When he left the Cabinet, Judge Black was poor. He had virtually to begin anew his career at the bar. He located his residence at York, Penn., because it was a point accessible to Washington, convenient to the capital of his own State, and not remote from the large cities of Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia. He was glad for the time being to accept the position and salary of reporter for the United States Supreme Court (1 and 2 Black). His official assertion of the rights of the California settlers had, however, directed to him a special class of lucrative practice; it flowed in upon him so unexpectedly that to his surprise and satisfaction he suddenly found his time fully occupied and his labors able to command enormous fees. Clients with "retainers like a king's ransom" came to him unbidden. Out of the case of the New Idria Quicksilver Mine alone he realized $160,000 fees; and some of his finest forensic efforts were made in this line of cases. His daughter[1] relates that after the Supreme Court had decided the Osage Land case in his favor, by which the homes of the inhabitants of five counties in Kansas were saved to them, he sent this telegram:—
"Opinion by Davis. Miller affirmed. Lawrence sustained. Shannon honored. Peck glorified. Justice vindicated. Truth triumphant. Settlers protected. The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth."
Lawrence, Peck, and Shannon were his colleagues. Lithographs of that telegram were scattered broadcast among the people whose titles had been involved. Their gratitude was his chief compensation.
Relieved from all apprehensions of for tune by the profitable practice he soon acquired, he freely and fearlessly indulged his natural taste for disputation, for the vigorous defence of what he conceived to be endangered public rights, and for the aggressive denunciation of public wrongs. He abandoned in a measure—if indeed he ever pursued—the practice of the law for private gain. For nearly twenty years before his death he never had any office except in his hat. He practised in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Harrisburg, in the highest State and Federal courts, and in some of the county courts of Pennsylvania, when ever large interests claimed his varied talents. He was not only regardless of the accumulation of money, losing large fees, his biographer tells us,[2] by some clients whom he indulged, and through others who swindled him; but he never kept a book or account of any kind, and made no charges. After his death some clients came forward and paid large fees, against whom he had left no trace of obligation. Often in the enjoyment of his splendid rural estate at Brockie—just outside the town of York—he refused for weeks to even break the seals of his correspondence, lest it might involve his withdrawal from the delight he took in the green fields, sparkling waters, wide-branching oaks, the vineyards and orchards with which his noble homestead was adorned.
All the while he was keenly alert to every question of public interest, and his services were freely and gratuitously given in the courts, in the public prints, in council, and on the hustings to the support of any cause that to his mind involved the rights of the public or jeopardized individual liberty. His famous "Galaxy" articles addressed to Judge Hoar, Henry Wilson, and Charles Francis Adams, Jr.; his stinging open letters to Garfield and to Stoughton,—take place in political polemics with the "Junius" papers. They are masterly specimens of a vigorous style. His famous eulogy on Chief Justice Gibson, 7 Harris (19 Penn.) 10, who, "at the time of his death, had been longer in office than any contemporary judge in the world, and who in some points of character had not his
