Lawyers know that those who are almost invincible before a referee,
auditor, chancellor, or the full bench, are often failures before a
jury. Nothing tests or taxes a lawyer's nerve, knowledge of men, tact,
readiness, fertility in resource, and the power of reconstruction or
combination, like a jury trial, and he only who has been through
it--unless it be the woman who is so unfortunate as to be his wife--can
fully appreciate the strain of the minute and laborious preparation
which precedes, the anxious days without food and nights without sleep
which attend the progress of the trial, and the collapse after the
verdict, especially if it be an adverse one, when a young practitioner
is pitted against one of the leaders. It is a hard experience; but it
schools him in his work, and enures him to the hardships of campaigning.
Mr. Bryant tried his first cause before a jury, against Mr. Quincy, and
won. The veteran congratulated his youthful opponent and predicted his
success at the bar. At the next term he was pitted against his old
instructor, Mr. Pike, and one of the judges wrote his father a note
highly complimenting the efforts of the son in that important and
exciting trial.
In 1855, Mr. Bryant removed to Concord and entered into partnership with
Lyman T. Flint, Esq., who had assisted him at New Hampton in fitting for
the sophomore year. His practice soon extended to Belknap and
Hillsborough, while he retained his hold in Merrimack and upon his old
clients in Grafton, where he attended the courts as before.
Mr. Bryant had hitherto acted with the Democratic party, in whose faith
he had been reared, but in 1856, in common with thousands more, in the
whirlwind which swept the North after the passage of the Nebraska bill,
and the troubles which had arisen in Kansas, he supported by voice and
vote the nomination of John C. Fremont, speaking in all the large towns
and in nearly every county in the state. From that time until he left
the state in 1860, he probably made more stump-speeches than any other
man in it. In 1857 he was elected representative from ward six in
Concord, was re-elected in 1858 and 1859, and was speaker the last two
years. He originated and carried through, against a violent opposition,
the act making parties witnesses. At this day the act seems eminently
proper; but then it was regarded by many as portentous of evil,
subversive of social order, and revolutionary in the extreme. Its
constitutionality as applied to pending suits was affirmed in Rich _vs._
Flanders (39 N. H., 304), against the dissent of two of the six judges,
Chief-Justice Bell and Judge Bellows, who, as a member, had strenuously
opposed its passage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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