He was a Puritan of the old school. He made a vigorous but ineffectual attempt in Connecticut to enforce the Sunday laws. His death was caused by his exertions in resisting the removal of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia, a removal accomplished in violation of the Constitution and of public faith. The Supreme Court of the United States declared the law of Georgia unconstitutional. But Georgia defied the mandate of the Court, and it was never executed. The missionary agent was imprisoned and died of his confinement. Mr. Evarts said, "There is a court that has power to execute its judgments." I told this story to Horace Maynard, an eminent member of Congress and a member of the Cabinet. Mr. Maynard said, "There was never a prophecy more terribly accomplished. The territory from which those Indians were unlawfully removed was the scene of the Battle of Missionary Ridge, which is not far from the grave of Worcester, the missionary who died in prison. That land was fairly drenched with blood and honeycombed with graves." Mr. Evarts edited the _Panoplist,_ a very able magazine which powerfully defended the old theology against the Unitarian movement, then at its height. A well-known writer, Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, published a short time ago a sketch entitled, "The Greater Evarts," in which he contrasted the career of Jeremiah Evarts with that of his brilliant and delightful son. Whether that judgment shall stand we may know when the question is settled, which is to be answered in every generation, whether martyrdom be a failure. Among the inmates of my grandfather's household in my mother's childhood and youth was Roger Minott Sherman. He was the son of the Reverend Josiah Sherman, my grandfather's brother, a clergyman of Woburn, Massachusetts, where Roger Minott was born. His father died in 1789. My grandfather took the boy into his household and educated him and treated him as a son, and just before his death gave him his watch, which is now in the possession of a son of General Sherman. Roger Minott Sherman was unquestionably the ablest lawyer in New England who never obtained distinction in political life, and, with the exception of Daniel Webster and Jeremiah Mason and Rufus Choate, the ablest New England ever produced.* [Footnote] * See Appendix. [End of Footnote] Roger Minott Sherman's father died in 1789. The widow wrote to some of her friends to see what assistance could be obtained to enable her son to continue his studies at Yale. It was apparently in response to this appeal that Mr. Sherman wrote the following letter to his nephew. NEW YORK, April 28, 1790.