JAMES BRADLEY THAYER. 079 



JAMES BRADLEY THAYER. 



A Massachusetts man by ancestry, birth, and training, James 

 Bradley Thayer, our late vice-president, represented by the simplicity of 

 his life, his scholarly tastes and achievements, his practical good sense, 

 his public spirit, and generous sympathies, the highest type of the New 

 Englander. He was born January 15, 1831, in Haverhill, where his 

 father exercised a wide and wholesome influence as a journalist. He 

 entered Harvard College at the age of seventeen, having fitted himself 

 for the examinations after his fourteenth year, like his brother before 

 him, without the aid of a teacher. He ranked high in his class and 

 was the class orator. After an interval spent in teaching he entered 

 the Harvard Law School in 1854. Here he gave proof of his literary 

 and legal ability by winning, in his second year, the class prize for an 

 essay on the " Law of Eminent Domain." It is interesting to note that 

 his first legal essay, which was printed at once in the leading law 

 periodical of the day, was upon a topic in Constitutional Law, one of 

 the two branches of law in which he afterward acquired his great 

 distinction. 



An incident in his career at the Law School exhibited the character 

 of the man. The Harvard Corporation had appointed Judge E. G. 

 Loring to a professorship in the Law School. But the Board of 

 Overseers, on account of the Judge's decision, sending back to slavery 

 the fugitive slave Anthony Burns, refused to confirm this appointment. 

 The Southerners and their sympathizers in the Law School moved in 

 their parliament a vote of censure upon the Overseers. The motion 

 was opposed on various parliamentary grounds, but finally the majority 

 determined to put the vote through in disregard of orderly procedure, 

 and the Clerk was directed to call the roll of yeas and nays. Mr. 

 Thayer, who was Clerk, rose, and in a quiet but impressive manner 

 declined to be a party to this unparliamentary action, resigned his 

 office, and walked away from his desk. The motion was ultimately 

 carried, but Mr. Thayer's calm, dignified rebuke of their proceedings 

 robbed the victory of well-nigh all its glory even in the minds of the 

 victors. 



For nearly twenty years Mr. Thayer was active in the practice of his 

 profession, residing during the greater part of this time in Milton, where 

 he was conspicuous for his public-spirited interest in all that affected the 

 welfare of the town. 



