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character, and such was the magnetism of his personal influence, that he was the most forceful personality on the bench. It was during the period above mentioned that the judicial system of Georgia was developed. The part which Lumpkin played in ex pounding and expanding the Judiciary Act of 1799, and subsequent legislation, was something like that of Chief-Justice Mar shall in the development of the Federal Constitution. No account of Judge Lumpkin would be complete which did not mention his Zealand his labors in behalf of temperance. Into that moral reform he threw his best energies. No subject outside of the eternal issues of reli gion affords so fine a field for eloquence as that; and Judge Lumpkin's thrilling speeches are still living by their echoes in the lives of thousands of his fellow-men. Hiram Warner. There is something romantic about the early incidents of Judge Warner's life. " A boy, some nineteen years of age, left his pa ternal home in New England to seek fortune and fame in a land of strangers. His only patrimony was the intellect the great Father had given him; his only assurance of success, the consciousness of its possession. The few dollars in his pocket when he embarked were lost in shipwreck; severe illness, nigh unto death, followed that disaster; the char ity of Sisters of Mercy at Charleston, where first he landed on Southern shores, nursed and restored the penniless lad to health; alone, unfriended, he wended his way to Georgia, and finding an acquaintance in the teacher of a school at Sparta, this acquaint ance was informed of his situation, and em ployed him as his assistant." After reviewing his career, Chief-Justice Jackson said in a memorial address : — "How does the lustrous life of this Yankee youth illustrate the old and maligned South! With what light does it shine on the page of her history, exhibiting to impartial generations and
nations that our fathers were never a hand'sbreadth behind their children in welcoming to homes and hearts all who came to dwell beneath her sun, to honor and elevate to office and emolu ment the men who deserved them! How com pletely does this light disperse the clouds and scatter to the winds the imputation on our ances tors that ancestral blood was the road to fortune and fame in their midst, and that a Southern aristocracy sat enthroned in the Southern heart, and dominated its pulsations, and dictated its preferments!" It is worthy of mention that at Greenville he was the preceptor in law of Lyman Trum bull, the eminent lawyer, judge, and senator of Illinois. Vigor was the distinguishing characteris tic of Chief-Justice Warner. It was the quality impressed by his massive frame, his powerful intellect, his resolute will. His physical tenacity was illustrated by a painful experience, horrcsco rcferens. In 1865 a party of bummers attached to the victorious Federal army, having been informed that Judge Warner had a large quantity of gold, hanged him, as a means of coercing from him a statement as to where it could be found. Thrice was this gentle experiment repeated; and after the third ordeal he was left for dead. Although he was then about sixty years of age, he survived the severe physical shock, and lived in robust health under the most exacting judicial labors until 1880. Judge Warner's decisions deal only with the point to be decided. They are exam ples of direct statement and strong reasoning. In the period after the war there was a craze among the people for relief legislation, relief from debts. Stay laws, large home stead exemptions, scaling ordinances (author izing juries to readjust liabilities on Confed erate and ante-bellum contracts), and other similar legislation were demanded by the popular will. The other members of the court at that time were in sympathy with the object of these laws, and held them con stitutional. Judge Warner strenuously anta gonized the whole system of relief legislation.
