(Excerpt from James Speed: A Personality
A year and a hal...)
Excerpt from James Speed: A Personality
A year and a half later this work was eu trusted to the author by Hattie Bishop Speed.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
(Excerpt from James Speed: A Personality
A year and a ha...)
Excerpt from James Speed: A Personality
A year and a half later this work was eu trusted to the author by Hattie Bishop Speed.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Oration of James Speed: Upon the Inauguration of the Bust of Abraham Lincoln, at Louisville, Ky;, February 12, 1867 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Oration of James Speed: Upon the Inauguratio...)
Excerpt from Oration of James Speed: Upon the Inauguration of the Bust of Abraham Lincoln, at Louisville, Ky;, February 12, 1867
While at college he fell sick, and was cared for at the house of his uncle, who lived near Bardstown. When he recovered he rode home to his father on horseback, that being the mode of traveling in that day.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
James Speed was an American lawyer and federal attorney-general. He is noted for his appointment as an United States Attorney General by Abraham Lincoln.
Background
James was born on March 11, 1812 in Jefferson County, Kentucky, United States. He was the descendant of James Speed who emigrated from England and settled in Surry County, Virginia, about the end of the seventeenth century. His grandfather, also James, settled near Danville, Kentucky, about 1783. His father, John, settled in Jefferson County, at "Farmington, " five miles from Louisville, and married Lucy Gilmer Fry.
Education
He attended school in the neighborhood, and then at St. Joseph's College in Bardstown, where he was graduated probably in 1828.
Career
Speed spent 2 years after studies in the county clerk's office in Louisville. He then went to Lexington to the law department of Transylvania University. In 1833 he began the practice of law in Louisville and continued with a few interruptions as long as he lived.
In 1847 he was elected to the state legislature. In 1849 he was defeated for the state constitutional convention by James Guthrie, on the emancipation issue. His grandfather, James, had suffered defeat for a seat in the Constitutional Convention of 1792 on the same issue, for hostility to slavery long characterized the Speed family.
In 1849 Speed wrote a series of letters to the L ouisville Courier, in which he boldly assumed a position against slavery that definitely limited his political career until the outbreak of the Civil War.
For two years, from 1856 to 1858, in addition to his legal practice, he taught law in the University of Louisville. In the secession movement he took the typical Kentucky attitude - a desire to preserve the Union and at the same time avoid war. He was a member of the Union central committee, which was set up to merge the Bell and Douglas forces, and which on April 18, 1861, issued an address lauding Gov. Beriah Magoffin's refusal to respond to Lincoln's call for troops and advising the people to refuse aid to either side.
In 1861 he was elected to the state Senate as an uncompromising Union man, and he continued in this position until 1863. He became a principal adviser of Lincoln on affairs in Kentucky, and in the latter part of 1864 was appointed attorney-general.
As time went on he found himself increasingly out of harmony with Johnson, and on July 17, 1866, he resigned. The breaking point seems to have developed over the Philadelphia convention, when, in answer to a communication sent him by the committee in charge of promoting that convention, he declared that he thoroughly disapproved of it.
He then returned to Louisville and later bought a home near the city, "The Poplars. " In September 1866 he attended the Southern Radical convention in Philadelphia and was made its permanent chairman. There he made a bitter speech against Johnson, characterizing him as the "tyrant of the White House" - an expression he later changed to "tenant" .
In 1867 he received forty-one votes in the Kentucky legislature for senator but was defeated; the next year the Kentucky delegates gave him their votes for vice-president; in 1870 he ran for the national House of Representatives and was defeated.
As he grew older he reverted to the ways and beliefs of his earlier life. He continued his practice of law in Louisville and from 1872 to 1879 he taught law again in the University of Louisville.
A few years before his death he became an unwilling party to a controversy with Joseph Holt, over the question of President Johnson having received the recommendation for mercy in the Mrs. Surratt case. Against the almost frantic appeals of Holt to Speed to say publicly that Johnson saw the recommendation, Speed resolutely refused on the ground of the rule against divulging cabinet proceedings.
Speed's last public appearance was at Cincinnati on May 4, 1887, when he addressed the Society of the Loyal Legion, Address of Hon. James Speed before the . Loyal Legion (1888).
(Excerpt from James Speed: A Personality
A year and a ha...)
Politics
He was a Southerner and a conservative, a man agreeing with the President's policy of moderation toward the Southern states.
As long as Lincoln lived Speed held true to the President's policy.
Back in Kentucky he took a prominent part in Radical Republican activities. He early began to advocate negro suffrage and was soon as critical as Stanton of President Johnson. He opposed Johnson's veto of the Freedmen's Bureau bill and favored the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 1884 he supported Grover Cleveland for the presidency.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Lincoln could say of Speed in Washington, that he was "an honest man and a gentleman, and one of those well-poised men, not too common here, who are not spoiled by a big office".
Connections
In 1841 he married Jane Cochran, the daughter of John Cochran of Louisville. They had seven sons.