Memoir, autobiography and correspondence of Jeremiah Mason
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Jeremiah Mason was an American lawyer and United States senator.
Background
Jeremiah Mason was born on April 27, 1768 in Lebanon, Connecticut, the sixth of nine children of Col. Jeremiah Mason and his wife, Elizabeth (Fitch) Mason, and fifth in direct descent from Maj. John Mason, 1600-1672, the famous Indian fighter and conqueror of the Pequots. His father, except for some years in the Revolutionary army, was a farmer, occupying land originally deeded to his family by Uncas, the Mohican chief.
Education
After two years of preparation under Nathan Tisdale, Jeremiah entered Yale College in 1784, graduating with distinction in 1788. A year of legal study with Simeon Baldwin, in New Haven, was followed by two years in the office of Stephen Row Bradley, in Westminster, Vt. After several years of practice in small towns in Vermont and New Hampshire, he moved in 1797 to Portsmouth, N. H. , then the largest city in the state.
Career
It has been said that, from 1805 to 1808, the number of original entries made by him at any court session was larger than that of all the other attorneys in Portsmouth together. With the arrival of Daniel Webster in Portsmouth in 1807, Mason had keener competition, and the two men were soon retained on opposite sides in nearly every important case in Rockingham County. Webster, who was inclined to be rhetorical and grandiloquent, learned much from Mason, who was direct, colloquial, and economical of speech. Furthermore, Mason, through his thoroughness and earnestness, compelled Webster to exert himself to the utmost. The latter often testified to his indebtedness to Mason for what he had learned from him in courtroom pleadings, and more than once expressed the opinion that he was the greatest lawyer he had known. Although Mason, like Rufus Choate, really preferred law to public life, he was drawn inevitably into political affairs. In 1802 he was appointed attorney-general of New Hampshire, serving acceptably in that capacity till 1805. Elected in 1813 to the United States Senate by the Federalist party, he joined with Webster who was then in the House of Representatives in opposing the War of 1812 and criticizing the policies of the administration. A conservative by temperament, he disliked Jefferson's theories of government and found congenial friends in such senatorial colleagues as Rufus King and Christopher Gore. He resigned his seat in June 1817, disgusted with the hopeless decline of his party and unwilling to be longer separated from his family.
For several terms (1820, 1821, 1824) he sat in the New Hampshire legislature, where he assisted in revising the legal code of that state. In 1824 he was again a candidate for the United States Senate, but was defeated in the legislature. He declined several important positions on the bench, including that of chief justice of the highest court of New Hampshire (1816), choosing instead the more active life of the courts. Mason was associated with Webster and Jeremiah Smith in the earlier stages of the so-called Dartmouth College Case, and his arguments were used freely by Webster before the United States Supreme Court in 1819. During the summer of 1828, he reluctantly accepted the presidency of the Portsmouth Branch of the United States Bank. Some of his policies aroused the antagonism of certain strong adherents of President Andrew Jackson, notably Isaac Hill, then assistant comptroller of the treasury through a recess appointment, and a movement for Mason's dismissal was initiated; but President Nicholas Biddle of the Bank refused to listen to the partisan protests of the Jacksonians and reappointed Mason. He removed in 1832 to Boston, where he practised actively for six years, accumulating a considerable fortune. He retired at the age of seventy.
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Membership
member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives
Personality
Mason was of unusual stature, being six feet, six inches in height. His stooped shoulders, awkward manner, and slow movements made him appear sluggish, and his handsome face, except for his piercing and vigilant eyes, was not immediately impressive. In the courtroom, however, he was transformed. His homely phrases and provincial pronunciation, to a large extent deliberately adopted, caught the attention of the jury, and he held them by the clearness and sincerity of his arguments. He had a gift for cross-examination, and was a master of sarcasm. The testimony of Webster, Choate, and Joseph Story bears evidence to the energy and sagacity of his mind and places him among the greatest lawyers of his time. In character he was generous, high-minded, scrupulously honest, and deeply religious. Retaining his intellectual powers almost to the last, he died in his eighty-first year and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. His wife survived him by almost ten years.
Quotes from others about the person
"no other man ever tried so many cases and lost so few, in proportion to the whole number that he tried".
Connections
In November 1799 he married Mary Means, daughter of Col. Robert Means of Amherst, N. H. Five sons and three daughters were born to them.