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PHELPS, EDWARD JOHN
(1822-1900), American lawyer and diplomat, was born on the 9th of July
1822 at Middlebury, Vermont. He graduated from Middlebury College in 1840,
was
a schoolmaster for a year in Virginia, and was admitted to the bar in 1843.
He began practice at Middlebury, but in 1845 removed to Burlington, Vermont.
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The man who makes no mistakes does not usually
make anything.
— Edward John Phelps |
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From 1851 to 1853 he was second comptroller of the United States Treasury,
and then practised law in New York City until 1857, when he returned
to Burlington. Becoming a Democrat after the Whig party had ceased to exist,
he was debarred
from a political career in his own state, where his party was in the
minority,
but he served in the state constitutional convention in 1870, and in
1880 was the Democratic candidate for governor of his state.
He was one
of the
founders of the American Bar Association, and was its president in
1880-1881. From 1881 until his death he was Kent Professor of Law in Yale
University.
He was minister to Great Britain from 1885 to 1889, and in 1893 served
as senior counsel for the United States before the international tribunal
at
Paris to adjust the Bering Sea controversy. His closing argument, requiring
eleven days for its delivery, was an exhaustive review of the case.
Phelps lectured on medical jurisprudence at the University of Vermont
in 1881-1883,
and on constitutional law at Boston University in 1882-1883, and
delivered numerous addresses, among them that on "The United States
Supreme Court and the Sovereignty of the People" at the centennial
celebration of the Federal Judiciary in 1890 and an oration at the dedication
of the Bennington
Battle Monument, unveiled in 1891 at the centennial of Vermont's
admission to the Union.
In politics Phelps was always Conservative, opposing
the anti-slavery
movement before 1860, the free-silver movement in 1896, when he
supported the Republican presidential ticket, and after 1898 becoming an
ardent " anti-expansionist." He
died at New Haven, Connecticut, on the 9th of March 1900.
Men of Vermont: Illustrated Biographical History
of Vermonters & Sons of Vermont
Edward John Phelps (1822-1900), of Burlington [Chittenden County, Vermont],
was born 11 July 1822 in Middlebury [Addison County, Vermont], son of Hon.
Samuel S. Phelps. He received his education at Middlebury college, graduating
in 1840, and studied law at the law school of Yale University, and in the
office of Hon. Horatio Seymour in Middlebury.
He was admitted to the bar in Addison County in December 1843, and after
something more than a year of practice in Middlebury, established himself
as a lawyer in Burlington. In 1851 the office of second comptroller in
the treasury was unexpectedly offered to Mr. Phelps by President Fillmore.
As its duties would not require a cessation of professional practice, he
accepted the office, and held it through Mr. Fillmore's administration.
He represented Burlington in the Constitutional Convention of 1870, and
was made president of the American Bar Association in 1881. Has been for
more than twenty years a trustee of the Vermont State Library. Was appointed
professor of law in Yale College in the same year, and gave a short course
of lectures before the law school of Boston University upon constitutional
law.
Mr. Phelps was a Whig while that party continued organized and active;
since it ceased to be he has regarded himself as an independent in politics;
in the main, however, he has voted for Democratic nominees. In 1880 was
a candidate of the Democratic party of Vermont for Governor, and received
the largest vote ever cast in Vermont for a Democratic aspirant to that
office. He has never cast his fortune or plumed his ambition in the line
of politics. In 1885 was appointed by President CLEVELAND United States
Minister to the Court of St. James. Was leading counsel for the United
States before the Behring Sea Board of Arbitration, which held its sessions
in Paris in 1893. Although the public performance of this most high professional
engagement was in the second Cleveland administration, his employment and
preparatory work in this great international lawsuit was in the time of
the Harrison administration.
The faculties and qualities by which he is chiefly known and regarded
have been as a lawyer. Yet not only in his arguments to courts and juries,
but also in his occasional addresses and his professional lectures, show
him extensively conversant, from scholarly study and extensive reading,
with a wide range of learning outside of the law, and deeply imbued with
the text and spirit of the best classics, and familiar with the current
literature of the day; one of the most cultivated and accomplished public
speakers; [has given addresses on] Chief Justice Marshall at Saratoga before
the American Bar Association in 1880; on American Legislation in 1882;
and on Judge Prentiss before the Vermont Historical Society in 1882. Was
president of the Bennington Battle Centennial in 1877. In August 1846 Mr.
