(In the absence of any direct sketch of Captain Leffingwell's life, extracts from the action taken by the Chicago bar and a eulogy later delivered before the Supreme Court of Illinois, and a portion of the tribute rendered him before the Supreme Court of Iowa by one of his nearest friends, are presented below. And these pages, it should be further explained, are printed at the close of the biographical notices because the copy was received too late for insertion according to company and rank.)
On September 3d, 1884, Hon. William Barge, who was appointed by Judge Dickey, the chairman of the meeting of the Chicago bar, to present the resolutions passed at that meeting relating to the death of Judge Leffingwell to the Supreme Court, in performing that duty said :
“IF YOUR HONORS PLEASE — I have been directed to present the following memorial and resolutions, adopted at a meeting of the Chicago bar, and ask that they be made a part of the records of this Court:
“‘William Edward Leffingwell, a member of the Chicago bar for the last ten years, has been removed by death from our midst. In his day he was one of the ablest and most eminent lawyers of the Western States. He went into Iowa at the age of seventeen years, when Iowa was a Territory. At an early age he became the foremost lawyer of his State. Among the public positions held by him were those of Presidential Elector, Judge of the District Court of the district in which he lived, and President of the Senate of the State, and in the late war he commanded a company of Iowa volunteers. As a lawyer he was well known not only through Iowa but Illinois also, and was one of the most eloquent advocates and successful counsellors of his day. He was a lawyer of learning in his profession, distinguished also for a high degree of scholarly attainments, and was respected by the courts, honored by the members of the profession, and loved by his clients and friends. He was a man of great kindness of heart, great nobility of nature, and his inborn honesty, everywhere exhibited, gave him a character for integrity in and out of his profession for which he will long be remembered.' • • •
“Judge Leffingwell was born in New London, Connecticut, on the 9th day of October. 1822. His educational advantages were extremely poor. He never attended school after he was twelve years old, but his vigorous mind, aided by an unquenchable thirst for useful knowledge, surmounted all obstacles, and he soon became a scholar and a cultured gentleman. At the age of seventeen he came west, and selecting the Territory of Iowa as the place of his future home, he became a student in the law office of Judge Hastings, in Muscatine, and after pursuing the required course of study was admitted to the bar, before that Territory became a State. Entering at once upon the practice of the law, he soon achieved the highest position in his profession, and constantly maintained it to the day of his death. His fame as a lawyer was not confined to his own State, but extended throughout the entire northwest. No ordinary man could have risen to this elevation, and no great man without incessant labor gained such honorable distinction at a bar containing upon its rolls such names as Hastings, Dillon, Knox, Manning, Arrington and Wallace.
“His person was tall, well formed and erect, and his presence majestic; his voice silver-toned and melodious, and his manner of presenting a case clear, logical and eloquent. He was an orator, and as an advocate had few equals and no superiors.
“When his country was in danger, near the commencement of the late war, he offered his life in her defense, and rendered valuable services on the fields of battle while in command of a company of Iowa cavalry, which he had been largely instrumental in recruiting for that service.
“But he is gone. His familiar face, and kind voice, and generous hand, we will see, and hear, and clasp no more forever. Stricken down in the street in Chicago several years since, by paralysis, from which he never fully recovered, and receiving a second and third attack of the same disease last spring, he died on the 13th of August, 1884, in Lyons. Iowa, surrounded by his wife and children, whose loving hands did all that earthly hands could do to ameliorate his sufferings and wipe the death-damp from his aching brow. His warfare of life is ended; his last cause tried; and he appears for judgment in the court from which there is no appeal, and in which there is no error. And I can but now say for myself and his many sorrowing friends — just judge, great lawyer, and true patriot, hail and farewell!"
Hon. L. A. Ellis, of Lyons, represented the Clinton county bar, the county of Judge Leffingwell's residence, before the Supreme Court of Iowa, and from his eulogy the following is quoted :
“MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONORS — I had an extended and intimate acquaintance with the Hon. Wm. E. Leffingwell, as a townsman and neighbor. When I came to the bar and became a resident of this State, he was in the meridian of his life and fame. He had already participated in the legislation of the State; had presided on the District bench of the Seventh Judicial District, and had won his way to a first place as an advocate and jurist, among those who were qualified to adorn any bar in the country.
"As a friend he was generous and magnanimous, and no sacrifice was too great for those in distress who appealed to him for help. Like the great cardinal, he might be
“‘Lofty and sour to them that loved him not,
But to those men who sought him, sweet as summer.'
"He may have had his failings and enemies — who of us has not? — but now that he is gone, even the tongue of criticism, that might aim its arrows at the living, will respect the maxim — De Mortuis nil nisi bonum.
“Take him all in all, as he went in and out before us, it is not extravagant eulogy to say he seemed
“‘One upon whom every god had set his seal
To give assurance of a man.'
“Standing here in this Court to-day, where he has so often stood, in the presence of your Honors, who have so often granted him audience as an oracle in the temple of justice, we observe no imperfections, but rather treasure his memory as a star in our profession of the first magnitude, and regret that it has so soon gone below the horizon to reappear no more to the gaze of men.
“His career was cut short by a stroke of that disease which so frequently assails men subject to great mental strain and exhaustion.
“His work is done, and nobly done: and such a life is more than the mere dull round of many years.
“‘We live in deeds not years, in thought not breath,
In feelings not in figures on the dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs; he most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.'
"May we not hope, as Judge Leffingwell did. that 'the grave is not the goal,' and that the soul, so capable of grasping intangible things, and living in the world of thought while cumbered with the tenement of clay, is as imperishable as its Author; and that in more congenial realms, reunited, we will realize that complete development, happiness, and fruition, which, while they ever haunt our aspirations, always elude our grasp in this world."
SOURCE: Charles H. Lothrop, A History Of The First Regiment Iowa Cavalry Veteran Volunteers, p. 352-5
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