this
view. He answered me at first in his rough impulsive way,
and seemed very unwilling even to take the matter into consideration.
But after a considerable discussion he asked me to ascertain
whether the Republicans would be willing, if he sent in a
Republican name, to adopt the course above suggested, and
transact no other business until the result was secured, even
at the risk of defeating the Appropriation Bills and causing
an extra session. I went back to the Senate and consulted
a good many Senators. Nearly all of them said they would
not agree to such a struggle; that they thought it very undesirable
indeed; that the effect would be bad. So it was clear that
nothing could be accomplished in that way. I went back to
the White House and reported. I got the authority of the
gentlemen I had consulted to tell the President what they
said. The result was the appointment of Judge Jackson, to
the great satisfaction of the country. He was a very industrious
and faithful Judge. But his useful life came to an end soon
afterward, I suppose largely as the result of overwork in his
important and laborious office.

The Attorney-General said of Mr. Justice Jackson: "He was
not so much a Senator who had been appointed Judge, as a Judge
who had served for a time as a Senator."

I served with Senator Jackson on the Committee on Claims,
and on the Committee on the Judiciary. We did not meet often
in social life. He rarely came to my room. I do not remember
that I ever visited him in his home. But we formed a very
cordial and intimate friendship. I have hardly known a nature
better fitted, morally or intellectually, for great public
trusts, either judicial or political, than his. In the beginning,
I think the framers of the Constitution intended the Senate
to be a sort of political Supreme Court, in which, as a court
of final resort, the great conflicts which had stirred the
people, and stirred the Representatives of the people in the
lower House, should be decided without heat and without party
feeling. It was, I have been told, considered a breach of
propriety to allude to party divisions in early debates in
the Senate, as it would be now deemed a breach of propriety
to allude to such divisions in the Supreme Court of the United
States.

Howell E. Jackson had this ancient Senatorial temperament.
He never seemed to me to be thinking of either party or section
or popular opinion, or of the opinion of other