[Edward John] Phelps was married to Mary, daughter of Hon. Stephen Haight,
of Burlington [Chittenden County, Vermont]. Of this marriage there are
surviving two sons and one daughter: Edward ; Mary, Mrs. Horatio Loomis,
of Burlington [Vermont]; and Charles Pierpoint.
Obiturary from Harpers Weekly
The Late E. J. Phelps
EDWARD JOHN PHELPS, who died on March 9, at New Haven, came of exceptionally
vigorous and effective American stock. The founder of the family in this country
was William Phelps , colonist, Puritan, and justice of the first
court held in Connecticut, who came from England in 1630, and founded the town
of Windsor in Connecticut. The list of his descendants who turned out to
be men of distinction is long and notable. One of them, Edward, was a member
of the General Court of Connecticut in 1744-5, and a large landholder. His
son John, a Revolutionary soldier, was the father of Samuel S. Phelps, jurist,
member of Congress, and United States Senator from Vermont. He in turn was
the father of Mr. Phelps who has just died.
Edward J. Phelps , born in Middlebury, Vermont, in 1822, was graduated at Middlebury
College in 1840, spent a year at the Yale Law School, continued his law studies
with Horatio Seymour, and was admitted to the bar in 1843. In 1845 he moved
to Burlington, where he practised his profession. For about three years, until
1854, during President Fillmore's administration, he was the second Comptroller
of the Currency. From that time until 1885, though active in public life as
an orator and a lawyer, he held no public office, but devoted himself to law,
and to services more or less closely allied to that profession. In
1880 he lectured on medical jurisprudence in the University of Vermont. In
that year, too, he was president of the American Bar Association, and the unsuccessful
candidate of the Vermont Democrats for Governor. In 1881 he became Kent Professor
of Law at Yale.
Though a man of proved capacity and scholarship, and of
wide and istinguished reputation as a lawyer, when President Cleveland,
in 1885, appointed him minister to Great Britain he was not widely known outside of his profession, so
that the appointment occasioned surprise. Its wisdom was amply justified. He
proved an exceedingly competent, acceptable, and successful representative
of the United States, and as a minister was very popular abroad, and sincerely
respected by the more discriminating of his own countrymen. He, and his wife
as
well, during their stay in London, contributed in a very important degree to
the work in which Mr. Lowell had preceded him, and which Mr. Lincoln and Mr.
Bayard continued, of bringing the British and the American peoples into more
cordial and sympathetic relations. It is on the marked success of his career
in London that Mr. Phelps 's reputation as a public man chiefly rests. That
success was attained by very solid qualities, of learning and character, joined
to attractive personal traits, sound judgment as to men and the merits of disputed
questions, and social gifts of unusual charm.
When he came back from London, Mr. Phelps resumed work at Yale, where, in 1887,
a professorship of law was established for him by Mr. J. S. Morgan. He continued
to perform its duties up to the time of the illness which ended his life, finding
leisure also for various important writings on constitutional and governmental
subjects, and for the expression of his views from time to time on pressing
matters of public policy. In 1893 he was appointed senior counsel of the United
States in the Bering Sea controversy, and made the closing argument for the
American side before the Court of Arbitration in Paris. Later, as a
distinguished American, his good offices were engaged to assist the settlement
of the dispute which arose with Lord Dunraven over his attempt to capture the America's cup.
Mr. Phelps lived part of the year at New Haven, but never gave up his residence
in Vermont. He strongly disliked wars, condemned Mr. Cleveland's Venezuela
message, and opposed the war with Spain and the expansion
policy which followed it. To the free-silver mania and the candidacy of Bryan
he was also unalterably opposed from the start, so that the closing years of
his life found him one of the considerable number of Democrats who were strongly
disaffected to all existing political conditions.
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