James Moore Wayne: Southern Unionist

I

One of the Chivalry

ONE SUSPECTS that Richard Wayne, Esquire, was not wholly pleased with the idea of moving to Georgia in 1789. Charleston was a pleasant place, he must have thought, looking back upon thirty years of its trade, riches, magnificence, gayety, and dissipation. Those fine English churches, St. Philip’s, in whose churchyard his first-born slept, and St. Michael’s, of which he was a vestryman; the splendid brick dwellings along the Cooper River and the North Bay, with their Doric- and Ionic-columned porticoes and lovely gardens; the great State House near his factorage office on Broad Street; the gallant spectacle the topsail vessels made beyond the wharves near by, and a hundred other noble prospects—to say farewell to all this was not easy.

As a Yorkshire lad of eighteen or nineteen, Richard had come over to the new country in 1759.¹ According to a dubious family tradition, a commission had been purchased for him while he was working in a London banking house and he had sailed for America as a junior major in the Royal Welsh Fusileers. Little is known about Richard’s English ancestry. Apparently he belonged to the same stout stock from which General Anthony Wayne was descended. They were of the same family and through their lives intimate friends, says his son.² Settled in Charles Town, Richard prospered as a commission merchant and factor. A few years after his arrival he married Miss Elizabeth Clifford, of Colleton County, who was contemporarily described as an amiable young lady, with a genteel fortune.³ In the lacy ornateness of the portraiture of Jeremiah Theus, Elizabeth appears as a woman with something less of beauty than of the grand manner. Her family had been among the earliest settlers in South Carolina and she was prominently connected throughout the Province.

Richard’s troubles, political and financial, seem to have started with the American Revolution. At the beginning his sympathies appear to have been on the side of the Colonies, for he belonged to the South Carolina Regiment of Volunteer Militia. Indeed, his predilections for the American cause were such that he was named a member of a commission appointed by the General Assembly in 1777 to investigate the delay of some of the South Carolina troops in taking the oath of allegiance to the State. His name was subscribed to the verdict which directed those inimical to the rights and liberties of mankind to leave the State within a specified time.⁴

His solicitude for the rights and liberties of mankind proved evanescent. When the British besieged Charles Town in 1780, his loyalties underwent a strain—then a metamorphosis. A few days before the garrison surrendered, a detachment of the Queen’s Rangers found Richard at his house on his Goose Creek plantation some miles from the City, whither he had repaired. Seized as a prisoner of war, he was promptly paroled upon a promise to be forthcoming when called upon by the Comm in Chief or any Officer acting under his authority.⁵ But as far as Richard was concerned no call was needed. Anxiously desirous of establishing the British government, he was listed by the General Assembly as being among those who petitioned Sir Henry Clinton to be embodied, and to be permitted to serve as royal militia.⁶ This weakness for the strong side Richard transmitted, as will be seen, to at least one of his progeny.

Along with many other Tory residents of Charles Town Wayne was banished from the State by the General Assembly upon penalty of death without benefit of clergy if he returned. His property was declared confiscate. In spite of these legislative maledictions he continued to live in South Carolina after the British left. Probably through the influence of his wife’s connections his name was taken off the list of banishment in 1782 and the amercement of his property reduced to twelve per cent. Before many months had passed, he was relieved even from this penalty, though his disqualification for public office remained. Some years later, when an enemy reminded the Savannah public that he had been a Tory, Wayne defended himself in the local print with the statement: It was known, that I was a Britain born, and therefore just allowance made for my political misfortunes.⁷ More likely Richard had made a choice (as had most of the Tories in Charles Town) between American independence and his pocketbook.

Among his debts in South Carolina was a small loan from his speculator friend, Adam Tunno. Many years later, in a suit against Richard’s executors, Tunno testified that from the year 1784 until the year 1788 (when he left Charleston to reside in Savannah) Richard Wayne was frequently requested to pay and did promise to pay the said note dated 26 May 1781 for 100 pounds sterling, but in consequence of his contracted circumstances in life was incapable of performing such promise and repeatedly applied for and obtained indulgence from me on account of his being an old acquaintance and of other friendly motives.⁸ If the word of the plaintiff can be relied upon, it was a credit in London and Charles Town which he gave to Richard (who had no capital of his own) that enabled the latter to seek his fortune anew in Georgia.

