Typical old age lives in the past, but this old man, with youthful heart and brain, keenly alive to the present, hopeful of the future, insisted (7 Ga. Bar Rep. 20) that he "intended always to be one of the young men;" acknowledged that he "depended for progress upon posterity," and while conceding that "conservatism was all well enough in its place, awaited hopefully the arrival of posterity to make the needed changes in the administration of the law." Of Judge Bleckley's ancestry, we know that his father was English and Irish, and his mother was of German descent. His great-grandfather, George Lutes, a native of Bavaria or Wertemberg, came first to Pennsylvania, and afterwards settled in North Carolina; thence he moved to Virginia where his paternal grandfather was born, and later moved to Georgia. His father, James Bleckley, married Catherine Lutes in 1823 and lived in Rabun County, Georgia, where, on July 3, 1827, Logan Edwin Bleckley was born. The influence of his German ancestry manifested itself in the subtlety and acuteness of his mind, the love of mathematics and metaphysics, and his unsurpassed facility in making clear the abstruse and abstract. The character of his father, however, more profoundly affected the son, who cherished for him the tenderest affection, and of whom (12 Ga. Bar Rep. 114) he wrote: "He had great solidity of personal character, and its basis was Truth. In word and in deed, he was a true man. Such was his estimation of veracity that he taught his children, as a standing precept, that theft, criminal and degrading as it is, is less abhorent than deliberate falsehood. The reason he gave was that society has more defenses against the violator of property than it has against a violator of the Truth, and that to reform the tongue is a more hopeless task than to restrain the hand." We find here the key-note of Judge Bleckley's character. In all his utterances, public and private, Truth is adored, deified. This abiding sentiment found a notable expression in a remarkable address on "Truth at the Bar," (3 Ga. Bar Rep., 107) which he begins by saying "Law is the scripture of Justice, the - Gospel of Right, and Truth is the Minister at its Altars. Error is a pretender to Holy Orders, a wolf in sheep's clothing, always striving to usurp the sacred office, or to share in the exercise of its functions. To exclude Error from the sanctuary, and to admit and keep Truth within, are objects of sedulous endeavor in every system of enlightened jurisprudence." James Bleckley was a farmer, and a man of great influence. in his community-successively sheriff, clerk, ordinary and judge of the County Court. The son's mental attainments would have fitted him for either a literary or a scientific calling, but the legal environments of the head of the mountain home naturally impelled him towards the bar, and, at an age when most of his companions were struggling with the multiplication table, this boy of eleven had begun the study of law. (22 Ga. Bar Rep., 143). It is doubtful if there is to be found in the biographies of lawyers or judges a parallel case, where one so young, undertook, of his own accord, a study so uninteresting to the youthful mind. Books were few. It was before the days of the Code, or Cobb's Digest. But it is of the essence of genius not to be deterred by difficulties. He says (4 Greenbag, p. 50,-1892) he "had contracted a relish for the Law, and, in his father's office, became familiar with legal documents and forms of procedure. The Statutes, strange to say, were pleasant reading, and, at intervals," he "read them with assiduity.' By the time he was sixteen, he had what he calls a "boy's acquaintance" with many legal topics. He was wholly selftaught, without even the Primer of the Law from which to get a clue to the maze. He constantly attended courts, and J. W. H. Underwood, Esq., having expressed the opinion that young Logan would make a lawyer, loaned him Blackstone's Commentaries. He never forgot this act of kindness, and many years afterwards, on the occasion of the memorial exercises in the Supreme Court in honor of Judge Underwood, the Chief Justice said: "On that day I received from him in the town of Clarkesville the two volumes which I now hold in my hand. I put them in my saddlebags and rode twenty-five miles to Clayton, and that evening, as soon as I reached home, I opened the first volume and read the first line of Blackstone. In April, 1846, less than two years after he sent me the books, he was one of the three legal gentlemen who certified to the usual legal fiction that I was well qualified for admission to the bar. I have here his certificate to that effect," (producing it and the two volumes). Those who know his absolute honesty, not only of conduct but of mind, his abhorrence of debt, or obligation in any form, will not be surprised that, in the same memorial, he said: "I want to observe, as I have produced the books, that, wishing to keep them, he kindly allowed me, long afterwards, to purchase and pay for them, and they thus became my property." (83 Ga., 818). Soon after his admission to the bar, he witnessed the imprisonment of a woman for debt. This so profoundly moved him that he prepared a bill to exempt women from arrest for debt, secured its introduction into the General Assembly, and its enactment into law thus making him the Georgia pioneer in the movement which gradually expanded, until it was declared by the Constitution that there should be no imprisonment for debt, and this ancient relic was entirely blotted from the laws of Georgia. (16 Ga. Bar Rep. 8). The young lawyer's success was not immediate. He says: (Greenbag, 4th Vol., p. 50) "Though for the two following years I had a monopoly of the minor practice, and a fraction of that which was of some importance, the litigation of one sparsely settled mountain county which fell to my share was too inconsiderable to break the continuity of my studies, or rather my legal meditations. My professional income for these two years, not counting insolvent fees, amounted to between $35.00 and $50.00 per annum. Having no means with which to establish myself elsewhere and wait for a clientage, I determined to suspend practice and engage in a more lucrative department of labor until I could accumulate a small capital. I sought and obtained employment as bookkeeper in the State Railroad office in Atlanta, and remained for three years - my compensation ranging from $40.00 to $66.00 per month. In the fourth year, I was transferred to Milledgeville, then the capital, being appointed one of the Governor's Secretaries, with a salary of $1,200.00. A new incumbent of the executive's chair was inaugurated in 1851, and both my health and my politics needing repairs, I returned to private life and opened an office in Atlanta. Clients gradually ventured within my chambers, and I soon had a moderate prosperity, due chiefly to acquaintance made in railroad circles during my three years' service as a railroad clerk." These extra-professional engagements ultimately proved of great value. He then laid the foundations for that astonishingly broad and accurate knowledge as to business and corporate methods which so often surprised those who knew him only as the writer of opinions so brilliant as to suggest that his talents lay in a literary, rather than in a professional field. Returning from Milledgeville to Atlanta, he continued in the practice of the law until 1856, when, although he was a Democrat, and that party was in the minority, he was elected Solicitor-General of the Coweta Circuit over his Whig competitors. He has left on record a most amusing account of his success, notwithstanding his inability to electioneer. He says that he was anxious to submit to election, but not willing to struggle for it, and one of the Whig candidates having been withdrawn, their whole vote came to his support. "I had no cause to anticipate this timely rally of my political adversaries to my assistance, and it surprised me almost as much as it gratified me, and it did gratify me profoundly, for when one is a candidate, it is a pleasant thing to be elected, even by the votes of the opposition." He served out his term of four years as Solicitor, and, in 1864, was appointed Reporter by the Judges of the Supreme Court. Owing to the war, and to the fact that, in a large measure, the courts were practically closed, two small volumes contain the report of the work of the Supreme Court for four full years. While the volume of his work was not great, his characteristic individuality expressed itself, and those who are familiar with his style will see it manifested in the Statement of Facts in 34 and 35 Georgia Reports, as, for example, in Jordan vs. Faircloth, 34 Ga., 47. He was particu |