William M. Evarts
William Maxwell Evarts (February 6, 1818 – February 28, 1901) was an American lawyer and statesman from New York who served as U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from New York. He was renowned for his skills as a litigator and was involved in three of the most important causes of American political jurisprudence in his day: the impeachment of a president, the Geneva arbitration and the contests before the electoral commission to settle the presidential election of 1876.
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Quotes
[edit]- The pious ones of Plymouth who, reaching the Rock, first fell upon their knees and then upon the aborigines.
- Quoted by Henry Waterson in the Louisville Courier-Journal (July 4, 1913), according to John Bartlett (ed.) Familiar Quotations, 13th ed. (1955), p. 592
Quotes about Evarts
[edit]- In none of his ways has he the magnetism of a great speaker. He has a clear, sharp, ringing voice, though it is not powerful or musical. His action is sparing, but effective. In making his points he is lucid, precise and cogent, seldom rhetorical or ornamental. He has an easy colloquial way; he is never in haste and never hesitates. His style is classic in its correctness. His sentences are long and faultless, and freighted with words which show that profound thought is selecting felicitous vocabulary as it goes along. He has a fine humor, but it is the humor of cultivation, not the coarse fun of the vulgar. His appeal to the intelligence of juries are the highest in their tone, the broadest in their scope and the deepest in their power of any in modern times.
- "The New Cabinet: Wm. M. Evarts, Secretary of State", in the Anderson Intelligencer (March 15, 1877), p. 1
