WHEELER H. PECKHAM Tweed days when Mr. Peckham has not been a leader of the Reform Movement in the city of New York. He was untiring in his devotion to public duty, although he cared not in the slightest degree apparently for public applause, but was as indifferent to it as he was to official honors. He was president of the People's Munici pal League in 1893, and a leading member of the Committee of Seventy which elected Mayor Strong, and president of the City Club for many years. To enumerate his public services would require a review of the history of New York for the past fifty years. Any just estimate of Mr. Peckham's abil ities as an advocate must include most of the qualities that have distinguished great lawyers and advocates in all times — quickness of perception, comprehensiveness, analysis, memory, abstraction, and the power of generalization — these were parts of his natural equipment. But, perhaps, his most distinguishing and preeminent ability lay in his keen and quick perception of the vital point of a case and his extraordinary power of condensation and lucid statement. No one of his time surpassed or equalled him in this respect. He conveyed his clear thought in the purest and most unaffected English, seeming to have searched vocabularies for the fewest and most apt words with which his meaning could be expressed. His liter ary style was terse and epigrammatic, and often unintentionally picturesque, and was essentially modern. The writer remembers hearing Mr. Peckham make an argument in the Court of Appeals in a most important case against a formidable opponent, the late Colonel James, in twelve minutes, which, in the opinion of the lawyers who were present, could not have been more perfect and complete and convincing had he taken an hour. The title of the case was " Matter of Steinway (159 N. Y. 250)." It involved the common law power of a stockholder of a corporation to examine its books, and came up from a
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divided court. When Colonel James had concluded a very able argument for the appellant, there were twelve minutes left before the hour for adjournment. Mr. Peckham began as if he had the whole day before him, but speedily warmed up, as was his habit. The very marrow of the subject was laid bare at once, the fallacy of his opponent's argument exposed, the principle and the law of the case tersely expounded, and the argument rounded out and com pleted within the allotted time, so that if there had been no clock in the room to point the hour, by common consent the argument should have concluded when and where it did. It certainly was a remark able performance, and was the subject of much comment among the lawyers who came down to New York on the evening train that night. Mr. Peckham was forceful rather than "tactful" in argument. His method was to conceive the just principle of the cause, and planting himself squarely upon it to fight his way by irresistible logic and eloquence to the truth, as he discerned it in its applica tion. As an orator and an advocate he had few rivals. Always interesting and convincing, on occasion, when thoroughly aroused, he attained great heights of eloquence and power, carrying all before him. He was master alike of the fiercest invective, or the warmest and most inspired advocacy. An example of the former is the peroration of his speech against Judge Maynard, which he delivered at a meeting of the Bar of New York held in Cooper Union in 1888, as follows : "If Maynard is elected, it will mean that elections are not hereafter to be decided by popular vote, ascertained in the manner provided by law, but by the skill of the knave and the fraud of the cheat, and next, thereafter, by the man who commands the greatest physical force." Of an entirely different order of eloquence was the speech upon the death of James C.