The misgivings of a Charlestonian as to life in Savannah were perhaps not entirely justified. The houses, mostly wooden, barely extended, it is true, to South Broad Street, and the white population of the little riverside town, with its mosquito-breeding rice fields on three sides, numbered only 2300. But the transition from town to city was well under way. "Savannah, is, and ever will be, said a visitor of the period, a place of Opulance, fo long as human Nature shall require Food and Raiment, or, Commerce fpread her canvafs to the Wind."⁹ Many a vessel, dipping deep with the products of Georgia, cleared Cockspur Roads. James Jackson, a noted lawyer, was making £3000 a year from his practice. So was the energetic and equally partisan Thomas Gibbons, some of it perhaps a little questionably. Ere long a young man named Whitney would be tinkering around out at Widow Greene’s plantation with a cotton-ginning contraption which was to bring the South wealth, poverty—and civil war.

Savannah’s society was no longer a frontier affair. Less than two years after Richard’s arrival, President Washington with his party attended a ball there and was impressed by some ninety-six handsome ladies, elegantly dressed in infinite taste. Mr. Justice James Iredell traveling his circuit in 1792 wrote of receiving most agreeable courtesies from very genteel people and of dining abroad every day since I came.¹⁰

This was the Savannah to which Richard came in 1789 to start life over at middle age. His arrival was heralded in a local paper with the announcement: THE SUBSCRIBER has settled a plantation on Back River, which makes it convenient for him to reside in Savannah. As his planting interest will not occupy the whole of his time he intends to engage in the Factorage and Commission Business.¹¹ It was not long before a thriving business was being done at Wayne’s Wharf as well as at the store he opened in the city. Not the least part of this business was in human commerce. One of Richard’s first advertisements called attention to a cargo of Very Prime Slaves Just arrived from the river Gambia and some likely valuable country born slaves who could be bought for cash or produce.¹²

Sometime during the year 1790, the exact date being lost, the twelfth of thirteen children was born to Mrs. Wayne. He was named for an early governor of South Carolina with whom the Cliffords were connected. By the time James Moore Wayne was eleven years old the Wayne family was firmly established in a position of social, business, and political prominence in Savannah. His two sisters had married well-known gentlemen in the city. His father was now devoting most of his time to the profitable occupation of rice planting. No land on the river produced better crops, it was claimed, than the plantation on Argyle Island a few miles above Savannah.¹³ At Wayne Mountside some thirty-five slaves toiled the weary day from sun-up to sun-down while thirty more worked Wayne Hill plantation near by. A similar number labored on a farm in Scriven County.

The records of Richard’s estate indicate that six negroes served the house in town, a fine wooden dwelling standing on Pepper Hill at West Broad and Indian streets, overlooking the wharf. With its pictures of Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Pinckney, and Rutledge, the upstairs drawing-room suggested a distinctly federalist influence. Almost from the day of his arrival at Savannah, Richard had been active in politics, and in the ensuing decade he had held such offices there as justice of the peace, alderman, mayor pro tem, and the chairmanship of the Commissioners of Pilotage.¹⁴

The groundwork of James’s education was laid under the supervision of a private tutor named Mackay, who came to Savannah to live with the Waynes. His rapid progress in his studies, Wayne admitted later, was not at all surprising, as his lessons were enforced by his Irish pedagogue with suitable discipline.¹⁵ While he could not look back upon this period with complete equanimity, he fully acknowledged his indebtedness to this early schoolmaster. What he read on the side can only be surmised, but among the books in his father’s library were Chesterfield, Blackstone, Cicero, an account of the American Revolution, a life of Washington, a history of Europe, Gil Blas, and The Art of Speaking.¹⁶

At a very early age he was presented by Mr. Mackay as a candidate for the freshman class of the College of New Jersey, a favorite institution for young Georgia aristocrats. He was found qualified to enter but on account of his youth he was held back for a year, meanwhile continuing his studies under a tutor at the college. The faculty minutes show that he was enrolled in the freshman class on November 8, 1804, when he was only fourteen.¹⁷ Among his classmates were William Meade, who was to become a noted Virginia prelate; George M. Dallas, destined to be vice-president of the United States; Benjamin C. Howard, who would serve for a long time as reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States; and Richard S. Coxe, whose practice before that tribunal was for years the largest of all the lawyers in the country.

