by Robert F. Mooney

Charles O'Conor in Nantucket

11

by

Robert F. Mooney

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, the entire public debt of the Town of Nantucket was paid off by one man, the eminent retired lawyer, Charles O'Conor of New York, who spent his last years and his last public activities on the Island. A century later, the name of Charles O'Conor is all but forgotten and his famous home and library have disappeared, but the story of this illustrious man and his connection with Nantucket are worth remembering.

Charles O'Conor was born in New York in 1804, the son of Irish parents who had immigrated to America to find religious and political freedom following the Act of Union with Great Britain. From his father, Thomas, a noted Irish patriot and scholar, Charles received most of his education at home. With only six months of formal schooling, he became a master of the classics, foreign languages, and the traditions of Irish and American history. His father's brilliance could not relieve the family from poverty, and Charles found that the poor Irish in America needed their own legal advocates to secure the benefits of American justice.

Living through an era when Irish Catholics were victims of prejudice in the society and professions of New York, he began the study of law as an apprentice in various law offices where he worked by day and studied by night in the law libraries. He developed a prodigious memory, and it was claimed he read the entire span of Blackstone's Commentaries not once, but twice. He was admitted to the Bar at the age of twenty and although the rule required three years' service as attorney before attaining the privileged title of counsellor, he achieved that distinction in three months. At the New York Bar, he rapidly gained an immense reputation as a legal scholar, while upholding the highest degree of public responsibility in handling unpopular causes and representing the public interest. One judge remarked of O'Conor, "I have often heard him state the case of his adversary with greater clearness and force than the adversary was able to state it himself".

The turbulent political times drew the eminent attorney into the public affairs of the day. He was a member of the convention to revise the New York Constitution and was often mentioned as a candidate for Attorney General of the United States, a post he declined. In 1872, he was nominated by a splinter group of the Democratic Party known as the American Party or "Straight-Out Democrats", to run for the Presidency against U. S. Grant and Horace Greeley. O'Conor made no

The Honorable Charles O'Conor

CHARLES O'CONOR IN NANTUCKET 13

campaign but received 29,489 votes, together with the honor of becoming the first Catholic to run for the highest office in the land.

Despite his fame and growing fortune, Charles O'Conor continued to maintain his interest in the last of his ancestors. He visited Ireland and studied the history of his family, tracing his ancestors back to Roderick, the last King of All Ireland in 1200 A. D. He commented bitterly on the conditions in Ireland during the Great Famine of 1846. As part of his research, he changed the spelling of his land name from the common form of "O'Connor" to the ancient form using one "n" and softly explained the change by saying "Did you ever know an Irishman who could make both n's meet?"

O'Conor's fame as a lawyer is based upon two great causes which stand as milestones in American political history. After the Civil War, he served as counsel to Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy, who had been arrested and imprisoned in Fortress Monroe on charges of treason. As a graduate of West Point and a former Secretary of War, Davis had taken the oath of loyalty to the United States of America and realized that only a courageous lawyer would undertake his defense in the face of popular sentiment in the country. O'Conor undertook the case and based his defense on the Fourteenth Amendment, one of the post Civil War amendments usually interpreted as the final nail in the coffin of the Confederacy. By one of its provisions, the amendment barred any Confederate official from holding any Federal office. O'Conor carried his argument before Chief Justice Chase of the Supreme Court and successfully argued that Davis had been fully and finally punished by the Constitution itself. The Government attorneys saw technical difficulties in every other charge, and Davis was never brought to trial. He was finally released on bond in 1867, and both Charles O'Conor and Horace Greeley were sureties on his bond.

In the era of the 1870's, the political corruption in New York City masterminded by William Marcy Tweed and his powerful allies became a public scandal involving scores of politicians and the loss of millions in public funds. Governor Samuel B. Tilden conceived the master stroke of enlisting the venerable Charles O'Conor to lend his great moral and legal talent to the cause of political reform. O'Conor served as Special Assistant Attorney General and was opposed by the eminent David Dudley Field. His strategy produced a barrage of million-dollar civil suits and multiple prosecutions lasting over several years, which finally resulted in the destruction of Boss Tweed and his ring of cronies. O'Conor gained national fame for his brilliance and thoroughness. On the last day of the final trial, Charles O'Conor, aged 72 and in frail health, rose from a sick bed to speak, and one witness wrote, "I saw the tall form of Charles O'Conor, pale, emaciated, and

14

HISTORIC NANTUCKET

feeble looking, with the collar of his greatcoat raised about his neck, slowly and painfully walking toward the bench. Almost every man in the Courtroom rose to his feet, but maintained a respectful silence".

Rich in honors but poor in health, 0'Conor determined to retire from the forum. Widowered and childless, he summered in Nantucket in 1880, staying at the Ocean House, and announced he had found "the finest and most healthful spot on the Atlantic Coast". He purchased an outstanding homesite on Sherburne Heights, overlooking Nantucket Sound from the North Cliff, and began the construction of a large Victorian home. The house had marble fireplaces imported from Italy, a n d i t s c o n st r u ctio n wa s c a r ef u lly d o c u m en ted b y t he we e k l y I n q u i r e r and Mirror. The paper reported that O'Conor had chartered the schooner Onward to transport his law library to Nantucket. This was a collection of over 18,000 volumes, reputedly the greatest private law library in the United States, containing a comprehensive collection of Irish law books and the leatherbound volumes of O'Conor's greatest cases. To house the library, a separate brick building was constructed near the gate on Sherburne Turnpike.

The people of Nantucket looked with awe upon the great man who had come to live among them. Nantucket was then just starting to realize its possibilities as a summer resort, and the distinguished attorney became its first retiree in residence, thus launching a movement which has continued to the present day. On Nantucket, O'Conor lived a quiet life, interrupting his reading and writing to take long, solitary walks about the Town. The natives welcomed the tall man with the fine Irish face and white beard, who became a familiar figure on his lonely strolls, but few were aware of his innermost thoughts. Some citizens hoped the great lawyer might be induced to undertake their legal business, but he soon made it plain he had come to Nantucket to escape clients, not to get them. After the years of publicity and controversy, Charles O'Conor was finding the "quiet and more genial climate" he had long sought.

In April of 1884, the Town of Nantucket received an anonymous donation from a private citizen in the amount of $7,000 — a vast sum in those days — sufficient to pay off the entire public debt of the Town, accompanied by a strong admonition that its townspeople never again burden themselves with that root of all evil, public debt.

Charles O'Conor died on May 12, 1884, and not until his death did the Town learn the name of its benefactor. He was praised for his accomplishments in the Nantucket paper, and his Will, filed in the Nantucket Probate Court, was reprinted in full. Testimonials in the New York Supreme Court honored him as "the embodiment of the qualities, mental and moral, which should enter into and constitute the character of a great jurist and advocate".