Arts and Letters

I am indebted to our fellow member, Mark Howe, for much of the following, and for allowing me to quote from what he has lately written about Charles Warren for the Massachusetts Historical Society. Other details have been taken from the book published by the Class of '89 at Harvard (of which class Warren was a member and the secretary) on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the graduation of that class. Though Warren's account of his own career in that book is rather dry reading, the introduction he wrote has in some ways a more personal touch.

Warren was a true son of New England, unchanged by his long residence in Washington. I knew him only slightly, but have a very clear image in my mind of how he looked—a thin, redheaded man, clean-shaven, who wore the highest of stiff collars; and I imagine that in the rather public life he led, this part of his dress may have helped to give him a certain stiff dignity.

In his class report, commenting on those members who had not attained a place in Who's Who, he quoted Cato: "I should rather it should be asked why I had not a statue than why I had one," and then added a citation from Lord Bacon: "They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations." His surely did.

Perhaps in these days when many of us are depressed about the state of the world you might be interested to hear what Warren thought appropriate to quote in a similar connection, showing that for all his dry appearance he had a sense of humor. From Ralph Waldo Emerson's Journal of 1837: "Society has played out its last stroke…. The present generation is bankrupt of principles and hope…." From Moorfield Storey's Commencement Address in 1891: "Our countrymen seem more than ever before devoted to the pursuit of wealth. Plain living and high thinking are relegated to a few eccentric men whom their neighbors are apt to call cranks." From Edmund Wetmore's Commencement Address in 1896: "We sometimes stand appalled when we consider the perils that threaten our social order…." From Seth Law's address before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa in 1898: "Everyone is conscious of new problems, but no one is wise enough to see how they are to be worked out." From Charles J. Bonaparte's Phi Beta Kappa address in 1899: "The national danger lurking in the degeneracy of our public men may become yet more manifest." And to finish, Warren quotes Thomas Jefferson: "My hopes sometimes fail—but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy…. How much pain have cost us, the evils which never happened." Are not these quotations appropriate at the present time in the world's history?

Warren came of a long line of men in public service of many sorts, from the days of the Revolution in 1776 to his own time. His ancestors were all Jeffersonian Democrats, and he was always a devoted member of the Democratic Party. He entered Harvard in the class of 1889, and took part heartily in college life, belonging to several clubs; he was secretary of his class and president of the Harvard Advocate. Mark Howe asks, "Was there a faint shadowing of his long trusteeship in the New England Conservatory of Music, in the fact that he performed on the cymbals and triangle in the 'Pierian Sodality,' the college orchestra?" After having become a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and graduating magna cum laude he went to the Harvard Law School. In 1893 he was appointed secretary to William E. Russell, Governor of Massachusetts (a great name in his day), thus becoming intimately involved in state politics, before acquiring an active interest in national politics. In view of the character of most of the books to be written by him, it may be surprising to learn that his first book was a work of fiction, The Girl and the Governor.

The list of his appointments to positions of great responsibility in judicial matters grew larger and larger as he advanced in years. He gave annual addresses before eight Bar Associations, and was frequently invited to lecture on law and jurisprudence by universities throughout the country. He belonged to numerous historical societies and societies of international law. He was active in many important matters at Harvard University in his later life, and appropriately was a member of the Board of Overseers, as his father and great-grandfather had been.

In 1923 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the best book on American history published in 1922, The Supreme Court in United States History. In 1925 the American Council of Learned Societies appointed him a member of the Committee of Management of the Dictionary of American Biography, and he served until its completion in 1936.

Among the other (many other) posts he held was that of Assistant Attorney General under President Wilson. In the Department of Justice (and I quote from his autobiographical sketch) "he had charge of all matters connected with the World War, neutrality, Mexico and German criminal activity in this country; also all matters relating to our Insular Possessions, Alaska and the Canal Zone, and to Federal Reserve and National Banks…. He drafted that part of the President's Proclamation of War of April 6, 1917, dealing with alien enemy regulations," and drafted many acts and bills having to do with neutrality and espionage.

During the middle thirties, when there was much controversy concerning the neutrality of this country, James T. Shotwell wrote (in On the Rim of the Abyss): "The starting point of clarity in the whole problem is a study of Mr. Warren's description of the inadequacy of the pre-war neutrality legislation to ensure the success of the policies which he was charged to enforce."

A more recent estimate of his legal achievements comes from Judge Charles Wyzanski, who writes: "He was a great legal historian who in his own lifetime saw his historical research affect the growth of law. What he discovered about the early history of the federal judiciary became the basis of the revolutionary decision that federal courts must follow the common law decisions of the state courts—a doctrine reversing a hundred-years-old line of cases traceable to Justice Story. His research on bankruptcy served Justice Cardozo as the text for one of the more important of that jurist's Supreme Court decisions. More important, Charles Warren by his day to day influence on newspaper editors, men of administrative importance in Washington, and readers' of The Supreme Court in United States History gave to constitutional discussion depth and perspective. He made tradition an effective contributor to public policy—thus underlining our boast that Anglo-American law values precedent and habit as much as logic and pure reason."

I quote again from Mark Howe: "If he were not to be found on a trout stream or golf links, sailing or enjoying any indoor hobby, there was a certain pastime apart from reading in which he took pleasure. This was one of the pleasures of the table, not so much the consumption of food, as that feast of reason which goes with good talk. Through many of his later years, he found this pleasure at a special lunch table at the Metropolitan Club in Washington. Though not circular, it was often called 'the Round Table.' It brought together daily ten or a dozen of the most interesting men in Washington. The give and take of lively talk on matters of national import flourished exceedingly."

John Lord O'Brian amplifies this description: "The table at the Metropolitan Club came into existence as a distinctive group in the Wilson Administration, when most of the Cabinet sat there. When I returned to Washington with the Hoover Administration, I found that Charles had already become a settled occupant. Conversation was generally such as you would expect, except when Stephen Bonsal or Robert Bliss or Frank McCoy would converse with Joe Grew about historical incidents characteristic of the East. Arthur Krock once wrote of us as 'the forum of the unfinished sentence.' Charles was the unique figure, always serious because almost invariably he talked of law, perhaps of some very recent decision of the Court, but frequently recalling some historical decision connected with the Court in earlier days. All of us looked to him as the final authority on all constitutional matters. As the years passed, he underwent considerable change and became greatly mellowed, but his independence remained that of a true New Englander. He always retained his firmness of convictions and his habit of expressing them with dogmatic authority. [On one occasion he said:] 'If you are speaking of me, I rarely agree entirely with anyone.' At times some of us were bold enough to twit him with the fact that he never on a single occasion was heard to criticize a Democratic President…. His friendliness and courtesy became, as the years went on, more and more endearing qualities. When he spoke his opinions, none of us ever had the heart to enter into any further argument."

He was born on March 9, 1868, and died on August 16, 1954.