The course of study at the College of New Jersey was rigorous. In the freshman and sophomore years it included the Latin and Greek languages, arithmetic, geography, and the Roman antiquities, while Sundays were given over to the history of the Bible and the principles of the Christian religion.¹⁸ On the side Wayne took an active interest in a secret literary and debating club called the Cliosophic Society, in which he formed a number of close and lasting friendships.

In their junior and senior years the students were permitted to study in their own quarters. During this period young Wayne embarked on a course of desultory reading apart from his studies—in his words, read and wrote much from a desire to be distinguished for composition and in debate.¹⁹ Later he regretted these distractions since he gained little or no distinction in his regular studies. Diversions were indeed risky in a curriculum which featured such items as the following: Theology expounded so as to refute the objections to certain parts of the Sacred Writings by the aids of History, of Antiquities, and the Principles of a sound Criticism; Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion; Speculative and Practical Mathematics; Natural Philosophy; Astronomy; Chemistry and Natural History; the Elements of Logic, of Belles-Lettres, of History, and of Moral and Political Science.²⁰ In none of his studies except Logic, which he liked, did he acquire any degree of perfection.²¹

The great student insurrection of 1807 took place while James was at the college. Several boys had been suspended for repeated violations of the rules. One hundred and twenty-five of two hundred undergraduates signed a petition of remonstrance, the tone of which was quite offensive. The student-body was called together and peremptorily ordered to withdraw their names. At a signal from the ringleaders the rebellious Princetonians rushed noisily from the hall. They were promptly suspended, James among them.²² After a short time he was readmitted along with other less guilty students who were willing to acknowledge the error of their ways. Perhaps the experience impressed upon him lessons of obedience to constituted authority and the folly of rebellion.

He graduated in 1808 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, but as he freely acknowledged, without much distinction.²³ An incipient nationalism is reflected in a debate in which he took part during commencement. According to the faculty minutes, he upheld the affirmative side of the question: Would it be a good policy for the United States to maintain a large navy, at present? During his life he consistently supported that policy.

When he returned to Savannah, his educational defects were discovered by his friend, the Reverend Henry Kollock, and several months were spent, he says, in efforts to repair my mistake, under the instruction of two New-Haven graduates, who had passed through their course without committing my fault.²⁴

In the summer following his son’s graduation old Richard Wayne died, after a severe illness of four weeks, which he bore with true magnanimity.²⁵ James found it necessary to turn his thoughts more seriously to the study of the law which he had evidently been pursuing with a certain degree of casualness in the office of Mr. Noel, a distinguished Savannah attorney.

1. Family Papers of J. Randolph Anderson of Savannah, Georgia, and of Mrs. James E. Cooper of New Britain, Connecticut. For other biographical data see: J. G. B. Bulloch, A History and Genealogy of the Families of Bellinger and DeVeaux and Other Families (1895), pp. 85 f.; The Republican; and Savannah Evening Ledger, July 11, 1809; Municipal Mortuary Records, City Hall, Savannah, Georgia.

2. J. M. Wayne to A. A. Mayo, November 11, 1852. MS. Courtesy of The New-York Historical Society, New York City.

3. The South-Carolina Gazette; and Country Journal, September 19, 1769.

4. The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, III (1902), 113.

5. The originals of the two paroles signed by Wayne, dated May 4 and May 5, 1780, are among the Sir Henry Clinton Papers in The William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

6. The Statutes at Large of South Carolina, IV, 516, 519 f.; VI, 631. See also VI, 635.

7. Columbian Museum & Savannah Advertiser, October 14, 1796.

8. Deposition of Adam Tunno in the case of Tunno and McKenzie v. Executors of Richard Wayne, March Term, 1812. Judgment for the principal amount of the note was confessed by James M. Wayne, attorney, in 1816. A tradition handed down by Henry C. Wayne, Richard’s grandson, that Richard Wayne’s wife had sewn 4000 pounds in bank notes in his vest, enabling him to make a fresh start at Savannah, is at least interesting.—Family papers of J. Randolph Anderson, Savannah, Georgia.

