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JOSEPH P. BRADLEY.

1813-1892.

BY

HORACE STERN,

of the Pennsylvania Bar; Lecturer in the Law Department of the University of Pennsylvania.

1

N anecdote is narrated of Joseph P. Bradley's 1 childhood which may or may not be true, but which at least effectively illustrates one of the most prominent characteristics of his maturity. When he was first learning to read, his mother, in reply to his inquiry, told him that there were twentysix letters in the alphabet. With the respect due to such a source of information the boy felt quite sure that this statement was accurate, but nevertheless nothing but the certainty acquired by personal examination would satisfy him. Accordingly he scanned the largest volume he could find in his father's library and patiently perused page after page to see whether he could discover any letter which was not included in the list of twenty-six which had been furnished him. It is needless to

1 The "P" does not represent the initial letter of a name. Bradley's baptismal name was Joseph. His father's name was Philo, and Bradley adopted the "P" probably merely as a patronymic.

add that, as the result of this minute and painstaking investigation, he finally accepted the number given as the correct one.

The quality which most marked Bradley both as a lawyer and as a judge was thoroughness in investigation. He was of all the eminent judges who have sat upon the bench of the federal Supreme Court the most scholarly and the most profound. It may be and no doubt is true that many excelled him in that peculiar attribute of some jurists which is usually designated as "legal instinct." For example no one had a more unerring power of intuitive judgment than Bradley's associate Mr. Justice Miller. But Bradley was infinitely painstaking, exceedingly cautious, and learned as no other American jurist has been. In any biographical narrative of the lawyers and judges of the United States it would not be improper to characterize him as preeminently the scholar of the American bar.

The success which Bradley attained he gained by hard work. No advantages of family wealth or position were his; no environment was ever less conducive than his to any easy path to fame and glory. His early education he wrested from the humblest of country schools; his living he eked from the most barren of hillside soils. His boyhood was one of wretched poverty and and exacting physical labor. Only an indomitable will, a lofty ambition and a remarkable capacity for work opened for him the door that leads to that greatest of all successes-a life

filled with the ability to serve, and richly utilized for the welfare of his countrymen.

As early as 1638 his paternal forefathers migrated from England and settled in New Haven. His great-grandfather participated in the Revolutionary War, and his grandfather in the War of 1812. For generations his ancestors had followed farming for a livelihood, moving in 1791 to Berne in Albany County, New York, where Bradley, on March 14th, 1813, was born. He was the oldest of eleven children, and his early years spent on his father's farm were hard and arduous. For a few months each winter he attended the country school, supplementing the meager education thus gained by a diligent study of any and every book which came within his grasp. From very childhood he had a passion for reading and study, an avidity for knowledge that ceased only at the grave. The crops of the paternal farm were all too scant to support a large family and Bradley helped out the financial deficiencies by cutting wood from the slopes of the Helderberg Mountain, burning it into charcoal and peddling it around the streets of Albany. Spring, summer and autumn, he worked as a laborer on the farm. At fifteen he added to his employments that of teacher in the winter school, and for five years earned a little money in this capacity while continuing his studies, especially mathematics and surveying for which he had a great fondness. His labors, however, were so irksome and he was so eager to improve his con

dition, that he determined to go down the river to New York and try there to obtain a position. But at this time he met the Reformed Dutch clergyman of the precinct who took an interest in him and offered to teach him the rudiments of Latin and Greek. Bradley gladly availed himself of the opportunity and in this way prepared for entering college.

In September, 1833, there came to Rutgers College at New Brunswick, New Jersey, a most peculiar looking young man, awkward in his manners, and clad in a suit of a nut-brown color which had been wholly woven by his mother on the home farm. At first, by reason of these things, the laughing-stock of his companions, he soon became the object of their respect and admiration. Advanced by his scholarship to a higher grade, he became the classmate of many who in later years attained no small measure of distinction, such men as Cortlandt Parker, the eminent lawyer of Newark and Bradley's lifelong friend; Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, afterwards Secretary of State; and William A. Newell, subsequently Governor of the state of New Jersey. Even among such rivals Bradley forged to the front, meanwhile supporting himself by teaching. Graduating in 1836, he taught for a short time in an academy at Millstone, Somerset County, New Jersey, and became principal there of the school. At this time his intention was to devote himself to theology, but his college friends, impressed by his manifest ability,

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