But he was a leader of leaders.
When in 1848 he left the Whig Convention in Philadelphia,
an assembly flushed with the anticipation of National triumph,
declaring, amid the jeers and hisses of its members, that
the Whig Party was dead--a prediction verified within four
years--down to the election of Lincoln, in 1860, he was in
Massachusetts a powerful influence. He was a great advocate,
a great judge, a great counsellor. He was in my judgment
a greater intellectual force than any other man in his time,
Daniel Webster not excepted. It was a force before which
Webster himself more than once recoiled. I knew him intimately
and was, I believe, admitted to no inconsiderable share of
his confidence. But there is no space here to do justice
to my reverence for his noble character.
On the whole, the most successful of the Worcester Bar, in
my time, in the practice of his profession, was Emory Washburn.
He was a man of less intellectual power undoubtedly than either
of his great contemporaries and antagonists, Allen, Merrick,
or Thomas. Yet he probably won more cases, year in and year
out, than either of them.
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