9. John Pope, A Tour through the Southern and Western Territories of the United States of North America (1792), p. 81.

10. Griffith J. McRee (ed.), Life and Correspondence of James Iredell (1858), II, 346.

11. The Georgia Gazette (Savannah), September 24, 1789.

12. Ibid., November 19, December 10, 1789.

13. Advertisement in Columbian Museum and Savannah Gazette, December 1, 1817.

14. On September 30, 1789, Richard informed General Anthony Wayne that Electioneering seems to Run High here and advised him to come to town for the election because of his influence with the Northern Merchts.—Richard Wayne to Anthony Wayne. Anthony Wayne Papers, Book 19, p. 88. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

15. Hon. James M. Wayne, of Georgia …, a biographical sketch by John Livingston of New York, in United States Monthly Law Magazine, V (March, 1852), 382 ff. The same article is published in Livingston’s Biographical Sketches of Distinguished American Lawyers, I (1854), 158-75. An abridgment appears in George White’s Historical Collections of Georgia (1855), pp. 379-85. The information about Wayne’s early life was taken by Livingston from an autobiographical sketch written for the amusement of his children. Unfortunately it has been lost.

16. Appraisal of property of Richard Wayne. Records of Court of Ordinary of Chatham County, Georgia. 86 W’s.

17. Faculty Minutes, College of New Jersey, November 8, 1804. Records of Princeton University, Secretary’s Office.

18. John Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, II (1877), 64.

19. United States Law Magazine (March, 1852), p. 383.

20. Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, II, 57, 65.

21. United States Law Magazine (March, 1852), p. 383.

22. Faculty Minutes, College of New Jersey, March 31, 1807.

23. United States Law Magazine (March, 1852), p. 383. In 1849 the College of New Jersey conferred the Degree of Doctor of Laws on Wayne.

24. Ibid., p. 384.

25. Columbian Museum & Savannah Advertiser, July 13, 1809. Mrs. Wayne had died a few years before.

II

Attorney, Solicitor, and Proctor

THE ARISTOCRATIC young Georgian who presented himself to Judge Charles Chauncy at New Haven in the late summer of 1809 doubtless caught the fancy of that learned if somewhat crusty lecturer on jurisprudence. There was no denying the fact that James Wayne was a fine-looking boy. He was about five ten, of graceful carriage and bearing. His intelligent face, with ruddy complexion and strong features, was particularly attractive in animation. No second glance was needed to see that the brush was never spared on his clustering, brownish hair. The manners of the youth were as engaging as his appearance. A natural courtesy and reserve dispelled at once any suspicion of dandyism which fastidiousness of dress and an evident eye for the social graces might otherwise arouse. A model of manly beauty, and a Chesterfield in deportment, Charles C. Jones, Jr., said of him later, a befitting description even in his youth.¹

A letter written by a young Savannahian in 1811 is proof that his attractions were not lost upon feminine contemporaries. From England John Wallace wrote to his sister back home that he was glad to hear of Alfred Cuthbert’s election to the legislature. With the raillery at which young brothers are peculiarly adept he added: "James Wayne, you no doubt think, would be a better representative, and I agree so far with you, that he would do much better to please the Ladies, you must admit, in fact you have already convinced me of your extreme partiality for him, I have almost a mind to compose a very pathetic novel on the Occasion, wd do so but fear his penetration wd too easily see the characters I meant to represent."²

