He was not an orator, did not cultivate
his voice, did not labor hard; but he had the power to penetrate to the
very center of the subject, discover the chief point, and rally all his
forces there. If he was defending a case, he would turn his attention to
some other than the main point, in order to let the prosecution assemble
its powers at the wrong place. With a military eye he saw the strong and
weak positions, and, like Rembrandt painting, he threw all his light on
the right spot. The character of his argument was a perspicuous, easy,
onward, accumulative, reasoning statement. He had but one gesture--to
lift up his hand and bring it down on the place before him constantly.
He discarded fancy or poetry in his arguments. William Wirt said of him,
in a sentence worth committing to memory as a specimen of good style in
the early quarter of this century: "All his eloquence consists in the
apparent deep self-conviction and emphatic earnestness of his manner;
the corresponding simplicity and energy of his style; the close and
logical connection of his thoughts, and the easy graduations by which he
opens his lights on the attentive minds of his hearers. The audience are
never permitted to pause for a moment. There is no stopping to weave
garlands of flowers to hang in festoons around a favorite argument. On
the contrary, every sentence is progressive; every idea sheds new light
on the subject; the listener is kept perpetually in that sweetly
pleasurable vibration with which the mind of man always receives new
truths; the dawn advances with easy but unremitting pace; the subject
opens gradually on the view, until, rising in high relief in all its
native colors and proportions, the argument is consummated by the
conviction of the delighted hearer.
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