Memorial Address on Roscoe Conkling

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888. Excerpt: ... BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. The distinguished lawyer, orator, political leader and statesman, Roscoe Conkling, whose untimely death the whole country mourns, was born in the city of Albany, on the 3d of October, 1829, and was the youngest son of Judge Alfred Conkling, who was United States Judge for the Northern District of New York for more than a quarter of a century, or from 1825, when John Quincy Adams was President, to 1852. Judge Conkling was afterwards appointed Minister to Mexico, under President Fillmore, and died at an advanced age in the city of Utica, in 1874. He was a native of Amagansett, Suffolk county, in this State, and was of English descent. Roscoe Conkling received an academic education, and had the advantage of excellent training in a home of culture and refinement. The home schooling impressed upon him in his youth, the refining associations by which he was surrounded and the pure, moral atmosphere in which he was brought up, did not fail to influence him in later years; they were stamped into his life, became a part of it, and evidences of their influence were among his most distinguishing characteristics throughout a brilliant and eventful career. In 1846, at the age of seventeen, he entered, as a student, the law office of Spencer & Kernan, in Utica. It is not remarked of him that he was a plodder in his legal studies, although he gave to them as much attention and energy as might be expected of one so young in years. Of rhetoric, oratory and politics, he was passionately fond, and to them he devoted no small share of his time and attention. About the time of his admission to the bar, and when he was scarcely twenty-one years of age, he was appointed by Governor Hamilton Fish to fill a vacancy in the office of district attorney of Oneida...