One evidently did not become Judge Chauncy’s pupil without considerable cross-examination. Neither his office nor his parlor was easy of access. I did not get into either, without much questioning of, ‘who I was’—’where I had been’—‘what I had done’—’why I came to him,’ Wayne reminisced.³ Having been accepted, he was lectured, to begin with, on the ethics of the profession. Several weeks were then spent on the civil law after which the common law was taken up with Hale and the English statutes (particularly those of Edward I) as the text.⁴ Concerning Judge Chauncy’s methods it was said: In legal science, his investigations were profound and original. He did not content himself with treasuring up a confused mass of forms and precedents. The practice of the law he delighted to reduce to the invariable principles of justice. The relations and connections of these, he traced in his lectures, with a kind of professional enthusiasm.⁵

The condition of his father’s estate (several suits had been filed by creditors against Richard’s executors) was the cause of young Wayne’s leaving New Haven sooner than he wished. He returned to Savannah near the close of the year 1810, bringing with him a complimentary certificate from Judge Chauncy. He was admonished not to consider himself a lawyer yet, but to continue to work as he had and his preceptor might yet hear that he was.⁶

On January 21, 1811, following an examination on the law in open court, Wayne took the oath before Judge Berrien faithfully to discharge my duty as Attorney, Solicitor and Proctor in the several Courts of Law and Equity in this State.⁷ He appears to have spent the next few months in the office of his brother-in-law, Richard M. Stites, familiarizing himself with practice and procedure in the Georgia courts. At the end of the year he opened his own office in a brick building on the Bay.⁸ Within a few weeks he formed a partnership with Samuel M. Bond, a young lawyer skilled in conveyancing. Their association continued until 1816 when the firm was dissolved. For the three succeeding years Wayne practiced alone.

Distinction at the Bar of Savannah was no easy achievement in that day and time. On its roster were men who would have gained distinction in the law anywhere. John Y. Noel was probably the leader, though there was little to choose between him and Charles Harris, a native of England, to whom no one ever referred save in terms of profound respect. After Noel’s death he was acknowledged by all as the head and ornament of the profession. Thomas U. P. Charlton, a judge of the superior courts at twenty-six, was a proud, independent spirit and a powerful jurist. In his nature there was a prodigality which reminded Wayne later of Daniel Webster, who also had no regard at all for money.⁹ Scarcely past thirty, John Macpherson Berrien was already a giant of the law. From him Wayne confessed that he learned a great deal of law, and how to use it in the management of a cause. A long and brilliant career in law and politics lay before Berrien. Other leaders of the Bar included William Stephens, judge of the United States district court; the talented William B. Bulloch, a politician of parts; industrious but sickly William Davies, who would hold both the federal and superior court judgeships for brief terms, and public-spirited Richard M. Stites. The latter died shortly at the age of thirty-seven as the result of exposure while riding the circuit but not before Wayne’s brother-in-law had achieved a reputation for ability, integrity and learning which the Savannah Bar still remembered seventy-five years later.¹⁰

Among the younger attorneys, George W. Owens, who had studied at London under the elder Chitty and Levi S. D’Lyon, an up-and-coming Jewish barrister, were preeminent. None of the lawyers who came along during the next few years was more popular than Richard Wylly Habersham. Political honors awaited him as well as Edward Fenwick Tattnall, an aristocrat to the finger-tips and a hero of the War of 1812. Richard R. Cuyler, soon to become Wayne’s law partner, would make a name for himself as a pioneer railroad executive. William W. Gordon, a West Pointer, began his legal career in Wayne’s office. Like Cuyler he turned his large talents to railroad development in Georgia. Young John C. Nicoll became judge of the superior court as well as the federal district court, being swept from the latter office years later by secession.

It was a palmy era of the legal profession, and a contemporary practitioner could well say: The fidelity, integrity, and I may add the talents of our Bar will bear a parallel with that of any other country.¹¹

Occasionally during these fledgling years the older lawyers permitted Wayne to assist in the handling of their cases. Whenever one of his own possessed particular difficulties he availed himself of their riper experience and knowledge, but never, he attests in an autobiographical sketch, without requesting them to become associated with him in the case.

He made a practice of taking down notes of the arguments of leading practitioners, a habit which in at least one instance proved very useful. While visiting New York in his third year at the Bar he happened to hear two eminent lawyers, Messrs. Wells and Emmett, argue an important case. He took notes of the points they made. Several years later a case involving